The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

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Fuseblower
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The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#1 Post by Fuseblower »

Hello! So, The Doomed Diner (take 3) is a visual novel about a trio of girls who inherit a diner at Dadrice Cove. Bad stuff ensues as they take part in the local tradition of a Haunted Halloween Hike.

Image

It offers 3 wildly different main routes that deal with either a zombie apocalypse, possession by an evil witch or a masked maniac slasher. Although the tone is comedic, it will offer graphic horror stuff (decapitations, bodies melted by acid, impalements, you know : the usual) but no sparkling vampires!

It's different in that this visual novel doesn't work with the usual sprites against a background but each page has its own illustration. I feel this way I can better tell the story (especially when showing actions). Horror aficionados might find a reference or two but this is not important to the story.

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Some might recognize the title "The Doomed Diner" and this is indeed the same thing but with a reworked story and characters. We have the same 3 girls (Sue, Tina and Mary) and the same idea (a mysterious inheritance). I'm confident this time it will be finished because over 80 of the 100 drawings/pages have been done. Given that I've made about 2 drawings each day, it should be finished well before Halloween and well within 2 months.

Image

Since this subforum is a WIP I might as well show how the illustrations were made. This is one I made today.

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About half of the illustrations are on 300 grams Arches Satine, the other half on Schut Terschelling Glad ("glad" is Dutch for smooth). Although the Arches is the better water color paper, the Schut takes more punishment and the pens (Sakura Microns) glide easier over it. I use the Microns instead of a nib pen or a brush because it works way faster. This illustration contains references so I used references (there are 4) but my ability to get a likeness is so abysmal that people might get the idea I created unique characters. I will shamelessly take credit :lol:

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And now the water color. It's all Winsor and Newton. I always make heavy use of the Perylene Green, Dioxazine Violet and Benzimidazolone Orange. These 3 are great mixing colors. The skin tones are almost exclusively Orange and Violet in different proportions with some Cobalt Violet thrown in for very white skin. For the night sky I use Indanthrene Blue. Unlike the other blues I use for skies, this one leaves very obvious marks. Can't get a smooth wash with it but this is what I want to get a creepy sky. Of course, all colors are transparent to show the ink lines underneath.

Image

And now I touch up things with Copic markers and restate some ink lines. Put it in Gimp to up the contrast and brightness (typically between 3 and 10 and brightness half of that) and that's it. I use Manga Studio (nowadays called Clip Studio I believe) to cut it out and soften the edges with the eraser with it's opaqueness set low so it will integrate neatly with the page (which is just a scanned in empty piece of paper).

I'm not yet decided whether I will use text in the usual way or hand write the story on the pages themselves. I tend to opt for the latter (it's hand drawn, I guess it should be hand written too). Of course, that means I can't get running text. All of the text will be revealed immediately (there are ways around that but that will take far too much time).

I don't know if this kind of "illustrated visual novel" has been done before. I wonder if it can still be called a visual novel without sprites?

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Re: The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#2 Post by Fuseblower »

Just noted one of my browsers didn't show the pictures (the one with the paranoid security settings). Probably because the images are on my own site (which isn't https certified). Here are the WIPs as attachments (shown somewhat smaller than the originally posted ones).
Kids1-400.jpg
Kids2-400.jpg
Kids3-400.jpg
And a view of the diner itself (it's based on a Zephyr train BTW)
Diner.jpg

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Re: The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#3 Post by Fuseblower »

As usual, I've underestimated the work involved. The number of pictures will be well over 100 and typing in the story will take more than two days :lol:

BUT!

The witch trail is ready so I've uploaded the VN to the doomed diner itch.io page.

This trail is the least bloody out of the three (the other two being the slasher trail and the zombie trail) and most appropriate to the 2020 Halloween because it involves a "blue moon". This Halloween has a blue moon which is very rare (not the blue moon per se but to have it on Halloween) and it plays a part in the witch story.

Those who are curious to the other two trails : I've included the images finished so far in the image directory.

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Re: The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#4 Post by ghostclown »

I really like your art style.

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Re: The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#5 Post by Fuseblower »

Hmm, when I started this little experimental project (using vignette style graphics instead of sprites and BGs) I thought : "I'll make a quick 100 watercolor sketches and work out the story later. After all : I'm somewhat of a 80s horror afficionado. It'll be a breeze and will surely be finished on Halloween" (Halloween 2020, that is).

