Category Archives: Games

Stepping back

It’s been a VERY long time since I’ve posted anything here. But I’ve kept the domain alive, at least on the hosting side of things.
I could make excuses as to why I hadn’t posted anything up in regards to any work going on, even if, the only work was privately working on Legends from Thyilos. But I won’t. fact is, I was too lazy and after such a long time gone quiet, I’d become over anxious to be able to post anything.

So here it is, the grit.

I’ve been a four month hiatus from working on Legends from Thyilos, mainly because work and life have been too baring to allow me to even think of touching the project. This situation has forced me to reconsider something I’d thought about last year when RMMV was due to be released. Where I wondered about ceasing production on the project using the very out dated RMXP.

Part of the my reasoning stemmed for why I opted to stay with RMXP to begin with, and that was it’s setup was not too far different from the RPG Maker 2000 which got me started in this hobby in the first place. So I kept working on it in XP, but I have always wondered.
Well, now I’m taking a huge step back, in order to leap forward.

RMMV will allow me to set the game up for future project centered around the universe I’ve been creating for so long, without having to worry about doing it later. There’s also the added fuel of making it available on Mac and Windows, and if luck provides, it may even get the Green Light on Steam.

It also gives me more practice in the engine me and a friend of mine are making a side project on called, Whisky Quest. Which to be honest, may never actually see completion, but for the mean time, working on the script together has been an excellent pass time and has given me the breathing space of focusing entirely on Lft Hot4K i needed.

So I’ve made a post up on the Dev site, Lucid Flame, detailing what’s being planned, and I won’t dilly dally retyping everything in here when I could use that same time to get back to work.
Typing this update is just a little break to sip some whisky and collect my thoughts before I delve back into rebuilding the database and converting what salvage assets from the old engine I can.

So I’ll leave it at that, and will hopefully, have the nerve to post updates on here of what;s going down. If there isn’t anything here, then please, keep in touch on the Dev site, just in case I’m voicing myself on there rather than here.


A little link to a project

This is just a short little post to highlight a new project that was finally made public. Me and the others over at Lucid Flame decided it was time that a large collaborative project we’d been discussing and slowly working on over the last year had reached its time to take a spot in the limelight.

For now though, there is only going to be updates and features about the new game, Thief of Time, over on Lucid Flame, until it of course reaches a point where there’s enough information for it to be made public on RPG Dev Forums.

If you choose to follow the link here and take a look, I really appreciate it, and if you like what you see, then please feel free to leave us a like. It really does help motivate the team, especially the others I work with who sometimes feel like they can’t find the effort. 🙂
(which lately, includes me! I’m getting out of my lazy streak, seriously!)


Trying to break my chains

Sticking to the title right there, I’m literally doing exactly what it says. I’m trying to break my habit right now of being lazy. Seems since my laptop broke down, I lost all work motivation and albeit, slipped into a bit of depression. So lately all I’ve been doing is aimlessly browsing the net, and trying to find actual work so I can get some money on my plate. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing, since finding a job is important; but my old hobbies were once my dream to be my job, and I can’t just forget about them.

Truthfully, I feel very guilty about my lack of work ethic, so over the last month I’ve been forcing myself to do a little bit at on something, but each time I do start I only get a little bit done and then get distracted by something else. But I’m going to change that right now! It’s time to go back to %100 focus. Normal sleeping hours, normal waking hours, and I think I’ll kick my caffeine addiction and drink more tea instead to limit myself. Then i can go back to posting updates here, rather than feeling like its pointless because there’s nothing to post an update about (which is kinda ironic since over on LucidFlame it’s me who was always telling the others they should post updates on their work regardless of how small it was, just so the readers know what’s going down. Talk about a taste of ones own medicine).

So, to conclude this, here is some stuff I DID manage to do in the last… I think it’s been two months now. >_<

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RunicGriphonCharm
RunicShield

Both these designs I’d created for a Role play narrative I’ve been taking a part in. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that a person who loves writing would take part in an RP. I think they’re quite good ways to improve ones writing skills since you’ve gotta adapt on your feet to keep canon to the narrative and characters present, whilst others do the same, sometimes at the same time you are. Always fun to have to edit your last post due to another posting right you were. 😛

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Collage of Kingdom banners link~
This is a large one, so rather than clog up everything here, I’ll just link it back to my DeviantArt page.
The image is a collage of the kingdom banner designs I’d bee working on while my laptop was dead, which I recall in a prior post over a month ago, I said I’d upload… better late than never?
I haven’t done enough with the full vector version of these, however, to warrant uploading those just yet, but I will hopefully do so soon.

