Heya, folks! Chief here with… GET OFF THE KEYBOARD, FUZZY! Crikey, I can’t go five minutes without him deciding that the best place to sleep is my keyboard. He’s finally found a place between my keyboard and the monitor, but that gives him the perfect place to swipe at my fingers as I type. There’s only so far adorable can take you… At least he is giving me more ideas for Alexi. Anyway, back to the update!

Wordcount: 3411 (This week was mostly focused on getting Brilliant Shadows and RA: Spark off of my books, so I didn’t get as much writing time as I’ve been in coding hell. Good news is that they should be off my plate soon and full efforts will return to Fates. Going to start my marathon. My goal is to get 100,000 words done before the end of March. I want all of the core done for the voice actors.)

Merchandise shipping: Weather and the front office made all of my shipping materials take forever to get to me. They held it for two weeks without telling me… Anyway, I’m getting the stuff in the mail this week.

Sprite update: Almost all of the sprites are done! Only two supporting characters, both of whom are unlikely to survive to the end of Fates, are awaiting to be finished (currently sketches) and Natalie’s sprite needs to be started. That will bring our final cast to… 21 people. Here’s one of the finished sprites that was just delivered to me, another one of the minor characters you will meet in your journey. Bonus points to those people who can recognize the character as she belonged to an apprentice of mine who had to quit for health reasons.

Last week’s questions: To all the folks who have sent me comments, messages, and e-mails, thank you so much! I’m behind in getting all the responses out, but I have read and appreciate everyone’s feedback. Right now, the pro-Name protagonist group has a pretty dominate lead in that aspect. I’m going to let the sister rivalry go forward. Now, the three-way fight for the route isn’t going as cleanly. It’s a pretty close fight between Syl and Yoi. Turns out very few people love Lenna after the Sol debacle, so she’s been eliminated. I’m gonna let another week go for more opinions. Also gonna talk about Yoi this week.

Voice acting update: One week left to audition for the 6 largest roles in Fates! There have been a staggering amount of auditions so far. If you don’t get chosen, there will still be chances to work with the studio for the large number of supporting characters. I mean, Faye isn’t even part of the first run. Tons of awesome characters still are coming.

Today’s update is going to be about Yoi since she’s currently leading the pack. This is a bit of an old update, but it is still a good one, pertinent, and pretty likely nobody ever read it back in 2012. I updated it to match Fates.

Name: Yoi Mono

Age: 20

Gender: Female

Species: Half-Elf

Birthday: November 15 (Earth Standard System)

Favorite Pet: Bubbles

Bio: The daughter of a Katajion Director and granddaughter of the Trilani Rangers’ patriarch, many thought that she would have a life of ease. However, her father was assassinated in office while she was only three. She was then sent to live with her mother as an elven ranger trainee. Many in the community resented Minako Mono’s husband, leading to her exile from the world of Troplain. The council also wished to banish the young Yoi, but the Patriarch refused, saying she had commit no offense and would permit the girl to continue training as a ranger and the eventual heiress of the Trilani Rangers.

Yoi grew up with very few friends, suffering the scorn of being a half-elf in a pure blood society. Nonetheless, she tried her best to make friends, often coming off as hyperactive and talkative to conceal her loneliness. In an effort to help his granddaughter out and get her away from the racism, a deal was brokered between the Katajion Directorship to permit Yoi to attend the Space Academy, making her the first Trilani ranger to also attempt to be a combat pilot.

After her academy days, Yoi was assigned to a squadron with former friends Lenna Edeck and Sol Hackett. Unbeknownst to them, Yoi was on an assignment for the Trilani Rangers. Her mission was to assassinate Commander Anton Rogers. After her mission failed due to shifting mission objectives, Yoi accepted a mercenary job as Commander Roger’s bodyguard (Anton is a bit of an odd man…). Yoi now serves as Anton’s personal pilot, tracker, and occasional pain in the butt.

