Category Archives: sneak peek

PSCD – meet Lucius

It’s time to talk about the first robotic male love interest of my games! Before, there was only the female Tanya of Bionic Heart that was an android, but she was more human-like. Instead Lucius looks like… a real robot, as you can see above 😉

And here’s more about him directly from the writer:

Name: Lucius
Nation of Origin: –
Service Branch: Imperial Robotics

Description:
Built by Luna-Ferrix Industries, Lucius is a rarity; he is among the first generation of self-aware robots developed by humanity. This isn’t to say there weren’t robots before as the RoboAnts demonstrate, but Lucius is definitely something on the cutting edge.

Though constructed as a male adult, Lucius is innocent in his interactions with others. True, he has the accumulated knowledge to draw on, but he has no context to place it. As a result of this, he is very curious about what goes on around him, and will sometimes place himself in situations which, if he was human, would be hazardous to his health.

Lucius is a direct, if trusting soul, and still has some trouble distinguishing between turns of phrase and direct commands, much as the kitchen staff found out when he proceeded to bake enough pies to fill the cafeteria.

Lucius’ construction also raises some further implications. Luna-Ferrix sees Lucius as the first in a wave of robot servants and soldiers which will net them a healthy profit, but other people wonder whether it is morally appropriate to allow one’s ‘tools’ to be aware to start with.

However, despite others’ distrust, Lucius has shown himself to be a reliable, loyal person to those around him.

I am quite curious to see what people will think about his “romance story” 🙂 I am looking forward to it!

Various games updates

Progress have been made on several games:
Roger Steel script is now 100,000 words long! Is still not finished, though 🙂 The game will also feature a very particular theme song by Boossara (same singer of SOTW theme song).
PSCD script is at good point too (the main missions at least).
Queen Of Thieves art is being redrawn by artist and I’m very pleased by the results! Just take a look at the picture below, featuring the new female romances of the game:

From left to right: Therjalla the elven healer, Moirgane the human bartender and Mary-Ann the human blacksmith.

Story-wise, the new writer is fixing the old script, so this part is going fast (since scenes have been written already, she can change some parts but doesn’t need to brainstorm/spend time thinking what to write for most of it). For the yuri romances I guess will take a bit more time. Anyway this time I want to release the game with both romances genders available, so to not repeat something like Nicole… At least there are “only” 3 characters to write! 😉

Thank you

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A nice picture I managed to catch with my camera while taking a walk outdoor!

I’m writing this post on Thanksgiving day. Here in Europe is not a big festivity like in USA, though I really like the idea of it. Being thankful for something, thanking someone, is a good thing to do.

So here I am, thanking you! 🙂

Yes because if I’m still indie after all those years, is mainly thanks to you. My entire life (and those of my wife/pets!) would be very different without your great support, doesn’t matter how big or small.

But I’m going to thank you not just by words! 😉

I’m doing a special promo sale, with all my games 50% off until the 2nd December!
(except Seasons Of The Wolf obviously, since was just released).

You don’t need to enter any code, the discount is automatic for the whole duration of the sale. As always, by buying direct you help me (I get a bigger cut than with portals) and also you get the games DRM-Free + Steam key anyway.

Short status update

I’m making good progress with the various games in the works, but as always I have no idea when they’ll be out.

I often get people asking me: “when game XYZ will be out?” 🙂 It’s cool since shows that people are waiting for my games, but always remember: as soon as I am confident that I can start * at least the beta testing * in a specific date, I’ll be the first to officially announce it in the blog or the various social networks. So if I don’t say anything, means that I don’t know myself!

When several people are involved in developing a game (like all my games do now), is normal to have delays and to be unable to know when everyone will finish his/her tasks.

Anyways, if I had to make a guess, I’d say that 2015 might be “the year of yuri”, since beside Nicole yuri, I also have another yuri-only dating sim in the works (the infamous “Summer In Trigue” which I’ll officially announce later) and all the other games that could be out include female love interests playing as female main character.

This is another way to thank all the yuri fans who followed me through the past years 😉

PSCD – meet Mira

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After a break of a few weeks, back to introducing the PSCD characters. And what character! 😉

Name: Mira Patras
Nation of Origin: Greece
Service Branch: Civilian Consultant

Description:
As one of the youngest Nobel Prize winners ever, it was a foregone conclusion that Mira would make her way to Planet Stronghold. The numerous anomolies and mysteries have drawn scientists like a moth to flame, and Mira is certainly no exception.

There are many demands on Mira’s time, however. A true polymath, she has provided valuable insight into numerous fields, whether it is geology, or robotics. It is known some of her research was instrumental in Lucius’ construction, for example. This also causes a bit of exasperation for the military since as a civilian, Mira isn’t as bound by military doctrine as a soldier would be, and they worry she may inadvertantly leak some critical research.

What initially brought Mira to the planet were reports of excessive gigantism among some of the animal species, and upon her arrival, witnessed this firsthand as a giant grub attempted to consume her transport shuttle. Instead of frightening her off, Mira was inspired to stay. After all, if she could discover the source of this enlargement, it might then be replicated among other things such as food bearing crops.

Mira is also a bit of a media darling as various outlets vie for her attention. Some of these include invitations to anchor her own show, or various movie roles. While she makes time for inteviews, Mira usually declines these entreaties as they would. There were many broken hearts when she refused the lead role in the remake of ‘Attack of the Giant Amazon.’

Needless to say, she is one of my favorites. Not because of the piercing on the lips, or the blue eyes. Or her sexy alternate outfit. No, really, not because of that… 😀

Jokes apart, I really like all the character design of this game! And I’m also pleased by the progresses made by the writer so far.

SOTW DLC and other games in progress

SOTW Steam testing is going well, can you believe that we found some more small bugs? haha the work on a RPG is never done! They were all minor things of course, but needed to be fixed 🙂

I can also confirm that we’re going to work on a DLC for SOTW. Only 20 days have passed since the official release, but I’m confident enough that it’s worth doing it. The DLC will happen after the end of Act 4, but of course before the various “alternate endings” (since they talk about things happening far in future).

I’ll manage to keep the existing characters so keep your saves, but I think will also offer the possibility to “start anew” just for the DLC, automatically leveling up the characters to level 25-26 and picking your romance, so people don’t necessarily need to replay the whole thing!

The DLC will focus more on the story/lore and the interaction between the player and the various romances. Is a RPG, so of course there will still be battles, but not often as the main game!! Of course everything is still in early planning stages, since the DLC for sure won’t be out before next Summer/Fall (as always, depending on how the other various projects go).

Queen Of Thieves is going well too: the artist is making the new characters with his “new improved style” and what can I say? just take a look for yourself:

Therjalla the elf healer is going to be one of the female yuri romances of the game

So, Myrth from Loren has a formidable competitor it seems! 😉 Jokes apart, also pleased by the new writer’s speed. I have no release estimates of course but if both writer and artist keep going at this pace, the game will be out sooner than I thought.

See you next Friday…the Black Friday!! 😮

PSCD – meet Mizuki

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Time to met a new PSCD character: the hot japanese hacker Mizuki!

Name: Mizuki Tsukino
Nickname: Null
Nation of Origin: Japan
Service Branch: Imperial cyber Defense
Specialty: Overclock

Description:
At one time, Mizuki was considered the greatest threat in cyberspace. No target was safe when her avatar, a neon dragon, appeared wreaking havoc on corporate, criminal, or government networks. Not bad for a woman yet to see seventeen summers.

However, despite her almost superhuman talent, she was eventually captured. In a secret court, she was offered two choices: either assist the Empire with her formidable computer skills, or spend the rest of her life in a primitive cell with nothing but rats for company.

