Next week you have a meeting with Nicole

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Nicole_OPver2.mkv_snapshot_00.18_[2013.10.09_17.12.02]
A screenshot taken from the game trailer. Apologize for the blurriness 😉

Yes you heard it well, next week (weekend probably) you have a meeting with a certain Nicole! Those are bold words, I know, but if I check the project status:

  • all writing completed: check
  • all texts proofread: almost (Sarah is checking them this weekend but she’s basically done)
  • all art done: check
  • all music ready: check
  • all GUI/icons done: only a few gift items are missing, but is not a problem, I can start the beta anyway even with temporary art
  • coding: need to finish implementing the online shopping and the gifts, but in a week it should be no problem

Of course in case wasn’t clear, I’m still talking about the beta testing version, but in this case should be very close to the final product (probably only some minor tweaking on stats/money/relationship and difficulty levels).

The goal is to have the game on sale for Halloween. Even if seems far away, I know from past experiences that it’s going to be very hard to release it officially before that date, but we’ll try! 😉

At least once this game is out I won’t say anymore every year “damn I wish I had a game good of Halloween!”. And when Undead Lily is out, I’ll have two! Speaking of which, below you see some nice (and not so nice, like the Harpy) card creatures:

creatures
From left to right: the Nymph, the Harpy and the Mermaid

Of course there’ll be a variety of genders from the classic mythology, those are only the ones which were done first 🙂

That’s all for now, going back to work on Nicole, I have a new deadline to meet!

The importance of custom soundtracks

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IMG_2264
My dog Skipper in his usual begging face

In the past, I used to have royalty free music in my games. Partly because I couldn’t afford to hire musicians, partly because I didn’t think that having original music was so important.

But one day, I saw this quote by Friedrich Nietzsche on a website:

Without music, life would be a mistake.

And I immediately jumped on my seat and realized how wrong I was!!! 😀

Jokes apart, it wasn’t such an enlightening moment but pretty close. I used to have theme songs in some past games (Always Remember Me for example) but wasn’t until Heileen 3 that I decided to have a full custom soundtrack. And when I saw how much people appreciated that, and the possibility to download the music tracks (along with other bonus stuff) in the “bonus content” version of the games, I realized that indeed before I made a big mistake.

So what does this mean? it means that, always keeping an eye on budget, I’m going to have full soundtracks and in certain cases even theme songs for all my future games!

For example, you can hear a snipped of Undead Lily theme song below (is weird and scary but because of the game theme):

and Roommates will have a custom theme song + full soundtrack as well (can’t post a preview of that one though, sorry).

Seasons Of The Wolf

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One of the early scenes of the game. Althea, Shea and Vaelis meet Riley for the first time

Is this game going to have a custom soundtrack? Yes, and also a theme song! Speaking of the game, I’ve finally started coding the game story itself as you can see from the screenshot above. Is still the early battles and I’m tweaking a lot of things, but I’m making progresses fast.

Short news

I know many people are eagerly waiting for Nicole & Roommates. Nicole writing is finished, though I still have to get the last scenes from writer. Some art is also missing which should be done in a week or so. I really hope to have the game finished for Halloween!

As for Roommates, there are only a few backgrounds and some CG scenes left, but most of the work is done. Will take a while only because the game is very long so needs time to be coded, but it’s at good point too.

One last news, I’m also thinking to redo Loren soundtrack, because is one of my biggest games and sucks a bit to have royalty free music in it (even if the tracks I picked were particularly good). So on the next game update you might hear a very different music 😉

Terrain modifiers

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IMGP7266
A very nice dog that joined us for a trip on the mountains years ago

A concept that is well known to strategy/wargame players is the so called “terrain modifier”. What is it? is the influence that each terrain type has on the gameplay, for example movement, attack / defense bonuses, and so on.

I’ve decided to experiment with it too in the upcoming RPG Seasons Of The Wolf:

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In the new pre-battle party setup there’s indication of the battlefield type

You might recognize it if you played Loren Amazon Princess, even if here it’s completely revamped: is the pre-battle party setup screen, where you place your party members in the front / back row.

This time though, beside letting you know some limitations/restrictions of the battle (like which party members must be present, the minimum/maximum party size, and so on) it also displays the battlefield type, in this case “Hot”, which gives a bonus to Fire attack/spells.

Of course there are still “normal” battlefields with no particular bonus. But I plan to use this new gameplay addition to make some interesting battles and to add more variety (since if you play at high difficulty level, you’ll need to take that aspect in consideration).

Amber Magic Shop update

I have also some good news for Amber Magic Shop. I won’t go much into details because will make a series of post about that game when we are closer to its release (which won’t be sooner than next year unfortunately).

