astrathaliagames

[astrathaliagames]

October 2021 Update

Hi all, I would like to update you on my project. I don't like to be dead silent for too long.

Since my last update, I've added a few new scenes here and there, and continued to add in the sprites and fixing up the textbox into the game.

CGs and Game Art:

The most exciting part to mention is that I am continuing to draw more CGs and adding them into the game! I can't give a number, but the majority of CGs for one love interest has been worked on and completed in the past few weeks, and the other two love interests have half of them started, at the very least.

Game design:

There's also a few mechanics I was writing into the game, and adding new and... interesting choices throughout. For example, I decided to add a system where depending on if you are a little more assertive, or if you let the love interest take the lead, different events happen and you get varying CGs.

In addition to an assertive/passive MC, I also added in another element where each route has a secondary love interest who is also interested in MC, and if your affection is low for the main love interest character's route, the secondary love interest will also show an interest, and you may end up on the secondary love interest's route. There are alternative CGs that occur if you do end up going on the secondary love interest route.

There's also a few choices sprinkled throughout the beginning that decide various things, like MC's favourite food, what kind of pet her housemate has (hedgehog or dog), or... I'll let the screenshot above do the talking : v )

Anyway, that's all for now about the game. New job is tough. Difficult clients. Please be kind to healthcare workers.

[astrathaliagames]

April 2021 Update

Hi all, thank you to everyone who is following along on my passion project - Miasma Override! I have a bit of progress to show since my last posted update, which was posted last November.

Sprites:

I had some sprites started earlier, and I had them as line-art with base colours. However, I haven't shaded them until recently. I updated some of those ones with some shading and effects (both are still WIPs).

Some characters are receiving multiple character sprites. Currently, each love interest has two or three alternative sprites, where at least one sprite for each love interest has multiple arm poses. The main sprite for each love interest also has around four interchangeable outfits.

CG Pictures:

I ordered a new tablet a while ago that has a screen, and lining CGs was occurring much faster when working on that tablet for me. There are also some CGs I worked on since the last update too:

Writing Progress:

Writing has been coming along well. I've been spending a lot of time working with plot holes that have come up and fixed up some scenes for continuity. I'm also continuing to add character portraits/sprites to scenes and background changes. One of the love interests has most of his scenes already coded, with just a few fight scenes left. The other two love interests are going to be a lot more work, but I anticipate working on them a lot more during the Fall of 2021.

For anyone who is curious about the project:

I posted a brief summary and character descriptions here.

The demo will be pending for a while, but I will post the demo on Itch.io, and I also post will be resuming updates on Twitter.

Thank you for reading!

Anise

[astrathaliagames]

Progress Update (11/15/2020)

I feel that I haven’t really given any progress in the last three months or so, but that was mostly because of all the responsibilities I have right now. I still love this project a lot, I just feel a lot of fatigue when I post on social media about it. At this point, it’s mostly a passion project anyway.

In the past three months, I really haven’t done all that much. Just a few drawings, editing dialogue, figuring out how to do certain mechanics/transitions in Ren’Py, etc. Just yesterday, I found out that I can make moving text-boxes with Ren’Py, something I never really thought was possible, so that’s pretty exciting I think. This is also pretty recent, but I discovered how to do a transition to fade the screen into black from the left side of the screen to the right side.

I feel like including another (totally out of context) scene in here.

The Cold Shoulder

Aqua (Protagonist) "I think they're... Mabel and Aubrey? I had no idea that other people would be taking part in these missions."

Mabel "You're correct. There aren't too many people doing them. We're one of the lucky few."

Leo "Wait, but how do you two know my name??"

Mabel "I think most people at Sylmont know you by now. You're constantly running from building to building in the hallways."

Mabel "Plus, you're not ugly."

Aubrey "Er... Mabel can be kind of blunt sometimes. To put it better, your face is fairly easy on the eyes."

His face went from pale to red in seconds as these two girls were talking about him. It was kind of amusing to watch. I looked at Aubrey, probably with a blank stare.

Aubrey "Sorry, I shouldn't be saying such things so openly! I mean, you two must be boyfriend and girlfriend, so--"

Aqua (Protagonist) "Don't worry. I'm actually single, for now."

Leo "Y-Yeah, so am I!"

Aubrey "Well, Aqua, make your move already! Not often do you have a fine guy just waiting for you to sweep him off of his feet."

Aqua (Protagonist) "Erm..."

Leo "Well, Aqua? I'm yours for the taking."

