Going 3D Pig Disgusting on BG-CG’s for OELVN’s

After putting much thought I finally decided…

It’s official… I’m going 3D from now on for my future OELVN projects…

Well… for BG-CG’s anyway. Let’s see, I know 3D rendered backgrounds can’t compete with manual labor of love that is Beautiful Handrawn BG-CG’s but you also can’t deny the advantages and convenience of Pig-Disgusting 3D Rendered BG-CG’s. First and probably the most obvious advantage is it’s reusability… meaning you can use the same resource over and over again saving time and effort. Aonther advantage is you could pick EXACTLY the spot you wanted to appear or rather you can move freely until you find that beautiful perfect spot. And another distinct advantage of 3D over traditional 2D is that you could choose your light setting with a few slider adjustments. You could have a day scene and a night scene without much of an effort.

Now, 3D has this very steep learning curve but I believe once I overcome that thing I’ll be a GOD! As they say in 3D… “Learn to crawl before you run”… I’m totally fine with that except I no longer have the luxury of free time and I want instant gratification… the very reason why I decided to go 3D in the first place. I wanted to continue this very fun hobby but I do not want it to eat up much of my time and my time is very precious… something I don’t always have enough.

Enter Google SketchUp… It’s a no nonsense 3D program that let’s you create 3D objects pronto! Sure, there is still this initial learning curve but this one is way easier for beginners compared to other 3D programs… it’s like I’m on training wheels. So I was up and running in a few minutes and and made my first little house after a few hours… it’s that easy. And what’s more… it’s FREE!!! Yes it’s free, no charge at all… or so I thought.

Yes the FREE version does have one huge disadvantage. It can’t export to other formats meaning what you made in SketchUp stays in Sketchup and that’s quite a problem. Google SketchUp doesn’t have a decent renderer. Wait!?… Renderer?… WTF is a renderer!?…

In layman’s terms. A renderer is something that makes your 3D creations Photo Realistic. The renderer calculates the light coming from light sources, how it behaves once it hits and reflects on surfaces and materials and displays them on your screen for your viewing pleasure.

And at $495.00 for Google SketchUp Pro… it really isn’t that cheap…

So I was all gloomy and lost until a friend recommended me the Free IDX Renditioner for Google SketchUp. So I now have a decent renderer that I could use on Google SketchUp Free Version… oh yes! It is very good in rendering. Very easy to use. It is making so much plenty beautiful images but only 640×480 pixels!?… It is too small!… I can’t use this!!! why is that!?…

It seems Free IDX Renditioner has a pro version. Free one can do exactly what Pro can do except produce very large images… fuck! Now I have no choice but to pay up right?…

Let’s see

Google SketchUp Pro
$495.00 (Php 22,969.66)

IDX Renditioner
$199.95 (Php 9278.35)

OK… $199.95 is a LOT of cash where I came from, enough to buy a full size fridge (remember… this is just a hobby, not something for sale) …but still cheaper compared to $495 for Google SketchUp Pro so with much hesitation, I decided to purchase the IDX Renditioner.

So I said to myself…”This better be good…” And yes it is good… Now I am (trying) to figure how to make 3D images I produce look like 2D… and that’s another story…

Google SketchUp free can be found here

You can get the free IDX Renderer here

To be continued…

Renpy as a… presentation material?…

Let’s start with this…

What you see in the projector screen is a presentation powered by Ren’py. Of course we all know that Ren’py is a “Visual Novel Engine” meant for “Visual Novels” so why am I doing this… thing. Well… because I can and it’s RISKY and FUN! I know Ren’py can handle Videos, Play Sounds, Show Images in so many different ways. Renpy has all the features of a full-blown presentation tool minus the high cost since Ren’py is free.

Actually, I’ve used Ren’py before as…

A promotional material for promoting Oblax’s Concert in Cebu distributed to potential sponsors.

As a highly rushed substitute animated backdrop because the primary HD in the computer that was meant for the task went “POOF” just hours before the same Oblax concert starts by binding a bunch of animated displayables (code stolen from someone’s game) into keys so I can scene change at the press of a button… very neat…

A promotional material for a umm… certain err… company selling printer inks and specialized printing machines.

As a presentation material for a seminar of pediatricians. Burned and distributed to all 200 who attended.

So far, Renpy hasn’t failed… yet. So I am quite sure it will work out just fine. Confident, I decided to once again use Ren’py in another event and this time… a press-con for A Fucoidan, A Food Supplement from Japan.

