Progress? Wait what? YUS

Hallo all, I have SNOW WHITE ROSE RED NEWS.

This news being? I hit a writing stride for the first time ever.

You see, a lot of the reason why SWRR keeps stalling and not being worked on is completely to do with the fact that I was having a lot of trouble with the writing.

The first draft was crap, some may tell you differently, but it wasn't natural enough and the two girls had zero personality.

I went back, developed the two of them a lot more and made a few stylistic changes.

I tried to write then again but couldn't do it, so I put SWRR aside and focused on trying to get Rock Robin done, which I did do a lot of. I drew a tonshit of chibis, finished off Emma and got about halfway through Claudette (Okay I'm very slow, but school really gave me a lot of setbacks).

And then I decided to Rapunzel.

Now Rapunzel had been an idea of mine since I first started SWRR. I knew I wanted to use this world I created for SWRR to encompass a variety of fairy tales. So while working on it I threw out ideas for about 3 other fairytales and how I could go about doing them. Rapunzel was one of those ideas, but that one had to wait for NaNoRenO to come around.

So when it did I put everything else aside and pounced on the opportunity and boy was it the greatest learning opportunity I've ever had.

Of course afterwards I was VERY put out from game making for a long time (it didn't help that I had stupidly joined a group at my school doing the Games4Girls contest as the only gamer in the group I knew the game sucked, but I did try my hardest).

So at this point I hadn't even looked at SWRR in months, let alone attempted to write it.

And then yesterday it just hit me, so I started and the writing style lessons I had learned doing Rapunzel immediately put themselves to use and it was so easy where it had been so hard before.

The problem with SWRR is that I kept pushing this game to use styles that were not my natural styles. I contrived a drawing style (I'm actually planning to redo both girls' sprites to something looser) and I contrived a writing style. The rest was natural to me (especially the GUI and the way I had decided to structure it), but writing and art are two corners of the very important VN triangle.

Now that I have gotten them figured out, however, I expect things to really start to fall into place.

I don't know if I'll finish all the art by the time I have to leave for my study abroad in Japan, but I can tell you that the writing will be done.

Because I am 4/5 done with it. All of Rose Red's side of the writing has been completed and I only need to write the boy events and the first chapter three event of Snow White and it will be done.

I'm pretty damn ecstatic right now.

Wish me luck <3

School is no longer kicking my Ass

So pretty much ever since I finished Rapunzel I have had my ass kicked violently by my last term at college.

Well second-to-last, but I don't count study abroad term...

ANYWAY

So I barely had time to FINISH all my homework to give you a clue to how bad it was.

But it's over now and I'm back from vacation with my family so the rest of this summer is dedicated to two things:

RockRobin

and

Snow White & Rose Red, which althought I haven't been working on it for a while, is very much still going to happen. It's gonna benifit a lot from the feedback I got from Rapunzel which was told in the same style I planned on using for SWRR.

What's amazing is that I started this blog a year ago to help me keep up with information with SWRR, and now I'm still working on it and I'm even in an awesome VN Group, Happy Backwards, which includes a VN maker whom I had admired as soon as I had started going to the community.

Who'da thunk it XD~

Right now in RockRobin I am working on Claudette, a character whom I didn't create, but I did develop. Emma is done except for little things of course and I'd like to take on other characters as soon as I'm done with Claudette. My goal is to write as much of Open Play Mode as I can, as fast as I can so we can get Open Play Mode out with the original release of the game.

My other goal is to start writing SWRR again so that I hopefully get enough to release a demo before my study abroad. Due to my lack of work this summer this should be plausible.... Especially since I should be able to churn the writing out pretty easily since Rapunzel helped me master the storybook style I had been going for.

So here is to a summer that is just as productive as last summer! *CHEERS*

NaNoRenO - Rapunzel

HI DARRR

How have you all been doing? Good, well that's good. So things have been rolling along. Not too much work on SWRR due to this awesome thing called College, and a bit more progress on Rock Robin (new demo was released last month and it really was spetacular!)

So what is this screen shot you see over here?

Well March is NaNoRenO Month and this means that Visual Novel creators are challenged to create a game within a one month time period and I have decided to take part in this under Happy Backwards.