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That’s it from the work I do have to put up on display. Aside from these, Legonds from Thyilos has still been progressing, slowly. I’ve lacked motivation for doing actual work on it, so I’ve instead been doing other written pieces associated with its lore. One of the bigger pieces is a written journal by a rather important figure-head in the series, called Rein. I was thinking of doing a biography of him, but when I truly considered it, and the man Rein does become, a biography became impossible!
There is not a single sole alive throughout Thyilos or any other dimension who would ever be able to get close enough to actually interview Rein.

So instead, his background is narrated through him by way of a journal. It starts off when he is only ten, and goes on from there. I’ve got some ideas in my mind about twists and such that could be precursors to the man he becomes today, but I’m still a while off from there. It’s a bit of a challenge though to write this journal though. mainly because even though he’s from a wealthy family and has the proper education, he’s young. So I’m having to write as a young boy would, not as I would write today. it’s all a part of showing his growth.

Another key reason for doing a journal instead, which I thought was rather a good plan, is that if Rein were to still keep journals to the current date, then that would show his human side. Even though he is current meant to be a mad, near-inhuman monstrosity whose selfish ambition is to annihilate and control the world as the one dominate ruler. He is still a human, somewhere… really deep down… Maybe inside that black void of a soul he has? Who knows. But if it exists, and it might, even if just a teeeeeeny bit. It’d be noticeable in his journals. Which, unlike getting a biography. It’s possible to steal Rein’s things, provided someone were able to somehow get inside his dark castle and do so.

Before I depart once more, hopefully this time not for more than a week, I’d like to announce a new member to the LfT production team. A good friend of mine, David R, has agreed to being the games musician, and he’s already presented his first piece of work; a remix of the default theme I’d been using for the games title screen. I’ve high hopes for this partnership, and am elated to have the chance to see someone create music to fit the narrative.
Depending how things progress, me or he, my put up the audio examples for people to hear.

That’s all from me folks. Hope you’re having a good start to the week!

~Shea


Released: Stand-alone version of ToT Beta Demo!

The first thing on my agenda from yesterday, since my laptop was finally functioning again with its new (and looking twice as durable) power pack, was to release a Stand-Alone version of the Beta Demo.

Essentially, we had to do this to make sure the game would work on as many systems as possible, and there seemed to be people having problems with the previous versions, which we think could have been due to their computers not liking the XP RTP the game needed.

So this version solves that by eliminating it completely eliminating that out of the picture, and it should run on (as far as we know) every Windows OS out there.

Which leads me to highlight something now I’ve mentioned Windows.
RPG Maker has only ever been a Windows OS program, and thus, only makes games for Windows.
However, if anyone knows how to make an executable work as a application, I’ll be sure to pass accreditation in the end for those who can help in that case with sharing the game with a broader audience.

Click this link to download the game, which also includes the same Alpha Version of Thyilosian Lore as before, and now also a short game guide.
Thankfully, a friend and also one of our game testers, is proving to be great help in refining the book. So with his help, we’ll be able to make sure that the pieces fit together and its hole free. All the while, not spoiling the game or future games to come. (hint hint of big series)

You can read up more by following either of these links as well.
RPG Revolution – Where I’ve also tracked the version fix notes
Planet Indie @ HuskyHeart Media – also tracking fix notes
Or at the dev site, Lucid Flame, where I’ll be keeping more frequent tabs about the game there than here.

That’s it for today. ^_^
Though now I am back, I better keep to my promise of getting back to uploading chapters of those novels. But first, there’s other matters to attend to, so I’ll finish this post up, and since I’m late and its Friday tomorrow anyway, I’ll put up a couple chapters!

Have a great day everyone, and hope you enjoy the game. 🙂

~Shea


Awkward, yet wonderful

I wanted to do a little something different today, as a the other week I was watching an couple of anime movies with a friend, both by the same director; Satoshi Kon.

To be honest, before now I’d not seen any of Kon’s works and when my friend told me, “You’ve gotta watch this, its going to blow your mind!” I of course had to take his word on that. But the result was a lot different. Probably because instead of watching the first intended movie, which was Paprika; we instead watched Perfect Blue. Which to sum the end result of watching it up quickly would be to say it even made me feel uneasy, and I assure you its not a gorey or horror based movie. Instead, its more a psychotic-traumatic thriller.