Hours before the event. I double checked everything. Run lint and got this result…

Ren’Py 6.10.2a lint report, generated at: Thu Jan 28 09:21:53 2010
Statistics:
The game contains 0 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 0 words,
The game contains 0 menus.

Hmm… it seems Ren’py only counts the amount of “actual” words in it. Oh well… as long as it’s working I’m OK with it. Confident, I went to Annabel’s where the press-con will be held.

But once I arrived, my confidence was quickly shattered when I saw these…

Oh Fuck!… I said to myself… what if Ren’py failed in the middle of the presentation. Maybe me insisting on using ren’py for presentation is a bad idea.

Worried, I re-tested it again… it’s working… and now the moment comes. My hands were initially shaking when I first pressed the run game…

7 minutes later, it’s all over… everything went well… safe for now… yes Fun, Rewarding but very Risky…

Anyway, if you wanted to try the presentation itself, you can download it clicking the links below.

Windows Version

Mac Version

Linux Version

“POOF” (Disappears)

A Tiny Update on Sprites for flagship project Heavy Metal Girl MAdonna

I finally got some free time… 5 hours of solid uninterrupted free time to sit and work on my flagship project Heavy Metal Girl Madonna.

Decided to replace all the original sprites of main character Madonna with new and improved sprites. Decided to stick with 2 to 3 shading to make things faster.

Here is a sample of newer sprites

…and the older sprites for comparison

Updating sprites for Uncle Pacundo, Uncle Fetus and Papa Brutus is next in agenda.

“POOF” (Disappears)

A bunch of Excuses and a story about Angela Building and an American guy named Fred Stepanich

OK… so I have this tiny (almost) finished project called “A Night with American”and you might be wondering why the hell am I taking too long to release it. Now this post might not be related to VN entirely but hey… stay awhile and listen a bit to my excuse…

So the project is complete, with graphics (using photographs of the actual locations) and everything but I wanted to try something new… voice acting. You see, the project was based on a true story (read: my story) about a certain long haired guy who stumbled on a confused and very much lost American who pleaded for help, which I did seeing how desperate the guy was. What really made this encounter unique and interesting is he doesn’t even have a clue where he is, nor does he carry a cellphone, he forgot his wallet containing the address of his girlfriend where he was staying… the only hints I got were A large Hall like structure, A large Gym like building nearby, Stadium like built, A-79? and finally… after several hours a hexagonal structure which finally narrowed down everything and got him home safely. After that, he ordered Pizza Hut, we had this sort of mini feast, he even tried to give me money which I declined and instead told him I did it for Lulz and it was the right thing (Yeah! I finally did a good deed and act very cool in front of his girlfriend and the rest of her family… really, that moment is priceless)

After a few days I contacted him and asked if I could make a VN out of our encounter. He asked what is a VN. Not prepared to answer the question, I just made up some BS and said… it’s a short novel in digital format (which is partially accurate)… so he said OK and then this project got finished.

Of course, there’s no way I’m gonna show this to him let alone ask him to do voice acting since the story has my POV (point of View) and there were times that my nerves are being tested to the limits… I mean, why the fuck am I wasting my time helping this dude who constantly yiffs and barks at how the locals (meaning us) can’t speak English properly and kept pointing him everywhere and other &^#%$!!!… I ain’t gonna get anything in return out of this… why the fuck should I subject myself to his verbal abuse!?… I even considered ditching this guy, leave him and run away like hell for like 5 times… but reason got the better of me… I mean… if I were on his shoes, I’d probably panic like him… and yes,  all of this was written and present in the VN.

So for the voice acting part, I decided to ask for assistance from a friend and a native English speaker named Fred Stepanich, an American living in Angela-I in Malate, Manila.