So keeping in the Starling Tales spirit I am doing my own version of Rapunzel, set on the same continent as SWRR, but different kingdoms. I have till the end of March to finish this and I'm using all the help from the rest of HB that I can get.

Currently it is:

The game contains 859 screens of dialogue.

These screens contain a total of 8,856 words,

for an average of 10.3 words per screen.

The game contains 0 menus.

Hello Everyone

Amusingly enough my blog has been found out! Might as well open the doors completely. Though I do warn anyone just reading this I do have a bad tendency to post spoilers on here since I use this blog to organize my thoughts and keep myself updated on the progress.

Speaking of progress CELEBRATION the chibis for Rock Robin are done! I can't believe I actually did this (AH line from Tangled *hears Rapunzel saying it in her brain*).

It's thanks to the Snowpocalypse, because it gave me a VERY rare snow day for my school (who has had now three snow days in the last 30 years). Now I can write again! Yay!

Since very few people do read this and we kinda slightly spilled the beans aaaannnyway I would like to say that those of us who are at the core at working on Rock Robin have formed a VN circle/group called Happy Backwards. It's pretty exciting. I've been working on a branding/logo for class and I just finally think I got it all worked out, so hopefully my teacher and my fellow members will enjoy it.

I'm thinking of maybe starting to work on CGs for the "prologue" of SWRR now as well, mostly because I'm starting to become really happy with how it looks when I play it now. It gives the perfect fairytale feeling when it's read and it doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out. And now that I don't have the chibis to do I can also do some writing for SWRR. I'd like to get the demo done before summer, especially since I might be away in Japan.

Anyway that's all for right now <3

Chibis Chibis Chibis

Only Beau can truly dig those latrines correctly >:

Parody Chibi aside I have been incredibly productive RockRobin wise! I have finished all but THREE chibi linearts for the game and that means I've done a grand total of THIRTY. I'm rather proud of myself XD Unfortuantely I have two essays and one midterm that will be due on the Monday after next weekend so unless I find random time to work on it during this week I won't be able to finish the final three chibis until next next weekend.

BUT! After that I can start writing up some Clau whom I can't wait to write for. I have been dying to write again for RockRobin for a few weeks now, but priorities, priorities. We're hoping to get this done by March, and I'm certainly crossing my fingers. I cannot wait to play it myself.

Happy Belated New Years!

Hello everyone, of course, as to be expected it's been a long time since I've last updated. The reason being many of course.

In general, however, I took a bit of hiatus off of the VN world to go off and be a good friend (paint pictures for xmas presents) and good student (winter term has begun).

In general however I'm back on the horse :D~

As it is still during the term, however, I'm sticking to just helping to finish up RockRobin. SWRR is far from being abandoned. There is music and the prologue's current draft is not going to be changed any time soon (just edited) I'm very happy with it's progress. The projection for SWRR however is not ANY time soon. I may be studying abroad during the summer so I will lose that.

RockRobin on the other hand more than likely will be done by next winter I think. In fact there's a chance we will have it done before summer. I have the guitarist, bass and keyboardist chibis finished which means I just have the vocalists, violinists (all 2 of them) and drummers to go.

After I'm done with those it's back to writing, more than likely Claudette and some Emma band convos.

Also just a little tease. SWRR is being written with the sequel in mind. Yes, sequel. Yes another fairytale reimagined, but until SWRR's demo is out I won't review any details about the next game in the "Starling Tales" series of VNs :)

Long time no Update

Hey! This project is still alive, fear you not :)

School put it on temporary hiatus but I don't know if it will again story wise at least. And why is that? I have completely changed my writing style and it has done wonders!

I have to scrap everything I've done up till now, but the writing was subpar to my usual anyway so I don't mind all that much. I've changed the story to being narrated in the style of fairy tales. And now the story flows out and I don't have to force it (which is awesome!) Already I am done rewriting the Prologue and it's ten times better than it was originally~ (though 800 words shorter)

I've also been working a tonshit on RockRobin :D Emma's events are completely written up and all I'm missing for her are band meeting conversations. I am taking a break from writing that though to do... ART! I have volunteered to do animated chibis for mini games and certain other scenes. I'm almost done with half of them and I'm pretty stoked.

After that though it's on to Clauclau~