Category Archives: sneak peek

PSCD – Meet Graciela Reyes

Time for another PSCD character, one of the few humans with psionic abilities (in this prequel game they’re not common as in Planet Stronghold).

Name: Graciela Reyes
Nickname: Serenity
Nation of Origin: Spain
Service Branch: Imperial Psionics Institute
Specialty: Psionics

Description:
Graciela is among the rarest of humans; a person born with great psionic potential. As such, this made her highly sought after by many organizations to make use of her talents. Ultimately, she chose the military as it seemed to give the best training.

At heart, Graciela is a peaceful woman; after all, when you can feel another’s emotions, it makes little sense to cause them harm. She figured by joining the military, she would have an opportunity to use words where most would resort to guns.

This calm sense of self earned Graciela the nickname, Serenity, which was instrumental when humans made peace with the Xynthillians. A highly empathic the species, the Xynthillians never had to psionically shield themselves before, and thus were wide-open for what was essentially emotional assault when they first encountered humans. Graciela, underwent this pain when younger, was able to broker a peace by having the humans promise to stay away from Xynthillian space.

Unfortunately, even with her success, Graciela still faces discrimination. People fear the unknown, whether it be aliens or psionics, but Graciela hopes, given time, she can help people overcome this prejudice.

I’m still producing the art assets for PSCD, including the romance scenes. Once I have all of them will do some sneak previews as usual. There are some very interesting and unique settings for the romance CGs 😉

Seasons Of The Wolf update

Like in past week, spent this week working on ACT4 since I finished the ACT3 main coding but I’m still waiting for the tilesets. Please be patient, but at least know that I’m not wasting a single day of time 🙂

a sidequest of Act4 featuring some ferocious Gnolls!

Roger steel world: meet Roger Steel!

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Taking a break from PSCD characters intro to introduce nonetheless than Roger Steel himself!!! 🙂

Introducing Roger Steel… Explorer. Spy. Legend. Pawn.

When Ann and Arthur are ambushed at a remote temple, the surviving sibling and their friends are rescued by a handsome stranger in the middle of a mission of his own. Little do they know it is Roger Steel himself, whose adventures real and ‘enhanced’ are broadcast across the British Empire as part of its 20th century quest to maintain global order and confidence in its rule in these troubled times.

In books and movies Steel’s adventures have been chronicled and mythologized so much it is hard to separate man from legend. But the real Roger Steel is very human indeed, and when in a rash act of kindness he intervenes that ill-fated day, his duty to a ruthless Empire and his human inclinations are set on a collision course.

But unbeknownst to him, in the corridors of power in London, his mission has already taken a darker turn. With the endgame in sight, as with all pawns, the day might soon come when it is easier to remove him permanently from the board than keep him in the game.

Update about Seasons Of The Wolf

If you follow the game development in my forums, you know the mess I managed to make last week 😀 In practice I wanted to use the new Ren’Py, then found out the saves weren’t compatible because of a variable, I changed it, meanwhile Ren’Py coder kindly had fixed that on the framework-side, but was too late. And I even managed to run the auto-updater stopping it in half, so I had a mixed version (part old, part new Ren’Py)!!

In short: a giant mess. I can load some savegames but other won’t work, and the safest thing is to start again the game from scratch… even if is normal during such early beta testing to lose access to old saves, every time it happens I’m angry at myself.

Luckily the testers are very supportive and accept it without drama. Well, almost 😉 I heard some started drinking after the 7th consecutive playthrough from scratch…

Jokes apart, I am still going on with the game. Admire a portrait of a Kraken below:

I am coding ACT4 right now, even if ACT3 is still not playable because I need the tileset (won’t go in more details to avoid spoilers for those who never played it). So as fun as it might seem, considering the tileset won’t be ready before 1-2 weeks at least, I might be done with ACT4 before ACT3! It’s not bad though, since means I’m not losing any time.

During act3 you can also do all the romance talks, including some funny jealousy scenes!

If all goes well the full game (still in beta though) could be done by end of month. But when was last time that “everything went as planned”? Hmm…I can’t remember 😀

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.

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! 😉

Roger steel world: meet Arthur

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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:

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!” 😀

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

Roger Steel world: meet Christina

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Time for another Roger Steel post! SOTW act 2 will come 99.99% tomorrow, meanwhile enjoy this new character art and introduction:

“Sidekicks are problematic characters. Too strong and they risk overshadowing the heroine or hero. Too weak, and you wonder why the protagonist bothers to have them tag along. (Multiply them by 8, and you might have some idea why Roger Steel is taking so long to develop!) Include in the ensemble, the eponymous Roger Steel who is the de facto head of the expedition (whether he remains the leader of the expedition is up to you to decide!), and you have a dense network of personal dynamics to juggle while attempting not to lose track of the story itself.

Personalities, skills, and worldviews all need to complement each other and hopefully add to the thematic resonance of the work itself. If we look around at our friends and lovers, we often find that they provide something we perceive as lacking in ourselves. They ‘complete us’, as the adage goes.

In Roger Steel and the Human Element, Ann and Arthur are overtaken by adventure whilst vacationing with their old friends, siblings Christina and Neville. As friends, the foursome know each other well even though they have spent a lot of time apart. Playing as Ann or Arthur, your relationship with your two friends will determine the whole mood of the story.

As anyone who has observed people for any length of time will attest, men and women relate to each other differently, no matter whether they are straight, gay, lesbian, or transgender. Equally, the relationships the player experiences with Christina and Neville will be different playing as Ann or Arthur, and straight, lesbian, or gay (or indeed entirely platonic). This is not a game where the only difference between the conversations you make as Ann or Arthur is the name accompanying the dialogue.

When writing Christina, I had to ensure that she is flexible enough to relate to realistically to all the dialogue and game choices available to the player, whilst retaining her own personality. I wanted her to have a quiet strength and dignity that would withstand the worst of Ann’s or Arthur’s behaviour whilst being open to developing a relationship with either of them in new and unexpected ways.

Christina has her own unique skills as a field medic and voice of reason and temperance. She is strong enough not to be overwhelmed by the hard-driving company she finds herself in, even though her self-confidence is not very deep. It takes some grit and determination to appear in public with her prosthetic leg, let alone adventure with it in places even the able-bodied might fear to go, and I think that the artist has captured a lot of Christina’s personality in his rendering.

I hope her open face and beautiful green eyes (not to mention that finely crafted mechanical leg!) will invite you to learn more about her as you explore the world of Roger Steel and unearth the dark secrets that lie therein.”

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva