strangesomewhere

[strangesomewhere]

While the Dust Settles - Strange Development

Hello! I come to you, without a gallbladder! It's a strange time indeed but not a bad one by any margin anymore. Hopefully this should be the last thing they need to do before my body is good for, at least a good 30 years. Admittedly I did enjoy my time in the hospital in a weird way, I'm sure you'll see it come out in the art that gets drawn for the game. This week has, understandably, been a bit more wishy-washy as a result. I haven't exactly been putting a lot of focus on it, you know. Worried about the pain first. You all are lucky that pain recoil isn't a game mechanic, not yet at least.

Of course if you listened above, the broad concept of music is coming to the strange somewheres! It’ll be a longer process than the art, as I’m working with a very talented musician friend of mine with a very expensive roland synth (also known as: a roland synth), here to be known as the silly bird on the keyboard. Everyone say thank you. As I come to the end of recovery, this week has also been the week of concept spreads! Gone are the single, practical design sketches that may actually make it into the game! I just need to get more ideas sorted, and I’m glad I did. Some significant changes are being made to some of these areas as the focus shifts to something less arcade and more dungeon crawl.

All this means is that the somewheres are getting more strange, and that’s hardly a bad thing. Worry not though, practical progress is also happening. It’s been less prevalent but it is indeed happening! The introductory wastelands are expanding to a proper tutorial dungeon to get the player adjusted to working with Lem and Mel as a team, and to get a general feel as to how things work. I think working on things in a linear fashion like this gets me in a real ‘one foot in front of the other’ mindset, where I know what my endpoints are and what it’s going to take to get there. It eases the mind a bit and leaves some of the hard stuff for future me while I sort out the foundation.

All that to say things are back on track after a few weeks of recovery. I will have to take another break soon as I head out to a not-so-local gaming convention on volunteer duties, but I doubt that’ll slow my roll like a whole surgery did. Quite frankly if it does, call in, it’s a cry for help. I’ve probably fallen into a despair pit of no return. That, or deltarune. Either way medical attention is needed.

[strangesomewhere]

Strange Development - With Ups and Downs

This week, my gallbladder was disappeared! Needless to say, not as much got done. I'm currently recovering from the surgery as we speak, but before that happened I do have something fun to share. This week before I was whisked away to the hospital I endeavored on an entirely new kind of project for me: animation! I don't know how many of these I'll end up doing but I at least want to make a few. It was a very different experience to my usual art process and I figure I might as well share.

Here at Strange Somewhere, you get all of the dogwater sketches I throw together on a moment's notice. This is the original 'storyboard that I threw together just to give me an idea of what I wanted to happen. The more I look at it the more I hate it, but thankfully I won't have to look at it for too much longer. Even as someone who enjoys getting their thoughts out onto page first, it feels rather strange drawing up blueprints for an animation like this, for reasons I simply cannot pinpoint. Still, things are well.

I ended up drawing up the whole thing manually, with each scene being its own gif I made in aseprite. Then after converting them all into mp4 files, I stitched them all together in "Windows Clipchamp" which wins my personal award of worst piece of proprietary software I've ever interacted with, to put together the full animation. I won't be sharing the full thing here as I'd rather wait for you all to see it in game, but I'm incredibly happy with the final product and if this game thing falls through, I'm definitely still bragging about it.

Before this point I've never actually had to think about how Mel's freaky little arm extends and moves. Originally I thought it might just ascend through the darkness as if it were literally reaching out, but not only was that not working, it seemed very lame for such an interesting little creature. This sort of drawing into reality was not only a lot more fun to animate, but a lot less natural, which is fitting for the literal face of Strange Somewhere. Fleshing out details like this is the real fun of game development.

Unfortunately the fun ends here, for a bit. I need to spend the rest of the week relaxing and recovering from surgery. The lack of productivity is pretty much being forced upon me by circumstance, which isn't terrible but it does mean I might be taking the next week off in terms of updates and progress. In the meantime, despite all of this, I've never played Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass. Hopefully it'll be a good study into combat that's actually fun in the rpg maker engine, a rarity somehow. I'll play Lisa the Painful again too just to make sure. It sure would be tragically funny to put all this work into a game that's absolute garbage!

[strangesomewhere]

Strange Development - Putting Pencil to Paper

I really do miss digital a lot…

But that’s okay. Nobody has to see these messy lines I inked over in a mild haze until I get wildly famous and everyone calls it art. One of the best ways to just start is to get things out on the page as I’ve found. Things seem a lot less intimidating once I have a game plan going in, even stuff like finalized sprites. Sometimes it leads into tweaking hell, but that’s okay. For me digital is a lot easier (especially since I developed this style with digital tools exclusively) but that just means I get the hard part out of the way elsewhere, actually getting a good idea, and save the execution for the computer.

