Raidaa no Asahi [Coming Soon... Very Soon]

[Samu-kun]

Eh? Me... Cute...?

S-seriously... Saying such ridiculous things in public...

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Hellooo guys. This is the author speaking again. :3 As you can see, all the expression pictures for the three main girls have been completed. And as you can also see, the girls can display quite a large variety of different emotions. ^_^ Because of the massive size of this project, I'm going to prioritize everything near the beginning of the game so that I can start programming soon. Hopefully I can put together a demo some time in the near future. At that point, I hope I'll have enough of a proof of concept to formally rally all my team members and start seriously recruiting people in earnest.

As you can probably tell, all the character pictures you see here are thumbnails. :3 Here's what their actual size. I hope they all look very cute and moe! ^_^

[musical74]

Yes, Yes, all three girls are all very cute!

Looks like things are shaping up good....looking forwards to things being completed!

Based on pictures I would say that Asaga is the most happy of the three, Ikkari the most tsundere, and Chigara the most reserved

[Jake]

I hope they all look very cute and moe! ^_^

One word of advice, on the art front - if you can, I'd try moving their eyes a bit further apart. One of the "human face" conventions is that eyes are one eye-width apart, if they're much closer than that (like yours) or much further apart then the face tends to look a bit odd. To my eye, (mostly) Asaga and Ikkari in particular look a bit cluttered for that reason.

[Samu-kun]

Ah haaaa! Thanks to Jake-san and some other viewer's comments, our eyes have been separated further and our necks shortened! Thanks everyone! Hopefully we look even cuter now!

Seriously, I don't even see what the big deal is. We don't even look that different from before...

Samu-kun says he can't fix me because my layering system is more complicated...

[musical74]

You don't need FIXING, Chigara....you just need a little touching up is all!

It's more noticable with Asaga that the eyes are more *natural*...and yes, she does look cuter! HOWEVER...I can't see much difference between the before and after pic of Ikkari...uhhhhhh Ikkari, please don't point that laser at me...

[Samu-kun]

Haha! Did you hear that, Ikkari? I'm cute! Errm... Ikkari?

Hey, what did you just say about me!? Of course there's an improvement, baka!

Eh heh... But didn't you say just a second ago that you didn't think that was much of a change either? I guess some people just aren't meant to be cute material, leader...

What did you say...?

Ahhh... You guys, please don't fight...

[Samu-kun]

Hey guys. I'm sorry to report a slight change of plans. It appears that I need some help alot earlier than I've anticipated.

I've discovered that I have absolutely no talent for making backgrounds. :3 I've grinded away trying to make the same background for days but to absolutely no avail. As of now, I'm really looking for a background artist willing to help me out. :3

Here's a proper description of the project, what it will intale, and how much time it'll take.

All the backgrounds will be 800x600. They can be either drawn traditionally or rendered in 3D. The biggest challenge is that the entire story's set in the future, so it probably won't be what most people are used to drawing. Here's a full list of the backgrounds I need and a brief description of each of them so you know exactly what you're getting yourself into.

All the backgrounds in blue can be made by recycling elements from other backgrounds... I think that'll be necessary because of the large number of backgrounds needed.

SunRider - bridge
The main bridge of the SunRider. The SunRider is the capital ship that you will be living on throughout the game. Alot of major events occur in the bridge of the SunRider, so alot of attention should be paid to its design. This is the most important background in the game.

SunRider - lounge
A living room of sorts onboard the SunRider where the girls come to relax after a hard day. There's a couch and a TV here, among other things.

SunRider - washroom
Where the majority of the service shots will take place. ^_^

SunRider - kitchen
Where the girls can cook and eat their meals.

SunRider - Chigara's quarters
Chigara's quarters. A typical bed room. Except for the fact that Chigara's quite the inventor, so there are random gadgets lying around everywhere.

SunRider - Deck Two
A dark and creepy place where there's a mess of cables and circuitry that keeps the SunRider operating. Nobody really wants to come here unless they have to do repairs to the ship.

SunRider - hangar
The hangar bay from which Ryders are launched from the SunRider.

SunRider - destroyed bridge
The main bridge of the SunRider in ruins after a major battle.

Machiavelli - bridge
The main bridge of another warship, the Machiavelli. It's much more powerful and bigger than the SunRider. However, feel free to recycle the SunRider's bridge to make this one. :3

Machiavelli - medical bay
The medical bay of the Machiavelli. Don't spend too much time on this, it's only in one scene in the entire game.

Machiavelli - hangar
The hangar of the Machiavelli. Recycle stuff from the SunRider's hangar.

Bluebird - cargo bay
The cargo bay of the civilian cargo ship, Blue Bird. There are alot of crates and boxes here. Don't spend too much time on this, it's only in a couple scenes in the beginning.

Bluebird - bridge
The bridge of the Blue Bird. Create by recycling elements from the Machiavelli and SunRider bridges. Not really pivotal to the story.

Ruined city
A destroyed city.

School
The courtyard of a typical high school.

Cosette's quarters
The living quarters of Cosette onboard a warship. Don't spend too much time on this. Recycle elements from Chigara's room.

Beach
A beach. Also where a bunch of service shots take place. :3

Beach - sunset
The same beach, except during the evening with a sunset in the distance.

That's all the backgrounds in the game. Please post here or PM me if you are able to help. I do believe I will release this in parts, so you won't have to make all the backgrounds all at once. Thankksss. ^_^^_^

[Samu-kun]

If you want to see some stuff I've already got done before you volunteer, I've also gotten a deviantart account where you can see some of the art of Raidaa no Asahi.

http://samukun.deviantart.com/

[Blue123]

This looks quite nice. I can see you've put a lot of effort into this.

[Samu-kun]

Eeeahh... Some interesting developments.

Appearently, as of now, the main game file and all 9 backup files of the game have literally ceased to function. There's no error log or anything when I start the game... Just a blank screen and an error message saying "game has come to an unexpected error." But I guess not many people here will be able to help me out on GameMaker, and the support in the GameMaker community is pretty much crap, so I won't even bother asking for help there. I have no idea what exactly is going on, but I'm beginning to suspect some sort of file corruption. I've had countless file corruptions in other projects and I've seen this error message literally thousands of times, but it has seldem wiped out all my backup files too. o_o; (Although that has happened to me on some occasions as well. -_-;)

And I assuming it's a bad sign when all the backup files get sequentially smaller in file size as they get more recent. :3 And I'm also assuming the fact that the project file is now 3 megabytes smaller than the one I had just a moment ago when I didn't add or subtract any new content is also a pretty bad sign. Yup... This is showing all the signs of a file corruption.

The good news is that all is not doomed. While I had the visual novel engine completed, the shmup engine was still unprogrammed when it happened. If I lost both the VN engine and the shmup engine, I woulda been reaallllyyy screwed. -_-; Content wise, it wasn't a huge loss either since I only had the first two scenes completed anyways. The biggest loss I guess is the engine itself. Gah... -_-;; Still very annoying it happened. Since I'm not working in Ren'Py, I had to make the VN engine myself... Way to disappoint, Game Maker. Way to disappoint. -_-#

And of course, all the artwork is still intact.

Gah, I've been raging a war with GM all day today. We'll see what happens tommarow.

[monele]

Do you have a single backup or maybe multiple sequential backups left? In any case, it's weird that your backups would get corrupted too... ô_o...

[Jake]

But I guess not many people here will be able to help me out on GameMaker, and the support in the GameMaker community is pretty much crap, so I won't even bother asking for help there.

Surely it's worth asking, even if you don't expect to get anywhere? You never know when you're going to be surprised, after all...

The good news is that all is not doomed. While I had the visual novel engine completed, the shmup engine was still unprogrammed when it happened. If I lost both the VN engine and the shmup engine, I woulda been reaallllyyy screwed. -_-; Content wise, it wasn't a huge loss either since I only had the first two scenes completed anyways. The biggest loss I guess is the engine itself.

On the not-entirely-bleak side, I always find that when I start entirely from scratch on something I'd already mostly finished it tends to turn out a lot better the second time...



