September 29, 2019, 2:14 pm,
By Zaima Atoshi
Game Development? BWAHAHAHAHA
So I was fresh out of university, with no prospect on life, so I needed to do something for my portfolio and I needed it fast. A product, a project, something to talk about.
I did what I thought was going to be just that: I started making a visual novel game. What followed after was a development cycle of hell.
In editing hell that is. This is a summary of my development process.
-------
Rather than coming up with a new idea, I decided to transfer a old game into the unity engine. I had 4 tasks to be completed.
Through out my project, I employed these tools.
Initially I wanted to use one of the addons for Unity that lets one use twine features of branching path and graph. Particularly Yarn Spinner. But converting from one to another just lead to the graphs being tangled up in a line art fashion. I decided it would be better to just opt for a full fledged visual novel engine like fungus then to untangle that stuffs.
(which just lead to more manual work, and unfortunately, I have found other that seemed to take twine really well...I don’t know why I didn’t find them before)
At first I was copying and pasting it from graph to graph, - Then I figured out about proofing format and Illume proofing format. which made copying and pasting so much better.
(Why didn’t you just find a proofing format that exported it to doc? well simple, I didn’t know and I am dumb)
Fungus has 2 different ways functional way. One function was dialogue command, where one states the character portrait, position and dialogue to be said at the time. Another is the Conversation system where instead of one character, it uses different syntax Lua? to play out the conversation.
I opted for the second one, I was copying and pasting all of conversation from twine’s file and then modifying them to add character emotion, position, etc.
Afterward. I went through the text and checking if the writing was write in both the editor and if it appeared correctly in the game.
It led to a questionable stagnation of 1 months,
Fungus has a certain pattern that figures out when a character finished its dialogue. Particularly it uses enter character and the “:”. Anything else would hand the dialogue to someone else or worse, the character would read the syntax of the engine itself. In trying to add subtle emotion to the characters, I ran into the latter problem.
I was being questioned about it by my family about when the game will end. So I had to hand the editing part off to my older sister.
I wanted to create simple cell graphic style of character design. So I opted to use Vector graphics for the character design. Initially for Kent I referenced his pose from a direct picture of my fam. Then for later characters I used 3d models to pose the characters and render out line art to be used. attached to the head separately. Proportion had to be right in this case.
Initially I was grabbing off from SketchUp warehouse, Using another software (p4d) to export to SVG vector format. But later I decided to change it all together because I couldn’t exactly grasp the licenses and the rights. So we opted to use real photography and modify them out using GMIC plugin that came with Krita. The goal was to keep them simple colours and stylistic. Similar to the background used in Voltage game.
We mostly took picture around University of Toronto because it has a Victorian aesthetic to it. Alongside used Blender and 3d models from Blendswap and OpenGameArts to create more of the custom background and the sorts.
As I have said before, I was stuck on manually copy and pasting words one file to another. I should have found other unity assets that lets you use twine, or exported it to word document first to do a full proof editing.
Initially I was using my Galaxy Note to draw the character and transferring them to Affinity Design to do a vector version. Doing illustration by mouse is manual work. Specially when doing line variation to the character. I later got a tablet that let me use pressure. So this problem was solved.
I also used 3d models for efficiency and accuracy of pose.
Initially, The game was rejected by play store because I integrated unity ads & analytics and I failed to ask permission to the user for collection of data.
Unity ads works by collecting data and setting personal ads for individuals, so that meant I must comply with the GDPR. Which required you to create a privacy policy/general agreement document, and explicitly ask permission to the user to collect data. At first the whole process felt too tedious, fortunately there were generators that helped on how to write these documents.
So I went online, used a privacy policy generator, put it on my GitHub. and then linked it to the game so that the user would understand
The first problem has come to hunt me throughout the project. This time it was obvious that the characters were actually speaking the syntax.
So not only did I have to see if the dialogue is good, I also had to fit the text to Fungus system of conversation. Which led to a lot of experimentations with the text. I also considered tweaking the regex to see it would solve my problem, but later I decided against it.
A lesson that I continually fail to learn, or end up doing it anyway as much as I try to avoid it is. Learning and doing. Learning and doing things together isn’t really a good idea. Researching things first is a much better path to a happy process, find something that is stable.
I didn’t find fungus stable as I thought I would, It might be my luck though...because fungus was used in successful visual novel like Dream Daddy.
Sound of rain was supposed to be a simple game, I thought of abandoning it but I had to see it through because else I won't get a headstart. Somehow, I cant help but feel like that it was a small window to what game development felt like.
It isn’t my first game development though, My first game development was a parody of guitar hero and that was when Unity was at version 4.2
I had my troubleshooting time with that game too. But I remember having so much fun with that.
This one was not like that at all...It was grueling time spent on tweaking the dialogues.
Sound of Rain Development Blog
The spiral down to planner and stationary.
