Lots of smaller revisions recently- new quick menu, edited GUI, sound effects, music, etc.- lots of polish added, basically. The pure VN portion of the demo is complete, so now I'm working on the battle menu and walking around sections for the RPG portions. Here's a look at all the newer changes! And, finally, here's a preview ingame of the opening scene! This week I thought I'd try something different and document the process each map goes through, from sketch to ingame. So, I'll be showing off Kotachi's room for this! 1. Initial SketchThe layers are hidden in this PNG but I start my sketch off with 4 initial layers- my grid map overlay that shows me where the tiles are for when I code it, a previous map to give me an idea on sizing, and a walking sprite to further help me with sizing furniture and items. I sketch things out somewhat roughly (those walls are definitely not straight) in order to get a feel for the room and get ideas on what details to add. 2. Adding DetailsHere I added details to the sketch to add a bit more life to the room. You can also see my grid overlay here to give an idea of how it'll look in the game. 3. LineartAt this stage I refine the lineart by drawing over it on a new layer to make the lineart, which will be the basis for how I color the map. 4. Flat ColorsThis step is pretty self-explanatory- now that I have the lineart done I just filled it in with colors. I try to keep everything separated so as to make moving and changing things easier, as you'll see later I had to edit some parts and changed the colors of others. 5. ShadingAnd here's where it's all coming together! I shade each of the parts and do a bit more tweaking, such as changing some colors and adding the pictures. 6. ProgrammingFinally we reach the last stage- putting it in Ren'Py! Putting the map itself into Ren'Py with wall collisions isn't actually too hard with my current setup, so now Kotachi is able to walk freely around his room. ...Just don't ask him to interact with anything yet. And there you have it! That's my process for making maps in Asterism.
Hi guys! As you can see, I haven't posted any updates for Asterism this month! Why? Well, I decided it would be best for me to devote my time to school and That Which Binds Us- originally, TWBU was going to be a free, short VN, but has since grown and will now be my first commercial VN, replacing Asterism for that title. Why, exactly? I want to make sure Asterism is a successful product, as I'll be making more RPG VNs in the future for sure. By releasing TWBU as a commercial product first, I'll not only gain more experience on the process but I'll also be able to get funds to fund Asterism fully.
TWBU is set to be released the first half of 2018, and the script is currently halfway done with a demo released. So, never fear, it won't be too long before Asterism starts receiving more updates! Wow, is it that time already? It's almost been a full year since development started on Asterism. To celebrate, here are some brand-new character art pieces of the main characters in winter-wear! First up are the main boys walking in the snow- from left to right, it's Leos, Ophi, and Kotachi. After that it's the main girls taking a night stroll- from left to right it's Riko, Ayane, and Dania! Thank you guys for staying tuned! I hope in the next year to near completion of Asterism and share it with all of you! Until then...
Today I was mainly playing around in RPGM and with some tilesets I'd already started on. This isn't what the finished game will look like (nor what the finished outside tileset will look like) as there will be a lot of refining and this was more of just a practice run. (PSA: don't stand in the middle of the road, especially at night) I won't start on the actual scripting until I finish my edits for the dialogue script and get a fair amount of talking/walking sprites done, so it'll be at least another month.
The main script for the game is finished! What does this mean? It means all the dialogue for the story from the start to the end if finished, albeit it being rough around the edges and missing some side conversation dialogue. Now I've got to send it off to readers, get their take on it, and then do some editing!
The current script is at 48,656 words, but after edits and additions the completed dialogue script is projected to be around 51,000 words. I'm over halfway done with the script, but for right now I'm rereading what I've written so far and doing my first round of fine-tuning. I normally hate reading my own writing, whether it's games, fanfics, essays, etc., but going over this has been easier than I thought. It might be because, for the first time, I've fully cared about the characters that I'm writing (and would frankly rather be spending time making fanart of them than writing about them, something I only do for characters I like). The main difference with Asterism is that I'm treating the characters like my OCs rather than just characters in the game- all my previous games have just had characters in them, and while they are my OCs, I don't typically refer or think of them as such.
I am worried about finding readers once I've finished the script and want opinions/proofreaders on it. In the past, I've been hard-pressed to find even beta testers for my games unless I posted about it on dA, but most of the people on dA follow me for art rather than games and don't exactly care for VNs so I don't always get the same level of quality feedback like I do from somewhere like Lemma Soft. But that's a hurdle I'll have to tackle when I get there. Back to fine-tuning, for now. I started off with a rough outline and then expanded it into a detailed outline. Once I started writing dialogue, however, my detailed outline became really sketchy and all over the place. The black marks aside from the one on my post-it are where I marked out Vulpe's real name, what I usually refer to her by. Writing has been slower than I'd like, mainly because I'm not a writer- I don't write outside of visual novels, so I've only gotten about 45 pages of dialogue done so far, which is equal to about the whole first page of the detailed outline (the image on the left). I still have about 13 pages of outline left.
So, quick update. The past few days I've been working on a detailed outline (going day by day, making little notes of encounters and putting a summary for each day), but I can't make a dev log out of this each day because I can't show it off because spoilers, so every day I'd be writing "I'm working on the outline, I swear!". Maybe when I get further in I can show some of it, since I put a lot of spoiler notes for myself about events in the beginning....if that makes sense.
Today's dev log is going to be clarification on what Asterism is going to be any my aspirations towards it.
Asterism is my first attempt at making an RPG game using the old JRPG style mechanics, but is going to have a more shounen-esque story line. This is going to be my first "real" game, i.e. not a short project I'll spend a few months on and then throw it out for release. I'm estimating (if I'm able to work as much as I'd like to on it, despite my school and work schedule) a year to a year and 1/2 of development, but as games go it'll probably be 2~ years before it's completely finished. The story centers around a teenager named Kotachi Asterio, a 15 year old who can see sprites, small creatures that come out at night. A few years previous his grandfather passed away, detailing in his will for a family heirloom to be passed to Kotachi- a small, ornate box. To his grandparents and parents, the box was empty, but to Kotachi, a pair of white revolvers were inside. With the help of his best friend, Ophi, the two learned about sprites and that special weapons forged from constellations could defeat them. A couple of small pointers about Asterism to get the general gist of it- sprites are small creatures that are killed by weapons made from constellations and stars. Humans that can see sprites usually gain one of these weapons in order to rid the world of sprites and protect themselves. The main characters are aiming to become full-fledged Aligners, people that are officially recognized by the main group in the world (COIN) as being able to kill sprites. As a lot of the names and concepts suggest, this game will revolve a lot around constellations and stars, eventually leading to the Zodiac. No real update today because Super Bowl. I mean I was gone all day. I mean I had homework. Anyway, here's a sketch of Kotachi for later promo art.
Worked on story outlining today, but I put a lot of spoilers in it so I can't show it off. For now, have a chibi. Tomorrow I'll be refining the outline and working on some more character designs.
Day 3 of official development. For this project I'm writing it all down in a notebook rather than on my computer like I do normally. The first two days I wrote a tweaked character bios, today I started describing the intricacies of constellations and the Zodiac. Tomorrow I'll start working out the main corporation in the game, COIN, and start planning out the story line. The ending is already planned, I've just got to write up to that point. |
Quick LinksAboutWhat is Asterism? Read the short bio here or the Game Design Document. Categories
All
Archives
July 2019
|