What I Did Last Week (ending 2/13)

[papillon]

Welcome to the first "What I Did Last Week" thread. Over the last couple of years, I've noticed that there's a lot of posting, and especially concrete posting, towards the start and end of projects --- but not much in the middle. The hope is that this series of threads will fix this, by providing a place for people to talk about what they've done over the course of time. To help foster a sense of community, I want to try time-based threads, rather than project-based threads.

The challenge here is simply to post, once a week, a synopsis of what you did in the last week; and to do so at a level of detail that will let people follow along and make suggestions.

A couple of rules:

1. Anyone can make a new What I Did Last Week thread, if the old one is out of date. The goal is to post at least once weekly, with weeks running Sunday-Saturday. If you don't see a thread, make a new one. (If more than one thread for a week is created, we'll merge them.)

2. Be specific. Don't just post, "I wrote 100 words, made 2 sprites, and made 1 background." Show us - give us a synopsis or excerpt of the writing, or post a picture or two. The idea is to give people something to comment on, rather than going "yeah, that's nice." Use spoiler tags for large, game-ruining spoilers - but maybe not small ones, as people should expect some spoilers here.

3. Collaborative Criticism is welcome. This should be considered a "Critique Please" thread. That means that if you have suggestions for how a project can be made better, post them. If there's something you especially like or dislike, post about it.

4. Don't post lack-of-progress reports. If you didn't do anything this week (and it happens to everyone), don't post about it here.

This is an experiment; I hope it leads to more discussion of in progress games, and I hope that discussion leads to more and better games.

As a reminder to everyone, the motto here is Be Specific. We want to know what's going on, not just raw counts.

[papillon]

Finally got the monster art in for dungeon-exam 4! The critter (which can be seen in screenshot here) is a hodag, based on a bit of Wisconsin folklore. Since this game is set in the US, I'm trying to rely on local origins for most of the fantasy creatures that come up, although they will be garbled a lot from the legends.

This dungeon also took a lot of code, because the monster is not a rock and takes actions on its own. If it gets near you, it attacks, but if it's aware that you exist and not near you, it tries to track you down. So it had to have movement code and there had to be defined time periods for when it can move, how long cast-effects last, and so on. Also, all the combat stuff which hadn't been done yet because there was nothing to fight, now comes up.

There are a ridiculous number of ways to win this dungeon. We have now put in spells for the whole range of skill ability, including the tunnelling spell at Black-100, which lets you dig around and change the entire dungeon map as you desire. But it's expensive enough that it's not terribly useful unless you know where you're going, and there are places you can't dig through because it would break the game.

So... 76 unique spells, all of which should preliminarily work now, I think, and a current wordcount of 74,045. Basic code for trophies (achievements) is in, an actual gallery for them isn't yet. Game script is at January 15, still early in spring semester.

[DaFool]

Purely administrative stuff.

We're now 10-strong (core of 5 people)

But the Great OEL SRPG needs a massive effort, and I am shelling out cash to speed development (No one will care if you took 5 years if the end result sucks).

Recalculated the project budget cap to $8,767. That's still more than the average yearly wage here.

At least I'm not as foolish as these folks. $235,000 for a platformer. The. Fuck.

And I'm not going to make the heartwrenching mistake of this guy.

I really miss when two friends -- a writer/programmer + artist pair -- are enough to make a small but memorable game. But the bar is continually raised so one must take the extra effort to release something significant in the sea of indie games out there.
Self-doubt often kicks in and makes me depressed. Making games is supposed to be fun, and I want to be able to concentrate without worrying about trolls and haters in general.

My favorite inspirational article from the past week

He was also inspired by a practice Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones called “The yes sessions,” meetings where no one was allowed to say anything negative that might damage a fragile creative idea.

[Greeny]

I'm still waiting on someone to tell me whether or not he wants to do the backgrounds for the project.
But, at least the program is complete, and standing at 17,854 words. (I could have sworn there were more.)
Still, I don't see a release coming any time soon.

I did some random bugfixes, but what I've mostly been doing is customizing the GUI. I think I did everything, but it's my first time,
so I might have overlooked something. I've also decided on adding trophies to the game. Really a gratuitous feature, but I think
it's kind of nice. Besides, the whole project started out as an experiment in various things, so there's no reason not to experment
with other things while I wait for the important content that's out of my hands.

