2 girls 1 bat

Sorry it's been so long since I last posted.  I'm starting work on one of our next games which Leonizer previewed over at the LoP Team Blog.

Currently the game is still in the design phase with only some of the renders complete.  What this means is that I'll have more of an opportunity to affect the outcome of the final product as well as a better chance of requesting renders.  What this also means is that I've got a bit more work to do as the storyboard isn't finished either.

Enough with the French!

Now that everyone has had a chance to play Claire: The exchange student, I decided to have one last post-launch write-up about the game.

First I want to thank Leonizer and Chestnut Shuffles for their work on the game.  For those of you who aren't aware this was Chestnut's first game with us and I think he did a fine job with the graphics on this one.  I'm curious to see what his next game is going to look like as well.

The Jade Phallus of Zin Shi Xuan - Part 2

I was able to get the test copy of The Jade Phallus game.  With that, I went back through the script making more changes to match the texts with the scenes, as well as doing a lot of formatting work to make sure that dialogue and button texts didn't bleed out of their respective fields.  Now that all that has been taken care of, the game just needs to be updated once more and it should be release ready.

I.L. and Tokage did a great job with this game and hopefully it won't be long before everyone else will have a chance to see their hard work as well!  Now then...  On to the next project!

ThE JaDe PhAlLuS oF ZiN ShI XuAn

Or how we pissed off China...

Leonizer let me have the script for Jack Wells' latest adventure to look over while the game gets ready for publication.  This time I was just reviewing the script and making changes for editing purposes, so I didn't have anything to do with the story or characters.  That has been handled by I.L. who did the work on the original Jack Wells' game: 7 Day Quest.

Insérez la languette A dans la fente B (Or Clendra)

The script for Claire:TES is done and off in Leonizer's hands!

There was an almost ridiculous amount of scripted sex dialogue in this game due to the new format that's being tested out with the game.  Normally each sex scene has about four lines of dialogue.  In Claire:TES each scene had at least fifteen lines!  Though, I suspect that will be shortened for the final game.

So, that took the better part of the evening writing for.  But now, the script is finished and I'll be waiting for the game to be compiled so that testing can begin.  There are actually two modes being tested in this game.  The first is the aforementioned sex scenes which now use a "slow, medium, fast" type of interface.  And the other is a timer based response system for the questions and menus for the story side of the game.

What that means is, not only do you have to find the hot-spots to proceed properly to the next page, but you also have to do it within a certain time limit or else you'll fail and and different page will be loaded instead.  That said, there is really only one bad ending to Claire:TES.  The other four endings will be unlocked based on your reflexes and ability to choose the right answers.  Don't worry, it shouldn't be too difficult.  The shortest timer is currently a rather long 2 seconds after all!

P.S. If you happen to see Claire calling Kendra, "Claire" or vice versa...  Totally not my fault!  (Okay, maybe it is.)

C'est Parti

Well, aside for some sex dialogues the script for Claire: TES is just about done.  I have nothing better to do tomorrow, so I'm going to try and power through the night and get this wrapped up and on its way to Leonizer.

After that, will be the usual testing/corrections/etc. and then hopefully we'll be good to go and have this published.  I'll post more details once I've sent the completed draft to Leonizer.  Until then... back to work!

Kendra Unsatisfied

Once again, I start the month off being busy as hell.  Fortunately, it was the good kind of busy this time around.  (Setting up a home theatre system!)  I was able to get back to Claire:TES yesterday and today, and with a bit of luck the script will be finished tomorrow or the day after.

Part of the polishing on the script has been going back and checking all the variables that are called and making sure that everything works as intended, at least on paper.  So even when scripting, I'm scripting...  Programming is actually a great thing to know even if you don't use it!  By writing and testing the logic in the dialogue script it helps both me and the programmer keep things organized and makes it easier to track down errors when they pop up.  Claire:TES is a rather straight forward game, but there are still variables that need to be tracked, and if we know where they are and what they're doing at all times, it helps make the game run smoother.

I'll admit, one of my pet-peeves occurs when I have to reload a whole game after I beat it and then want to restart it to find alternative endings and scenes.  (Dialogue menus are notorious for causing this problem.)  So now I do my best to track all the variables that might be used in my scripts to try and avoid those issues.  I didn't always used to do that, but even I can learn from my own mistakes...

Resource Limitations

First off, sorry to those who were waiting so long for a new post.  Time is money, and I had no time these past few days to make money.

It seems, you can't always get what you want, even if you feel you need it.  There are a few extra assets that, while not necessary to have, I feel would help improve Claire:TES.  Regrettably there isn't enough resources to go around, and I don't have, much less know how to use, Daz3D.  The script itself is still progressing fairly smoothly and thankfully it's not a convoluted mess, so once testing begins it should be a short period of time until it gets released afterwards.

I'm at the point where everyone is pretty much fucking each others' brains out.  After that, I'll need to go back and write up the little quips people say during the gameplay portions.  Ideally I'd like to have this in Leonizer's hands by the weekend, (There I go again...) but I also have some real-life commitments that I have to attend to this week as well, unfortunately I just don't know when exactly those will be, nor how long they'll take.

Claire: The Exchange Student is coming soon, and I hope you'll have at least as much fun with the game as I've had writing it.