So this was a writing focused week for sure. I will jump into the details...below.
As I mentioned in my last post, my goal this week was to work on catching Kav up to the other routes writing wise.
My other goal was to somewhat shrink the inevitable gap between Kav's word co...
2023-09-02 00:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
So as I've mentioned, there are going to be images that are unlockable in the music room and will display in a gallery there when you are listening to music in When Stars Collide.
I thought I'd share sneak peeks of those images here on Patreon!
And of course, we usually go in alphabetical order so we are starting with Asher - lounging around listening to music.
2023-09-01 05:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone! Today starts the beginning of our next Q&A.
Just like before, I'll take questions for a week and then go through them and post all the answers.
As before, you can send questions about:
For any of my games and characters. I will collect them and then post a Q&A style post w...
2023-09-01 04:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone - over the next few weeks I will be uploading profile sheets and "stat" or "ability sheets for the characters. These are, like all of the lore content, for fun. And some of the information on the profile sheet will get mentioned in the game as part of character back stories.
(So if you really want to avoid any and all spoilers - even relatively minor ones that won't have a huge plot implication, you may want to pass over the body of information in the profile sheets and mayb...
2023-08-30 00:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
And here we have....Kav'isari. Or Kav, for short. The newest LI in When Stars Collide - and a character I have jokingly called the space hobo due to his usually unkempt look.
It's always interesting to have a character who has one eye covered because it can really impact how certain expressions come across. He also looks quite different when you turn his beard off or just tone it down to more of a 5 o'clock shadow sort of look.
The real question is whether or not we'll ever see Ka...
2023-08-27 00:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone! I am reposting this, which was posted a couple of months ago, because I realised the post didn't have the full sized images in it which, I think, meant they were kind of hard to read.
So I am reposting the whole thing but with the full sized images so they are easier to read and use.
I'm also reposting the original text that game with the post so no one has to go look up the old one to see the explanation.
...
2023-08-27 00:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostHellooo! So this is not my first actual devlog for WSC but it's also kind of my first official one. The first one that follows my usual format and that is accessible to all patrons. And it's going to be the start of weekly check ins for this game.
It's really long mostly because I take the time to explain my writing spreadsheets for any new Patrons, etc.
This week I will be covering both games but will still divide the updates so it's less confusing. Especially because the WSC update is pretty long while the GS one is pretty short.
This Week's Summary:
The Ramble:
As I mentioned this is going to be a really short check-in this week. I sent out the beta but have not checked for any feedback yet.
We have a really small g...
2023-08-26 00:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostHi all. It's been a while since I posted one of these (though I have multiple written up - I just stress over if they're too complicated or silly. This one seems safe. LoL!)
So I have mentioned before that a lot of my game contemplations comes from realising language that we frequently use is...maybe not as accurate or useful as I want it to be. And this is another example.
I have always had a really good understanding of a "route" in games like Changeling and Gilded Shadows - a r...
2023-08-23 00:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone! So as Gilded Shadows winds down and When Stars Collide picks up, I will start making the general developer logs for WSC available to all tiers.
And I will start doing them on a regular schedule.
Any spoilers or major sneak peeks will remain exclusive to the relevant tiers, though.
For now I want to do a quick update to let everyone in on some of the work I've done on the project since my last "ramble."
I have not written much this week as I've been busy ge...
2023-08-20 00:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Yren is one of those characters where something about his features just makes his expressions more subtle. Though sometimes even if it's harder to detect differences in a side-by-side, and static, comparison...they can be a little more obvious in game when you see the expression switch from one to the other.
Even so, the differences been serious, angry, annoyed, and sad...are still a little more subtle due to his eyebrow shape and other things.
Like Raif, I left his eyes in their ...
2023-08-20 00:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostHalloooo~oo! Time for the GS devlog for this week!
This Week's Summary:
The Ramble:
Sorry for the delay for this month's answers. I have no excuse - I just basically forgot to post even after I had all the answers written up. (づ￣ 3￣)づ
How do you name your games? What and how do you think when you’re coming up with one.
I don't know that I have a clear process, really. I guess my first angle of attack is thinking of any catchy story components - locations, groups, etc.
Changeling was originally called "The Unseelie" but ...
2023-08-14 02:25:03 +0000 UTC View Post
So...Noel.
The one whose tattoo I will regret for the rest of my life. And also one of the only characters with a distinct colour scheme. I feel like my main goal with Noel's design was "especially hot" LoL
I suppose I did want a character who looked a little more mature than some of the others. He's definitely the dad-like or big-brother-like figure for the crew. And, funnily enough, he's not even the oldest cast member. Two of the LIs are older than he is. But I still wanted him...
2023-08-13 00:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostHallooooo! Time for the GS devlog for this week.
This Week's Summary:
The Ramble:
Sooo. Yeah.
I finished the CG art this week. I honestly did not expect to be done with it. My hand cooperated and though I ended up pushing it a little too much on the last day, overall, it's fine.
I haven...