Now to get to the point of why I’m posting about this; The movies directed by Satoshi Kon, from the two I’ve beheld and the trailers I’ve seen for the others, he is a genius of his art, and the resulting creations are beautiful and inspirational (despite the uncomfortable chill one may get at times). It’s truly a great loss that he has passed away a couple years back.

So before I move on to the next announcement I’m putting up today, I strongly recommend his work to watch, and just like my friend also says, watch it in English Subtitles if you’re able. English Subs are typically more accurate as a literal translation to the original text than an English Dubbed version. Also, the subtitles will make it a whole lot easier to understand what’s going on, and in Perfect Blue I doubt I’d have managed to make some sort of possible logical sense of what was going on without them.
But I also recommend that if you’re feint of heart, watch something like Paprika first. It may be a be still a bit of a mind twister, but its a lot easier to grasp. There’s also much more colour to it.
Then watch Perfect Blue… cuddled up under a warm blanket if you wish. But you’re only missing out if you avoid this awkward, yet wonderful piece.

Moving on now, Tales of Thyilos has little over a week before the Beta Demo is to be released! It’s come a fair way and the group is doing whatever they can to get it ready. I’m hoping that the gameplay will be nice and smooth for everyone; though there’s bound to be the odd bug fix. But since this will be a public release, as opposed to the Alpha releases meant only for testers, if people can put forth their opinions and ideas, and note any bugs or issues, then the game will progress wonderfully and I feel such a thing will give a strong push for the game and boost morale.

The Alpha Vr5 is still up in on my mediafire account, and is open if anyone wants to take a early look at what’s coming in the BETA.

The Demo will host around 2 hours worth of game play. This is factoring in what there is to explore. There’s four Kingdoms in the game, hence the title, and thus far, the first section is only just nearing completion! Then its on to the next part of the narrative which starts off on a neighbouring Kingdom.

I’ve also finally started to paint the map for the Four Kingdoms and since only snippets of this are used in the game, I’ll be getting a good quality photo and uploading the completed piece around the time of the Demo’s release.
The Thyilosian Lore book is also on schedule!

That’s it for now, but before I do go, I’ve slipped Satoshi Kon into my page of wisdom, because after I managed to recover from my awe, I realised I was in love with his work and found myself with an unwavering bout of inspiration for the next few days.

Till next time!

~Shea


First Update of the new year

So it’s 2012 and there’s a fresh new year ahead to get right into the thick of it! With TAFE over and done it’s time to focus 100% on my design practices, which is exactly what I intend on doing, and this month should be a heavy one!

BETA Release of Tales of Thyilos is due this month along with my promised BETA Release of the Thyilosian Lore book, which is that complete narrative piece I mentioned in an earlier post last month and specified that I’d intended to make at least one hard-copy and auction it for charity!

Hopefully this month I will get my hands on anew computer. It’s been months since me and person I’m collaborating with did the tutorials. At first we paused new work to focus on study, then my laptops video card got fried, and though it still does work, 3d programs glitch-out and recording became impossible. But this’ll be solved when I obtain a new computer! Hopefully we’ll expand and release some tutorials for different applications as well.

With this luck holding, some older projects that needed clean ups will be finished, especially the Major Production I’d meant to complete! But we can’t always foresee a technological mishap, and without a 3d program working it can’t be finished, as about 80% of the entire project is 3d environments compiled with Live Action. But it’s something I plan on finally finalising sometime at the end of this month, and having up not too long into February.

I’ll leave off with the latest piece I’ve put up. This ones a part of a Product Photography assignment, where we had to design a scene and set up for a full on production shoot of our chosen product, which in my case was for coffee. I rather enjoyed this assignment, but it’s always easier to enjoy something when its with something you enjoy, or on a subject enjoy; in this case, for me, it was both of those!

And before I forget! I’ve added a new page with hotlinks right to any tutorials that are created with us. 🙂

Till next time! 😀
~Shea


Something different

For a quite a while now I’ve been slowly working on an Adventure Map in Minecraft (a sandbox based game you may or may not have heard of). Its taken a while, but I believe it’s ready for at least a public release. So if you have the game and are interested, here’s a link to the topic page I slipped it on. I might put this up over in the Games section of here, or perhaps Lucid Flame Dev in time.

