We won an award, hurrah~

Something not visual novel related?... le gasp!

First, for the non-Dutchies; We regularly visit some conventions in the Netherlands to sell our stuff. Last week we were at Animecon, which also organizes the annual Dutch Manga Awards. These are basically awards which can be won by amateur manga artists who self-publish their stories.

As you can see from title of this post, we happened to win in the category original story with our book The Lost Angel Arianna. This resulted in us getting a cool, shiny, super professional(ly handmade) trophy and some moneyz!

Hell yeah.

Actually, we didn't think we would win. It's not that we're not confident about our work, but more the fact that two of the three jury members had a great interest and history in western styled comics.

Yeah, that didn't reassure us much; since people like that usually show a clear preference to a more western style, and our style is totally shoujo. What didn't help either was that another person was nominated in this category with a story using a pure western comic style, and that one of the jury members said he didn't like manga.

As you can imagine, we prepared ourselves to not be butt-hurt after that guy won, only... he didn't. The importance of style did turn out to be an huge discussion point among the jury members, so at least our fears were justified. Also, now I can complain without looking bad~

Anyway, enough gossip about behind-the-scenes Dutch mangaka politics (man, what a sentence). As for the actual convention experience, it was a little different this time. Unlike conventions in America and such, Dutch conventions never had an Artist Alley (or as they say Avenue) before. Instead they just put the artists between the real dealers and shopkeepers.

However, this year they did separate the groups and thus we got our own Avenue. Yes I find it amusing writing this. As expected, sales went down and what didn't help either was that it was placed after the dealerroom. You know, the place where people spend money? Still, it wasn't that bad and if they make sure people realize we're there, then I think it will work out more smoothly.

At the very least, we had lots of cool conversations with our neighbours into the wee hours of the night. Please, accompany us again next time, we still have to convince you to make more visual novels <3.

So, that was our con-report. We had a lot of fun there and will now resume pushing our trophy into people's faces. I'm off! /o/

Next post will really be about Locus Magici, I swear!

~Anna

Resource management

It's already been a month since NaNoRenO, so that's enough time to recover and pick up our work on our latest project; Locus Magici. However, since we haven't done anything else yet save for writing more of the story (Anna is working hard on that one), today's post will instead be the return of the tips section! Brought to you by me, the ever mysterious K-chan.

First, let us move back to 2010, when I was putting Firefly together. Not planning ahead on how to handle my resources, I pretty much threw everything together in one image folder with a few exceptions for stuff like the title screen images. The result?

Yeah... I kind of regretted that one. Some problems that arose thanks to this:

• Obviously, it was harder to find specific images.
• It was harder to get an overview: How much sprites characters had, which background had handmade evening/night versions and which could go without, etc.
• More descriptive names were needed to be able to find them, result in longer names to type out.
• All of these problems were tenfold once I hadn't memorized the locations and character's names  anymore.

When it was time for Nanolife, I decided to turn things around:

There, much better. Characters, backgrounds, fades, and various parts of the system all get their own folder now, making it much easier to work for me. Also, the names used in Nanolife were rather short, but otherwise I could have also worked with three-letter abbreviations (like kee/smi.png for the image path, instead of keeffe/smile.png)

I talked mostly about images now, but the same goes for scripts. Instead of putting everything in one master document, I like to split it up in multiple scenes, sorted by number. For example, '1.lvn' or '1-description of scene.lvn'. Like images, it is easier to find and edit a specific scene, or see whether a scene is too long in comparison or not.

This seems like a pretty simple concept, but it saves quite a bit of time, at least in my case. At the very least, it's enjoyable to see oneself developing tricks like these. Well, until next time, where hopefully we'll have something to show related to Locus Magici :).

~K-chan

Nanolife promo video

To be more specific, a Nanolife promo video with commentary done by us! Yes, really, it's as horrible as it sounds.

So, why commentary? Well, we had some problems with recording ingame audio for a promotional video (like the one we made for Firefly), so we decided to fix the problem creatively.

