Othala

[Avaible]

Edit 30.12.11

Yesterday, all my systems fell victim to my cousin who thought it a good idea to play soccer with my external hard-drive (my backup). She scored a hit directly into my open computer (for maintaince earlier that day), damaging the main drive. When trying to fix this (I was away) she and her brother actually managed to pour some soda-like drink into my system, causing some interesting results.
My computer works again by now, somewhat at least, less so all of my data including everything done for this project. And since I don't have the time at hand to redo everything from scratch I'll have to drop this.

[Aiurax]

First story written in English? Your English is rather good. And your premise to the story is intriguing.
Are you doing the whole game by yourself? I wish you the best of luck! :]

[poppyrocks]

I know how to feel about working on a game for the very first time >3<

Like Aiurax sed ur eng is goood! Don't give up! XD

[Avaible]

@Aiurax
Yes, I'm going to do it all by myself, and thanks, I'm going to do my best.
@poppyrocks
^^ Thanks, good luck to you too

So, today I tried myself on making the GUI and it turns out it's pretty funny to play around with the settings of photoshop. Then again, my results are really basic, for example the Othala-sign I added to the first post.
Anyway, this is how it looks right now (bg also done in photoshop):


What do you think, should I make the text-box transparent or leave it like that? Or only part of it ... I'm not really experienced with composition yet, so I hope you can give me some input

[Aiurax]

The BG is beautiful.
Do you think you could post an image of what the text box looks like when it's transparent?

[Avaible]

Sure,

[Aiurax]

I like the look of the second text box. But that's just my two cents :]

[Avaible]

Time to introduce the next two characters, Sil and Yuki.


Or rather, I'll let them introduce themself.
"Nice to meet you, everyone, my name is Yuki Yari, call me Yuki if you will. I'm Waka's left hand and have been watching over him ever since his birth fourteen years ago. I'm a Yuki-Onna and able to control nature's cold elements."
"Yuki-Onna? More like Umi-Onna." *end of post
"What's that supposed to mean, Sil?"
"Ever looked into a mirror?"
"I'll have you know that I'm a beautiful snow-like pure girl - with the will and capabilities to freeze you."
"Wait, what? Beautiful, alright, but you're a bit too old to be called a girl, don't you think?"
"... Sil~"
"Oh, she's angry. Calm down, cool down, Yuki, that was a joke."
"That's not funny!"
...

"And thus ends our introduction. It was only brief, but please take care of us from now on."

Some personal details on them ...

Yuki is a Yuki-Onna (from Japanese mythology) able to control snow, ice and similiar things. By humans she's handled as a 16-year old, but her real age is not known by Katana, who she has served since his birth, and she's not planning to tell him nor Sil, though they both want to know. Yuki is quite powerful herself and constantly has to conceal that fact while attending school with Katana to keep her nature as youkai a secret. She's doing all of that for Katana, always putting high hopes in him, and her life pretty much revolves around helping him grow up. However, while she always has the best in mind for her young master, she can't bring herself to hurt him in any way, creating a downward spiral in their relationship while he continues to be an undecisive weakling. Due to her upbringing she can't really understand Katanas feelings for humans, source for a lot of confusion when she beginns interacting with a specially peculiar subject of that species: Sil.

Sil, this being his only name, transfers into Yukis class shortly after the beginning of the story. She is also the first person he notices as he has a rather unique condition of automatically ignoring and almost instantly forgetting everything he's not interested in. His background story is unknown, but his motivation is made clear quickly: To reach happines and having fun while doing so.
He has a way of irritating others that goes beyong mere words, and anything, no matter how strange or impossible, he does seems at the same time normal and strange comming from him to others. He's also of the opinion that 20 hours a day should be spend sleeping through it, but sadly he rarely gets the chance.


And I should probably add some angry-like expressions to Yuki, but every time I try that it just doesn't look right. What ways are there to make a character look angry without using a pounding vein and deformed eyebrows?

*Yuki-Onna = Snow woman, Umi would mean ocean.

[Avaible]

The girl in red, Ira, is the waitress in a restaurant Sil frequents and also the daughter of it's cook. She hates working thus she's doing everything to scare away customers, meaning she mixes them (non-lethal) drinks that taste so horrid that no one ever wants to return there. Since Sil is twothirdly asleep most of the time he actually appreaciates the wake-up effect he gets from her drinks and due to that they share a rather strange relationship with her trying to kick him out and him ignoring her advances.
The cook has already given up on his daughter, on that note, and is rather grateful to Sil that he's at least keeping her company three times a day.

Ira
18 years old, (supposedly) works at her fathers, hates Sil for making her work.
Her goal is to kill Sil with her drinks, or at least make him go away.

Incidentally, Sil's goal is to make her willing to work as his personal servant by calling her such and waiting for the day she forgets to snark back at him for it.

[Miss-Mae]

Looking good! I really like your text boxes, btw. Very nice! I'm glad to hear I'm not the only person experimenting with Novelty. It seems like an interesting program to me.

[Avaible]

@Miss-Mae Thanks :) And yup, Novelty certainly is a very nice program.

Update


Two new things this time: Futhark, the character, and the menu I added when clicking on the Menu-button. Does it look too simple, I wonder? What do you think?

Some information on Futhark; if Yuki is Katanas left hand, then he is his right one. He's a demon that has been sealed away several times already and destroyed even more often in the past, but as he is a manifestation of the nordic runes he can be resurrected any number of times as long as someone experienced in rune magic calls for him. He's seen as an evil being on the level of a natural catastrophe by those who still hold knowledge of him.
His current form has been alive for 50years and is a friend of Katanas father. He lost a bet against him though so he had to take care of Katana ever since fourteen years ago. Futhark is the oldest, most experienced and strongest ally of Katana, though he tries to keep in line with the power of the youkai surrounding him. Can't have a monster destroy the town by accident, can we?

His human form as shown in the screenshot is >2m tall, the bare maximum to still count as a human disguise.

And I've tried myself at making music.
It's supposed to be some kind of mood-setting background music so I advise to listen to it like that - in the background while doing other things. Please tell me what you think :)

[Miss-Mae]

Wow, that menu looks awesome! :O What program are you using for the art and design?