Chief’s notes: Yoi is a reoccurring villain in pretty much everything she’s ever been in, despite her best efforts to be on the side of good and justice. She’s manipulative and crafty, but she gets rerouted easily. When I was first developing her character, I started out with a slightly modified Rikku for FF10. Yoi was a very minor character who was there for an energetic comic relief character for Lenna. That didn’t stick. Yoi was a very dynamic character who kept ending up in places I never intended her to be.

One thing that has always ate at me while writing Yoi is her energetic, bubbly personality. It always seemed to suit her so well, but something just felt wrong. It was like petting a cat the wrong way. It is still fuzzy, but you know your hand was just seconds from being shredded by claws. Her happiness felt legitimate, but at the same time, I could see her using her own nature as a shield from her feelings. Yoi would be sad, hurt, and emotionally ripped apart in a scene, but she’d just keep acting like everything was fine. The more I wrote her, the more it dawned on me that I didn’t understand a thing about the character I had created. It took me several rewrites and books before I finally saw the true Yoi, a mature girl hurt by years of solitude, forced to hide behind a mask so long that she couldn’t figure out which was her true self.

One thing that is rather special about Yoi is that she’s the first character I’ve ever drawn. I used to draw her so much! Since I’ve dropped out of art, she doesn’t get drawn nearly as much. One thing people might notice is the difference in her hair from Rising Angels and Katajion’s Dream to Anton’s Vacation. To me, it seemed fitting as she uncovered more and more of her true self and found her place in the universe. I personally liked the short, spiky style more, but as we move away from her early days, we move back to her longer curly hair.

In Red Rose (and subsequently Hope), Yoi is slowly adapting to a world where everyone ISN’T out to get her. The problem is that she still has a very “ME” attitude, which results in a lot of pain for Faye. While she grows to realize that there is more to the world than making herself happy, Yoi still is a pretty two-faced friend. Fates’s Yoi has grown up a bit, both physically and emotionally. Under Anton’s tutelage and support, Yoi has managed to conquer some of the ghosts of her past. While she is still a pretty heavy flirter and still a tad greedy and selfish, Yoi’d learned to harness her talents to help those she cares about. Murder and manipulation, Yoi can do it all with a smile. There is still a torrent of confusion behind it, but the smile she gives is more often real than her favorite mask. If Yoi gets the route over Syl, rest assured that it will be the most upbeat of them all.

And that wraps up the twentieth Fates weekly update! Can you believe I’m still out here ranting every week since August? I’m amazed as well! Next week we should have some CG art to share and some chit-chats about Syl.  Until next time, Chief out!

Video of the post? Of course! I stumbled on this video again recently.  Such awesomeness.

Hey, folks. Chief here with the weekly update. No dramatic or interesting intro this week, I’m not doing so well. Health, the weakness of man. Just like a crazy dancing red dot is the weakness of Fuzz now that I bought a cheap little laser pointer. I don’t know what red dots did to him as a wee kitten, but he will try to maul it with unseen ferocity. Anyway, on to the update.

Wordcount: 5,220 (Most of the writing this week was focused on the core story, aka the non-investigation/non-romance sections. The reason for this is to get the script properly set for the voice acting, which auditions have just started. Read below!)

Backers at the physical item level update: Everything is in! …except for the wall scroll shipping tubes. Curse you winter storms! Shipping will be started next week by my lovely assistant Figerit. Zuri’s has to be my favorite of the group.

Voice acting update: Voice acting auditions have been started! Sakura Hughes has joined us as VA director, so no crazy attempts of Komi tring to figure out which end of the microphone is which. There are going to be two different casting calls. The first one (this one) is for the characters with the most lines in the core path. That means it will be Natalie, Nàme, Zuri, Kika, Sol, and Anton. The rest of the cast will be done in a later casting call. If you are interested in auditioning for these roles or know someone who is, more information can be found at…

Lemmasoft Forums

Voice Acting Alliance

Music update: Music is coming along nicely. As a part of today’s update, a small snip-it of one of our mystery tunes by Terranivium is available for you to enjoy!

Since it seems like I’m always up on the stage singing and dancing for everyone, let’s take a moment for an update from the other writer on the team, rellimkram!