It is in military service Mizuki encountered the challenge she craved. Whether it was outwitting the Robobrains in their own cybernetic hives, or adapting to the Vauses’ fluidic thinking, Mizuki found her skills matching, or exceeding their own. This earned her the nickname Null, since her presence was never detected, let alone suspected.

While she is the mistress of the digital world, Mizuki is less sure of herself in what she terms the meat world. After all, how can you trust what you can’t control?

This isn’t to say Mizuki isn’t loyal. She’s had numerous opportunities to escape, covering her absence electronically, but when her comrades spilled blood for her, leaving was the last thought on her mind.

Seasons Of The Wolf last Act/Season coming soon!

You can see a sneak preview of the ending CGs above

This week I’ve worked on the last act, though as you may know if you follow me on twitter, I had already finished the main coding last month. So I am just retesting everything, the battles, the enemies (there are some really tough boss fights!) and in general that all the endings unlocks the intended way.

Speaking of the endings I’ve commissioned new CG images for them, using a different artist, since the original one couldn’t make it in time. I’m rather happy about the result 🙂

I believe I will release this last act/season this weekend or maximum early next week, I’m just waiting to see if I get get some last missing images (but the game works already anyway). Keep an eye on the forums to know when is ready!
In any case, not much left to wait, to see the conclusion of the story. Do you remember the wolf pup in the first season? Well… 😉

Some general considerations: as I’m approaching the end of this project, I have learned several things:

that doing such LONG (really, SOTW is the longest game I’ve EVER MADE!! lol) RPGs it was a real massacre. I’ve worked on it 1 year, of which almost 8-9 months full time which for me is a lot! Think that I was reusing Loren’s engine, so in theory I only had to do the story and stop, but instead I’ve added countless new features!!
So, this game better sell well, MUCH more than Loren, because otherwise it really wasn’t worth it. I liked doing it, but since I run a business I need to take that into consideration as well.
the longer the game, the quicker I lose interest. The last months of coding were really painful. Don’t get me wrong, I still put 100% of efforts like I always do (that’s how I am made). But sometimes it felt really a chore 😀 This is something personal of course, I know many other indies who prefer to work on a smaller amount of titles and take more time with them. For me, after a while, becomes frustrating since I keep having new ideas about new stories or gameplay 🙂
I’m not sure if players really appreciated the efforts. Don’t get me wrong I got great support from fans as always. But it seems (might be just an impression) that players would have preferred less fights, less complexity and more story/scenes. Sort of the opposite direction I went with SOTW, so as you can imagine I’m a bit worried! But this only a theory for now, I’ll need to see once the game is out.

Because of such considerations, and based on how SOTW will do, will decide how to take the challenge to make the future RPGs. If I see that all the insane effort I put to make the gameplay of SOTW so detailed didn’t make the game more appealing to players, I think will need to do things differently.

But in general, I might do things differently even if SOTW did well, just to rest a little 🙂 Playing Banner Saga, and other indie RPGs, showed me that you don’t necessarily need to have 8+ characters with 15 skills each, huge battles 6 vs 6, and so on.

In summary there are other ways to make a story-based RPG interesting without the need to make it long, super complex or add a lot of features.

Also, I might for once do what basically most other indies do: reuse the same engine WITH SMALL CHANGES (not what I did with SOTW!!!) and make smaller games (of course, at lower prices as well). Not necessarily everyone wants to play huge epic RPGs, sometimes is refreshing to do something small. Small is beautiful! etc etc 🙂

OK better stop my ramblings here otherwise you think I went crazy while working on SOTW! …which actually is not completely wrong…! 😀

PSCD – meet Samuel

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Time for another character introduction: Samuel. He is one of the homosexual romances playing as Alex.

Name: Samuel Bellamy
Nickname: Doc
Nation of Origin: England
Service Branch: Imperial Xenobiological Service
Specialty: Eco-Engineering

Description:
Ever since he was a child, Samuel had a deep love for animals, and his parents encouraged this behavior in their son. As Samuel matured, this interest widened into a fascination with alien life, and it came as little surprise when he graduated with top honors in Xenobiology.