Writer has planned the two extra characters yuri routes, and is already writing them. So differently from Nicole, this time even if the game will be out later all the yuri content will be available either at launch day. Or with a very small delay 😉

I’ve also got a bit more art, in particular some nicer clothes for Amber:

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Two new outfits for Amber, who on left is the young version, on right the adult one

So that’s another game which is progressing slowly but at least constantly and hopefully will be able to code a good alchemy/crafting system for it 🙂

Aravorn’s Map and Timeline (WIP)

I am also doing a bit more world-building of Aravorn, the imaginary world where all my fantasy games takes place. You can check this forum thread if you’re curious about it:

http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3007

That’s all for now! Lots of stuff happening, but can’t talk about it yet 🙂

Looking at the bright future

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HORIZON
My cat Gilda is looking at the future with optimism

This year was a bit of a rough year for me (though obviously, it could be MUCH worse in general!). The main problem was all the events that happened in real life, and that influenced this year releases (or lack of).

The year is not yet over: but if I compare it with previous years, in 2012 by now I was about to release Loren’s expansion after releasing the main game. In 2011 I had already finished Planet Stronghold, and other cool games like Always Remember Me.

Sadly, it seems that this year I’m going to miss the “release of a new RPG” milestone 🙁

Anyway, the future looks brighter! Read below.

Nicole status – almost done!

Nicole seems very close to completion: I have all boys route finished and the mystery path done by 60-70%. There are still several scenes missing, and also some art, but I think worse case in October the game should be out with all the promised content and gameplay changes (if you’re curious check my forum thread here: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=39&p=19101#p19101).

Roommates update

Yesterday I also got all the backgrounds for Roommates! Even if I’m considering adding a couple more. The new “steamy beach sex scenes” (which aren’t porn, but very hot!) are at good point too, about halfway done. If things go as planned it could be out around Christmas or early next year 🙂

Undead Lily and the return of CCG

There has been a recent interest/return of CCG, which stands for Collectible Card Games. I also have some cool memories of one of the first games I made, several years ago, called Magic Stones, which was indeed a sort of mix between a RPG and a CCG.

Together with Roommates writer (who will write Undead Lily too) we started brainstorming the creatures list for Undead Lily.

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A sketch of the Sylph creature

There are going to be 12 base creatures for the 6 elements, plus other cards (spells and some extra combo creatures). Writer counted 114 different creatures cards, so there should be a good variety!

Some of the creatures include: Griffon, Harpy, Mermaid, Shark, Ifrit, Salamander, Giant Mole, Purple Worm, Tree-ent, Giant Ant, Ghouls, Vampires, and more. I’ll post more previews as I get them.

Obviously I’m talking about a game that will be out not sooner than next year Summer or later 😉

Seasons Of The Wolf update

This week for various reasons was unable to work at all on SOTW, but I plan to get back on it next week. I was planning to have a sort of battles preview at end of month but that probably won’t be possible, since I want to redesign a bit the skills, adding a few more variety. In practice now there are 5 skills each, with 3 degree of power. So you could say 15 skills each character, but in practice is 5 unique skills each one with 3 power variants.

I was thinking instead to eliminate the various power levels, or use them only for non-scaling skills. For example, if we take two healing skills:

A) Healing Balm – heals 30% of character’s total HP
B) Minor Heal – heals target character by 25HP

For B we could have Major Heal that heals 50HP, while for A, as the character HP increases (presumably by leveling up) the spell power will automatically increase.

The writing and art production is going well, and I think that for sure in October I should be able to show something (sort of alpha version, to get feedback on the battle system changes).

Greenlight

Speaking about RPGs, in case you don’t know, recently Valve Greenlit a lot of games, and for the first time my RPG Loren Amazon Princess is around rank 85-86 in the top100. Still a long way to go, but now would be a good moment to vote for it using the link below:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92923628

No need to say that getting a game on Steam would mean I could afford to invest a lot more in my games, making them even better 😉

Creepy stuff!

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If you follow me on the various social networks you probably already saw the two videos below:


Nicole mystery scene video, part one

Nicole mystery scene video, part two

Scary stuff, eh? 😀 is one of the scenes of the mystery path of Nicole dating sim otome version, which should hopefully be out at end of month or beginning of October (there are some last minute things still to finish).

For those who don’t like scary stuff, you’ll be able to play the game with the mystery/scary stuff, or like a regular otome dating sim. Though so far based on the feedback people seems to enjoy that kind of things, at the point that I’m seriously considering doing a horror game in future!

Meanwhile, somewhere in Aravorn…

Seasons Of The Wolf development continues. I finished the inventory screen and the skills screen too:

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The new skills subscreen of SOTW

I am still pondering some changes to the skills, not to the system (I’ll use the same skilltree system as Loren) but maybe I’ll add more variety of skills since there are less characters in your party.

As for the Traits, they are permanent bonuses that you’ll unlock once you reach certain values in your character’s base attributes, which you see on the bottom of the screen. Obviously unlocking them all will be impossible so you’ll have to plan your strategy accordingly 😉

That’s all for now, I’m pretty busy so this was a short post. More news about the other games coming soon!