Ask A Developer!

[AlgaeNymph]

I sent an email a while back (on 9/27/13) asking if I could offer thoughts on a character in Eastern Starlight Romance but I didn't get a reply. Should I send it again?

[Graph]

Graph, are you still going to wait on an English patch for GSTY despite the fact that the one running for over a year has made basically no progress?

Well, I might as well take the plunge just to see how they handled the new characters' abilities in a SRW setting. Though even without doujin games, there's already more games than I've got time to play. A lot of PS3 RPGs have had their translations finished up in the past couple of years, so I've been playing some major catch-up. (Been working through Atelier Totori lately)

Did you manage to pick up Yukari and Suika in Sengoku Gensokyo? (Or for that matter, get the bonus story with Alice/Marisa/Patchouli?)

All of the above! Though I got Suika in the second run, and I don't think I finished with the True Ending or whatever it was called. I remember finding the MAP sidestory kind of interesting, though I can't recall exact what it was about at the moment.

Have you played Genius of Sappheiros then? (I found Touhou Labyrinth not really all that grindy outside of Youmu, Yukari, Rinnosuke and the postgame. Gave up on postgame.) What point in Laby became too grindy?

Haven't played GoS. I got to somewhere in the Floor 16-18 range in Labyrinth, I think. So it was probably Yukari or Rinnosuke up next.

What did you guys think of HM and DDC, anyway?

I haven't tried DDC. As for Hopeless Masquerade, I'm pretty bad at fighting games so I had tons of trouble making combos connect because everyone's so floaty... not to mention just about every character has their own custom gimmick connected to a little display at the bottom! I got the feeling it wasn't for a beginner like me. The animation's quite fun to watch though. And Hata no Kokoro's one of my favorites out of the recent characters.

I'm not sure if it's been asked if you have favourite Touhous? If yes, then say so and I'll reread the thread again. I suspect it has been.

Well, opinions do change over the years, and people do pick up new favorites! And it's been over 2 years since that was last asked I believe. That said, I'm sticking with Utsuho. Some runner-ups include Sakuya, Sanae, Satori and Alice.

[OrangeOfPurple]

Oh, what do you think of Mystical Power Plant?

[28JFJ]

Hello, can I ask how ESR is coming along at the moment if you don't mind?

[IcedFairy]

Hello, can I ask how ESR is coming along at the moment if you don't mind?

We'll be making a post soon, but the short answer is 'slower then we'd like, with significant progress still.'

[Raineh Daze]

We'll be making a post soon, but the short answer is 'slower then we'd like, with significant progress still.'

And, well, any news now? xD

[SleepKirby]

I guess he meant a post on the blog. But uh, yeah, we haven't done one of those in over a year now, since Demo 3.0. There's still been some progress, although it's been particularly slow in recent months. Currently I'm the last one to have posted progress within our dev team, and that was about 3 weeks ago.

I believe for a while we've had a pretty clear plan of what needs to be done to finish the game. Iced/Talon = write the rest of the days on the story plan, me = transfer the scripts to code and look into more Renpy customizations/features, Graph = draw the rest of the CGs and code in battle effects. We've drawn up a pretty long story though, definitely on pace for over 400,000 words. It's quite possible that me and Graph may catch up with the writers early, in which case we might try some writing ourselves for some of the less-plot-essential parts of the story. We'll see though.

In any case, we do still aim to finish this (it helps that Touhou is still going strong after all these years!), and I can say for myself that I still enjoy working on this when I'm able to.

[Raineh Daze]

I guess he meant a post on the blog. But uh, yeah, we haven't done one of those in over a year now, since Demo 3.0. There's still been some progress, although it's been particularly slow in recent months. Currently I'm the last one to have posted progress within our dev team, and that was about 3 weeks ago.

I believe for a while we've had a pretty clear plan of what needs to be done to finish the game. Iced/Talon = write the rest of the days on the story plan, me = transfer the scripts to code and look into more Renpy customizations/features, Graph = draw the rest of the CGs and code in battle effects. We've drawn up a pretty long story though, definitely on pace for over 400,000 words. It's quite possible that me and Graph may catch up with the writers early, in which case we might try some writing ourselves for some of the less-plot-essential parts of the story. We'll see though.

In any case, we do still aim to finish this (it helps that Touhou is still going strong after all these years!), and I can say for myself that I still enjoy working on this when I'm able to.

It's just good to know that you're still aiming to finish it.

[Koakuma]

Hey, have you thought about putting your ESR demo on steam? there's been a lot of touhou media going in steam recently both official and not, including some VNs as well.
Even in its unfinished state it can serve as a free demo of sorts, and i think that will get ESR more recognition, especially since there are no Touhou dating sims as far as i know.
Regardless i still look forward to ESR, i have been since 2015!

[SleepKirby]

Hey, thanks for the encouragement and info!

I think announcing ourselves on Steam (and/or potentially another platform) could be a good idea sooner or later. If the timing were up to me, I think I'd prefer doing it when we're active again and looking for feedback, development help, or generally getting more eyes on ESR. Kind of using that as a window of opportunity in some sense. Until then, I don't actually mind if we're not getting much attention/recognition at the moment, so that there isn't too much pressure while we're still getting our personal/work lives in order.

(In the meantime, hmm, why didn't I get email notifications on those spam threads... better check how that should work again.)

[Koakuma]

Hey, thanks for the encouragement and info!

I think announcing ourselves on Steam (and/or potentially another platform) could be a good idea sooner or later. If the timing were up to me, I think I'd prefer doing it when we're active again and looking for feedback, development help, or generally getting more eyes on ESR. Kind of using that as a window of opportunity in some sense. Until then, I don't actually mind if we're not getting much attention/recognition at the moment, so that there isn't too much pressure while we're still getting our personal/work lives in order.

(In the meantime, hmm, why didn't I get email notifications on those spam threads... better check how that should work again.)

I'm overjoyed you responded to my post! I will be there supporting ESR when it comes out!
I can't wait to see this project complete!