I’ve known Mr. Fred for quite a long time now and quite possibly one of the few people I know in real life whom I could speak openly about my unusual (and sometimes goofy) exploits, unusual habits and mis-adventures. It was fun talking with him. Sure he talks about the good old days once in a while just like any old guy on his age but it sure gave me a rare glimpse on “The American Way of Life” something a guy like me can only guess or read in books or seen in movies. Some of the interesting things I learned from him are like how he gathered skunks, how school was different back then compared to the current ones, their farm, how Ice-Cream was a sort of luxury back then, their old Ford car, the time when he went high school in neodesha and other tidbits of info accompanied by old well preserved pictures (some, I even restored personally) but one thing kept bothering me… how the hell can he withstood such boredom during his younger years when there was no Internet, mobile phones, or TV (well… there is TV back then but it was still sort of expensive luxury)…

Every-time we had a conversation or a chance to see each other we follow a certain pattern… we greet, we ask how we’ve been, what’s new, a bit more chatting, nostalgia and me trying to cheer him up (read: coerce) to watch porn. So far, I haven’t succeed (Oh no! I don’t give up so easily so I’ll just keep on trying)

For 16+ years he was staying on what most real-estate developers call “prime-property”… I mean he’s got an elevator (which doesn’t work), a large creepy mirror in the hall, smack in the middle of a business district, nightclubs on every corner, a nice view of the Manila Bay on one side and a balcony where umm… you could see other peoples roofs. Angela I was also a sort of “heritage site”. Built during the ’30s… not only the building withstood WW2 bombings, it also outlasted every deco type building in existence in Manila… that is, until recently.

So let’s summarize thing up. Original owner kicked the bucket but forgot to leave a memo to a bunch of greedy heirs regarding who gets what, now scavenging for whatever they could scrape until one of them declared “FUCK ALL OF YOU! THIS BUILDING IS MINE! ALL MINE ALONE!” shitfest ensued and poor old Mr. Fred got caught in the middle of the crossfire.

I don’t think I can fathom how stressful it is for an old guy like Fred but the effects were quite apparent. He’s a lot thinner now and quite possibly weaker. As for the building itself, the front doorway is now covered with this huge ugly banner saying “RESTORATION PROJECT” and other BS. Guards were posted everywhere making it difficult for me to go in or out, same goes with Mr. Fred… sure he can go in and out without restrictions but the same can’t be said with his belongings. And you know what’s worse?… the motherfuckers are tearing up the building one room at a time… WITH MR. FRED still PRESENTLY OCCUPYING the place. When I went there I was partially horrified… I barely recognize the place since the last time I went there… I mean, half of the building… the lower half believe it or not… is GONE and is supported only by several pillars (isn’t that kinda umm… dangerous?)

Of course, knowing his current situation, I don’t think I could ask him to do Voice Acting… unfortunately, moving his things and stuff to his new place is the only way I could think I could help Mr. Fred.

Anyway… in worse case scenario… I’ll have to ditch voice acting or ask someone else.

Hang in there Mr. Fred!… I have a large collection of porn I wanted to show you… you’ll never know what you’re missing…

In case you’re curious and wanted to know more about Angela-I Building… click here.

Terragen Classic – For people who are too busy/lazy to draw landscape scenery for their VN projects

A few days ago, JinzouTamashii introduced me to a program called Terragen Classic. You may be wondering what the fuck is Terragen? Well… to put in in simple terms, it’s a 3D program that can generate large and beautiful landscape scenes quickly and cheaply.

So what does this has to do with Visual Novels you ask? Well… let’s say you need a BG for your VN project say a bunch of mountains. You could either (1) draw it manually, that is… if you could draw. And even if you could draw you probably don’t have much freetime (2) download a photo from the interwebs and use photoshop or any other editing software to filter it beyond recognition. Dirty but fast and does the job but not quite. It looked good but it’s not really flexible enough (3) Use Terragen and let it do the dirty work for you… either because I’m lazy or don’t have freetime…

Let’s take a closer look at this software.

Here is Terragen’s workspace. It looks daunting at first… no… it really is daunting. You got plenty of buttons and inside them are more buttons and a couple of sliders so Terragen really is not for absolute beginners. Good thing the documentation is easy enough to understand and yet comprehensive enough.

After reading the documentation… it’s time to play with it a bit. After pressing a few buttons, adjust a few sliders, a few clicks here and there, render it… I got this (see image below)

After creating some mountains, it’s time adjust the cameras and choose a good spot to view… look at that (see image below)

Now the good thing about this software is it’s ability to change the direction, elevation and even the color of sunlight. Meaning you could have a dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, dusk and evening version of the same scene by simply adjusting a few sliders here and there.

…and after a few adjustments

As of writing, I barely scratch the surface of this magnificent piece of software. Not only you could have mountains, you can also have lakes, clouds… just about everything even the kitchen sink (via the import command) With practice and patience, you could have something that looked like this (see image below)

To fully maximize the potential of this program, I really do recommend getting a “decent” computer with “decent” computing power but it’s still suprizingly performs fast enough after testing it on crappy Eeepc’s.

