I finally got myself a light table! I’ve been wanting one for years and years, and finally it was possible thanks to my awesome boss.

This is great. I’ll be able to do a lot of snazzy stuff now that I’ve wanted to do… and it inspires me to try it out and get some real work done on the art side of Blue Rose.

Apart from that I have reached the point in the script where Lena and co. are going on their Great Mission in the mountains. I spent some of my time at work today making small map sketches with arrows, planning how the battle is going to be handled.

Mmmm maps with arrows…

Hopefully I’ll be able to write the action scenes properly.

Work on Blue Rose is slowly progressing. As with Angelic Orbs I’m mainly focusing on the script at this stage – only a few design sketches here and there are made on the art front, and I try to ignore the future programming problems that will inevitably come up.

And I have come quite a way with the script already. Because of the (annoying) event system that I am going to use in this project, it is mostly written in a program that lets me branch out the story as I write. Other portions of the story are scattered word documents, mails(!) and paper notes. But exporting what I have in my wiki program lets me count up to 16673 words written so far. Of course some of these are notes and jump directions, so the real number is a bit lower than that.

But yes, these events are proving quite a pain to organize. I don’t have any trouble keeping track of where the story is going so far, but organizing my scripts and making them connect the way they’re supposed to is a pain. The more linear branching of Angelic Orbs was a lot easier to control…

I’m also lying about the coding – I actually did code part of the system already. I think I mentioned this in an earlier blog post, but the map is working! Hurrah! Unfortunately there is a lot left to be coded in order to make the game’s system work. Those are the parts that I am ignoring so far. First things first…

As for the sketch above, yes that is another picture-in-progress of Lena, protagonist of Blue Rose. You’d think that seeing the faces of the main guys in an otome game would be better, but I don’t have any sketches of them that I want to show off yet. And getting Lena to appear the way I want her is hard enough.

One of the many things that came out while I was away was a few english language visual novels for the iPhone and iPod Touch! Which is amazing for me, since I only just got myself an iPod Touch.

Two of these are Gift and Kira Kira, a game already released in english by Mangagamer. I bought both the moment I got home, curious about how this works out. So far I have only played a little of Gift, since I want to save Kira Kira for when I have better time – I hear really good things about that game, and I’m really happy to be able to play a non-h version of it.

But just to clarify some of the questions about these iPhone games, here is a run-down about what I know about the Gift game for now:

Gift is playable on both iPhone and iPod Touch. You can get it in both english and japanese versions, and there are also free “Lite” versions (demos) that you can get to try it out before buying.

I heard somewhere that it isn’t possible to save or load in Gift – this is not true! It is definitely possible to both save, load, skip text and so on. So don’t worry about missing out on these features if you consider buying the iPhone version. I don’t know if the people mentioning this were playing the Lite version, since I haven’t tried that. The Lite version may be missing these features, but the full version does not.

Then there is the translation… well, it’s not impressive. You’ll be able to know what is going on, but I personally can’t help but laugh out loud at the strange choice of words that appear from time to time. I mean, even I can do better than that…

Considering that this is an iPhone app, we can all hope that some sort of update for the translation will be released some day. But it’s still playable, I guess that works.

Art looks nice, although a little generic/boring to me. Story seems to be pretty ordinary too so far – the main character is reunited with his not-really-his-sister after several years, while also being courted by a shy, clumsy and very smitten friend. The setting is a city with a rainbow that never disappears, no matter the weather, and one of the heroines is researching this rare rainbow along with something called “Gift”.

I hope this answers some questions for people interested in getting this app. Maybe I’ll be able to do a better review if I finish Gift some day. Hopefully Kira Kira makes use of the Mangagamer translation which should be really good, because that would make me a happy bunny.

Finally back again!

Was nice to get away from everything for a little while, but now I can’t wait to get back to work on my projects again. Also got a lot of new ideas and great inspirational  photos for my next game. Amazingly enough, I even got a title too. For now my mystery otome visual novel project will be called “Blue Rose”.

And so much has happened while I was gone, too. Will take a while to catch up with everything.

So, I’m off tomorrow! I’ll be away for 9 weeks, most likely without any chances of posting in this blog or any other websites/forums/etc. Hopefully I will still have some time to spend on my next game project during the evenings, and maybe I’ll be able to return home with a load of new inspiration.

See you all again in December

So, I guess I should make a post on the project that I’m working on now – the secret otome project.

Since all my free art-time is being spend on a race for the finish line for a few commissions before I leave the country, most of the work on this project is still focused on the script. Like with Angelic Orbs I prefer to write a good deal of the script before drawing any art assets for it anyway.

So, how is the script coming along?

One thing is for sure – since I have decided that this game is going to work differently than the somewhat “linear” paths with choices in AO, scripting can be really hard. Harder than I thought <_<;; Keeping track of what comes where when takes some work.

One good thing is that the map system is mostly finished. Coding really isn’t a strength of mine, so getting that out of the way is a relief. (Know that this isn’t some impressive walk-around map, it’s actually pretty simple “choose where to go” map )

Because of the way that I organize scripts at the moment, I don’t really have a clear number of how many words have been written yet, but most of the prologue has been written along with events for something like 6 days.

So yah. What is the story even about?

