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I'd like to say sorry for not posting for a while. Other busy from polishing certain parts of the game, I'm also handling a couple of client based projects and my portfolio.

Just for the record, the demo contains an opening video cutscene. Upon making it, I realized that there should probably only be one cutscene per release, since it took me 1 to 2 weeks for production, post prod and editing. It was quite tedious. And small mistakes can be very vexing, as I would need to re-render a huge chunk of it again if I only saw them past render stages.

I'm going to be honest though, the progress of Vol1 itself hasn't moved up that much. I concentrated in further improving the plot of the game while it's still early, rather than banging my head on a wall when I realize that there's an annoying plothole in the long run.

But now that the video and demo is finally done. I could start devoting time to the game's progress again :)

Chapter 1 done!

VOL.1 PROGRESS: 28% done

That's right, the first chapter is done, leaving me three chapters to finish.

I've come to realize that the first volume will probably be the most time consuming, since that's the part where I do the backgrounds that'll span the next few volumes. That means, that once I'm done with this volume, I''ll only need to worry about dialogues, the programming, some music, and if not, a few BGs if needed.

Since, things will be slow for the moment, I'm thinking a bit of uh, i dunno, marketing and production sketches should sustain interest.

I HATE...

VOL.1 PROGRESS: 25% done

Seriously... Look at the background at the picture. The colors there are suppose to be less washed out like the original artwork. And don't make me talk about how bad it looked after the initial scan. I fixed it up in photoshop, but even layers and layers of adjustments can't perfectly replicate the glory of watercolor paintings.

Watercolors and scanners just don't get along. I'd buy a nice camera if I had the money.

carry on

VOL.1 PROGRESS: 17% done

It's going quite smoothly, yet still long none the less.

I've been having second thoughts about the character dialogue box, the way it's transparency makes the dialogue kinda hard to be read and also mixing the dialogues with the character sprites. It's kind of annoying in the long run. So I decided to make a new one and increase the opacity altogether.

I spent the much of the week illustrating new sprites and writing narration and dialogues, not much on the programing, but I'll get back to it after writing this.

Meanwhile, all portraits of all the characters I've made into sprites so far. I'm not giving names, as it's not important for the moment.

Differences

For those who haven't played the test version here's a link .

In the test version, all of the character and background illustrations, as well as the writing were done quick and reckless. It's a test version after all. I've addressed all of the bad points regarding the overall presentation of this demo so far:

- Dialogues cover the whole screen, including the characters. So I've isolated the dialogues in a small window below with a name display of the character who's talking.

- Character sprites show most of the body, which I realized was really awkward. So now, the characters' appearances only show the midsection up to the head, which gave me the opportunity to paint them with more detail and better textures.

-The characters themselves lack, well, 'character'. I've spent several days honing my skills before redesigning them.

- I couldn't give enough effort when doing backgrounds in digital, I dunno why (The backgrounds for casual dialogues and narration at least, not for action scenes) . So I've decided to go traditional with it.

So here's are series of comparisons between the old and the new:
:::OLD:::
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:::NEW:::
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official post #1

VOL.1 PROGRESS: 10% done

Good day ladies and gents! This blog is for 'The Metro' visual novel project. I, the creator of this project, will do my best to keep everyone updated on its progress. As you all know, this is a one man army project, meaning I'm doing everything from writing to character and background illustrations, static and video cutscenes, music and sound effects and the scripting itself.

If ever anyone of you guys want to offer me a helping hand for any of the project's aspects mentioned above, I'd be really damn grateful. But I might be reluctant to accept, because I can't promise financial compensation for it {:-/

The first release will be volume 1, which encompasses the first four chapters. Sorry for the lack of info regarding the progress itself, but I'm kinda in a hurry cuz I'll be leaving later for MMA training. More info will be on the next post! Ciao!

Testing....