Made Marion Development Update: June 2022
almost 2 years ago – Thu, Jun 23, 2022 at 04:52:38 AM

Hello everyone!  I'm back fresh from vacation with a ton of cool stuff to show off from Part 2 of the Sherwood Common Route. I've finished all the coding except for a few bits that are waiting on art completion.

Sherwood Common Route, Chapter 2

In order to better balance the Sherwood and Nottingham common routes, the entire Sherwood segment found in the current demo has been changed to Sherwood Chapter 1.  Chapter 2 now starts where the current demo ends, right after Marion asks if anybody can hand her a sword. This works better IMO, because the title of Sherwood Chapter 2 is "My Future, in My Own Hands," and that's the part where Marion really starts to take control of her situation.

Sherwood Chapter 2 gives players the chance to get to know the Sherwood love interests better, as well as revealing a bit more about the rebellion and its members.  Tuck fans will discover hints about why he isn't available as a love interest at this juncture, and folks who chose to spend a little quality time with him at the bonfire will get some different scenes with him.

Speaking of which, we have our first choice that only appears if you've made certain earlier choices. When you get to the route selection question at the end of Sherwood Chapter 2, you'll get a fourth option that only appears if you got close to Layton at the bonfire in Chapter 1.

You still won't be able to romance Layton, but you'll get to be the recipient of his biting wit and perhaps learn an interesting tidbit that gives hints about our DLC. Don't worry, making Layton choices in the common route won't negatively affect your Sherwood romances.

You'll also be able to spar with the Sherwood love interests, which is a lot of fun.

You'll also get to spend time with some of the secondary Sherwood cast, such as Nell the tailor (who you'll learn has a few other interesting skills), Roan the changeling, and Aiden the cat sidhe (the only full-blooded fae who is visible in the main game, since only cat sidhe appear to non-druids).

Of course, in the end you'll be choosing which of our three Sherwood love interests will be working most closely with Marion; in other words, whose romance route you'll be embarking upon. Each of the three men has their own mission that they're undertaking for the rebellion, and each has particular skills to teach Marion, as well.

General Goodies

With this programming pass, I added tinting to the characters during dusk and nighttime scenes. Thanks to everyone on our Discord server for their feedback; my settings now look subtle but help to set the scene.

On the left are the sprites before the sunset tint is applied, and on the right is how they look with the tint (it looks a bit different in-game than it does in screenshots).

We also have a font for Avalon handwriting now!  Here is the letter that Marion writes to her father in Chapter 2:

It bears a bit of resemblance to Tolkein's elvish script, but it isn't.  What does Marion write to her father?  You'll have the chance to set her tone to either angry or open to reconciliation, which will change a few scenes in the game's endings.

Whew!

I'm happy to report that my long Covid symptoms, which had been gradually fading over April and May, largely disappeared over our vacation. Nature is healing!  So I'll be buckling down like crazy on Robin's route this month.

I know our dear Robin can be a bit overlooked in comparison to his powerful cousins Will and John, but I think more people will be interested in him with a bit more information about who he is and how his route unfolds. Thus, I will be re-introducing Robin over the next month on our social media. Keep an eye on our Tumblr!

See y'all in July!

Made Marion Development Update: May 2022
almost 2 years ago – Wed, May 18, 2022 at 01:39:08 PM

It may be a bit of a Mayuary here in the Pacific Northwest, but summer is on its way! Our development update will be a bit delayed in June because I'm taking a vacation mid-month. We're going to drive down the famous Highway 1 to the California Redwoods, one of my favourite places in the world. It should be excellent for inspiration!

The Writing/Coding Department:

I continue to write scenes for our Sherwood routes. My favourite this month was a drunk kiss on [REDACTED]'s route. Don't worry, I'm quite aware of the consent pitfalls around drunkenness... it's quite wholesome and leads to a pretty hilarious (and perhaps sexy?) next day. Plus, writing the narration as drunk Marion was a lot of fun. Just remember... she was not drunk. Ladies, naturally, do not drink to excess.

