already had some scenes done in game, but they were few and early in the script. Now that the script is complete, I've been organizing myself so that the game is built from the inside in the most optimal way possible.

This was a recent decision when I completed the story, I felt that with some twists and shifts I could get more out of the story, since I intentionally left a few things out to make the story work. So I decided to reserve two open slots for two possible routes to continue where the main story left off.

Those who play visual novels are familiar with this: Routes that you play in a recommended (or sometimes strict) order where the story goes down different paths and gets more complex each time, taking advantage of things the previous route did and left off. But I have the problem that this was a poorly thought out decision, it was practically done in days, the supposed 'Harmful Route' was supposed to be the only story available, and it's the one that will be available in version 1.0 of the game, but if at the end of the game I am satisfied with what I did, there are people who liked it and would like to see more development of the visual novel (optional, a generous soul supports me monetarily a little bit.) I dare to expand the story of Harmful Heaven in 1 or 2 more routes. Harmful Route lasts an average of 2 hours (taken out by beta reader reading time) so they are not long stories either, which makes things easier.

There are scenes, themes and characters to be exposed and shine in these two routes, but.... It won't matter much if the first main story is bad! I have to make Harmful Heaven's main story as good as possible so that there is a quality base from the beginning and worth the expansions. All the more reason to give my best effort in this!

The following is not a flowchart, it's more of a super basic guide so I don't get so lost in what I'm going to do in the in-game construction of the story. I make references to important events in the game.

I've done several other things today, but I'll show them later. Dang, I slept very little and woke up with more energy than I should have, I feel like my body is a machine, a very worn out one right now, I'll try to sleep early. The development continues.

Harmful Heaven is a visual novel where the apocalyptic adventures of young Sera and the mysterious Dess take place.

The game has been in development since January 2023, starting with drafts of initial scenes of the story, and drawings of the main characters. It was going to be something much simpler than it is now - The actual game is simple in a way, but it used to be more plain.

With the planet being bombarded, Sera and Dess meet by chance on the way to the boat to heaven, and decide to cooperate to survive. From beginning to end, they will be presented with illogical situations and unhinged events, in a world where bombs destroy normality and take the world into strange facets.

The storyline that is planned to be published first, Dess' Resolution, will focus more on the disturbed woman Desírée, what her name before she died came to mean to the world, and what Dess intends to do from now on.

This is the project with which I've worked more consistently, if I was well disciplined maybe I would have finished it months ago, but I'm still in training, and at a bad time. My computer, apart from being old in terms of specs, is several years old, including the hard drive. I have started to make plans to back up important files, since the hard drive will eventually get ruined one day, thing that in these years i've always fear, because replacing it is not within my monetary reach. I don't know how I ended up with a decent computer in the condition I'm in in the first place.

From here on out, I'm going to take drastic measures with myself. Starting with today, I decided not to sleep and stay awake to make more progress. The script is finalized, and I'm making additions and corrections as I incorporate words into the game. The way I will do things from now on would be more or less like this:

More than 40k words are the ones that were chosen to be the definitive story after writing thousands of drafts in all these months.

Making everything legitimately good is a priority. Harmful Heaven, even if it has flaws, should not overshadow everything and become something that is only talked about negatively. Or, that it's a "meh" game along the lines of "it was entertaining, but nothing more." I have to make this game to be something more than these two things, all these months must have paid off in something, Harmful Heaven has to be something more. Not a masterpiece; that's impossible. I guess a 9/10 is being unrealistic, also 8/10. The best I can aspire to is something a little lower than that.

In other maid-news, I've started using Cohost, a social network that I feel really comfortable with and that looks promising (better be one of the first.). In the future I plan to make a page (not an account, a page) that represents the whole series of projects I'm going to do, but for now, I have this personal account where I talk about various things.

That's really the most important thing I had to communicate, I had no idea how to say it, so hence the inactivity on this devlog. I hope with all my heart to make this project to go ahead, and to go well. Thanks for reading this post.

