It’s been a while… time to post something… anything…

August 17, 2013

First and foremost… Hello World! Next is an image to get your attention… Second, never in my wildest imagination I’ll be doing what I’m about to tell you today…

The image you see above is for an Otome project where I Uncle Mugen is currently part of. We’ll go back to this later…

OK, now that is out, I shall now tell you my excuse why I haven’t been active in Lemmasoft or on OELVN’s (aka EVN or Visual Novels) lately…You see… my tiny adventure in UDK landed me a part time job as a level designer for a Japanese Company for this one particular project. Here’s a condensed version of the story…

Downloaded UDK to see if it’s internal rendering Engine can help me achieve my desired results which is generate cheap BG’s for use on my Ren’py OELVN projects.
Took me a day to learn the necessary things I needed while totally ignoring what I don’t needed…
Using Sketchup to produce scenes then import it to Blender, then UDK… Produced stunning BG’s that not only gave me what I wanted but actually surpassed my expectations.
Bragged about it all over the internet 🙂
1 week later… Received what I though was spam… offering me a job as a Game level designer for a platformer. About 30 minutes later another message comes in, this time with Skype and complete contact details… it seems, a Japanese company is eager to get in touch with me.
Fast forward 2 days after first meeting, they send me US$500 as bonus sign in Unfortunately I cannot tell how much I’ll get paid monthly for the actual job due to contract stipulations. We ironed out all the scheduling and protocols because I still have a full time day business to run.

Now there are a few things I needed to note here… mainly, I am under contract not to release any screenshots or info about the project or the company other than what they approved for release (which is not much at the moment)… same with this blog post… had to receive approval before I can post this. It’s really unusual because it just came out of nowhere and bam here it is. They are fully aware that I’m pretty much a Sketchup native and the fact that it’s barely over a week since I started using UDK… And they are pretty much lose on the scheduling and I don’t have to worry about Physics or any programming and stuff… they have other people working on that, I was told to just concentrate on Level Design. While I appreciate the fact that they went through the trouble of finding me… I’m still scratching my head as to why would they go that far to find me when there are more talented readily available people out there than me who can do this job better. But I have one advantage that I can brag about… I’m an extremely fast Sketchup Modeler… as long as I know what I needed to model… it will be a piece of cake to me. Another interesting thing is that they specifically put in the contract as a separate stipulation that I’m not allowed to put any Easter Eggs or “Uncle Mugen” stuff in the works. At that point, several scenarios are running in my head as to why they added that in the contract but one thing is for certain… whoever recommended me to them or scouted me is very much aware of my “little habit” of self inserting myself into anything… most likely, he/she is a Lemmasoft regular… So long story short… Uncle Mugen is now officially a Game Level Designer for a Japanese Company for one game…

So does this mean the end for UNCLE MUGEN’s ties to OELVN and EVN / Visual Novels in General?… Nope…

Which brings us back to the image I posted earlier… what you see there is for an Otome project where I Uncle Mugen is currently part of… which I’m not gonna reveal just yet not because of any agreement and terms but rather… I’m kinda shy to admit I’m a part of an Otome project. Normally, I steer clear of Otome VN’s but the premise and story of this one is just… it will hook you so here I am. And the character design… is just glorious…

Now unlike the first project, this one is pretty much straight from Lemmasoft. He contacted me asking me if I’m OK for commission, I saw his project page, more left and right conversation and bam… I’m now working for him… This is actually a good opportunity to fully test and apply what I’ve been trying to perfect for a long time… quick and cheap and probably recyclable BG’s on a non-studiomugenjohncel project… and unlike the level design job where I have to adhere to specific game and engine constraints, this one is pretty much left to my imagination which is actually pleasant… I mean, it’s a VN BG… I don’t need to worry about clipping distance or any other thing…