It’s time for a more concise report on how work on Angelic Orbs: Fallen Star is going. (For those not entirely sure what the deal is with this game, head over here for a general overlook at what it is.)

Anyway here we go, as this is the first one, it will be a bit long…:

Script:
The script itself has been done for quite a while. There has been some trouble with gaining a reliable editor, but outside of that it should be pretty much done, bar a puzzly section that I think needs some cropping down to become less frustrating for players. Development focus is therefore now on creating art assets, as well as coding all parts together.

Art:
I have been working on sprite sets for the main characters of the game on livestreams lately, and have more than half of the most important ones done so far.

In the case of how many poses and variations each sprite gets, I’ve gone with the same general principle as I did with Blue Rose: The core set of main characters get at least 2 different base poses each with their own set of variations, while less important side characters get just one to keep things manageable, unless something really demands an extra for story reasons.

In reality this means that for almost all of the core characters, actually 3 poses are needed. There are many action-based scenes in Angelic Orbs, and outside of normal poses and variations, one is needed for such confrontations as well. And let’s not talk about someone like Tia, who requires different sets of clothes, wings and disguises as well…

If you’re interested in how I do these things in practice, feel free to hop by my stream on fridays where I always work on game art, or have a look at the archive of previous art streams.

I am thinking of making another blog post on the nitty gritty of sprite creation as well, or at least of how much I know of it, in the future.

I have started work on a few of the scene illustrations as well, commonly known as CGs. Mostly those needed for the prologue of the game, with the aim of having some mostly-finished version of that to use as a demo. Some of these have also been made on stream, though at some point I imagine that a lot of these will have to made offline, so as not to spoil future events. There is still a lot of work to be done here.

But then what about backgrounds? So far all I have are placeholders, quick sketches made by myself to generally indicate what needs to be there, so I can get an idea of scene setups as well as what I’ll need to have as finished background art in the end. I will almost certainly be outsourcing this, as drawing and colouring character art is already taking a sizeable amount of time, and background art is not my forte either way. Hopefully I will soon be able to start reaching out to other artists for this.

Sound:
Music is another thing I wish to outsource for Angelic Orbs. Composing is something I am most definitely unable to do, and while there are many great sources for free music to use in indie games, I still believe that one of the best choices I made for Blue Rose was to get an original soundtrack. I hope to be able to gain something similar for Angelic Orbs, creating a personality of its own.

There is still no composer connected to this project, but this will be what I reach out for next, after work on backgrounds has been settled.

As you can see, Fallen Star still has a lot of work ahead of it. Having a script ready is important as it is what sits at the heart of any visual novel, but is still far from a finished product. I’m aiming for this to be the year where I can hammer most of the bases of the game into place, and finally see things coming together properly.

In terms of art and sound, a lot of this will also set the base for the next Angelic Orbs games to come, even if those will also have bucketloads of new assets to be made. But especially because of this, I feel that it’s important to get these fundamentals in place, so everything can come together as a great whole.

Here’s hoping we can create something great for you all in the coming months!