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

The second day

~Dawn of the second day - 48 hours remain~

N-No! Stay away!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaah ;_; - oh, um, hi!

Today was strange. I woke up early (7 AM) while my alarm was set at nine, and couldn't get back to sleep - so I wrote. Sadly, I had to meet with some people at university, which means that for a 15 minute chat I travelled three hours... -_-;.

On the bright side, I sketched two character concepts in the bus and train, so now I just have three more of those to go. I'm pretty satisfied with the ones I drew today, even though they oppose the main character in one way or another. I also fleshed out their story/motives while drawing them (I just can't stop thinking when I'm drawing).

I'll work extra hard this rest of this evening and night to make up for it!

Today's results
4000 words written.
2.5 chapters, 2 interludes and the epilogue to go.

FFFFFFFF-


~Anna

The first day

This morning, I realised my impending doom is near.

You see, though I have been working on the script of Locus Magici, because of colds and university deadlines I didn't get too far. But this week, I finally had a little spare time from university. Like many times before, I half-jokingly told my partner, K-chan, that I would finish the script in the next three days. The problem is... she's going to keep me to it this time.

K-chan: I'll be checking it on Friday evening then :D!
Anna: Ahaha...ha...

All right, let's see what I can do!
I am so doomed.

~72 hours remain~

Link had it waaaay easier!

I started with preparations, as for the coming days, I need the utmost concentration to reach my goal. So, I made sure I enabled my 'see no typos' vision, prepared 10 litres of Ice Tea (I live off that stuff, OK?) and quickly dealt with my university-obligations.

Furthermore, I had to make a tough decision: write on my laptop, which allows me to type much faster, yet I have to switch files to see my outline; or write on my desktop, which means I can see both outline and the chapter I'm writing at the same time, but I will type slower.

It was a difficult decision, so I decided... I just wouldn't decide.

When in doubt, go with both!

The desktop shows my outline, while I type on my laptop. And yes, it's pink and it has a :3 face.

Today's results 

I wrote about 6000 words, so I still have three chapters, three interludes and the epilogue to go.


... I can do this! I'll post my day-reports of the next two days as well, so wish me luck!

No Anna, stop deluding yourself, you are so screwed.

~Anna

Firefly for Android - out now!

Since Firefly second edition has been released for the PC, it's now Android's turn! This version will be half the price too, since it doesn't include a high resolution mode.

As you can see, the application can be used in both landscape and portrait orientation, with the graphics scaling along accordingly. The visual novel should work on any Android 2.1+ device.

Please click on the picture below to get it now:



We hope you'll enjoy it and we'll do our best to bring more visual novels to Android in the future.

Last Firefly post ever!

~Anna

The Legend of Placeholder Art

Today, your usual host Anna has been replaced by her mysterious assistant.

Right now, we're not going to discuss handy tips or show cool stuff. Instead, I'll show the beginnings of our new project... with delicious bad programmer art, fufufu~ Now you can learn how to make a good test environment while not being able to draw at all.

First, let's discuss backgrounds. Most of the time, Google can be used for simple stuff like rooms and hallways. However, with more unusual or important backgrounds, we need to make them ourselves. Thankfully, I don't have to worry about it actually looking good - as long as the important elements are in place, Anna will make something awesome out of this... eventually.


Let's look at the characters next. This is a little bit more work, since I need to think out some important stuff, such as the characters' expressions and their general poses (which makes Anna's life much easier when she starts working on the art). Still though, you don't want to spend too much time on this, so I can pick an existing sprite, do some quick editting work, and ignore the large gaping hole in their necks and edit them into the game.

Also, the sprites may appear somewhat familiar >:3...

There are some CGs as well, but since those are fully drawn by myself, I would die of shame your minds cannot comprehend them yet at this stage.

That was a rather short update, but it was fun showing you behind-the-scenes stuff like this. Now it's time for me to go back to work /o/!

~K-chan