Monthly Archives: August 2014

PSCD – meet Diana Nelson

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Here’s another Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense character intro. This time we talk about Diana, the playable female character.

diana

Name:  Diana Nelson
Nickname:  Tigress
Nation of Origin:  Germany
Service Branch:  Imperial Special Forces
Specialty:  Sharpshooter

Description:
The middle of three children, Diana always knew she wanted to join the military which was something of a Nelson family tradition.  Even when her parents divorced, and she moved to Germany with her mother, Diana’s military ambitions remained.

This drive made it rather easy for her to join the Citadel, the Empire’s top military Academy.  Diana still holds the record for longest accurate shot made with a rifle.

Upon graduation, Diana was assigned to a remote detachment.  It was supposed to be a routine mission, guarding a team of scientists verifying whether the planet would be good for eventual colonization.

Somehow, the Arnox detected the human presence.  In a brutal attack, the aliens took out her immediate superiors, leaving Diana as the leading commanding officer.  Rather than surrender, Diana withdrew all survivors, and conducted a guerrilla war which lasted over six months.  

Eventually, human forces liberated the planet, and discovered how Diana’s actions actually kept the Arnox from causing trouble elsewhere.  Her troops named her Tigress, much to Diana’s amusement, for she was constantly on the prowl.

Her actions caused one problem:  while she is confident in her own skills, she sometimes has trouble relying on others.  Diana realizes the others have skills she lacks, but she feels she should be able to do more on her own.

This feeling also has strained the relationship with her brother.  When Alex was assigned as co-captain, Diana felt self-doubt, wondering whether her superiors were questioning her ability to defend the colony on her own.

As some users in forum suggested we’re going to tweak slightly Alex intro, explaining how his battle against the Robobrain was very useful to make progress in Psionics research, otherwise his background story was not at the same level of Diana’s.

Don’t worry, they’re both two tough and famous heroes/characters 😉 That’s all for this week, next Friday we’ll talk again of the Steampunk World of Roger Steel introducing nonetheless than Roger himself! 😉

Announcing Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense

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I know what you’re probably thinking: Winter Wolves doing a Tower Defense game? 🙂

First of all, I’m getting a custom engine done. So don’t worry, the game will run great even on the oldest desktop computers or mobile devices. Is not made in Ren’Py, but using a Python+C framework coded on purpose for this kind of games (and other possible ones, like wargames and builder games).

Will feature real-time shadows, shaders, effects and so on. Currently it can run at 24 FPS unoptimized on my ancient Android Transformer 101 (single core!) so even when we add more stuff should still be playable!

Tech stuff aside, do you think I could just make a plain TD game? (not that there’s anything wrong with it). Of course not! I’ll make a story, VN-Style, that will accompany the player through it, and some tough choices moments that will result either in different missions or same mission with different features.

As always you can play as male or female, and have 2 romances for each sexual orientation (2 straight, 2 homosexual). Yes, I managed to put romance even on a TD game, that’s some kind of achievement 😀

Who is Alex Nelson?

But let’s introduce the first of the two main characters, Alex Nelson:

alex

Name: Alex (Alexander) Nelson
Nickname: Lion
Nation of Origin: United States
Service Branch: Imperial Special Forces
Specialty: Leadership

Alex (he hates to be called Alexander), brother to John and Diana, is the youngest child of the Nelson household. He knew he was loved, but he felt he never measured up to the others, especially in a family where many people joined the military. It wasn’t until he discovered he had a talent for hovercar racing that he felt whole, sustaining him even when his parents later divorced.

Much to his surprise, Alex found most of this pressure was self-imposed. His parents encouraged him to find his passion, and in time, he actually made it onto the junior circuit of the hovercar racing league. Alex was about to go pro when the news announced a major defeat for the Earth forces on a distant planet…and one of the reported casualties was his sister.

Wracked with grief, Alex made the decision to join the military to avenge his sister. He passed through basic training, and was assigned to guard duty on a remote base. There was little of value to the base, but the Robobrains decided otherwise. Employing a series of sonic and psionic attacks to disorient the soldiers, the Robobrains attacked.
However, Alex possessed the strength of will to fight against this sensory assault, and rallied the others to mount an effective counterattack. The other soldiers started to call him ‘Lion’, and they were his ‘pride’.

Alex’s joy soon became overwhelming when news came out that not only was his sister’s death misreported, but she had decisively defeated the invaders.

While Alex is capable of inspiring his soldiers to follow him to hell and back, at times he still feels like he lives in the shadow of his brother and sister.

Stay tuned for more in the next weeks. I don’t have a fixed schedule but probably will alternate Roger Steel and PSCD characters intros.

Seasons Of The Wolf update

In the latest update, I’ve added fixed items with accompanying “lore text”, together with some other minor fixes/tweaks. I’m working on ACT3 right now and I’ve finished coding about 2/3, though I still have to get the new tileset and add it to the game, so that part will take at least one week.

fixeditems

Assuming there are no delays in art, I think ACT3 could be finished by end of September as I hoped 🙂

Roger steel world: meet Neville

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neville

Here’s Neville, a new character from the Steampunk RPG Roger Steel.
Like for the other characters, the art is not definitive yet. In particular we’re going to change a bit the clothes colors, since both the writer, the artist and I noticed there’s too much “brown” in them 😀

But now, Neville’s introduction by the writer:

Introducing Neville – Itinerant Inventor

This week we meet Neville, Christina’s brother, Arthur’s best friend, and all-round steampunk nerd. Neville much prefers machines to people (less complicated; far easier to fix), but somehow clicked with the effervescent Arthur and holds a shy, cautious regard for mercurial Ann.

