Blogs - CircleCosine

We just finished first pass out of five for processing the script for the demo. First pass includes simple proofreading, checking consistency, and adding more dialog.

Our writer also started a daily word count log. It has helped a bit with tracking progress and overall team motivation. But then art progress is still the biggest motivator of them all. I mean, what is a visual novel without art? Oops that was a spicy take.

Second pass is for cleaning up deprecated code and adding minor features if possible. The word count itself might not move since we're gonna refrain from adding new dialog as new code is being put in.

That's it for this update. Be sure to follow us on Twitter for more frequent (albeit smaller) updates.

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And in case you missed it, this is our itch.io page.

Finally, a small update for in Delinquency, Discipline, and Disorder.

SURPRISE, IT'S JUST A WORD COUNT:

Statistics:

The game contains 6,188 dialogue blocks, containing 47,735 words and 256,033
characters, for an average of 7.7 words and 41 characters per block.

The game contains 28 menus, 720 images, and 81 screens.

Update 32, "Introducing the Kouhais"

Almost a year had past and I'll admit, progress has been stale to say the least. I'm only doing incremental scripting and stuff, AND spending some of my wage for more art. Anyway, this update is supposed to be for February of this year but I just never had the time. My day job is real, so real.

Unofficially dubbed the kouhai system (or maybe minigame) involves getting tasks from juniors and then trying to resolve them, all to keep school morale and prestige (and your student council approval rating) up. Another feature will be trying to get the clubs to train for school, local, regional, then national events. I'll admit this sounds like feature creep but I've already made a prototype of it. orz.

Okay, introducing them now:

Alexandrie Delacroix

Alexandrie is Lin's partner in the Fencing Club. Alexandrie is also their class' older sister figure and is often looked upon by her foreign classmates for advice on how to be more "local".

Claire Mitterand

Claire is Clara's one and only best friend. She is the de facto leader of the Tea Club because Elisa is busy with running the student council. Being the leader of the club also makes her the unofficial right hand of the student council. She is very outspoken and can readily deal with anything troublesome she comes across.

Clara Hollande

The other half of the CL2 duo, if you can call her that. Clara has known Claire since childhood and has always followed her. Some call her Claire's quiet shadow. She likes to sleep and always say she needs sleep despite being fully rested.

Sumire Murasaki, formerly Hana Moriaka

Has a "can-do-it" attitude. She isn't part of any club but rather jumps between the available clubs. She's rather close with Aletta, whom she took the entrance exams with.

Helma Fritz

Quiet but if annoyed, she has no filter. She's very witty as well. Helma Fritz is a recent arrival. She seeks to improve her magic skills but also to try being independent. Maybe she's just running away. Of all the clubs she could have joined, she joined the tea club explicitly because it's quiet and serves warm food.

Meilin Li

Meilin is another foreigner but unlike most of the students in the academy, she intends to stay in Concordia for the rest of her life. She's really good at fencing and in knowing so, the academy offered her an athletic scholarship for her skills. Personality wise, she is friendly and is described as sweet by the guys in her class.

Aletta Marconi, formerly Rafaella Marconi

Aletta hails from the Venetian Republic. She wished to be a gondolier but witches are not qualified to do so, allegedly to be fair with the mostly "normal" industry. Unknown to many, she's also a pop culture enthusiast, and dances in front of the mirror ala idol at times.

Natasha Pavlova

Natasha hails from the Russian Far East. She took the entrance exams in neighboring Japan, hoping to be admitted to the academy there but was surprisingly referred to Concordia instead. She doesn't know if she wants to immigrate here or just finish her studies then leave. Despite her calm demeanor, she sometimes say things that are out of the line.

To those who are currently or were formerly part of the dev team, you may have noticed that there are others missing. For the record, the following were dropped from the roster: Nohemi, Clarissa and Nina. Their respective slots will be taken up by male characters because reasons. The kouhais were originally designed by Aqua. Present sprites were done by Yokura

Next update would be about new art, maybe in another six months, definitely not a year (i hope).

Thanks for reading!

Update 31, A.k.A "IndieDB Exclusive Edition".

We've been doing well. Sprite redesigns for the kouhais are being blitzed through first before their actual sprites. Shown above is smug Helma, and Natasha (thank you /evn/ for information and usage of her name).

Backgrounds are still at a standstill. It never moved since our colorist had to excuse himself for family reasons.

Script? Nah, it's still largely the same. There's going to be some rewrites though as I'll attempt to fix the secondary characters' introductions. Aside from that, a major issue right now is sprite height and placement. There's like 3 groups of sprite sizes in this project right now, 2200, 3100, and the recent 4000px, which the newer sprites come with. I'll probably discuss in detail how I'm going to overcome this hurdle but for now, let me sleep. lol.

I should make a page for this game here.

Once again, low-rate production for Project 2059 is running. What was planned for 8 months will now be spread over a period of 12-16 months, provided there are no hiccups along the way.

A summary of updates can be found here.

A.K.A The possible downfall of Project 2059.

Things are getting bleaker and bleaker for this project right now. I'm putting the project in hiatus until people start reporting back. For the meantime, funds will be reallocated to a new project. Development of this project will be done in near radio silence because, "hey, it's just another BxG game."

Welp. Worry not, if you actually did though. Project Rothera will still be active for a number of collaborations, God willing all these projects push through.

Remember that WIP battle engine I was bantering on about last blag post? Well, here it is. It's called Sheepstorm. Sheepstorm is a battle framework for Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine. Ren'Py devs can get it here. It is available under a CC-BY-NC license.

For now, it features RPG stats, AOE skills, and a simple victory condition. Provisions are available for sfx and gfx. Might as well add voice and attack dialogue next.

Hmm. If you want to join me in improving this engine by adding better skill gfx, please send me a message. Any help is appreciated.

All is going well in the coding front. I have succeeded in developing a rather rudimentary battle engine with components usually centered on using RenPy's Screen Language. Thanks to that, I was able to avoid complex Python code.

As of today, it features a fighter class (containing stats lol), a skill class (for obvious reasons) for single-target and AOE skills, buffs, and animations. I'm currently adding formatting and normalization functions to engine, maybe add HP/MP bars under or above each character.

The last hurdle would be animating AOE skills because that really would require Python code, unless it's just another for-loop lol.

Eleven minor characters will get 7 sprites each. Four of them will have two sets of outfits. These minor characters are essential for the "student council-sim" part of the rebuild project. $45 have been sent so far, for a total of $425 something.

More updates soon for this project.

Project Rothera has landed on new territory, this time, it's IndieDB (did I stylize that right?) It's a new year and we're about to make progress.

As of posting, I'm steadily moving through lines of code trying to optimize this free-to-use battle engine for my game. Work on new sprites is also in the works, we have 11 characters receiving 3 sprites each. New sprites for the game is projected to cost $450 or more. Additional sprites for the battle engine might be procured at a later time.

Background recolor is progressing at a rate of 1 BG every 2-3 weeks. I can say I'm satisfied with the coloring but the original line art's perspective errors are too noticeable.

Anyway, back to work.