Sprite Process 2

Fiddling with sprites again. Given that I have no idea what I'm doing, I strongly suspect that my process is the most inconvenient, needlessly messy method there is, but hey, sink or swim.

At the very least, I seemed to have figured out my coloring style. It's not the most polished style in the world, and there's a world of things I need to fix, but I consider a vast improvement to my first few attempts at coloring. I keep each step of the process on a different layer, just in case I want to go back and change something. Her shirt is not yet shaded in, but that last sprite is basically what she'll be looking like throughout the visual novel. Provided that I can manage some consistency, of course. Cross my fingers. Even though her hair was a nightmare to color, she may actually be the easiest sprite, mostly because I don't need to color her body other than her shoulders.

Sprite Process 1

I'm toying around with Paint Tool Sai, adjusting things so I can fit all of Constance's sprites onto one file, which makes it easier for consistency since for coloring, I could just use the eyedropper tool to maintain the same shade and tone. Otherwise one picture will have her hair bright red while the other would be a rusty orange. Someday I will have no more use of such trickery, but until then, I have to rely on that kind of technique to compensate for my complete lack of coloring ability.

To avoid going overboard, I'll be giving each main character only three or four body postures. Each posture will have their own set of expression; three each. In total I'd put the amount of available expressions for each character at twelve. Hopefully that would be a large enough range of emotions for each situation I'm putting them throw. But if not, I'll add more when necessary. In order to go about this expression-changing, I just start by sketching out everything BUT the face (except for the nose, which doesn't exactly shift that much).

Then I add in the facial features. Since she is the POV character, her sprites will be delegated to the side of the textbox, as per visual novel tradition, so her sprite will only be a bust. Everyone else is lucky enough have their sprite go down to their waist, at least.

Since the sprites only go down to her shoulder, not much of her character can be portrayed through body language, which I find a pity, but also a blessing, if only because I don't have to color and shade in her body.

Choices

Still deciding what sort of choices I'll be putting into the game, to separate the routes. While there probably won't be too many choices, just enough to 1) separate the story into the different routes and 2)let me and my programmer test how to implement the story branches, and 3) practice making the choices fit into the narrative and the tone of the story. From the visual novels I've played, there are two main types of choices. The first type just provides the player with a random action--such as choosing which path in a forest to take--which will have unforeseeable actions. The second type contributes to the message of the story; it has moral weight, and sort of has a "right or wrong" dichotomy going, in order to match up with the message that the story's trying to convey.

If possible, I'd like to put both types in. I'd like to convey an atmosphere where people can make honest mistakes, not so honest mistakes, suffer for said mistakes, and occasionally learn from them enough to salvage something good out of the mess they make. In Constance's case specifically, it'll mostly be whether or not she can stand both Geoffrey and Elliot's frankly appalling behavior without losing her temper and doing/saying something she regrets. Nobody here's really aiming to be the pinnacle of good conduct, unfortunately. 

Possible Routes and Endings

To make sure I don't go overboard with my first attempt, I decided to keep the potential endings simple. There will be four endings, one of them being the obligatory bad ending, which will probably be as horrible as they come, to compensate for the other bad endings that I could have written, but will not for the sake of not biting off more than I can chew. The temptation is strong.

The two major routes will follow Geoffrey and Elliot (both of whom will be introduced eventually), and land you into two endings that are...happier than the bad ending, but not the standard happy endings. Think bittersweet.

To compensate, the last route will end with pure joy and happiness, where everyone becomes friends, become content with life, and all is well. Even Constance will be happy, after 30,000 words of switching between "grumpy old man" and "I'm going to have a panic attack" mode.  





          

Visual Novel: A Strange God Reigns (non-commercial)

Here’s to introducing my first visual novel, A Strange God Reigns. An otome (gxb) visual novel set in a 19^th century England, featuring as the main character Constance, a young woman ejected from her violently superstitious hometown at a young age to avoid being murdered for her red hair—believed to be the sign of a “witch”. She’s a little paranoid, grumpy, and easily exasperated, but she is quite tough and has a good heart, and when it come down to it, she'll try and do the right thing.

The game revolves around a giant disturbance in her life, when a notable aristocrat from her hometown is kidnapped and the kidnappers escape into the forest, right where she lives. Luckily her cabin is well-secreted in the thickets of the trees, but still, having violent criminals in the neighborhood isn’t the best situation. Then the local police come charging in and her chances of survival just keeps getting lower and lower.  

Joining her in her sordid adventures is a complete religious fanatic of a policeman and the hostage himself, the heir of an aristocratic family who generally teeters between sanity and self-destructiveness.


Gameplay is standard visual novel format, with choices that affect which ending you’ll get. There are four endings. Music and programming will be done by a ridiculously multi-talented friend, while art and writing will be done myself. The rough draft of the script is around sixty to seventy percent complete, and concept art of the three main characters are done. 

Given that this is more of a test run than anything, this will be a free visual novel. This blog will be devoted to my trial-and-error process, and I do hope that my mistakes (and triumphs) will be able to help anyone also starting out their own game with as little knowledge as me.