I shall share a bit about Eve Auroch, one of the characters I’m responsible for writing and developing for Fates. While I’ve worked on her, especially at the beginning, I got to write a bit of the lore for the RA universe as well, as Eve’s race, the minotaurs, haven’t really been expanded on much (even in Chief’s hidden stash of writings, it seems). As such, I’ll talk a bit about them as well.

If you haven’t seen her yet, her sprite was shown in Weekly Update #14. Minotaurs are a nomadic people, wanderers that only settle down when forced to by something. For Eve’s band (groups of minotaurs are called bands. Racists call them herds, though), the cause was the inability to continue supporting themselves, as the war between the Directorship and the Empire made trade more difficult, especially for those with no clear allegiance. With their ability to obtain the necessities for constant travel crippled, they settled down and tried to make a livelihood for themselves. Unfortunately, minotaurs aren’t always well liked by other races, especially humans, which is rather ironic, seeing as the all female race of minotaurs require other species to continue to reproduce. The distrust and general disapproval, even hatred, shown to Eve’s band made life for them quite difficult, especially for the young Eve, who was only four at the time. Other children avoided her, and the adults did so as well for the most part, with most of their interactions with her being to tell her to stay away from their children. Skipping over details (don’t want to spoil too much), the loneliness of her childhood drove Eve to seek acceptance, which she chose to find in trying to make herself indispensable to society, namely a doctor (her profession was also revealed in the update). After a rather emotional series of events (which I plan to reveal during Fates somehow), she found herself caring for everyone’s favorite lupide, Faye.

Eve’s interactions with the cast of Fates is largely still undetermined at this point, but I can say for sure that she will be tied to Faye’s fate in some way or another. Basically, if Faye gets killed for some reason, Eve may chose to leave the group, as she will no longer have an obligation to stay, and if Faye’s condition worsens, Eve will likely recede to the sidelines, her efforts being focused on keeping her patient alive rather than interacting with the others. Now, don’t let those things discourage you, as Eve may still prove at least moderately significant, as Chief has told me that some romancing with Eve is something I’m allowed to write (though I still haven’t really worked out how I’m going to do that yet). I might take suggestions (or at least indirect influence) from you all as I write her part of the story, and maybe I’ll reveal something about an old acquaintance of hers that will more likely than not also make an appearance in Fates, an elf by the name of Sovran.

Okay, Chief back. I’m gonna take a moment to do an inclusion to this since the question was asked before. There are other relationships that can happen in Fates. Natalie is not the only person who has a chance of finding love while the universe explodes around them. However, Natalie (and you as the player) do have the chance to either help it along or completely ruin it. It’s not a full matchmaking game, but there are some characters who can get close.

As many of you were curious to why we were really late with today’s update, the reason was to let the voting end on the Raltin Ship name contest. It was a really, really, really close contest, but the winner has been decided… it is… me discovering I set the time wrong. You have until 7AM EST tomorrow to get your votes in. It’s currently a dead even tie between Ardent Flare and Darklight.

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned. Chief out!

Hey, folks! Chief here with… you know what… IT’S A FATE WEEKLY UPDATE! Did you know that a week hasn’t gone by since August where I didn’t post something? I’m just as surprised as you are! Well, probably not. I mean, I’m going to keep doing consistent updates until October 31st at the minimum, so I think I will save my awe until the end.

Writing update: 1400. Yes, I have to admit that the number of words written this week is pretty low. Remarkably low. Before we raise the calls demanding for my head, I want to take a moment and talk about the small story that took up this week and a little bit of next. Nuge (the CG artist for Reborn) and I are working on Rising Angels: Spark (title pending), a fun little quiz dress-up game which will follow the story of Kika and Blade during their time at the academy. It’s a little jaunt down memory lane and a might be a refresher for the remake of Red Rose that is coming out in the upcoming months. Besides, the greatest character of all time will be making a canon return in Spark. It’s been fun having him rampage around again.