I was only feeling half-diligent, so I used the CG gallery code from the cookbook to make into a trophy room. And perhaps also
a CG gallery. Depends on how many CG's we end up having. Oh, and it's a secret trophy room. Except that I just told you.

[James]

2/11/2011 - Got the courage to post my first VN idea "The Alumnus" got 17 people to vote in the polls inside the forum. Thanks guys, need more data!

Over all I tried to think what would appeal to people in their teens and twenties, and just gather parts and pieces that would interest people and tried to put it in one package. The setting is base on United States Highschool so I think it will be different then the usual Japanese high school visual novels. Cause not everyone out there wants pretty girls in sailor uniforms. The tone of the story won't be cute and fluffy, but insightful and slightly cynical because that's how I am.

2/12/2011 - Drew 1st rough sketch of the 9 characters, so far nobody made any remarks on it which is kind of sad. Right now, I don't know if I should go ahead and color it or scrap the rough draft and redraw it. Thank you Auro-Cyanide!. I'm not really good at drawing so was hoping I can get some pointers from the art gurus.

2/14/2011 - Found theme music for my characters that fits them pretty well, they're well-known music so I probably have to swap them out later. But listening to them while I type their dialogs makes me happy and somewhat focused. Not going to share what theme music I picked yet.

[Voight-Kampff]

Worked on sprites for a little old lady, a mother and a lamp.

Yes. A lamp.

What?

It's an integral part of the story and absolutely necessitates a sprite!

Well, either that, or we're just going nuts with detail and will eventually drown in an ocean worth of work.

[Greeny]

But you have to admit, it is a very nice lamp.

[PyTom]

V-K: How many emotions does the lamp sprite have? I'd assume there's at least on and off. Maybe also frayed.

For me, the big thing last week was the 6.12.0 release, and starting the planning for 6.12.1. I've been fighting infections and deadlines as of late, so I didn't do much since the release, at least when it comes to actual coding. 6.12.0 was also an interesting release - for several years, I've known pretty much what I've wanted to do with Ren'Py. Now things are a little more open, so I get to pick what I want to spend time on first.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I finally did a second character concept sketch. My life has been hellishly busy lately, but I have managed to negotiate free time, which is probably for the best. I was liable to try ripping a customers face off if I didn't spend more time away from them doing my own thing.

Anyway, here he is:

I had trouble drawing him, not really sure why. Just trying to find the right look I suppose. Overall I am pretty happy with it, though there are a couple things that I may change, such as minor adjustments to the hair and maybe making him look a bit older. He is meant to late 20s-early 30s. What do you think? Also, I am not really sure about his outfit. He is a rebel leader, so he isn't hard done by but he also isn't upper-class. He is a fighter but I figure he has a certain degree of pride.

The other thing I did that has nothing to do with my games, but with someone elses was to design the logo for 'The Spiritual Equivalent' for Lumen. I had the sketch sitting around for ages but didn't have the time to finish it until now. I will have to get stuck into the other ones I have to do since I have free time. My idea with the logo was to create something that felt magical and to carry on the idea of balance and equivalency by having the lines connect. Look at the sparkles!

[Lumen_Astrum]

Hmm....

~ Did some sprites for my game! Finally got finished with Leonard Bell from my KN Independent.

A little icon for Leonard :D

leonard icon.png (60.1 KiB) Viewed 2273 times

~ Learned some things about imagemaps for main menu design, and I designed my own main menu, once again for Independent :

Title Screen for Independent

It's only a simple design, but I really wanted to learn more.

~ Of course, The Spiritual Equivalent isn't on full hiatus. I have been choosing music and making drafts for the branching system, and typing out the storyline. Hopefully, I will continue it once I am done with Independent.

~ Did something for others, art for an RPG game naming "Elements' Lands : Warlock's Pendant" which is offsite, and I just took a request for another RPG game. Hopefully once I finish them, I will have more time. I took the request because it can be a practice on the way I do sprites Here are the two facesets that I just finished this week :

Destiny Darknife Faces

DESTINY FACES 2.png (44.63 KiB) Viewed 2273 times

Hilla Blackhilt Faces

HILLA FACES.png (43.36 KiB) Viewed 2273 times

~ I chose Tell Me Once Again and Mirror of Solitude (no link, sorry ^_^''') as Independent's themes.

