(zoom On The Preview And Open In New Tab To Be Able To Read The Info-boxes)Finally, After A Lot Of Back

(zoom on the preview and open in new tab to be able to read the info-boxes) Finally, after a lot of back and forth and interruptions, this should be the most updated depiction of Sears, one of the Addison co-workers for which Spam is going to work with on behalf of the conglomerate. Because they were the last one to join the office, Sears is often used by the others as the "legman". Sears doesn't mind this though as they love to be useful to others and doing errands is not much pressure on their schedule.

Sears is a very storied character, so I apologize for the spam of info-boxes 😅Also because their pet has some mild relevance for the plot, I needed to add him within the same profile because they are kind of inseparable (though Sears never notices the creepy side of the glitchy cat they adopted because MIKE tries his best to keep it a secret). Sears gave him the name MIKE because of the "M" the kitty had branded on his back. They are very clueless about the origins of that stray kitty but loves their pet regardless, as MIKE keeps his side of the relationship by acting like the walking anti-depressants cats are known to be 😸(yeah that fur is very fluffy by the way thick short coat but fluffy). Lastly, MIKE is a homage to a real cat and to old data storage devices (punch-cards and floppy disks). There are other more interesting engineering details about him but I'll reserve those for the game when the time comes 👀

As for the logo of PRODINAMI, it should represent the increasing revenue of your company after using the marketing services they sell. It also represents a very stylized Addison and it's inspired by two important companies from the past (I dare anyone to guess which ones when the clues start to appear).

Not much else to say but that I need to keep practicing painting (if RL stops nagging me so much). Gah, I'm [[SO HUNGRY]] I could eat an octorok now...

Characters' sound-bits

I'm testing uploading some sounds here to see how they look like on Tumblr, don't mind me. I'd like to have some feedback on them because I'm going in blind with my sound experiments (and yes no real voice-lines because I highly doubt I'll ever get enough money to get me some VA's, plus the sound-bits are more faithful to the original game).

In this case they are the SOUND-CUEs that are going to be used for the dialogues while the characters talk. You might be familiar with the sound-bits that many characters in Undertale and Deltarune has.

Well, since I need to make up many as many Deltarune characters lack of their own sound-bits -- plus the fact that the original ones needs to be tweaked enough to be of rightful use -- I took the time to create a few SOUND-CUEs for these ones:

Spamton >> Using the original one and tweaking it a little so that it sounded more natural.

Swatch >> He originally had the default sound-bit for his dialogues in Deltarune, so I needed to make something unique for him. I always likened Swatch's voice as low bass, to go with his big and more somber nature because of his origins, and to contrast with Spamton's which is more high-pitched.

Spwatchton >> Is just the fusion of both Spamton's and Swatch's voices, but needed to tweak it a bit so that both would mesh together without stepping on each other's voice. What do you think? 🤔

Tasque Manager >> She was the hardest to come up. Since her sound-bit is inexistent and Toby recorded his voice to give her some voice-lines during the fight against her, I tried to come up with something that would sound feminine but still mature and kind of electric because how she is stylized kind of robotical. I'm no expert and just experimented a little but maybe this one is the one that needs the most feedback. I'll listen to any advice or reference that you might suggest.

And as last freebie, some placeholderish reference (NOT FINAL) experiment for a voiceline that should go on the logo intro of the project -- guess which character is speaking here 👀(you may want to lower the volume because I see that it sounds kind of loud after I recorded it 😅) (the phrase in English translates roughly to "from the filthy world of CHAOS, we rise anew")

A lil of game-devving (first Dev-Log?)

Today some development while we wait for interviews and other confirmations to the job hunting of Friday -- or at least something I can still do with the mouse. (all of the pictures used above on the block-out are just mere placeholders to fill up the empty gaps)

It's GUI prototyping time!

I've seen before in the past that many visual-novels and even some RPGs allow the player to fast forward dialogues and skip back and forth across them if they were already seen. I had a mind of adding these buttons too but in a less default position, to balance a little the visuals of the GUI.

So, the idea is that the upper and bottom sections would show the zone where the current scene is playing, as some sort of decoration ribbon. Since I already planned the height and width of the main screen where the scene and dialog box will appear, there's a ton of empty space around that must be filled with something! I had an idea of making use of that widescreen space not only to hang the dialog buttons, but also to show a split portrait showing the status of the character from where we are having the POV of the scene.