Speaking of Hope, the Red Rose remake, the CG should be done by the end of the month. After some more writing and a few other things, it will be ready to go. As a benefit for everyone who has backed the Rising Angels: Fates kickstarter and those who have donated to the studio, these folks will have early access to Hope.

Daki update: The daki have been finished being printed and are now on their way to the studio. I know most of you aren’t really caring about that, but this has a bit of significance to the studio. This is the first time that the studio has ever produced physical goods. If wallscrolls and body pillows do well, we may be able to fund future projects without having to charge people for them and expand what we can offer. Honestly, it is a bit of a dream for me. If there is a way where I can write stories and release them to the world for free while not having to live under the bridge in a cardboard box, I’m going to pursue it.

Voice Acting update: I’ve been quiet for a while on the voice acting front. For those of you who may have forgotten, we did get to the voice acting stretch goal. Hopefully starting next week, we will be opening auditions for the roles in Rising Angels: Fates. Because of the staggering length of all routes in the game and the fairly limited budget, voice acting will be limited to scenes for the core route. I’d love to voice the entire game, but unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to even afford my spot under the bridge. There will be roles open for a whopping 18 characters; 5 males, 13 females; 6 major roles, 4 medium roles, and 8 minor roles. If you are interested in auditioning, details will be posted up sometime during the week on the IDHAS website. For those of you not interested, it will give you a sneak peak at some of the characters who haven’t been talked about yet.

It’s voting time for the Raltin ship! We had a lot of strong entries. The poll is currently up at http://innomenpro.com/forums/index.php?topic=1013 . I’ve got my own personal favorite, but I’m not going to risk tainting the vote by saying it! The poll closes after 7 days, so get out there and vote now before it is too late!

That’s all for the week. For those of you who want an updated schedule of Rising Angels games coming out this year, the confirmed ones are…

Rising Angels: Spark – 1 Feb15

Rising Angels: Hope – ?? Apr15

Rising Angels: Fates – 31 Oct15

Depending on how fast I can go, another game or two might be able to slip in there. Maybe a short little jaunt into some of the space battles. Until next time, Chief out!

Hello, folks. Chief here again. It’s a super late update this time. I’ve finally found enough time to start writing at the usual time I post. It has been a busy day.

-Wordcount: 3,665 (Still mostly focusing on writing Zuri events. The more I write Zuri, the more interesting she is to me. Her route might end up being my favorite, though it is too early in development for me to be picking favorites. This week’s events involved a lot of options in her early scenes. One of the complaints about Reborn was the lack of interactivity. While there is a ton of interactivity in presenting clues, asking questions, and some creative investigation in the investigation part, expanding some of the interpersonal relationship options in the story sections was high on my priority charts. Like Reborn, it is possible to turn Zuri away with consistent cold decision, I wouldn’t consider it to be her bad endings. No, to get the worst endings in Zuri’s route, you can’t attack Zuri’s beliefs. Instead, you have to attack her trust. There’s nothing worse to the a warrior who questions herself than to not have the faith of her close friend. While I know nobody here would intentionally seek the bad ends, they are there. Looking at the outline, the worst possible ending for Zuri would require you to break her heart, find the clues to the mystery, and make a painful decision at the end that is borderline genocide.

In short, I’m being a terrible person and writing a lot of unhappy scenes for Zuri’s route. Don’t worry, Zuri bad endings are the easiest to dodge. Kika however…

-Dakimakura update: Natalie’s daki is finally done! Tomorrow, I will start sending out surveys to the backers at the daki levels to determine which one you would like. It will take a bit to get them produced and then shipped, but we are finally moving forward with the physical merch stuff. I apologize for how long it has taken. Wallscrolls and everything else will also be sent out at that time. For those of you who are interested, a few extra daki of each type will be printed and available. However, I’ve made the decision to not do reprints of anything. Once they are gone, they are gone. Once they are in and I have the numbers remaining, they will be available for purchase on the IDHAS site.

