#I'm too busy making a visual novel of the script though

[necey]

So, speaking of Deltarune, this is just me thinking out loud, but we know Ralsei's version of the prophecy is heavily summarized. He does say this, though, which I find interesting:

"The sky will run black with terror. And the land will crack with fear. Then, her heart pounding... The EARTH will draw her final breath.

Only then, shining with hope... Three HEROES appear at WORLDS' edge."

I know that Susie not being the third hero is a popular theory, and I kind of buy into that as well. If Ralsei is right, we haven't even met the three heros yet because the Earth hasn't drawn her final breath.

Not saying Kris and Ralsei aren't two of the heros, but I've seen people throw Kris into question as well. I just think that whatever "Earth draws her final breath" is, hasn't happened yet. Nothing that's happened so far seems to have been that severe.

I might be talking out of my ass, but I thought I'd toss this idea out into the void. Lemmie know what you guys think! Is Noelle the hero with hope crossed on her heart? Is it Dess? Just, AAAAAHH this game I swear has me by the brain.

[itsu-saragi]

Devlog #3 - Revisions and Indecisions.

Sjdjfdhs hi. Apologies for letting the “see you in a month” turn into several months. Work got busy, then I caught Covid, after recovering I went on vacation, and then work got busy again… But I did work on this VN all throughout.

I didn’t make as much progress as I wanted, but some progress was made nevertheless.

So what exactly did I do? Let me count the ways.

Story Revisions

Changed the premise from magic academia to magic uhhh small business? Workshop? Something like that, I'm not sure what to call it.

My original story followed the player character and their love interest as they explored their university campus. This came to be because I was tinkering with the concepts of "group partners to lovers" & showing the player character as non-humanoid to allow for reader-insert and immersion, like the Obey Me games and the pink sheep MC. But the story stopped being appealing to me, plus the scope started to become bigger than I had anticipated. Multiple CGs in different locations across a giant campus? Yeah that's a nightmare to draw.

I'd still like to explore the idea of a non-humanoid MC though, so maybe that'll be a future game, or at least another brain dump post!

But anyway, I shrunk the premise. One store, one LI, and the customers that enter the little workshop. I'm still sticking to the idea of mundane modern fantasy though.

Because of the location change from university to workshop, I've had to revise the LI a lot. He's shaping up really well though! His name is Fen, I hope I can introduce him here sometime soon.

Building Frameworks

I'm not sure what to call it, so for now I'm calling it frameworks.

Basically, instead of tackling each aspect of the game separately from drafts to completion (ex: drawing all sprites right now and then moving on to writing the script), I want to create rough versions of everything.

I think this will help me because then I'll have an idea of how much work each aspect will entail, and I can hopefully spot and remedy any holes or glaring skill issues.

This is especially important for coding. I'll be using RenPy, the classic engine for visual novels, but I have very little coding experience. I'd like to gain some before I start creating the writing and assets meant to be incorporated into the platform.

By creating the framework (or I guess prototype is the better word in this case), I'll get some understanding of how RenPy works and once I have the assets complete I can insert those in.

For plot frameworks, I'm trying not to go into too much detail. Lots of bullet points cause I fuck with those.

For character frameworks, I must admit I'm putting a lot of thought and detail into Fen, but I think I should as he's the core of this game. I'm reminding myself though that much of him can still be altered if the story requires it.

There's definitely more frameworks I need to think about, like sprites, backgrounds, and music too.

But to sum it up, I'd like to create a rough draft of the entire game, and then only afterward do I start going in and changing details and adding colors to the big picture. I hope that makes sense.

Next Step: Character & Coding Frameworks

For the rest of April and probably the entirety of May as well, I'll focus on fleshing out Fen and putting together the coding framework.

I think figuring out Fen's character arc will help me get an idea of the overall story, which is incredibly daunting yet exciting lol

I'm not planning on making the coding look pretty, I just want to make something that functions. I have no clue how well that will go so please pray for me or something.

Personal Thoughts: I am Afraid

I think the reason why I didn't make a lot of progress is because lately, I've been afraid of doing so. I've never made a game before, or written an original story. I don't know what I'm doing, and instead of directly addressing things I've kept working around them. And because I haven't made much progress, it stresses me out. And then that stress makes me do less work.

Hellooo feedback loop.

I'm an indecisive person who likes to look for the right or most optimal answer. But in a creative project like this, it's hard to know what the "right" answer is cause it can be subjective.