2023-08-12 02:20:56 +0000 UTC View Post
So for this sheet, I ended up leaving Raif's eyes a single colour but in reality, a lot of his expressions probably would only appear with certain eye colours because they are so strongly correlated to emotion. I want to do another post showing their range but I'm undecided if I want to spoil which colours go with which expressions or let everyone figure it out in-game.
Raif has a couple of additional outfits besides the ones shown here. I was a little torn on which ones I wanted to sho...
2023-08-06 00:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostHallo~oo again! Time for the GS devlog for this week.
This Week's Summary:
The Ramble:
So I finally started work on the last *major* bit of work for Yuu's route. There are a few small things ...
2023-08-05 00:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone! It hasn't been that long since my last update on WSC but I've kind of done a lot of stuff since then and decided to do a new update on it.
So this time I'm going to break it down because there is a lot of stuff.
Basically I have one small bit to finish for Yren and Noel, Raif, and Yren will be completed up to Chapter Five. That may not seem like a lot but each chapter in this game is pretty long so often the ...
2023-08-03 01:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone! Today starts the beginning of our next Q&A.
Just like before, I'll take questions for a week and then go through them and post all the answers.
As before, you can send questions about:
For any of my games and characters. I will collect them and then post a Q&A style post w...
2023-08-01 02:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Daaz, interestingly, probably went through the most design changes of any characters. His hair, his markings (which weren't always bioluminescent). His hair went through several styles before I settled on this one - which is just a style I like. He actually has several alternate hairstyles for the game, though I forgot to put them on the sprite sheet.
Initially I thought I wanted his clothes show off the markings down his arm but I ended up not liking those designs (they felt impr...
2023-07-30 01:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostHallooo! Time for the GS devlog for this week.
This Week's Summary:
The Ramble:
I managed to finish sprite expressions this week.
This route was SO tedious. Like all the Endgame routes, there were so many large group scenes due to meetings and the like. It hasn't been this bad for a while because no other route...
2023-07-29 00:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
So I have been, in between writing, working on sprite variations and such for the main cast. A lot of the side characters won't necessarily get secondary outfits or hairstyles but the main cast always will have as many as I can squeeze in.
Though these sheets won't have every variation or outfit, they are designed to show off at least some of the different ways the sprites will appear in the game.
Starting with Asher, of course, since we go in alphabetical order.
Asher someh...
2023-07-23 07:44:15 +0000 UTC View PostHellooo everyone! A quick WSC ramble!
Or not quick. I don't know.
So...I've mentioned this before but WSC is a bit of a different story structure compared to my previous games. Gilded shadows and Changeling are both games where the story overlaps through a short common route and then branches into self-contained character routes fairly early in the story.
WSC breaks into self contained character paths way later in the story. Actually ...
2023-07-22 03:34:34 +0000 UTC View PostHallo~oo! Time for the GS devlog for this week. Let's get into it.
This Week's Summary:
The Ramble:
Probably another short update since I've embarked on another of the major chunks of work currently left for Yuu's route...sprite expressions.
So for those who haven't been around a while - there are around 6000 - 6500 expression changes per route. And ...
2023-07-22 03:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostMy last write up was really hard to write (I kept re-evaluating the way I was explaining that concept and thus rewriting that whole thing over and over. LoL! 🤣) but this one, I think, is going to be a little easier. It is something that is really important to bear in mind during game design imo.
This is what I call the "mechanical" vs the "practical" function within game design. You can also think of this as "back end" vs "front end" - in short, it's really about what's going on behi...
2023-07-19 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostHallo! Time for the GS devlog for this week.
This Week's Summary:
The Ramble:
Short update this week. All I did was flowcharts. All week.
But I did get all the flowcharts coded and one test run done. So usually I don't test every variation myself - I let beta testers check if everything is unlock...
2023-07-15 02:27:23 +0000 UTC View PostHalloo~oo! Time for the GS devlog for this week.
This Week's Summary:
The Ramble:
Short ramble this week - I did a lot of work but it was all centred around one thing for the most part.
So the first thing I did this week was code in the music cues and SFX for Yuu's route. That doesn't take too...
2023-07-08 02:06:18 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone!
I just wanted to do a quick WSC check-in since it's been a while.
Writing
I have finished the rough draft for Daaz's scenes! And....Noel is next but...
I can't remember if I mentioned in my last update that I was looking back over what I have written so far and had decided I don't like the pacing of the early part of the game. Things happen a little too fast and I've decided I need to add some content to slow the pacing down and to p...
2023-07-08 00:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone! Here are the questions and answers for this month's Q&A. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions!
Do you know how long it'll be between episodes when you start releasing When Stars Collide?
I don't. Not yet. I won't start releasing more until it's fully written so the space between episodes isn't going to be for writing the story but for coding and doing the art.
I'm not sure how long that will take.
I think the first...
2023-07-08 00:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostSo this is one of those topics that I have thought about and just written down some random observations and thoughts.
But.
Trying to collate it into something coherent is a little tricky though, so bear with me.
My opinion is that "Right Choices" and "Wrong Choices" are a feature of any game that gives you choices. This is an inherent quality of choice (and, therefore, having multiple paths and goals.)
Let me explain.
The moment you introduce potentially co...
2023-07-05 11:37:02 +0000 UTC View Post