Monday, December 15, 2008

The State of Play, Christmas Edition

Hello everyone. It's been a long time since the last blog update, and a fair amount of things have been happening, so it's time for yet another update.

Writing:
Post-production is trundling along on all paths, with a particular focus on preparation of the demo. As we come to the final stages of development on it, alpha testing will begin with a demo release coming afterwards. The post-production phase has so far shown one of the greatest problems, but also one of the greatest strengths, of the development process of KS - that being the almost anarchic organisation structure. While small bursts of democracy, mob rule and dictatorship come and go, people largely do what they wish to via both negotiation and merit. At times this means he who has the largest mouth is most powerful, and at others it means very loose control over developers, but in the end it's fostered a friendship that's held the project together through many tough times.

Art:
The first finished CGs are starting to roll off the art-line now, with heroine sprites on the edge of completion. Thanks to everyone's hard work we've found, and finished altering, all the background shots required for the game. It was a long process given the number of backgrounds that had accumulated over the process of scriptwriting, but it's finally done. Thank you to all involved on that front, especially Yujovi for getting us a huge majority of the photos, and Delta for his image altering, with organisation and management of the process from Suriko.

On the staff front, we've welcomed Raide to the project as another artist, who will be working on both sprites and CGs. Being Indonesian, he joins our ranks as a developer of yet another nationality amongst a Finn, a German and an Italian, in addition to a handful of both Australians and Americans. Some of his fanart from before joining the project can be found on the forums, in the oekaki section.

Below is an updated heroine shot, showing the new Lilly art and another background, the exterior of the school dormitories.