Thursday, January 1, 2009

The Year in Review, and The Year Ahead

Happy new year, one and all!

With 2008 behind us and a new year ahead, this is a look back to everything that happened in 2008, and what looks to be ahead of us for 2009.

Enter, January. All paths were still within their second acts as far as writing went, with no path having breached a dozen scenes. Editing took place on the forums, and there was no head writer or overall vision in place. The basic GUI had taken form (though would still be tweaked later on), but the character sprites and CGs were nonexistant. The first arrivals of our new artist team had mostly joined during February, so it wasn't until then that we saw the first concept sketches posted and sprites begin production. Backgrounds remained all but nonexistant, with the faint hope of finding an artist willing to draw them rapidly dying.

As time went on, people came and went. The decision to use modified photos for backgrounds was initially met with disdain, but in the end turned out to be the only viable option. Not to say it ended up being an easy one - due to the script having ballooned in size due to being constantly worked on despite art and backgrounds having been neglected, a huge backlog had built up. Thanks to the valiant efforts of Yujovi, though, we got all the backgrounds we needed with the photos he's taken. The other backlog - art - moved very quickly from being a dismal and depressing topic to one of great excitement as our art team swelled from four to six, with Moekki, Weee, Gebyy, Kamifish, Ambi and, recently, Raide joining the team. Even in the project's brightest days it had never had multiple artists, let alone one per heroine and an extra. Politics and drama, of course, happened both publically and privately, but the project's managed to get past its disputes and grow in size more and more, reaching an unprecedented high point as it approaches its second year of development.

And so, we reach 2009. What now?

Right now, much of the developer team's focus is on the demo, of which we're aiming at a first half 2009 release for. Some of the artists have already finished their act 1 workload and are continuing onto art assets in act 2 and beyond. Raide in particular is off to a flying start, having done a large amount of art despite arriving only recently.

Finally, in an unrelated note, you may notice that the blog has been updated in accordance to the website's visual design, thanks to Delta's hard work.