Whether that was a good choice or not I still don't know, but at the very least I got the privilege of hearing K-chan's Kiki's awesome Denglish. Being Dutch is fun during times like these :D~

That's all for now, I'm afraid. See you next time!

~Anna

Nanolife released!

Synopsis

A boy has recently found a great MMORPG in the depths of the internet. Excited, he stays up behind his computer late at night, while a thunderstorm is roaring outside. However, just as he completed his character creation - thunder strikes!

All electricity and thus also his computer shut down at once, leaving him in the dark. Though sad, he has no choice but to wait for now. However, in the game, his character has already begun playing without him...

Specifications

• three routes with one ending each
• unlockable extra and choices
• 1920x1080 resolution
• ~20.000 words
• very tiny, but cute, animations

Age Rating: 3+

Beware! Brush your teeth before and after playing!

Download
Installer -- Windows XP/Vista/7

Application bundle -- Mac OSX

Zip file -- all platforms

Warning

Because of the very tight deadline we haven't tested thoroughly on all systems, so please let us know if you find a bug.

System requirements
You will need Java version 6 or higher, which can be downloaded here.

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Yes! Yes! Oh hell yeah~ we made it!

That was the most horrifying month we have had in a long time. Next time, we're definitely making something simpler haha. We didn't even have the time to sleep or update this blog properly.

All right so what did we do?

Art

We made a lot of art for the graphical user interface, but the minimap has been simplified to only show the area's name and a small picture for it, since it just didn't work well with the 2D atmosphere we created.

Nevertheless, this was my first time doing such a big and strange GUI, so I'm satisfied with the results, especially since Firefly only needed a simple black transparent text box. It took a looong time to do though.

Story

Me and K-chan discussed the story and made an outline and flow charts before the writing even began. After that it was a matter of me typing at the speed of light and her and me doing a lot of proofreading afterwards.

Still, the script turned out to be double the size of what we originally planned – oops ^^;. I had a lot of fun writing it though, since it was a very novel way of telling a story for me.

Scripting

From what I heard and asked of her to do, scripting was hell for K-chan, but that's probably because I gave her the final pieces of art and sprites so late ahaha... I have to admit though, she had to do a LOT of new things for this project too, from flying people to changing title-screens to little animations and what not.

However, she can't fool me that it was 100% bad. I bet you she was secretly smiling with glee when mistakes made the characters rotate through the air while looking smug. Definitely.

Music

OK, the music was downright hell :'D! I was struggling with another deadline last night and only had this day left to do the music. Then, I OVERSLEPT. K-chan called me awake at 12:00. Why thank you, body! Couldn't you hang on for a couple more hours? Dammit.

In the end I managed to make 1 simple track while I stole some from our other work to fill most of the gaps. We finally added 3 other creative commons tracks after looking around for a good couple of hours too.

Music on the last day? Never again man.

And that's about it. We hope you enjoy it! Now please excuse us while we go sleep, game, eat and blissfully do nothing at all. Aah bed, I missed you too <3<3<3~

~Anna

Nanolife update

Today let's look at our progress for Nanolife - our NanoRenO project. As expected, we are perfectly on schedule and this post is totally not late because we were working our asses off to meet ridiculous deadlines.

Ahem, so yeah! Let's take a look :D!

Script
I'm currently doing the final final check of the final check after which K-chan will do the final final final check. In short, it basically means it's 99% done.

Title screen

This is the title screen, I spent way too much time on it and you will like it dammit. You can see three silhouettes, which will appear as people once you complete their routes. Since we like to be captain obvious, we also tell you how many routes are completed in the lower left corner of the screen.

As you can also see, we added a "guide" feature in our visual novel. It will show you all those awesome short-cuts and features to read through Nanolife like a pro! Last but not least, our circle's logo will be click-able and send you to our website because we can.

Graphical user interface (GUI)
Apart from the script, the GUI has the most progress so far. We've made a MMO-like interface which has:

• A text box containing skills and items (which you can click for more information about them),
• A minimap in the upper right corner,
• A main character information window in the upper left corner which shows your class, name, level, HP, MP and EXP. They will behave and change according to what happens in the story.
• A smaller information window for party members below yours,
• A custom in-game menu,
• And a crystal thingy which hovers over the character who's currently speaking.

