Blog

Blue Rose update

Blue Rose update

Posted on by LTB

Time to post an update on Blue Rose! The script is nearing its end, and I am nearing my limit… *_*

I have been writing on this story for a little over a year now, most intently the past couple of months, and it has now grown past 105.000 words which means the end result will be more than twice as long as Angelic Orbs. Of course this one also has 5 “capture-able” characters which increases the volume of story by quite a bit.

The first pieces of real, finished art have also started to trickle in! (Mostly because I’m not making it, hah.)

I got a real talented BG artist on the team, and he has made some pretty promising things so far. I’m looking forward to when the parts of script already inserted into renpy will evolve to more than just a black screen with text. I want to show it off… but I should probably wait… <_<;

Character lineart (which I am doing) has also begun taking shape now, you saw a short glimpse of Simon’s sprite in the last blog post. I have some ideas of how to use art in this game that I hope I can pull off.

Hmm making interesting blog posts about a game is hard when art is one of the last things to be produced – no shiny pictures to post…

So… all I really need to get sorted is music. (I’ll be looking for a colourist soon too, but that I’m not as worried about at the moment.)

There is no end to this! OTL

Blue Rose – Character development?

Blue Rose – Character development?

Posted on by LTB

During the writing of a story  some characters can develop in very surprising ways. I’m sure other authors know this well. In the early stages of Blue Rose, I mapped out important characters and the roles they were going to play along with their personalities and stances on the main plot. But as is usually the case, things take sudden changes in direction when these characters jump off the drawing table and are actually let loose in the script.

It doesn’t matter how much preparation and planning is done, the real development happens in the actual writing.

One of these is Gavin, for who I first finished writing the final ending and epilogue. Gavin is the superficial skirt-chaser who would say a nice word to any lady walking past, without that necessarily having any deeper meaning to him. At least that’s what he was supposed to be. That part of him still exists, but he has taken on quite a life of his own and shown me sides of him that I never knew would come to be. When I yell “come on Gavin, you shouldn’t care about silly things like that!” he’ll reply with a defiant “but I DO!!”

It’s the same with the rest. Erin who was supposed to be the frail, sensitive girl has ended up kicking aside anyone who gets in her way (especially Gavin gets to feel this), determined to make it on her own. Due to that she sometimes borders on being somewhat of a troublemaker and pain in the ass, but I hope the readers will be able to see past her flaws and see her good intentions 😉

Simon has moved from passive non-caring role to someone who is serially confused about what to do with Lena. (Serially confused. I love that phrase. Guess where I stole it from and I’ll give you a cookie).

Especially Simon has changed so much and acted so opposite of what was originally planned that for a while I wasn’t even sure how he would shape up in his own route, where he finally gets the chance to step up front. The result has been… interesting. As usual he has a tendency to draw the short end of the stick, but I like what he has turned into – even his bad ending feels important to me, and really show what kind of person he is. For a short (insane) moment I even considered making it canon when thinking of what general consequences that ending has for Lena’s future life. (But that’s just too sad, isn’t it? Let’s hope for things to turn out better than that!)

Just like the other two characters I have written so far, Simon is now a hard competitor for being my favourite. Now it’s Tobias’ turn.

Which means I am done writing the first 3 out of 5 routes in Blue Rose. Hurray!

Names and origin of Blue Rose

Names and origin of Blue Rose

Posted on by LTB

Time for a post with content about the development of one of my current games.

Before Blue Rose I originally intended to work on different project under the w.i.p. name “Academy”. I had done a lot of script planning and world building for this project, but when the writing of the script began in earnest, I ended up shifting over to something different – from the supernatural mystery taking place in a huge castle/academy and with a male lead, it turned into a story taking place in a distant corner of the same country, but with a completely different plot and cast (the main lead now being female). That is Blue Rose.

Some things carried over from the first project since Blue Rose was supposed to take place in the same world. One was the attitude towards magic and users thereof in the country of the main character, the other was usage of names. This country is called Tanves.

When creating the setting for Academy I decided to use names for the characters that are used where I live myself, since the place is very European in appearance anyway – names that are ordinary here in Denmark, but also acceptable in English (no pronunciation issues, hopefully!). Since Blue Rose takes place in the same country this rule also applies here, and that has taken part in deciding names for characters like Lena, Simon and Tobias.

Gavin is from the neighbouring country of Helen and thus has a very different name that you wouldn’t see often around here. The same with Aran, who is something completely different than everyone else in the story. The sisters Erin and Marie also come from the same place as Gavin, but! Useless trivia will tell you that these two are 2nd generation immigrants from Tanves, and as such they are named after the same rules as Lena.

I could keep talking about this by mentioning last names as well, but I’ll spare you…

“Academy” is still a project that I intend to work on as I think it has some very interesting characters and a premise that I like. Maybe it will become my next vn project when Blue Rose is finished.

White Cat launches!

White Cat launches!

Posted on by LTB

And now for some different website news! White Cat launched today – I finally decided to make the site dedicated to my game projects, so here it is.

The site is still very bare-bones with very little content, but that should come along in the near future. The only project you can read (a little) about so far is my as of yet unannounced rpg “The Nest Egg”. My visual novel Blue Rose also has a section, but in spite of it being the main development project there is not much to see yet. I also plan to put Angelic Orbs: Broken Memories up there, but that one has no rush as it is already available at my gallery site.

Now back to actually producing content…

Rin-Tastic 2 – Rin Tries…

Rin-Tastic 2 – Rin Tries…

Posted on by LTB
Click for large image

Yes, I am having too much fun with this… and it turned out pretty long this time ^^;

I super-glued Rin’s hair back on, hopefully it works 😛 Also, Berlinetta’s figure is an amazing pain in the ass. Seriously, it falls apart just by looking at it. I mught have to do something drastic about that. A shame really since it looks so good.

The pokemon part is something I’m likely to be the only one who finds funny, since it’s a reference back to an old photo I took way back.

English KiraKira All Ages for PC out!

English KiraKira All Ages for PC out!

Posted on by LTB

It came out of nowhere, but today MangaGamer put up an All-ages version of Kira Kira on their website.

This is an instant get for me. I have heard good things about Kira Kira, and I truly want to support a company that is finally exploring the possibility of releasing both H and non-H versions of their games.

Bad news is that I haven’t even finished Fate/Stay Night yet, and I hear that Kira Kira is a long game too… well, hopefully it won’t slow my own development down too much 😛

A little late, but…

A little late, but…

Posted on by LTB

Everyone else is doing it! ™

So here is a few words on my 2009. Well, the one related to my creative endeavours at least.

2009 saw my first release of a visual novel, Angelic Orbs: Broken Memories. It had taken me two years to make, and it was finally time to get it out of the door. In the end I couldn’t do all I wanted with it, but this seems to be a general problem to vn creators, and I’m still pretty happy with the result. Hopefully I can pull myself together and release the version with fixed english some time in the near future.

I also had a second release out, the small short story My Eternal Rival, which was featured as a part of the Cute, Light and Fluffy project. MER was very short and non-serious, and most of it was written on small pieces of paper while at work. But I still got very attached to the project, and I don’t regret taking part in it at all.

And so came to tough decision of what to work on next. I had a few ideas on hand that I was very interested in doing, and even started one of them. But in the end something (I’m not even sure what) changed my mind, and production began on the script for a new game set in the same general universe. An otome game. Something I thought I’d never make. But I’m taking up the challenge, and will hopefully succeed in making something interesting for girls to play, without it sinking completely into useless fluff. But that is for this year. Back to 2009.

Apart from the two mentioned VN’s I didn’t manage to much else of my own out there. My comic is still lying dormant although I constantly wish to return to it, but life has been too busy for me to work both on my game projects, the several new commissions that I received this year, and the comic at the same time. Hopefully I will be able to get something done on that soon.

That’s right, there is something else that I had released. The very first TCG cards with my illustrations on them.

All in all I think I came a long way this year when looking back at these achievements, along with my amazing 2-month long stay in Wales. But enough talking about me!

As Hime mentioned, there has also been a lot going on when it comes to translations of Japanese visual novels. Most of it something that the majority of VN fans thought would never happen, like Higurashi getting an official release in english, Jast partnering up with Nitro+ and visual novels released on the iPhone/iTouch.

But you probably already knew that.

So here’s to a great 2010! (Hopefully)

Theme: Overlay by Kaira.