WE'VE BEEN GREENLIT

Hello! We're back with another yaoi game in the works :D. We will be properly updating this dev log this time, unlike, ehem, Requiescence. We'll be going back to Kickstarter for this game, so all the support we can get would be great :D.

Logs 1-3 can be found on our own hosted dev blog. Some quick announcements first:

• Sign up for weekly email newsletters to get these updates (and more) delivered right to your inbox!
• Join our Discord to chat with the devs and other BL VN fans~
• Itch page that will have demo uploaded when it's ready!
• LemmaSoft thread!

Casting Calls

Deadline: April 1, 2017 for Rafael and Valora

Casting Call Club | Behind the Voice Actors | Voice Acting Board

Check out the Top 2-3 voice actors we've selected for each character and vote on your favorites!

Features:

• 70,000 words ~7 hours
• Visual Novel, fantasy/mystery/romance/comedy
• Fantasy kingdom setting
• 3 romance options
• English Voice Acting
• PG-13 and R-18 versions

Characters: (more to come ..as they are made !)

Table of Contents

• Log #4: Fancy new visual, official name change
• Log #5: Franz's hair color
• Log #6: Artists found!
• Log #7: Rivian Varrison
• Log #8: [BG] Castle - Main Hall
• Log #9: Kickstarter banner drafting
• Log #10: Franz
• Log #11: [BG] Castle Main Hall - Balcony
• Log #12: Arden
• Log #13: Silas and Valentine's Day Fanart<3
• Log #14: [BG] Balcony (complete); CG #1
• Log #15: Hazel and Trailer Storyboarding Begins
• Log #16: Linnaeus, final love interest!
• Log #17: Character Expressions
• Log #18: Voice Acting Casting Call Open! New Logo!
• 5 Days to Kickstarter! Demo preview~~
• 4 Days to Kickstarter! Music teaser~~
• 3 Days to Kickstarter! GUI preview~~
• $2000 reached on Kickstarter! Some fanart of Linny x Riv
• $2600 reached, young Arden!
• Some more teasery images~
• Handy Dandy KS Rewards Chart!

Log #4: Fancy new visual, official name change

Yesterday, we sent out our FIRST email newsletter! And that newsletter forced us to make some sort of key visual (or other giant header image graphic thing). If you are signed up for the newsletter, you will have gotten to see the new visual (and name change) first :).

The newsletter was sent out fairly late (~10pm EST) because we wanted to make a fancy image. The result is the one you see in the OP, and it took several hours, but it was really worth it. Do let us know what you think of it; like it, dislike it, too difficult to read, etc. This visual is just version 1.

Not only did we have to figure out the color and feel of the image, we had to finally decide on the final name for CAN – I mean COB. That's right, the game is now called "Chess of Blades", otherwise known as COB, like the tasty stuff you eat. We chose this name after throwing several at the people in Discord, with those present giving their opinion on which names they liked best. There will be many such opportunities, so join us in Discord~

Our search for artists (CG/Sprite and Backgrounds) continues, but we will be closing it at the end of this week. We've gotten a couple of responses from the artists we've spammed – respectfully inquired, but we haven't found THE ONE(s) yet. So send in your portfolios by the end of this week (as in Sunday) @_@. Artists have been found! We'll post more about that on another day~

We have basically finished writing the common route, so we are now working on the first of the possible romance routes! It should be done this week.

Log #5: Franz's hair color

What a frigid day today, with sudden snow even though the weather said 0-10% precipitation max. Since it's so cold, we'll take a shallow glance at something warm: character design for Franz, one of our romantic partners.

One of the design questions we had to tackle was: Should we give the characters wacky anime-style hair (color, style)?

Originally, the answer was no. Our characters are NORMAL and RELATABLE, and people *probably* weren't dyeing their hair hot pink or electric blue in the medieval age. However, Dovah loves to refer to characters by their hair color, so the question came up again, and we decided that it would be fine to have colorful hair.

Franz. Here's his character description: Male, 25 years, 6'4, _____ hair somewhat cropped, tanned, traditionally masculine features with defined jaw, light stubble, dark brow, green eyes.

What color should his hair be??