I've been doing a good bit of coding as well, adding more features and getting everything ready to stick our character routes into the game.  Our animated lore intro is now coded in base form, with the subtitles synched up to the audio narration. That was one of the more tedious coding tasks I've had to do, but now it's all ready for the graphics. Lawrichai will be creating the graphics for the intro, and I'll be doing most of the animation with Ren'py's in-engine tools (and perhaps some assistance from our programming assistant Shawna!). Note that if you don't want to sit through it, you can skip it and watch it anytime from our Extras menu.

Thanks to feedback from the backers who watch our Discord, I'll be using some light shading to add immersion to our sunset and nighttime scenes.  You can see a before/after example of this on our Twitter account.

The Graphics Department:

Speaking of the animated lore intro, we've nailed down the basic visual style we'll be using. Originally we were going to use silhouettes, but Lawrichai did something even better!  Here's an example of the style, which we'll be using during the prologue when Marion talks about her past:

This summer, we'll be starting on other animations as well, like combat swooshes and spell effects.

Our sprite updates are a bit delayed due to Arrapso's work schedule, but they're coming!

That's it for this month, see you in June, about a week later than usual!

Made Marion Development Update, April 2022
about 2 years ago – Sat, Apr 16, 2022 at 09:49:07 PM

Welcome to the April 2022 Made Marion dev update!

We've got a pretty quick one this month.  I'm working with my doc on my long Covid issues, which stubbornly persist, but I've been able to do more writing this month than I was doing earlier in the year.

I've done some lovely scenes for our three Sherwood love interests, like an act of charity on Robin's route that ends with him getting in some hot water, a starlit conversation with Will that shows Marion a new side of him, and a perilous situation in John's route that has four possible outcomes depending on two different kinds of choices you've made.

I've also completed my first love interest point of view scene, which will be unlocked after you finish Alanna's route.  This one shows some behind-the-scenes action that explains why a certain event happens on Geoffrey and Gui's route but does not happen on Alanna's.  It's kind of a fun little spy vs. spy moment.

On our Made Marion Discord, I had some nice feedback on the direction to take one of our love interests, as I was wanting to make them a bit less wholesome to be in a relationship with than the other characters (they/them used to make the character's gender unclear, not to signify that it's Meissa).  There's a very good reason for this, and a good number of backers were interested in this kind of (slightly) darker route, so I'm going for it!  There will be clear opportunities for players who don't want to see this kind of relationship to get off the train before it fully hit dysfunction station... and Marion will be able to make choices that point it in a healthier or unhealthier future direction (also pretty clear).

Finally, my first reader is back after a lengthy absence due to her own workload, so I'll have more of my completed scenes proofread and available to plug into the game soon.  I just double-checked the second half of Sherwood Common before sending it to her. I wrote it last summer, and I still rather rather like it... so that's a good sign!

To sign off, here's our updated silhouette style, done on cotton paper for more control over colour mixing and detail.  I really like the details of the fabric around Mar's waist. 

See you next month!

Made Marion Development Update: March 2022
about 2 years ago – Mon, Mar 07, 2022 at 07:57:53 PM

Hi everyone!  Long time no speak, so let's get to the nitty gritty of what's up with Made Marion. It's been a while, so this might be a long one!

On Project Pace:

So it's been two months since I had a very mild case of Covid, and unfortunately it appears that it left me with a case of long Covid that's way worse than my original infection. I've been struggling on and off with extreme exhaustion and brain fog, so writing has been difficult.

We are all super dedicated to this project, never fear!  It will get done, but depending on how things go over the next few months, it just might be slower than anticipated as I adjust to my new health reality. I'm going to keep our anticipated release date at Q4 2022 for now; we'll see how things are going by the summer.  I think I'm slowly improving, but I've also had some setbacks and unfortunately in-person medical care isn't very accessible to me at the moment.  It's been a rough few years, y'all.

Works In Progress:

We're at an awkward development phase where we have a lot of work in progress that isn't fully polished for the final game. So please keep in mind that other than the backgrounds, the art I'm showing here is not final!

Here's a cool example of our BG artist Sandra's excellent background variant work.

This is a tavern in the higher-social-class part of Nottingham. It'll be the background for where Robin holds secret meetings with rebellion-friendly representatives of the guilds and merchants... and probably for some shenanigans in other routes as well.

