Hello Volunteers! Here to quickly give you the monthly rundown on the progress I've made towards getting the next phase out to you all! And an apology for not having it out this month like I'd originally hoped.
I'll start this by apologizing for the next phase not being rolled out this month. I've tried my hardest to get the next phase complete for release, but unfortunately it just hasn't happened. That's not to say progress hasn't been made because it definitely has, and I'll run through that in a minute, but truthfully the delay is simply because I've just had so many new ideas and routes I want to take the test this phase and when I get ideas like that I just run with them.
For example, in the early stages of this games development Alleyne wasn't even a character who was going to be included. She wasn't implemented until months later and that was only because I needed someone to introduce you to the test. So I created Alleyne, loved the personality I'd given her and then all these mad storylines came to me on who she could be and what she could do. Now she's the biggest part of the test. So I hope you'll all bare with me while I try to run with more ideas like these, they will only better your experience.
Okay so now that is out the way I'll move on to how far phase three has come:
- All five main storylines have been scripted and are now in the rendering phase. This is the five main storylines which are varied based on your previous choices. Some big, some small.
- An example of the point above being Alma. Depending on the choices you've made with her already you'll get one of two very different paths with her this phase. Where as Freya on the other hand only has one path, which can be dismissed entirely if wanted. Still, to counter that she has a romance option which in itself has two different paths and extra scenes and conversations.
- When phase three rolls out you'll be able to start the 'true' routes. Two of which have been scripted to completion and are now in the rendering phase.
- Previously Aiko was the only person with a unique scene after the first choice. Now in phase three, four more special scenes have been added with the other women noticing people vanishing. Three of these are scripted to completion with one rendered fully.
- The gallery will been expanded this phase with all the new scenes which will be added.
- Hundreds of more renders are complete for this phase, on top of what was already finished last month.
- Thousands more lines of scripts have been added extending the story further than before.
- On top the five new outfits last month there is now another two added this month.
The list of completed stuff may seem shorter this month, but I've mostly spent the month writing out the stories and pathways ready to move on to the rendering phase. Plus this is all on top of what was completed last month. Once more I apologize for the delay and am working as hard as possible to get this out as soon as possible. As always if anyone has any questions or ideas I would love to hear them. Feel free to email me at [email protected].
If anyone is interested, lastly below I'm going to have a little section on how my work flow goes and what I do to make this game possible. It isn't important to the announcement, so skip if you want. :)
This section is mainly here because I want to be open with you all on how I create the game, so you know time isn't being wasted, and secondly because when I was first started work on Anna; The Series Test, I had no idea what I was doing and trying to research it didn't much help. (You never know, this might help someone else who wants to try their hand at it.)
This has very much been a learn as I go process. (Hence the file size. Accidently I rendered all of phase one as PNG's which lead to the large install data. I am working on converting phase one to JPG's, like the rest, to lower the size. But only if it doesn't effect the render quality. Sorry for this mistake.)
Anyway, I've read a lot of CG visual novels in my time and one thing what struck me was that some use the same characters, clothing and scenes as others. Pre-made and repeated over and over. Don't get me wrong, I still love the games and appreciate how well they were made and the stories they tell, but I wanted The Series Test to be truly unique which is why I personally build everything from scratch. (Bar the music and a few hairstyles.)
All the clothing in the game I make using Character Creator 3, Marvelous Designer, Zbrush and Substance Painter.
Marvelous is used to design the outfits, make sure they fit the characters and act as real clothes would. Once done there they go through Zbrush where each fold is hand sculpted and they are further detailed. Little accent buttons and other side parts of the costumes are added. Lastly it goes over to Substance to be hand painted and designed to match the character in question.
When the clothing is finished, I take it back to Character Creator 3 which is what is used to make the replicas to begin with. All said and done, I get something like this:
The set-pieces and all the renders are done with a mix of CC3, Substance and Iclone7. Each background/set-piece in The Series Test begins as a simple cube and is added onto from there. All scenes are hand built by me, created from tens and dozens of tiny shapes all transformed and shaped to makeup the environments and objects you see.
Finally when the scene is built I paint it, texture it, add in the lighting, position the replicas and work a little magic with the camera and it's ready to render. Giving off this beauty:
So yeah, that's how Anna: The Series Test is created. I'm aware no-one really asked, but just wanted to be straight with how the process works and how much love and care is going into this game from me. Never know, might also point someone in the right direction to create their own. :) :)
Thank you all again for being on this journey with me. You are all awesome! And I'll have more news for you all when the next phase is complete. Hopefully It'll be before the next monthly announcement. :)