If you need equipment repaired, upgraded or just plain invented, Neville is your guy. Handy with a wrench, a wizard with a lathe, and most at home in a fully equipped forge pounding the bejesus out of some hapless piece of metal, adventures aren’t really Neville’s thing – but friendship and a protective instinct for his sister can lure a man far out of his comfort zone.

However, Neville is far more than he appears and, as Ann or Arthur perhaps discover, even friends you have known for years hold can dark secrets close to their hearts.

Bionic Heart on Steam

Speaking of dark secrets: my sci-fi visual novel Bionic Heart is now out on Steam. As always if you bought it directly you can redeem a Steam key from this site:

http://bestanimegames.com/steam/

and if you decide to buy it, buy directly from me to get a DRM-free version plus the Steam key 😉

Roger steel world: meet Arthur

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arthur

Time for another character from Roger Steel world. Please note that all those images are still work in progress: for example we’re thinking to make Arthur’s hair light brown to match Ann’s. His “devilish look” will still remain though 😀

Introducing Arthur

Up until now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Roger Steel is a yuri title given that all the characters we’ve introduced so far have been women (not that there’s anything wrong with that!); but you’d be mistaken as our next character attests.

Arthur is a rather outgoing fellow who’s probably a bit too clever for his own good, especially with his tongue (and get your minds out of the gutter right now: that is not what I meant!). Along with his partner in crime, Neville, genius inventor whom we’ll meet in a couple of weeks or so, Arthur is something of a whiz with gadgets, although you, his esteemed players, might prefer to develop his sharpshooting, archery, martial arts, or sundry other non-combat skills.

Whether Arthur indulges in romance or simply becomes the star of his very own action buddy movie VN-TBS RPG, is up to you; as is whether he treats the rescue of his sister as a true coming-of-age, or simply a great excuse for a damn good time with lots of handsome gents and lovely ladies to party with during those long evenings camping beneath the stars in the wilderness.

Seasons Of The Wolf update

Work on SOTW continues, last week I finally had the last missing images for Dingirra, like the big Arena:

newarena

And the artist who was busy with another project now can resume working on this, he’s currently doing the 3rd Act tileset (won’t be more specific for people who didn’t play the game yet to avoid spoilers!).

Another big new feature was the improved AI, which gave me a whole new array of possibilities to make the player think “wow this computer opponent could even seem smart sometimes!” 😀

newAI

Currently coding battles against Ghosts and Wraiths, Zombies and Liches, and so on. (the background on the battle screen above is temporary obviously).

While I cannot give any estimate yet, also because a lot of art is still missing, I’m guessing that could be done with Act3 for end of September 🙂 I also have two new games approved on Steam (Roommates and Bionic Heart 2) so adding them to the portal will take some time too!

One last thing, do you remember that preview image I posted last week? still not announcing the game officially but I’m facing a tough choice. More info and a poll in my forums: http://winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=3418

Summer (?) update

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tofiusIn the image above, Tofu is looking for the Summer that didn’t arrive at all here

I know, usually during Summer I complain because is too hot and I can’t work. Well, this year, at least here in Italy, I really can’t complain about the heat… in the whole month of July there has been an average max temperature of 24-25°C where I live!!

Anyway, I’m only a bit pissed for my vegetable garden, because tomatoes don’t grow up well in this climate, but at least was able to work just fine 😉

Seasons Of The Wolf update

I’m making progresses, I just uploaded a new version recently, even if of course the story still ends at beginning of ACT 3. The biggest improvement is the new computer AI, which now can use a variety of skills like your party does. For now I only updated the AI of a few of the random enemy encounters (the four families of Dingirra) since I didn’t want to change too much what I have already done.

Speaking of gameplay I also completely changed the way traits work: after a long discussion in forums with testers, having the traits unlocked by specific attribute levels wasn’t making much sense, it was like getting Constitution to 50, only to get a bonus that gives even more HP (Constitution attribute indeed already influences the HP).

With the new system instead, you “spend” one of the skillpoints you get leveling up to unlock the trait. Traits effectively become a sort of permanent passive skill, and offers more variety, since for example you can give a HP bonus to a Mage, or a SP bonus to a Warrior.

Also I changed the way they work for the ones giving bonuses to the base stats: now they scale based on level. For example Toughness doesn’t give a generic +15% HP increase, but adds 3HP every level of the character. This should prevent the traits to become too much powerful… at least in theory! 😉

Art-wise, I got some very nice backgrounds like this one:
newcamp

But sadly not much else, since the artist working on the tileset is currently busy with another project. I also have a few enemies and backgrounds still missing, so let’s say that things will go a bit slower until I get the new art, but I should be still able to code the new enemies encounters while I wait.

Last but not least, people who follow me on twitter already saw some interesting images about an unusual (for me) game in the works. I’ll make a proper post later when I have more stuff to show, but for now enjoy this:

preview

Mizuki and Samuel. The uniform style should give you a hint about what game world the game is about… 🙂