And here is a variant for a tavern in the Brambles, Nottingham's poorest district, where Alanna takes Marion for a wild night out on her route. It'll also be seen in Meissa's route, and maybe Will's too!  Gotta make the most of those backgrounds!

I love the subtle changes Sandra made to give this background a very different feel despite it having the same base design. The straw on the floor is great - it's a traditional, low-budget way to sop up spilled drinks, after all, and I didn't even think to request it! Our artists' imaginations and their dedication to detail and quality continues to blow me away.

Cut-ins and Silhouettes:

Meanwhile, Lawrichai has finished the main cut-ins for our prologue and is spending some time developing two silhouette art styles. The first will be used to illustrate love scenes, adding extra visual interest and spice rather than our scenes just being text over a blank background.

Here's a test image imported into the game.  The final silhouette image will be done on higher-quality watercolour paper and if there is visible texture, it'll be reflected against the entire cut-in background.

I am once again thankful for Ren'py's new MatrixColor system that lets me easily darken the background for these scenes!

I'm not about to spoil a major love interest scene - this is from an optional scene in the prologue. If you've  been paying attention or participated in our prologue beta, you can guess who you have the chance to make sexy bad decisions with - and no, it's not a bad decision because it's a casual encounter - it's a bad decision because it's only a casual encounter for one of the participants and they both know it. 

The player won't be punished with a bad end for making this decision (or any sexy decision), but it might have some consequences for Marion later on in one of the game's routes. I encourage folks to go with whatever they'd like when it comes to decisions like this. Do you want to play a more idealized Marion or do you like a little trouble along the way? It's up to you!

The other silhouette art style is what we're calling "Storytime."  It will be an inkier silhouette style and will be used in our animated lore intro (see below for more details) and occasional scenes during the game. Thanks to our prologue beta testers for inspiring this style! There's a scene early on in which Marion talks a bit about her past, and one tester noted that it was a bit awkward having Marion just stand there talking to herself for so long. I agreed, so instead that scene will be illustrated with a cut-in and silhouettes.  I think it's going to look neat!

Character Sprites:

As I mentioned in our last non-update, our lead artist Arrapso also dealt with Covid early in the year, but is now back to completing our character sprites. There are a bunch that are nearing completion but need some changes and/or need their expression sets.  So here's some unfinished art to show progress:

As one of our older characters, Layton is one of the few sprites with visible chest hair. I know not everybody likes chest hair, but some of us do! We like to provide a lil' something for everyone. However, this version of his sprite has been digitally altered to conceal certain (non-chest hair-related) spoilers.

Those hands in the second pose? Man! I may be a terrible visual artist but even I know how difficult it is to draw hands that well!

"Lady Anne" and Gui are looking good so far!  Yes, Gui's hair is even more lush and lovely now. How does he do it? Portable wind machine? Invisible fae buddy blowing his hair back? Fantasy artistic license? (It's that last one, and we love it.)

Animated Lore Intro Progress:

I have written and recorded the narration for the animated lore intro. I handed it over to Alexander, who wrote a super spiffy background track that matches the tone of the narration. This was made possible by our Beyond Stretch 1 set of goals, as y'all voted for the animated lore intro as a top priority for those funds.

Once Lawrichai has inked our lore intro graphics, I'll be putting them together with our narration/music track, adding some simple animations in-engine, bringing in some sound effects, and timing it all so it looks and sounds spiffy.

The lore intro is about 4 minutes long and because of the timing between the subtitles and the audio file, you can't speed through it. However, once you've seen it, the game will give you the option to skip it in subsequent playthroughs (you can choose to skip just the lore intro or to also skip to a choice near the end of the prologue).

That's where we are for our March Madness. See you next month!

Made Marion Jan. Dev Update Postponed
over 2 years ago – Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 05:54:40 PM

Hi everyone!

I've been quite sick since just after the holidays, so we're postponing our development update until February.  Hope you all stay safe and get your boosters!

In the meantime, enjoy this shot of a cozy little Sherwood forest home. Who do you think lives here?  The mini-vineyard is a hint.