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Sound, Visuals, Action!

Posted on December 30, 2009 by LTB

So, I’ll make a post for once that doesn’t just revolve around my own little project.

Lately there has been some attention surrounding a new(?) way to release books here. Recently I saw this kind of project named in the media for the second time, a so-called “2-dimensional novel”. A well-known author here released a book which was part ordinary text, part graphic novel and with a soundtrack. So the point is to listen to these songs as you read along certain parts of the book, making text, pictures and music create a whole.

The whole time I couldn’t help thinking, “but that’s just a visual novel without a computer, isn’t it?”.

Also, both the author, artist and musician are pretty well-established names in my country. Apparently even the musician is the one who came up with the idea, having the story created around the tunes. And the artist is pretty well known for being manga influenced…

So, what is my point with this? I don’t really know. I guess I just find it really interesting to see how other authors and artists are trying to make all these things – art, music, stories – come together as something special. And, who knows, maybe this kind of storytelling is actually becoming more than a niche. And in the future, it could be something more than just a way to lure kids into reading books too.

Of course no one says that they succededed yet. It could just be a novelty, disappearing into obscurity – time will tell. I guess I should check out this book myself. After all I own another series of books by the same author, which were all really good.

For those interested, the mentioned “book” is called “Sirene” by Leene Kaaberbøl. I don’t know if this book even exists in other languages than Danish yet, but it probably will at some time.

Blood will flow(?)

Posted on December 25, 2009 by LTB

group1_sketch — For the first time, a glimpse of two male characters.

Hello everyone, have you all had a nice christmas so far? I certainly have.

Since my Christmas Eve was dealt with yesterday, I have spend most of today playing Galaxy Angel, which has proven to be a really nice experience. Forte is awesome.

Apart from that I have managed to write through one more important scene for Blue Rose. And I must say, looking at the pieces of text that I have written for it today, Blue Rose is turning out to be a bit darker (and bloodier) than I initially thought <_<;; Oops.

I’ll need some cheering up after those scenes. Maybe another round of Galaxy Angel is in order – at least I’ll put on some cheerful music for now.

After finally finishing that part I will be able to begin on some more relaxed scenes again, some that don’t involve any jumping around or fighting. Action can be a pain to write.

Have a great day!

Chaarge!

Posted on December 15, 2009 by LTB

I finally got myself a light table! I’ve been wanting one for years and years, and finally it was possible thanks to my awesome boss.

This is great. I’ll be able to do a lot of snazzy stuff now that I’ve wanted to do… and it inspires me to try it out and get some real work done on the art side of Blue Rose.

Apart from that I have reached the point in the script where Lena and co. are going on their Great Mission in the mountains. I spent some of my time at work today making small map sketches with arrows, planning how the battle is going to be handled.

Mmmm maps with arrows…

Hopefully I’ll be able to write the action scenes properly.

Numbers

Posted on December 8, 2009 by LTB

Work on Blue Rose is slowly progressing. As with Angelic Orbs I’m mainly focusing on the script at this stage – only a few design sketches here and there are made on the art front, and I try to ignore the future programming problems that will inevitably come up.

And I have come quite a way with the script already. Because of the (annoying) event system that I am going to use in this project, it is mostly written in a program that lets me branch out the story as I write. Other portions of the story are scattered word documents, mails(!) and paper notes. But exporting what I have in my wiki program lets me count up to 16673 words written so far. Of course some of these are notes and jump directions, so the real number is a bit lower than that.

But yes, these events are proving quite a pain to organize. I don’t have any trouble keeping track of where the story is going so far, but organizing my scripts and making them connect the way they’re supposed to is a pain. The more linear branching of Angelic Orbs was a lot easier to control…

I’m also lying about the coding – I actually did code part of the system already. I think I mentioned this in an earlier blog post, but the map is working! Hurrah! Unfortunately there is a lot left to be coded in order to make the game’s system work. Those are the parts that I am ignoring so far. First things first…

As for the sketch above, yes that is another picture-in-progress of Lena, protagonist of Blue Rose. You’d think that seeing the faces of the main guys in an otome game would be better, but I don’t have any sketches of them that I want to show off yet. And getting Lena to appear the way I want her is hard enough.

Gift for iPhone/iTouch

Posted on November 29, 2009 by LTB

One of the many things that came out while I was away was a few english language visual novels for the iPhone and iPod Touch! Which is amazing for me, since I only just got myself an iPod Touch.

Two of these are Gift and Kira Kira, a game already released in english by Mangagamer. I bought both the moment I got home, curious about how this works out. So far I have only played a little of Gift, since I want to save Kira Kira for when I have better time – I hear really good things about that game, and I’m really happy to be able to play a non-h version of it.

But just to clarify some of the questions about these iPhone games, here is a run-down about what I know about the Gift game for now:

Gift is playable on both iPhone and iPod Touch. You can get it in both english and japanese versions, and there are also free “Lite” versions (demos) that you can get to try it out before buying.

