信じてもいいの?

    I thought this would never happen, but I think I am falling out of the habit of drawing. I drew something today in an old sketchbook. Just some girl in the pose I seem to be obsessed with these past few months, and a few floating faces. But last night while I was browsing the usual forums, I was thinking about the last time I drew on paper, because I was telling someone how it's better to write or draw on paper than on the computer...

    but I myself hadn't drawn on paper in a long time. I had written a bunch these past few days (nothing creative. Just a few journals in Japanese and a few sentences I made up to practice vocabulary.) but I had drawn absolutely nothing. I hadn't thought about drawing. All I can think about is becoming a little bit more fluent in Japanese -- to become like a native despite knowing no natives personally that I met regularly enough to practice (in other words, I'm obsessing about this with no way to achieve it). And about there only being a few more days of unstructured days left. Ater that it's back to working in the day and feeling bummed out at night.

    It's weird how I feel motivated to create a game nowadays, but I don't have the capacity for it. I don't want to bother with Renpy, and Novelty is too much of a mystery to use. but it's not like i want to try with RPG maker or go as far as using Visual Basic. If I do end up making a game, it'll probably end up being in Renpy, but I guess I'm waiting or a better alternative to come along.

    I've been thinking lately that I should really start producing a lot of work and auction it off at various conventions around the country, but I must be depressed or something. I think it's hopeless. It's also overwhelming how much work I would have to put into researching what conventions would be the most worthwhile targets and which things would be more worthwhile to draw. If I just had 2 or 3 friends who drew I would probably be producing a lot more than I am now, but it doesn't matter i I draw one good thing or ten bad things -- no one is here to see it anyway, so it doesn't matter.　It is terrible what isolation will do to someone, but if I hadn't changed to this I would had probably gone mad.

    So what have you been up to, lately?

    My passwords are so secure that even I can't guess them! But tonight I did, so here I am, posting. Goodie.

at: http://www.livestream.com/skims

probably around 7PM (EST)

Pretty much sums it up.
Gotta make more cards tonight when I've memorized the new cards ...

    I'm thinking about taking the JLPT at the end of this year, and the thought occurred to me that it'd be nice if there was a game about studying for and taking the JLPT.  :| but geez, that's a lot of work. Plus I have this other idea about a witch and a kid who doesn't die floating in my mind.

    Anyway, here's to JLPT 2 or 1 this December.

    I started a story about a cat. Tonight I typed 600 words about it. I want to reach 3250 words. Why? Because most short stories are between 1000 and 7500 words. So I guess, at this rate, I ought to be done in a week.

    I was watching a movie today, an action movie, and I guess I have watched way too many episodes of the Mythbusters, because I can no longer just watch a movie and enjoy it. I have to question the physics of everything, and nothing can be coincidence. Barrels of gasoline next to a hobo fire? NO WAY. The pipes the hero is attached to come loose and allow him to get away? NO WAY. Jumped off from a bridge and landed safely on the boat passing below? Without any injury at all???? Nooooooooooo

    And I only watched this movie because CS4 is taking an awfully long time to install.

    I'm anticipating a lot of free time in the next few weeks. I'll probably be spending a lot of this time trying to secure a job, but if the job never shows up, I'll have a lot of time to work on some personal projects, which means I'm thinking about working on that game again, but I have no idea how much work I can get done, hence I have no idea if it'll be worth it or not, but leaving that complicated calculative thought aside -- I still have to find a program to make the game in the first place. I think it's possible to make one with visual basic, but I haven't tried. I may only complete the skin and meat of the game and then find a programmer to make the bones. I think a lot lately about why I started this game, and how things have changed nowadays.
   

    I've been writing a few pages of story each night before I go to sleep, but have had no time to revise any of it. I'm hoping that once break starts, I'll have an opportunity to revise most of it and write what's lacking in the stories. I'll also think about how it would best translate into an easier medium to absorb, such as a comic or a VN. I can't say what will happen for certain, but I'll looking forward to the middle-end of may to arrive.

I am not a visual novel expert -- I've only played three or four from finish to end -- but I thought it'd be fun to nitpick at some interfaces to point out some things that seem odd to me and some things that work. No need to agree or disagree with me - if you have your own opinion, take the picture and describe what works for you or doesn't work for you.

Title: Comic Party

A faily clean interface -- Previous and next buttons on the right, possible hisory button at the bottom right, name on top with a tiny character icon and speaker's name. I'm not sure if this is a special scene or not, but it may be interesting to have a game that is entirely scenes instead of a character image over a background image.
I wonder how you save or load in this game, or change the game settings (Audio? Video? Read speed? Skip?).

Title: Snow Sakura

Another simple interface. I like that this one has skip and auto on the right instead of backwards and fowards. Presumably the rest is under the menu text. It looks like speech is put into "quotes" and perhaps narration is not contained in quotes, which is a nice consideration of the English literary tradition. Excellent grammar and punctuation is always a huge plus for a visual novel.