I'm trying to remind myself to enjoy the process and to take small steps, and everything is still changeable as I'm still in the beginning stages. It's hard, but as I'm writing this update I think I'm feeling better.

I'm sure this gamedev journey will be me enjoying the ride and then immediately hating it, so for anyone reading: thank you for your patience. I appreciate you.

I'm going to try and post an update, no matter how small it is, once a month. So. Cheers to me being able to post this in April.

I'm still trying to figure out what to post and how to get my thoughts across. I've never done anything like this before, so please bear with me. If you have any feedback, please feel free to share!

And again, thank you to whoever's reading this. I hope you have a great timezone :)

[sonic-spirit]

Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - Chorse

1:06 PM

Weird doing this not in my sketchbook, but I want it full of drawings, not weird word meandering.

What do I want to do today? Chorse (...yeah, I'm keeping that typo)? IDM sound editing? Jatlagging edit finishes? Start learning Unity or Godot? Sketchbooking? All of the above? Tired.

1) Blogging

2) Chores

Dishes

Cat litter

Vacuum

Trash and recycling out

3) Lunch

4) IDM editing

5) Jetlagging editing

6) Yuki over

2:26 PM

Been thinking a lot about AI art. It's been really grinding on me more than I realized. Fucking stolen garbage. Like, what's the point of making digital art, anyway, if it's gonna blend in with all the shitty AI slop? Not that my art is the kind of intricate renderings AI likes to copy. But I don't even like looking at art online much anymore because you keep crashing into that trash. I'm just wore down over it. Fuckin' resource wasting theft machine garbage.

So I've been thinking about making traditional art as a result. Tho' I didn't realize it for several months, that's also one of the factors that've had me utilizing my sketchbook more. Digital art is much more convenient--my iPad takes up less space than my sketchbook, pens, markers, or painting things, with much less setup and cleanup. Digital art's also hella easier to share. It's already pre-loaded in a computer friendly format, no scanning or photographing necessary. But also a little bit who cares? Because theft bot. Because I'm bad at sharing and engaging and cooperating in a community, and I just clam up and drift instead. Because I get so burnt out on the social aspect of sharing art that I don't end up building a community or following the few times I've managed to start getting some traction on that. I just end up scared and hiding. Because I need to not try and focus on Building An Art Career, I'm about to go back to school and try and become a vet, and that's going to eat my time and energy completely.

And because, though I like the way I make more things, I don't like the way putting pressure on myself to utilize my art for survival plays out. With burnout. With dissatisfaction. With expectations of response that aren't met, and that's no one's fault. Things take time to be found, and I don't know anything about how to actually promote my art. I'm always telling myself I just want to make things. And I do. But making them under the yoke of capitalism just crushes me. I'm too soft, and that's okay. But it does mean I have to make alternatives for myself.

So for the billionth time, I quit art business and am making just for me, again. I'm sure I'll turn around on that next week. Hells, this week I've already been thinking about the JOYS of monetizing game making and novel writing. And yeah, I want to make stuff. I want to make and share stories. I gooooooottta separate that from making money and survival in my head, because I simply cannot.

Sucks, cuz for so, so long I've spent my life churning myself into a froth that this time I'll be able to make art for a living.

4:05 PM

Vi heard back from the Swedish company yesterday (vi had a call scheduled with them). Aaaand it's a no. With all the craziness, the shit we're trying to escape here from the US, they're not willing to go through the hoops.

So that sucks.

So we'll keep trying. I'm glad I'm pursuing schooling, and signed up for community college (tho' I'm worried about affording classes), to help feel like I'm still moving on this. But it still really, really sucks.

5:08 PM

Okay, roughed out another scene of the IDM audio, the one I've got in my Audacity file as Track 4 - Sitting Ducks (am now on page 17 of 32 in the script). Next up is the scene where I finally bust out of my shackles and me and Knux finish our TFs!

Pulling all these clips from the big master is so fuckin' exhausting. I don't know why it feels so arduous. Prolly just maintaining my focus on audio stuff with very little to visually separate it. Ugh, I get lost so easy. I don't think there's a better method when we're recording cross country like this, but ugh. It's hard and I'm struggling. And I still haven't managed to set up the recording session with Gazzy, so even once I do polish this rough cut it'll be missing all of fuckin' Eggman (and Mark, but Mark is far less important).

