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Development log - Harutopia (part 1)

As with "the bed of diverse flowers," I didn't give myself a concrete formula for this album, continuing on with the freeform approach that I took previously and rolling with it. I'm also at a point where I no longer need to write anything in my OneNote notebook about the creation of this album, instead opting for things to just come and flow through. With that being said, I'm gonna keep on aiming for album-wide consistency for this album, seeing that that's more or less worked with "the bed of diverse flowers."

I think this first track is a significant improvement in composition, incorporating many complex melodies and syncopations, alongside an attempt and creating atmosphere as indicated by the echoing pings that can be heard throughout the song. While this song has the soft intro heard in all of my first tracks of the 7SoSB series, the way the introduction sections evolve with each passing album makes for some interesting marks in how I've improved my composition over the years.

Looking forward to what comes in the following days!

This album will be self-promoted on Battle of the Bits and social media. RIP 9-Bit Records, no one really knew its worth.

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*Album art not finalized

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Let's Go! Nanastar Coms! Chapter 7: Coney's Day Off

Coney's day off consists of...eating a lot. Why would anyone expect any less?

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Let's Go! Nanastar Coms! Chapter 6: Haru's Day Off

Haru hangs out with a couple of her friends. And then she doesn't. If only she looked behind her :c

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Let's Go! Nanastar Coms! Chapter 5: Shizuka's Day Off

What do lovely rich ladies like Shizuka do on their days off? The world may never know.

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Let's Go! Nanastar Coms! Chapter 4: Outfits

Coney has Haru, Rona, and Musubi do an on-the-spot video shoot for the fans. Poor Musubi tho...

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Let's Go! Nanastar Coms! Chapter 3: Influence

Momoka lost her motivation during the last show they did. What will Coney do to fix this!? (Probably something dumb)

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Let's Go! Nanastar Coms! - Chapter 2: Dream

Why stop at one chapter? Have another! This time, we have Momoka showing her love of candies and having some...rather amusing developments with Haru.

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Let’s Go! Nanastar Coms! - Chapter 1: Cleaning

It's been quite a very long while since I've posted a new chapter of Nanastar Coms. Tell you the truth, this has actually been finished quite a while back, but I just didn't get to posting it for some reason. But enough of that, enjoy this Rona-centric chapter! (ganbare ganbare rona)

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Let's Go! Nanastar Coms! - Chapter 0: Special Edition

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present Let's Go! Nanastar Coms! Aside from being an adventure in stitching, shitty cleaning, and typesetting, this is a series of 5-komas (or 4-komas with a color title) featured in the game Tokyo 7th Sisters that details the daily lives of the Nanastar idols. This comic series will be updated whenever I have time to stitch, "clean," and typeset, but in the meantime, enjoy this first release!

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Final fixes and improvements for Prismic Shift in GM8.1

Over the course of last week, I have worked a little more on Prismic Shift ver. GM8.1 FINAL, for the most part adding and changing some things about the game to make it more accessible to bypassing guests in public venues such as art galleries and mini gaming conventions such as Rockage. The changes are as follows, almost all of them suggested by one person from my school's game dev club:

Skippable "disclaimer" text and the ability to start a game during the logo sequence. I'm not entirely sure why I never did the latter from the get go, but since this is a game that's probably not going to be on for a good amount of time (it's a part of several other games in a cabinet, after all), there's no point in having a disclaimer sequence that's unskippable. Plus, it makes it easier for a random person to just jump in the game right away once they start it up.

Confirming a single player game with only one touch of a button compared to mashing buttons to roll down a timer. From observation, most people would get confused when the game says "please advance the timer with the buttons," not realizing that the button presses only advance the timer by 1, and the timer is not as noticeable since it's tucked in at the top-right corner. To fix this, I've made it so that only one button press from any of the three buttons (and the start button) is necessary to confirm a single player game. This also makes it easier for someone to just jump into a single player game.

