Lykan Projects

Fffff--What the fuck?

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 04:35:35 -0400

I’m angry at myself.

This was how I was working. The workflow that I was used to. Where I created a separate image for every necessary combination for every image.

Fuck me, because that would take forever. Every emotion PLUS every state of clothing. I wanted to ask the creator of the engine about the possibility of a feature that was in RenPy—LiveComposite. Where you can issue out commands that would overlay expressions and other things on top of the other levels.

That would be fucking handy if I had transparencies for my… what the fuck, I already do!

Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. How could I be so stupid? This is how I’ve BEEN working, why couldn’t I have programmed that way? I’m just going to continue to berate myself for something that I could have spent time actually progressing forward.

All I would have to do is call a clothing layer and drop the images onto that layer which would be in front of Cole. Voila. None of the over a hundred iterations bullshit.

On the flipside, I could have NOT made the discovery. The game size would have been too fucking huge. As they say in the military, work smarter, not harder. But I will continue to kick myself for a whole goddamn week because of this.

Fuck I’m dumb as a bag of hammers,
~Lykan

Come Together

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 03:55:09 -0400

Well well well, I’m actually doing it!

The pieces are falling into place. Though, school is also getting back into full swing… so I won’t have as much time to dedicate to it as I’d like. I do plan to chip away at it little by little, and my notebook is getting filled with more and more snippets of story and character development.

I’ve been making it a tradition to start every notebook with things I find inspiring.

This snippet is from the 22 Rules of Storytelling by Pixar. It’s wonderfully insightful.

And it’s good to remind myself of these things every time I open the book. It helps me continue to be creative and inspires me to follow through on this project. Which knowing my track record, I need it.

There’s a small portion of the introduction done. I think when I have all of the cast introduced I will make the link for it available to everyone.

Thanks again for tuning in!
~Lykan

Revamp - the Boss

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 05:19:20 -0400

Okay, I did a quick revamp of a very old character. He’s two year’s old and he was the Director for my first attempt at creating a visual novel—subsequently he went into project two as well.

What’s past is past though. I’ve learned a few more things since then. Definitely not to use pure black for anything.

I needed a bit of a filler character, somebody who could help become the catalyst or the “call to action” if we’re following the structure of “The Hero’s Journey.”

I’m trying not to overwhelm myself. One character to fill in here may become another to fill in there. Soon it will be too big of a project (once again).

But as I begin to fill my notebook full of things that I want to see in a game, I’m still careful to keep in mind a beginning, middle and end. The three act process may even come in hand.

On the subject of Three Acts, the introduction to this character will be rather short. Meet James. He is Cole’s boss who sends Cole out to his next assignment. There will be very little interaction with him.

However. I’m thinking about turning this into perhaps an episodic series.

So if that happens, I may bring him back for other things, other assignments.

Though much more studying in the future would be needed to see how I handle choices that a player makes in one version and the outcome it would have in the second. But that gets into a whole other journal. Let’s keep it simple with just James.

For now, this is his office. Not sure if I’ll revamp that later.

Thanks for tuning in,

Lykan

Drama

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 06:07:49 -0400

Drama. I was lacking something in telling a story, and I tend to forget these things. So much of things occur in sets of three.

Comedy for instance. Someone has to have an action, repeat that action in order to show that it’s business as usual, and the third time is when something different happens that gets a reaction from the audience. I’m thinking Chaplin style humor.

I debated whether or not I should include another character because it adds a layer of complexity… but also a bit more work. But at the same time it gives me more elements to work with.

That’s in for now.

This is Lucas. In messing around with the sprites I felt that I didn’t give enough ‘life’ to his eyes. So I’ll be retooling that in the near future.

Rory and Cole

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 04:30:00 -0400

Let’s introduce Rory.

I’m in this weird zone where nothing is really clear, and I can go in a lot of directions. And this nebulousness really slows me down. I wasn’t sure what form Rory would take. I wanted him to certainly contrast from Cole.

From research and writing tips, it’s suggested that you write what you know. Every character I write/draw/create will take with it some part of me. Anyway, I’ve been trying to tie down personalities for these characters.

Cole, could probably represent a confident archetype. Probably has seen a bit of the world and thinks he knows how it works. Which lets me sort of tackle the notion of perception and reality. Mix it up with a little bit of a jaded fatalism and it starts to sound a lot like… someone I know. Somebody we all know I suppose, it’s aim is toward an archetype.