6:10 PM

Ughgghhhhhh, I don't wanna figure out how to do the motion graphics part of the edit of our Jet Lag the Game thing! That sounds like so much woooooork...!

Blurgh. I do want to finish it tho. Just gotta cut in the photos Vi and Yuki sent us, the maps, and pop together a trophy real quick. It probably won't actually be that much work, it's just that I've gotta figure out how to do it in Resolve, versus how I would do it in After Effects. And I'm a neophyte with After Effects anyway. It's just that learning new programs is such a headache. Blurgh. It would be really nice to finish this tonight, tho. Since Yuki should be here soon, anyway.

9:21 PM

Veterinary schools in Europe which offer programs in English:

The Lithuanian Veterinary Academy in Kaunas

The University of Zagreb - Croatia

Szent Istvan University in Budapest - Hungary

University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Science in Brno - Czech Republic

University of Veterinary Medicine in Košice - Slovakia

The University of Agricultural Sciences & Veterinary Medicine Iaşi - Romania

The University of Agricultural Sciences & Veterinary Medicine at Cluj-Napoca - Romania

Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Zagreb - Croatia

University of Nicosia, School of Veterinary Medicine - Cyprus

Soooo overwhelmed. Need to apply, and just whatever, but fuuuuuck, who the hell would accept me?

10:55 PM

We got to see Wolf Children at a Fathom event last night, it was absolutely outstanding, and I loved the shit out of it. So of course I had to draw some wolves when we got home.

Then today I made some deer to get practice in for drawing more cervine unicorns. Still dialing my eye back in on drawing from reference, I'm very out of practice, and drawing from photos on my phone's screen isn't ideal either. But still. Better than not using references.

[allqrcoded]

Devlog 11: Aesthetics, playtesting & more

Happy new year & merry holidays every one :-) December has quite been a busy month regarding this project's development, especially with its aesthetics such as GUI and even CGs. As of right now, I've tackled on drafting up a bit of a placeholder GUI for the different menus. Moreover, I surprisingly got a lot done with the CGs. As always, more details are under the cut.

1st GUI drafts

Honestly, I forgot that I tackled this during December or so, the moment I started working on the previous devlog (because I've been busy with getting the CGs done...), but, yes, there has been work on the GUI side of things! A part of me feels unsatisfied with it, but what matters is that it definitely is better than whatever I was working with before December -- it also adds a bit of a unique flare to the game. I have also made a logo for this game to give it a try.

It's based on Red Velvet's Russian Roulette album cover, and as a first venture into GFX, it's definitely passable, but I definitely have much more to learn about.

CG placeholders

And so, we've reached the CG drafting stage. Albeit, I underestimated my ability to make so many sketches for them (yes, sketches and not composition drafts) for the whole of December, but either way, I got a lot done by the end of it. A majority of them are still stuck in the "still needs lineart" phase, but in the handful of days before the new year, I've managed to color in and add some needed polish to the CGs that did have lineart done. For me, I'm quite satisfied with the way they look right now :-). Though the process is a bit more painful now that I have other elements to take into account, such as pen pressure because for once, since I'm not doing pixel art for a game.

For January, I'm definitely prioritizing getting all those sketches lined, but with the limited time in that month for pouring my efforts (IRL matters again...), I'll still be satisfied even if I managed to do so halfway. EYHO! doesn't have a set release date quite yet, since I don't think about that until it's polishing time + the thing I'm only waiting for is the feedback from my playtesters. Speaking of which, the project's gotten to the point I managed to release a working build to my usual group of playtesters!

1/30/25 edit: I have successfully lined all 27 CGs (excluding variations I need to make) for this month! Good job on my end for managing to meet my set deadline! Yay!

Playtesting

As of right now, I have gotten back one editing log from one of my playtesters. To be honest, I'm quite surprised at the sheer lack of major bugs in the log itself (only minor bugs/visual errors, such as text going off the box and so on), which is quite a change of pace from what I've experienced in my past projects. As you know, this stage is where I spend most of my time on regarding polishing, but for once, that might not be the case with EYHO!, and I'll just have to prioritize dusting off the aesthetics along with CG works.

Coding a visual novel in Renpy, much like making a game in RPGmaker, requires a ton of patience. Though, a notable difference with Renpy games is that you need to have a good tolerance for inputting repetitive code for sprites and so on within Visual Studio; the rest of the hard work mostly relies on the script. As my second visual novel game that's lengthier than is&d, I'm quite a fan of the support for the large text copy-pasting, as RPGmaker still requires you to input all the dialogue manually.