I said YELLOW. Because the Franz in Gankutsuou has yellow hair. If you haven't yet seen Gankutsuou, it's great. Adaptation of Count of Monte Cristo, the textures they use are gorgeous...a really unique art style. But back to our Franz, Dovah said DEFINITELY NO. Because our MC is Blond, and yellow for Franz is apparently the same thing as Blond. Hmph. Another reason for NO to YELLOW hair was that Franz was definitely not a GANGURO.

This conversation spilled over into our Discord, and someone asked "what's wrong with ganguro?"

Someone else then decided to post images of ganguro-styled people that were, let's say, over the top. The original asker kowtowed and begged for them to stop. The person posting images then asked: You tell me...what's wrong with a ganguro?

Now, ganguro done right can be downright beautiful, but just like anything in life, if you go to the extremes, things start to head into the Disaster Zone.

Franz is now the very boring color of BROWN hair.

You'll get to see him soonish. Our artist is working hard on making our characters!

Log #6: Artists found!

Tis a super exciting update today. We have acquired some artists! Two, specifically: one for characters and one for backgrounds. Please give a warm welcome to Paradise (character artist) and Mizu (background artist)!

Here are their DeviantArt portfolios:

• Paradise
• Mizu

We gave some background on the story and reference pics to them, and these are the trial images they sketched for us.

Paradise's Rivian:

Mizu's grand entrance background (first has a chandelier, second does not):

We are pretty darn blown away by how beautiful their sketches are and can't wait until they are completed. We'll be posting some progress pics on twitter and compiled into the newsletter/devlogs, among other places, so stay tuned!

Log #7: Rivian Varrison

Today's log is a little late because I was busy making a trailer for a friend's Greenlight campaign.

Let's meet our grumpy, lovable MC, Rivian Varrison. If you're following our newsletter, you saw his full character design and the beginning of coloring. You also saw how he is CLEARLY a master of disguise. Ala:

You can check out the other two sketches on the archived newsletter.

Rivian
Appearance: Male, 21 years, 5'9, pale, [golden] blond hair almost to shoulders, pretty and slightly haughty features, slim/unmuscular build, violet eyes
Voice: Medium-high, casual, nonchalant, noble, uppity/snide
Personality: Introverted, sardonic, educated, arrogant, but kind of a good guy deep down.

This description is taken straight from our design doc, which we gave to Paradise (our character artist). Can you picture him yet? Imagining his color scheme?

As the announcer at the ball might say: I bring youuuuuuu…………RIVIAN VARRISON!

Don't laugh at our poor baby :(. He tried so hard.

Paradise did such a great job with the coloring. We can't wait for the other characters to be brought to life!

Also please don't make fun of my color composition…I'm probably more colorblind than actual colorblind people. That's how bad my color aesthetics are *sigh*.

As soon as I know more about him, I'll be able to provide more info, such as his likes and actions. Secret obsessions, etc. Unfortunately, Dovah is being real tight-lipped with the whole story, so I can only read a little bit every now and then.

Log #8: [BG]Castle - Main Hall

Today's a background day. Let's see how Mizu has changed that trial sketch into a full blown background. The final background will be a little bit different because we had to make a major revision yesterday/today (Mizu is 12 hours ahead of us), but we can show some of the steps going toward the first version.

Just to remind ourselves of the sketch:

We gave the OK on the sketch because the layout looked great. Mizu then cleaned up the lines.

You can still see the outline for the carpet, but since that will be painted on later, it just has the lines for its edges. They are a little bit hard to see, but they still follow the original sketch, extending all the way forward and up the two staircases. Now time for some pretty line art:

Look at those beautiful flying staircases. There's probably an official term for them, but we enjoy calling them like so. The side balconies aren't in yet, but you can clearly see the intricate baroque-ian we're going for in those rails. Baroque probably also isn't the correct term, but… we just want that old architectural style with all the ornaments, filigree, and excess detail; if you know what the name of the style we're going for is, tell us and we'll switch to it.

Though a lot of background is copy pasta-able…it still takes a while to make half of the background (since it's symmetric, you can just mirror it, yay digital art software).

Checking perspective now to before we color and add more details. Rivian looks a tiny bit giant, but if he was moved down a little and you imagine you're standing on an elevated surface, then it doesn't look wrong.

Aand then we added in the side balconies and did not test perspective again, proceeded to color, almost finished coloring and texturing…and realized that all the characters must be giant and levitating. So poor Mizu has to go all the way back to the lineart stage and fix the perspective.

Luckily, Mizu is a super optimistic and cheery artist, so she is tackling this challenge with all her fiery energy. Visit our Discord to witness her cuteness in person.

Log #9: Kickstarter banner drafting

Announcement: Dev log schedule will change to Tues/Thurs/Sat since we have the Monday newsletter ^w^.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Last update of the week! While our artists are busy working away on characters and backgrounds, us devs are beginning to make the graphics for our upcoming Kickstarter campaign, to be launched around March 5, 2017. Keep on the lookout!

The banners I'm talking about are the themed ones that separate sections of information on a KS campaign.

You can tell how low budget and uncreative we were for our Requiescence banner. We are determined to do better for Chess of Blades! If only slightly!!

(P.S. Since I am absolutely design incompetent, I badgered Dovah to start working on the banners; shhh keep it a secret.)

First version Dovah sent me:

Uhh…those masks….are kinda creepy and not really the kind you would see at a masquerade ball.

Next version:

Eh…the shape of the flag in the back is kinda ugly? It looks way too fat for the text. The cream color is kind of too clashy/plain with the fancy rose and the white text. You also can't see that mask on top of the rose. I almost missed it again while writing up this log.

Next!

Not bad? That rose is way giant though. Again, that mask color is impossible to see. Even though the font is the same as before, it looks especially boring and ugly since there is less stroke/shadow.

I don't know what happened to the red O, but the mask looks a little more visible and the overall feel of the image isn't so off-balance. But the banner itself still looks too skinny/plain?

Now the banner is super fat and the text looks like it is photoshopped badly on top of the banner =.=. We can do different colored masks for the different sections, but the overall look still…blech. Unbalanced.

Needless to say…we are still working on these things ==;;. If anyone has suggestions, we are open!! Please send them! All the help! :D If they are super awesome, we will showcase them all over our KS! (with proper credit of course).

Log #10: Franz

Today we are looking at Franz, one of the romantic interests! And also our (everyone in Discord, Mizu and Paradise) favorite. They have already several fan art pieces of the pair: Gangian (Ganguro (aka Franz) x Rivian).

Taken from the Design Doc

Appearance: Male, 25 years, 6'4, brown hair somewhat cropped, tanned, traditionally masculine features with defined jaw, light stubble, dark brow, green eyes.
Voice: Medium-low, slow/deliberate, flirtatious, breathy/sensual, husky (optionally)
Personality: Flirtatious, sensual, hedonistic, philosophical, secretive, confident, graceful.

Have an idea of what he looks like?

Alright, here's Paradise's sketch.

When we first saw this sketch in Discord, all we got was:

We were confused. Was it a crotch or was it his face?

Anyway, pose is a wee bit too flamboyant for Franz Ganguro's default.

There. Something more like that. Although his crotch area is a little bit *too puffy*, if you get what I mean.

Well, on to hair color! Dovah is super picky about hair color, probably because we were supposed to be departing from the realistic colors…

Too light.

Closer….too light still.

Perfect. It's really hard for us to determine base color since a lot of the look and feel will change with shading. We think Paradise gets a little angry at us with our color pickiness!

<insert lots of wips and color testing. We gotta save something for the Artbook!>

*DRUMROLLLLLLLLL*

We have a pirate!

(p.s. don't forget all these little character squares are temp. since we haven't figured out a nice uniform GOOD LOOKING yet.

Log #11: [BG] Castle Main Hall - Balcony

Let's look at our second background today! It's in the same room as BG#1, just upstairs and looking out over one of the side balconies (into the main hall).

Yup. Pretty much looks like you're looking over a side railing. The only comment Dovah had was "Where's the staircase?" (probably the blue line on the bottom left of Rivian's coat). After we discussed it a bit, we finally decided that it was fine to not see any bit of the stairs/landing, since the hall is big enough. Perspective is hard, especially when we don't Art ourselves ==;;.

Mizu sent us these two pics asking which one was better....and we had no idea what was different between them until she explicitly told us "Check the front railing height!" Should it be by Rivian's waist or his elbow? It was a tiny difference D: Ultimately we decided on elbow-height since he should basically be right up against the railing.

Yay lineart is done! Rivian has become Mizu's official reference sprite. Which is perfectly fair, since he's our grumpy MC. Now that we know better about the whole perspective issue with backgrounds, it is much easier to avoid it, and clean lineart is finished faster. Coloring is still an issue though, especially since Dovah is not around much of the same time as Mizu is (class and timezone difference), so the general background making process isn't as optimized as it could be..yet.

Log #12: Arden

Hellooooo! Today's another character introduction. Speeding them up a little so that they don't run right into the Kickstarter!

Here's Arden (or our little pup Clifford, as we call him). He's one of the romantic interests.

Voice: Medium, gentle, friendly, a bit slow paced, emotional
Appearance: Male, 22 years, 5'11, red hair that's a bit shaggy (around ear length), slightly tan, boyish/gentle features, fairly muscular build, large gold/reddish eyes.
Personality: Gentle, trusting, easily persuaded, strong sense of honor/duty, protective.

He's got a pretty hefty one eh? *looks pointedly*

There we go. A little more normal looking. Not that there's anything wrong with having a big one *wink*

Only now does Dovah remind Paradise that he does not have a RAPIER.

*snicker*

Ahh the normal straight sword handle. Bye bye fancy rapier handle!

Remember how we were super picky about hair color – well, color in general?

Yup. Look at all that color difference. We finally settled on something, but there was a ton of back and forth, Paradise sending tons of pics.

Now, ladies and gents, let me present our cute little pupper!

Log #13: Silas and Valentine's Day fanart<3

First off, Happy Valentine's Day! Or Single's Day. Or Singles' Awareness Day. etc. Well, it's no longer that day for most of the world at this time, but look at our artists' presents to us, for you!

The virgin killer sweater kitty is from Paradise, who used it to announce her return from MIA status. Quite the pleasant surprise. Our Sir Ganguro is from Mizu, who sketched it all excitedly before asking for permission to make Vday fanart :D

Now, onwards to our version of a hell of a butler: Silas!

Sebas-chan (Kuroshitsuji) was definitely one of our references for art style, so, given the setting of COB, of course we had to have our very own butler.

Design Doc:
Appearance: Male, 32 years, 6'2, sleek and short black hair, slightly middle-aged looking, elegant and calm features, grey eyes. HAS WHITE BUTLERY GLOVES BOI.
Personality: Refined, elegant, polite, highly clever/perceptive, somewhat impartial.
Voice: Low, polite, refined pronunciation, confident, butlery

You know, a typical butler. I'm sure your imagination is running wild now over his appearance, so, without much further adieu, I present Silas.

Woops. That's Early Silas. Here's Proper Silas.

Log #14: [BG] BG #2 complete, CG #1

That's a pretty hefty title today. Lots of acronyms and numbers and symbols. Last week, we saw some sketches and lineart of background #2, and today, Mizu sent us the completed version! Time to show off:

If you remember from last week, that mural in the center of the ground floor used to be a nice smiley. I was all for keeping smileys in the backgrounds as a sort of easter egg hunt, but alas, Dovah disagreed :( I'll have to find some other way to sneakily add easter eggs! Keep it a secret from Dovah, :ok:.

Mizu's started work on background #3 now, so hopefully that will be ready for next week. In the meantime…let's look at the background for one of our CGs. I may have mentioned it before, but CGs are being split between Mizu and Paradise, with Mizu doing the backgrounds and Paradise focusing on the characters.

The process for making CGs is:

1. Paradise sketches character pose
2. Mizu sketches background behind pose
3. Mizu creates background (colors/paints, etc.; not line arting for CG BGs)
4. Paradise colors and finishes up characters

It's a little bit of a process, especially since the files have to be passed around (and Mizu is in the opposite time zone). But that just means that Mizu is working on multiple backgrounds at once while waiting for other things to happen (like a character pose sketch for the next CG).

CG #1 is the scene when Rivian's arrival to the grand hall is first announced. He's a shy kid, and everyone keeps staring at him :(

So first, Paradise sketches the pose, something likeee

Next, Mizu sketches the background…

Do you see all those people in the background? Mizu's gotta color all their fancy party clothes. She curses our choice of setting on a daily basis because of all the fine detailing and coloring work.

Dat coloring…We left all the clothing coloring etc. to Mizu. The main direction given was with the lighting (warm, bright, golden). You can see how she's using a painting rather than digital line art style. She's much happier with painting, so maybe we can pull a couple extra CGs out of her… hehe.

Now she passed the CG BG file back over to Paradise, and Paradise colored in Rivian.

Et voila! Our first CG is complete! (There's also a version with his eyes closed like in the background sketch).

While we wait on Paradise to draw our final love interest, Linnaeus (or Linny), there's still Hazel to be introduced. Hazel is this little Kawaii Maid. She's pretty much the only one with actual wild-colored hair. Though she's young, she has a pretty big role in COB.

Appearance: Female, 10 years, 4'8, long pink hair in pigtails or tied back, fairly pale, cute as fuck, lolita maid aesthetic, brown eyes.
Voice: High, innocent, playful, happy, sweet.
Personality: Adventurous, clever, curious, secretive, sweet.

You know, your typical little maid-chan.

She was cleared from the get-go. Probably because Paradise really hates drawing females, so she didn't want to have to go through a bunch of iterations XD.

Hair color took a bit of work…we had an argument over the color salmon.

And then bow/ribbon color…

*phew* she's finally done. Our kawaii little evil demon maid-chan. There were a couple more iterations on her eyes, but I didn't save those pics, and I'm a little too lazy to search back through thousands of logs just to find them. They aren't that interesting anyways.

To trailer storyboarding! Disclaimer: we (as in Dovah) hates storyboarding. I'm neutral to it since I haven't done any of it yet :3.

We want a proper game trailer that's many stories above our Requiescence Kickstarter trailer. If you can't remember what that one was… behold!

Such great production value amirite. One of our friends helped us with it, and we (as in Dovah and him) spent many hours on it, but..alas, our inexperience is clearly displayed.

So we are turning to Amy Smith, the person that helped us with our Requiescence OP. This thing:

Here's what our storyboard doc looks like:

As you can see, we link the folders with assets at the top and the trailer music. The trailer length should be exactly 1:28 (at least, that's the length of the music). And then we start listing out what we want to happen for how long. The times for the 2nd and 3rd bullet points are messed up because Dovah is actively working on the storyboard as I write this log. Who knows if any of what's currently on that screenshot will even be there in the final product! (Well, the logo will be there…like 99% chance).

Nothing too mind-blowing. We haven't actively studied the art of storyboarding, so we're just going off of how we do other design docs. If anyone has input on how they storyboard, it would be great to hear from you.

Hey everyone! Dovah here with your dev logs this week, since Gamma's super busy, and I am a totally awesome team member, so I'm picking up the slack. :D

Today, I'm gonna introduce you to Linnaeus -- the third and final love interest (and my personal bias, cough)! He may seem to have a bit of a rotten personality at first, but he develops a soft spot for Rivian pretty fast.

Appearance: Male, 25 years, 6'2, long black hair (down to waist) tied back in ponytail, pale, elegant/sharp/angular features, thin and lanky build, blue eyes behind rectangular glasses.
Voice: Medium-low, sharp, sarcastic, a bit scornful, quick and elegant
Personality: Harsh, haughty, smug, highly intelligent, perceptive, a little sadistic, dubious morality.

This was his very first iteration. Isn't that hair majestic? I wasn't too fond of the rectangular glasses just because they looked overly modern so I asked Paradise to make them "more old-timey."

...Okay, not _that_ old-timey.

Having his hair in a ponytail is a distinct part of Linnaeus' style, so Para reworked his hair to this glorious state. He rocks it, don't you think?

He also found a brief blond iteration for testing purposes. For some reason, he really reminds me of some kind of French nobleman or something with that hair.

Finished and colored! Isn't he fantastic? Look at those megane~ Say hi to Linnaeus, our sharp-tongued Inquisitor!

Log #17: Character Expressions!

As anyone who's played a visual novel is probably aware of, the characters' expressions are a huge part of the experience – and, when there's no voice acting, they affect how you read the characters' words in your head.

We've been hard at work making (or rather, having our slave artist Paradise make) distinct expressions for our characters. Let's take a look at some of them today!

We like to call this "chipmunk Rivian," or the rejected "annoyed" expression. Isn't he ridiculously cute? We thought this was generally a bit too exaggeratedly anime-ish for our currently more serious style, but it may make an appearance somewhere in the game.

Silas' annoyed expression, or as Paradise likes to call it, "who just broke something?"

Angry Hazel is angry. Everyone else seems to think she looks like a demon, but I'm of the opinion that she's pretty dang cute. Maybe not Chipmunk Rivian levels of cute, but you know, still up there.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE LET PARADISE OFF THE LEASH. Not indicative of final product. =.=;

For all the visual novel developers out there, how do you decide which expressions a character needs? For those of you just play VNs, do you prefer super exaggerated anime expressions with goofy eyes/lines/etc, or a more serious style?

Log #18: Voice Acting, New Logo!

Hey everyone! Dovah here with the last dev log of the week. I'm really excited to say that our voice acting auditions for Chess of Blades are NOW OPEN!

CCC Link:
https://www.castingcall.club/projects/chess-of-blades
BTVA Link:
http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/members/Argent-Games/casting-call/Chess-of-Blades/
Voice Acting Boards Link:
http://voiceacting.boards.net/thread/430/chess-blades-visual-novel-18

We've already gotten a few auditions on CCC, but we're still looking for more! Auditions for these characters will be open until the end of our Kickstarter (about April 10) – there are also 2 more characters who will be added in later on.

Please share with anyone you know who's interested in voice acting! The positions are paid (we're not as broke as we were for Requiescence's VA), and you can see more specifics on our CCC or BTVA pages.

In other news… we're currently working on getting the demo together! As I attempt to un-rust my Ren'Py skills, amusing results occur:

The demo will be released either simultaneously with our Kickstarter, or a little before! Get HYPED!

Finally, we've been working on a new logo! Thoughts?

(5 days to Kickstarter!) Demo Sneak Peek!

Hello everyone! The date for our Kickstarter (March 5th) is rapidly approaching, and so for our special countdown, we're going to be sharing some screenshots for our demo with you. The demo will be released alongside the Kickstarter (or possibly before), so everyone can see what Chess of Blades is all about! It will be free, and roughly 15 minutes in length.

Everyone's favorite puppy, Arden, makes his first introduction! Rivian isn't so happy to see him, unfortunately... these two go way back.

A mysterious man who Rivian meets on the balcony? Who could it possibly be??

Rivian encounters the dynamic duo of Silas and Hazel. At least Hazel likes him.

As a note, the GUI we have shown here (text box, portrait, etc) is all temporary stuff we have for the demo. But the main parts of the game (art, transitions, sound, music) are all working their way into the game... it's so exciting!

4 days to KS: Music Teaser

4 days left until COB's Kickstarter! Today, we want to tease a little bit of our soundtrack, which is currently in the works! The soundtrack for COB is almost entirely orchestral, inspired by a lot of classical pieces, as well as by composers like Jeremy Soule and John Williams. The music for COB is being composed by Alec Sievern, whose portfolio you can check out here!

Teaser 1: Trailer Music

This short clip is from our trailer/cinematic track, so you'll be hearing the full version of it when our trailer is complete! It's action packed and sweeping, so we think you guys will like it.

Teaser 2: Waltz

Our second teaser is from the main waltz in COB. You'll first hear this track in the demo, when Rivian gets his first glimpse of the dancing at the royal festival!

Rivian, of course, hates dancing and swears he's never going to partake in it. We'll see if he makes good on that promise, or if someone persuades him to do otherwise!

GUI Demo Work + Screenshots

Only 3 days left before the COB Kickstarter begins! While the demo is something of an alpha, we still want to make it look nice, so we're replacing the default Ren'Py GUI with our customized version.

The (temporary) main menu screen, still a WIP! Better than the solid grey background that was there before, though… >_>

Fiddling around with a preferences menu in Photoshop. We are by no means GUI artists, but sometimes you have to improvise.

A sneak peek of Franz – with a new quickmenu at the bottom of the dialogue box! Say hi, Franz!

We're very excited to share what we've been working on with you all! It's hard work setting all the basics up in Ren'Py (GUI, sound effect library, sprites and backgrounds, etc) but once we get into the swing of things, production goes by really fast.