If you accumulated enough points with Leo at this point:

Aqua "Ermm..."

Leo "Oof, the cold shoulder..."

Otherwise...

Aqua "Denied." Leo "Well, can't say I didn't try."

Mabel "We should probably get going then. We still need to get some more work done. Excuse us."

Aubrey "See you later!"

Aubrey gave us a quick wave and both of them walked off. Mabel seemed to have been walking fairly quick, so Aubrey had to catch up to her. I looked back at Leo, who appeared to have been lost in thought. His arms were crossed, and he was tapping his index finger on his arm. He was staring at the ground so intensely, I just had to break his gaze with my hand.

Aqua "Hey, uhh.. That was really weird, wasn't it?"

Leo "..."

[astrathaliagames]

Piercing Gaze

It’s been a while since I posted an update. As I’ve mostly been doing writing and programming recently, I figured I could post a sample of writing from this project. For context, Aqua and her housemate Jasper attend a yearly cultural festival. During the festival, Jasper gets separated from Aqua, and now she is searching for him.

----------------------------------------------

Aqua: "(My phone's signal doesn't seem to be working. How lovely.)"

Aqua: "(Ugh, this is horrible. Despite there being so many people around me, I actually feel so alone.)"

I took another glance around the festival grounds. Couples, groups of friends and families were scattered all around and mingling with each other. Lineups formed for each booth. Somehow, a man dressed in what I thought was a yukata caught my eye.

Aqua: "(He's stunning.)"

My heart was left restless and my mind was smitten.

Aqua: "(I wonder what he's doing alone in the middle of a festival like this. Is he a model, or something?)"

As my eyes kept drifting towards him, he stood in one spot, looking around.

Aqua: "(Maybe he's waiting for his girlfriend.)"

I was soon in his line of sight. At that point, I wanted to turn away, but my eyes seemed to be glued to him. My thighs pulsed with heat. The anklet I was wearing jingled as I took a step back. The warmth from the summer’s air slowly embraced my face.

Aqua: "(That's silly of me to care. I'm wearing a mask too. He surely wouldn't notice if I were looking at him. Still though, Jasper really is nowhere in sight.)"

As I looked around, a masked man appeared right in front of me.

Masked Man: "You alright?"

Aqua: "Huh...?"

Masked Man: "I've seen you pacing back and forth around here. Are you lost?"

Aqua: "Same could be said for you. You've been standing around, are you looking for someone?"

Masked Man: "..."

Masked Man: "It seems like all my friends have ditched me."

Aqua: "Some friends they are."

Masked Man: "Yeah."

Aqua: "Then again, the person I came with also decided to run off on his own."

Masked Man: "Oh, that's horrible."

Aqua: "I don't think he left purposely. We just happened to get separated."

Masked Man: "That would make sense. It sure is crowded tonight."

Aqua: "Mhm."

Masked Man: "Hm, maybe we can keep each other company while we look for each other's groups."

Aqua: "We can do that."

Masked Man: "I think I'm going to buy a drink, do you want anything?"

Aqua: "Sure, could I get maybe some grape soda?"

Masked Man: "Oh, you like grape soda too? Everybody seems to make fun of me for it, saying it tastes like medicine."

Aqua: "You have good taste, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Their taste buds don’t work. Ours are just fine."

Masked Man: "I like the way you think."

Masked Man: "Anyway, just stay right there. I'll bring you a soda then."

Aqua: "Thank you!"

He walked off, merging with the crowd. I patiently waited in the spot that we were talking in.

I waited...

... And waited...

And waited some more.

Aqua: “(I've been waiting forever for this guy to come back with the soda. My phone battery is dead now too. From the look of the sky, it's already been a while.)"

???: "There you are!"

Aqua: "Huh...?" Jasper: "I was looking all over for you! Where did you run off? Stay close to me. I don't want to lose you."

Aqua: "Where did you go?"

Jasper: "Ta-da!"

He pulled out a plastic container with some sushi rolls.

Jasper: "I wanted to get you some salmon sushi. It was almost sold out. I just happened to get the final pack for you."

Aqua: "Jasper...”

Aqua: "(He really does remember my preferences, even though it's been a while since we lived together.)"

Jasper: "Amazed? Falling for me now?"

Jasper: "Be careful now, watch your step~"

Aqua: "I'm not going to fall or any--"

And on cue, I just happened to nearly trip, but fortunately, Jasper pulled me into his embrace. While it was loud from the festival music, I felt the beating of a heart that started to beat faster and faster. It was almost as loud as the drums in the background. Jasper soon positioned me back to where I was.

