The progress over the last few weeks was quite slow since I was gone over the end of the month and then got sick right after, but I hope that it's going faster while I'm gradually getting better again.
Reading Sample
Last month I released a reading sample and got some feedback to help improving the story.
It wasn't exactly the feedback I was hoping for but as long as someone responds it's better than nothing I guess. xD
So thanks to Sparky66 for reading through everything and giving his thoughts. :>
The reading sample is going to stay online for a couple more days, but as soon as I have the time I'm going to take it down again until I have some more stuff to test for you guys...
The next thing is probably going to be the sketch demo, at least as long as I'm not taking a break from drawing the character sketches again what takes us to the next thing...
Character Sketches
Character Sketches
I finished a little bit over half of the character sketches now, only missing a little bit over 100 sketches before I can start putting together a proper demo for gameplay tests.
Most of these character sketches are going to be poses for Braixen (~50) what is way too much
and could have been completely avoided by using expressions instead of poses, but I'am hesitant in using those.
If someone wonders what the expression/pose thing is about...
and could have been completely avoided by using expressions instead of poses, but I'am hesitant in using those.
If someone wonders what the expression/pose thing is about...
Poses swap the whole posture of the character in a scene to give a detailed image of how the he reacts in certain situations.
This can not only make the game look more alive but also help define the character and/or help out if the game lacks the writing.
While this probably (at least in my opinion) looks best, drawing a different pose for every scene would be a lot of work and in cases where you need to hire a artist for your game not even affordable.
While this probably (at least in my opinion) looks best, drawing a different pose for every scene would be a lot of work and in cases where you need to hire a artist for your game not even affordable.
That's why people draw expressions instead.
Pretty much the same thing as poses, but instead of using the whole body to describe how the character feels it's only the face or sometimes an arm/something similear that's changing.This takes a lot of work from the artist and can also decrease game size if you have a limit for that aswell.
Most games use 1 pose per character and only rely on expressions like this to save budget and can make the game look boring, especially if it doesn't have anything else to go for.
I will still try to keep some poses, but keeping it up so I can actually finish it someday is definitely more important.
Instead I will try to animate the different expressions later on using Live2d, what I already tested over the week while I was too sick to draw...
Animation and Customisation
I already mentioned in earlier posts that I want to implement some kind of customisation for Braixen and the possability for a shiny at game start...
Using Live2d I already tested for a simple way for me to implement these things without having to put in tons of scripts and grafics.
I added a simple/subtle breathing animation to one of the sketches and added an option to color/replace parts, what seemed to work completely fine ingame.
This is just a simple test of course, but you can probably expect animated characters and changeable hairstyles like in this in the full version now that I tested it.
There's some big stuff coming up in real life and I will probably have to take some breaks from drawing inbetween, but I'm still hoping to release the sketch demo including samples for the h-scenes before end of the year.
We'll see how it goes.