What next….

My first visual novel was finally released a few days back. A lot of things could have been done better, but in general I’m happy about the result.

Shortly the “Cute, light and Fluffy” VN project will hopefully be released as well, where I have contributed with a short story.

But apart from these things, what is up next?

For one thing I would like to return to updating my webcomic, but I have just been commissioned to do art for yet another game, and also have a lot of other loose ends to take care of. So unfortunately it seems like AO will have to wait a little bit longer.

But I’m already preparing for my next game project after Broken Memories as well. A couple of ideas have been circling in my head, but recent discussions on a certain forum have made me decide on a final story that I will start working on.

Yes, my next visual novel is going to be an otome game. In spite of me once saying that I would probably never make one that wasn’t BxG!
I have a story that I’m happy about, and have begun writing a few drafts. Other than that, there isn’t much I can say about this project yet. It’s still in its planning stages, and it will take a long time before it gets finished (Broken Memories took me 2 years after all).

Alright, time to get back to work!

Angelic Orbs: Broken Memories released!

Angelic Orbs: Broken Memories has now been released!

Go to the website to download the game, or to Lemmasoft to read up on the release and leave a comment (Or you can do that here )

OP video:

Yes, I’m lazy….

Edit: The first version of the game had a buggy sound effect that made the game freeze on some computers during Tia’s path. Ver. 1.1 fixes this bug and download links have been updated with this version. Please re-download if your game didn’t work. Enjoy!

OTL

It’s the 1. September. That means summer is officially over, and I didn’t manage to get the AO game out during summer as I had planned ._.
I progress news, I just recently managed to fix Tia’s entire sprite set. Now check this out: Tia has a total of 33 sprites. 33! I nearly died, having to go through all of those @_@ Tia has the most expressions to begin with, and on top of that her sprite set has a couple of variations for some of those expressions. And since she was the first sprite set I made, it is also the most unorganised one. In comparison Yoko, the female lead with the fewest sprites, has only 9 expressions in total.

Oh, and today was my first day at my new work as well.

All together now...

Smile

Returning to the original purpose of this blog, here is a short progress update on the game.

All Yoko’s CGs are now coloured and done. In principle, the same can be said about any other character in the game – all images are now in a finished state! I could actually release this if I wanted to! But I don’t! Ha!
Two CGs still need to be rehashed, although I don’t believe a complete remake of them is necessary. Not if I’m lucky…. I may have to redraw an entire sprite set though. *Shot*

Also, even though the music for the game is also completed, I need to get a few of the tracks in their polished and final versions. Yay, another good excuse for being slow
I also want to have another look at the text, but at this rate the game will never be finished… so I may just want to ask for proofreaders soon.

I’m off!

Transforming Tia

Having some time between my last commission and another big project coming up, I’m working on getting some more CGs finished. Some of that work has consisted of fixing or redrawing a couple of old CGs. One of these are safe to show here, since it was one of the first screenshots I ever showed anyone from the game – here you can see the old and new versions of this picture:

The date of the old picture says “3.-10.-07″, almost a year ago. I guess that means that you can see almost a years improvement between those two images. I find it kind of strange myself to look at these pictures – it doesn’t feel like so much should have changed in that time, but that new picture is still a huge improvement. There is still so much left to learn though…

I hope that doesn’t mean that the images in the game will vary too much in quality ^^; I’ll try my best to avoid this. Fortunately that picture was one of the worst in the bunch.

Apart from that I can happily say that all linearts for the CGs are done at this point. I only need to colour 3 more, and get the last piece of music!

I’m such a slowpoke…

On the drawing table

Thought it was about time I made a post about something else than playing games. So here’s an update on the projects I’m working on right now!

Breakthrough!

…. I hope.

It’s about time I make another update about the AO game I guess. Lately I have been pretty stuck, so not much has happened – somehow I just couldn’t get any further with the remaining CG’s. At least all Tia’s CG’s are now finished, so I don’t have to worry about her anymore.

Today I managed to get another one of Yoko’s CG’s out of the way, though. I’m not all pleased with it, but the lineart itself was kind of bad to begin with, and there’s a limit to what colours can save…. In the end I found another technique for spiffing up CG colouring by complete coincidence, and with that I made the finished picture look a little more bearable. Now I have declared it as finished, and with that I hope to have broken through the wall that was standing in my way – next up is colouring another CG with an annoying amount of background in it, and then getting some lineart finished…….. *sigh*

I’m finding it really hard to live up to my own expectations with this. Looking back at the finished CG sets, there are a few that I would like to redo as well. At other times I just tell myself that I have to live with some crappy art here and there.

I want this game to look great, but at the same time I feel that the story is inferior, and then maybe it doesn’t even deserve for me to work so hard for the graphics.

Hmmm this is tough…. I’m still hoping to get this game released this summer though, so let’s hope I can get my act together.

Progress Report

NaNoReNo is soon coming to and end, and it’s time for another progress report about the Angelic Orbs game.

When the NaNo month started, I decided to use the deadline to hopefully get the art for the game done. Unfortunately this is not possible. The last few weeks a lot has happened in this house, ultimately resulting in the posibility that we may have to move. Because of that I have been forced to move all my stuff away from where I usually draw, and retreat into my own room until the value of the house has been estimated. And… well, let’s just say that this is a very small room. And it’s hard to draw and colour details with your tablet lying on your lap instead of on the table.

That doesn’t mean that no progress had been made, just that things are going a lot slower than they are supposed to. Here are some stats showing how far things are progressing with the art:

CG lineart: 21/27
CG colour: 14/27
BG: only 1 missing….

A couple of CG’s have been written out of the script. I felt they looked too much like earlier CG’s in the game, and that it would be a general waste. Therefore I have decided to use sprites in those scenes instead. On the other hand that has resulted in Tia’s sprite set growing even bigger, since a few of them needed to be changed for the scene – she’s the character with the most sprites in the game, since she has a few variations.

That last BG is really annoying me now. It is so hard to find a photo matching the last room in the game! Please, if you find a photo free-for-use of a light room, without huge windows and tables in the middle then tell me ^^; It wouldn’t hurt if it looked a bit like a place where one would exhibit things. Oh, and it is inside a mansion….

As for the music, things are going really well. It will probably be finished before the art is

Yoko

Time for some kind of progress report on the AO game.

Since the only thing I have to do at the moment is finishing the art for the game, there rarely is anything new to talk about. I got a composer to help me with the game a short time ago though (Alessio), and he has sent me a few samples to demonstrate what he’s doing. It sounds great already, so I’m really looking forward to what my game will be like with music and everything in it ^^ (He’s also the first person to actually play the game.)

On the art front I finished the lineart for a couple of Zyra CG’s today, and finally pulled myself together to fix the “front” pose for Yoko. You can see the difference here – I believe it helped a lot:

Now she doesn’t look like a gorilla anymore….. Instead her head looks a bit huge. But I noticed that almost all my sprites have huge heads, so maybe it blends in <_<;;
I also noticed an error on her sideways pose now. Sigh. I don’t know if I will fix it….

Yoko: Why is it always my sprites that are broken….?

Tia: I don’t know…. maybe because Vatina isn’t as used to draw you as the rest of us?

Yoko: …. I have disgraced myself.

Tia: Nah, lighten up Yoko!

…… …….

…..

Tia: Wait, where are you going….?

Tia: Nooo stop Yoko! let go of that sword!

A new milestone reached!

Yesterday I finished inserting the script and programming of AO: Glass Wings! Yay!

All that is left now is (a lot of) art, and of course the music. This will probably take a while, since I’m really slow a colouring…. but at least I have a working game now, that’s kind of amazing.

And now for the fun stuff – the Lint report:

The game contains 4889 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 50443 words.
For an average of 10.3 words per screen.
The game contains 17 menus.

I didn’t know it would reach 50.000 words, so I’m very pleased with that ^^ And a very short scene still need to be fixed and re-inserted, but it won’t change a lot.

Here’s some W.I.P art for you: