Category Archives: queen of thieves

The Queen Of Thieves – Kira

This week is the turn of another main character, Kira (the middle sister):

Kira is the middle child and often feels the pressure of such a position. During her younger days, she always found herself trapped between Joanne and Thalia when they were fighting. She sympathised with her older sibling’s desire to help them all grow up but she also found herself agreeing with her younger sister that Joanne was not their mother and had no right to act that way. In the end, she usually ended up siding with Thalia but occasionally she would agree with Joanne when their youngest sibling just went too far with her teasing.

When she was old enough to leave home, she moved to a town a few miles away from Triberg to work as a guard. She enjoyed the life very much. There was a comradery amongst the guards that she had not experienced before and it made her happy to live amongst such a large group in their barracks. Unfortunately, many of her fellow guards were into drinking heavily and Kira got into that habit too. While she is not an alcoholic, Kira finds it hard to stop once she starts. This has led to her getting entangled in several illicit liaisons with her fellow soldiers. On occasion, this led to brief but disastrous relationships, most of the time it just led to a very awkward morning and a splitting headache.

Perhaps her greatest weakness is a lack of belief in herself. Kira is rather convinced that she is stupid and that her love of alcohol just confirms it. Despite that, Kira really is not stupid but simply lacks the confidence to use what she was given. She often solved unusual cases when working as a guard but she fails to see it was because of her intellect that she did so.

As a rule, Kira finds being direct is the best course of action and his little foibles when it comes to using whatever comes to hand to succeed. She will use her strength and even her love of low-cut shirts to get what she wants. She finds it very easy to make friends although some do find her a little taciturn at times. Most of all, she badly misses the structure and feeling of community being a town guard gave her. Her sense of duty keeps her from abandoning her family’s attempts to free their mother even when it feels hopeless, however. In order to get that back, she is determined to succeed and woe betide any who gets between her and her chance to return to the life she loves.

Scripting games

PSCD intro scene it’s the only one I had actually coded so far…

I was so enthusiast last week about the good news that I actually forgot a very small detail… beside writing the stories and coding the gameplay, the games needs also to be scripted!! 🙂

What I mean by scripting? You know, every time in the game you see a new background, a character shows up, then moves on screen, changes expression, and goes away, every time a music plays or a sound effect is heard… behind it there’s scripting. All the writers I work with are quite familiar with Ren’Py so they know already how to place menu and use variables. But still, after the game has been written, and the logic/choices works, someone needs to add all those things listed above, the game scripting.

It’s really not a hard task: but it’s LONG! because you need to type all the commands and then test them to make sure you didn’t show a character flipped vertically hanging out from the roof 😀 (something that actually happened to me in some games in the past!).

So I’ve hired some people to do it for me to speed things up, this way I can focus on the game design and coding (what I can do better). In Queen Of Thieves case, the writer herself wants to script it, but it won’t delay much since all the main scenes have been written already.

In the end in last week I might have been a bit too much optimist about the times, since for example PSCD is over 200k words long, and scripting everything would probably take a month alone. Anyway, as always I’ll keep you updated on the progress!

Speaking of PSCD, in case you haven’t read it already in the forums, the generous Miakoda (the writer) offered to write more romances for the planned DLC so that there’s an even amount for all genres/combos! In practice, the DLC will have as much romances as the base game. Because of that will take longer to finish, but at least everyone will be happy.

Here’s the updated chart then:

I’ve seen some preliminary sketches for the new DLC romances and I can assure you that they WILL be worth it. Probably the best DLC I’ve done for all my games. I’ll also try to add some more gameplay/cards with it, but it’s too early now to decide.

The Queen Of Thieves – Joanne

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It feels really weird for me to post the first character profile of this game – originally announced back in 2011 !! But as they say, better late than never 😉

So let’s start with the oldest sister, Joanne:

Joanne is the oldest of the Queen of Thieves daughters and the only one born with the gift of magic. From a very young age, she was able to instinctively use her abilities to all kinds of magic. Her ambition when she was a child was to go to a famous school of magic and learn how better to use her gifts. Her dream fell apart, however, on the day her mother was captured. With her gone, she was the only one left, apart from her father, who could care for her younger siblings. She became almost a surrogate mother to Kira and Thalia. Her younger sisters have not always appreciated this but they understand what she had to give up to do it.

