sattotw

An actual something...

2011-01-03T11:04:00.000+02:00

Q: What do you call a rhinoceros with a beard?
A: A beard-noceros

Q: What do you call a beard-noceros with a horn?
A: A rhinoceros

Ehehe~ that's not really funny and I know it. Anyway...
Couldn't sleep a while back and when that happens I find it's easier to just get up and do some writing or something, so I wrote the first half of this short story. Then I lazily finished it and I present it here for your enjoyment.

evolution/revolution

The second half took about 900 times as long to write as the first half. And why am I writing about such serious topics, anyway? Well, don't take it too seriously, I just wrote whatever hit me at the time and that's what ended up coming out.

Oh, and Happy New Year (although it is already the third)! This one's got to be better than last year. Right?

So, it looks like we're making some progress...

2010-11-09T15:58:00.000+02:00

Well, as the many loyal fans of this blog know, I'm working currently on a program that draws sprite for you, for use in a visual novel, or whatever else you want to use the picture for. Admittedly, somehow I think that my target of getting something usable done by the end of January is a bit optimistic, but I'm going for it anyway. Then February will be testing month.

What do I have so far? It is at the point now where I can actually show some progress. Here you go:

I haven't spent much time on the method used to draw the actual sprite, so of course it doesn't look very polished. And it's just lines! I haven't even begun to add the ability for it to colour yet ><
That's probably the one major thing that would need to be done for the sprites to be usable as-is. For now, I'm going to focus on the line drawing. Might I suggest the bucket fill tool ^^;
Going to try to get this in, though.

It is now also possible to write a separate piece of code describing how a sprite should be drawn and plug it into the program. Thinking ahead, am I?

So, for now I'm working on polishing off the underlying code and writing a nice-looking sprite. Next time I should have something shinier to show ^^

I'm not dead yet!

2010-10-06T13:05:00.001+02:00

It seems to me that people make a whole bunch of posts like these, saying that real life just got in the way for a bit or whatever, but now it's back to the action of the internet. Well, there may or may not be something wrong with doing that, but I don't see much use in making any sort of excuses. If it was that important to keep up with what's happening on the intenet, at whatever sites or whatever you spend your time, then you would perhaps just stick to it. Anyway, while I think that that is quite important, I also think that it doesn't help trying to explain anything, especially when you had a valid reason for being away.

Alright, so I was away for about 3 months and got back a few weeks ago. I was up North (which is still pretty far South compared to most other places in the world) and I am so glad to be home! Cape Town is definitely the best, so here, have a picture of Table Mountain which I took recently from the harbour wall.

Before I get into the update, I think I promised something like an analysis and comparison between the different web browsers. Well, the conclusion I came to is quite simple: use the one that you prefer and that you find works best, or just use whatever one you are used to. One exception is that I would select Chrome over Safari. Chrome is based (not sure of the specifics of this) on Safari in some way and has more features which make it natural to me to prefer it.
Firefox, when I first installed it, was very bland, but it's strength lies in the add-ons. I soon had a couple of add-ons installed which added all the functionality I was used to having in Opera. There were a few things that it did even better, for example the synchronization add-on stores a bit more than Opera Link does, such as passwords and such.
In the end I decided to stick to Opera for one simple reason, though. That reason is Opera Turbo. Without it it is often impossible to browse the modern internet and retain your sanity on a slow connection.
So, to summarize, if you're not on a slow connection then just use whatever browser is most comfortable to you ^_^

Now for the update you may or may not have been waiting for. There has been a bit of a mix-up with the staff of The Duke's Daughter (name still not necessarily final) but I won't bore you with that. It is still going ahead at this time, though. I just recently completed writing the first good ending, along with a bunch of bad endings, so there is not that much more to go.
On the subject of Paper Tiger, the sprite creation program, I hadn't worked on it too much even before I was away. I have almost completed rewriting the internal workings of it now and once that's complete I should be able to get to writing how it draws the actual sprites. My target is to have a working (to some degree) version ready by the end of January so that it can get some testing before NaNoRenO in March. At the moment it doesn't look like it will be quite so easy as push a button and the character comes out, but it should make it rather easier for a writer to get a project done without an artist, in the given time.

Update (and prelude to rant)

2010-06-05T01:12:00.001+02:00

Firstly, a bit of an update on projects. Well, there's only one project to really give an update on, which is the visual novel currently going by the name The Duke's Daughter. It is a dating sim set in the middle ages, as I announced in a previous post. I'm doing the writing for it, dstarsboy is doing the programming (both the Ren'Py and iPad versions) and Hime is doing the art. Production is moving. I have now completed the script for the first section of the game. The next part to be written is a really action-filled part, so I'm quite looking forward to writing it. Also, the character art is being designed at the moment. The designs are looking very good already.

That was the end of the update, so this is where the prelude to the rant comes in. I plan to do a comparison between the 4 most prevalent web browsers. That's Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. I heard there was something like an Internet Explorer also, but I've been unable to find conclusive evidence that it is in fact a web browser.
What prompted this? Well, I am an Opera user myself, and it makes me sad and/or angry when I see Opera getting the cold shoulder. And since I'm not the sort to just blindly continue onwards, I decided to test it out for myself. Hence, expect a comparison some time in the future. Note that, in addition to speed, performance, stability, I will also be looking at features and ease of use. It'll probably also be somewhat slanted to the way that I use my browser, but I'll be sure to keep it unbiased.
The actual incident that prompted this, I went to a restaurant with WiFi, and however they'd set it up didn't work with Opera. The support guy (I had to phone because the actual people in the restaurant clearly know nothing about how it worked) gave some apathetic excuse. So, since the only other browser installed on my netbook is Internet Explorer 6 (which was pre-installed) I didn't get free internet. So naturally I was annoyed. It's browser prejudice! I was actually going to write a whole post just ranting about how Opera always gets the short end of the stick. Then I came up with this idea, so I'll just go with the comparison and get over it.

And the last thing is completely random. I found these handwritten notes that I was working on a while back. They cover the basics of algebra as it is covered in high school. I figured I might as well share them. They contain some secrets that everybody knows, and some that hide in plain sight. Enjoy, if you can read my handwriting, that is.

get some algebra

Also, I don't make any claims about the accuracy of the work and will not be held liable if you misunderstand some part of this and flunk your test, of course.

Narcissu Side 2nd

2010-05-04T01:15:00.000+02:00

Before I get into that, I don't really have any progress report to mention. I wrote a small class for Paper Tiger that controls the bezier curves and that should save me from writing out super-huge nested lists. And there was the manga that I was working on with my sister, first page is up. I just did the inking, so don't blame me for anything else.

So, I just wanted to write down some notes on Narcissu 2nd that may or may not be interesting to others. Some minor spoilers may follow, and I'm writing it with the assumption that you've read it already, so don't take it as a review. And I did warn you about any spoilers.

Well, I think Narcissu really highlights the advantages that kinetic novels have over their traditional paper counterparts. The music in particular I find adds greatly to the immersion. Together with the backdrops which make long-winded descriptions (something that I hate with a passion) obsolete, it really contributes to an enjoyable experience. (Haha - it's sounding like a review after all :D) I do feel that they made the images of the characters a bit too scarce, though.

Compared to the original, I don't think it really adds much. It could easily have been a stand-alone story and the links were tenuous at best. They tried to tie up some of Setsumi's back story, but it ends up making it seem like she just copied a bunch of stuff that Himeko did. Also the fact that there were continual references to a story that I do not know... I don't think that's the first time that's happened to me in a VN and I wouldn't call myself a veteran by any stretch of the imagination.

The writing is good and the end result is a story almost as good as the original, although I don't think either story really benefits from the association. That's about all I have to say.

On a side not, I find it quite strange that the art in both games is good enough as to actually interest me in the cars portrayed. I'm really not a car enthusiast at all, but the pictures really convey the interest and the excitement, they've got a certain quality that draws me to the. The way I'm usually interested in airships or spaceships, i.e. more interesting modes of transport. In other words the art really conveys something quite in addition to just augmenting the story. This is the way it should be.

2 new projects

2010-04-14T15:26:00.000+02:00

I've been looking for a project where I can do the writing, and I found one. It has a medieval setting, but it is a dating sim. Basically, you're aiming for the hand of the daughter of a duke, but you'll need to take into account the setting you're in. For example, the duke himself will have to approve of the union. Furthermore, if you annoy the minor characters, it's likely to filter up. The inhabitants of the castle do have a habit of talking to each other, after all.

This project will be released on both iPad and as a Ren'Py game. So, when did I learn to program for iPad? Well, I can't, but I've teamed up with dstarsboy who I met on LSF. He was in fact the originator of the idea of an iPad game. As I said, I'm doing the writing and he's doing the coding. We're still looking for an artist though...

And the other thing is that my sister is doing a short manga and she didn't really give me an option except to ink it for her. The joys of being an onii-san. (:P I'm just kidding R-chan)

Paper Tiger, the latest version is on my desktop and I haven't switched it on for a week. I won't be working on it till I've got the script for this new vn well underway, though.

A small update

2010-04-07T15:56:00.000+02:00

Well, since I took the VN off a NaNoRenO schedule and put it on a regular schedule, I haven't worked on it hardly at all. What I have done: I think I'm done with the UI now. The only thing that I still need to do if find the font that I want to use. I am totally procrastinating starting on the backgrounds. I never really learned to draw landscapes or anything... >_<
The thing is that I have to draw the backgrounds before doing the sprites, for various reasons. The sprites depend on the backgrounds. At the moment, my plan is to sketch them, or at least draw them in pencil, then get working on the sprites. And I'll probably do them in vector then, from the pencil sketches. I already tried vectoring them straight, and that didn't work.

In other news, I've gotten back to working on Paper Tiger. Not too much progress as far as functionality goes right now. It's got a sort-of command-line interface now. I'm working on re-writing the way the sprite is drawn. It's still going to be a bit unwieldy for a while. I got a netbook recently, which means that I've been getting a bit more done, since I don't have to be at home to work on it (I'm almost never at home, actually) but now I'm running into trouble with keeping the version on my desktop and the version on my netbook in sync. So now I can't work on it because I don't have the latest version on me.

Anyway, that's enough whining. I'm still going for having a very bare-bones face drawer done by the end of the month.

Let's just change the plans

2010-03-18T01:08:00.001+02:00

Alright, so on reevaluation, I'm clearly not going to make the deadline for the end of the month, so I'm going to scrap that idea, and the previous NaNoRenO project becomes now just a regular project. Even though it is what I would consider to be a visual short story, rather than a visual novel, I'm not willing to compromise on quality for speed, especially since this will be my first offering. Since I'm learning to do things too, I'd rather just learn to do them correctly now. So the production time will be longer (I'm sure it would have been anyway or else I wouldn't be changing my mind) but I'm certainly not dropping it. Which reminds me, I should make a page for it when I've got a bit more data to offer - and come up with a name >_<. For now I'm working on the ui. I expect it'll be done in one to two weeks because it's giving me a bit of trouble.

So, with that, it also means that Paper Tiger is coming off hold earlier than expected. I've been doing a bit more research and it seems like the package (if that's the right term in this case) that I was going to use, PyGTK, doesn't work with Python 3 yet, and of course I went and started coding Paper Tiger in Python 3. Truth is I was thinking it would be too much trouble to convert from Python 2 to 3 at a later stage. Just goes to prove what I know already, i.e. that if you try to cut corners it always comes back to bite you. So I'll be converting back to 2 and then I'll update back to 3 if I see fit in the future. *sigh* The other change to my plans is that I'll be implementing the image drawing directly in Cairo (PyCairo, which is part of and separate from PyGTK) because now that I took a look at it and because of the fact that Cairo can handle svg's anyway, it seems silly to implement the svg output when it's just creating double work for myself. This time I'm not cutting corners, I'm being smart, okay?
Alright, I plan to have the next version done by the end of April. That will be able to do faces (maybe not with a great number of features) but without any gui for now.