Numerous organizations vied for Samuel’s attention, but he settled on the military, figuring this would give him the most exposure to alien life. This proved prescient since while he was out in the field, a disease struck the expedition he was on. The group’s doctor was among those afflicted, but Samuel was able to synthesize a vaccine, and earning the nickname ‘Doc’. This incident also brought a measure of unwanted fame to Samuel. For two years running, he was voted ‘Hottest Biologist.’

Samuel was assigned to Planet Stronghold because his knowledge has allowed humanity to adapt to various alien environments. This serves his own purpose for it allows him to research forms of life entirely unknown to humanity at large.

If he could be said to have a flaw, Samuel really prefers wide open spaces to civilization. Given a chance, he can often be found out in the wild, recording alien lifeforms in their natural habitats. He feels truly at peace when he can be one with nature.

Playing games is important

Yes you heard me well: is important to play games! Especially if you are a game developer like me 🙂

I have less and less free time now (especially this year with everything happening all at once, Steam, iOS ports, etc) and as you can imagine, when I have some I prefer to spend it with my wife, pets and doing outdoor activities.

However I still try to find the time to play for a few hours a week the new games. Because that’s the equivalent of “research & development” of other industries.

Some practical examples and games that inspired me while I designed and coded my upcoming RPG ToA: Seasons Of the Wolf:

– Guild Wars 2: from this game I grabbed the ideas of “solve all quest in an area” and “discover all locations” and so on, to get bonus EXP. From this game I also wanted to implement the idea of stat-derived enemies (no matter your level, all enemies would be a challenge) but after only a week of testing I realized that it wasn’t a good idea 😀
– Diablo 3: it’s nothing new, the random items I mean, but still while playing this game I thought that would have been cool to use random items with tiers even in my games, alongside manually created ones. I implemented it and people loved it 🙂
– XCOM and such the idea that the battlefield and environment should have a bigger impact. I implemented it in a limited way because didn’t want to risk breaking the balance too much, but I’ve added elemental conditions and some special ones (tunnel sewers where 2handed weapon do half damage, underwater where fire magic doesn’t work and ranged weapon do much less damage). I also implemented the damage penalty when hitting Thief class with Warriors. However the ideal would be to have a full tiled battlefield for this to work better. Maybe in future! 😉
– Everquest 2 and another MMORPG I can’t remember now, the idea of offering items as reward for quests. Again it was nothing new, but just playing those games reminded me of this feature which was missing in my previous RPGs.

So if you’re a game designer, try to find the time to play a few games. Your own games will benefit from it!

SOTW update

Rowinda’s flashback quest is totally… crazy ! (what you did expect?)

Work on SOTW is proceeding not really smoothly – I decided to adopt the latest Ren’Py to take advantage of a rewrite of the screen language which makes the super-complex game like mine run faster, but since is a beta… has issues. I’ve had old save games compatibilities broken already 3-4 times, even if somehow every time was able to keep the ones I use to develop the game. With the latest update though, they broke as well… so I have to go back to a previous version, because otherwise I can’t even work on the game myself lol. Needless to say, this is very frustrating, though obviously is not Ren’Py fault. I guess I was spoiled by the fact that in the past it always worked without problems! But is normal for a beta program to have such issues.

I should have the new tileset I need for Act 3 at end of month, so I estimate that all problems considered, the next act could be ready for beta-testing around mid or end of October.

The final game release *might* happen in time for end of year, since for the last act I already have all the art I need and I’ve already coded almost all of it. I’ve also commissioned some extra ending CGs from another artist (using the same one wasn’t an option, he wouldn’t have made it in time) and they’re turning out very nice!

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva

Category Archives: sneak peek

PSCD – meet Lucius

PSCD – meet Mira

PSCD – meet Mizuki

PSCD – meet Samuel