I was feeling really burnt, and some friends invited me to hang out, so I didn’t manage to get as much done as I hoped. Still, I feel like I really needed the break. I managed to finish more of Kindee’s script, so now there are only a few encounters left for me to write for her. I’m not sure why, but her personality seems to have changed a bit as I was writing. Somehow her character became much clearer to me, and she isn’t what I had originally planned. Still, I think she will be interesting to hang out with.

I also got off my butt and posted the Liora concept art. That task list still looks mighty long. Still, progress is progress.

Here are some headshots for Princess Liora, again by Lonewolf. Liora is very determined, and loves everything about politics. She has ambitions for herself and for her planet, Tau Ceti 4. Because Tau Ceti 4 and Tau Ceti 5 have long been rivals, Liora and Elika have also been lifelong rivals. Liora hopes to win the title of Treasurer in the upcoming VRA student elections. Liora is currently dating Prince Calen Ginn Dola ed Wingar of Ceti Alpha 6.

The text on there was kind of irking me, since it was written before most of the story was written.  Then it got edited and reedited and it ended up not really being very clear.  Its still not polished, but at least its been rewritten a bit to be more accurate to the tone of the dialogue in the game.

I realize this is coming really late. Well, to pay the bills gotta manage the day job, which has thrown a few wrenches into my production plans. The coding side, ironically, is coming along well, we’ve managed to script a few effects that I want to use over and over, as well as fix a text rendering issue with muti-line multiple choice menus.

Here are the tasks which we need to finish in the next week:

1. Finish the Kindee story line. That’s about half done. I think most of the material for the Briel and Seta story lines are there, just in note form. There won’t be much dialogue in the Briel story ark anyway.

2. Publish some more art. I have the Liora art, I should go ahead and publish that so people can see what we have.

3. Puzzle battle playtest. I am going to try and get in some polish/balance playtesting in this weekend with me and my “focus group.” I think the game mechanics work fine, I’m a little concerned that the difficulty levels go from easy to insane which means the difficulty needs to be dialed back a bit.

4. Redo the UI elements. I guess I could post a screenshot from one of the dialogue sequences.

5. Some major editing of the Elika sex scene, to make the narrative voice fit the proper tense and narrative point of view.

6. Apply the same changes to the Liora sex scene.

7. Write the Kindee sex scene.  I think I need to watch some <ahem> source material for that one.

8. Redo the art schedule.

9. I dunno, actually have time to PLAY a game and WATCH some anime. Whine whine whine, I know.

10. Steal some funds allocated for production and buy a MGS4 Special Edition PS3.

When we started this project a few months back, I was really uncertain about what this product would look and feel like. I had some vague notions, and some really sketchy concepts back then. I realize that I probably should have flushed out that core idea more, but in our current business model, I have to churn things out quickly. That’s what I like about this kind of work, when you work with creative people, you don’t know what you’re going to get, but what you get is almost always cooler than what you had imagined.