Functionality wise. Terragen Classic (which is free) is quite limited compared to it’s commercial counterpart (which is NOT free and slightly expensive) but still had enough features to do the job.

I really highly recommend this program.

Terragen can be acquired here.

A night with American

Time to break my silence… I’ve been secretly working on a small project (which is technically complete already) and it is called…

Here it goes…

Once upon a time, there was a handsome long haired guy on his way to OBEERTIME (A beerhouse) to drink booze stumbled upon this… American guy who is currently lost and had no idea where he was and how to get back and asking for help.

Fortunate for the American, the long haired guy can understand english… barely. Join Mr. Long Haired Guy (who is not really familiar with Makati City himself) as we go around Makati City in the middle of the night while helping Mr. American find his way home using only a bunch of not so helpful hints.

This game is (again) technically “complete” just testing to see if we missed anything and see if there is still room for improvement. Release date is most likely within this month.

Here are a couple of screenshots…

Look forward to it…

“POOF” (Disappears)

Eileen, Lucy and Mary… again

I admit… what I did earlier was a sloppy rushed job. So I decided to umm… go back and fix things and add a few improvements like animated umm… lights. Once again featuring Eileen, the Ren’py Mascot. Lucy, the (former) Ren’py image map girl who’se about to make a comeback and Mary of Moonlight Walks, the first ever Ren’py game.

Relevant Tutorials for OELVN production

Finally, added a tutorial section where I share techniques and other related things that will be useful in OELVN creation. For our first tutorial, I decided to put something I did quite a while ago. More to come…

Tutorial section can be viewed here.

Eileen, Lucy and Mary

I need to draw something once in a while. Of course, it has to be OELVN related to qualify here.

Featuring Eileen, the Ren’py Mascot. Lucy, the (former) Ren’py image map girl and Mary of Moonlight Walks, the first ever Ren’py game.

A Game called “A Game”

Now let’s see… there was this OELVN called “A Game” made by a mysterious guy called “Alex” who popped up out of nowhere, dumped this “OELVN” at the Lemmasoft Forums and disappeared without a trace but appears randomly once in a while when you least expected. At first glance, it looked just like any other OELVN but look closer and you’ll see that this is more than your average epitome of generic run-off-the-mill OELVN…

Graphics:
Well, there’s not much to say about graphics. Even the main menu is bland with no title graphics whatsoever, just a simple graphic with the usual generic renpy buttons. It features heavily pixelated images, poorly cropped photos either photographed by “Alex” himself or “Stolen” from the interwebs and to sum it in one word it’s “CRAP” but it definitelly does the job at conveying the underlying content… more on that later.

The simple and “bland” main menu

Story:
There isn’t. It’s all about this random guy as he goes about his everyday routine. Like breaking kebab shop windows, beating people, purchasing cars, working with the mob, tolerating jews, the gay parade occasionally showed on TV and the “differently colered people” in the metro… sure it’s not everyone’s cup of coffee but the way the racist jokes and other umm… socially unacceptable content are presented in such fluid way.

This is where it all begin… in a simple room with a simple TV showing a gay parade

Music:
What music!?… there isn’t any!… really…

Oh look!… It’s that guy again…

Gameplay:
This is where this game “really” shines. It’s all about balancing and maintaining stats. There are two stats you have to watch out for. Strenght and Intolerance. In most cases you’ve got to maintain your intolerance to a minimum to avoid trouble. Strenght is very straightforward and self explanatory and best maintained at a decent level. Too low and you end up getting beat up by a chinese guy. It’s up to the player to figure out how to maintain and balance both stats… which in some case might get you stuck. Scripting is quite advance and high-level compared to most Ren’py games out there.

Uh oh… Bad coice dude… start praying…

Others:
Unlike most Ren’py games, it features an in-game option to switch languages (english & russian) and an ever persistent quit button which is rather convenient. The only complain I have here is the presence of “rollback” which enables players to “cheat” their way out easily in case they made a wrong choice.

That’s a Kebab Shop!?…

Anyway, I recommend this game to people who have high tolerance. Also, the script of the game is unarchived meaning anyone who wanted to take a peek at it’s inner workings can go and steal err… I mean to learn and study the script to see how things work… I very highly recommend this game.

Here’s the link to the game.

Windows
Linux
Mac

“POOF” (Disappears)