The only things still left are to draw the different maps for the minimap, the classes, skills and items icons. K-chan has most of it coded already too.

I would show you a screenshot, but the only one I have is with a background of K-chan's amazing, jaw-droppingly, gorgeous art which would change the art world forever!... and which was drawn without a tablet in one minute. Oh well, it's probably cooler to see it when it's done anyway.

Sprites
I sketched them and inked two of them and I have many, many left to do... and the deadline for that is Sunday. In other words, this weekend Anna is screwed.


Conclusion
We're slightly behind schedule, but the toughest parts are done now. We'll continue working hard to make this!

~Anna

Nanolife: Our NaNoReNo project starts now!

It's the 1st of Marth - also known as the kick-start of NaNoReNo!

For those of you not in the know, this is basically a visual novel making month inspired by NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to start and finish an entire visual novel in one month - March! Planning and preparations are allowed before March, but the content of the visual novel should only be done within this month. Results are then posted on April 1st.

So here we are! We will participate in this event with our own shiny new project, Nanolife! Everything in it will be made by me and K-chan, since we need to be extremely flexible with this project and we'll probably have to work our asses off. Another reason is that it's going to be absolutely free~

Now onto the fun stuff! First off, the rough sketch of our logo:

Synopsis
A boy has recently found a great MMORPG in the depths of the internet. Excited, he stays up behind his computer late at night, while a thunderstorm is roaring outside. However, just as he completed his character creation - thunder strikes!

All electricity and thus also his computer shut down at once, leaving him in the dark. Though sad, he has no choice but to wait for now.

However, in the game, his character has already begun playing without him...

Further information
As you can see from the synopsis, this visual novel will focus on adventures in a MMO world through the eyes of an AI. We'll try to make it look as MMO-ish as we can, so think of a concept like this (only, you know, not crap):

It will have choices and three routes with one ending and no bad ends (I cannot harm chibies), 1920x1080 resolution (Full HD, hell yeah) and maybe small background animations where I can think of them.

We'll update with our progress every week, but here's a rough schedule to give you an idea:

week | Anna               | K-chan
--------------------------------------------------
#1     | writing              | editing + sound effects
#2     | sprites              | coding
#3     | BGs + CGS     | more coding
#4     | music               | needs more code man

... that code better be god-tier, K-chan.

Anyway, we hope you'll enjoy the ride! Let's do this!

~Anna

The final day

~Dawn of the final day - 24 hours remain ~

;_;

It is finished! \o/

Who cares only I can understand what I wrote and that in fact, sometimes, not even I can understand it entirely - I made it!

Oh, and epilogues are obviously overrated. This story never had one, the results section was lying all along, it is still lying, maybe, perhaps, a little...

And the last two battles of doom are unnecessary as well; even villains need holidays! They'll be back to kick Lloyd's ass next week, surely.

As for last night/today, I fought and tortured my hands until an unmentionable hour in the morning, only to go to K-chan's place after that, because we had some things to discuss. Then, while we were joyfully arguing over the plot, we discovered some 'tiny' plotholes. Though we fixed those... it spawned another chapter/interlude ;_;!

K-chan, you're cheating! You cannot make your face fall on me, you caaaaaannooooot!

Someone hide me somewhere quick.

Results of today
About 11.500 words.
K-chan's cheater chapter/interlude, end battles and the epilogue still have to be written.

Results of three days of doom
So in the past days I wrote about 21.500 words, while I did all kinds of little other stuff on the side. I wish I could have written more, but nature isn't yet convinced that a day should contain 30 hours.

The next week I'll be finishing the last bits of the script and editing what I wrote. Though it really is rather bare bones at some points now, I am not in the least bit unsatisfied with what I wrote.

So, after some final edits and additions here and there, the script is done :')! I'm satisfied enough.

~Anna