I heard somewhere that it isn’t possible to save or load in Gift – this is not true! It is definitely possible to both save, load, skip text and so on. So don’t worry about missing out on these features if you consider buying the iPhone version. I don’t know if the people mentioning this were playing the Lite version, since I haven’t tried that. The Lite version may be missing these features, but the full version does not.

Then there is the translation… well, it’s not impressive. You’ll be able to know what is going on, but I personally can’t help but laugh out loud at the strange choice of words that appear from time to time. I mean, even I can do better than that…

Considering that this is an iPhone app, we can all hope that some sort of update for the translation will be released some day. But it’s still playable, I guess that works.

Art looks nice, although a little generic/boring to me. Story seems to be pretty ordinary too so far – the main character is reunited with his not-really-his-sister after several years, while also being courted by a shy, clumsy and very smitten friend. The setting is a city with a rainbow that never disappears, no matter the weather, and one of the heroines is researching this rare rainbow along with something called “Gift”.

I hope this answers some questions for people interested in getting this app. Maybe I’ll be able to do a better review if I finish Gift some day. Hopefully Kira Kira makes use of the Mangagamer translation which should be really good, because that would make me a happy bunny.

Back to work!

Posted on November 29, 2009 by LTB

Finally back again!

Was nice to get away from everything for a little while, but now I can’t wait to get back to work on my projects again. Also got a lot of new ideas and great inspirational photos for my next game. Amazingly enough, I even got a title too. For now my mystery otome visual novel project will be called “Blue Rose”.

And so much has happened while I was gone, too. Will take a while to catch up with everything.

See you all later!

Posted on September 23, 2009 by LTB

So, I’m off tomorrow! I’ll be away for 9 weeks, most likely without any chances of posting in this blog or any other websites/forums/etc. Hopefully I will still have some time to spend on my next game project during the evenings, and maybe I’ll be able to return home with a load of new inspiration.

See you all again in December 🙂

Scripting chaos

Posted on September 6, 2009 by LTB

So, I guess I should make a post on the project that I’m working on now – the secret otome project.

Since all my free art-time is being spend on a race for the finish line for a few commissions before I leave the country, most of the work on this project is still focused on the script. Like with Angelic Orbs I prefer to write a good deal of the script before drawing any art assets for it anyway.

So, how is the script coming along?

One thing is for sure – since I have decided that this game is going to work differently than the somewhat “linear” paths with choices in AO, scripting can be really hard. Harder than I thought <_<;; Keeping track of what comes where when takes some work.

One good thing is that the map system is mostly finished. Coding really isn’t a strength of mine, so getting that out of the way is a relief. (Know that this isn’t some impressive walk-around map, it’s actually pretty simple “choose where to go” map :P)

Because of the way that I organize scripts at the moment, I don’t really have a clear number of how many words have been written yet, but most of the prologue has been written along with events for something like 6 days.

So yah. What is the story even about?

Unfinished costume-test-sketch-thing

Who knows! This is all for now 🙂

Nitro+, JAST USA and fan translators…

Posted on July 17, 2009 by LTB

As you may already know, a lot of things have happened in the english VN scene lately. MangaGamer has licensed Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Navel’s games, and JAST USA revealed their new partnership with Nitro+. Their first game is Demonbane, and Jingai Makyou is also hinted at by the picture in the background.

Now for the interesting part – (as if the rest wasn’t) – when Jast announced their partnership, every Nitro+ translation project was taken down from TLWiki by the translators, with the message that people should wait for an official announcement. And now that announcement is up.

Here’s your official statement regarding our Nitro+ translations.

We are currently trying out a bit of a partnership with JAST USA in order to do a few different things:

1) Increase the speed at which the finished products are released. This is probably the item of most interest.
2) Ensure that Nitro+ fans are working on the projects, in order to provide the highest localization quality possible.
3) Simply get more Nitro+ titles translated in general and help support the companies involved. The fact that we can do this with Nitro+’s blessing is even better.

As for details of the partnership… Basically, we’ll just let them have our current work and continue to work with them to finish anything we’re not done with. We’re also interested in working with them on games that haven’t seen any sort of translation attempt as of yet.

Obviously, since we’ll be working with JAST to have our translations released officially, we’ve taken the script files and patches offline. This was done in order to both support future official releases and to provide incentive for others to actually buy the damn games.

If you have any questions about this, or are someone who has translated or is interested in translating Nitro+ games, please don’t hesitate to contact me or LoSs about the matter.

By the way, we will continue to work on the Noah translation project.

I, for one, find this very awesome. The chance that I will actually buy these games is pretty slim since I usually avoid h-games, but this is still great news. I wish them luck with their partnership – if the miracle should happen that even a game like Chaos;Head gets a localisation, I won’t hesitate from buying another copy.

And the possibility for companies and fan translators to work together like this is great. After all, why not help eachother out when the chance presents itself? Unfortunately I doubt that such an opportunity will present itself for our team 😛

Whether this deal with Nitro+ is going to affect NitroChiral games is unknown. Who knows – in the future BL game fans may get their fix as well in commercial form, helped along by their fan translators?