About Coming Out On Top (Redux) - due late August 2012

REDUX BETA IS OUT.  Check it out here:
http://obscurasoftgames.blogspot.com/2012/08/redux-beta.html


You ask, why oh why am I releasing another version of this game?

Well, when I released version one, I was already a couple of weeks past my deadline.  More importantly, I had no idea if anybody was going to be even remotely interested, aside from half a dozen people.  It's not like the yaoi games I've seen...and it's already a genre that's very niche.

So I released it, without giving it the full polish.  And it's gotten a few hundred downloads...and this is even before I've even started publicizing it on any major forums aside from the RenPy database and lemmasoft.

Things I've wanted to add:
- more fleshed out endings
- artwork (the CGs)
- updated interface
- a tutorial for players new to Visual Novels
- a new Alex
- typos (sorry)
...and a whole lot more...

In the next few weeks I'll be working my butt off to make these changes, to release Coming Out On Top (Redux) in late August 2012.

Here's Ian from an upcoming CG...

Ian's opinion on free-to-play gaming

If there's anything you'd like to see or you have any suggestions, let me know!!!

Coming Out On Top Redux - A CG Teaser

In order to make my July 2012 deadline, I didn't get to stuff all I wanted to into my game.  (Note, the game was already 3 weeks late from my tentative deadline of July 1st).

For the next few weeks I'm adding numerous bells and whistles that didn't make it into the first version.  Among them are an updated Alex sprite and a handful of CGs (and a couple of other bonuses.)

For those of you unfamiliar with visual novels, CGs are short for pictures.  Yeah, I initially thought CGs meant fancy animation or something... nope!  They're just...pictures.  But they can be fun and add a neat dimension to your game.  Apparently one of the gaming features in a standard VN is to collect all the CGs.  

I'm not sure how many Version 2.0 will have, but apparently I can crank them out at the rate of 1 every 2 days.

Anyways, a little something cropped from a CG I'm finishing up:

Gee whiz, cropping the image makes it look pornographic!  The actual scene is actually pretty innocent.  *hides*

New Alex

Just gotta do the mouths, and he's close to done.  This will be the Alex used in the next version.

(You caught him before shaving.  And before he's decent.  Whoops.)

LOL

I fiddled with Alex (not THAT way) until I finally got a decent result.

And then I realized he looked like somebody...

Somebody famous...

Somebody named Archer.

#($*#$(  

Back to the drawing board...

Updating Alex

Trying to figure out if I want a new Alex for the next release.

The mockup isn't cartoony-looking enough yet, but I like the squintier eyes.


NEW

OLD

Will probably spent the rest of today playing around with this.

Quote about Game Development

I'm sure a lot of people have already seen this Penny Arcade article about Kickstarter Projects and game development. The Kickstarter angle was interesting, but what really stood out to me was this quote:

“The area where most teams fail is insufficient polish. Cliff [Bleszinksi] always says there’s the first 90 percent of the project, and then the second 90 percent. Because once your game is completely playable and it works, you’re really only halfway,” Sweeney explained. “It takes an incredible amount of tweaking to get to the level of polish where people take your game seriously.”

Post Mortem: Continued, and Future Plans

Warning...big ol' wall of text ahead.

Post Mortems, for those of you who don't know, is a little rundown and analysis of everything that went right and wrong during the development process to help you with your next project.

I'd like to do an actual one instead of just blabbing randomly like I did in my last post.

Questions taken from this blog (http://blog.brodzinski.com/2008/03/post-mortem-basics.html):

• What went well and should be repeated in future projects?

Uhhhh...*stares blankly for a few minutes*

I'm not sure if anything went as smoothly as I would have liked it.  Sprites and writing were revised countless times.  I was learning to do and redo things as I went along.  I think I just have to keep in mind that writing and art are like the layers of an onion, and I'm going to keep working on layer after layer until I get it just right.

I think using a vector program (idraw) on my ipad was helpful for getting clean sprites.  I think I may just draw directly into the vector program from now on, since I can make an infinite amount of adjustments without losing image quality.

Using Garageband for the music was a pleasure and it was very easy to create songs, despite having no musical ability.  (Though the music probably could have been better, I didn't hate it...)

Based on feedback so far, I think my game kept up enough people's attention throughout.  My number one rule is: DON'T BE BORING.  I am very guilty of 'skipping' text and dialogue during games because I have the attention span of a gnat.  To the point where I don't finish a substantial number of the VN's I play.  Keeping in mind there are probably many others like me, I tried to cut out as much fluff and drag as possible.   Hopefully I succeeded?

And most of all, just be passionate about the story and the characters.  Because it's a long, lonely, and sometimes grueling journey to finish a game.

• What was on a good path and should be improved in future projects?

Um, probably breaking all the sprite expressions down into a grid.  The final "grid" got kind of messed up though...since I made a lot of last minute adjustments that didn't really "fit" the grid I devised (e.g., I used 'shock-level 2' for Alex instead of 'talk-level1' because it just looked better in certain circumstances.)  The grid could definitely be improved.  Right now it's a mess.  

• What went wrong and should be avoided in future projects?
- Don't make last minute changes before releasing.  I will be very sorry.

- Fix my personal grid-expression system so it actually makes sense and I don't have to keep testing and retesting a scene because the sprite's expression doesn't match the label.

- From feedback so far: make alternate options more meaningful instead of resulting in quick deaths.

- Try to be a bit more focused on quality during the writing phase instead of writing whatever comes to mind.  Rewriting will be far easier.  Hopefully.

Plans for the Future

I've been deliberating over what to do next, aside from updating my game with fixes for spelling and grammatical errors.

OPTION A: update Coming Out On Top with small tweaks, like its own icon, 2 more CGs, and a few GUI fixes.  Polish up that sucker so it feels less clunky.

OPTION B: participate in the Worst VN Ever contest on the lemmasoft forums.

OPTION C: start work on my sci-fi game

OPTION D: start work on new characters for Coming Out On Top (3 planned in my head so far)

As much as I'd like to dive into the worst VN ever contest...my god...even a 'bad' VN seems like a lot of work to me!  I don't think I could stomach an accelerated version of the last 5 months.  I did have a really godawful idea that will plant my entry right into the Hentai forums, but...I dunno...we'll see.

I think I'm going to go with Option A for now unless my 'bad VN' idea continues to rear its ugly head.

Dramatic Finale - Post Mortem

It's done.  (If I had any energy right now I'd insert a gif of Julie Andrews in her Sound of Music number.)

Not only is it done, after I put the game up, apparently there were immediate reports of a nasty bug.  :-D  Wow, I feel like I finally took off my developer training wheels!

Link to game here:
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=16307

And now, I'll share some of my personal experiences with making my first VN...

ART
I started this game back in March.  I had no experience with GIMP and almost no Photoshop skills.  I had no idea how to shade, color, draw smooth lines or any of that jazz properly on a computer (and still really don't).  So there was a huge learning curve there, and while I'm still not entirely happy with the sprites, I feel like I gave it my best shot under the circumstances.  I also looked at incredible number of shirtless men on the internet.  That part was a-iiiight.

I think the only thing I wish is that I had photoshop and a new tablet, but it's probably not worth it until I actually advance my art skills to the point where they're actually that good to merit a couple of hundred bucks worth of equipment and software.

WRITING
Overall the writing was the hardest aspect.  An outline, a draft, another draft, edits, another edit, a polish, another polish... there was just no end to it.  Art, for the most part, is a nice, relaxing activity for me compared to writing.  Writing always feels like I'm always trying to bend a spoon with telepathy, which is why I am an in awe of most writers.

MUSIC
God, if I have to listen to my soundtrack one more time, I'm going to cry.  I actually liked the music I threw together via Garage Band, but after the first 1000 times or so of hearing a song... I dunno.  Kinda loses it's freshness, huh?

TEAMWORK
Nuxill really helped make the game look much more polished with her GUI, logo, and main menu.  I will be forever grateful.  I am using the first version she gave me (she preferred the latter one) so if you are reading this Nuxill, I'm sorry, your first version was just that good.  :P

CODING
There are many bells and whistles I would have liked to add, but I just really wanted to get this game out before the year 2040.  Maybe in a future version.

PERSONAL STUFF
Basically my office (where I have my computer) is a complete mess.  I haven't cleaned it since March and I'm finally gonna pick up all the trash and crap off the floor.

I've also been putting off lots of housework (aside from the bare minimum).  When I say I lived and breathed this game for approximately 5 months, that's exactly what I did.  I'd drive to work thinking about my game.  I'd drive home thinking about my game.  I'd wake up and work on my game.  I'd work on my game before I went to bed.  Though I will admit, probably 50% of that time (during the cursed writing process) was probably procrastinating by doing 'research' on the internet or hanging out on the Lemmasoft forums.

After I finally got everything up on Mediafile this morning, I was WIPED OUT.  And at the same time, I couldn't go to sleep.  I felt like I had just moved a mountain with a teaspoon, and I was now looking at the sheer enormity of what I had just accomplished.  I know one 25K word VN doesn't seem like much, but it did for me.  I kind of wanted to start crying.  Not in a "how awesome" way, but more like I had just walked across the U.S. on foot and holy shit, my long journey has come to an end.

