Category: Art

Hi folks, Graph here. I’ve made good progress toward revising the old art. We’ve got the full heroine lineup now!

There’s also been a lot of revisions for the rest of the cast, too. Rather than redo everyone from scratch though, the focus there is on the face and coloring technique. Still, I think most of it turned out passable.

Also, we’ve got an important announcement! A new demo is coming up!

Initially the plan was to wait until the whole game’s done, but a couple of things have come up that influenced our decision to make a Demo 3:

1. A number of users have reported that they’re unable to run the game on Windows 10, even though they were able to do so before upgrading to Windows 10. We want to release the game with a more recent version of Ren’py to see if that improves compatibility. Hopefully it works, but if not we’ll keep at it until we find a solution or workaround.

2. As mentioned up top, the art overhaul is nearing completion. As of this writing I have three characters left to revise and the Event CGs from Demo 2. Then we make sure things still look fine after the switch to HD screen resolution, and that’s about it!

Story-wise, the plan for this demo is to only go a little bit further than Demo 2. This is to minimize editing time and allow the writers to keep going at their own pace. Next time around it’ll be the writers’ show, and hopefully the final release!

My target time for Demo 3 is July or August; we’ll narrow it down as we get further along. To those of you still following along, we thank you and hope to deliver something great this summer!

Foraging in the forest. Speaking of the forest, this time I tried to find some reference reminiscent of the backdrop in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.

An oddly fitting comment for this post…

Additionally, for each route we’ve added a few bonus outfits!

Obviously, I still have to handle Flan’s set. Look forward to it, and Happy New Year everyone!

Hi folks, it’s about time I dropped a report on my progress too.

Backgrounds
Pretty much done here, and also converted all the old backgrounds to the new 1280×720 screen resolution. Not only that, several backgrounds got a major overhaul. As one prime example, Hakurei shrine from the demo…

And the new version! Granted, this isn’t just a result of skill improvement over time, but also having the patience to spend more than 2 or 3 hours on a background.

You can expect some new scenes in the final version as well, such as this little marketplace in the Human Village:

CGs
Harder to say since the script isn’t all in yet, but out of the stuff that’s currently there it’s like…
60% done
20% CGs from the demo need revising for the new screen res
20% others to do

GUI
Updated for the new screen res.

Danmaku + other effects
Old images updated for new screen res, haven’t done the new stuff yet. Not sure how far along it is yet, though I’ll probably get this done quickly at the end like I did before.

Cut-in sprites
Haven’t touched it since the demo. I want to redraw the 5 heroines and Marisa fresh, and the others will probably just get quick edits at best, just because of the sheer size of the cast.

Alright, getting back to it. I’ll endeavor to post more regular updates when I get to the home stretch.

Hello folks, Graph here! It’s been a while since our last update, but our projects are still coming along.

Back in April and May, I took those two months out to work on another project. Not Touhou-related, but there’s mecha; I guess that’s why my skills were called on! It’s a space-age strategy RPG made using Ren’py, the same engine that DSD’s VNs run on. It’s being written and programmed by a couple of other guys from Lemma Soft. It’s still in the design stages, but I’ll link more information when the project has some Internet presence.

Anyway, Touhou Mecha! Chapter 2 has made good progress; the animation, sounds and character sprites are in place, and most of what’s left is finishing up the new mecha sprites, BGs and CGs that are currently in TM as sketches.

We upgraded to Ren’py 6.15, which has additive blending! It should make it easier to do those nice glowy effects that mecha battles are so fond of.

And here’s a sneak preview of Marisa’s AM, the Chroma! The three magician friends have their own variation of the Chroma with different weapons.

I’m aiming for a release of Touhou Mecha Chapter 2 sometime August. Look forward to it!

In other news, it’s business as usual for ESR, and we’re still plugging away at that mountain of writing. Currently the writers are trying to finish up one ending to get an idea what they want the ending lengths to be.

Hello, Graph here with an update for Chapter 2 of Touhou Mecha. The dialogue scenes are mostly done, save for a couple of CGs. The newcomers this time around include…

The magician mercenaries who call themselves the Magus Trio, and…

Prime Minister Satori! Her appearance in Chapter 1’s intro was unfortunately cut out with the rewrite, but now she makes an appearance in person.

I’ve still got the whole battle scene to do, but with any luck I’ll have an update on that before too long, as well. See you soon, everyone!

Hello folks, it’s Thanksgiving Day and I have an update on Touhou Mecha!

The addition to Chapter 1 has been written and coded. I’ve also finished the new mecha sprites and CGs. That leaves us with this remaining work:

– A few more expression sets for Utsuho, Rin and Yamame for the rewritten dialogue
– Rework the code on the old part of Chapter 1 to work with the new 1024×576 resolution
– Program a few extra features

What extra features, you ask? Here’s what’s planned right now…

-Music Room
-TM Database, explained in this post
-Hellcat Corner, which will contain some skits in which we freely break the 4th wall and talk about the story and world of Touhou Mecha itself!

At this point, there are no plans for a CG gallery, since the VN has been kept to a fairly modest screen size to simply the task of animation. Instead, I’m thinking of uploading select CGs to my Deviantart account and possibly the DSD forums, depending on image size limitations. You may see them in up to twice the size of how they appear in the VN!

A first-half-of December release should be possible if I control the urge to redraw a bunch of things. Already tempted to redo Utsuho’s sprite set… but anyway, Happy Thanksgiving! We’ll see you all again soon.

Hello everyone, this is Graph. I Hope you’re all enjoying the holiday season so far! For those of you that haven’t noticed, we have a new logo that I designed at the top of this blog page and the forums. Just a little something to help get DSD’s name out there in our future game releases.

This year our holiday present is an update on Touhou Mecha; we’re making some good progress here. I mentioned in the previous update that I was considering making the battle sequences using sprites; I’m happy to report that it’s going well for the most part (just have to figure out how to avoid making Ren’py slow down with the large Yatagarasu mecha sprite). As it’s a one-man show as far as artwork goes, don’t expect animation on the level of Super Robot Taisen, but I think I can pull off something close to the mecha scenes of Muvluv Alternative (VNDB info link).

Our progress so far is as follows:

Character sprites: 100%!
Backgrounds: 70%
Mecha sprites: 40%
CGs: 5%
Music: Pending…
SFX: 80%
GUI programming: 90%

Provided I can figure out what to do about music soon, I think we’re looking at a January or February release for Chapter 1. Again, unlike Eastern Starlight Romance, Touhou Mecha is going to have periodic Chapter releases so this release will be considered more or less “finished”, rather than a demo (though we might retroactively update sprites or add new ones later).

Also don’t worry about ESR. The writers are still working on it. It’s just not as exciting to talk about random pieces of scripting. We’re just lucky to be at the point where we can work on both without sacrificing quality on either.