The details will really help make him more of a person and flesh out the other dimension. But that’s still in the works.

So then what would be the opposite of that?

Insecurity? Someone who’s been incapable of breaking out of their shell for fear that nobody will accept them. I briefly thought I could make him a chubbier character, who doesn’t realize that beauty comes in all forms. It didn’t feel right to me. I wanted a character who doesn’t need pity.

I wanted a back and forth between the two characters.

Characters who don’t necessarily wilt in the face of another.

The story will be character driven, so the last thing I want to do is create a scenario where there’s no conflict.

I know that much, and hopefully that helps guide where I continue to go with this. I have the freedom that will allow for me to move in any direction, I just need to pick one and start.

This is 9

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:35:21 -0400

I keep doing this thing, where I conceptualize something that’s pretty awesome (at least in my opinion) and it’s just way too much for one person to handle.

I want to put in gameplay effects, balance them against a very slight RNG, and give things an ‘infinite’ play through sort of scenario. Mostly because that’s what I myself want in a game. But as it turns out, that’s a LOT of work. As I’ve already mentioned, doing this alone doesn’t make that any easier.

Not to say that the other projects are dead, but their grand scale makes them hard to just plop down and hammer it out.

Let’s talk about distributables. RenPy would have put things out into an .exe distributable and personally I would like things to be a lot more easily accessible. A lot of other engines have different ways to run their stuff.

I’ve certainly been looking at Twee/Twine after creating a CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) game with it a few years back. The result was an HTML file and that’s exactly what I wanted. It was a lot of fun, but there would be no way for me to layer an image over a background with it. Well I suppose I could delve into some JavaScript to make that work. But I want something that does it natively.

When I found something called WebStory Engine, which the developer has been working on it for the past year, based off the framework of RenPy, working in a web environment.

I found what I needed in an engine! No executables, and images that I have Z-Axis to work with.

I whipped up a sprite, this wonderfully playful cougar. Whom, I’m thinking of naming him Cole. Oddly, it takes me very little time to make sprites any more. I’d say I have well into a dozen sprites that I’ve made, each time from the ground up. So the workflow is easier each time. But then I lacked a story. All the other ones had stories, but they were a lot more lengthy than I want to work with.

I’ve got something in the works, but sadly it’s extremely rough.

I really wish I had a much clearer vision of what I want to achieve with this particular story. As it stands, it has Cole and an Otter, of whom has yet to be created. Friends slash Friends with Benefits? It’s a really in the air and it gives me room to fashion where I want the story to go, and also give me room to make it more than just a story and an interactive one.

Then I won’t have to worry about six characters, just the two. Of course, I’d really like to keep it as a one shot adventure, maybe with a few different endings. Of course, being that this is furry, and I’m who I am… there will be porn involved. I mean, this picture, is Cole in shock at the size of… the story.

Thanks for reading,
~Lykan out.

The History and Meta-History

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 05:21:01 -0500

I really liked the idea that each of my sprites had their On Screen persona/character on the show and have a life away from all of that.

Names have yet to come. That’s usually last on my list because I take forever coming up with names.

But the Lion is the Chef. He’s a bit of a hot-headed and temperamental one. He graduated top of the class in a four year Culinary Art Program at a Community College. He’s not the best at what he does, but you’re probably better of not telling that to his face if you value your fur.

Off the show, he’s was a pop-star in a world famous boy-band, until his sexuality became big news. His agent managed couldn’t get him anything until Hot Days, Mystic Nights: New Haven went into the works. The producers didn’t seem to mind the scandals over the alleged sex tapes, in fact, quite the opposite, they loved them. He’s really excited to be working on the show and is glad that he doesn’t have to put on the charade of celebrity girlfriends and fake affairs.

It’s interesting that I can play around with two worlds. One in which there is a universe where people come into these psychic powers and sometimes end up at a paranormal hotel, where it’s cheesy and campy and has sexy guys getting gay, then a world outside of that that’s just as prejudiced and hostile as our own.

Sadly, I’ve yet to do the emotions for the raccoon.

Anyhow, he’s the cheerful, happy-go-lucky bellhop of the hotel. He was pretty down on his luck his entire life, until he discovered his abilities just two years ago. Now he’s found himself at the hotel, and life’s looking good.

Off screen, he’s one of the producers. He was a child actor on several TV shows and became a producer for several successful shows. After the finale of his last show, he realized that he’d love to be in front of the camera again. Like his character, he was a late-bloomer, and realized his orientation later in life. So he wants the elements of that to show on the show.

Art mimics life, and life mimics art, right?

Expressions and Sex

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:52:59 -0500

Layers are amazing, they’re what make working in digital a life saver, that and the undo-button.

I learned a while ago that you could simply make sprites by omitting things that will be changed and build components off the things that do change.

And when it comes to expressions, there’s only ever really 3 major components that change. Eyes, Eyebrows and Mouth. There are other things of course, but they’re minute and on cartoonish characters, get phased out during the simplification.

Ever since reading Scott McClouds’ Understanding Comics, I’ve since seen the subtleties of what makes up different emotions. Just ever so slightly tweaked changes in the orientation of components of our face. In fact, he goes so far as to show us really what we probably think we look like, which are those same three objects. We have a conscious and mildly unconscious control over them, and therefore know their positions, and it’s easier for us to understand what the combinations of them form.

Emotions are easier to understand this way when you’re breaking them down into their simplest of forms.

I’m about halfway through all the expressions for my sprites. They each have different positions for their eyebrows, where they’re looking, whether their eyes are closed or open, the shape of their mouth. I’m on the fence about creating the anime/manga style expression symbols. The teardrop, the blush, the vein, that indicate different things. On one hand it makes things a little more comical and unrealistic—though we’re talking about animal people here. On the other hand, I think there’s a lot that can be said without those things, and I wouldn’t otherwise need the accentuation. I’ll eventually figure that all out when the time comes, I’m sure.

I’ve come across some quandaries before I get into the writing portion of all of this. There’s definitely going to be sex written into this game. I’ve seen a lot of examples where it’s sort of strewn about like candy in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factor just waiting for the poor hapless player to stumble across. I honestly believe that it’s something that the player should work for.

I’ve developed more or less a formula as to how relationships are handled in this game, and there’s calculations for the One Night Stand, the Love at First Sight, the Building Romance, so on and so forth. I can only hope that it all works out. We’ll find out when I start beta-testing this whole thing.

But here’s the problem, while I’ve built the game to be replayable, different endings and different possibilities. What can I do to make people come back to a new episode?

I wanted to make this a series of stories, each one telling a different aspect or angle of a larger story. I suppose even more different endings is my answer. At the end of each episode, I want the possibility for striking up a romance or a fling, or whatever with any one of the eight characters. Also, there will probably be guest appearances as ‘guests’ in the hotel. More on that later. But if every character is romanceable in the first episode of a game, what would make people want to play the other ones?

Of course, there’s the option to limit who’s romanceable. However, I feel as though that would be unfair… though it looks like the first episode of the game will more than likely be something that’s free. I suppose a teaser wouldn’t be too much of an affront to the players.

But again, these are all things that will and should be handled while I’m getting further along in the story. So after the expressions come the clothes. Then I can call the spritework complete. Work on the story, and then the CGs.

The Complete Banner

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:57:09 -0500

Here it is! The full cast! After I revamp the cougar to fit with the rest of the style, I’m going to recreate their faces for various emotions. Design up some cloths, and then the show will go into the writing and programming mode.

A Horse of Course!

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:31:50 -0500

Last sprite! It’s a horse of course! Well, it was a really hard decision to come to. I had started out looking at some sort of herbivore. At first, I started with a bull. Then I examined what I needed in my table of elements, and wanted to go with a Water Ox. Then in my search in between my other sprites, I stumbled across a gnu—or wildebeest. Also in the herbivore family. An Inex was suggested, which would have been awesome since I had just watched Kung Fu Panda 2, alas, horns are complicated and when I get around to creating the CGs then I don’t want to have to work that extra bit. So it was back to the bull… but as soon as I started sketching out the muzzle, I realize that I’ve almost never drawn a horse.

Voila. Horse it is!

Another One Bites the Dust

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 05:03:32 -0500

I’ve got one more base sprite left to go. I figured that I would approach my sprites in such away to try and keep the style uniform. I noticed a problem with the cougar, which is that I tried to increase the outline in order to separate him better from backgrounds. In hindsight, it’s not very in keeping with how I do things. So I should avoid doing the forced things. I’ll have to go back and fix him to retain a similar style with the rest of them.

