Merry Christmas 2009!

To celebrate the event, a more-literal-than-usual cookie! Happy holidays everyone! ^^

Advertisement

Project Nattsu updated! Ver 1.1 release

Ahh, I was finally able to complete this – I’m sorry for taking so long, especially since mikey did such a great job on this, but I’ve had a lot of personal issues and business. A scary year indeed! In the end I couldn’t find my old work in project -version of the English fix, so I did it from beginning to end this evening – which is probably for the best, since I didn’t need to check what I had done and hadn’t done. :)

The changes between 1.0 and 1.1 include:
– updated to version 6.6.1 of Ren’Py
– better, more fitting colour theme
– typos and inconsistencies fixed
– beautiful new backgrounds
– a lot more readable font
– and more!

All of this kindly provided by the English visual novel veteran mikey for the Slovak translation of Nattsu, but now also available in the English version!

The changes are minor enough that I don’t recommend replaying the game if you already have (unless you have interest of course), but if you haven’t played Nattsu, please download version 1.1 instead of 1.0 if you do. Even if the changes aren’t earthshaking, mikey has done a great job on them and made the new version is a better experience in whole compared to the original one. ^^
Download links here!

I want to once more say thanks for everyone who has been involved in the development of and played Nattsu, I truly appreciate it!

Computer trouble, translations and webzines

Gahh… I’ve had bad luck once again, as my computer failed me this month, so I haven’t been able to work on anything during the summer. I should get a new computer within a week, and when this happens, I’ll finish updating Project Nattsu with mikey’s corrections. For real. D: Sorry about all these delays… life has been harsh.

On the bright side, it looks like Take Rena Home will be translated to Russian. I hadn’t heard about this until Vatina, who released her first game Angelic Orbs some time ago (go check it out! <3), told me that TRH had been added to the visual novel database. I find the news great and wish to encourage the translators. I’m both very surprised and excited about this. Waai! ^^

To those of you who haven’t heard of it yet, please have a look at The Baka-Trio Webzine. It’s an English visual novel community magazine with articles, interviews, reviews and all other kind of cool stuff. I wrote an article about storytelling for the second volume, which you can find from the link. :)

Thanks for reading and please remember to enjoy the summer! <3

Take Rena Home released!

Sorry for not blogging for a few months, I’ve been horribly busy. I can’t promise to be able to blog more before summer (freedom, yay), but luckily my holidays will start within a month, so it actually isn’t a very long time. ^^

Nonetheless, the main reason for this post is that my collaboration project with M12 of Vjutsu, Take Rena Home, has been released. It is a Higurashi fan game, but I’m sure people who haven’t played/seen/read it can enjoy the game to some extent as well, and it doesn’t have spoilers for the original’s story. :) Here’s the LSF thread for the game!

Now that I’ve done my work with this, I can’t promise any “big” releases really soon, but at least I should have the time to actually convert Nattsu’s translation’s improvements to the English version. It’s actually almost done, but I’ll have to check that I haven’t forgotten anything… ^^;

Thanks for reading and I hope you all are enjoying spring as much as I am~!

Challenged by M12 – On the subject of Moe

Moe – such a famous and widely used term among the otakus, yet so hard to describe and define. There is no right and wrong in the moe world, but in this blog entry, I shall voice my own opinions and feelings concerning this topic, as hard as it is.

I think that in the end, the character isn’t moe, but rather, awakens the feeling of moe, which is also one of the reasons why moe is this controversial. Kittens are cute, it’s quite undeniable in the end: They are little, innocent, soft and fluffy, so pretty much anyone considers them cute. However, I bet a lot of people disagree with each other about what is moe. A lot of us love ideal bishoujos, other are to tsunderes, a few to yanderes, some into loli. My opinion is that what moe is depends on the person, his/her past, beliefs, taste – quite a few things.

However, what is essential in moe is that you can love, forgive and relate to the character, no matter what he/she is like. I think yanderes are a good example here, as it’s hard to feel moe about the character if you think whatever makes him/her a yandere isn’t justified. I think Kotonoha Katsura is moe. To me, Katsura is a girl who loves her boyfriend more than anything else and gets mentally deeply injured to the point of (temporarily?) losing her sanity as she hears about less fortunate things. In the end of School Days the anime, I can’t say I’d do what she did if the same happened to me, but as a girl in a relationship, I bet I’d be shocked and depressed to the point of at least considering those things in my mind. Many think yanderes are bad or immoral, but it really depends on whether or not you can forgive them for what they did. (Of course, only having forgiven them isn’t equal to seeing them as moe.)

I also think anyone who is open and willing to feel moe can have feelings for moe characters. The generalization of the moe audience consisting of 20-30 year old desperately lonely, single otakus is cruel. I’m a girl or a young woman (depending on how you look at it), in a happy relationship, and I adore moe characters. You always think those Konata/Kagami wallscrolls end up in the apartments of male nerds, but some of them are actually bought and worshipped by cute teenage girls (with experience – ahh, she’s such an adorable person… One of those few cases where real life persons seem moe). It is true, however, that young men are more often open to moe and the series with the most moe characters usually are aimed at them when looking at other aspects of them.

Even though it’s rare to look at things this way, moe isn’t only limited to otaku merchandise and otakus, but it can touch anyone and be in anything humane, even real people. Real people, however, are a difficult case of moe because of their humanity. We are wonderfully complex and imperfect, which makes us one of the most beautiful beings on this planet, but it unfortunetly makes it hard for us to feel moe about each other: We have actual pasts and experience instead of quickly invented possible plot devices from our childhood, so it’s very hard to find someone you can really relate to, and even then, it’s unlikely that that person is moe in other aspects. Nonetheless, there are people that have been moe to my eye.

Quite a different opinion, now isn’t it? Anyway, thanks for anyone who has actually had the patience to read this. Also, a little Nattsu sketch to make it a little more light to read. ‘:3

Midsummer’s over

It was a rather nice Midsummer. Also, I have now officially killed my writing block! Finally, progress…

Also, the two most young(-looking? You can’t know how old Sakura is, uhuhu) characters from Lux Visual Novels’s main projects, Anna from Project Nattsu and Sakura from Tera to Mura to Wasuremono. I should post more sketches here. ^^

Thanks for reading!

Anniversaries of many sorts, thanks of many sorts

Do you know what date it was yesterday? That’s right, May 14th. So, what’s so special about that day?

Well… That means it has been…

:3

It’s kind of hard believe that it has already been a year since that time. I can still remember how nervous I was when I was uploading all the versions of the game, about to release it… I would never have believed that I could actually complete a game, release it and actually get some positive feedback from people who have played it. It’s kind of a funny thought how a game that I’ve written, programmed and illustrated is really able for download at various sites on the Internet, and that it’s also being downloaded from those sites. Such a small production, Lux VN’s first release, actually got some audience!

For all of this, I first want to send my thanks to everyone who has been a part of the making of Nattsu. Even if I had a complete script and complete CGs and sprites, this game would never have got released without you. The musics that DaFool made really enchanced the atmosphere and I doubt many people could have been able to enjoy the bad English that the script had before DrakeNavarone spellchecked it, so big thanks to both of you two! The backgrounds would have taken me a forever to draw, so I’m very grateful to ReccaPhoenix and all the other photographers too. All the playtesters gave me some useful feedback, thank you for that. Not to mention that I always thought making a VN was impossible until I found PyTom’s Ren’Py engine! I also want to thank Lemma Soft Forums and its members for being the best VN community ever and for helping me a lot with all the problems and questions I ever encountered while making Nattsu.

A lot of things have happened in one year, and perhaps the most remarkable happening has been the Slovak translation of PN translated and enchanced by mikey and corrected by Liu. When I first got a message from mikey concerning the translation of Nattsu, I entered a state of great bliss. I couldn’t believe that someone wanted to translate my game! Translation is a progress that takes a lot of work, time and energy, so the thought that someone actually wanted to translate PN was… Amazing, to put it short. Big big thanks to the translation team!

And the last but absolutely not the least, thanks to everyone who has played and enjoyed either the original or the translated version of Project Nattsu! Without all of you, I don’t know whether or not the game would have been worth making in the first place… :’3 Awawa, I’m getting too moved. Really, big big thanks to the all of you!

