I think this image speaks for itself. I’m doing serious writing for the game now. I’ve gotten this crazy burst of inspiration recently. Does anyone know of any JAPANESE sound effect or sound loop sites? Or what the Japanese word for sound effect is? サウンドエッフェクト？　音エッフェクト？　無料ＢＧＭ？ Any suggestions would be appreciated. (And please no suggestions for English SFX sites; I’ve gone through a lot of them and they are really poor for what I’m looking for and are to be used as a last resort.)

Not saying who’s who in order not to spoil game but it’s probably a dead giveaway anyway. Also the guy in this pic has no blushing scenes so I had to draw one in MSPaint to match the others And now I begin writing and event CG drawing. Probably won’t be any updates on this project for a long time because I don’t want to really spoil the game for you guys. It’s a long road ahead…

Warning: This is a tl;dr post about MMORPGs so feel free to skip if you’re not interested. I was talking to DS last night about RO and he was surprised to hear that I actually have been playing it on and off for the last 5 years. I’m not really much of a gamer and unlike most people I don’t actually get addicted to MMOs to the point where they affect my daily life. However, RO has been that one game that I just can’t eternally give up. I’ve had break periods ranging from 6 months - 1+ years but I still come back every time… Continue Reading »

So the last couple days I’ve been hammering along at the script and working out the paths and menu choices. I even bugged Tom, the Ren’Py creator, to help me out at the beginning when I realized that there would be possibilities of going on a character’s path without being properly introduced to them. Thankfully he helped me get that working so all is well in that aspect. While I haven’t really done any new artwork, I’ve been playing around with photoshop filters to achieve a less photoey but still a nice background to use during the character dialogue. For event CGs, I was actually going to draw a background, but perhaps do it otome game style where it’s a flat color with sparkles & bubbles all around lol. As far as status goes, at this point I got the “main branches” done, and Jen and CJ’s routes also done, bad ends inclusive! The next 2 routes are going to be difficult for me but I can’t go into detail to avoid spoilers. And for the inquiring minds, yes I plan to stick Impz in there as a resident trap. (He does already have some dialogue early in the story.)

Here’s a question I bring to you. I began to write a little dialogue here & there (although it’s mostly placeholders) and I found myself going “holy shit this is SO CORNY.” Is corny ok? I mean aren’t these kinds of things supposed to be corny? I wanna bang my head against the desk when I write some of these sentences XD The other thing is, how does one express love in English? I mean in Japanese you always have your おまえのことが好きです！ but then in English do you say I love you? Or I really like you? Or I want to be with you? I mean I’m having difficulty deciding on what the heck to write. I’m gonna have JP proof read my script since he was an English major after all but for these kinds of things I wonder what’s the best way to approach it?

Well since some people like to see progress here is some progress for you! I jumped head first into programming last night and getting familiar with Ren’Py and the codes. Sure it involved me screaming out loud “what the fuck is wrong with this stupid thing” (And JP can attest to that) but eventually I got something going. I wrote out a couple lines just for testing purposes but I’ll probably do dialogue in greater detail once I get the paths & routes all smoothed out. At least the “basic” skeleton is done so it’s art, programming and writing from here on out!

P.S. Anyone recommend a good FREE sound FX site? All the ones I found require you to either register or buy their CD :S And Flashkit doesn’t have as many options as I would have liked.

Owen asked me on MAL if I was still working on the RenAi Blogger Project. Well truth be told I am but certain things have distracted me. I’ve been working on an excel spreadsheet with routes, events, paths and bad ends. I’ve pretty much done all but 1 character which I hope to finish tonight. While browsing my blogroll today I ran upon this post by zepy in regards to CatSystem2 which was another Visual Novel engine used by people who made Trappyness.

I downloaded and played around a bit, and while I have to admit, based on the tutorial, you could do a lot of cool shit with this thing…but since my Japanese reading knowledge is god awful (especially when it comes to technical things) I found myself even more lost than with Ren’Py. I mean programming is hard enough for me but programming and Japanese kanji? I think I’ll pass. Most likely Ren’Py will be what I ultimately use to do my game in. Also I realized after I did most of my routes that the game could almost be like an otome game except from a guy’s POV. What have I created!

So as promised I finished characters for the other 2 female heroines. Below is Jen (left) and NyaChan (right). I really had trouble for Nyachan’s character Natsuko. (This will be her game name.) Edited the face a bit and adjusted the glasses. Now she looks young. xD

I figured I could use this post as a way to give you guys a basic idea of the story (without giving away too much) and some basic character background information. Continue Reading »