Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

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frylander
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Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

#1 Post by frylander »

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Author Presentation-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi, I'm known as frylander on the internet, and this is a project I'm currently working on. It's my first project, too. As it is right now I'm doing almost everything myself (Art/Programming/Script), while I get 'free for commercial use' songs and sounds for the sound department. This means that updates on the project may come at a slow pace, though I pretend to finish the game in the next few months. Hopefully.

I already posted some of my individual work in this forum to get feedback and now I'm ready to dig deeper into its development, hence why I'm posting this here.
If you have any doubts, questions or want to share anything with me regarding the project, feel free to do so.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Soulless Creatures-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Story:

Soulless Creatures takes place somewhere in England, in the early 19s.
The story follows Drake: a self-proclaimed vampire hunter, and Lisa: a little girl who's also a vampire.
They met in their childhood, but separated after some tragic circumstances. 10 years later they reunite, Drake with the objective to kill her, while Lisa wants to kill another vampire. But not just any vampire, she wants to kill an elder, the strongest kind of vampire there is. And for that she needs Drake's help.
Not being strong enough to kill Lisa, Drake accepts to play one of her twisted games:
She will train him to kill the elder, and in the meantime he can try to kill her as many times as he wants.
If Drake kills her before having to fight the elder, he wins. Otherwise, he will find himself in a battle he cannot win.

Info:

Expected Release Date: Late 2018.
Price: Free
Genres: Horror, Mystery, Romance, Fantasy
Rating: +16 for blood and violence.
Kinetic Novel: This means there is only one main route, there are no choices to be made. It's being made as if it were a novel or movie rather than an interactive game.
Script Lenght: Around 50k words.
Made with: Unity

Progress:

Programming:30%
I already got and modified an asset in Unity to suit all my needs with the workflow for the fastest possible development which should speed up a lot the later stages. All that remains to do in Unity is change the default interface for a new one and actually create the game with all the dialogue, music, etc.

Art:5%
As for the art, I'm making all the art myself even though I'm no artist. So the art, especially the character sprites may look bad. Either way I don't plan to create finished sprites until the last stages of development, I will work with sketches instead. That means that most of my updates, if including artwork of any kind, will be probably sketches.

Sound:20%
Sound should be fairly easy and simple. All I need to do is recollect online a bunch of SFX that is free to use, it's a matter of investing some time searching. As for the music, there are a lot of songs that fit the theme of my novel and I already got some. The next step is to make loop versions which isn't too hard either. So that shouldn't be a problem.

Script:100%
And finally the script, it consists of 18 chapters, and a short epilogue/prologue. Thanks to the very helpful user 'Mammon' that acted as my proofreader, I managed to clean the script from grammar mistakes and I got some very useful feedback that I implemented in the script.

WIP Artwork:

Character Sketches

Image

WIP Final Sprite of Lisa

Image

Alleyway Background

Image

And here is a screenshot with everything put together (GUI still default, it will change though it won't be that different)

Image

Keep in mind that all the artwork right now is pretty much WIP for the sake of testing and is probably going to change to some extent before the final release.

As for what I expect from this post, mostly I want to get my game out there so people start seeing it and (hopefully) talking about it. Other than that, it would be nice to get feedback on the sprite sketches as I make them, since I know that the art is what will lack the most because of my artistic skills.

For instance I have no idea of how to draw clothing, and it shows on the sprites. That's one of the reasons why I won't make final sprites until the very last moment, because I plan to improve on those subjects as much as possible before making final art.

It would be nice if you let me know if the story summary did catch your attention or not, that would be very helpful!

Either way all help or feedback is appreciated. I will post updates once I have enough relevant things to push an update.

Have a great day everyone!


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Changelog-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

28/04/18: Script done, art and programming of the game started.
Last edited by frylander on Sat Apr 28, 2018 12:39 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Mammon
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Re: Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

#2 Post by Mammon »

As the proofreader that read this story, I can tell you that Frylander's writing is real good and that he's a motivated developer. The story is well-written with some real good moments and one particular part of the story being enthralling. And that was before my proofreading, with the way he took my critism to heart it's only bound to be better in the final version. While I'm usually always wary to say so before the project is released, I'm positive that Soulless Creatures will see the light of day considering frylander's motivation. And when it does, I hope that you'll all play it. I know I will, despite already reading it once.
ImageImageImage

Want some CC sprites?

frylander
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Re: Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

#3 Post by frylander »

Image

Small Update:

Final version of the script done. Already started programming the game with placeholder assets, though it will require several iterations to get everything in there.

I've been working on the workflow inside Unity as well. Now programming the game should be way faster and easier.

Work on the art department has already began too, the image above being a test for one of the CG's. Considering the ammount of CG's I'm going to have, I decided for the sake of being able to finish this project, to have both sprites and CG with this look.

Instead of doing a proper linework, I clean the sketch as much as I can and paint below that instead. It saves me a lot of work and the end result probably is better anyways (I really suck at doing clean linework). Let me know what you think about the CG above, it's not final since the wings are a bit clunky but it should look very similar to a final thing with that style.

On the sound department everything is fine too, found more than enough sources of free music and SFX and they got pretty much everything I could ask for.

The biggest chunk of work here will be the art, considering there will be lots of CG's and sprite variations. And considering I will work with placeholders and sketches for the most part, you won't be seeing many finished assets here until later in development.

