Deeplake - Demo v 1.3 Released! 22/09/07

[monele]

Sounds like a very good compromise to me ^^. Go for it! Are you still going with the japanese girl route first? (which I suppose now includes another character)

As for the artist, I wonder how much work is left to do for the new routes. Will there be many new backgrounds and sprites? Probably some event CGs? Just thinking that if there's not too much, it could be the perfect occasion to polish the character sprites. I've noticed the project didn't get as much praise as I think it deserves and I've had private returns saying that the chara graphics could be a bit of a barrier :/

[Sapphire Dragon]

There will be cg's and stuff. But I dont know how much there is to do. The writer isnsists that itll be spoiling if for me if I know the plot.

Yes to the samurai first, and yeah itll have another character included in the plot too.

Character art side, yeah ive been planing to redo them at some point but I have two ICA's left for uni which are taking my time at the moment. Last hand ins on 14th may.

To be fully honest its going to be hard to work on this soon. Mid july/august im going to start up a games company and accrding to the people funding me to do it ill have no free time for a good while. So what itll most likely be is updates every now and then with some redone art and only the new pics having the newer versions first.
(415 pictures to redo is no small feat)

edit:
How is this style? or do people prefer cell shading.

[monele]

Wow, good luck on all the projects then ^^; (and yeah, you're going to be swamped if you go "pro").
I'm not sure which one I prefer. The new one is definitely crispier and the coloring more detailed. I guess I still feel nostalgy for the old one, but the new one definitely looks more polished ^^

[Sapphire Dragon]

Ok, not too great then. How about this?

[monele]

Ahh, it's so hard to say ._. I'd like to ask for a lawyer!
No, but I'd actually like other people to give an opinion too.

For now, I'd say I do like the last one. It's polished and it has celshading. The only thing I could think of is maybe try to color the lines as you did on the second version. Might look good

[Sapphire Dragon]

Ok heres both. The shading isnt perfect to the lines because I took the lines from the newest one and smudged the old one in but it should be enough to show what itll look like.

[Vatina]

There isn't a lot of difference betweent the last two, are there? The biggest difference I can see is in the eyes. I think I like the eyes of the last one the best - they are a bit darker.

[Sapphire Dragon]

the main part is that its using a blended shading rather than cell shading like the one above it. its a mix of the two top ones.

[PyTom]

Hm... I think my problem is that I'm interpreting the shading on these as beveled, rather than relatively smooth shapes.

[Vatina]

Oooh you're right, now I see it better. Yeah, I like the last one the best then But you should probably do what you feel the most comfortable about, since they are both good.

[Sapphire Dragon]

Any is fine for me. Besides, the amount of times Ill have to draw things the style will become second nature regardless of what style it is.

I don't really understand what your saying pytom, the shading is too linear and not curved enough?

[PyTom]

Hm... I think the problem is that the shading doesn't really seem to follow the curves of a person's face. So as a result, it seems like the face is mostly flat, with some shading causing indents in it (especially around the eyes).

[Sapphire Dragon]

I see, its probably just the style I do. Ive always darkened the area below the eyebrow to the eye because it goes inwards yet left out the imprint round the bottom of the eye because it then looks like shes been punched a fair bit...

Its a habbit with lighting, when theres no lighting in the scene like theses character pictures I always make the lighting from the top left rather than shading them as if if was no lighting. Maybe it feels bveled because of this.

[Septimus]

It's been a while since I've last posted on this forum, sorry about that.
In any case, I have a request. Now that I'm beginning to make progress on the script I'm finding it more difficult figuring out what people are expecting from this game. For those who are new to the forum, you can find the full demo of Deeplake on the first page. Please try it out and give me some opinions on the characters.

For some reason, once the demo was released we've only heard mainly from monele and DaFool. As much as I appreciate their feedback, I'd like the opinions of many people rather than just two. The demo is still being downloaded, the latest download as of this post was yesterday, April Fool's Day... The Windows version anyway. As the Mac and Linux versions have died due to a lack of downloads I'll send the demo to anyone who uses those and wishes to play it.

So my request is for people who download the demo (thirty-six downloads so far) to actually give their opinions of it. Feedback, especially on the characters, will help me to bring out the full potential of Deeplake's storyline.

[Septimus]

A little progress update. I'll start doing these every week, just to let everyone know that the project is still alive. Since making the decision to merge some routes together I've been making the necessary alterations to the script. As previously stated, the first route we planned on making was Ruri's. That hasn't changed, but now another character's route is intertwined with her own. I'll refrain from revealing which character that is for the time being. There are 5 planned chapters, the first of which is the demo, and the second one has been almost completed. Currently, I'm going back through it and adding extra content for those on the other character's route.

Has anyone else tried the demo yet? I'm still looking forward to hearing more feedback, even if it's negative.