Two weeks gone ;_;

2010-03-16T00:24:00.000+02:00

That's two weeks of March gone and not really all that much progress. Ah, well, I finished the script today (started only on Saturday) but that's the least of the project. Lint says there are 2093 words and 298 screens of dialogue. That's subject to minor changes as I still have to do the final edit. The other thing that I've been working on is the ui, but that doesn't mean that the whole thing's done at all. Gonna complete the rest of the in-game menu (the game uses a standardized, custom d-pad like menu for all the choices - that'll become clearer at a later stage.) tonight. That consists of putting a bit of animation in place. I might change the graphics for it completely, though. Not sure right now if it suits the rest of the graphics, which have yet to be made.

Then I'm straight onto backgrounds. Was planning on doing them by hand, but instead of learning to do that, I think it might be easier to learn to do them vector-style in Inkscape. Then there are all the character images. They aren't really sprites 'cause there'll be separate ones for each position/action. I may have set myself up for a lot of work.

No picture this time. Hopefully will have a screenshot of the actual gameplay by next week's update.

A bit of progress...

2010-03-09T01:10:00.001+02:00

Ah, it's more than a week into March, and all that I've got done is the main menu. Still, it's animated and such. You can see a still image of it below. In the actual thing, her hair is blowing in the wind. I'm not sure about the menu itself, it may change. Particularly, it may be a bit big, and also I'm not sure if anyone else can read that.

Alright, so I'm working on planning out the action at the moment. The choices don't take place in quite the same way as they do in an ordinary VN. You guide the character's motions as she travels rather than choosing what you want her to say. Depending on the path you take, it will influence the plot progression. It'll probably be clearer when I actually post a screen shot of the game itself. There will be a lot of drawing for me to do.

The one thing that I'm actually worried about, besides finishing in general, is the music. There aren't going to be any sound effects, at least I don't have any planned, but I would have liked to do some music, just a track or two. Anyway, since I have no experience in that, I was planning to maybe do that in the last week, but at the moment it absolutely doesn't seem like there's going to be any last week time. I also don't really have the opportunity to go hunting the internets for music because of bandwidth constraints, and it'd probably take me longer to find free music that was what I was looking for. Anyway, I'll probably solve it in some creative way... or try to

March 2010

2010-03-02T00:28:00.004+02:00

Alright, since this month is NaNoRenO, I'm putting Paper Tiger on hold, and will resume it at the beginning of April. Progress so far is that I've gust started laying the groundwork, but expect to see something that actually does something in April. Until then, wait patiently and in anticipation, okay?

What I was really hoping was to pick up the writing for a NaNoRenO project, but since that didn't pan out and I had this idea for a game that could be relatively simple, I'm going for it. It will be more visual than novel, in other words it will be light on the text. I wouldn't say it pushes the boundaries of what a VN is, but it certainly won't be conventional. I'm using Ren'Py, and will be working alone for now. I have a sample of what the art style will be like, but note that the game won't actually have any mermaids. Hopefully this will look okay while at the same time allowing me to get the production done fast enough.

Okay, off to work then!!

From somewhere, a transmission...

2010-02-21T22:58:00.002+02:00

Okay, I'm finally activating the blog! You can read more about what sattotw is (and how to pronounce it) on the About page.

With this I'm officially announcing sattotw's only current project: Paper Tiger is (will be) a program for creating character sprites for visual novels. For information on what a visual novel is, you might check out the Wikipedia article, and it probably won't mislead you too much. Right, Paper Tiger uses vector graphics, which means that the characters created with it will theoretically be infinitely customizable. But within limits of the design, of course. It is programmed in Python, and will be able to output in svg (scalable vector graphics) format and later png. The advantage of svg is that it is a vector format and it is easily used. svg files can be edited with Inkscape (svg is its native format), and can also be imported into GIMP, Photoshop and other programs for editing.

Current level of development: I have coded enough to know that I can do it. I can't say any more, because not much more is done. Expect an alpha version in a couple of weeks, depending on NaNoRenO.