Changing confirmation text to something less "Japanese." Before, the text for each of the game modes' confirmations were "SINGLE PLAY OK," "CO-OP PLAY OK," and "CO-OP PLAY NG." The latter case, as the one person stated, has the potential to confusing players. Understandable, since NG is sort of a Japanese mannerism that means "no good," or, in this context, "not available," so the confirmations were changed to make more sense in not-Japanese English: "SINGLE PLAY CONFIRMED," "CO-OP PLAY CONFIRMED," and "NO CO-OP PLAY," respectively. Hopefully, these changes won't confuse future players.

Color-coded score separators. Another suggestion from the same person was to add commas into the score to make them easier to read. Instead of commas, however, I opted to color code the millions and billions section of the score. As expected, it makes the scores a bit easier to read, since one's now able to see the millions and billions sections more clearly.

Highlighting your high score on the high score page after a run. A new feature recommended by that same person, instead of running through all of the pages of that mode's high score list, the game will now focus on the player's post-game high score on the list instead. Even though rank and score is already displayed on the name entry screen itself, it gives a better confirmation of where the score is at in context of other scores in the leaderboard.

And that, for the most part, is all of the more recent changes on Prismic Shift ver. GM8.1 FINAL. Since this is, as said in the version, the final GM8.1 version of the game, I'll probably be using this version and creating a sort of consumer version for use on home computers. Hopefully, I can get that version finished before Fanime, because one of the guys that hosts the PC section might consider having some of the game dev club games on the PCs they'll be using. Neato :3

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Development log - the bed of diverse flowers (part 3)

Track 4 - Bloom and Spring

Having been swamped by a load of other obligations, mostly pertaining to school work, I actually started working on this piece rather late at night...11:30PM PST, to be exact. Needless to say, for about 2-3 hours of work, I was pretty satisfied with what I put out. The first half has some hints of experimentation, especially with the rather glitchy piano riffs that I arranged to go along with the equally syncopated bell tones.

This track was supposed to serve as an interlude for the entire album, but for whatever odd reason, it sounds more like a final track than an interlude to my ears. Maybe if I listen to it more, I'll be able to see its place as the 4th track of the album...or maybe not and I end up bumping this to final track.

Track 5 - Spores of the Sky

I worked on this piece kind of on a whim today about 3 hours prior to One Hour Compo (I didn't participate this week, in the end), and I ended up making something that was simple, but rather uplifting, at least when I listened to it in its entirety. As I was composing this, I was kind of concerned about how it would turn out, since the end kind of seemed a bit short, but then I heard the whole song and realized that everything I arranged kind of snugged together in a way that made sense.

Because of how this song in particular was arranged, it was rather difficult to figure out which parts I should showcase for both the 30 second preview on Soundcloud and the OHC preview compilation (which consists of an "intro" part and a "chorus" part, with the title spoken in-between the two), since the latter would prove difficult to choose parts without "spoiling" the song. In the end, the OHC preview spoils the last stretch while the Soundcloud preview remains unscathed.

There's only two more songs left in this album! Remember, the album is going to be released on March 30th on my Bandcamp, with promotion from 9-Bit Records.

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Development log - the bed of diverse flowers (part 2)

Track 2 - Jumping Jack

This track ended up being kind of iffy for my taste as I listened to the entire track as a whole. I think I made this song progress a bit too fast, jumping straight into an outro stretch after the initial verse. I do like how the chords progress, though, which is one of the pluses that I'm demonstrating with this track: being able to make songs with chord progressions that make sense and are somewhat organized.

I'll probably go back to this later in the week and add some modifications (adding a little more to the song, more or less, preferably stuff after the verse and before the outro stretch), since it's personally too quick me for my own taste.

Track 3 - 薔薇祭 (bara matsuri - Festival of Roses)

If this track doesn't scream Nekomata Master influences, I don't know what does. Not only does it approximately incorporate Nekomata Master's sine pings, but the whole thing sounds rather worldly and somewhat whimsical, something that's commonly found in Nekomata's work. (For those familiar with his work, listen to the full track when the album's released and listen for parts that seem influenced by the following tracks by Nekomata Master: scar in the earth, Good-bye Chalon, and Queen's Tragedy) I'm personally satisfied with the result of this piece in general, but I think I might head back to this track a little bit to tweak some mixer volumes and such.

