#the devlog has me feral

[bipanicoverthegravessiblings]

This can only go well :3

[moonrosevalley]

Chronicle of Roses Devlog 1: Design Notes Ronya

Li's Portrait of Ronya

Hiya ! This is the first devlog of Chronicle of Roses ! I’m Scarlett, the narrative and game’s designer and today I will showcase the game’s protagonist, Ronya. Showing the influences that helped me mould her character and the concepts for her design as well. This is still early in development and subject to change, those changes will be clear as the project continues.

This game is set in the holy city of Lorne, based in a highly theocratic society headed by a holy prophet worshipped as a protector & harbinger of safety. The citizens heavily disdain witchcraft and magic, anything that goes against their holy scripture. In a cruel twist of fate, Ronya was born with the markings and blood of a witch. Ronya was orphaned as a young child and was taken in personally by the holy prophet Ursula. Ronya was raised to be a soldier, climbing the ranks to the top despite her persecution. Eventually, she became a ‘Raven’, a member of the prophet’s most trusted inner circle of soldiers. Carrying out espionage, scouting, and assassinations under Ursula’s direct orders. 

Throughout the game, we follow Ronya as she searches for her lost wife in the newly corrupted Lorne, having to fight old neighbours and comrades whose minds have been lost. Battling against the strings of fate, old prophecies, and horrors beyond human comprehension.

Li's Early Concept Art

Ronya’s inspiration is from a plethora of stories and mythology. Still, a few of the main ones are Ronja the robber's daughter, a Swedish kids' tale about two kids from rival robbers gangs becoming friends, leading to the two gangs making peace eventually. My early idea for Ronya was more feral and outgoing, much like the Ronja of Astrid Lindgren, but we developed her to be more restrained and no-nonsense. 

Norse mythology was a heavy surplus of inspiration for Chronicle of Roses, especially for Ronya. We were inspired by Huginn and Muninn, Odin's ravens, and the valkyries of Valhalla. This is where the raven, winged and death motifs came from.

Signalis, Silent Hill, Bloodborne and Dead Space, were heavy inspirations for the game’s plot and characters. Elster as well as Kratos from God of War (2018) were the characters that inspired me to make Ronya more no-nonsense and hard-set on saving the person she loves most. The existential and personal horror of those games were heavy inspirations for COR; Ronya is looking for her wife, time and space are warped and fragmented, and the story is incredibly personal and character-driven. Where the horror is directly linked with a character's mental health, and tackles heavy themes of motherhood, codependency, and hate.

Scarlett's Moodboard

Ronya’s armour and equipment, as well as the rest of the game, are heavily based on the mid-1600s. A time of religious turmoil and witch hunts. Ronya’s main weapon is similar to a Polish sabre, which saw its popularity rise through Europe during the Thirty Years War, & she has access to bombs and early flintlocks, as stealth is not particularly a worry anymore. Her armour is based on the early 1500s to mid-1600s armour that was used throughout Europe. 

My intention with her design was to try and showcase a quiet specialist, struggling with her born identity, the use of the black armour and cloak was to symbolise her relation with death. Her hair used to be black in our early designs, but as we started figuring out the different covens and Ronya’s link to fire and magic, we changed to make her hair long and red, almost like a mane, to showcase that separation between her societal identity and her actual identity. To really hit it home with the split of her personhood, we gave her a burn across her face, splitting her face in two, she has loads of other burn scars but they can’t be seen under the armour. 

Scarlett's sketches.

Ronya’s story is one of self-actualisation and self-acceptance, her story is a very personal one to me as it is a heavy allegory of queerness and transness, and I’m literally the gayest queer to ever exist and I’m about to start my hormones this coming week ! Ronya’s themes of codependency and having to find purpose and meaning for herself also add to the list of things I grapple with. I use my art to shed light on those struggles to hopefully make someone who relates to this connect with it, see that they’re not alone, and potentially to find my work helpful in their journey of growth. 

For next time ! We will showcase Ronya’s and Li’s favourite character, Lilith, the second most important character in the plot of Chronicle of Roses (Ronya being third~).

(Don't mind this being a few minutes late of schedule <3)

[herotome]

Devlog #37: Before&After GUI

Hi-ho, Wudgey here! Once again we're going to do something a little different today.

