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I feel foolish for always going back and fourth between developing The Silent Column as a visual novel and developing it as a video game.
When I talk to loved ones about changing The Silent Column's development format to one thing or another, I feel like they're ultimately just happy I'm working on the project I care about and don't care about what format it's getting done in, so I probably shouldn't be hard on myself. I've been seriously considering switching back to visual novel development rather than continuing on with video game development. I feel nostalgic for some visual novels and they seem to form intimate bonds with readers... and The Silent Column was meant to be a visual novel way back in that Lemmasoft Forums thread all those years ago... I've just been thinking. I'm liking the portraits I'm making: they look nice in my opinion, and I'm trying to be reasonable with what I can do as a one person team. The Silent Column has a large cast- 35 characters in the "Liberare" location if I'm not mistaken, and I'll assume that when the plot goes to the "Vadleen" location, the number of characters will roughly double. These portraits look nice and using them only requires each character to have one image rather than several sprites. So far I've also been able to do each character portrait quite quickly- with Amy's just taking around two hours. As opposed to using unique backgrounds for each location, I'm thinking of using generalized backgrounds that fit multiple situations to spare myself an unbearable workload. Backgrounds like building interior, large building interior, suburb street, city street, natural outdoors, and natural beach can fit many situations in the "Liberare" location. Each of these generalized backgrounds will have variations to account for "sunset hours", winter, fall, power being on or off, and that sort of thing... but it will still save me loads of work if I use a batch of generalized backgrounds like this for each of the two locations instead of making each background unique. In addition to being reasonable, I think readers won't mind after a while, especially considering that each character portrait has its own background and covers a large portion of the background whenever a non-player-character is talking. Developing The Silent Column as a visual novel will also just let me relax and use whatever default settings Ren'Py has without worrying about the code behind it, and in my brief time trying to develop The Silent Column as a video game I know that that's a really large weight off my shoulders. When developing The Silent Column as a visual novel in the past I would get myself stuck in editing loops, but if I just edit what I write at the end of each writing session and not touch anything I've written in past sessions, it should prevent editing loops and lead to the writing being acceptable. I just thought I'd share my thoughts with you guys. Thanks for listening... See y'all later. :) Hello, everyone.
I've made quite a lot of progress with the game. :) I haven't figured out how to record my screen on this Windows computer yet, though, so I can't show you. But, I can give you a list of accomplishments. Before I do, though, I did stop using the 3D models in favor of flat pictures: I like drawing more than 3D modeling and I can draw much quicker than I can model. Anyway, here's the list: - The player collides with geometry (Excluding characters) - The player can look around in 3D space (With the arrow keys) - The player can walk in 3D space (With the WASD keys) - The player can run in 3D space (While holding the shift key) - The player can jump when grounded in 3D space (While holding the space key) - The player can toggle sitting (With the c key) - Serra's sprite always faces the player - Serra collides with geometry (Excluding the player and other characters) - The player can toggle Serra following them when they're close to her (Using the f key) (In the actual game, the player will only be able to toggle following on and off in certain situations) - When close to Serra, if there is a conversation to be had, the player can start a conversation with her (Using the e key) - The player can advance the conversation (Using the e key) - The player can't move or look around, Serra's portrait is shown, a text box is shown with the text, and the background darkens when in a conversation - While conversing, the player can be presented with choices - When being presented with a choice, the player cannot progress without making a choice - The game remembers the player's choices - After making a choice, the player is given a new line of conversation - The conversation ends when it is finished, putting things back to normal - The player can try to quit the game when not conversing (Using the esc key) - When trying to quit, an "are you sure?" window comes up - The "are you sure" window works as you'd expect (I removed the ability for the player to quit in the middle of a conversation because making choices in the conversation and making the "are you sure you want to quit?" choice use the same buttons.) - Grassy areas are present on the ground in 3D space - When at all near grass, the grass is visible. When not, the grass is invisible And that's it. :) I still need to learn how to let the player save and load the game and there are a few minor issues, and I still need to figure out how to export the game as a "final" game that people can download and play and not edit, but all in all I'm very happy. This is exactly what I want the player to be able to do in the game and things are coming along very well! ^_^ When I have this all sorted out I'll probably release a mechanical demo of the game to show off the mechanics, give you guys something you can play, and practice exporting a "final" game. :) See you guys later. Spite of Serra to represent her in 3D space. Her sprite always faces the camera. When talking to Serra, her portrait appears with dialogue text.
New picture: this one's of Nithi. I've never ironed out how I wanted her to look, before, and I'm happy with how she turned out. :)
Not so much of an update as a thought... this is interesting... Original for reference: Redesigned her to not have the red lines, anymore. And the wings are diployable: she simply isn't using them in the newer picture which is why they are absent.
Finger painted on my little tablet computer after my more expensive one broke. No worries, though: I managed to get the files I was working on onto my tablet computer and the programs I use are cross-platform freeware, so I'm okay. :)
I know The Silent Column is a videogame and that it uses 3D models, but I like drawing. :) Maybe I'll integrate something into the game where character portraits appear when you talk to them, or something like that. ^^ Peace, y'all, and a happy post-Canada day to all the Canadians who read this. Here's how she looks in her cute little underdress: The feet looked off before, so I tweaked them. Now they look good and I'm done. :) I'll do the hands, next. ^_^
WE HAVE THE FEET LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! :D I've never modeled feet before. I've done hands and ears and faces, but never feet since characters are usually just wear shoes. Feels good to know I can do it, now. They look pretty good if I do say so myself. I'm taking my brother's suggestion and making the actual body to help me with proportions and give me a base to make other characters with. I'm glad I modeled the feet in particular, because there actually is an important scene where one of my characters specifically is barefoot, as strange as that may sound. Plus now I can have characters wearing sandals and such. :) Here is how the rest of Serra is looking. The feet might need a tiny little bit of tweaking still, but it's coming along really nicely.
Remodeling Serra. Serra had so few cuts in her dress before that she couldn't sit down. Also, the expressive hair at the top of her head was strangely thicker and bigger than any of her other hair. Also, I like modeling: I feel like I improve the more I do it, so it's nice to do it more. Old model for reference. Two update videos since last I last updated the blog. I explain more of what's going on in the video descriptions on YouTube. See you next time, everyone. :)
Hello everyone. The game is coming along fairly well: so far I have a first person character who has physics applied to them, who's able to walk around and look around fairly well. They can also jump, but I'm needing to figure out how to only have the character jump when they're on the ground so they aren't able to fly by holding down the jump button. I also need to figure out how stop the character from looking up/down after reaching certain angles so they can't flip the camera over, but progress is being made. :) So far I have the character set up to walk with the wasd keys and look around with the arrow keys as I find it easier to just rest my hands on the keyboard rather than having to move my hand around as I touch the track-pad or mouse. I might add controls to let people look around with the mouse too, though, since people might prefer that and it doesn't seem to be too difficult to code. The game is being coded in the Godot game engine which will be getting a big update sometime this summer, so that might be interesting. Aside from working on the first person character, I already know how to import 3D models. Though, while I can import 3D models with materials, the materials don't retain their colors on import so I have to reassign each color to each material. I'd like to know how to solve that problem. Also, I'm still not sure how to make the collision for an object be the same as its geometry. After solving these issues I want the player to have a dot be in the center of their screen and be able to press a key when hovering the dot over certain 3D models to have text appear. Then the player can press a key to progress the text if there's more of it to show. I'll see y'all next time. :) Edit: I deleted the jump function and assigned its key to the run function which I already had. Run used to be shift and it's now space. Shift is now a crouch function, which is a simple script assigned to the player collision box to make it half the height which results in crouching since physics is applied to the player. When not pressing shift, the box returns to normal height. Also, when shift is being held down the player can still run and walk, but the player speed is fourthed. I feel good about the addition of crouching and don't feel so bad about the removal of jumping: people rarely jump in their daily lives as far as I've observed ;) and if there is a time when the player has to jump, I can just specifically code for that event. Edit: Building a house. I still need to add all of the stuff inside the house and some other details but it's coming along well. :)
Edit: Saying some more about it, I made sure to make room for three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room. There's a front and back door. Near the front door is a closet, and in each bedroom is a closet. In the bathroom I tried to make room for a toilet, sink, bath, and hot-water tank. The rear door of the house is in a hallway which I made to house the backdoor, washer/dryer, and furnace. The second floor has a small inner balcony area to look down to the first floor before leading into the third bedroom. Serra Attempt 2 by SelLi on Sketchfab
I've tried going for a low-poly style.
Edit: I know this model is less impressive than the other one, but lower poly means less effort throughout the entire game-making process, which is a large relief, and the style has its charms. I'm also going to leave the characters without faces, partially due to it being less effort but mainly because leaving characters without faces lets players imagine the faces for themselves. With some suggestive character animations and dialogue, I think having characters be without faces can help make more intimate connections with people, sometimes. I may work a little bit more on Serra's model- I have her modeled and rigged- but soon I want to start on another character or some other asset(s) for the game in this style. I'm so used to just experimenting with Serra in different art-styles... moving past her to the other characters and other assets will help me feel like I'm really making progress. :) Making the model has been a learning experience. I'm going to start over, mainly so that her hair won't be fused to her back or forehead, giving me freedom to animate it as much as I want and maybe even apply physics to it. After the post, I had to decrease the number of faces and vertices to have it load properly into Unity. Also since the last post, I've learned more how to texture paint rather than just vertex paint, which is more ideal for detailed painting on models.
For the new model, I'm considering modeling her body and clothing separately, to let her potentially change clothes. Rigging her as two or more objects instead of just the one might be challenging, but I can learn. The idea of making The Silent Column a virtual reality game mixes me up. On one hand, making it a virtual reality game would be very immersive and would let me touch players in more personal ways. On the other hand, virtual reality still seems to be pretty young and expensive, and if I make TSC a game specifically for VR it wouldn't reach as many people. Also, making it for VR while VR is still so young might make the game just seem like some gimmicky title. VR will probably continue to mature, though, and if/when VR headsets become more commonly owned, I can see myself thinking about this, more. Unity is free unless I essentially become really successful and can afford the price of monthly payments, and it can develop for VR. Meanwhile, Godot is a completely free and completely open source game engine. However, it doesn't as of yet- to my knowledge- allow for VR development. However, if/when VR gets more popular, I could see them updating to develop for it. I'm probably overthinking things: no one's saying I can't make a VR version and a non-VR version. I can just use Unity or Godot, switch from one to the other if I really need to, and essentially do whatever I want. Things will work out, and for now I should mainly focus on making 3D models. Regardless, I just thought I'd share my thoughts. See y'all next time. :) |
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