Also in keeping with building with a purpose, I’m going to put together the emotions for all the characters in the next wave.

I absolutely love being able to work with layers. Originally I had about 4 different positions for each of the components (Eyebrows, Eyes, Mouth). This could create more than an adequate number of combinations for several emotions.

Then I ran across another person’s work for an expression generator, and there’s a lot more positions that I hadn’t touched. So I’m back to the drawing board with it, but I know that I’ll have no problem putting it together. The hard part of the base sprite is over.

Better yet, built into RenPy is something called LiveComposite, which allows you to layer things on an image. Sai Paint Tools easily exports out into .png without any problems. So that will not be a bottleneck to my workflow.

Onward!

Dossiers and Mindmaps

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:26:00 -0500

I realized that ages ago, I had purchased writing software for NaNoWriMo. It’s called Liquid Story Binder. It allowed you to generate crazy little things like Dossiers, Timelines, Mindmaps, and various other creative things. Unfortunantly, it’s all sorts of departures from a horrid flurry of 50,000 words needed for NaNoWriMo.

However, now I see it serving other purposes. It’s helping me create a much needed outline for my own story. Also, cute little backgrounds for the characters.

We have our otter character for instance. Yes, otter, there is one. People keep mentioning that the cast is missing an otter. There’s been an otter all along.

Anyhow, with the dossier, it let me think up a character for him on the show, and off the set. On, he’s an attentive, wise-beyond-his-years, but playful at heart bartender who has telepathy and the occasional he sees a glimpse of the future. And outside, he’s a former silver medalist who really wanted a career in acting and this is his first part stepping in front of the camera (outside of the cereal endorsements). He loves the people he working with and is super enthusiastic, even when he screws up his lines.

Writing requires research—a lot of it.

I went through and thought about the origins of several actors as well. On top of the research and hunting for typical jobs you’d find at a hotel. Thank Google.

With regards to the mindmapping, it’s quite a relief to use a mindmap just because it frees your brain a little from the restrictiveness of just typing something out. I found it extraordinarily useful when I was playing Twee/Twine and creating that choose your own adventure game. This won’t be too much of a departure from that particular style.

New Banners and Happy New Year!

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:57:00 -0500

Happy New Year to everyone out there!

There’s a new banner, updated with the cast as I work on them. I’ll be working more with their facial animation in the coming week. I think I have most of the background pictures, I’ll just need to go through and touch up the ones I want to use. So very glad that those are out of the way.

I’ve decided on how a relationship system is going to work based on decisions made by the player character.

One more screen shot.

Hot Days, Mystic Nights: New Haven

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:18:35 -0500

I think this works as a title for the game. While trying to brainstorm it, I liked the name Haven. Thinking that this was sort of a place away from society where magic or the supernatural happen. Then I realized that the goal was to name the show that these characters play a role in.

So something cheesier needed to be selected. Something more akin to a soap opera. After some thought, Hot Days, Mystic Nights was born. Of course, this is also after figuring the setting.

It took quite a while to figure out what I was going to do for the setting. I was half and half on whether I wanted a tropical coastal setting, or something that I’m a lot more familiar with, which is a mountainous region like the kind in my backyard. That’s not to say that I haven’t been to places like Puerto Rico, Key West, Cape Canaveral. So that’s going to come in handy when I’m writing.

I still ended up really liking the name Haven, and it wasn’t about to leave me. So being a bunny, let’s just stick it in. Which created this whole new dynamic. They create various series on TV where it branches out to different divisions. Law and Order: SVU, CSI: Miami, ST:TNG… why not do that? Perhaps this could be a franchise from an established show.

So what does that mean for our characters? They could be new actors, happy to get onto a show that they may already love, or it’s not as high profile and this particular series needs to find a way to come into their own and has a pretty rocky start, like ST:Enterprise. Maybe with a foreboding of possible cancellation the way network television loves to cancel things… Caprica, Firefly, SGU, so on and so forth.

I’m pretty happy that things are falling into place.

VN7 - Psionics

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 02:21:35 -0500

Let’s face it, I go into something a little half cocked. I wanted to put magic in the series, mostly so that it would open things up to a bit of a puzzle element to each episode. Of course, I’m not as familiar with magic and it’s ‘everyday application’ the way I could image psychic abilities. That’s totally within my realm, as I’m that sci-fi guy more than a fantasy guy.

So let’s push into psionics.

I went into researching the stereotypical powers. Clairvoyance, Precognition, Telepathy, Telekinesis… then I remembered that there was a fully realized world of psychic powers that sadly had a horrible story. Push. While lots of ideas were very interesting, it wasn’t put to great use.

For me, I’m going to compile a list of stuff and see what interesting elements I can use to create puzzles with. Of course, with multiple ways of solving it, as I intend to give each character a power or two that they can use.

Well, with that said, I can post up on the Pyrokinetic.

In a quick poll of FA and SF, I found that Lions were a popular choice. I figured I’d need an additional feline to that cast, so that really works out. Then the ideas started to pour out. Now that I was going in the direction of psychic powers, I could now have a hot headed pyrokinetic. He’s that short, quite stacked lion. And then I can definitely see how that will play out as the game goes along. Of course, as an actor, he’s very relaxed easy-come-easy-go nice guy. Likes long walks on beaches, drinks fruity cocktails, hasn’t held a steady relationship since most of the guys want the hot headed personality he plays on the ‘show’.

Though, I can go either way on how popular the ‘show’ is in their world. Whether it’s a few very niche TV show aimed at gay guys or a very standard and rather popular prime time series. I’ll have to think about that one for a while.

Visual Novel #7

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 05:57:00 -0500

Well, it seems that I’ve abandoned #6. However Blake survived the horrible accident and will probably push forward into #7. Though he was essential as being the template for all future sprites. As opposed to the first attempt at a Visual Novel and none of those characters survived as I’ve tried a little harder to make sure the anatomy doesn’t go all screwy when I mirror the image.

I’ll probably have to redo Blake though, as his lineart is a lot stronger than the others. Speaking of others…

The current project will feature about 8 characters. Here’s 4 that are solidified and have a species. The rest will be decided upon later. I posted the picture to my SF account to poll some of the people following me there for what they’d like to see for the remaining 4.

Thus far I have two stories that will play out. I wanted to keep using my sprites, and when in a forum dedicated to the Visual Novel scene I asked how often people re-use sprites, it was a definite ‘no’ or ‘no, and I’d be confused to see them in a different setting. Then I started thinking in meta. What if these guys were actors on a series of episodes? Then that would be a plausible reason to use them for more than one visual novel.

So now I had to come up with a story that will fit an episodic content format. I was thinking psychological horror at the start, but after finishing the Lost Room series I started thinking about a paranormal/supernatural thriller. That might work out even better for a series as well. So what could I do to bring people together? A motel/hotel/resort! Then my friend suggested that I could make something like Dante’s Cove—except that it would be good.

So this is the path that I’m currently walking down. Wish me luck!

Visual Novel Project #6

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 03:54:00 -0400

I really haven’t kept track of how many visual novels I’ve started, or have planned in the works. It’s quite a few, sadly. It usually comes down to the fact I try to put more than too much into it. Choices, characters, plot lines, subplots, variables, random events, and so on and so forth.

So I’ve worked on trying to pick a story that is short enough for someone who’s limited time and trying to work solo in the mean time. Trying to keep the complexities down and just try to tell a simple story. Of course in the mean time, I keep trying my hand at Interactive Fiction. Which is where the inspiration for the following story comes from.

The premise was simple, you’re stuck on a spaceship that’s broken down and you and one other need to fix it in order to get home.

Meet Blake. He’s in his underwear because… well, because he is. Or rather, he can be. Yes, it’s going to be one of those games.

The goal is certainly to get things fixed aboard the ship, but there will certainly be some intimate moments where you can learn more about the person you’re working with. Make decisions and react in ways that earn respect or gain ire.

And perhaps get him in the sack… or strike up something more?

Really, selecting this to be a short story certainly helps. It does make it a lot easier to work on. Keeping the characters down to Blake and the main character makes it a lot easier to work on. I can focus on the dialogue and interaction. The workload doesn’t have me working on too many drawings, and I can insert more CG of the Blake.

I have a few additional poses, though I haven’t figured out how many there should be. For the most part, I’m winging the sprites while I flesh out the story. I have the premise and beginning and the end, so it’s all that stuff in the middle that needs to be worked on. Aside from learning the language of course.

So, I hope that I can keep motivated with the project, since I’m notorious for letting my projects stagnate and collect dust. I have a good start for now though.

~lykan