Update 09/20/2014

This laboratory base will have three alternate versions, depending on what path you take in the story.  This is just the rough draft version.  

www.darksirengames.com 

09/06/2014 The Laboratory Outside

There's multiple versions of this background, so I might take a while on this one.

www.darksirengames.com

Nindel Sprite is Done

Finally done with another sprite for Trapped. Unlike Bryan, Nindel isn't very emotional and has six emotion sprites (less than the other characters).

Three sprites more to go.

Dark Siren Games

Bryan Work In Progress

This blog entry came here

So it’s been awhile since I have updated.  Currently this is what I for the next sprite for Trapped: Bryan.

The full shading and highlighting should be done this week.  The emotions will be done the next week after this week.  I need to stop wondering how to do better line art and coloring.  I’m more focused on delivering the story with this visual novel and generally getting my first project out there.  The next visual novel I make, I want to focus on improving my digital artwork.

My Wordpress Site is Up and is in Work in Progress

Hi guys!

My site is currently up and running. I just wanted to let everyone know while I am building on the site. You can go to the website through this link here.

I'm happy I got this far. I would need to work more on my visual novel so I will be working on my visual novel first before the website. The first post can be viewed here. There will be posts that are different there than here. Of course I will be still on Blogger since some people might be more comfortable on Blogger than going to a website.

One Sprite Finished, Five More to Go

So Im finally on the road to finishing this visual novel. My first visual novel with all original artwork (about a year ago I made The Coin with the help of a tutorial and pictures from Google). The sprites will hopefully be all done in photoshop and the scenery line work in manga studio. I was using manga studio for a friend so I guess I'll keep up with the software through my visual novel development.

Below is Amenti, the main character of Trapped and her emotions. This visual novel is not going to be a long one so the emotions: default, happy, mad, sad, shock, blush (probably won't be used for her), and eyes closed. So far each character will have a sprite that the other characters do not. Amenti may not have a blush sprite but Bryan will have one.



Before there was Remember Me, The Walking Dead (game) and Assissian's Creed (Vita) I used to wonder about the lack of dark skinned characters or characters of African decent in video games. There is still a chance I will get to work at a mainstream video game company someday. I know most mainstream companies are concerned with what sells so most video game characters are made with safe designs in mind. Of course I know the importance of making money but it feels nice being able to experiment.

Sprites and Wordpress

So last week I finally finished the menu screen of Trapped. I was just going to have Amenti by herself but I decided to add other characters such as Nindel (left) and Bryan (right).

Amenti's sprite is the next piece of artwork I am working on. I might change her skin, hair, and maybe even her figure. I wanted her to be petite with a smaller chest. I might keep this design. Every two weeks I am going to a Wordpress meeting for building websites with wordpress. I know I have said this in the past but those Wordpress meetings were either once a month or every few months. This week is a meeting on "How to Build a Site Under 30 Minutes". It is nice having someone walk me through something in person. Wordpress Tutorials people online can look at such as WordPress Central Station: Click Here!

Finding Motivation

 I have the characters' personalities, a general idea of how the story is going to go, and the final designs of the characters.  This week I am finally diving into digital coloring on the computer.  Thanks to my seasonal job ending earlier than expected I have enough free time to push myself forward and finish my first Ren'py game.  Unfortunately having a steady schedule at a job was a major motivation for me.

During breaks, at my seasonal job, I would write my story or character bios, read Imagine FX magazines, or listen to indie game development podcasts.  Despite the distractions of hearing random people enter the break room, I was fine studying away as I have a hard time doing these activities at home.  Random people at work sounded like background music while family members and telephone calls was another story.  There is also a sense of laziness and a need for sleep when I am in my room all day.

This week I am breaking the habit of getting busy with indie game development when I do not have a steady paying job.  As soon as I wake up, I get down to the activities that I enjoyed so much during breaks at my last job.  There is no sense of time or a need to rush myself through my writing or drawings with in thirty minutes. I make my own stopping point when the sun goes down. 

Of course job searching will occur during my free time and maybe I will get a new job in a few weeks.  Hopefully I will keep this practice even after getting another steady job.

Homosexuality in my VISUAL NOVELS?

As the days go by I am getting closer and closer to finishing my first Ren'py game.  The game is a dating sim of sorts (main character going for one of the males).  Of course I'm already thinking ahead to the second possible Ren'py game and only a very few have a main character going for someone of the opposite gender.  That's right...I can not get males dating other males or females dating other females out of head for my next game.  It does not help that there are so few boy love and girl love dating sims in the Ren'py game list (Look ).  I just want to add more to the boy pursue boy and girl pursue girl section!

 Of course I know that not everyone is into boy's love and girl's love.  So when I start making my second game, I will also be working on another game (Unity3D or Flash) in order to have something else that future readers can also look at here.  I used to write a lot of same sexed romance fan fiction and the range of flames I got (solely based on the fact that the main pairing was gay) bored me after a while.  I would skim over those flames and then give my full attention to the next review.

Still I am putting a lot of thought into my next visual novel game since visual novels require a lot more work than fan fiction.  Writing, drawing, coloring, and programming a story for several weeks or months only to have someone hate my visual novel solely based on the fact that my main character is pursuing members of the same sex irks me.  What about the story, personality of the characters, artwork, etc?  Of course I will get used to this kind of treatment the same way I did in my fan fiction days long ago.

Lurking the Lemma Soft Forums, I'm finding that there are a lot of people looking for these types of games.  So I do know that there are some people that would play second game whenever it comes out.  Thinking about this issue has made me think about how I am going to advertise my same sexed dating sim games in the future.  Also what kind of characters I will make for these games as there are a lot of fans for boy love and girl love with a variety of tastes.  This will be an interesting adventure. 

