Author Archives: admin

Follow the leader: about characters in a party RPG

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As some of you might know, recently I fell in love with Bioware’s latest title, Dragon Age.

Of course there are MANY reasons to love that game: but as game designer, the most interesting new feature (never seen before in a RPG game as far as I know) is the party management / relationship between the main characters and his/her companions.

Beside the possible romance outcomes, which are very nice, I also liked in particular the skill bonus that each NPC can get if you have a good relationship with him/her. I definitely want to do the same in my game Planet Stronghold. Beside raising the skills the “normal” way (through Training or winning battles / earning XPs) I also want to have a relationship value with each of them, and that value will give bonuses to combat. Of course also a negative value will give a negative bonus to combat.

Another very interesting feature is that the NPC actually interacts during the exploration dialogues. Evil / selfish characters will be annoyed if you try to help too much everyone you meet, while generous / brave characters will be pissed if you do evil action or if you refuse to help the weaks. This will require a bit more planning during the dialogues to check for all the possible companions present in that point, but will definitely add much more atmosphere and realism to the game.

I always liked the idea of your party NPC being not simple soldiers that will follow the leader blindly, but real characters with their own morals / thoughts that will change their opinion on you based on your actions.

Planet Stronghold – New characters

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Today got more pictures for Planet Stronghold + new sketches for the new characters. I must say the improvement is great, and the game is changing from a “cute” look to a more “adult” look, but still using manga art. Michelle is the new character that was redone, and I like it a lot. She’s a small, thin girl but she is very determined in becoming a good soldier for the Empire!

Click on the thumbnail on the left to see it bigger, is worth it! This is her “casual dressed” version.

The new sketches looks also very promising. Rebecca, who is my favourite character, an aggressive and sexy woman of the Scout class, and also your training Sergeant, will have a big role through the whole game. While the older image was cute, the new one (just saw the sketch but I’m already loving it) will better represent her personality.

One last image showing both Lisa and Michelle in their uniform, during the training session. I’ve also started coding the Training Screen where you’ll be able to train your heroes skills without going to combat, but I am still doing some balancing / UI work so probably won’t be able to post any screens before 1-2 weeks.

I’ve also started another artist on the inventory/items art, since I decided to switch from just displaying text lines in the inventory to a standard icon inventory, so player will be able to recognize instantly the item from the shape/colors.

Flower Shop released + making of

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First of all, in case you don’t know, the game is now out! You can get more info at the official page here: http://www.winterwolves.com/theflowershop.htm

Then I want to give a brief background history on this game in case someone is interested. It all started shortly after I found out about Ren’Py engine and the visual novel / dating sim world. I got to know the LemmaSoft community (which has been very helpful for me in making those games since then) and several great people like Tom Rothamel, Ayu Sakata and M.Beatriz Garcia. Those two last people were later fully involved in the game.

Summer Session, a dating sim made together with Hanako games, was released in July 2008 and was very successful, with mentions on Gamasutra, Macworld, and so on. So I wanted to make another, but at same time go on with my other projects (Heileen, Spirited Heart would get released in the next months). While browsing Lemmasoft forums I found out Deji (Garcia nickname) and of course I was impressed by her skills, but also by the fact that at those times (if I remember correctly) no games (even freewares!) were ever released with her beautiful art.

I thought to ask her if she was interested, and I still remember after I sent her my initial game idea she wasn’t much motivated because of the “guy goes after girl” theme: but when I expanded it mentioning one of the main girls would be a Flower Shop owner, she immediately changed her mind! Also, in the beginning, the game was really like another Summer Session. But then (luckily I think) I decided to ask Ayu Sakata to write it completely on her own, just following my original plot idea, but leaving all the dialogues to her.

Was July 2009, she had just done some proofreading /editing for Bionic Heart and I really liked her work, so asked her if she wanted to take care of the project, and she did. She changed the player perspective from the classic male point of view (the one of Summer Session for example) to a more delicate, romantic view (I’d say definitely more female!).