This also gives a pretty clear distinction between being creative and getting the work done. There’s no weird intermingling where one bleeds into another or things get weird on the motivation front. I have time to think of ideas in the coffee shop and get that creative energy out there, and once I get home I can give my creative side a break and focus on just making that plan happen. I like this decoupling of creativity and labor, I feel like the two should never get confused, lest terrible woes be upon your village. Being creative is not work, it’s fun. Doing work is not actively fun, it’s efficient, and that’s not a bad thing.

Before I went to animate our new friend here, I went first to paper to get a good idea of what he looked like. It’s not the best drawing, no, but it got the idea across to future me. It also helped because my first few iterations weren’t that good, I can’t imagine trying to change stuff after I did that much work. Once the creative idea legwork was done, I could hop on over to the other leg and get animating without any fear of doing something I didn’t like. If I didn’t like it, past me should have been on that. I’d call her a twit if she wasn’t very helpful..

It also helps me surrender my creations. While sometimes I get caught in the weeds of minor adjustments, for the most part, I accept that once it’s out of the design phase it’s out. Pencils down, grading begins shortly. Will some designs be better than others? Certainly so. That’s what happens when there’s a lot of things in general. The important part is that designs do finish, there are some great home runs, and we can leave the thickets of not being happy with my own art eternally at an expedited rate. They have to kick me out of the coffee shop eventually, after all.

[strangesomewhere]

Strange Development - What's in a game?

Hello hello! I forget if it's been a true-blue week since my last post, but here I am. I'm going to try and make Saturday my update day. Regardless, strange somewhere is going somewhere! This first week has been quite exciting, mostly focusing on planning and doing some first step drawings to get an idea of what this game is even going to look like. Thankfully, that's been the easy part. Getting back to drawing has been a pleasant gift all on its own, and even doing my on-paper concept art has been very nice too, even if I miss the conveniences of digital programs a lot sometimes...

So far, a lot of my time has been laying down the fundamentals in RPG Maker. It's a very familiar dance to me but one I find a bit tiring as I get all the plugins in, make sure all the yanfly stuff is in the right place, yada yada. Another has been making sure some of my base ideas will even function, which I can happily report so far has been looking quite good. Most of the status ailments work so far, as to various aspects of combat I was worried might not, even if the workarounds have been, annoying at times. Did you know RPG Maker MV doesn't allow you to determine how long a status effect stays active anywhere in the status effect or on any skill that inflicts it? I wish I didn't!

A bit of time has also been figuring out how I want this game to function on a macro level. I've had to change some of my underlying assumptions on how this game should work and why I would want it to work like that as development has properly kicked off. It started off as an almost repo-like/lethal company adjacent experience, but has morphed into a combination of that and Etrian Odyssey. While I wanted dungeons to be more randomly generated, I've settled on proper structures within the dungeons, with some randomly-generated elements, such as respawning loot, certain passages, and enemies. This keeps the spirit of the loop of getting farther and farther in the dungeon with every run as you get stronger, while allowing the benefits of a hand-crafted dungeon crawling experience, much in the same vein as Fear and Hunger. If I get even close to that game's quality though, I'll have succeeded far beyond my imagination!

This is my first experience properly doing animations within RPG Maker as well as actually engaging with the RPG part. I've always had the mantra "RPG Maker is great at making any kind of game, just don't make an RPG." I'm finding this to be more and more true the more interesting RPG stuff I try to do. Still, it hasn't been that bumpy of a ride, so I'll try not to complain too much. More exciting news next week hopefully!

[strangesomewhere]

A long overdue update!

Hello friends!

Many things have transpired since I last posted! I officially graduated, multiple projects have been put away, a lot. I intended to make this post with an accompanying link to a game but, alas.

So, the big thing that was supposed to happen was the finishing of a game jam game called Nurse-tective. It would have been a noir-styled digital age detective story where you follow a diagnostician in an age of bio-warfare, trying to get to the bottom of what patients are experiencing and why. This project, as far as I know, was quite close to completed before the main and only developer dropped out last minute leaving the project unfinished. Unfortunately, I don’t know a thing about godot, so it shall remain a folder on my desktop until I know what to do with it.

