Monday 9 February 2015

Commissioning assets, game inspirations and NaNoRenO!

I'm dropping the whole Day XX from the posts, because math should only be done when absolutely necessary!

I've been sent some great audio assets (sound FX) from my good friend Urban Fox ( http://urbanfoxuk.com ) - I'm certainly going to use them in the game! I've never formally commissioned any assets for a project, and I still haven't (I have just pestered friends for freebies!), but I am thinking about commissioning art, music, and maybe even other things on future projects. I've started a deviantart account and am keeping an eye out for artists who do commissions, at least I'll have a small pool to approach in the future if I do want to go down this route!

Progress has been pretty slow lately (still doing drawings and plotting mostly), I've had a lot of paid work on, so that's been keeping me busy. It's always good to get paid from time to time!

I thought it would be fun to mention a few of the inspirations for my pizza game.

1. Sean Lock joke about a world with no herbs (from Sean Lock Live I believe) - I think about this from time to time, what would a world without herbs be like. You can substitute herbs for anything really and it's still interesting to think about.

2. Silver Spoon episode 4 ( http://www.crunchyroll.com/silver-spoon/episode-4-hachiken-bakes-pizza-641945 ) - A great anime episode about pizza and friendship that really struck me when I watched it

3. Anamanaguchi - Endless Fantasy music video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fdr-Fiv92c ) - This, although very different to the episode of Silver Spoon, made me think of the same themes of pizza and friendship!

And of course real life, that's a big inspiration too!

Finally, NaNoRenO, the month-long game jam for visual novels ( http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=30252 ) starts at the start of March. Last March I hadn't ever used Ren'Py. Around that time last year I was playing D&D and for one of my campaigns I made a small RPG element which could be played online - it was just a bit of javascript. Then it was around June that I had a go with Ren'Py and made an unfinished game (which I might talk about in a future post). I'm planning on giving nanoreno a go this year, which if I get something finished (or finished enough!) by the end of March that will be my first finished game!
Well I made a game about 12 years ago when I was at school, but that was only 'released' on the school LAN!

I've still got a few weeks to come up with a concept for this other game, I'm planning on doing it 100% myself, so it'll have to be VERY short.