Trapped: What the Characters Look Like

This is a short blog entry but I hope you readers will enjoy this entry anyway.  Last post I forgot to post what the characters looked like.  Well here they are:

From left to right; Nindel, Amenti, Unette, and Bryan. At the bottom is Ronald. I did not give Ronald a body as both him and Bryan are wearing similar outfits. Nindel and Bryan are both possible romantic interests while Unette and Ronald are the "parent" figures. I should no longer refer to this game as a visual novel as it is a dating sim. Working with the digital tablet really helped cover all the notes I wrote on this sketch. I see why people like wacom tablets so much.

Now I shall move on to fleshing out the story of this game.

Trapped: Introduction to my first Ren'py game

This would not be a blog about Game development if I did not talk about my first game. As we all know now I am using a visual novel which means I have a set of characters and a story to tell.

Story: Amenti, a mermaid, is finally turning 16. At sixteen years of age a mermaid is given the power to grant one single wish for herself or for others. Amenti wishes to leave her small house set in the middle of nowhere and outside of the city but her adoptive mother will not let her leave. Upon sneaking out of the house Amenti is captured by humans who operate an undersea laboratory.

Characters:

Amenti is the heroine of this story. She has been raised by her adoptive and over protective mother ever since she could remember and would feels that it is time she starts seeing the world. Naive to life in the undersea city and humans, the player must help her choose who she wants to trust in order to get out of the lab.

Unette is Amenti's adoptive mother who has raised Amenti for sixteen years. Unette loves traveling to the city, not cleaning up after herself, and sleeping at home. Despite her activities she is protective and overbearing when things come to Amenti. Unette wants to make sure that Amenti is living a life away from the city and whatever possible dangers outside of her small home.

Bryan is a young scientist who has been studying merfolk for years inside of the undersea laboratory. His adoptive father hopes to have Bryan take over the laboratory in a few years. Not fond of seeing Amenti's face behind a take, he tells her he would like to let her go when the time is right however conversations with his father makes Amenti believe she will be kept forever. Is he telling the truth? Generally smart, stuck on himself, and shy.

Nindel is a merman who has been locked inside the undersea laboratory's tank for months. Before his captivity he enjoyed hunting and working in the city. He has gone from a nice and welcoming merman to someone who is hostile and nearly unapprochable.

Ronald is Bryan's adoptive father who dreams of Bryan taking his position when he passes on. Runs, created, and funded project Blue, Ronald wants Nindel and Amenti to mate so he can have an easier time studying merfolk without having to capture them every once and a while. He believes that merfolk are purely animals and nothing more.

Game play? This is a visual novel so there are a series of points when certain choices are made. The choices will affect the story and if Amenti ends up with Bryan, Nindel, or alone. There is no release date for this game as this game is being made by me, myself, and I. At least I finally received my small Intuos4 tablet in the mail. Posting a blog entry a week is encoraging me to work on my game a lot more.

Why Ren'py?

After starring at a list of game engines for a long time, I decided to go with Ren'py. The game engine is easy, I can import my drawings, see my writing in action, and have fun with a hobby. There is hardly any effort in bringing a scene to the stage and having the characters talk either. I just need to know what are the names of the file that I want to bring on stage and post those files in the engine.

Example

label beginning

scene bg tank1 (insert scene here)

with dissolve

"stuff is happening" (narrative on screen)

A: "blah, blah, blah" (character "A" is talking)

B: "blah, blah" (character "B" is talking)

End Example.

Ren'py is mainly used for visual novels which means the engine requires a story. I have always wanted to make some kind of online series for people to enjoy and I have also wanted to revive my interests in writing for a long time. Ren'py will help me accomplish both dreams easily. I even began doing sketches in my notebook yesterday for the characters of my first game. Of course Ren'py is not the only game engine I will be using for life. There are other far more complex game engines out there such as flash and Unity3D (which I am experimenting with for a starting mainstream game company). For right now, I will relax and develop a few games in Ren'py.

By the way I ordered my first wacam tablet a few days ago. I cannot wait to use it.

Buying My First Tablet

In general Ren'py and making video game art requires a lot of digital artwork. Going solo on my first visual novel project I would like to provide my own artwork instead of paying someone to draw for me. Unfortunately I have never taken the time to fully understand how to color my pictures digitally. This picture is a result of me messing around with digital coloring.

This is Kneesocks from an anime called Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt.  Not a pretty sight and the process of preparing the line art was not painless either.  I have been told plenty of things about the wonders of a wacom tablet (digtial coloring is a lot faster with a tablet, I would not be struggling so hard to color if I had a tablet, etc, etc).

I know Best Buy sells tablets and I would have brought one there but research through the internet and friends have brought me to Amazon.  The majority of tablets at my nearest Best Buy are Bamboo tablets.  From what I can remember of using one of those things was that I did not like using the darn thing and even went back to using my mouse.  I did not feel like I was using a didgital pencil at all.  Lastly I can get a wired Medium Intuos4 Wacom Tablet for $50 cheeper than a wirless one at Best Buy.  I will update when I get the item and spend some time with it

We Meet Again

This is not my first time writing a blog or even writing on this website. Here is a an old blog that I wrote a long time ago.  Warning: OLD BLOG I do not get much entertainment from doing reviews anymore (also the channel which hosted the relaity shows I reviewed got cancled).  I would like to take a different subject instead of doing reviews on various media.  How's about joining me in my journey in learning how to become a indie game developer?

I graduated from ECPI University last March of 2011 with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Information Science.  The major was however called "Game and Simulation" (I will explain why these words are in qoutations later) and I am egar to learn and make some video games.  Hearing people's opinons on game developing, my art, ideas, or programing will help make me a better indie game developer.  I am currently starting out small with a game engine called Ren'py.

I hope you enjoy your stay here.