Unlike her sisters, Joanne has no real experience with romance. Between looking after her sisters and focusing on her magic, she has had little time to really explore such things. She has been in relationships but they always ended very quickly. Joanne assumes it was because she was taking things too slowly for them or else they had only been interested in her body and not her mind. She likes when people are interested in her body, especially her legs, but it upsets her if they try to push that forward into something more than she is ready for. Her youngest sister often mocks her for being a thirty year old virgin although that is usually in response to Joanne chiding her over her rather loose attitude towards sex.

Outside of romance, Joanne comes across as a friendly and knowledgeable person who exudes extreme confidence in everything she does. The only problem is that when things go wrong she tends to get extremely flustered and her mind goes blank. She has gotten so used to things going how she expected that things going wrong is so utterly alien to her that it completely throws her off. Her sisters take great delight in teasing her during those situations which makes them even worse.

Joanne often gets into arguments with her younger sister, Thalia, over the gods. Her sister rejects the existence of divine beings while she believes them to be extremely real. She is often mocked for her devotion, attending the local temple at least once a week to pay her respects to the gods. Unlike her sister who blames the gods for what happened, Joanne believes that only by petitioning the gods will they succeed in their endeavour to rescue their mother.

Some exciting news (at last)

I have good news! First of all, I’ve been playing for the past 2 weeks with the card game framework for PSCD, and I’ve made great progresses. I have coded almost all cards (I had to tweak some as expected, to balance it better).

Anyway, while of course this is a huge progress towards the game completion, the beta won’t come until later this year for three reasons:

I still need all the GUI (deck building and game screen). I have already an artist working on it, and I think the result will be very good.
I still need to code the game missions. Which is essential: I want to have a variety of missions/enemies and that will require quite some work first as design and then as testing.
the game texts are done but I still need to script them all, adding music/sprites/etc. That is a simple task but very long to do!

After those things are done, I’ll finally be able to start the beta!

Another good news is about Queen Of Thieves, since writer rewrote the catacombs texts and I’ve fully tested/scripted them, so that is done! Now I need to resume working on the robbery missions. What is left now is mostly the ending romance CGs. But since it’s a RPG I might start a beta/pre-order as soon as all the gameplay and texts are final. I still need to script everything though (adding the sprites, background, music) so that will take a while.

I’d say you could expect Queen Of Thieves beta later this Fall, and PSCD either in December or early next year 😉

About the other various games, there have been progress too, but nothing as big as those two.

Of course I know what many people are wondering… what about Nicole yuri? Well, it still needs the plot to be finished . Then it must be scripted and the romance CG are missing on that game as well. But even in this case once the game is scripted I might start preorders as well.

I knew it. I’m going to be shortly in a position where I have 3-4 games that needs to be finished and I will need to pick one, because I can’t work on all of them at same time! 😀

Summer In Trigue – Liz

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Since the whole game takes place on the Island of Trigue, the scene above with Liz is part of a series of flashbacks that Sybil has during the game. That one above in particular is when Liz confesses her love to Sybil during an apparently innocent night out to watch a movie… 😉

Introducing Liz

Liz is a somewhat shy, nerdy woman who dreams of becoming a successful author one day. In particular, her imagination was captured by the great fantasy epics she read as a child, and she hopes to be able to write similar stories herself. Thus far, she has failed utterly at achieving her dreams. But thanks to the encouragement of someone very close to her, she has not given up. She continues to work hard on her stories, while holding down a steady job in retail.

Liz is Sybil’s girlfriend at the start of the game, and the two have been dating for quite a while. Though they were classmates in high school, they never interacted with each other much back then. Instead they later encountered each other as adults, and almost immediately hit it off at that moment. They now live together in Liz’s apartment, and have a fairly comfortable and happy life together.

