malixegames
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How's the development going?
🕑 Added 2023-07-08 01:31:19 +0000 UTCHey guys! This was a slow week, I had to divert my attention for a number of reasons, but I made progress in composing the sets. As I said last week I added the furniture and objects in most of the settings, however I preferred to leave the texturing for a later step.
I want to digress a little bit about this moment in development, it's nothing that satisfies anyone waiting for the finished game, but I want to share it and leave it on record for anyone who's interested.
One thing that bothered me about previous versions of S4H was the lack of artistic quality. I have no art background and no way of telling whether or not my work is attractive beyond my own perception, and realizing that something doesn't feel right is a long way from being able to fix it.
So this time I want to get away from that feeling of unfinished work by maintaining a uniformity in the artistic style of the sets and characters. For the furniture, I chose to use more cartoonish proportions, better matching the characters. For the new textures, I want to better plan the colors and for that I'm going to work the sets together with the characters, thinking about the best integration.
In the meantime, I've started setting up the areas and I think it's likely that I'll create navigation across maps, separating each area. The area of the suburb where the main house is located, in addition to the home of Angel's family, is ready.
The college campus and the downtown area, where are Misty's store, Brendon's father's restaurant, and Wanda's studio, among other places, are almost finished.
The area for the Sackrider sisters' house and the house where Brendon's aunt and cousins live is still missing. I thought about making a seaside district, but I haven't decided on that yet.
There will be 14 locations within these four areas. Most of them will be explorable by one of the four protagonists and you will be rewarded with extra content if you want to explore everything.
However, I will allow alternative ways to play the game for those who are not interested in exploring, or even for those who only want to control one of the characters and have no interest in the others. I've been working on these changes for a while now, they're still experimental, I'll come back to that another day.
Well, that's all I have to say for now. I think the sets are getting ready at a good speed, so I hope we can talk about more interesting things soon.
Until then, I thank you all and wish you a great weekend. See you later.
Comments
MaliXe
Thanks! 😄
MaliXe
Hello! You're right about the importance of a neutral view, unfortunately, I'm a very lonely person and I don't have anyone to help with that. But I count on the sincerity of you, supporters. I just want to have a more defined visual style before showing it to you, untextured objects say very little about the final appearance of the game. I'm glad you enjoy exploring, I feel this is a divisive subject. Initially, I thought of S4H as a Porn Adventure. Today I have the technical ability to make this happen, but I don't intend to abandon those who just want to enjoy a Visual Novel all animated, so everyone will be happy.
Archy_TaxiWhy
Hello, It's always a pleasure to read your progress on gaming. I can't imagine that texturing things must not be the most pleasant thing to do, but I think you're making the right choice to leave it aside for a while and come back to it at another time. We can see that you're progressing at a good speed (which is yours). As for the art, don't let it get you down, you'll find ways to get a good result. There are lots of ways of creating things, even if you're not an artist. I swear I don't know how to make stick figures (I think I'm descended from the architect of the Leaning Tower of Pisa XD). Do you have anyone who can help you get an outside view of the aesthetics of your game ? Of course, this doesn't take away the feeling of personal dissatisfaction, but it does help you to take a step back from your work and to have a neutral, outside view of it. Because when we spend time on something we don't have a neutral opinion on it. I like the idea of several locations to give diversity. The places seem very consistent with the beginning of your story and make you want to discover them. The idea of exploration is something I really like. It's great to see your progress! I'm looking forward to seeing things when the time comes. Kind regards
Mike C
Sounds great already