For example, if we are in a scene from the POV of Tasque Manager, her portrait will appear on both sides. These are to show the mental status of the character, as the player takes decisions that could possibly upset the character or make them happier. The idea is to keep track of this as is the only visual cue (if the player isn't taking mental notes of what are they doing with the current character) to see if you are going through a good route or a bad route.

The mental status of the character will also open venues for other dialogues, just like in graphic adventures of old, you could explore questions for the lulz or just cut to the chase to go faster. It can also lock you from knowing more as other characters that you angered on purpose will refuse to elaborate or will reply with something else, or will see you too upset to let them speak up.

This can serve to further move towards a different path. I plan to add different outcomes to certain decisions depending of your behaviour, though upon release only one path will be available as I want to focus on the main plot-line and add the side paths with future updates for those avid to squeeze the lore of its last remaining juices.

In a sense I believe the paths could be categorized in Light, Neutral, Dark and Darker. Obviously the Darker paths would be the ones with the most downers, and might end abruptly or perhaps open a new unseen chapter, as corruption sets itself in the characters. As said, will only add those in the future if the game gets well received and we manage to stabilize our life enough to dedicate myself fully to the project. The default path will be always the Light one by the way.

And nothing else. Must not forget to add quick buttons to Save, Load and Quit To Title... Though adding them to an ESC menu could be redundant, I rather move these buttons tastefully to improve the looks of the general GUI that the players are going to stare at 95% of the time (that's why prototyping the Game's GUI is a very important part of the development). The other parts that should receive some attention would be the Gallery and the Chapter Selection... I was wondering if adding a list of quick jumps to all the scenes could be done, so you could replay your favourite parts again, or go there to pick a different set of dialogues. In a sense the main bones of the game are just that:

Title Screen

Options

Save/Load

Gallery

Chapter Select

Game

Credits/Disclaimer (absolutely skippable after reaching the end of a chapter)

Yeah, 7 bones. I don't see anything else to add. I believe the most fun part to make would be the Chapter Select. My idea for it is quite unusual and I haven't seen it done before. It could work.

I don't have anything else to show or to ponder publicly at the moment. Hope you enjoy to have a lil glimpse on the developing of the visual-novel as I make it from the scratch.

Playing Computer Surgeon

I apologize for any lack of updates or of activity. This week has been stressful, and let's just leave it like that because I tend to ramble too much about my grievances when I shouldn't do it in front of others.

For a little blessing, the new heart for the computer arrived:

I'm very grateful that my friend went on a limb to buy me the replacement and pay the shipping expenses. If you didn't know yet, the PSU of the computer started to fail in the past two months and giving less and less juice to the components, to the point of disabling the stylus detection of my tablet or not letting me to play any games without the computer blaring fans and overheating like I could cook an egg on top of it. Heck, even playing YouTube videos puts the fans on a fritz.

So... it's time to play surgeon and replace the heart of this old NEO (yeah, I call my computer NEO by no reason apparently <coff coff coff>) with a brand new one with some odd but cool LEDs. I'm a bit scared though because it's been aeons since I fiddled with computer components and I fear that I'm going to break something irreparably and then I'll be cooked because I need the computer to work. But if I don't replace it, NEO will die regardless so... I installed Tumblr on my phone so that I can at least post an update if everything goes south.

And if it goes well, I hope this new PSU will give juice to revive the tablet. If the tablet is still not working after all of this... Well, as Sears would say "Never try to heal the wound before getting it on yourself". I'll go and just channel my inner Spam engineer and just do it. Doing nothing would be far worse anyway.

<goes to make password backups on paper and unplug everything>

Some Addison 3D teasers

Just a few teasers of some Addison OCs that are still in WIP state. CEO the yellow Addison belongs to @fragonreal and is the most complete, only needs the visemes, a few expressions, some weight painting corrections, a tongue, and will be ready to dump into Unity 3D to turn it into a VRCHAT avatar. The pink one is called Valentine and belongs to Derpy. Most of the body is complete, but needs more floof and to model the asymmetric parts, before I can make the clothes, the armature, visemes, expressions... It could be said that it's at a 63% completion 🤔

This Tuesday is being slow, which means some bits of free time to waste on my own. Hooray.

It failed. Despite putting everything back together, the PC turns on for a second and turns off not allowing me to even use the power button to jog it back to life.

Little else to say but that my frustration scalated exponentionally after all of these hours juggling with cables, smol screws and the wind (only had space at the terrace).

I'll sit for a moment and think, while I try to look up a solution online with the phone. Until then.