Chickadee is back in development! Here's a title screen concept!

Chickadee has resumed development after a relatively lengthy hiatus! Thanks to my programmer and fellow game developer Jo-Thijs Daelman, the project is back in business!

My first goals for the project now that it is back in development are to get some of the foundations done. For the time being, we have a working title screen. I gave Jo some direction on what I wanted-- Chickadee rolling onto the screen and the logo shifting from the right onto the screen--and he went above and beyond to make it. He even threw in the jumping animation for Chickadee, a very clever and adorable addition.

Coming up now is some more menu design, coming up with how the world select and level select systems will work, as well as implementing a shop that uses the coins collected by Chickadee to purchase items like costumes and extra lives! Jo is doing the proverbial heavy lifting here implementing everything, and his work is so very appreciated. Without him, I'd have nothing!

For now, however, check out this proof of concept video of the title screen. Pardon the amateur sound and production values, this was my first time recording my computer screen. Also, note that the background is only temporary.

After meeting Chibi Casey, Meet Chibi Monica!

Several weeks ago I shared the new style for the key art for Legends of Adrigal. It took on a more deformed, chibi style. To see it in action with protagonist Casey, check out this link. Now, tonight I share the next character to get the chibi art style, Monica, the tomboy cheerleader who fights for her friends.

I used a reference for this character just like with Casey. However, this reference had wholly different proportions to Casey's reference point despite being the same chibi style. Thus, I had to do some tinkering with the proportions. I hope you guys think it came out well!

Screenshot Saturday - The new and improved Dorter

With my moving on to RPG Maker MV, not only is the process of creating Legends of Adrigal a much easier and more convenient one, but the art is much approved as well. Take Dorter, a trading city on the west coast of the kingdom of Adrigal. It is reached by going all the way west on the Western Adrigal Road, which connects Dorter and Adrigal City, as well as has an entrance to Mabel Road which, of course, leads to Mabel.

Here's a look at what the old Dorter looked like in RPG Maker VX Ace.

And now, here Dorter is in RPG Maker MV:

With brighter paths, a lighter color scheme, and plenty of detail, this is Legends of Adrigal's new Dorter. While I haven't created the necessary scenario data up to this point (hence the lack of townspeople and doors for buildings), that didn't mean I couldn't create this town regardless. Stay tuned to next week when a new screenshot or series of screenshots is posted right here on my blog!

Encouraging Exploration: Flavor Text for Objects

When you build a world in an RPG, you try to put a lot of effort into building its lore as well as making players want to explore it. This series of articles delves into how to encourage exploration in your game. Since I'm building an RPG with Legends of Adrigal, we'll be focusing on that genre of game, but it's really available for anything with objects you can examine and exploration.

First, what is flavor text? Flavor text typically refers to text in a game that gives an item, a character, or whatnot added characterization to help build the game world. It's superfluous by design, but it adds so much in world-building and adding some realism to your game. I'll be discussing flavor text in my game Legends of Adrigal in the realm of flavor text that is read when examining an object in a given map of my game. (There are also plenty of other uses for flavor text in making an RPG, such as describing the use of an item or weapon, but that's a topic for another day.)

The important thing to consider when adding flavor text to your game, such as when examining a particular object, is that you're consistent and you make it clear that this is possible. What I mean by this is that if the first explore-able area or areas of your game doesn't have any objects that the player can engage with and the player tries to interact with multiple objects to no avail, then they're probably not going to waste their time interacting with later objects in later areas. 

When I say being consistent, don't just have one area full of objects you can examine and then next have an area with plenty of objects yet no flavor text to them. It's jarring to the player, and it's mighty frustrating to expect something (in this case, some text from examining an object), yet not get it.

Another thing to note is that you should give your flavor text personality. For Legends of Adrigal, I used to have just an omniscient narrator. However, that was just like every other RPG out there, and with using RPG Maker, you really need to do things to distinguish your project from the other 900,000 RPGs being made with the program. 

Look at this example of a before and after regarding Casey, Legends of Adrigal's primary protagonist, examining a well in the countryside village of Mabel:

BEFORE

AFTER

For Legends of Adrigal, instead of having some nebulous narrator explaining to the player what they're examining, I made it so Casey himself remarks about what he sees. Sometimes this is done for comedic effect, but it's always to add personality to investigating and exploring the in-game world. It can feel like a prize to uncover a fun revelation that Casey comes up with regarding a given object. Just make sure that your flavor text is fun to read, so it encourages the player to keep examining objects.

Here's some other examples that I particularly like most of Casey examining objects in-game.

To recap, DO be consistent with your flavor text and what objects can be examined by the player.. DO introduce the concept early to get players investigating objects as early as possible. DON'T lack personality in your flavor text. DON'T have some rooms being full of objects to read info on while having others being completely empty. I hope this article and sneak peek look at the development of Legends of Adrigal was entertaining and informative!

