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I was recently interviewed for the official blog, so I figured I should toss a link to that. There's a bit of info on my current projects, how I go about making tiles and how I got into art. It's not a terribly long read, but some of you may find it interesting.

Other than that, I'm taking a much deserved break. The past couple of days have been spent in a mad rush to get the modern tileset ready for sale. I am just blown away with how much support we've received for it already. Thank you soooo much for buying the tiles, everyone! It's inspiring and motivating me to keep making more tiles.

Lastly, there's a matter of a super secret something that will be unveiled in two weeks. I'm very much teasing you all with it right now, but I think you'll like it. It was something I've done to challenge myself and hopefully inspire others to rise to the same challenge. So, stay tuned~!

Starlight: Weekly Update 1

In between fancy tile making, I've found a bit of time to make some faces. As I've mentioned already, I'm using Jalen's chibi base and making faces with that base is almost ridiculously fun. Each face takes very little time and I know that using them will give those characters so much more personality!

And since pictures speak more than words, here is a sample of some of the NPC faces I've finished:

They will be a little less fuzzy in game.

Other than the fun artsy thing, I've also got most of the gameplay planned out. I'm actually very excited about it because it sounds both fun to make and fun to play. I'm going to try finish making the database soon, so I can be better organized through the development process.

Things to do next week:
- Finish more NPC faces for the main town hub
- Get started on skill and item icons
- Finish up items database (for stuff that's planned so far, anyway)

Future of TUAH

I've got a few pm's from you guys wondering if Twice Upon a Hero is cancelled or on hiatus now that I've unveiled the new project. The good news is that I'm still working on TUAH. The bad news is that it's taking me way too long to produce significant content.

Here are the things that take up the longest:
1- Parallax mapping.
I love it, and it's what gives the game so much of its visual appeal, but it's very time-consuming. I'm lucky if I can get one map done per day - and this is assuming I actually get hours of free time to work on said map.
2- Database.
Despite having spent weeks getting everything organized, there's still a ton of work to do. Between setting up all the skills, adding the appropriate items and setting up the quests, I have several weeks worth of work before I can use the database effectively.
3- Eventing.
Hours worth of dialogue input, several puzzles that need to be implemented and just more gameplay in general. After getting feedback from you all, I really want to incorporate more of actual play (as opposed to just a series of cutscenes).

After much thought, I'm leaning very strongly toward porting TUAH over to Ace. Although it means redoing the first two chapters, using Ace would pretty much fix all the current issues I'm having with development length. I can move to using editor mapping again, the database can be organized better and I can put in all the bits of gameplay I was planning to put in. Things like shops, bartering, ways to earn and spend money, more quests, more areas to explore, etc.

The only thing that's holding me back is that I will be delaying release, once again. I hate to disappoint those of you who are eagerly awaiting chapter 3 (and onward). So, I'm still taking some time making a final decision.

If you have any opinions about whether I should stick with VX or go to Ace, please let me know! :)

Dun dun dun dun ... Ta da!

Since a few of you have seen glimpses of the super secret project, I've decided to create a thread for it and share quite a bit of information about the game. You can read about Wish Upon: Starlight right here.

Expect more art, screenshots and info soon! ~

Art = decided, Livestream

I'm so happy right now! I've finally decided what I was going to do with the art for faces/portrait in the super secret project. I kept going back and forth on the decision. I really wanted to do original art, since it's fun and a great practice for my own artistic skill. But even with the flat colors and sketchy lines, I still hesitated that it would take too long.

I've solved the issue, however, by switching to Jalen's super adorable chibi base. It's super cute, it allows for a lot of detail and it's just fun to work with.

So, here is one of the portraits/faces you will be seeing:

 So cute! :3

In other news, I've done a livestream video of my tile-making the past couple of nights. If you're ever interested in how I make tiles, or if you want to chat while I'm making tiles, you can head over to my livestream channel. I usually post a profile feed on the official RM forums before opening the stream.

Back to development

I have been absolutely terrible about updating you guys on what I've been doing lately. Besides a resource-making spree (check out the tiles right here), I also had a lovely (and very busy!) visit from my parents. All together, it translates to no game development being done over the last 2 and a half weeks.

I'm hoping to be back on track next week. I've missed making a game and this super secret project has been poking my brain like crazy!

I leave you with a screenshot:

Yes, you do get to visit and eat at this lovely restaurant.

Faces

Art is therapy. Therefore, after feeling a bit tired and drained today, I decided to just doodle a bit for Super Secret Project (I swear, I need to give you guys a name!). I just drew the main character's faces in a very quick 5 minutes. And then, surprisingly, I loved the result so much that I started to think about using that instead.

Here is the original face (style 1):

Cute, right? It's straight from the pre-order Ace bonus.

Here is the face I drew (style 2):

This is actually closer to how the character looks in my head.


 
Two things to keep in mind ... If I went with style 2, it would stay as you see it now. So, slightly messy lines and a flat color. However, because it's so quick to create, it means I could make faces for all NPCs as well as the characters.

So, which one do you prefer?

Weekly Screenshots

A couple of screenshots of areas that are now mostly complete (save for NPCs and events).

The first screenshot is of a forest that will be one of the areas you explore for various quests and to gather materials for alchemy, cooking and blacksmithing. I fixed that one spot in the waterfall since.

The second is a gypsy camp, filled with wonderful music and a lot of spirituality. This is the quest hub for the other side of the forest as well as a resting place between the forest and the caves.

I'm currently mapping a major town, which is the home base for your party. Look forward to more spiffy screenshots once I'm done! :)

Progress Report

I have not had a lot of time to do any game development lately.

I am still slowly working on TUAH, though it's going at a snail's pace. I've been chatting with some of you about possibly transferring it over to Ace. It would be a huge setback and it would really require a ton of work. But it should allow me to make future updates much faster! So, I'm very much on the fence about it. Almost all of the scripts I was using are either translated or have an equivalent script available already. The database will be a giant pain, of course, but a huge chunk of it will be very simple thanks to traits and custom formulas.
 

I'm happy to say that I have finished a total of 14 maps for the side project (3 whole areas). Since Ace has unlimited tilesets, I'm just going to stick with primarily tileset mapping, and it's much faster. Once the tilesets are set up, that is. At this rate, all the maps I'm planning for the demo should be completed within a month. I'm a bit amazed at this, to be honest, because it took me a solid 4-6 months of mapping to have the same amount done in parallax for VX.

I've felt tempted to make this side thing my main project for now (which is sort of how I ended up working on TUAH in the first place), but I don't want to disappoint anyone by putting TUAH on hiatus. So, I'm spending roughly the same amount of time on either project for now. We'll see how long that will last!

S. Project: Decisions

Well, I've had a chance to spend a bit more time working on this secret side project, and I have a few more things to share.

1) I'm not going to do battles.
After thinking about it long and hard, I've decided against a battle system. It's something that makes sense story-wise. It also allows me to focus on what I want to achieve with this project - which is to have emphasis on gameplay and exploration.

In that sense, this will be more likely closer to the adventure genre then a classic rpg.

2) There are 4 separate elements I'm going to focus on.
- Various quests, most of which will be chosen by the player instead of being introduced in a completely linear fashion. There will still be a degree of linearity, as I don't want to tackle a completely open world. But I want to give you more to do than just follow a straight path from A to B.
- Synthesis system, primarily cooking and alchemy. This will involve gathering resources, so it should encourage exploration.
- Puzzles. I'm not going to go with complex puzzles, mind you. Mostly it will be using one or two simple concepts and making use of field skills/items.
- Classic adventure play. Things like fetch item X to advance through area, or use Y skill to open up the path.

3) I have waaaay too many ideas and way too many ways to add features. I want the project to be simple, but what I've planned is already more complex than what I'd imagined. So, I'm going to have to cut out some things.

One of the things I really wanted to do was art scenes for the intro and the endings. But there's a total of 10 endings, each of which would require at least one picture. And the intro would require at least 3. While 13 pictures isn't a gigantic amount, it's still way more than I'd be comfortable requesting from any one artist.

Thankfully, pictures are easy to add, so I can always change my mind and add them in at a later time. Completing this game will still take some time, so maybe the art bug will bite me and I'll have a bout of motivation.

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That's all for now, folks. I will try to update again soon and let you all know how I'm doing.