Still, it's pretty weird that it'd affect your backups as well - presumably they were working when you took the backups? How does GameMaker store it all? Could it - for instance - be your GameMarker install which is screwed rather than your code? Could it be worth uninstalling, cleaning out and re-installing GM and trying again with your backups? Did you install anything else - DirectX, drivers, etc. - in between it last working and then not working? It sounds a little like the error I started to get a few months ago when I installed some dodgy video drivers - every time I started Yuyuko, it opened a black window, then popped up a generic failure message as it failed to create an OpenGL context and closed the window again.

(Personally, I keep all my stuff in an SVN repo in source form, so if anything breaks it's trivial to go back and pull out the last known-working version; if that still doesn't work then it means it's an environmental problem rather than a problem with code.)

[papillon]

There is a known problem in older versions of GM with the file corrupting itself splat if the source gets too big. GM7 was supposed to fix this, but I long ago got used to keeping everything outside the exe and keeping the exe as small as possible.

HOWEVER, if you are able to open the source file in the editor without any problem and it's just RUNNING the game that's not working, it's probably fixable. Really, you should post on the GM forums - a lot of people there are idiots but there are folks who will try to help (and I can probably do better troubleshooting there than here).

If you're getting 'unexpected error' the first basic checks I would do are:

1. Have you added any very large image to the file recently? A lot of people try to load a ginormous background (something over 1600 pixels in one dimension) and find that their game explodes.

2. Can you make a new empty room your starting room and will that load up? It may be that there is some code in your existing starting room that is causing a kaboom.

Or you could send me the file and I could poke at it for you. No guarantees obviously but I at least know a few places to look, I've been working with this program a long time.

And I assuming it's a bad sign when all the backup files get sequentially smaller in file size as they get more recent. :3 And I'm also assuming the fact that the project file is now 3 megabytes smaller than the one I had just a moment ago when I didn't add or subtract any new content is also a pretty bad sign. Yup... This is showing all the signs of a file corruption.

... It's not *always* a bad sign that the filesize is changing, it does vary somewhat because of the encryption. But dropping 3meg is a little worrying, yes, since it implies that either a pile of data went missing or your game is RIDICULOUSLY HUGE to begin with, which is just asking for it to corrupt...

[Jake]

... It's not *always* a bad sign that the filesize is changing, it does vary somewhat because of the encryption.

I don't know about GameMaker specifically, but compression can also have this effect - the compression ratio you'll get out of most compression algorithms is dependent on the type of data you're storing, so sometimes you can do work to a file and end up making it more appropriate for compression with your changes, so it gets smaller when it's saved.

But yeah, probably not that much smaller.

(I find my source code sometimes gets smaller as I progress on a project 'cause I suddenly see neat more-generic ways of doing things, so I can delete large swathes of it... but I think you'd notice if you'd been doing that! )

But dropping 3meg is a little worrying, yes, since it implies that either a pile of data went missing or your game is RIDICULOUSLY HUGE to begin with, which is just asking for it to corrupt...

I do realise the magnitude of the task to write something as generic and flexible as GameMaker, but realistically - from a programming point of view, there's no excuse for large files causing corruption. Certainly it shouldn't be something that the user expects!

[papillon]

I do realise the magnitude of the task to write something as generic and flexible as GameMaker, but realistically - from a programming point of view, there's no excuse for large files causing corruption. Certainly it shouldn't be something that the user expects!

Oh, I know, and like I said it's supposed to have been fixed in the more recent version. It's just that it *has* been a known problem for years. Most commonly caused (this is what got me once) by loading a big old mp3 into your project. The game would appear to be fine, you'd keep working on it, you'd close the program for the day, then you'd come back the next day and your source and all your backups would be corrupt.

(When you save a file in GM, if you have automatic backups set, it'll save the current as backup1, save the existing backup1 as backup2, and so on for the amount of backups you've told it to do. When you've got a weird corruption that doesn't appear until you try to reopen the file, you can keep saving and discover that all your auto-backups are toast. Another lesson learned - manual backups in separate folders!)

Even without the corruption it's a good idea to keep the exe small, an enormous exe will take forever to load because it has to load all the information at once. Most commercial games don't try to pack all their data in one file either.