I was initially going to write a BIIIG overview of the progress we've made, but I noticed it was already getting long just from talking about the new GUI... (and apparently tumblr has a 10 image limit per post, boooo). So, I'll limit this post just to the new screens, and I'll queue up a post on our CG progress a little later. :)

A lot of this will be familiar if you've tuned in regularly to our updates; but this time I'll go into a little more detail on my process to buff out the post a bit.

First off, some before and after images as promised by the devlog title:

Name Entry Screen (Before 1/2)

I've always felt strongly about incorporating gameplay mechanics into the actual story. When I came up with the idea of having the MC write her name as part of the job search process, I was immediately invested in that direction! Originally, I was going to have the player type in their name into the Clammy Lady's tablet once they actually reached the job fair... but as you can see, it's not visually enticing.

Name Entry Screen (Before 2/2)

I reworked the idea into a resume (which makes an appearance in the March 2021 prologue demo). In my country you're expected to provide a professional headshot along with your information, which suits my nefarious purposes. The player now has an in-universe interface where they can update their picture AND type out in their name.

Name Entry Screen (After)

Finally, with help from some Ko-Fi donors, I was able to commission Re.Alice (who has a vastly more powerful background in graphic design than I do) to tighten the screen concepts and add some pizazz! Once she was done, I was able to code in some animation to give the resume screen more life.

Save Screen (Before)

Next up is the save screen. I didn't have a specific concept in mind for this one (hence the default renpy layout), but I do have strong preferences in save/load formatting from playing other games.

I referenced my favorites: Hollow Knight, Dragon Age, and Mystic Messenger. I quickly decided that I Do Not Like numbered pages, and I would replace it with a scrollbar. I did appreciate screencaptured preview pictures though, and I liked having specific names for each chapter as the player progresses.

Save Screen (After)

(I created a bigger screencapture here because the save slot text is on the small side ;;;)

Again, Alice was fantastic in helping me capture what I wanted! I also enlisted help from @synstoria for the more advanced programming areas. Once they were done, I adjusted the text format, asset positioning and added another touch of animation. I even added a bit of kerning here... who knew my college typography course would randomly pay dividends? lol.

You can see in the upper right, I've written some code to create "checkpoints" that can be loaded from this screen. The default Ren'py autosave system works by saving at EVERY choice; since Herotome is a choice-heavy game, it doesn't make a lot of sense to autosave so frequently! Instead, I'll be utilizing a checkpoint system to save before every major conversation - so if you make a mistake (or want to make chaotic gremlin choices and then claim takesies-backsies), you'll be able to use the checkpoint return to a secure area and try again.

The system will NOT save in the middle of bad endings, so you won't have to worry about getting stuck!

Choices/Textbox (Before 1/2)

What a blast from the past....! I hated the vbox choice screen so much I had to change it asap!! It's a bit nostalgic to see my original Katie sketch; I drew her on paper and added color with the multiply tool. :')

As for the textbox, I didn't really know what I wanted. I struggled with several concepts before settling for a basic gray halftone design for the time being.

Choices/Textbox (Before 2/2)

I designed placeholder assets and recruited @synstoria again to help me with the complicated coding parts. I just randomly go feral and want to break the default ren'py formatting!

I was less satisfied with the textbox, but after several concept sketches I was starting to get somewhere after I researching some superhero art deco images.

Choices/Textbox (After)

After Alice worked on the design, I adjusted the choicebox positions to be higher on the screen, so players clicking the textbox should be less likely to click on a low-hanging choice by accident. (Not that accidental clicks should remotely ruin the gaming experience, if the checkpoints work as intended...)

CONCLUSION

I'm excited about the strides we've made. Next up I'll be updating the Options screen, and I expect to update the Logbook and a couple of other screens further in the development timeline.

These visual updates will be rolled out along with the next installment, which I've decided to call Episode 1 (release date TBA). The common route will have 2-3 episodes in total before branching off into character routes. Normally I'm not keen on episodic releases, but I'm reaaally impatient for you guys to meet the love interests --and, of course, I'm impatient for you guys to talk to Warden a bit more. ^^

Please look forward to the next progress update! And if you'd like to help speed up our process (and get some spicy previews of our game's villain), please consider dropping by our Ko-Fi. We're at 72% of our goal to fund the sprite, which means we're almost there!!

I hope you’re all staying safe and keeping warm.

Much love,

Wudgey.