However, this bad news comes with some good news: strange somewhere in a video game is still on! I have a background in RPG Maker from some previous work I’ve done, and have decided to work on a project solo. For now, it will simply be ‘into the strange somewheres’, a game where you go to various areas battling strange enemies and searching various landmarks for artifacts to bring back before the sun goes down. Every map image will be a unique drawing in my usual style, and there will be many illogical creatures along the way. There will also be plenty of new folk to interact with as well, so hopefully get excited for that

To keep working on things in a timely manner, I would like to get back to weekly minor update postings. Thank you all for your patience, there will be plenty more art to appreciate along the way.

[strangesomewhere]

Strange is somewhere abroad!

Much forgiveness for the lack of posting, I needed more of a break than I thought. I will be on vacation until after christmas, and then will resume a normal weekly upload schedule, probably on fridays who knows. Quite frankly this little project is at my whims and they are fickle. Thank you for the patience.

[strangesomewhere]

Mel says: Happy thanksgiving!! (It has no concept of this holiday it just wants to be nice)

[strangesomewhere]

There’s lots to play around with here, though! They built a lot of things, whoever they are. It’s pretty neat, for the most part! The monoliths do strange things, the buildings have weird stuff in them, it’s a shame they aren’t around to tell me all about it. Whoever they are. I think they’d be happy though. They’re still talking, after all! -Part 1- the end

[strangesomewhere]

I do wish the spirits would talk though. Or maybe I don't, not sure on that one. They're very delicious, which is the hangup. Do I want my food talking back at me? They might have some good comebacks. Even worse, they might have some good points! I mean it wouldn't stop me, it's great sustenance. I'd just feel kinda bad, which is bad, something I’d hope needs no elaboration. That’s a puzzle, I suppose. One for another day, I'm hungry.

[strangesomewhere]

Update: The Future of Strange Somewhere

Hello! This is basically the first and probably one of the only times I'll be talking as an author, and not as one of my characters. First off I'd like to give a big thank you to all the people that have stopped by to check out my art this October. I started this as a [nondescript October art challenge] project incited by a good friend of mine, who convinced me I should do this. Since then I've grown increasingly attached to my new style and the world that has since been built through this project. It's been wonderful seeing people stop by and enjoy the art over the past month and I probably wouldn't have finished out without all the lovely support both from my friends and from you all. Second, the elephant in the room. If this is just an October project, what next? Worry not I'm definitely continuing with this project, it has been wonderful doing the art for it and it's now a solid enough idea I'd love to continue with. To this end, Strange Somewhere will be moving to a light webcomic format, something I've wanted to do for a while. The focus will remain on the odd environments and weird creatures of the world all perceived through the eyes of one of its few remaining residents. There will still be single panel shots with some light narration but there will also be some more elaborate stuff too. I'm still feeling things out, but I hope you'll stay patient as I figure all this stuff out. Lastly, I'll be toning down my upload schedule. As fun and interesting as it may have been to be doing art every single day, that schedule simply isn't tenable long term. I'll instead be moving to once every couple of days, or at the very worst once every week. This will give me more time to make art, and also free up some space in the week to not fail my classes, which is always a plus. I will always aim for a saturday as upload or potentially a wednesday too if I manage to finish multiple in the week. I'm also looking at uploading to webtoon if possible, though given the format I will have to do a bit of adaptation, such is life. With all of that out of the way, another handy thank you to everyone and I hope you all stick around for more strange places to explore!

[strangesomewhere]

-BEGIN LOG- I forget where I heard it. Apparently, they say dead men tell no tales. Probably correct, the spirits are mute. That doesn't seem right though. Not in every way. There's lots of cool stuff around here! Idunno what it is but, I mean hey it's here. They also say a picture is worth a thousand words (I don't know where I heard that one either), this is something I buy. The dead must be pretty talkative then. I'm listening, or at least trying to. It's gibberish, but neat gibberish. Besides if I've got forever to listen, what else am I gonna do? Day 31 - Anything you want Webcomic Update very soon.

[strangesomewhere]

Nothing today, something bigger coming up soon... Day 30 - Anticipation

[strangesomewhere]

Catch a ride. Day 29 - Flying

[strangesomewhere]

This is more important. Day 28 - Fulfillment

[strangesomewhere]

Easier to think way up here. Day 27 - Peaceful Solitude

[strangesomewhere]

Forgoing the prompt today to celebrate my favorite streamer's phirmthday and the release of the fuser video. Happy phirmthday, may your collective luck be better next year!

[strangesomewhere]

A treat for those have so far enjoyed the art. May it haunt your darkest corners.