If any of you Minecrafters do give it a try, please leave any feedback. 🙂 It’s the first Adv’ Map I’ve done so far, but it isn’t going to be the last. I’m also helping a friend design buildings and environments for his own Adventure Map. And there’s the intention of a new ma to follow the current one.

direct download link if you don’t feel like reading the forum post. The map requires Vr1.0.0 of Minecraft-

Have a safe and happy new years, everyone 😀

~Shea


That busy time of the year

Much has been going on recently. Tales of Thyilos has been getting a bunch of new concept art popping up, along with some new features to make the game run more smoothly and more enjoyable. It’s going along just as I’d hoped, which means being able to stick to the deadline of releasing a demo sometime in January! 😀
ToT isn’t the only game popping up with new art though. The other members over at Lucid Flame are flipping the switch and are on the go. Seeds of Time has also reached the point of construction and the first screen shots are up. 🙂

Along with the game projects, some more commissions are slipping in through the cracks. There’s a SFX Project going for a web-game client. In honesty, the SFX part is going well, but making jingles are proving to be out of my range (as I tried to explain early when I was recruited), but, it’s something I’ll have to somewhat manage for now! It’s probably the toughest challenge yet that I’ve undertaken design wise.

Speaking of which, there’s been an awkward delay in finishing and posting up the major production from this year. It hasn’t been forgotten, just nudged aside to allow for current work to be taken care of. I’d hope it too would go up some time in January. I guess only time can tell how successful it is!

Lastly, It seems I’ve fallen behind on posting narrative updates again. So here’s my pitch instead of apologising for terribly delays.
By February, I will publicly release a BETA version of the Thyilosian Lore book, which will for now, be an e-book (free unless you want to donate to the respective designers who did the art and concepts that’ll appear in it), but in time I hope there’ll be enough work compiled to release it as a complete E-Book (which will probably be free as well), and if possible, a Book book. Like physical pages and stuff! 😀
But if only one print can be released, we’ll probably auction it, signed and stuff, and then the money can go to a worthy charity. 🙂

… yes I think that’d make up for my tardiness on novel updates. 😛

Alright, all that aside. Here’s a some quick links to weapon art I’d finished since the last time I posted some up. I’ve one more of these commissions to go, then I can try and move onto another commission! Hopefully done before Christmas like that SFX one  :S

Hopes Stave

Kindness

Bloody Delight

Dragon Sabre

Pain Hammer

 

Bye-bye for now ^_^;;
And have a safe holidays! (or for that matter, be safe anyway. 😉 )

~Shea


Music artist for Tales of Thyilos, and commenced filming!

So after a spontaneous meeting today, Tales of Thyilos may now have a permanent musician.

We are quite stoked for seeing how things go, and hope all works out. The presets for RPG Maker can only work for so long, before they’re overheard and boring, and for players who play games created on RMXP, 2K or VX, you’ll probably hate it. A capable musician is a welcome addition.

For more good news, the current Client for whom I was doing another Graphics Package for is pleased with the results. Unable to see how good the results are until Wednesday, but at least that allots some time to whip up anything extra.

On the large scale production side of things, filming is under way for the short piece this year. There’ll be more to do this Friday, and I am pumped to get into it. This project is going to be a major piece which will pull together all the video effects and 3d environment knowledge at my disposal! It’s going to be a challenge, but nothing I know I can know off with perseverance.

That’s all for now, stay tuned and there’ll be some more updates to come soon.

~Shea


This weeks non schedualed update!

So thus far today, work going on is doing another Graphics Package, this one for the same Tv Students, but not the same Client. It’s a Healthy living show about good exorcise and eating habits. My teacher sat down and helped discuss what kinda motivation should be taken on it,and I do certainly feel like putting in whatever ace I can.

Now game related, for those of you following, with the addition of testers, progress has been great. I’m now hoping to have a decent-for-update version to issue for them after each week or two depending on time frames. If things go well, there’ll be a version ready to issue for the Public to try out within a few months. Hopefully by then, the Demo wont require that people download the Run Time Packadge for RPG Maker XP to be able to play it.
Sounds good to me 😀 Hopefully can stick to the schedule, but no actual date will be set till much later.

Filming is now no more than 2 weeks away. I’d hoped to do it this week, but I think there might be in need of a little more refinement. So I’m hoping to get all the filming done in one day, which means I can get onto working out how to set up the 3d environments! I’m excited!

That’s about all the news of what’s going on here.
Till next time!

~Shea