Title: Shuffle

Date and day on the top left, menu options at the top (frm, load, save ,skip, rev, auto). Does the bottom right triangle do something? Interesting framing of the text, although I'm curious if the dead space on the left and right sides of the text box is useful for anything.

Title: Planetarian: Chiisana Hoshi no Yume

This game's interface looks something like a 1/2 adventure-style visual novel and 1/2 novel-style visual novel. Perhaps the character disappears when the main character isn't talking to anyone? The spoken parts are contained in brackets: ｢ペラペラペラ｣ (Japanese equivalent of quotations in English)

Title: Kusari

I like that there's no line dividing the top of the text box and the active (character) space. It makes the active space look bigger than it actually is. On the right side there is save, load, [history?], auto, and skip.

Title: Chaos Head

This interface looks just like a movie, and the visuals look like something from a movie too. I'm a fan of clutter free interfaces as long as things aren't difficult to access when they're needed. At first glance I can't tell where the menu buttons are but since there is so little on the screen, I get the feeling they would be very easy to get used to.
Many visual novel games use a transclucent textbox to make sure the gamer can see all the hard-worked details of the game, but I think sometimes filling the entire screen with a visual is overwhelming. It's good to see a game that uses a careful balance between empty and filled space.

Title: Aoi Yori Aoshi

For a visual novel, the images look sort of budget, as if they were intended for a television anime show. The word bubble textbox is a fun idea, but the way the character's portrait cuts off the character's arm is disconcerting. It also seems reduntant that the character portrait is the same character image already on the screen. Perhaps it would have been better to leave out the character portrait, even if it makes the conversation ambiguous, and even then the game could have had a rule during development that only characters who are talking have their mouth open when displayed on the screen.

Title: Sakura Sakura

I'm not sure if I really enjoy text on a lighter background, because I think my eyes tire faster when the screen is very bright. This is probably why many visual novels choose a darker background for their textboxes and opt to display the text in a lighter tone. Again, I'm not very much of a fan of the repetition between the character illustration and the character portrait, but at least this time the character is carefully cropped so that no body parts are unfortunately left out. It's also nice to be able to see the character's name at the bottom left in case the player is bad at names.
I wonder how you save, load, skip mode, or auto mode in this game.

Title: Binary Hearts

This looks like a mix between a movie-like interface and a traditional visual novel interface. There is a sharp difference in the level of refinement between the portrait and the background, so I wonder if the background was "borrowed" from a screenshot of an anime. The placement of text looks ambiguous, and the colon (:) after the character name (Frei) unnecessary. I am worried about where the game options (save? load?) are. It's not as impressive when a game uses a generic windows-style program menu, which I suspect is what this game may rely on for game functionality.

Title: Gadget Trial

Too often the appearance of the protagonist is ignored in a game, so it's good to be able to see who is talking to the two characters on the screen. this game also has a very simple interface consisting of navigation buttons on the right (I'm guessing they're Hide Textbox, Skip, and Auto) and the speaking character's name and dialogue on the left. When the character's name is placed and styled (bold) seaparated from a character's dialogue, I don't enjoy seeing a colon (:) after the character's name. It's not only grammatically incorrect (colon connects two related sentences) but also redundant (If there is going to be quote marks to indicate the next part is spoken by the character who is named, why do you need a colon?) and confusing. As far as I know, I can't tell if his name is "Mihara" or "Mihara:", like one of those weird MMO names that use a lot of symbols like ^_^<utie_5+@r~-_.>

    It would be a near perfect world if I could just use powerpoint to make games. Powerpoint has everything I need to make a game, but it can't save.

    Oh gee, Blade Engine's forums have been up and running since July. I wish I had known earlier!

http://www.bladeengine.com/



Their program is still a mystery to use though. lol

No matter how good the seed
there's is nothing to harvest
if planted in the driest desert.

I handed in my first poem to my english class today.
I'm not a good writer -- certainly not compared to all the english majors in that class,
and I think I gave it a good shot but I can't help but regret it.
The poem was all dank and depressing that
it's not very entertaining to read. I can already imagine the face of my instructor and peers
as they struggle to finish it with cringed faces.
I've just begun appreciating poems -- it's really too early to be writing my own.

    ... are in about an hour. I'm a little nervous on the account that I pretty much spent the entire summer as a hermit.

    I've been thinking for the last few days...

What am I making this game for?

Which is then followed by hours of thinking "useless game useless game" and playing Sims 2.


I can't find any peers online.
Someone at my level of development and thinking.
Those people are nowhere to be found.

Slayers Revolution aired for the first time about 5 hours ago on TV Tokyo

( okay, fuck, I hate JC Staff. They need to learn to color )

... hot damn

http://zepy.momotato.com/2008/06/15/man-in-sendai-found-dead-buried-in-his-manga/

( Read more... )
http://www.gurren-lagann-movie.net/gurrepala/pv2.html