Game Development? BWAHAHAHAHA
September 29, 2019, 2:14 pm,
By Zaima Atoshi
So I was fresh out of university, with no prospect on life, so I needed to do something for my portfolio and I needed it fast. A product, a project, something to talk about.
I did what I thought was going to be just that: I started making a visual novel game. What followed after was a development cycle of hell.
In editing hell that is. This is a summary of my development process.
-------
Rather than coming up with a new idea, I decided to transfer a old game into the unity engine. I had 4 tasks to be completed.
Through out my project, I employed these tools.
Initially I wanted to use one of the addons for Unity that lets one use twine features of branching path and graph. Particularly Yarn Spinner. But converting from one to another just lead to the graphs being tangled up in a line art fashion. I decided it would be better to just opt for a full fledged visual novel engine like fungus then to untangle that stuffs.
(which just lead to more manual work, and unfortunately, I have found other that seemed to take twine really well...I don’t know why I didn’t find them before)
At first I was copying and pasting it from graph to graph, - Then I figured out about proofing format and Illume proofing format. which made copying and pasting so much better.
(Why didn’t you just find a proofing format that exported it to doc? well simple, I didn’t know and I am dumb)
Fungus has 2 different ways functional way. One function was dialogue command, where one states the character portrait, position and dialogue to be said at the time. Another is the Conversation system where instead of one character, it uses different syntax Lua? to play out the conversation.
I opted for the second one, I was copying and pasting all of conversation from twine’s file and then modifying them to add character emotion, position, etc.
Afterward. I went through the text and checking if the writing was write in both the editor and if it appeared correctly in the game.
It led to a questionable stagnation of 1 months,
Fungus has a certain pattern that figures out when a character finished its dialogue. Particularly it uses enter character and the “:”. Anything else would hand the dialogue to someone else or worse, the character would read the syntax of the engine itself. In trying to add subtle emotion to the characters, I ran into the latter problem.
I was being questioned about it by my family about when the game will end. So I had to hand the editing part off to my older sister.
I wanted to create simple cell graphic style of character design. So I opted to use Vector graphics for the character design. Initially for Kent I referenced his pose from a direct picture of my fam. Then for later characters I used 3d models to pose the characters and render out line art to be used. attached to the head separately. Proportion had to be right in this case.
Initially I was grabbing off from SketchUp warehouse, Using another software (p4d) to export to SVG vector format. But later I decided to change it all together because I couldn’t exactly grasp the licenses and the rights. So we opted to use real photography and modify them out using GMIC plugin that came with Krita. The goal was to keep them simple colours and stylistic. Similar to the background used in Voltage game.
We mostly took picture around University of Toronto because it has a Victorian aesthetic to it. Alongside used Blender and 3d models from Blendswap and OpenGameArts to create more of the custom background and the sorts.
As I have said before, I was stuck on manually copy and pasting words one file to another. I should have found other unity assets that lets you use twine, or exported it to word document first to do a full proof editing.
Initially I was using my Galaxy Note to draw the character and transferring them to Affinity Design to do a vector version. Doing illustration by mouse is manual work. Specially when doing line variation to the character. I later got a tablet that let me use pressure. So this problem was solved.
I also used 3d models for efficiency and accuracy of pose.
Initially, The game was rejected by play store because I integrated unity ads & analytics and I failed to ask permission to the user for collection of data.
Unity ads works by collecting data and setting personal ads for individuals, so that meant I must comply with the GDPR. Which required you to create a privacy policy/general agreement document, and explicitly ask permission to the user to collect data. At first the whole process felt too tedious, fortunately there were generators that helped on how to write these documents.
So I went online, used a privacy policy generator, put it on my GitHub. and then linked it to the game so that the user would understand
The first problem has come to hunt me throughout the project. This time it was obvious that the characters were actually speaking the syntax.
So not only did I have to see if the dialogue is good, I also had to fit the text to Fungus system of conversation. Which led to a lot of experimentations with the text. I also considered tweaking the regex to see it would solve my problem, but later I decided against it.
A lesson that I continually fail to learn, or end up doing it anyway as much as I try to avoid it is. Learning and doing. Learning and doing things together isn’t really a good idea. Researching things first is a much better path to a happy process, find something that is stable.
I didn’t find fungus stable as I thought I would, It might be my luck though...because fungus was used in successful visual novel like Dream Daddy.
Sound of rain was supposed to be a simple game, I thought of abandoning it but I had to see it through because else I won't get a headstart. Somehow, I cant help but feel like that it was a small window to what game development felt like.
It isn’t my first game development though, My first game development was a parody of guitar hero and that was when Unity was at version 4.2
I had my troubleshooting time with that game too. But I remember having so much fun with that.
This one was not like that at all...It was grueling time spent on tweaking the dialogues.
The spiral down to planner and stationary.