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Development log - the bed of diverse flowers (part 1)

Track 1 - Wreath

This time around, I didn't give myself a concrete formula to guide me in making this album, deciding to go for a more freeform approach to making this album rather than making things theme-based on the first two spring break projects (to be fair, I was still kind of a composition/arranging/mixing rookie on the first spring break project that I did). It's to the point where the OneNote doc I made for this album states:

Like last year, make one song per day. The difference between this album and the last…is that you go your own direction. Nothing will guide you in writing but the overall theme of the album, as seen through the title. All that is asked is that the album be consistent somewhat.

It will still be 7 tracks, preferably with an intro and an outro track.

Freeing me from the shackles of themes a day, I'm going to approach this album with at least an album-wide consistency in sound. I've already started things off in a rather positive note with Wreath, which begins with an introductory motif that's similar to 7SoSB2's Harbinger, but that quickly fades out as I progress to a more upbeat, energetic, and hopeful sound. This transition from familiar to new demonstrates my significant growth as a composer, going from cluelessly using Magical 8-Bit Plug for everything and not knowing a thing or two about mixing to being able to sit slightly below par with a few indie musicians, particularly those that participate in ThaSauce's One Hour Compos.

You might also notice that this particular spring break album isn't called Sevensongs of Springbreak III. I've decided to depart from the Sevensongs of Springbreak naming scheme as an explicit album identifier because I feel that I should at least make an effort to give these kinds of projects a unique identity rather than just an album that plainly tells people "oh yeah, I made this album in a week during spring break with one song per day." And thus, the bed of diverse flowers was formulated.

Looking forward to what awaits in the following days! I sure hope that I can pull a consistent album off.

This album will also be promoted by 9-Bit Records when it's released.

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Engaged to the Kill la Kill (キルラキルで進行形)

I translated and typeset another small web comic! Enjoy!

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Future games from A-zu-ra

Over the next year or so, there will be a few games that I will be working on, some for myself, some for my school's game development club. Here are a few of these projects.

Prismic Shift: Ren'ai Label

A personal project that I will be getting to whenever I successfully port over the original Prismic Shift to the new and somewhat faster GameMaker: Studio. Mechanics will be somewhat different with this version in the sense that the only way shapes will "die" in this version is through the explosion, which will also work differently as well. Gameplay more or less remains similar to that of the original Prismic Shift, except this version will also have an overarching romance plot involved. Somehow. I'm not sure what it's gonna be like, but somehow, I'll try and make it work.

This project was coined from when one of my teachers came up to me and told me that I should try making Prismic Shift into a dating sim. This would effectively be a response to that. My goal for this game, as well as the redevelopment of Prismic Shift into GM:Studio, will be by the time the new semester comes (which, as of this writing, is Fall 2014).

A visual novel for the current game dev challenge

As of this writing (Spring 2014), the challenge is as follows:

1. Take one of your prototypes and develop it into a full, polished game.

- OR - 

2. Create a new game which makes use of the theme: "Romance or Time Travel."

I decided to choose the latter and went with making a dating sim.

I'm actually going to be collaborating with one of my local friends thisisnotdavidbowie on this game; he's going to handle picture assets and the story itself, and I'm going to make sure it's presentable and in a neat package using Ren'py. All I'll say about this game is...it's gonna be interesting. And rather inaccessible unless you're familiar with my school's computer science club. This project is expected to be finished by at least May 1st, which is the second-to-last club meeting for the semester.

An idle game that involves operating a crank

This will be my first time working on an idle game, and I have a few things set up for it so far, but as far as gameplay is concerned, nothing is really implemented so far. I'll probably work on this from time to time and see what comes of it, if anything.

Three video game projects. Four if you count the original Prismic Shift redevelopment. Things are gonna get interesting this year.

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*Album art not finalized