Category Archives: general

posts about general topics, even not related to computer games

VN Series and more

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Today I thought that would be cool to have some sort of VN series. Like a TV series, several episodes covering several months. However, I’m aware that it wouldn’t be an easy task at all. I seriously doubt anyone could release a VN of decent size (at least 2-3h of gameplay) in less than 30-45 days.

Also much depends on the artist, since VNs require lot of art and I believe that artist are even more important than writers, in terms of “releasing stuff”. Of course a great writing can make the difference, but if there’s no art available, the game doesn’t get released 🙂

A way to do it could be to start producing many “episodes” in advance, so you would have “half-season” ready when you start releasing them to the public. I really think this could work, and I’m disappointed that I lack the means (financial, team, time) of trying this. However, not many people know that the game Farenheit, also known as Indigo Prophecy (I quote that often since I love it) originally was conceived as a series of episodes. Yes, exactly: they thought to use this method but even big companies like Quantic Dream had to give up to this idea (even if from what I remember, was because of publisher’s pressure). They had to cut off several chapters from the game, and make 1 big game instead of a series of games. Those were different times though, now that ESD and platforms like Xbox Live are more widespread I really think it could work well (selling downloadable packs with 1-2 chapters each for low amount).

Am I going to try this? Well, never say never, but at the moment I’m in a fun situation where I have 5 projects started, and I am stuck because I’m waiting for external people to finish their jobs on ALL of those 5 (yes, mostly are artists, in case you wondered!). Also, doing a VN or adventure game in 3d is different: once you have the models of the main characters for example, you can reuse them even if you make 10 games. Same for evironments and objects. I’m not saying it’s easier to do in 3d, but that once you build up a good collection of 3d models and you have a working engine, is surely faster to produce games in 3d than hand-drawn 2d (that’s not a big discovery).

Back to my own games, the final proofreading of all Spirited Heart texts is almost done, so I could release the beta-test version of the Deluxe version just before Christmas 🙂

What are “light-RPG” games?

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I remember when I was young, the game genres where very well defined: there were action games, adventure games, role playing games and so on.

As the game industry grew up, some interesting genre-mix started to pop up. For example now we all refer to Diablo as a RPG, but would be more accurate to call it Action-RPG. Actually, right now, we can find many “RPG elements” in lots of games. Very few “pure action” games remains.

One of my upcoming games, Planet Stronghold, is a “light-RPG” game. I consider it a visual novel with RPG elements, but stronger than those you can usually find in dating sims. What I exactly mean? I’m talking about quests, relationships, interactiveness? No, because many of those features were already present in my other “normal VNs”. In Heileen 1-2 there are quests, in Bionic Heart relationship and some interactive scenes, in Summer Session there are the stats/skills to improve and so on.

So to call the game “light-RPG” I knew I had to go forward and push renpy to its limits (well no, not really, is quite easy to achieve good results with it!). Indeed in Planet Stronghold there will be combat, an inventory, quests, character relationships and so on. There will be several kind of weapons based on the damage type: energy, piercing, explosive, etc. There will be 4 classes: psionic, soldier, guardian and scout, each one with special advantages.

BUT, the game won’t be FILLED by stats. You’ll clearly know from beginning what kind of gameplay you can expect from a certain class. Scouts will need lot of time to recharge but will be able to kill opponents with a single shot, especially human ones. Guardians will be tough and have lots of hitpoints, psionics duty instead will be to heal / protect others. That’s why I use the word “light”, because while is clearly a RPG game, it’s not hard to understand.

Clearly is not easy to create a game like that. Is actually harder than creating an uber-complex game like some I did in the past (Magic Stones or Supernova 2 for example). Because with this game, even a casual player should be able to pick up the game and after learning a few basics, being able to enjoy the game without getting lost not knowing what to do.

How to do perfect (or almost) gameplay balancing

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If you check at the bottom of this post you’ll see a sort of spreadsheet page (and indeed, it is!) and you’ll wonder what the … is that.