Jasper: "Sorry, you were about to fall. You would've tripped otherwise."

Aqua: "N-No, thank you for that."

He had a warm smile on his face.

Jasper: “This festival is so nostalgic in the best way possible. I'm so happy that I got to spend tonight with you.”

The both of us walked into the festival, enjoying our last days of summer.

Somewhere in the distance, I felt a gaze that pierced through me. I'll never forget the vague feeling of darkness that stirred within me that night.

[astrathaliagames]

I whipped this up a few days ago. This is a quick drawing of another character on his birthday :D

[astrathaliagames]

One of the love interest characters from Miasma Override, a game that I was developing.

[astrathaliagames]

Small update

Hello all!

I’m here to post that I have mostly been working on editing my project’s script to remove wonky typos and working through the point system.

In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of a character and some of his new, never seen before expressions from this project.

~Anise

[astrathaliagames]

Side Project

I haven’t really been posting much about my smaller game project. I pulled it off of itch io for some time now, and I stopped talking about it much, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on it. During that time, I wanted to carefully readdress how I would approach the story to make it cohesive with my main project, so now I have a clear idea of how to go about it. Bottom line, I figured out the designs and roles of each character, coordinated the costumes to ensure that each one is balanced, and other small details. I was originally thinking of posting it as a full game, but instead, I realized a demo can be suitable for this game after all. A demo will be coming soon once I update the sprites, music and the GUI.

[astrathaliagames]

Current Progress (July 14)

There isn’t much to really write here, but I’ve sent a second extended demo to a few friends. I don’t think there should be that many typos since I’ve read the script over and over, but I think it’s a good thing I’m getting another pair of eyes on it. I feel like a demo is long overdue, so if anything, I might end up just releasing what I have so far, and re-releasing it with fixes based on the beta reader comments later.

Other than that, I’ve been adding some small-sized CG cut-ins right at the beginning, some more outfits for characters, some new poses for some of the characters, and plenty and I mean plenty of animations and sprite movement...

So that’s what I’ve been up to recently. I’m also getting really close to the 200,000 word count, so I’m excited to see that happen. Unfortunately, that also means that it’ll be 200,000 words to proofread and edit...

[astrathaliagames]

I have no clue why I am drawing a winter coat in the middle of summer, but I just added a placeholder sprite for Jasper, the guy on the left. Once I have some morale, I’ll go ahead and finish adding all the details and shading it.

[astrathaliagames]

June Progress

Hello everyone!

If you are reading this, then I am probably procrastinating on school work to bring you this lovely, short and sweet update on what I’ve been doing recently for my game project. It’s been really focused on writing and editing for the most part, and some CG drawing.

Demo proofreading: My friend has went through the first demo that I sent her, and she gave me some feedback on inconsistencies. I have incorporated about half of her findings, but the other half will have to be done later on. I am also working on sending her a second demo. In total, I anticipate releasing two demos to the public, or releasing just one. In less than a week or so, I also finish my coursework for the summer with some friends, so I have two other potential beta readers on the way, and hopefully a bit more time to edit.

Writing: Not a lot of writing was done since the last update, but as I’m getting through the CG drawings, I’m rewriting some of the CG scenes and incorporating them in Atom (the program that I write in) to better fit the CGs.

CGs: Surprisingly, I’m actually getting a lot done in this section recently. I had about about three CGs done since the last update, with all of them being focused around the blue haired dude. Here’s a preview of one of them:

I think I have about one or two more CGs left for the demo. 

Thank you for following these updates!

-Anise

[astrathaliagames]

“Your willingness to speak your mind about these sorts of things. If you want something, you vocalize it.” (Miasma Override)

[astrathaliagames]

Log 11: Spring Progress

Hello all! I thought I might write another development blog since I’ve made some progress on my otome game project, Miasma Override: Other World. A lot of not-so-happy things have been happening to me recently, so I thought that devlog writing could get my mind off of it. This log will be more like a screenshot log than anything, especially since most of last month’s progress involved a drawing tablet in some form or another.

Sprites/CGs: The first thing I thought I might share is that all the current love interests now have at least two outfits and three arm poses. I will include some of said poses here:

(He’s asking too many questions at once!)

(I wonder what he could be so surprised about?)

Aside from that, I started drawing some sub-characters as well, and finished drawing a few of them. I am excited to share how they will look like in the future demo.