Lastly, I want to thank Mammon for being my proofreader and giving me those words of encouragement! I'm working every day to get this project finished before the end of the year. Hopefully I'll manage to do it and share it with everyone here.

Have a great day everyone!

frylander
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Re: Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

#4 Post by frylander »

Small Update:

I've been getting feedback and trying ways to do the art of the game, keeping it somehow close to the idea I have without going crazy over the ammount of work to do.

Managed to find a middle ground that I'm satisfied with. Now characters will have a main pose with arms and whole face variations, and when required other variations such as clothing or similar. That means most of the work for each character will be put in a single, somewhat neutral pose.

For the sake of not limiting myself to that however, whatever actions that can't be accurately portrayed with that pose due to it's stiffness or similar, will get whole separated poses. Anything that can be conveyed only with the arms and face will be done in the base pose as a varation instead. That will greatly reduce the ammount of work I have while not restraining myself to that single pose.

Anything else might be done with CG or programming tricks like abscence of sprites and just description in the text.

As of the progress of the game, the prologue is pretty much programmed at this point, and the first two chapters are also being worked on. Before continuing on the programming side of things however I will try to have my sprites done now that I have a clear idea of how I want to make it (though I've said that more times than I would like)

I have more sprites done and the way sprites look is way different now, for instance the little girl is only shown up to belly button level.

Instead of showing off random sprites I will link to a youtube video of the prologue in which I demo with rough sketches what to expect from the game when it comes out.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1DDStN1zbs

As you can see I want to have dynamic sprites, hence why I'm having such a hard time figuring things out, and while not all scenes will be so intense as that one, you should see characters moving around and changing arms/expressions quite often at the very least. Also bear in mind that the video only portraits a very early WIP for testing purposes and lots if not all of the work in there is subject to change.

I will keep posting updates when something more substancial happens.

Cheers, and if by any means you've read this, thank you!

DirkB
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Re: Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

#5 Post by DirkB »

I quite liked that video. It's nice to see that you add action like that. I think it works well.

I am also making a novel on my own now, because I really like to write a story and add graphics/music and share it with others, but my drawing skills are much worse than yours. I think you are actually pretty good. I am only using 3D software for all graphics.

frylander
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Re: Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

#6 Post by frylander »

DirkB wrote: Mon May 14, 2018 6:07 pm I quite liked that video. It's nice to see that you add action like that. I think it works well.

I am also making a novel on my own now, because I really like to write a story and add graphics/music and share it with others, but my drawing skills are much worse than yours. I think you are actually pretty good. I am only using 3D software for all graphics.
Thanks for the feedback, glad you liked it!

One tip if you are going to use 3D, the lighting does everything! I don't know if the software you are using allows you to create and customize lights, but much like in the drawings, in 3D the lighting sets the mood of the scene and the volume of the characters, so pay a lot of attention to that, and good luck!

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Re: Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

#7 Post by DirkB »

I use DAZ and yes it allows for customizing lights. Often scenes you buy in the store have built in lighting and then I use those. Otherwise I use a set of custom lights, called ghost lights, that are easy to fit. When I get a nice, clear image, then that's enough for me. I don't have time to do complicated lighting setups and I thought I could just go a for a simple real life impression instead of adding special atmosphere. It could be nice of course, but it would drive me crazy because I will have way too many scenes to make special lighting for all of them.

Good luck you too!

frylander
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Re: Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

#8 Post by frylander »

Small Update:

Already having established how I'm going to go about sprites and CG, I already began programming more in-depth the first chapters. The first one is mostly programmed (sprite-wise, it still lacks any sound). The same can be said for the second and third chapters, the more I make the easier they become to program thanks to having more sprites to re-use. There will be a few chapters that will require more work however.

Also the sprites for all characters have been zoomed-in to get a closer look at their faces, and now all primary and secondary characters already have sprites in the sketching phase as placeholders, meaning I can program their scenes without need for the final art.

I will focus on the programming and art now to get a first draft and later on I will add the SFX and Music. The last step will be to change the placeholders of the art into final art, cleaning the sketches a bit and colouring.

The game is still being worked on at a constant pace, usign the sprites in a dynamic way similar to the video shown before.

Cheers.

frylander
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Re: Soulless Creatures [Horror][Mystery][Romance][Vampires][Kinetic Novel]

#9 Post by frylander »

UPDATE:

This project as a game in itself has been cancelled. Instead, it has been made into a novel.

For any of you interested, here is the link to said novel:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J41RRNV

And here are the details:

Title: Soulless Creatures - Heart Scars
Genres: Paranormal, Vampire, Romance, Mystery, Horror.
Length: 421 pages
Blurb:

"Is Lisa an innocent little girl, or a wicked monster? It's been 10 years since we last met, but she hasn’t aged in the slightest. She’s still the same girl I fell in love with when I was young, and who I've been trying to kill ever since. The only problem is: I can’t even lay a finger on her. She’s too strong for me, and claims that an even stronger vampire is the one really responsible for what she did. She needs my help to kill him, and I don’t know what to do. If I make the wrong decision, I'll unleash an evil upon this city that will cost a lot of lives, including mine. One way or another, I’ll discover the truth about this mystery, and save everyone... or my name isn't Drake."

FREE PROMOTION: The book is on free promotion during the days 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9 of November.

Author's twitter, in case you want to get in touch or follow me: @SoullessBook

Thanks to all you guys and especially Mammon for the great help that helped me make this project come true, even if as a novel!

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