Now I got way over 200 of those quick water color sketches (which progressively got less quick and more involved) and a story that branches off into zombie, possession, cosmic and slasher territories depending on the choice the reader makes.

So, will it be finished this Halloween? Hell no!

But here's a link to where I upload the pictures to show my friends. I update it whenever I have a batch ready.

Doomed Diner Slide Show

Use the right and left cursor to go to the next or previous picture (you can also click on the picture but sometimes it goes blue, don't know why that is, something of a selection thing I guess).

That's the best I can do for Halloween. If you can gleam the stories from them, please tell me because I lost any clue I might have once possessed a long time ago :lol:

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Re: The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#6 Post by Zelan »

Always a fan of your art style, it stands out here on the forums (: will look forward to seeing any updates for Halloween 2022!

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Re: The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#7 Post by Fuseblower »

Thanks Zelan, things have kinda spiraled out of control (as usual with my "short projects") and there are already over 300 drawings but I do hope to finish it before next Halloween. The game itself already works, it's just a matter of getting the many storylines finished and add more drawings.

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Re: The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#8 Post by Fuseblower »

Tina.jpg
Tina.jpg (69.59 KiB) Viewed 3264 times
Just a quick heads-up for this coming Halloween. In a couple of days I'll post "The Doomed Diner" with 4 or 5 of its storylines finished.

The Doomed Diner consists of 8 very different kinetic stories centering around 3 nieces who inherit a diner from their uncle and have a scary Halloween adventure there. The game is different in that it uses illustrations instead of sprites.

The choices that lead to each of the storylines are "front loaded" (meaning you'll get them early on in the game). The choices that would lead to the unfinished stories are disabled so no time is wasted following a storyline that hasn't been finished.

The game also features a standalone quiz about horror movies of the 70s and 80s with no less than 250 questions (10 questions per round).

I'll be posting here again soon when the game is uploaded.

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Re: The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#9 Post by Fuseblower »

DoomedDinerTitle.jpg
And here it is, in time for Halloween : Itch.io link. It is the windows build (I have no way to test other builds).

Five out of the 8 storylines finished in time for Halloween. It has a possession, zombie, slasher, cosmic horror and prank-gone-wrong story. No background music yet (but it has the title music and bg music for the quiz). It has a horror movie quiz with 250 questions in total (presented in sets of 10).

As mentioned before, it is a visual novel using water color illustrations (or CGs if you like) instead of sprites.

The whole thing contains 26K words.

Though the remaining 3 story lines are not present, the graphics folder does contain the drawings used for those story lines (as far as finished) and some drawings that won't be used at all but I've left them in nonetheless.

Hope it works and I also hope the savefiles didn't get copied into the distribution. I cleared them (the delete persistent thing) and deleted the savefile folder but somehow every time I test run the distribution the saved story points keep popping up. Apparantly this shouldn't be a problem but I have no way of testing it.

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Re: The Doomed Diner 2020 [Horror][Halloween]

#10 Post by Fuseblower »

With a new year, one takes stock and I realized I have 3 projects going at the same time (Doomed Diner, Mall Macabre and Katyusha's Cap).

I will concentrate on the Doomed Diner for now (I can do Katyusha's Cap for the Next Winter VN jam). It has the greatest number of assets and I actually like making illustrations better than making sprites.

One change I will make : I'll make it like a "Choose your own Adventure" book with similar layout (as pages) and such that it could also be printed as a book. I wonder if it can still be considered a visual novel that way but Doomed Diner has always been more of an illustrated story than a visual novel with sprites.

Of course I need to rewrite all the stories (no big loss, the stories sucked). It needs to be in second person and it will have way more options. The first option will be to choose the main character (Tina, Mary or Sue).

One jarring thing are the illustrations themselves and the colors especially. In the course of the several years it took to make the illustrations I actually started to learn better color mixing. The colors of the old illustrations are quite garish.

The solution is to present all illustrations in black and white. After all : the illustrations in the "Choose your own Adventure" books are also in black and white.
Crypt015.jpg
Crypt015.jpg (92.4 KiB) Viewed 1123 times
I actually think the illustrations look better that way. The black and white look lends them a class they didn't possess before :lol:

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