Knowing that, it definitely levied a lot of difficulty from me, when I had to backtrack and add more to the script to give more depth to both the world and the characters after getting feedback. Said feedback was especially useful, as before it, I felt like there was something missing from the game, but never pinpointed the thing that irked me, already too blinded by the fact that this project, in a way, already irked me in general because how long it was taking me (whoops). Anyhow, I definitely feel like the writing has more impact to it after that brief intervention, so I'm very grateful about it.

What's next?

After knowing that I'm done with lining all the CGs for this month, the logical conclusion for the next month's goal is to, obviously, get all of them colored and shaded. This game's finally going somewhere after a brief (?) period of purgatory! As usual, there is no set release date yet, but to play it safe knowing that I still have to work with the main menu GUI along with the pubmats for this game, it would probably be released in the latter half of March or early April. As always, thank you for your time and see you in the next devlog.

[maneki-mushi]

Saint Ceri - May devlog

Read this on itch.io | Check out my games

Hi everyone!

Life was very busy this month but I’d planned for it by giving myself a shorter to-do list!

Writing wise, I wrote 8k words like I’d planned, so the script is up to 75k! But unlike my plans, this didn’t cover all the content for the festival scenes at all :’) So I’ll still need to do a bit of writing next month to finish up the pre-ending scenes! Each romance route (and the friendship route) have their own version of the scene. For now I’ve written the friendship version and started Kyros’s. I’m always surprised by how much I like writing the friendship-only scenes in Saint Ceri; though I planned the game primarily around romance and adult content, the way I wrote the characters and their dynamics makes friendship feel really meaningful, too.

I did some boring things to prepare for scripting; final fixes to CGs, exporting them, configuring them… I also made tweaks and adjustments to all the backgrounds to make them a little more appealing, so I’ll need to remake all my game screenshots again. I keep making more work for myself by making little tweaks and changes, but I really want Saint Ceri to be polished, since it’ll be on Steam :’) Here’s a look at the festival ceremony CG! It really is just an excuse for me to draw armour, haha. It has a few variations and it's right before a turning point in the story, so I'm pretty happy with it.

I’ll finally have some free time in the summer so I’m excited to work on Saint Ceri a lot! The demo will be part of Steam's Visual Novel festival in August so I have a few things to do to try and make it more appealing to people who might stumble upon it for the first time.

Thanks for reading!

[moon-boat]

Hi! I'm super interested in your project of visual novel, could you tell us more about it please??? and keep us informed of your work on this project?? if it doesnt bother you of course!! have a great day! (and congrats on your recent efforts to be positive and all, it helps and inspires me so much!!)

aaaaaa omg omg ;///v///; first of all thank you for your interest it means a lot to me ;v; and im glad the positivity is helping you my dear anon!!!!!! :))) that makes it all worthwhile!!! <3

As for the visual novel Im working on;;; I’ve always been a fan of visual novel/dating games ever since I was little and I always wanted to make one of my own but never knew how! It wasn’t until I realized Renpy was a visual novel engine made for noobies so I started playing around with it! I didnt want to make anything too serious or big as my first game/project since it was my first time picking up the engine and learning how to do basic scripting. I started the project as a way of distracting me and keeping me busy so my mind didn’t run a muck so I made sure to choose something fun for myself! So I thought I would quench my thirst for Sonic and Shadow by making a visual novel where you can pursue them <:3c thats what all the recent visual novel-like sprites and backgrounds are for…

I know i should probably make something more original but since its my first time making something like this (ive had experience making dating sims on flash and failed attempts in RPG maker) i thought i should just make it fun for myself! Use this as a test run to see how sizing works, how sound works, basic scripting (and some complicated ones OTL) and overall how long it would take for me to start and finish creating a game. From what I remember I started this game in late November/early December? So its been roughly two months. If I stop being lazy about the writing I could probably get it done sooner xvx

I admit I can go a little overboard when I get too into an idea but I have high hope for this since Ive never seen myself get so into a project! plus its really fun!! :) I think im a third of the way done? But this is something I’ll definitely finish and maybe post if others are interested in playing it! :) Let me show you some teaser stuff just so I could show im actually producing content ;v; (i wont show too much though because i like keeping secrets hehe)

(i know the sprites look like they are different sizes but thats just gifmaker being a booty)

thank you for your interest my dear anon…i hope i didnt let you down or anything;;;