Audio and Graphics Update

This month I’ve been trying to polish the demo and for that two of the areas that stood out were some graphical and audio upgrades.

I’ve already tried to establish some unique audio themes. For example, Mitch gets a lot of aggressive tracks. I’ve debated what kind of tone I want to set with the game’s audio direction. The two main camps are generally to go more humorist, with cartoon sound effects and the like. For example, a character touches breasts and they make like a “boing” sound. The other direction is a more realistic approach or something in between. I’ve been leaning more towards the latter as you may have noticed from the current demo.

This month I’ve spent overhauling and expanding the voice control system as well as going through many thousands of sound effects and music files. I have other good news. I was able to get a very generous licensing agreement on a website that overlapped with a few of my missing licenses so in a way all four of the major audio issues have been solved. The audio can now be properly controlled in game, the cost is much less per track, the diversity is high and I have access to pretty much everything I want in this category outside of voice acting. Last but not least, a lot of artists put their content on multiple sites so I now have proper licenses for one of the main composers I’m using (Winnie) and that solves one of the major annoyances and ended up saving a bundle in the process. 

I have also attempted to retrain and experiment with some different AI techniques so some of the newer voices are better than the earlier ones.

I realized something else this month and that is that the 3D demo is lacking something else compared to the original html demo and that is a lesbian scene. That is a critical oversight that I am correcting ASAP.

On the Ren’Py front, I’ve continued plugging away and estimate I now have over half of Transfigure ported to the 3D game. A few months of graphical work will hopefully bring them to near parity and then it is just a matter of me finishing the dreaded editing avalanche, writing out a few blank spots, and the light is visible at the end of the tunnel.

On the graphics front, I’ve also expanded my asset base and produced more character and background art. There were also a couple of new upgrades that increase my efficiency in the 3D department. I have continued to experiment with animations but they vary in quality and are still very time consuming to produce. Some Evan and Taylor animations turned out very poorly but I did get a number of decent still renders.

As I am trying to organize assets to create art for the rest of Transfigure 3D, I’ve gone through other assets along the way which leads to other creations. Lately this led to me writing a whole bunch of really cool lore for Goddess Connection. I like doing development like this because it adds a lot of different layers to the world as a player explores it. Many modern games neglect story but here I will make sure that players get a memorable story in each experience.

Here is my recent attempt to recreate the pantheon from my notes. I will let you guess which is the fertility goddess. 

From left to right, they are: Aoes (pronounced “eh-ohs”), Edis, Anyo, Yarm, Kail, Victora. I like the way Victora turned out but some of the others will probably change a bit. Anyo is the goddess influencing the protagonist, Hart.

The six goddesses are roughly divided into opposing roles, three who derive their power from creation and three from destruction. 

I’m going to finish up the demo and then release a block of overdue things (html updates etc) to support that release to keep the momentum up.

Thanks for being awesome!

Love,
Tango