恋愛♡Exchange

Project on hault until further notice.

Hinano — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:13:49 +0000

Well I tried to work on this game but I just don’t have time with a full time job after all. By the time I get free time I just want to spend it playing games, not making games (ㆀ˘･_･˘).

I hope to someday pick up this project but I don’t know when that will be. May not even be in 2012 heh. I was thinking about deleting this site completely until then but I guess I don’t want to lose the name so I’ll just keep it around.

When I’m ready to work on this project again I’ll post an update. Sorry for anyone who was looking forward to it. I started the game originally when I was unemployed and I had time but now I just don’t have the free time anymore. I haven’t even really drawn anything in months so my art skills are kinda washed out anyway at this point.

Thanks for reading, have a happy 2012!

Resuming progress

Hinano — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:19:49 +0000

Just wanted to give a quick heads up that I’ve resumed progress with the game! I’m in the script writing stage now. My incredibly drastic goal is to have it finished by the end of November, especially since there’s a lot of holidays in November so I’ll have more time to write. Worst case is I’ll finish it before the end of the year x3 Once that’s done I plan to start doing all the sprite programming and finally the CG art. Thanks everyone for being patient

:/

Hinano — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 22:44:46 +0000

I got a new job and when I get home and I’m really not in the mood to look at python code. Therefore, this project is on halt until further notice. It’s a pity I didn’t start on this in January of this year since I had 8 months free. Oh well shit happens, my arms hurt etc.

Customizeable heroine name!

Hinano — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:15:21 +0000

Because Shizuka is awesome:

So yea you can name the heroine John Smith if you want to. Hopefully this makes for a more interesting game play (although personally I always just use the heroine’s default name when I play lol.)

Always make PSD backups…

Hinano — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:54:37 +0000

Looks nice right? Well too bad I can’t do anything with it because I saved it as flattened 800 x 600 PSD File. I DONT EVEN REMEMBER DOING THIS OH MY GOD (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ彡┻━┻ Yea I had this nice idea of an empty bench with the guys only appearing if you got their route…SO MUCH FOR THAT. Not redoing this image orz. I managed to salvage this idea by making them black & white until you unlocked their routes but it’s just not the same… ｡･ﾟ･(ﾉД`)･ﾟ･｡うえええん Sigh well I guess I learned my lesson. A shame since I really wanted to use this image for stuff like prints oh well :/. Huge thanks to mah woman Lorelei for helping me with programming. I almost flipped my desk in rage when I opened up the horror that is my previous game’s program code OTL.

Splash screen WIP

Hinano — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 02:46:22 +0000

Since my first image was a piece of crap really I’m doing a nice one with all the characters in it which will serve as the game “poster” as well as splash screen. Too tired to work on it anymore tonight so here’s a progress pic lol:

That top pic man..so hot In other news I’ve been thinking about something: profit. Yea this will be a free game but it would be nice to get something back for my efforts… so I had a couple thoughts. Aside from stuff like posters/prints etc, I thought about adding an extra route for anyone who donates a small amount ($5 or something.) Anyone have thoughts on this? Otherwise the game will be absolutely free to play. Hopefully I can get the rest of this pic finished tomorrow (yes I am purposely trying to find way to delay my programming cause I hate programming god damnit..)

Special page updated.

Hinano — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:40:37 +0000

I made some link banners (´＾ω＾｀)

I only made 160 x 600 for now since that’s typically what I use on my blog but if anyone has other common size requests please let me know~

I think I’m done with the characters for now.

Hinano — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:19:42 +0000

If you haven’t been checking it the characters page pretty much has the main cast on it. If I end up creating any side characters (although I have 1 in mind…) I’ll add them in later. Part of me is happy with the designs, part of me isn’t. I always rag on my own art but sometimes the feedback I get makes me paranoid that I screwed something up. Oh well ┐(‘～`；)┌.

I’m a bit worried about this project for various reasons. I feel like I’m going to run into a rock as far as programming goes. Anyway I guess I gotta really work on story planning from now on and start the programming bit since I tend to write the story as I program.

Edit: Redid Daisuke’s face cause it was pissing me off

Edit 2: Redid Kentaro’s nose while I was at it

Background Grief

Hinano — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 01:24:04 +0000

Last one for today guys I’ve been kinda having a tough time with backgrounds all day. I found many sites that offer free useable backgrounds for games but let’s face it: all artists are different. There are some high quality works and there’s crap and there’s just a plain’ old photo. Now the question I guess I have is – how much does background consistency matter to you? I made an example:

The example above is 4 different bedrooms. Starting from the left going clockwise we got not so great artist 1, photo, really good artist 2, okay artist 3. I used the same filter on all 4 photos to try to make them look somewhat better for comparing but as you can see the sprite looks better on some than others.

Now say for example you are playing the game. Your scenes would look something like this:

Starting from the left & going clockwise, Melissa goes to the train station →　she sits on the train waiting for it to arrive at the university →　she finally arrives and stands in front of the entrance → and ultimately ends up in her class. Looking at the images above, we got 3 artists and a photo. Does this bother you? Do they all need to be artworks? Or all from the same artist? Or all photos? The problem is artist 1 only draws scenes of sidestreets, beaches and some buildings. Artist 2 has scenes of festivals, snow and bedrooms. Artist 3 has pictures of subways, malls and christmas decorations. This leaves me with only 1 consistency which is basically using google image search in hopes of finding photos of Japan in addition to my vacation pics. Of course if this variety doesn’t matter (its a free game after all..) then I just take material from all 3 artists + my photos and it turns out like the image above.

What’s your take on this? I’d really like some feedback on this, thanks!

P.S. No Melissa will not have a sprite in game – she’s just my test monkey

Heroine is ready for the world!

Hinano — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 23:34:15 +0000

Now that I think about it there’s so much open space I could probably convert this into a game opening screen menu… ( ･´ー･`)ふ━━━ん

Click to enlarge

I’ve created placeholders for all the pages for this site and I’m starting to work on the character page for now and story page is pretty much done. I think anything I draw now I may or may not use in game. My goal is to write all the script/programming first and then do all the art/place it inside the game. My art is inconsistent as it is so at least this will ensure that anything I draw will be within a close proximity time wise lol. Sometimes I feel like I made my heroine look like she escaped out of some eroge sigh, I can’t help it – eroge is where I began VNing :s But I also didn’t want my heroine to be some plain brown haired flat chested chick like in most otome games (　´_ゝ`).