As a reminder, this link is NSFW and should be treated as such.

http://www.idhasstudios.com/Images/NSFW/NSFW_Natalie_daki.png

-As a part of NaNoWinter, Nuge and I are working on a short little quiz/dress-up game for the Rising Angels series. The game will follow Kika and Blade during their cadet years as they try to raise money for a fundraiser by working at Chief’s Cosplay Cafe. For those of you who are curious, yes, this is a real cafe that is ran by Chief. Okay, that’s a fib, but the game will be out at the end of January and will be completely free.

-Got the first rough from the soundtrack in this week. Hopefully we will be able to show a track from the soundtrack soon!

Next week we will be introducing a new character. Until then, I’m grabbing some much needed sleep. Chief out!

Hey, folks. Chief is back from his vacation. For the first time in months, I got a decent amount of sleep. Twelve hours on two of the days and ten on another. I had completely forgotten what being awake felt like. It is an amazing feeling! I hope you all are enjoying your holidays as well. Most of the team is still gone, so today’s update is yet again sparse. I had intended to talk about effects for sprites, but the artist is on vacation and there is only so much I can bumble my way through before I sound like a nutter. Anyone who has been with me during the early days knows that I have no drawing talent. Even my stick figures are ugly. But that’s why I don’t work alone anymore!

Wordcount: 3315; I did manage to snag a few hours after family time and knocked out two scenes. Last week, I started on Kika’s route and quickly realized that I had a rather adorable storyline on my hands. This week (and next) I’m devoting my energies into Zuri, the unofficial main heroine of the universe in the series. I only got to get a couple of the early scenes done, but I’m liking how things are turning out so far. Zuri is a strong believe in the core draemon warrior beliefs. Protect the innocent, never betray a friend, never allow greed or pride blind you, and always follow your heart. While she has had moments in her past that have made her waiver (your scene with Stan causing a flashback to one in her mind), it has never been nearly the same as when she fell in love with Natalie. The more of the universe Natalie shows her, the more she wonders if there is a place for a warrior in the universe… if there is a place for her. The only thing she knows in the world twisting and changing around her is that a young investigator needs her protection from the monsters she fears they might become.

-I showed her lineart a few days ago, but I think now would be a good time to show one of the support characters, Eve. Like the other minotaur, Eve is also a doctor who will support Natalie’s operations into deep space. Poor Doctor Stan is losing his job as Natalie’s personal physician… maybe… Dr. Eve is there mostly to help keep Faye running strong for a little while longer since she won’t stay put. Eve might have her own route, though that depends on the volunteer writer.

-Backgrounds: We’ve had a small snafu with the backgrounds and they were a bit delayed while things shuffled around. We are not quite back on track, but things are once more headed in the right direction.

-A few updates ago, I showed and talked about Natalie’s younger sister, Name. As the first couple CG are getting completed, I am once again agreeing with Yoi for Red Rose that their dress uniforms are really impractical with the pencil skirt. As someone who has to wear military dress uniforms, I can tell you from experience that they rarely are what I would take into a prolonged expedition. This was one of the reasons why two additional uniforms were designed for fleet usage, one of which is seen in Reborn. The reason I’m bringing this up is because Name is the only person to wear the dress uniform and… well… it is a bit awkward. The CG isn’t completely done, so I will have to wait until next weekly to show off the exact details…well… as long as you all remember that things are works in progress…

Random tangent: The Katajion Defense Forces uniforms have evolved in different ways over the years. I’ve always tried to push hard that they be designed with their role in mind. If I would never dream of wearing it into battle, then a different design needs to be thought up. While the dress uniform for girls in Red Rose wasn’t the most practical design, it was designed for an office setting. It was drawn shorter than the original design for it, but I’m not too overbearing on artists and give a fair bit of freedom. I know I might be losing fans for it, but mini-skirts and tube tops will never be military uniforms in any of my Rising Angels stories. Civilian outfits are a bit more lenient and depend on the character. Characters have… ya know… personalities and different tastes.

That’s it for this week. New Years is coming up, so you all know what that means! That’s right, Chief is going to be staying at home writing. I hope you all have a much more festive holiday planed than I do! Until next week, Chief out!

Doing a video of the post since it is the holidays. This song is a tradition.

Hello, folks. It’s Chief or Hobson the Monk at the moment, since this is being written while I play D&D, here to bring you the weekly Fates report. It’s the holiday season and it is only me manning the studio. Even I’m going to be heading home back to Virginia soon. I don’t take time off very often, but I managed to snag some to see my family. But before that, let’s do our quick weekly update. Like I mentioned before, this week and next week are going to be sparse.

Demo: Delays on the backgrounds are slowing this down. I apologize and ask you to bear with us for a little longer.

Special writing event: I know many of you might be curious how the Kika route writing event went. Work hit me harder than I expected, but I was able to do some pretty decent writing sessions. The final workcount is 20,086 for the Kika marathon. I’d say I’m about a third of the way through her route specific events. It might be a bit less since I am entering the big events for Kika’s route in the third act. The first act (Celestia) and the second act (Tropolain, the elven ranger planet) are relatively calm for her, focusing more on strengthening your bond with Kika and showing some of the softer sides of the princess. Act three… To put it blunt, there is a decent chance that Kika’s actions are going to hurt you and she might not make it out alive…

I’m going to try another writing marathon over the holidays from the 24th to the 4th. I really wish I could do some sort of streaming to possibly make things more interesting than textual updates. If you have an idea, please let me know.

Since many, if not most, of those who are reading this are fans of visual novels, you are the best people to ask this question. Most romances in visual novels are dependent upon choices. If you want to be in a relation with a specific character, you are almost forced to choose certain actions to keep on the character’s route. I remember wonder a few times why Muv Luv even bothered giving me options once I decided which character I wanted to go with. So, here is my question…

As the player, would you rather just choose the character’s route at the start and then have all options be plot related or do you like the current visual novel setups where your options are intertwine between the romance and story? Ex: Telling Kika that you think she’s right because the investigation lends itself to that instead of saying it because Kika said it and you want Kika’s route. It was just something bothering me as I looked at how I wanted to layout certain scenes.

I hope you all enjoy your holidays! Until next week, Chief out.

Hello, folks. It’s Saturday and it is time for me to give the moooooooooorning report. Gives you the long and the short! Every grunt, roar, and… Wait… it’s night. Never mind, continue your musical numbers elsewhere. Sorry, sorry. Because of the astronomical amount of IRL work this week and completely random schedule, I have lost track of time. If it wasn’t for my weekly report, I doubt I would have realized that it was Saturday.

Writing: I’m in a marathon event right now. This coming week is the first week in months where I had a set schedule! That’s right, I don’t have to wake up at utterly random times and can have some sort of semblance of normality in my life. To celebrate this, I’ve cleared out nearly all of my commitments, got everything in order, and am doing a writing marathon. For the next seven days, I am going full bore to completely write all of Kika’s scenes. Can I write roughly 60,000 words in one week? Probably not, but I’m going to make one helluva go at it. I’ve learned a lot of tricks over the years of being a visual novel writer. Time to show a few of them. Wordcount will update next week.

Dakimakura: Still waiting on the Natalie images. However, I did a personal commissioned with CG artist to do a special Zuri one for me. Originally, I wasn’t going to share it because I am an evil mustache-twiddling madman, but I was recently talked down from that position. Are the daki backers (or any random passerby) interested? As a reminder, if you can’t see it in the link, these are fairly NSFW.

http://www.idhasstudios.com/Images/NSFW/NSFWZuriDakiA.png

http://www.idhasstudios.com/Images/NSFW/NSFWZuriDakiB.png

For today’s chat, I want to talk about some of the GUI things. When we decided to split up the storylines between the Katajion Defense Force and the rebels, the idea of having a split GUI was pondered. The factions themselves are fundamentally different. The Katajions are a lot more formal than the rebels and drastically more regimented. Anton has the power of Intelligence Director Doichu and the funding of the directorship on his side. Things like finding ways to refuel the ship and how they are going to keep food in their bellies isn’t an underlying issue. The individual natures of each faction resulted in us wanting to take some differences in the GUI.

The window being shown is the presenting window. This window is for both regular interrogation scene where you can present either people to the person you are talking with or in key situations where you need to propose a suspect or an item. The two windows being shown are for those key moments. One thing we are debating is whether you, the player, should be limited to just the basic information about the person/object you are trying to present or if we should make it a little more interesting with Natalie adding clues/red herrings based on scenes and evidence gathered.

I’m torn myself on this. On one hand, having Natalie give her feedback on it means that clues you might not have caught or events in dialog that were overlooked can be given to the player for free. It makes it easier for the player to determine their course of action. Green clues meaning that it supports this person/item being the right one, yellow being indifferent info, and red being evidence that disagrees with you. In the pictures shown above, the evidence shows that Kika is much more likely to be a pillow thief than Anton. It takes some of the organic nature of investigation out and makes it easier on the player.

At the same point, it does make things more difficult. Just because all evidence is flashing green doesn’t mean that you have the right person. Missing key events, asking the wrong questions, coming to the wrong conclusions in questioning scenes can build you into a false answer. Like a real investigator, you have to determine if the facts are what they appear to be. It could add a new layer of gameplay of intrigue while not forcing you to constantly reload to try and remember some random scene.

So what do you all think about it? A handicap that takes away the fun of drawing your own conclusions or a nifty system that makes life easier and will make you think?

That’s all for this week’s episode. Tune in next time to see if Chief managed to give himself carpal tunnel hitting that mark. Until next time, Chief out!

Hello, folks. Well, the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars. That means it is the dawning of the Age of Fates updates.

Wordcount: 43096 (1200 this week.) This week’s word count is pretty low because most of it was spent in editing. If there is one thing I hate more than anything, it is having to go back through my works with a hedgetrimmer, but any good writer will tell you that being able to take a saw to your baby is a key skill. Nobody writes things perfect on their first go, no sane artist uses their sketches 100%. Of course, I am also notorious for using my first drafts as my final drafts. It’s a weakness, I admit. My day job eats up so much of my time that deadlines force me to drop a dozen or so edits after release. NOT THIS TIME! I was smart enough to budget editing time into my schedules.

-The biggest reason that time was suddenly spent in editing instead of writing this week was for the preparations of the demo. It’s going to be a fairly raw alpha, but I wanted to give everyone a show of what we are trying to do and give a rough idea of what the final product may look like. We have a working GUI, a working interface code, and several sections of story that will highlight each type of interaction. We don’t have a release date for it yet, but I’m hoping to have one shortly. We wanted to have everything done this week and it was going to be the HUGE update I promised last week, but someone just had to break some code and highlight some important mistakes, putting us back. I just need to make sure everything is set, edited, and won’t burst into unholy flames of agony like every other initial release. Kickstarter backers will have access to the entire thing to play around with, everyone else gets to watch a video of me playing around with what I want to show.

-As we get into the holiday seasons, updates are going to be a bit more sparse. While Chief hasn’t taken a vacation since the dawn of time, several of our staff members have families and children and all that other jazz that reduces work flow. The good news is that I’ll still be here each week with the updates that I will still be here to tell stories about the story and programming adventures.

-Speaking of adventures in coding, would there be any interest in a rhythm game like Final Fantasy Theatrhythm? I was bored during some down time at work and decided to draw up an engine that would allow us to make that sort of game. Originally, we were totally just going to drop the investigation engine and your romance/investigation was going to be dependent on how well you could keep the beat (just like real life), but someone managed to inform me how nuts I was before it could be implemented.

This week is going to wrap up early. As a consolidation prize, here’s a lineart from one of the characters who hasn’t been shown yet! Haven’t seen any minotaurs since Red Rose and even then the doctor was just a very minor character. Quite exciting! There are quite a few characters in the roster who haven’t had their moment to shine yet. Next week, we are going to be talking about some of the romance in Rising Angels: Fates, some history of the cast, and maybe even a little world history while we are at it. Until next time, Chief out!