Demo: Speaking of the future demo, I’m finally at the point where I can almost release a demo right up before protagonist and crew enter the “other world”, a section of the game that is about 30,000 words or so. About 90% of the programming, including the sprites, music and backgrounds are inside the demo portion. Now, it is a matter of cleaning up the script a little as well as removing any images, script and music from the main game to make the demo as small in file size as possible. I also need to fix up the formatting for the dates, like the one in the screenshot above.

Coding: Over the past month, I did a sizable number of programming-related tasks in Ren’Py. A few fighting scenes and group scenes are now coded in. One of the CGs I made also uses dynamic movement, so it’ll be interesting when people actually get to see them.

Writing: Unfortunately, not much writing was done recently. Since May 5th, there are 2,000 more words inside the Ren’Py program. However, I did map out one of the endings over in Twine, so I have a relatively clear view of how one of the love interest’s routes ends.

That’s it for now. I hope you’re all staying well during these unprecedented times.

- Anise

P.S., I thought I might drop this scene in here somewhere...

During a heartfelt scene...

[astrathaliagames]

Log 10: King’s Reign

Hi all! As a brief introduction, I go by Star-Anise, and I have been working on two games for a little while now: Miasma Override: Songstress and Otherworld, which you can currently find as description pages on itch.io. I haven’t been actively working on them, more like something I do passively or during summer and winter breaks when I have less commitments.

I don’t think I’ve actually posted a full blog post on Tumblr specifically, but I wanted to move from the itch.io page as my devlog to having Tumblr as the page where I post blog posts for my game development journey instead.

I think for this blog post, I wanted to do something similar to another post I did a while back on itch.io for another character, but I thought this post would have a lot for me to write about. The focus for this post is on an original character that I created five years ago now, and who is a definite love interest in Otherworld: Leon Gideon.

I can’t believe it’s been so long, it still feels like it didn’t happen too long ago. This character was actually born out of me and my high school friend wanting to write complimentary stories about two delinquent but “kingly” high school boys who just like to mess around (i.e. power rangers, skunk pranks, and pretending to be anime lawyers... or something). Here are a few pictures I retained from my high school days.

While this picture wasn’t the original concept art, I think it really portrays many facets of his younger personality. At some point, he used to have his hair parted on the left-hand side of his face.

Anyway, so this guy went through a lot of different names. His first name was Ryouji because my friend thought it would be fun to write a Japanese high school anime story, and she really wanted our characters to follow a royalty theme. Apparently, “Ryouji” means “good reign” according to some baby name websites. Then for the longest while, his name became Riley because I wanted to choose an anglicized name for the story I was writing, and it still partially kept the meaning. I still wanted the name to have the y closer to the R, so somehow it later became Ryan, which still retains the ‘king’ theme. His current name is now Leon since the character is left handed and L’s are pronounced as R’s in Japanese anyway. Right now, I think I’ll leave it as Leon or Leo since Leon means lion and lions typically are a symbol associated with kings.

Aside from his name, Leon’s appearance has gone through a lot. Here’s a picture of him as a college student for something that I wanted to write, but this concept didn’t go too far. He becomes a little more serious since the high school version of what you see above. Leon also originally wore a red jacket to pay tribute to the original name Ryouji. You’ll have to imagine the red on the jacket here, sorry...

So that picture was actually drawn right before my first or second term test in university. I was getting really anxious like many students right before a midterm, and that just... happened.

I decided to write an otome game with the college form of Leon’s character in mid-2018. That’s also where his design started to change some more. I thought blue or green suited Leon much better than red, so that’s why his outfits reflect that in the screenshot below. Leon’s hair parting has changed to the right, and his hair becomes a little more more unkempt.

You might also get a feel for his personality changes, where he becomes a lot more serious over time.

Anyway, that’ll be all for this topic for now! I also wanted to share some work I’ve been doing on a replay screen page:

I’m mostly doing the screen replay page for myself to see which scenes have music and sprites added, and which ones don’t. I thought it might be helpful to just leave it in the game when people want to re-watch a particular scene from the game, but they don’t want to go through the entire game looking for it. I also wanted to add in ‘random’ scenes that happen throughout the game, but you wouldn’t be required to replay the scenes again - you would be able to play them here.

Currently it only shows 2 chapters on the replay scene screen, but there are 5 completed chapters for Leon actually (Chapters 2-6), I just haven’t gotten around to programming them in as scene replays. His story is pretty much complete, and I don’t have any plans on actually expanding it. I look forward to when people get to read his route, along with the other love interests!

~Anise