Jaime Log Day 1, 2:

I was out at a friend's house this weekend, but I have been working on character concept sketches and am about to read up on Ren.py. I have work M-W and will have less time to work on the game, but I will get some actual character art in the next couple days!

This sounds great! Good luck!

I love the story concept it's super original !!

That's a really rad concept with a lot of potential! I'm looking forward to it!

I'm so very ready for this, great concept and I'm looking forward to see the end result!

Jaime Log Day 3: (IMAGE HEAVY, SORRY)

HeyyyOOO I had quite a lot of work today, gotta love them deadlines,,

Today I mostly did some character design concept sketches of the four horsemen + all possible Love Interests (ooooh! <3)

Sketches of Death, which has been tricky, because I played her role in the original play and I'm trying to not make her look like me. Earlier sketches were way too similar but I think I'm diverging! Also, Beatrice is in the corner. I wonder what her deal is!

Here's War (in the beanie), Pestilence (in the bowtie), and Famine (in...that hair). I also tried to stick to but also deviate from the people who played them in the original play. It helped make them pretty funky.

Vi! One of the date able characters. Her middle eye has winged eyeliner on both sides and it's important. I worry about being restricted with expressions by her mouth, but also I want to be more monstery than not.

Michelle, another possible love interest. She's a buff angel. You'll notice both of the last two girls sort of have a more and less human form. There could be possibilities of fun expressiveness that causes them to transform into their more "true to the being" forms.

NOW for kinda test sprites! I want to do this whole game in traditional watercolors, which will be a fun challenge, probably especially with sizing. So, while getting a feel for these characters I painted these. All colors (and designs) are currently unofficial as I did not blend any colors.

DEATH

MICHELLE

BEATRICE

Ok it is time for me to sleep! I have another busy day tomorrow. I'll probably just make test colors of the other characters. Can't sit down and get into a good meaty session until Thursday. See you then! Good luck everyone!

Vince Log 1/Overview

Today's music;

-Angel Beats soundtrack

-A potluck of spotify playlists (with things like Crystal Castles, P.O.S, The Dear Hunter, and John Coltrane)

Writing, per usual. Nothing too interesting, was pretty hype to get sketches today. The way I thought of the characters was a little different, but Jamie's concept art is pretty sweet. I'm a big fan of all their sketches so far, but especially liked how Vi, Michelle, and Beatrice looked. I gave Jamie pretty vague descriptions and they all look unique and bold, which is cool. The Horsemen are neat spins on the people who played them in the stage show, which was cool to see. Having visuals is really great, helps both of us with the process (them more than me, obviously).

As far as the big picture, it's basically getting out as much of a rough draft as I can until the two of us feel like the first chapter is fine. Then it'll be a whole lot of editing. Probably a week or so of writing and then spend the next few days editing. I'm one of those people who edit as I go too (write a page or two, chill, read and reread, edit) so we'll see.

The beginning of the writing process was making the cast; which are the characters you've seen from the concept art. The Horsemen were a given but we needed to flesh them out more--in the original play the were a little too flat considering it was only had a 10-15 minute run time. I was sure that I wanted to do either Leviathan/Behemoth/Ziz for one of the love interests but I figured Leviathan would be the most fun to work with. I originally considered just having those three be the love interests but that felt like a cop out. Michelle is just a take on the archangel Michael, and Beatrice is....a mystery, I guess. It's not too hard to figure out what she's from if you've seen a particularly bad anime with Steve Blum. ;)

Rest of the writing has just been putting on music and seeing where it goes, there's a kind of outline we've talked about but most of it will just be seeing what fits. I've been looking for album recommendations while I write, so if you dig music lemme know.

Thanks for reading this wall of text,

-Vince

Jaime Log Day 4:

Another work day more busy than usual! So I was tired.

Today I:

• Did some sprite lineart and made a sketchy bg to test upload
• Went through ren.py's tutorial thing
• Checked out all them script files to see what was there
• Made a music inspo doc! And my brother actually made some hilarious "Emotional Moment" music for us (well, I think it's funny)

Jaime Log Day 5:

I gotta get ready for many image resizing ADVENTURES

other updates from today:

• resizing really is fine i'll just be adjusting a lot of images
• made a height doc to help with resizing, all the sprites can be compared before i can save them into their own image
• read a lot more on python! messed with the code, positioning, display and such

good luck with the rest of the writing! also yes, Sprite Sizing, is FUn. it's exciting to see it in game!!

Vince Log 2

Today's Music;

-'Without My Enemy What Would I Do' by Made in Heights

-'I Don't Think It Is' by Say Anything

-'Human After All' by Daft Punk

-a hodgepodge of other songs/bits of albums

Today was mostly about making the big picture outline. I made the outline for the entire first chapter. Whether we get that done remains to be seen, but I hope we'll get a good chunk in. A lot of talking to Jamie about what will/won't work, what flags should be used, how many flags, etc. There was talk of combination point/flag system. If we want the whole good/neutral/bad ending. For now it's looking like one 'flag' for each potential love interest and then a final choice which will later cement your route.

I'd say as far as the script is concerned we're coming to the first flag. Now that the skeleton's done I can hit the ground running with the rest of the writing. After a break I'll write through the first flag and then at least have an establishing scene with the second love interest. The optimist in me says that I should write through the scene with the last love interest. We'll see.

Thanks so much for reading,

-Vince

Jaime Log Day "A Bunch of Them"

Hey everyone! I've been painting a lot. A lot. All of the characters have one sprite (other expressions will be edited on later) and I have a handful of bgs and cgs for the story so far. Having some contrast issues with this scene but I might make the background duller. Once I get the story out, I want to add pauses and flair to the text. Also, haaa, Famine's name will probably have to be light gray.

Loving simple sweet ren.py. Want to change that font soon.

<3

Jaime, New Log, New Day:

Work week started again, but I've been putting more dialogue into the script, with notes on sounds effects. I'm realizing how much facial expression changing is to me, because the scenes become so much clearer and more animated even with a small mouth change. I think my new goal will be to photoshop enough expressions for these scenes! It's a bit harder with scanned in art, because I have to keep it looking painted. The entire Chapter 1 might not be done, but it will probably be more fun and coherent to get through with expressions.

I'm excited to try the image scrolling function...

Other notes: It sure is hot out right now.

This seems so cool, and I love the art aesthetic! I can't wait to play it

Vince Log

Music over the past few days;

-Save Rock And Roll by Fall Out Boy

-This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About by Modest Mouse

-Kikuo Miku 2 by Kikuo

-Handshakes with Snakes by Apathy

-various other tracks/bits of albums

Got a lot of writing done in the past few days, all of the characters have been introduced, and all of Vi's/Bea's scenes are done. Jaime talked to me about only having a really good first few scenes and that the whole first chapter would be a lot, which I agree with. Because of this I've taken to polishing and editing what's already there instead of finishing off the initial chapter. After taking a day or two off from writing over the weekend I found some lines that didn't really work (often dumb jokes/references), and some lines were confusing on the first read. Even if I've read the script over a bunch what matters is the first read--if the reader doesn't get it on their first time the impact's probably lost. Obviously there's a lot to be said for subtly in a script but if the wording itself doesn't make sense then that needs to be fixed. Still a good chunk of editing to be done, and a lot of talking to Jaime about what is working for us and what isn't. Also when the editing needs to stop so they can put the final version in the game.

Thanks again for reading,

-Vince

Vince (probably) final log

Music;

-We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse

-various vocaloid tracks

-various Prof tracks

The editing process was fine tuning at this point, rewording some stuff for clarification, polishing some details etc. The only major change was a branching dialogue bit towards the end that got added. Other than that I'm leaving this in Jaime's very capable hands. I can't wait to see the whole product outside of my script, as I've only seen bits of it right now. This has been a wild ride and I'm really happy they asked me to hop on this project. Hopefully the bits we have come out alright and we continue working on it. Good luck to everyone in the final stretch of your games! I hope you enjoy ours!

And for the (maybe) final time;

Thanks for reading,

-Vince

This Sure Is A Log

Sorry for being so silent! This whole second week became a weird mix of Actual work things happening, family things, friends visiting, and everything being too warm in general. I'm working right now on getting a bit of the game in for the deadline, and then will probably update it soon soon after! :)

-Jaime