~ And on an unrelated note, I did homework and a project in Technical Writing about the Twelve Gods of Olympus.
(If anybody is interested in answering a survey about the Twelve Gods of Olympus, can you please PM me your answers to this. Thanks a lot! XD)

And that's all I did last week (I think :3)
By the way, really thank you to Auro-Cyanide for the logo!

[azureXtwilight]

-Finished making this sprite,

- Written approximately 5000 words of Zephyr's path, and finally going into Thanos' path in MOGF. I'm writing both paths in turns now.~

- Finding music and sound effects for Doppelganger, found some screaming and also car screeching! Also some scary-ambience sound effects! AWESOME!~

- Requesting for music, asking for jenocide and lepap to sing another song for MOGF track (2 version, yay!) and I hope she does it well! I only need two more tracks to go! Hooraaay! :3

- Decided to purchase a few "cheap" music for my project. Some of my best money spent~

- Non-project relevant, but dropping dead because of college things. I hate the urinary system...

[mugenjohncel]

FLAGSHIP PROJECT
LAMEST OF LAME

Finished lineart for "Uncle Mugen" which is the other protagonist (antagonist) of the VN... I'm working on... it's been more than two years since his last official appearance in a VN and decided to update his looks to accurately reflect the current look of the actual person he was based on... ME (yes, including the beer gut )

BTW!... Unlike the previous sprite two years ago... this one had several variations... including well... no clothes at all since it will be used in-game...

______________________________________________________________________________

OTHERS:

Almost done with BG-CG's for Sepia Tears and will begin to review the already done BG-CG's for possible improvements.

A single BG-CG for a collaboration with Sake-Chan (Sake Bento) ate up a huge chunk of time since the nature of the BG-CG in question made it ridiculously time consuming to model in 3D... thus resorted to time tested MANUAL drawing....

"POOF" (Disappears)

[Codexus]

Hey guys,

I haven't posted here in a while.

Last weekend there was the mini-LD at ludumdare.com. Mini-LD is an informal monthly version of the ludumdare (48 hours solo game creation contest) and one possible theme was "Tetris is now a <genre other than puzzle> game!" and I wanted to try making a Tetris themed VN. I had a game idea and a rough idea for the story but unfortunately while I have completed 3d games in 48h before, I underestimated how much I suck at drawing (programmer art pawaaa! ). So while I was planning to have 4 characters, I barely managed to finish this one by Sunday evening (and there were still a lot of errors in the drawing that I fixed on Monday).

So I won't be finishing that game. But at least now I have a character to do some renpy tests and who knows, he might be recast in a new role for another game.

[Radhreni]

Started outlining the secret project. I haven't created a thread for it yet since I don't want to announce it before I at least have a completed script draft. (I figure, at that point, it will be a matter of 'when' rather than 'if,' even if it takes years.) That, and I don't even have a title at this point.

Basic premise: taking the classic four monster food groups fantasy RPG classes, mixing in a few other cliches-to-the-point-of-punchline, and shaking it up a bit before pouring into the story mold. Cheerfully invoking Niven's Watt-Evans' Law here (that'll teach me to write up a post when I'm too sick to doublecheck I have the right author in mind), and not sure if I can pull it off, but eh, it's a change-up from the usual sort of thing I write. Just for fun

The story so far: the MC is a young woman about to graduate to journeyman status as a scout (read: mishmash of ranger/rogue, less stealing and more stealthy) in the adventurer's guild. The only thing in her way is the final novice exam: to brave the perils of the sewers with a group of fellow novices with complementary abilities (read: fighter, cleric, wizard)...and bring back ten rat tails.

What the group finds in the sewer is far nastier and definitely not part of the exam. Their return to the surface, with one person missing and another on the brink of death (he gets better...mostly), is a somber occasion. The MC is left with a number of questions: what did they run into in the sewer? Will it return? What happened to the wizard, the sole member of the party who didn't make it back? Can she demand double the standard first-year journeyman fee if the client is an unrepentant douchebag, or should she just walk away?

So far I've loosely mapped out through the fourth day (exam and aftermath are day 1), and it looks like there are two main branches (dependent on whether she accepts the first mission offered). Each will probably subdivide once more before getting into the various ending-specific paths and such. I'm using Wikidpad to keep synopsis, setting bible, and (halted) script in one convenient place during the writing stage.

So that's pretty much it for the last week. Not even thinking about art right now (when I get to that stage, I might wing it) and music is in the "looking for inspiration" stage, that's all.