Sound of Rain Development Blog
Game Development? BWAHAHAHAHA
September 29, 2019, 2:14 pm,
By Zaima Atoshi
So I was fresh out of university, with no prospect on life, so I needed to do something for my portfolio and I needed it fast. A product, a project, something to talk about.
I did what I thought was going to be just that: I started making a visual novel game. What followed after was a development cycle of hell.
In editing hell that is. This is a summary of my development process.
-------
Rather than coming up with a new idea, I decided to transfer a old game into the unity engine. I had 4 tasks to be completed.
Through out my project, I employed these tools.
Initially I wanted to use one of the addons for Unity that lets one use twine features of branching path and graph. Particularly Yarn Spinner. But converting from one to another just lead to the graphs being tangled up in a line art fashion. I decided it would be better to just opt for a full fledged visual novel engine like fungus then to untangle that stuffs.
(which just lead to more manual work, and unfortunately, I have found other that seemed to take twine really well...I don’t know why I didn’t find them before)
At first I was copying and pasting it from graph to graph, - Then I figured out about proofing format and Illume proofing format. which made copying and pasting so much better.
(Why didn’t you just find a proofing format that exported it to doc? well simple, I didn’t know and I am dumb)
Fungus has 2 different ways functional way. One function was dialogue command, where one states the character portrait, position and dialogue to be said at the time. Another is the Conversation system where instead of one character, it uses different syntax Lua? to play out the conversation.
I opted for the second one, I was copying and pasting all of conversation from twine’s file and then modifying them to add character emotion, position, etc.
Afterward. I went through the text and checking if the writing was write in both the editor and if it appeared correctly in the game.
It led to a questionable stagnation of 1 months,
Fungus has a certain pattern that figures out when a character finished its dialogue. Particularly it uses enter character and the “:”. Anything else would hand the dialogue to someone else or worse, the character would read the syntax of the engine itself. In trying to add subtle emotion to the characters, I ran into the latter problem.
I was being questioned about it by my family about when the game will end. So I had to hand the editing part off to my older sister.
I wanted to create simple cell graphic style of character design. So I opted to use Vector graphics for the character design. Initially for Kent I referenced his pose from a direct picture of my fam. Then for later characters I used 3d models to pose the characters and render out line art to be used. attached to the head separately. Proportion had to be right in this case.
Initially I was grabbing off from SketchUp warehouse, Using another software (p4d) to export to SVG vector format. But later I decided to change it all together because I couldn’t exactly grasp the licenses and the rights. So we opted to use real photography and modify them out using GMIC plugin that came with Krita. The goal was to keep them simple colours and stylistic. Similar to the background used in Voltage game.
We mostly took picture around University of Toronto because it has a Victorian aesthetic to it. Alongside used Blender and 3d models from Blendswap and OpenGameArts to create more of the custom background and the sorts.
As I have said before, I was stuck on manually copy and pasting words one file to another. I should have found other unity assets that lets you use twine, or exported it to word document first to do a full proof editing.
Initially I was using my Galaxy Note to draw the character and transferring them to Affinity Design to do a vector version. Doing illustration by mouse is manual work. Specially when doing line variation to the character. I later got a tablet that let me use pressure. So this problem was solved.
I also used 3d models for efficiency and accuracy of pose.
Initially, The game was rejected by play store because I integrated unity ads & analytics and I failed to ask permission to the user for collection of data.
Unity ads works by collecting data and setting personal ads for individuals, so that meant I must comply with the GDPR. Which required you to create a privacy policy/general agreement document, and explicitly ask permission to the user to collect data. At first the whole process felt too tedious, fortunately there were generators that helped on how to write these documents.
So I went online, used a privacy policy generator, put it on my GitHub. and then linked it to the game so that the user would understand
The first problem has come to hunt me throughout the project. This time it was obvious that the characters were actually speaking the syntax.
So not only did I have to see if the dialogue is good, I also had to fit the text to Fungus system of conversation. Which led to a lot of experimentations with the text. I also considered tweaking the regex to see it would solve my problem, but later I decided against it.
A lesson that I continually fail to learn, or end up doing it anyway as much as I try to avoid it is. Learning and doing. Learning and doing things together isn’t really a good idea. Researching things first is a much better path to a happy process, find something that is stable.
I didn’t find fungus stable as I thought I would, It might be my luck though...because fungus was used in successful visual novel like Dream Daddy.
Sound of rain was supposed to be a simple game, I thought of abandoning it but I had to see it through because else I won't get a headstart. Somehow, I cant help but feel like that it was a small window to what game development felt like.
It isn’t my first game development though, My first game development was a parody of guitar hero and that was when Unity was at version 4.2
I had my troubleshooting time with that game too. But I remember having so much fun with that.
This one was not like that at all...It was grueling time spent on tweaking the dialogues.
The spiral down to planner and stationary.
Sound of Rain Development Blog