Getting there

Hi again! I've been working on the game in almost every spare moment, and I'm close to being done!

I still have to do a lot of the artwork that I mentioned last time, since I've been working on coding in all the cutscenes and so on. Some day I'd like to make a better system for adding cutscenes and that kind of stuff, but I don't have time to develop that now.

So I'm going to aim to finish everything by Wednesday night or Thursday morning at the latest. Maybe even sooner. :D

Progress!

I'm on vacation now, so I've been getting a lot done! Yay! First, here are the pictures of Rob and Julie, who you didn't actually get to meet last time but will soon.

Also, I'm almost done with the minigame, which means I only have these things left to do:

• Draw faces for Club Love in uniform and Ben and Tyler
• Draw sprites for all the NPCs, including the ones that some people submitted :D
• Put it all together!

So I hope I'll be done in two or three days!

Oh, I forgot to say - I found something great for people interested in making code-heavy Flash games like this one. (What I mean by "code-heavy" that is that instead of usual Flash fare like vector images and MovieClips, the whole game is code and bitmap images.) It's possible for students to get a free version of Flash Builder, which is a development environment for Actionscript based on Eclipse, if you've ever used that. I was using Flash CS3 until now, but I can only use that while I'm at school, so I had been working in a simple text editor while I was at home - but I'm glad I discovered Flash Builder, because it's more useful for what I'm doing than Flash itself. (Because of all its debugging features and so on.) So, check that out if you're interested: http://www.adobe.com/devnet-apps/flex/free/index.html

CL sprites done

See, I have been getting some work done. You know I kind of regret making you able to walk in 8 directions when I have to make all of these... It takes longer than you might think. Also, I regret making eyewear part of Club Love's uniforms, since it's a pain to draw in the comic too! Anyway, next week is exams, so after that I should have more time.

If you're curious, what happens is I include this whole image in the game, and then I've written some code that displays the appropriate sprite depending on which direction a person is facing and if she's walking.

Update

I haven't been able to spend a lot of time on CL much recently. But I've drawn some sprites and worked a little on the minigame for the next part, which is going to awesome. :D

Well, I have exams this week and the next, but after that I should have lot of time! Thanks for your patience.

Oh, there's another thing that I was working on - a tool for creating rooms from tiles. All the rooms in the game (Cora's bedroom, the hallway, etc) are made by repeating a few tiles. That way I don't have to include such large images with the game, plus it's an easy way to prevent you from walking into walls. So, the program gets data like this:
01, 01, 01
10, 10, 10
10, 00, 10
And uses it to place the tiles to create the room. Last time I wrote all that out by hand, which was a pain! So now I've created a tool where I can drag tiles and it prints out the code I need to include that room in the game. I should have done this sooner. Anyway if you're interested in this tool let me know. I could totally share the code with you.

Thanks for entering the NPC contest!

Hi everyone! I closed the NPC thing because I have way more than enough entries. I only need 3 or 4 for the next episode of the game, but I'll use some in later episodes too. Thanks to everyone who submitted a character! I hope you enjoy seeing whether your character makes it into the game. But don't feel bad if he or she doesn't. I'll probably end up picking them by a random lottery, since there are so many.

I just wanted to clarify the status of the Club Love game, since someone asked about it. The game is a normal part of the plot and everything. The only difference is that instead of a series of comics, it's presented as a series of interactive episodes. The whole idea is to do a game like a webcomic by updating it in little bits. Since there are various other interactive online comics, I don't think it's that much of a stretch.

But if you just want the normal comics back, then just think of this time as a hiatus. There are 3 more parts of the game, and then I'll go back to normal comics for Chapter 7. I wish that I could finish the game faster. The problem has been both underestimating of how long it takes to make a game and being swamped with schoolwork. But the school year is drawing to a close and even though I have a summer job, it should leave some time free. So even if Episode 2 takes me a little while longer, you shouldn't have to wait too long for the rest.

Be in Club Love!

I had a good idea while working on the script for the next section. I need some random NPCs (non-player characters - everyone except Club Love), so why don't I get you all to do the work for me! And by that I mean that if you submit your character, I might put him or her in the game! All you have to do is say what your character basically looks like and what she would say if she met Club Love.

There are no rules except I probably won't pick your character unless he or she seems like a mostly normal Amatus student. But it could represent you, or someone you made up just now, or whatever. So, you just have to go to this link that I'm about to give to submit your character. Then I'll pick whichever characters seem to fit in the best and include them in the next part of the game. But it's going to be a secret until the game comes out who I pick. Also, I might change what you send in, so no getting upset about that.

Edit: Ok, I've closed the submissions. Thanks for entering!

This time, I'm going to write the whole script before I draw any faces, so that's what I'm working on right now.

Of course, I've gotten a bit sidetracked by things like a function that finds which member of CL is the closest to whoever you're talking to, so that person can be the one to start the conversation (instead of having it be always Cora, or whatever.)

I'm still debating the mouse vs keyboard control thing. I spent a while getting the mouse control to work well when you have multiple people in the "party", and I'm happy with how that worked out. Keyboard isn't as elegant, plus it has some other bugs - so should I just scrap it and stick with the mouse only? Well, I'll decide later...