Unfinished costume-test-sketch-thing

Who knows! This is all for now

The “Cute, Light and Fluffy Project” has finally been released!! You can find it:

Here (LemmaSoft Forums)
or:
Here (RenAi Archives)

4 short stories are collected in this OELVN anthology. One of them is my own “My Eternal Rival”. I really hope you’ll check out these stories and enjoy the results!

“My Eternal Rival” is about the black witch Luna and her desperate attempt to get even with her rival, the red witch Lera. A story of rivalry, servitude and frog cakes.

On another note, I’m finally updating my blogroll. It was about time, too many were missing there (and a few links had even died).

As you may already know, a lot of things have happened in the english VN scene lately. MangaGamer has licensed Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Navel’s games, and JAST USA revealed their new partnership with Nitro+. Their first game is Demonbane, and Jingai Makyou is also hinted at by the picture in the background.

Now for the interesting part – (as if the rest wasn’t) – when Jast announced their partnership, every Nitro+ translation project was taken down from TLWiki by the translators, with the message that people should wait for an official announcement. And now that announcement is up.

Here’s your official statement regarding our Nitro+ translations.

We are currently trying out a bit of a partnership with JAST USA in order to do a few different things:

1) Increase the speed at which the finished products are released. This is probably the item of most interest.
2) Ensure that Nitro+ fans are working on the projects, in order to provide the highest localization quality possible.
3) Simply get more Nitro+ titles translated in general and help support the companies involved. The fact that we can do this with Nitro+’s blessing is even better.

As for details of the partnership… Basically, we’ll just let them have our current work and continue to work with them to finish anything we’re not done with. We’re also interested in working with them on games that haven’t seen any sort of translation attempt as of yet.

Obviously, since we’ll be working with JAST to have our translations released officially, we’ve taken the script files and patches offline. This was done in order to both support future official releases and to provide incentive for others to actually buy the damn games.

If you have any questions about this, or are someone who has translated or is interested in translating Nitro+ games, please don’t hesitate to contact me or LoSs about the matter.

By the way, we will continue to work on the Noah translation project.

I, for one, find this very awesome. The chance that I will actually buy these games is pretty slim since I usually avoid h-games, but this is still great news. I wish them luck with their partnership – if the miracle should happen that even a game like Chaos;Head gets a localisation, I won’t hesitate from buying another copy.

And the possibility for companies and fan translators to work together like this is great. After all, why not help eachother out when the chance presents itself? Unfortunately I doubt that such an opportunity will present itself for our team

Whether this deal with Nitro+ is going to affect NitroChiral games is unknown. Who knows – in the future BL game fans may get their fix as well in commercial form, helped along by their fan translators?

So I just received Princess Maker 4 for the PSP in the mail today. Playing the old PM2 DOS version with no sound was getting boring, so when I found this version for cheap, I thought “why not?”. Now I get shiny graphics and voices!

Unfortunately I get easily addicted to management games like this one, and ended up spending my time marathoning through this game today. And here’s a little about what the game is like (there will be a few minor spoilers, but it’s not like the story in these games is that deep).

The story starts out traditionally – the world is ending, and a hero shows up, saving the day by slaying the demon boss. (Only this time it’s a woman doing the slaying – woo!).
Travelling the world the protagonist hero, now all alone, is handed a small girl in a forest. He is asked by his former lover (the demon-slaying superwoman) to raise this child, and he agrees.

Now the game begins with a diabetically cute little girl only 10 years old. A lot of people shy away from Princess Maker games, saying that it borders on the pedophile. I don’t believe so. It’s a fun game with and interesting concept, and I know for a fact that a lot of females enjoy playing them as well. But I still feel like doing a head-desk when that little girl says that her dream is to “marry her papa”. -_-;;

Differently from the old Princess Maker 2 that I played last, this version is filled with events and pretty CG’s. The daughter also has a wide range of friends that she gets to interact with. And as she grows a little older, potential grooms show up – yay, this game has bishies!!

Since I used to do well at the warrior route back in the days, I decided to try my luck at that here as well. I keep loosing the battles at the festival though ._.
I run into a guy called ‘Charles’, riding a white horse. He claims being a knight, but keeps running away from someone. It’s not hard to figure out why.

My daughter ‘Rio’ grows up – soon she meets Charles as the castle as well, and spends a couple of christmasses with him. For once I actually manage to both do well with her warrior training, and also get all the way up to the queen and king when visiting the castle! Things are going well, I think! I even manage to win the final tournament!

The great day arrives – the day of the dancing party when Rio is 18 years old. She and her friend goes to the castle to finally see the prince. While Rio waits in excitement, she sees that the prince is, in reality, Charles (as if we didn’t know that already).
The prince smiles, and comes walking towards Rio and her friend. ‘Yes!’ I think. ‘This is it! I finally got the Prince Ending!’

“Would you like to dance?” he asks.
“Oh yes!” answers the friend.

… WTF!?!?

Next we see mr. prince and Rio’s childhood friend dancing around, while hearing Rio think about how happy she is for her friend.

Poor Rio ends up alone, and goes out to fight in the war. She becomes some hero or something.

So now what? Screw the prince! Next time I’ll go to Dark Town and go after that red-eyed bishie I saw there. Yeah.

The ships are firing their guns at sea. I can hear them, almost like rythmic thunder. So it’s that time of year again…

And here it feels as if my workplace is slowly falling apart. Everyone abandon deck! Although most people already have. It’s so silent here, lol.