OMG

I'm so freaking close to finishing I can't believe it.

Five months of practically non-stop game development during every free second I had.

Just a few more tweaks, and I'll have the beta up.  

The scary part is the only person who's actually seen the game is me.  

Finalizing, Age Ratings, Other Thoughts

Funny how I used to blog almost daily since March and now that I'm nearing completion of Coming Out On Top, I've barely thought about updating!

Today was spent with final edits.  Tweaking expressions, polishing up the writing, etc. I'm halfway through.  (God, why do I always feel like I'm 'halfway through'.  I am so THROUGH with feeling 'halfway through'!!!!)

One of the problems I'm having right now is trying to figure out exactly how age-appropriate this game is.  I don't think it's actually that racy, but of course racy in my world could be hardcore porn to somebody else.  I really have no effin clue.  I think my standards of decency have been obliterated by the internet over the years.  They were already kinda low to begin with... :-/

Anyways, I'm thinking maybe I'll put it in the hentai section of Lemmasoft for a while, until I get some feedback as to whether it should be moved into the general category?  Or should I just take out the stuff that I think is racy?

Meh, it's late and I can barely think straight.  Tomorrow I gotta finish tackle the remaining half of the game.  Then I have some bill-paying work to do this weekend, then another full day devoted to game stuff.

Hmm, I've told a couple of my friends and relatives about this game, and they're interested in playing it.  Half of them I'm sure, want to play solely in order to mock me, and the other half are just curious.  None of them have ever played a dating sim or a VN, I'm fairly sure of that.  Well, I dunno.  I think my brother played Catherine...I think...


I do find it a little nerve-wracking to let people who know me in IRL play this.  I'm pretty sure they'll never look at me the same way again.  Ultimately though, when it comes right down to it, I'm also pretty sure I don't care.  (Why does that sense of 'who cares what they think' only increase with age?  Just a general life question I have.)


Oh yeah, I updated my game thread in the Lemmasoft forums.  Just cleaned up the summary, made it brutally short.  I'm a fan of keeping game summaries short and sweet.  But obviously not blog entries.


Ok, good night all.

WHOO-HOO!!!  ATTACK OF THE DOUBLE ENTENDRES!!!

Yaaaaaaarg

Well, I thought I'd be done with Coming Out On Top by now, but revisions took me four times longer than I estimated.  And that's just writing.  I finally had to resort to using the Pomodoro Technique to sit my ass down and finish (a fancy name for working in 25 minute increments.)

What's left?  A whole mess of leftover graphic adjustments and a couple of objects.

Today I redid the CG (and I'm calling it "the CG" because there is seriously, only one CG) because the old one looked like I had huffed a couple of cans of spray paint before making it.  All the proportions were wrong so I had to go hunt down photos of men kissing for reference.  Jeez people, do you know that finding photos of men kissing -- WITH CLOTHES ON -- isn't as easy as you'd think?  There are about 100 photos of naked dudes playing tonsil hockey for every 1 photo of kissing dudes in clothes.

Anyways, now that I've sufficiently scared my husband from ever peeking over my shoulder again, I'm estimating a few more days of wrapping up and testing.  AND BY GOD I WILL BE DONE.

At least this will still be out by July.  I can't believe I've been working on this thing since March.  Holy crap, these months have flown by.


Statistics:

The game contains 2,318 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 23,721 words,
for an average of 10.2 words per screen.
The game contains 55 menus.

Still Editing!

This morning I had the most productive writing session I've had in a long time.  I don't know if it was because I got up at 6am (which means I only got 3  hours of sleep), but I was finally able to get through the scene that had me stuck for two straight days.

Now that it's finally the start of my weekend, hopefully I can finish this revision and have a beta out some time next week.

Hope everyone has a fabulous weekend!

Halfway Through With Revisions

More refining, more deleting, more rewording...more, more, more...

I estimate I've rewritten about 90% of the original first draft.  Very little of the original draft still exists in the current version, though probably about 80% of the story is the same.

This tells me I've been using my first draft as pretty much an outline for what eventually became the REAL draft.

Another observation I've had: editing surprisingly mimics the process of polishing up the artwork.  Tweaking, adjusting, refining...lots of incremental little changes that add up to the final product.

I'm definitely going to try and start reading fiction again.  For over a year now, I haven't actually read much outside of what's quick and accessible on the internet (unless you count the handful of screenplays I've read.)  The daily dose of acronyms, shorthand, and "internet-passable grammar" has really done on a number on my writing style.  I mean, I actually used to rite good.  I dunno wha happen....

I don't think I'm alone in feeling that it's impossible to be a better writer without reading almost daily.  And I don't mean reading just anything, but actual books.  Not comic books, and not VNs.  Those things have too low of a word count to image ratio, I feel, to really make much of a difference, at least for me.   So the big question is...what the heck am I gonna be reading?  If you have suggestions, let me hear them.  I'm pretty much open to EVERYTHING.  What's the best book you've read in the past year?  Past five years?

For anybody who wants to improve their writing skills, I would definitely suggest visiting the Absolute Write forums if you haven't already: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/.  I was browsing through the threads about writer's block (specifically about revisioner's block) and found some great tips and neat articles.

In the mean time, I'm estimating the beta of Coming Out On Top will be released within the next two weeks.  If I'm lucky.

Have you ever looked at something for so long you don't really know if it's something spectacular or a steaming pile?  That's where I am right now.  I couldn't tell you.

The End Is Nigh

Oh my.  This last writing edit is really dragging itself out.  I'm not sure why I'm taking so long...maybe because going over the same damn story for the 10th time is making my head hurt?!??  I'm really inclined just to download the latest Kaoirosoft game on my ipad and play my little heart out for a couple of days straight, moving miniature buildings around and not worrying about anything in particular.

Scriptwise, we're around 22,000 words now, which is about 4000 more words than I originally intended.  There's still more scenes I have to fix.

On another note, in my bout of procrastination, I purchased Christine Love's latest game.  Analogue: A Hate Story...


MINOR SPOILER SECTION BEGINS HERE!!!!  (Don't know if this will even be spoilery, but just to be safe...)


Though the endings seemed a bit rushed and tacked on, overall it was an excellent visual novel.  Probably the best I've played (though granted I haven't played that many).  


I also would have preferred the whole thing without any romance option whatsoever because it didn't seem like it meshed with the vibe of the game.  Still, it was an excellent ride.  The storytelling drew me in immediately.  I found myself caring about the characters and having pretty strong feelings about them. Highly recommended!



END MINOR SPOILER SECTION!!!

I think Christine Love has mentioned before that her goal is to make people see things from a new perspective.  This is what I've always considered to be the highest and most noble goal of writing.  And it's not a common one, either, even in fiction or film.  She definitely succeeded with this game.  It's amazing she is able to make the player explore the theme of societal gender roles in a medium like video games, which has been traditionally and narrowly defined by the heterosexual male viewpoint.

One thing I like about the Original English Language VNs I've seen is that so many games are made from so many people outside of this norm.

Incidentally, the next game I'm planning to make is going to allow you pick either a male or female character, and based on your preferences, your relationship option will be either male or female as well.

Man, it's late.  I think I need to stop blogging when I'm half cognizant....

About Coming Out On Top

You are Mark Matthews, a college senior who just came out to his best friends.

Leaping headfirst into the dating scene, you encounter a tall, handsome stranger.

Unfortunately, things are just about to get really crazy. Will you be able to make the right decisions and come out on top?

A light comedy with some sexual situations and humor that may not be appropriate for a younger audience.  No graphic sex or nudity.  Some adult language.

This game takes about 1-2 hours to play and works like a choose-your-own-adventure book.  It uses the excellent Ren'Py engine which is very easy to learn and use compared to most game engines.  This is also my first visual novel.  It's a bit beta-y because I'm learning as I go along.  The next update should be more polished and better in every way.

• If you've never played a visual novel before, note you can scroll up and down to go back to a choice.  You can also use the "skip" function to skip over previously read dialogue and scenes.
• There are three main endings (and several minor ones.)
• Once you've completed one of the three main endings, a "relationship tracker" in the upper right hand corner will show you your relationship point progress for future play-throughs.

BIG NEWS: I'll be releasing a more polished version of this game in August, with more CGs, mini-endings for the friendship routes, and an updated Alex sprite!  And more bells and whistles!

BIGGER NEWS: Based on the popularity of Coming Out On Top so far, I've decided I'm going to make a full version with three more relationships (plus an Ian storyline.)  I am super excited about the three new love interests for Mark.  Each of them is guaranteed to have tons of drama, comedy, and of course, sexual tension.


Please stay tuned!  Check for updates on this website or go to the lemmasoft discussion thread for more info and feedback!


Note: I appreciate any feedback, positive or negative!   Please leave your feedback anywhere on my blog, or at the lemmasoft forum link listed above.  Your opinions help me improve the game! Don't be shy!  :0)