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Hello everyone.
My computer broke so I'm going on a hiatus. I need to get a job and save up for a new, good computer. My computer did break in the last few days, though, so I had already missed the deadline that I gave myself for my scheduled update video. For those who are interested, here's what happened between now and the last update video, and for those who aren't interested, skip to the header near the bottom of this post: After drawing the sprite of Serra, I drew a sprite of Nithi as well as a background of a Liberare street. I wrote several thousand words and created a branching structure. I noticed that my writing was very quickly paced and started using what I had written as a general guideline; writing, editing, and outlining events things with that guide in mind. My brother talked to me about giving players false expectations by only having choices present at the beginning of the visual novel. Then, I thought to cut, focus on, and double-up the many routes I had planned (13) into fewer, more solid ones (5). Have the five routes be five linear narratives that the player would play in order, unlocking and reading new stories that would appear on the main menu, thereby not giving the player the expectation of making choices in game. The art style I was chose was rather tedious to use, so I experimented with another, quicker and more loose style and saw improvement in character anatomy. Around this point in time, I slipped on some ice, spraining my ankle and getting a small bone fracture. The new art style was showing things that I liked, but the drawings were still very clearly being drawn with simple, perfectly circular brushes and erasers, and I wanted my work to look better than that. Looked at different art programs, trying to find one that could create work that looked more realistically painted. Resolved to keep using Fire Alpaca, but in a way that used a more complex brush for drawing and erasing, and altering the style to feature small, repeated patterns to add texture and personality to the artwork. I stumbled upon Adventure Game Studio and reconsidered the possibility of making TSC as a first person adventure game. I hadn't written too much, and there seemed to be a lot of small plot elements that I wanted to include: Making TSC as an adventure game could let the player explore on their own and uncover those plot elements and, as Adventure Game Studio produces 2D adventure games, I could switch development into a visual novel direction, again, without having to re-draw assets. Looked up some adventure game Let's Players and some tutorials about using Adventure Game Studio, and found that I loved aspects of an adventure game called Scratches. Scratches was a 3D adventure game taking place in an old, Victorian mansion with some sort of dark and mysterious past. I didn't like the dark elements, but the environments were made with lots of attention to detail. The main thing that bothered me, other than the dreary and dark themes, was that the player had to teleport from fixed position to fixed position, rather than being able to freely roam around. It's already fully 3D- would it have been so hard to add some collision and give the player free-roam of the estate? Unsurprisingly, this lead me to think about developing TSC as a first person, 3D adventure game, once again. If I do choose to develop TSC as a first person, 3D adventure game, as time has passed and I already have some experience going down that road, I think I'll know more what to do. Then, my tiny little tablet/laptop computer finally "gave up the ghost" after three years of use, and I'm currently typing this on my mom's Windows XP tower computer, which she's being kind enough to let me use from time to time. Her computer can't run modern versions of Blender, can't run Godot, and can't play any/any modern 3D games. Perhaps I could try to develop TSC as an Adventure Game Studio game, but being able to freely walk around the world instead of jump from fixed location to fixed location really is nice. Not being able to use modern versions of Blender, I searched for free 3D modeling software that can work on Windows XP and found Anim8or, which seems to not only be capable of competent 3D modeling, but capable of rigging and animation. And, this is where I am now: nearly recovered from a bone fracture and using the old computer that I have access to, looking to get a job and save up money for a new, good computer. Honestly, I've been very much needing to get a job for a long time, anyway, and my old computer was getting worse and worse as time went on, and when it finally did break, it broke without any valuable files getting trapped on there, so it breaking is more of a blessing than a curse, if you ask me. So, yes, I am on what will likely end up being a very long hiatus. Thank you for listening, everyone. I don't know when I'll next update, but this is good. I need to work and figure out what to do with the project- and indeed, my life- and perhaps taking a hiatus will help me with these things. I'll see you sometime in the future, whenever that may be. Peace out, y'all.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/vndevs/ has a weekly dev log thread that's posted every Monday.
I wanted to post in one of those threads, so I waited until the next Monday to post, and between the time I uploaded the video and now I've done new artwork that I included in that post. I wanted to share it here, as well. I think it looks quite good. Hi everyone, I have all the artwork done for TSC chapter two. I have a lot of thinking to do regarding myself and this project but I will release TSC as a visual novel and I will release the TSC chapter two visual novel when it's finished. I'm faced with a lot of choice regarding this project but regardless of what I decide to do with it, I have a lot of writing, asset-creation, and editing to do. From now on, I plan to update once every two months, on the first day of every update month. Merry Christmas every one, and please have a happy new year! ^_^ I leave you with some screenshots of a 3D model I made of Serra for fun. See ya. :) Hi everyone. I just thought I'd let you know that I'm almost done doing the pictures for this chapter. I have three left to do, or four at the most.
I have to do: - empty room - Tashen's house - hospital and optionally: - border Then there will be the rest of the writing to do, and I want to do some songs too, of course. I'm looking forward to it. Kind of freaking out to be honest, guys.
Anyway, please enjoy. ^_^ sellillianna.itch.io/the-silent-column-chapter-1 Hi everyone. As I said a while ago, all of the writing assets are done and just need editing.
The last writing asset was actually still to be transferred from paper to computer, so I just typed it up today. It changed quite a bit- but for the better- and keeping the general key points the same. I think I'm going to spend the next week editing the text and then, when the text is edited, I want to release a pre-alpha version of the game for you guys. It won't have all the assets but it'll have a lot of the assets and all of the writing, and I'd like to share it with you guys. This feels pretty big for me but... anyway, I guess I'll see you then. :) If anyone has comments on this sort of style feel free to let me know, okay? :) I like it.
I haven't forgotten about chapter one of The Silent Column though- I'm still going to be doing it, of course. :) Not necessarily related to TSC - I'm going to keep doing the art for chapter one as I've been doing - but something about this piece that I just did interests me. idk.
A Liberare street at night.
Truth be told, I'm having trouble pinning down the number of art assets that are remaining. I keep on miscounting for some reason. But either way, I'm getting close. :) By my current count I just have 10 art pieces left. I will take some more time to edit it, but the writing is all done. :D
Due to some things that happened in the last piece of writing, I'll have to do three more drawings than I thought, and one more song, but it's all good. Here's how things look right now: Writing assets: 12/12 Art assets: 27/43 Music assets: 2/7 He guys. I composed two songs and drew more pictures. :) The two songs I composed weren't as hard to compose as I thought. I'm treating them like the artwork in the way that even if they aren't flawless, if I feel like they're pretty good and finished, I call them done. I redid the park and Kina, drew the school hallway, and edited Alix and Aqua's portraits a bit. :) I wanted to keep it quiet to surprise you guys, but for the past couple months or so I've been working toward finishing and releasing chapter one. :)
I have 10/13 scenes written, 2/6 songs composed, and 18/34 pictures done. The chapter will feature 2 choices: one choice made by Patricia and the other choice made by Alix. Chapter one is more than halfway done and I hope you're as excited about it as I am. :) I'll see y'all later. :) |
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