Or at least that’s what it seemed like to Sybil. Unfortunately, Liz was not actually sharing everything with her. Sybil and Liz’s relationship comes crashing down, and does so very badly. Thus Liz ends up staying behind as Sybil goes off heartbroken, on what was originally supposed to be a two week romantic vacation in Trigue for the two of them together.

This “two week vacation” of course turns into a stay much longer than Sybil originally intended. Despite this, Liz’s influence on Sybil’s life, and perhaps even her presence in it, may not be entirely over.

A few updates

I posted about this in forums already: brace yourself, Nicole yuri won’t be out this year! 😀 Haha OK, OK wait. The game writing it’s at good point: however it needs to be fully coded/scripted, and even going at full-speed that will take at least 1 month or maybe 1 and half.

Plus, the new ending CGs needs to be done: the story has been greatly revamped from the original idea. I knew it, and approved the choice, since having same culprit as the otome game would make the game less fun 😉

I plan to put the game in beta and do the pre-orders even if the final CGs aren’t ready in any case. So, maybe the beta will be out before end of this year.

Work on Queen Of Thieves instead is making progress fast: I almost finished the last level, it’s taking a bit more because I want to have some very tough battles. Below you see the final boss of level 8:

Can you imagine what there’ll be on level 9 then!?!? A Lich King? Uhm… yes, but not just that! Also, I’m happy about the catacomb backstory that the writer and I put together. This part can be played independently from the main game, but if you do it you’ll discover “a secret about a character and that will help you during the final stages”. Can’t say more than that for now 😉

There are still all the romance CGs to draw, so I’m unsure how long that will take for the artist, but I believe it should be done by end of year. Even in this case I could surely start beta testing even without them, since there’s all the RPG/robbery/catacomb exploration to test carefully.

Last but not least, PSCD cards are at good point and will be probably done by mid-September. Coder has resumed working on the system, and I should have something to show next month maybe. Still need to commission the GUI but that will be last once I made my mind on the card rules, etc.

Damn it, I knew it. I’ll probably have at same time two games with all texts, art and coding framework done, only awaiting me to finish them 🙂 Then I guess I’ll flip a coin and decide which one to finish first!

Summer In Trigue – Mia

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What is better in this hot day of August to introduce a “hot” girl from Summer In Trigue? 😉

Introducing Mia

Mia is an outgoing and athletic woman who works in Trigue as a tourist guide and instructor for several activities. This is much to Mia’s liking, for though the work can be tiring, it allows her to constantly experience the beautiful sites that can be found in Trigue. Mia loves the outdoors and is especially found of scuba diving, and so she is super happy to have been born and raised on an island like Trigue.

She also likes living in Trigue because the island’s name lends itself to puns. Mia is a huge pun lover, and enjoys making her friends groan with them. Her overall sense of humor is a bit dark, and she often jokes about how her job lets her know the perfect places to hide a body. At least most people assume she’s joking. She is pretty frightening when angry though…

Mia loves spending time in nature, but she has other hobbies. She is a fan of books, particularly those that have dark and disturbing stories with a hint of optimism. She also really enjoys watching terrible movies and laughing at them, especially if friends and alcohol are involved. And she has an interest in art, especially tattoos, and though her own skill at drawing is pretty basic she is interested in learning more.

Mia’s work with tourists often has had her interacting with stressed out couples and families, and so she has seen how ugly things can get between the people closest to each other. Her own personal experiences with both romance and family have also been complicated, and they have left her a bit jaded and cynical. But she doesn’t let that color her interactions with people, and tries to remain friendly and pleasant most of the time.

Queen Of Thieves update

After almost two months of “forced break” due to the crazy climate here (every day was over 35°C !!) I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things. Currently coding the sixth level of the catacombs, where things starts to get tough:

The minor elementals that were boss fights in level 2 are now regular enemies, and they brought their “big brothers” this time! Don’t worry thought since I’m testing the party progression for each level, battles should be balanced. It should be 3 party levels each catacomb level, so something like:

level 1 => party level1
level 2 => party level3
level 3 => party level6
level 4 => party level9
level 5 => party level12
level 6 => party level15
level 7 => party level18
level 8 => party level21
level 9 => party level24+

and so on. So while on catacomb level 2 your party should be around level 3, when you’ll encounter the battle above your party should be 12-13 levels higher, and that makes quite a difference!

