By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG] (COMPLETE)

NaNoRenO is an event where creators make a game from scratch during the month of March.
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TakafumiSakagami
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By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG] (COMPLETE)

#1 Post by TakafumiSakagami »

By Your Side

There are many humans in this world, and each of them has a story. Their numbers are immeasurable, ever changing, constantly.
Through the trial of life, 'til the end called death, these humans always seem to lose track of something very important: The humdrum nature of this world.
But we shall not strive for drama, nor for tears or loss. For this moment, just for now, let us wish for an endless everyday.
A peaceful life for us.
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Summary:

By Your Side is a story of the mundane, set within a fantastical version of '60s Britain. In a world full of industry, magic, and adventure, the unnamed protagonist decides to settle down. She has, together with her girlfriend, saved up enough money to afford an apartment. The two move in together and the game begins.
You, as the protagonist, play through a daily routine of interacting with the Heroine. As the days pass you will unlock new options, new outfits, new scenes, and plenty of backstory. The major goal is to save up enough money to afford a house.
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Now Available:

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Characters:

—The Protagonist—
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A photographer who once showed no interest in humans. Her life changed when a stranger entered the frame. Pushed along by the Fairy, she stumbled into a romance with the Heroine. Though she may be quiet—and she may seem cynical at times—she truly loves life and all the beauty it brings.

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—The Heroine—
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An upbeat herbalist with a bouncy personality. She pulled the protagonist into many fun activities, and the two eventually fell in love. She hopes to one day save enough money to buy a house, and maybe even marry her beloved. Although she lives as the embodiment of love, at times she seems to harbour a deep hatred for the world.

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—The Fairy—
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Saved by the Protagonist’s good will, Euon the Fairy promised to one day repay the favour. This repayment came when the Protagonist met the Heroine.
A very long time ago Fairies flooded the forests, using the roots and leaves of trees to communicate with one another. However over the years they—like many of the Earth's creatures—dramatically declined in numbers. They are considered an endangered species and are a very rare sight.

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Where To Find More:
Updates will be published right here, every day of NaNoRenO (hopefully.) Information will also be posted @:

Last edited by TakafumiSakagami on Fri Mar 29, 2019 10:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#2 Post by minyan »

This sounds really interesting! I wasn't expecting the fairy twist xD the idea of new outfits and scenes unlocking every day is interesting. I look forward to seeing where this goes!
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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#3 Post by Zelan »

I'm also super interested in this! I like the combination of more mundane ideas, like the fact that the main characters literally just want to buy a house and get married, and more fantastical elements, like the fairy. Will definitely be looking forward to this, and good luck during NaNo!

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#4 Post by TakafumiSakagami »

It's day 1 of NaNoRenO and the beginning of By Your Side's development. I decided to dedicate this first day to the most important elements of the project...

First of all we have the logo. This is often the first thing anyone will see of By Your Side, and as such it needs to be a grand conveyor of the game's ideals. I have a fondness of relatively simple logos (recent examples being Tsuki ga Kirei and Sukasuka) and that fondness links well with the endless everyday lifestyle that By Your Side idealises. As a result, I ended up making an incredibly basic logo.
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With the most basic typewriter font imaginable I made a SciAdv style sentence-in-a-logo image.

Following on from that I began to draw the heroine's sprite. If you're a reader of my blog you may remember I wrote a post about animation a long time ago. In it I covered the rapid drawing and colouring process of an anime sequence created for the opening of my Visual Novel Aious. Since NaNoRenO's major limitation is time, I decided to use that very same process for By Your Side's art.
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Here is the sprite's lineart. Unlike the lines seen in my work for other titles, this sprite's lines are completely flat. That means there is no transparency, no smoothing, and no blurring. With this I can precisely fill in every single area of the sprite with colour and not have to worry about manually colouring any aspect of the image.
It also helps because, frankly, my lineart is generally incredibly messy, and if you've zoomed in on any of my art you'll notice how imprecise every line is. Removing pressure and transparency from the brush limits the factors I have to keep under control and helps me keep everything consistent. It's basically a band-aid fix for my incredibly underdeveloped artistry.
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Lines as drawn compared to how they'll look in-game.
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As I mentioned, having such lines means I can paint-bucket fill every element of the drawing, and this time saving method is incredibly important because of the immense size of the sprite. This is by far the most involved and ambitious sprite I have ever made. Not only am I planning for the standard set of multiple expressions (with changing eyes and mouths) but I'm also including 2 different poses for each arm, giving us 4 different poses. That in itself isn't any different from sprites I've created in the past. The big factor here is... Outfits!