It’s my system to do perfect gameplay balancing! In games like RPGs, where you have lots of skills/stats, is really hard to balance properly games. There will always be some classes/races with better attributes than others. This is inevitable, but there are some tricks you can use to at least try to make a balanced game.

In what consists my method? simple, I take a spreadsheet program (Openoffice in my case) and I lay down the stats needed in row/columns like in the example below. Then, I use the SUM function to sum all values in rows/columns. The result should be that all totals are equals: it means that if I have a class with more Willpower, there will be another with more Wisdom, and so on. But in the end if you sum all values they should be all equals, grouped by your RPG system (in my case races/elements).

Hope I managed to express myself well. If you’re making a complex game, just try it, might save you some time! Of course there are still lots of things to balance inside the game itself but this should be a good start.
balancing

Lots of decisions

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morgan-julietIn the final part of Heileen 2 I’m trying to make things less dramatic. Some of the dreams Heileen has are pretty scary, true nightmares. But they don’t really fit too much into the light theme of the first game, so I’m changing slightly direction in this last part.

There will be fun moments and even the endings with the most risky sins like Wrath or Envy won’t be anything too bad.

On the left, meet Morgan and Juliet. Yes, exactly, Morgan isn’t free… even if Heileen instantly fall in love with him. But who knows, maybe things will change through the story, after some events…?

I’m also trying to keep the player active through the whole story. I know that the original Japanese VN have VERY FEW choices, and lot of text, but I think as they are they can’t work well with the western audience (if not at all).

Beside, I too like to have more control over what is happening. I don’t like too much to ask myself “why the main character did that? it was stupid, I should have had the choice to do differently!”.

decisionsSo even during this last part, that in theory was a sort of “prologue”, I’m putting many menu with decisions that will affect (even if in some cases only slightly) the final outcome.

The most important part for the outcome will be the choices you made in the previous 21 dreams, but also what you will pick in this final part: so in summary there will be 14 unique endings (one for each Sin / Virtue) and a sort of early ending for a total of 15 unique endings.

But there also will be several subquest that are triggered through the game and are independent from the main story (even if to finish them you’ll have to reach the pirates part) and the final score that you can reach will be 100 (so 20 different quests that you can solve).

I believe with all that content the game will be quite replayable and long, maybe not as Bionic Heart (who is my longest and more varied game to date) but still not bad at all 😉

Projects summary

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It has been a busy week!  I organized and worked on all my currently active projects, and they’re many!  The summary is:

Bionic Heart – Today got some new voices for Bionic Heart, so we’re almost finished with it. I’m really looking forward to this release! I already sent out the beta demo out to some people and so far got very positive responses.

Planet Stronghold – I asked Deji if was possible to do some digital coloring of some old sketches another artist sent me. He is talented but he doesn’t have any digital tablet so isn’t able to do digital stuff…! I also found a character artist, she does an interesting realistic/soft-shading manga art, I think would work well in a space game.

Tower Of Destiny – Just got the new build of engine from the programmer. With it I should have enough to start creating the game maps. I’m going to add a graveyard to that town map I already posted before. Once it’s done I’m going to post another video on youtube 🙂

Heileen 2 – I’ve just commissioned new art. The game will feature some really nice art, and some small nudity too. If I have to label a game under 14 for the content, then it better be not just for the texts/description! Everything will still be of course very raffinate and soft like in the first episode. Will post more screenshots, and when the voiceover by sakebento is ready a short video maybe.

The Flower Shop – I got Marian sprite, and is really cute. I want to post shortly a sort of summary with all the characters in the game, like I did for Heileen and Bionic Heart (“The Cast”). Deji drew some really cute girls, hard to pick one…! 🙂

and there’s still another mysterious card game I’m working at which made great progresses recently too! I’m going to officially announce it when I have made a video or taken some screenshots.