Also, the making of TeraMura – still in progress – was begun right before the release of Nattsu, so I’ve been writing this for a year as well now. Looking at how much I’ve been able to complete in a year, I feel like I should try a little bit more (especially when the holiday begins), but then again I’m happy that I’ve been able to maintain the inspiration and a somewhat steady progress rate for a whole year. I again have to say thanks for all of you for this, since all the feedback for both PN and TeraMura has been a great inspiration to me! ^^

On other anniversaries – May is full of them, now isn’t it – my and a certain dear person’s second anniversary is coming next week. Time has passed so quickly… It has been 2 years already? Awawa! I have to make something nice for him… Maybe I should bake something… Hmm. Oh and if you – the certain dear person – are reading this, I of course have to thank you as well. You know how important you are in both my life in general and in the progress of both PN and TeraMura. Even though it’s not rare for me to say this: I really love you. <3

Thanks for reading! I’m sorry, this post might have ended up a little bit too long, but I really mean every word of it and I think it was important to mention everyone, because you all really… You inspire me so much that at times I think that you people might do more for the projects than I do. Thank you!

Being… sick + some good things

Lately, I’ve been sick a lot, and yesterday morning I puked. And it seems like I’ve got a fever as well. I’m going to see the doctor today, but really… I hate being sick.

As for the good things, a Slovak version of Project Nattsu kindly translated by mikey has been released here (or on ATP’s page here). The translated version has also got some  great enhancements by mikey with the layout and backgrounds. There will also be an English release with the same enhancements as soon as possible. ^^ Myself I really loved to see the Slovak version (even though I can’t read Slovak), so if you can read Slovak, I highly recommend checking it out! :)

Another good thing is that the Tower (Rosetta) will be complete quite soon. I think I’ll also post her here when I finish the pic, since I’ve put a lot of love (Rosetta is moé!) and energy to this one.

TeraMura, on the other hand… I’m even more doubtful about catching the deadline, since I’m sick and my brain isn’t working at all. If I don’t catch it, I’ll try to finish this arc by the end of NaNoReNo (= by the end of this month).

Thanks for reading! ^^

Nobody expects…

…The Spanish inquisition A new update and a new thousand hits to come so soon. Not even me, that’s why I had to rush with the cookie. Luckily, I didn’t burn it despite the rush! To be honest, it’s rather raw than burnt.

Click for a very slightly bigger and better quality version.
I realized that all I have done is TeraMura cookies, so I just had to make a Nattsu one. I hope you like it and I’m really glad that people have interest in my humble projects and all the other things that I post about. Thank you everyone for that! ^^

A bit of this and that

Rena sprite lineart – complete.

With some stress and unfortunate happenings that some of you might have heard of, my writing inspiration has yet to recover. If things keep on going like this, I might have to delay Mura question arc’s completion. I’m very sorry for this… But I don’t want to force myself with the few last parts.

On the other hand, I joined the RenTarot project. I’m going to do two cards, the Hanged Man with Marliene and the Tower with Rosetta. Both of these beautiful characters are from Winter Shard, a game which I have to say you must play if you haven’t played it yet and aren’t afraid of dark stories. Myself, I adored it. It’s dark without being angsty, dramatic without being over-dramatic and the characters are very much lovable. Oh, I really should talk more about OELVNs… -creates a new category-

Anyway, this is a new challenge again, as drawing Tarot cards isn’t too easy. But this again will be a great practice, besides, I’ve always wanted to draw Marliene and Rosetta again ever since I completed a poor piece of fanart a year or so ago. Those two are nice to draw as well, even though I usually have trouble drawing other people’s characters. I would have wanted to draw more cards for RenTarot, but as slow and occupied as I am, I’ll be very glad if I manage to complete the two I’ve now promised to make. I’m wondering who’ll pick up the Nattsu trio (the Sun). If someone will, I’ll be quite interested and happy to see the result. ^^

Also, LemmaSoft turned 5-year-old last weekend. I’ve been going to the IRC channel for a longer time now and I love it, but we also had a voice chat on Friday, which was very much fun. It was really nice to hear everyone’s voices! My pronounciation wasn’t too good though and I was nervous and I spoke over other people, sorry for all those things. @_@; I wish we could have more voice chats, though it’s true that it won’t be nearly as exciting as it was if we begin to do it like every day.

Thanks for reading! Have a cookie!