New style for the Legends of Adrigal artwork

Introducing a more stylish art style for the artwork of Legends of Adrigal! The original artwork for Casey had more realistic proportions while still having a cartoon charm. However, I wanted to make Legends of Adrigal's artwork more special and different, so I made Casey, our protagonist, into chibi form! I hope to have a piece of artwork for Monica up shortly. 

It was a lot of fun drawing what I dub "Chibi Casey" in Inkscape (I used an anime chibi drawing as a reference for proportions), and I'm really proud of this albeit imperfect piece of artwork for Legends of Adrigal. What do you guys think? 

You've got a face for video games, Casey, Monica, Noah, and Nemus!

Continuing the aesthetic theme from a couple posts ago, Legends of Adrigal has a series of faces for the dialogue boxes in the game. Each character's face will appear as they are speaking. While Nemus and Noah were not edited at all-- instead using what the RPG Maker MV Character Generator created from my selections of facial qualities-- Casey and Monica were edited in Inkscape to add more modern touches to them. These are things like Casey's varsity jacket and Monica's cheerleader uniform. 

CASEY

MONICA

NEMUS

NOAH

Legends of Adrigal's Newest Theme - The Girl Next Door!

Happy weekend to everyone that passes by this small, li'l blog of mine! A new update is here for my WIP RPG Legends of Adrigal. This time it's music-related. A new composition has been painstakingly crafted, thanks in part by Patrick Crecelius of local St. Louis composition duo Fat Bard fame! His advice and guidance noted some rhythmic errors in my first drafts of this new song, and now I feel it's at a much better state!

The new song is called "The Girl Next Door - Monica's Theme". It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that this song is the character theme of Monica, the cheerleader and tomboy of the three teen group that gets transported into the Code Name: ADRIGAL video game. Though the cliche of the girl next door trope is that there is generally a romantic part involved, Casey's and Monica's relationship is more brother and sister than anything else. Sometimes the brother takes care of the sister, while other times the roles are reversed-- the sister is the one doing the taking of caring over the brother. It's an interesting dynamic that I hope my own writing allows to make even more intriguing. We'll see, though!

Take a listen to the new composition at the Songs of Legends of Adrigal Bandcamp page with this link.

Creating Casey: Making a character with help of RPG Maker MV's Character Generator

One of the hyped features of RPG Maker MV was its Character Generator, a resource maker that allows users to create their own characters from a myriad of options. Prior to RPG Maker MV, I was using the Game Character Hub to not only create sprites, but also to randomize the settings to make hundreds of NPCs to line the maps of Legends of Adrigal.

An obstacle to overcome with RPG Maker MV is that RPG Maker MV uses a different image size for sprites than RPG Maker VX Ace, the program I was previously using. Thus, to circumvent this, I used GIMP to resize all sprite sheets by 150% to make them fit the proportions needed for RPG Maker MV.

However, I wasn't happy with how the protagonist Casey turned out. For me, creating unique characters like Casey is done by editing a sprite sheet instead of starting out fresh. This is how the sprite sheet for Casey on maps looked in RPG Maker VX Ace:

I wanted an updated look for RPG Maker MV, so I used MV's Character Generator to start the process. In the Character Generator there are myriad options for creating and editing the face, hair (in both front and rear extensions), facial hair, ears, eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, facial marks, clothing, accessories, and other parts like tails or wings; allowing users to choose from one of about 24 colors for each segment of the sprite.

A look at RPG Maker MV's Character Generator.

Not only is a map sprite created from this process of picking and choosing parts, but so are the face for dialogue and menus as well as the sprite used in side view battles, similar to old school Final Fantasy games predating Final Fantasy VII.

Selecting option by option and piece by piece, the foundation for Casey was made.

Now, the foundation of the sprite I wanted for Casey was made. What I then did was use MS Paint to edit the map and battle sprites for Casey (for the battle sprite, this took some time as there were LOTS of sprite animations to edit-- though some could simply be copied and pasted over another animation). Taking these and putting them through GIMP (I'm more comfortable with MS Paint, so that's why I did the editing in that program instead of just doing everything in GIMP), I removed the background, making it transparent. Otherwise, there'd be a giant white box around each of Casey's sprite animations.

Through importing separate sprite sheets to my project,
 I was then able to begin the editing process.

I then took the foundation for Casey's face sprite and used Inkscape to draw and color in his varsity jacket. This process didn't take too long of a time, though I was being a bit of a perfectionist. Regardless, once that process was over, Casey's sprites were now able to be inserted into the game!

Hello, Casey, you handsome devil!

StortzumSoft returns with regular updates!

It's been a wild semester at Webster, and I had to put Legends of Adrigal, my WIP RPG on hold! However, this past holiday weekend, RPG Maker MV was on sale for half the usual price. I jumped on the sale, knowing that this update to RPG Maker was what I really wanted to further enhance my own project. RPG Maker MV offers mobile development, editing events while playtesting, and side view battles, for starters-- all things that I'll be using while making my game.

Since I'm back to working on a game and doing development, StortzumSoft is back and will have regular updates regarding my work on Legends of Adrigal, whether it be new scenarios, new maps, new songs, gameplay systems, and a lot more! Stay tuned, dear friends!