Of course that might be slightly tweaked during the testing, but I don’t want the player able to “clear” the catacombs in one single try. Something to do in-between the various robbery missions. Also they’re optional, so not required to win/finish the game.

Writing is going well too, the only thing slightly behind is the art, since usually I liked to have it almost finished at this point. Anyway, beside the ending CGs, the base game art is basically done 🙂

End Of July update

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In the image above, Sybil talking about her homosexuality to Grace

July was a very bad month for me because of the heat. I think I’ve never worked so few since I went indie! However, for my collaborators it was a very good month. It was the month where I paid them most of any other months ever. I am broke now 😉

Jokes apart, it was good because means a lot of content was made. I have several projects at a very good point, lots of text written and some great artwork being drawn right now.

Cursed Lands

I’ve read the Amazons intro for Cursed Lands, and it was really cool to read the protagonist traveling to the Citadel to meet Karen and the young Loren’s trainer, Leena:

“The path to the Amazon domain is treacherous and narrow. The Amazons know how to make a territory naturally hostile to invaders, I’ll certainly give them that.
The craggy rock path makes it easy to follow the narrow path without slipping, but I find myself constantly forced to adjust my balance along its uneven surface.
In the distance, I can see the fortress. With its high walls and imposing towers, it appears intimidating, or at least as intimidating as a distant structure can. At least I know I’ve found the right place. There’s no way that this structure can be anything other than the Amazon citadel.”

Queen Of Thieves

The Tiberius otome route was finished, and I am very pleased by the writing so far. Each love interest (male or female) feels really unique and different from each other.

Coding-wise, I’m “still in the catacombs” 🙂 which means I’m still coding/designing the catacombs levels (level 5 out of 9). I hope to be finished with that by end of August, and then there will be the robbery missions.

As I said already on Twitter/forums, much depends on how things will go, if artist can finish the CGs scenes in time, etc. If everything goes smoothly, which would be VERY UNCOMMON, the beta of this game would be out before end of year for sure. If some things go badly (late artist, writer, somehow I can’t code well, etc) would still be early next year. So even in worse case the wait should be over. (I hope these won’ be the last famous words! lol)

Loren 2

I don’t talk much about this game, mostly because is still very behind. However, at least the story is making good progress now. The main plot is at chapter 2 (out of 4), but of course is only the first draft, and there are still all the side-quests missing.

We’re focusing on getting the main plot done first, and then adding later the various side quests and camp talk.

The art is done, but we could add some more CG scenes as the story gets written. We have already planned some, involving Loren and Myrth, and other characters 🙂 They’re not romance CG of course, but story/key moment CGs. Some are still sexy/cool/cute though!

Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense

Writer is finishing to put everything in Ren’Py format, it’s taking a while since the game turned out to be very big (over 200k words!). Meanwhile the artist is doing the cards art, which are turning out very good:

The biggest problem in this case is the coding, hopefully the coder can resume working on the card-framework next month, since that would speed-up the development a lot! Also I was planning to reuse the same framework for Undead Lily…

And what about Undead Lily?

If you follow me on Twitter you spotted the various art updates I’ve been posting. For those who missed them, no worries. Check the “group” pictures below of the good heroes (later changed to the “order heroes”):

the “good heroes”, old style
the new style, order heroes

Beside the fact that old heroes were only waist-up, while the new version is fullbody, you can notice the BIG difference 🙂 The old ones were more fanservicey, but fear not since you can choose for each character what version to display. And the ending CGs will have an optional very hot version! You know when an artist can draw human anatomy so well, would be a pity to not take advantage of such skills… right? 😀

I had several more updates for Never Forget Me, Roger Steel, and more. I just talked about those games since they could be, in theory, the closest to be released next. Oh, also that yuri game that MUST NOT BE NOMINATED BECAUSE IT’S CURSED… you know what game it is! well, it’s at very good point too!

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva