Sunday, September 23, 2012

Pretty Pictures

Yay for art updates! I'm especially excited to show pieces from such talented artists - seeing their work really makes me want to practice hard and improve my own abilities! :)

First, I have some new main menu wallpapers by the beauteous bunbun. bunbun was kind enough to do wallpaper art for all of the AXIOM.01 guys, but I'll just show Sagan's for now, because it's my favorite (and because, according to my tags, I haven't posted as many pictures of Sagan as everyone else).

AXIOM.01 - Sagan Wallpaper by bunbun

You can unlock each guy's special "bunbun-style" wallpaper by completing their demo scenes. Eventually, I'm hoping to have a variety of wallpapers with different unlock conditions throughout the game. (hunts for more awesome guest artists)

Next, here's a CG preview by Nellie from the "The Pirate Mermaid." This is Mikali, the kindhearted mermaid prince. He's a sweet, idealistic guy who wants to learn more about humans, even though most mermaids avoid them at all costs. I'm especially fond of his long golden hair. :3

The Pirate Mermaid - Prince Mikali CG

In other news, I'm hoping to revamp the hidden object screens for AXIOM.01 this week (tip for anyone doing imagemaps in Renpy: do not put in any objects with overlapping bounding areas, else you will probably regret it!). Removing overlap will allow me to fade out objects once they are found, as well as to add a hint system. While it's going to be a pain to redo the images, I think these new functions should be worth it.

Then I need to sit down and finish those last few clue images! I keep on wanting to take a break to improve my art, but I should at least get the demo out the door first. ^^ Here's hoping for a release sometime next month!

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Introducing "The Pirate Mermaid"

 Hey all! So I've been taking an impromptu break from AXIOM.01 ever since my computer died (luckily, I had most of my files backed up, so I didn't lose too much). Finally got a new laptop, so I'll be finishing up those last bits of art and coding soon!

In the meantime, I started working on a short-and-sweet collab project with my friend Nellie (who did chibi art for AXIOM.01 earlier). "The Pirate Mermaid" will be an otome game featuring a gender-flipped version of "The Little Mermaid" fairytale, with a ruthless pirate girl protagonist. You can either win guys over by becoming a nicer person, or by corrupting them to join your evil pirate ways. xD

More info about "The Pirate Mermaid" and regular updates are posted in our official WIP thread. We're planning to have a demo out by October, so wish us luck! :)


Saturday, September 1, 2012

Grand GUI Finale

In a previous post, I showed some screenshots/mockups for the AXIOM.01 GUI. I am happy to say that I finally finished coding all the GUI screens! Each screen has some small animations, similar to the animated main menu I showed before.

You can check out a quick demonstration of the AXIOM.01 GUI in this video.


Around 1:40, you can see my new setup for interrogation questions. Now, you can either view questions by scrolling down a textbox-sized menu, or expand the menu to display all the questions at once.


Before implementing this "expanding menu" thing, I had sprites sliding back and forth to avoid being blocked by the questions, which looked really odd. I definitely prefer this new system. :)

By the way, someone asked a couple posts back if I could do a tutorial on main menus. Would anybody else be interested in GUI programming or general Ren'Py tutorials? If so, what specific topics would you like to have covered?