Meanwhile Deji was going on with the pictures, but was a bit slow because had to do an internship. In late 2009 the plot was fully written but there was still several pictures left: I still remember Marian was the last girl to be added, and some of her poses were paused for over 3 months 😀 But then, the internship ended and I must say I was surprised to see Deji motivation and speed (quality was NEVER in discussion) ! She finished all the remaining art in December, and the main menu in early January.

The background art was done by other external contractors and the interface… is my fault in case you’re wondering 😉 In December 2009/January 2010 I had lot of fun programming the farming sim part: I wanted something casual, not very complex but not too easy either, and I think I made it. Once again I was pleased to work with Python which is without any doubt the best language ever to do … just anything, from games to any other kind of programming task!

So that’s it… basically the game from its original concept in October 2008, was finished more than 1 year later, in January 2010! Of course, there were lots of pauses and dead moments so isn’t like the game took 1 year of actual work to make!

And now, what’s next? I am already discussing with Deji and Ayu about a possible “girl side” version of the game. I agree, I think many girls would like to deal with nice guys like Jacob and Trent…!

Who really is Vera Blanc?

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After I posted the first images I realized I created a bit of a mess. I forgot a simple rule, that the first images you show of a new game will also reflect what people think/expect from it.

First of all it won’t be a erotic game 😀 Nor will be a game without any plot, based only on naked babes! In practice it will be a detective/mystery game, not focused exactly on finding clues or making logic connections, but more about the suspense and mystery since in every case Vera and his partner in crime Brandon will have to face some classic myths of horror/paranormal like zombies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves and so on.

But how will be the gameplay? Actually, will be one of my most unusual VNs… to be honest not even a VN, even if there will be several scenes to tell some important parts of the story, in particular the introduction to the new case.

The gameplay will be similar to Spirited Heart, you get a case, travel to a place and then have several days in which you decide which location explore or what action do. Meanwhile of course things will happen: someone might get killed, or disappear, or something else. I have yet to decide if to set a fixed amount of time to solve the case, or simply use a “variable based unlockable path”, which is probably better so players don’t get frustrated because they run out of time.

Vera will be able, on each case, to select 3 skills to learn for the mission, which will modify the game in several points. For example she might learn “Science”, and before entering an old building she could understand observing the structure that there’s risk of collapsing, or could repair a broken videocamera to see if she can recover some pictures, and so on.

It will also contain at least one word-based mini-game, and several endings even if most of them will be “sudden deaths” ! Yes, will be a game where you better save often…

Sorry if the first images I posted derailed the attention to the game only on the exterior aspect of Vera and how she was dressed in those 2 screenshots I posted 😉

Game art styles

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After posting my last sketch about my upcoming mystery / detective game Vera Blanc, I got some comments from people about the artstyle.

Everyone seems to love the new style, and I’m a bit relieved since it was a bit a risk to move away from manga style (even if many said that Heileen was a mix between manga and american comics).

Note that I will still make manga games too in future, but I also wanted to try a more realistic / comic style.

Especially since in that style women looks better IMHO 😀

Click on the image on the left to zoom in and look at the colors… only at the colors, eh! 😉

I played with saturation level based on suggestions of Jake, and indeed seems that it looks better to me too. I wanted to obtain a sort of comic look, but before the image was less saturated than the one I posted above, and while was ok for a printed comic I think this new version fits more a computer game.

That’s just an example of what kind of fanservice you can expect from this series – yes, if things go well I plan to make a series of games. Another decision I had to take, which scares me, is to have multiple artists work on each “episode”.

Like in comic books, where each episode would be drawn by a different artist. I had to take this decision if I wanted to release each episode at 4-5 months of distance, rather than 1 year 😐

I hope players will understand my motivations!

Regarding art, if I had the money I would make all my games looks like the picture on the right: that’s a new screenshot from Planet Stronghold game, probably the most expensive I’m making so far in term of art and coding (and I hope it will do well!).

Just for fun, I also wanted to post an image of one of my first games as indie: Universal Boxing Manager (see below).

Ok, it’s true that simulation/strategy games usually don’t need great art, however is fun for me to see how I started, and how the quality of the art in my games changed (in better of course!) over the years… 🙂
universal boxing manager pc / mac game