My old computer has given me countless headaches. Today all of RPG Maker got messed up (and the whole computer too) because Steam Web Helper decided to consume an insane amount of ram and cpu, and I was offline with almost nothing open. Actually this is something normal every day, but it frustrates me because I use the least amount of programs possible so that in my work sessions it doesn't happen, and yet it does.

Something that has kept me "terrified" of getting into making the scenes of the game, is the fact that to insert images (pictures called in the folders) you have to place them with XY coordinates. I would have preferred an interface to place the pictures, position them manually, I hope it's understandable. But, I already realized how the XY coordinates work based on the custom resolution that I have of the game (it is not the base resolution of rpg maker MV). Maybe MZ already improved this. Anyway, now I work with this part without fear.

As it was seen in the screenshots, the backgrounds are very simple, and that's why... I'd better not try to make backgrounds if they are going to be very basic. I have in mind a way to present the visuals in the game without introducing 'normal' backgrounds, only elements like characters or objects. I have to test this way of putting backgrounds, because it will be much better than basic backgrounds from someone who doesn't know how to draw backgrounds. Well, I still have a lot to learn when drawing characters, but at least there I disguise it as best I can.

Those are the midnight comments. I didn't have internet all afternoon, next time I'll make these posts earlier.

Today's image is Dess in her final moments before getting her hair changed.

My colleagues say that her current hair makes her look like a man. It wasn't the intention, but it's interesting. Anyway I consider her current hair much better than what she had before.

All right, bedtime. The development continues tomorrow. My friends were upset when I told them I subtracted sleep hours to work more, and they are right when they were upset. I'm not good at staying awake with sleep anyway.

Over the past few days I've been taking care of the "scenery" for the game, along with inserting tons of story text. The process of this goes like this: Insert text from the script into the game, adding tags so that it displays along with other things, then add the visuals - the sprites, portraits, illustration windows, sound effects and music, and finally test and correct, and leaving it finished when it feels good. 

Only the first scene is complete, so I could see what Harmful Heaven is going to look like when it's finished.... Is it okay for me to speak negatively about my game? Tsukuhime (2000) has a better presentation, with the limitations they had at the time. This one I can hardly consider 'finished'. Is too simplistic, too basic. I don't have the artistic skills for real quality illustrations, nor am I a programmer to customize the game's presentation. game. This is difficult because solving it would imply things like paying a programmer, or learning programming (which I tried a thousand times and failed a thousand times) or dedicating other months to improve my drawings.

Right now, I just hope that the set of elements of the game will overcome the shortcomings and result in something worthwhile.

Only one of these boxes is finished. All the others have only a few illustrations, or are just pure text. And I'm not even  halfway through the script, not to mention that I keep writing scenes to 'fix' things here and there.

Sometimes I tell myself that I had good days, but, that's kind of like a breather to get back to normal. The truth is that I am the most pathetic stage of my life. If I had been successful before, my house would stop, and I wouldn't have to lose sleep over the fact that one day my computer decides not to turn on. Instead, I find myself in exactly the same condition as when I set out to start this, if not worse.

Health first - if I lose my health it's the end. But, I would like to mimic at least a little bit those work days of professional creatives. Those things that are no secret in the art industries. That requires a lot of work and discipline. It's not healthy. But in my case, if I fail at this, I don't know if I'll feel good about what comes next. My case is particular. Besides, I've been inept for a lot longer than I should be, I have to make up for it. I'm not good at staying awake, but I found a way to sleep for a few hours and wake up feeling rested - I just have to stay awake and then go to bed with my phone and alarm set. If I don't give it my all, I won't make it out of this sad cycle I'm in.

I give the estimated completion date for Harmful Heaven as sometime in October. I remember when I first started this and I thought I was going to complete my first game about 4 years ago. Now, I've lost count of how many incomplete projects I have. I will give my all to change that soon.

Now, some drawings:

This is how, after many drawings and versions, the angels will finally look like.

Time to continue the game, the development continues.

I am ashamed to post things frequently (more or less, with a lapse of 2 or 3 days) because what I have done I don't consider something worth showing. HH is not a traditional game, and a lot of the work goes to text, but I also work on things outside of text. I'm going to try to break that embarrassment by sharing a few things I've done.

Something I got to work on trying to figure out what I could change or improve to give it a better presentation. There is the window design, the font, and a change of other interface designs. But there is also the backgrounds.

I don't know how to draw backgrounds. But something I'm a little better at is rpg style maps. I was encouraged to go try that.

These background sceneries are not explorable or interactive, they work as a substitute for traditional backgrounds that cannot be drawn. I think it looks good, my colleagues think so.

"Why would you scare me? You have a stupid face"

There are several things to correct and change about this image, but the idea of the background maps and the front-facing sprites is there.

Plus, the face of this character looks better!

And I added a new font that replaces the base font of RPG Maker MV. It's called Ubuntu Mono.

"Either you're scared of them, or you love them, or you don't care about them."

"Even though they are gods living on earth, that's their social status."

"Although... I'll bet someone has managed to keep something with them."

I got a bug in the posting page and had to press 'Post' or else I would lose what I had written. Apart from all the visuals I have posted, I have worked a lot on the inclusion of text to the game, I have advanced in the development of scenes, I have decided the tracks that I will place and the sound effects that will accompany the scene, I think this could raise a little the presentation of the game, although it can not be seen in screenshots.

Something that I have thought a lot is to make a Maidelen Ch. in youtube where I post a few fotages to share videos in a simple way, but my colleagues repeat me that it is a bad idea, because being a video editor is a whole other subject that I would have to learn  and because HH is a visual novel, not a game with a gameplay that when you see it you say "it looks fun". For the moment I won't do it, but I might make one in order to share progress and general things about this kind of profession, maybe when HH Asassin's Resolution is complete.

I don't think I said things like "the last few weeks have been the hardest in the development of Harmful Heaven" before. It would have been funny if I had always said that and it was like a catch phrase.

After having abandoned other stories or put other projects on indefinite pause, I said 'we have to do something new, something small, something I can handle'. I wanted to go the 'see something new and build from there' route and among several things, I decided to go for inspiration from two manga that I really liked: Girls' Last Tour and Fire Punch. I also took my love with Fallout, and along with that, I went to write the first drafts.

Months later, the 8K word draft grew to 70K words by now. The standard for visual novels are much more, but what I'm trying to say with this was that originally, it was going to be a story without any pretensions, the two main characters were going to be unfeeling beings who see no problem in killing senselessly and making jokes about how bad things are. Everything that is now was built was out of my silly need to make not leave things as something small. It didn't help that, to see what visual novels are like, I played Tsukuhime and Fate/Stay Night Realta Nua. A lot of my preconceptions about how fictional stories work were shattered. (That happens like 2 times a year for me).

The need to turn HH into something more, even if it's just a little bit more, became strong. It doesn't help that when I'm working on something like this, I can't get it out of my head until I give it some sort of "final sentence". I've stopped thinking about my previous projects because of the above, but with HH I always tried to relate it to things I saw in other stories, associate songs with the story itself, when I was with things like the shower just looking at the wall imagining things with HH.... Eurobeatlover says that bets the final game with the two routes will gonna be 4 hours long. This is a big project for me, but because I'm novice. Still, I hope I can feel satisfied when I finally finish this.

And how is it going at the moment?

All the text for the first part of the Dess route is in the game. I have already adjusted a plugin and a pattern, as well as collected the necessary soundtrack and sound effects. I want to finish writing Sera's route to start making the first part of the other one.

Eurobeatlover is someone who really wants everything to have logic and quality. Practically every day we have discussions about how to bring the story to a better end. It is funny that this is the least I will write about in this post, but, those discussions are every day, and last for hours, and they have brought the story to a better end. Thank you, my visual novel elitist. (Joke)  Utsukushi Hana has contributed as well, only less but it is normal, her strength is in drawing, not so much in writing, but she still provides good ideas.

Eurobeatlover keeps telling me that making a demo of this is a bad idea, but.... For several reasons, I'd better dare to do this.

The idea I have with this is: Dess's route Pt1, then Pt2, then the full Sera's route. Contrary to what I planned before, that the game would reach its 1.0 state with the first story complete, in the Sera's route I have put everything I left out because I couldn't put them in the first route, so I can't consider Harmful Heaven as a complete game until both routes are complete.

I am open to whoever is reading this to express their point of view on everything stated I've stated. At the beginning when I was a kid I was hugely into that "you can create games by only yourself! After all these years, um, I guess it's true, but in my case, I can't make a *good* game by myself, and I accept any kind of help to make this project come out as good as possible.

Happy new year 2024. Sorry for not posting any update in several months.

This game started its development (at least, the making of the story script) in January of the past year. Unlike all my incomplete projects, Harmful Heaven was started without thinking so much and without planing. It changed with the time, and now it reached a definitive point. Let's share the progress in three parts:

On technical

RPG Maker has been dropped for this. Harmful Heaven is now being made in Ren'Py.

Inserting the script in the game  (in RM) is tedious and slow. Also mimic the feel of a visual novel. But I was still decided to do all of it in RPG Maker MV... I dropped Windows 10 and install Linux on my PC. Since then, using the computer is 50 % more enjoyable. and much less stressful. I was relieved knowing that RPG Maker MV has native support on Linux. RPG Maker MV can be executed in linux. But the quality of the software there is very questionable. 

So I change to Ren'py, what I should have done since the start, but I didn't because I'm bad in coding, but is what is has to be done. I haven't done big progress in it, but at first sight, inserting the script in the games is so much comfortable, fast and simple. I have trust in the Ren'py community and my capacity to learn, so Harmful Heaven can get fine in technical terms

On the story

The process of the making of the story is like this: This is the story. Is bad. I changed how the story develops. Is bad. I give it an ending. Bad. Drop everything. Now the story is more extended. Is bad. I check and change what I think would improve the story, and a final arc with a new ending. Bad. New route written until the half of it. Is bad. Drop everything, start again.

That's the summary of the process from the past year to today.  The script is in a 'Redo' status, and I want  it to be the last. Is still a fun and frenetic story of the dumb Sera and the dumb Dess fighting in a dying world. What mainly changes is the important moments, all the dialogues, quit and put traits of the characters, more stupid jokes, adding and deleting arcs, and making sure that everything is cohesive.

This is a simple story, but when Harmful Heaven is finally out, I want it to be of a quality that others can enjoy and say "this is fine" at least. This section should be more larger, is the thing I was working the more, but I think this is enough.

On the art

This is 'Good old RPG' Sera. This is gonna be his way of showing. He and the whole game. Novels teach me that with well written words your mind can show you awesome images. And, you know it if you see all the art of this thread... I barely can draw. So the art will be of this simple style, admitting from the start that I don't count with actually good skills. I'll still continue to draw everything (sprites, map-style backgrounds, portraits, etc) but with a new approaching. (Goodbye, every-screen-of-the-game-looking-like-a-(bad)-manga-panel).

And about me, I'm the same, but worse. Thins are going worse. Things in and outside of my control. Is possible that the internet gets cut, and the computer breaks, or get trough months without electricity. Several stuff. I wake up early, and since then I was trying to start up the monitor of my PC, sometimes lasted half and hour, or two hours, but today lasted six hours, just trying to start the monitor. My thoughts in these hours were sad. It was like this since the past year in the end, but is worsening. Like everything here.

This is more to how far I can get, and time doesn't forgive. My PC and internet were in a 'yes' status in these months, but I don't wanted to update this because another post of "the development is hard but I still there" would be just annoying. I hope that with this, the development is now more clear.

Is a matter of going forward. The development of Harmful Heaven continues.