By Your Side is a simulation game, and with any good simulation game comes customisation. I plan for new customisation options to unlock as the player progresses through the game, and as such, outfits become a major focus. I'm also running with a doll system, which means I have to create each layer of clothing. This ultimately means that I'll have to draw several sets of undergarments, several tops, several skirts, pants, socks, jewellery, accessories, and so on... Add in the fact that multiple poses requires me to draw some parts of an outfit twice, and we have a lot of drawing to do.
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I designed 4 full outfits which can be cut apart into seven different pieces of clothing (shirts, dresses and skirts.) I also plan to include at least three suspender belts (or Garter Belts if you're American) and matching pairs of underwear to go with them, adding another nine pieces to our original seven. I also have a couple cool sequined bra designs that I want to include for the old school glam factor, bringing us to eleven.
Then there's a couple hats and a couple glasses designs I also want to fit into the sprite, and knowing me I'll end up adding even more as I start drawing, so I expect to draw at least fifteen articles of clothing for this one character. But... This IS the only character, so it only makes sense I go all-out for it.
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But that's enough of drawing the heroine today. I can colour her tomorrow, but I'm kinda getting bored of it now... I'm also kinda dreading the process of including all these outfit changes in the game because... I have no idea how to do that. I know there's a couple live methods of presenting sprites, but I have multiple layers of clothing, some of which have sleeves that get affected by pose changes, and also I'm planning on including some skin tone changes. It's a lot to wrap my head around.

So instead let's do the final important element: the living room background image! Now, I'm not very good at drawing backgrounds, and I've never drawn in this style before, so it'll probably suck... That's a warning.
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The idea here is to draw out some vaguely correct geometric shapes, then fill them with random textures and lazily shade them. Hopefully it works out!I've also individualised the elements of the room onto separate layers. The TV, Table, Laptop and Bed Covers are all designed to lay over the background. Part of this is due to a planned 3D camera element which will interact with these objects, and part of it is because I want the heroine to, for example, sit behind the table or sleep under the bed covers. I may end up scrapping both of those ideas eventually, but who knows?
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Anyway, the background gets colored, and then the other elements get exported. I also quickly made a night time version. It's essentially just a couple overlays and a window change, but it works well enough.
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One of the best parts of working on both the logo and background image at such an early stage is that they can be implemented into other material. For example, with a combination of the two I was able to make the game's title screen.
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Throw in some buttons along the screen and it's a perfectly easy screen to make.
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That's all for Day 1! Tomorrow I plan to finish colouring the heroine sprites, add some additional clothing, and then maybe look into drawing her into the background.

I'm not really sure how I'm going to define and present the customisable heroine sprites in-game, but I've got a month to figure it out. If anyone has any ideas, I'd very much love to hear them!

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#5 Post by Zelan »

The heroine is so cute! The sprites are gorgeous, and I'm really impressed with how much work you've put into them. That's definitely a lot of outfits but I think it will be worth it to see them in-game. c:

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#6 Post by TakafumiSakagami »

Thank you~ Hopefully they show up well once they're fully coloured.

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#7 Post by TakafumiSakagami »

My second day of NaNoRenO was all about drawing the heroine. Not all of it turned out as I wanted, but we got a lot of good results.

I first focused on colouring the heroine herself, and then got on to drawing and colouring the clothing. Each layer of the sprite, including the clothing, hair, facial features, and various other details are exported as individual images. They will then be overlayed by the game engine.
I took some shortcuts with the colouring process. For a lot of the clothing options I defaulted to using patterns to avoid having to draw any detail. I also made use of transparency to diversify the appearance of clothing without having to draw anything new. Even with elements as important as the heroine's hair, I decided to avoid shading in favour of simply quantizing the image to let a computer colour it for me. That shows up in this comparison:

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Here's an example of using transparency to diversify the outfits:

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Oh and of course there are plenty of expressions.

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There are currently 91 different articles of clothing, but here's a few possible combinations.

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Also I figured it'd be worth including a tan system.

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In other news, I attempted to do that 'heroine in the background image' idea however I quickly realised how insanely boring the process would be, so I've scrapped it for now. I might bring it back if I have the time, but for now, this is all that exists of that feature:

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That's all I managed to do for this second day. Actually... I did some minor programming setting up a title screen and the core gameplay loop, but that's not very important yet. I can talk about that stuff later. Tomorrow I plan to start on the game's music, and that'll probably be the only day I spend on music, so hopefully it goes well.

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#8 Post by Zelan »

The sprite is adorable!! The outfit combinations look like so much fun, and they're all really cute. I definitely think that taking "shortcuts" to make them was the right choice, since they still look great, and you've gotten lots done just within two days of NaNo.

I usually prefer just to have the sprites over top of the background instead of within the background, so I don't think it's super important to have her in the background, especially if the process is hard and/or boring.

Keep up the good work! ^_^

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#9 Post by TakafumiSakagami »

Day 3 of NaNoRenO is over for me, and with it a day of work is done. By this point we have our title screen, we have our heroine sprites, and we have our background image... But we don't have a game at all. Nothing has been programmed, and none of the assets have been prepared for inclusion within the game, so we're gonna have to bring everything together!

So the first task of the day was to export all of the layers of the heroine sprite into manageable chunks for Ren'Py to deal with. I decided upon a format of 'NAME'_'FEATURE'_'STYLE' such as: Heroine_Hat_Red. Due to the multiple arm positions, I also added a final prefix to some file names, being either one of LURU, LDRD, LURD and LDRU (for left/right up/down) and attached these prefixes to any elements that get affected by the pose changes.

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I then made use of layeredimage and a laaaarge amount of if statements to bring these individual parts together to form the heroine sprite.

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With that done, I began incorporating these elements into the game. By Your Side focuses on character customisation, so this incorporation came via a doll screen. It's a very simple screen, essentially being one long list of image buttons that change the clothing upon being pressed.

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And of course that meant I had to make some image buttons! I quickly threw some rectangle shapes together in Photoshop, fixed the project to a mask, then shrunk all of the clothing options down to fit within the rectangles. A lighter colour style layer full of white was good enough to create a hover effect for each button.

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Now, having this screen is all well and good, but it does nothing if we don't have an actual script setup to play through. Well I didn't talk about it in my Day 2 post, but I actually began programming the meat of the gameplay yesterday.

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The gameplay loop is as such:
The day begins, showing you how many days the player has played so far.
The heroine is present, and the player can interact with her. Doing so zooms in the camera towards her. 
A gap in time occurs (for a brief cutaway scene such as working, shopping, or something else) and then the day turns to night.
At night the player can once again communicate with the heroine, and then the day ends. This loops forever.
However at the start of every day and at the end of every night, the game does a series of flag and value checks to see if the player has unlocked a new scene. Some scenes will play at the start of the day, and some will play when the night ends. Who knows what the requirements to unlock these scenes may be?

A series of menu buttons featuring different interaction options, different activities, access to the customisation screen and other fun things will eventually be added, but for now the game looks like this...



I should mention, the 'done' button of the customisation screen is placeholder, and at the time of recording I had forgotten to include buttons to remove leggings, stockings, chokers and hats. I added those in once I realised my mistake. And no, underwear won't be removable.
The system is incredibly simple, isolated to a single .rpg with documentation, and the possibilities go far beyond my capabilities, so I may open By Your Side up to modders should anyone actually wish to mod the game. I'd love to see peoples' creations. A hairstyle switch is coded into the game already, and though I have no intention of using it, it'd be fun to see what people do with such a thing.

In other news I began writing some of the flashback scenes. The game contains 191 dialogue blocks, containing 2,000 words and 10,593characters, for an average of 10.5 words and 55 characters per block.

I also made a couple songs. An opening song imaginatively called By Your Side and a song that plays during one of the flashback scenes, named If I Stand.

That's day 3 done, and what a day it was. Despite doing these daily updates, I find myself constantly losing track of the day. It's all becoming one big blur of development, but now that all of the tricky stuff is done I can be a bit more chill about progress. All that's left is to make the UI, write a bunch, whip up some background images and and draw some CGs!

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#10 Post by Zelan »

Wow, you really got a lot done today! I'm really impressed by the fact that you already have something that's playable - not a full game, obviously, but to have the doll system up and running already is amazing!

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#11 Post by minyan »

Oh my stars, you've been busy. 91 articles of clothing?! Crazy. I can't wait to mix and match outfits xD I also appreciate the implementation of a tanning system. Keep up the great work!
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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#12 Post by TakafumiSakagami »

NaNoRenO day 4 was aaaall about the little things.

Since the essential base of the game is now established, I got to work on setting up the rest of the framework. The previously shown loop of start > daytime scene > nighttime scene > repeat has been expanded. It now looks like this:
  1. Day start: The number of days played so far is presented. During this, the game checks for any unlockable events that occur on specific mornings. For example, on the 5th morning a scene unlocks that explains the Protagonist's childhood.
  2. Daytime Interactions: The textbox vanishes and a new set of menus appear. Buttons to load and save, change the settings, and to customize the heroine's appearance all appear. Another set of buttons also appear, and they include multiple interaction options.
  3. Interaction click: Upon pressing an interaction button, a point of energy is lost. You start the day with 3 and end the day when you hit 0. Interaction options award different amounts of relationship points, and new (sometimes limited) options appear upon triggering specific flags.
  4. Work: The protagonist goes to work, and you gain some money. This has yet to be truly programmed in, but the space is there.
  5. Nighttime Interactions: Similar to the daytime interactions, a bunch of menus and options appear. These include different interaction options to the daytime scene, and also includes the sleep option that will immediately end the day (for those gunning for the date-specific unlocks.)
  6. Sleep: The characters go to bed. During this the game checks for any unlockable events that occur on specific nights.
  7. Repeat.
A video example of this can be seen here.



In that video you'll also be able to see a bunch of other things I did. The UI elements for the quickbar up at the top of the screen were little hand drawn images, and the mixed image+textbuttons are very awkwardly programmed but working fine. You'll even see a TV discussion option appear on the second day. You may also notice the textbar has changed from the Ren'Py default. It still very much requires work, but it's a change.

In the video you'll have also seen me skip through some scenes. That was all written today, (458 words) and the game totals are: 266 dialogue blocks, containing 2,458 words and 12,954 characters, for an average of 9.2 words and 49 characters per block.

I also made a bunch of sound effects, fully programmed the title screen finally (aside from including an extras screen) and made music to go with the title screen. That can be seen in this short video:



The song in full can be listened to here. Its name is Protagonist, and it is the theme song of the character you play as!

That's unfortunately all I could manage today, and it's for a reason. A very stupid reason... I got some soap in my eye while washing my hair, and it went all bloodshot. I figured looking at a computer screen all day wouldn't do it any good, so I took a break for half the day. It's still bloodshot, but I don't have time for it right now. I've got work to do!

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#13 Post by TakafumiSakagami »

Hoo boy, five days in and I'm already starting to feel the burnout. I might have to take a break soon, but I'll probably be too invested in By Your Side to actually take that break...
Anyway, today I got to doodlin' mainly, but I also did a bit of programming. The unlock system of the game that rewards clothing options for progression has been fully programmed!

You start the game with a very small wardrobe, like this:
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However you'll occasionally run into special screens that look like this:
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The next time you look in your wardrobe, a new item of clothing will be there!
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Setting this up required a whole new set of icons, so I went into Photoshop and cobbled some together.
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The requirement for this specific unlock—the white dress seen in the gif above—is very simple: Get to the end of the first night.
While I was adding the unlock code into the scene, I decided it was nigh time to start working on CGs, and I drew the CGs relevant to that scene. It looks a little something like this...


Side note: I REALLY need to change that textbox.

Last of all, I made a start on another CG. It's far from finished though, so tomorrow will be spent finishing it.
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That's all for day 5!

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#14 Post by Zelan »

Definitely make sure to take breaks when you need them! You've gotten such an impressive amount done so far, it won't hurt to cut your self some slack.

And ahhhh, the heroine is so cute in that CG! >.<

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Re: By Your Side [NaNo2019] [Romantic Cohabitation SLG]

#15 Post by TakafumiSakagami »

I took a bit of a break for most of the day, but here's some day 6 progress!

First of all, textbox talk! That's right, I finally changed that ugly thing. I'm not guaranteeing the current version is any prettier, but it's much easier to read, and ultimately that's the most important thing.

Before:
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After:
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I went through a lot (and I mean a LOT) of experimentation with font colours and styling, but ultimately black always ended up the clearest and easiest to read. I'd love to have the font stylised in pinks and reds to fit the bar, but it isn't practical.

Onto brighter topics, here's a sunny CG of Euon the fairy.

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I also made a bunch of little changes that you may notice in future videos, namely a change in the presentation of text, as well as alternative flash and fade effects. A lot of care has been put into the timing of menus appearing and disappearing, and every single screen transition has a strict order in which things happen. I'm hoping these changes give the game a subtle professional touch despite the obvious signs of a solo project.

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