~ Birthing Process

Log 10 ~

I am in the process of migrating the project to RMVX-Ace from RMVX. I don’t have the luxury of time to explain in detail my motives; what’s important to know is that from the perspective of a programmer the pros are far more significant than the cons. Quick summary:

Pros:
• 64-bit operating system compatibility
• Less software restrictions
• More functionalities, more properties, and more flags/tags to use freely
• Cleaner and smarter RGSS code written by Enterbrain
• Faster performances
• Use Ruby version 1.9.2
• Enterbrain discuss the possibility to create exporters for Smartphones and XNA

Cons
• Shadow Pen Feature: a serious nuisance more than being accommodating
• Not localized in North America yet
• Possible additional delay of my game, but not that much longer

The transfer is a breeze – but not without some extra labors. I’m excited to say that as I’m working with RMVX-Ace a large fraction of the hard-to-manage predicaments I had encountered with the previous engine have vanished. I could also get rid of many of my now-obsolete scripts, thus reducing testing-time and instantly eliminating tons of glitches/bugs. Very positive.

The engine is so much improved in a professional fashion that I’m considering keeping using RPG Maker for a few more projects.

The only big obstacle I’ve met so far is the new Shadow Pen feature in RMVX-Ace, it’s too complicate to explain, but it nonetheless forced me to bring back the Super Tilemap script I had once created during the making of Eternal Eden 2 to overcome this issue. As a result expect a bunch of very cool real-time special effects in the game!

I don’t know if it’s another twist of Providence in my life, I can yet confirm that Enterbrain has carried their newest engine just when I needed it the most in order to assemble the last pieces of my game without the crazy headaches. The old version of RMVX was making my life a nightmare in the end, trust me on this.

Note down that until I’m over and done with Eternal Eden: Ecclesia you won’t hear from me. Time is short and my physical/moral capacities are getting extremely low, so I need to maintain my energies uniquely for the game. Oh, and by the way, I’m reserving the eleventh entry of my birthing process logs for one special event: the birthing!

I’m busy, busy, busy… I don’t even have any time to think of New Year’s resolutions. Anyway most things I’d like to change are beyond my control, so I’ll just skip the resolution part this year and let Providence act on its own to support and guide my life. Sometimes it’s simply better not to force things.

Overall it worked great for me during Year 2011. There were full of good surprises and I’ve been very fortunate financially which allowed me to focus on my game development. I wish it will keep going like this throughout 2012.

The only unhappy event that happened was Kojak’s death. Fortunately I went emotionally through it faster than I expected. It’s surely because deep inside me I knew I made him happy till the end.

One of my biggest dreams I wish to accomplish during 2012 is the purchase of a charming residence. Happily my credit score is high and healthy and my preceding fiscal reports show positive results to qualify for a mortgage. Once EE:E is sold I plan to make a downpayment of 20% of the total value (rather than 5%), so it will make future monthly payments a lot easier and not overwhelming.

I’m currently living in the poor section of my town and I must say I miss terribly the suburb life. What made me stay here during the past two years was mostly Kojak, I couldn’t leave him behind because his real master didn’t care about him and I felt I had this responsibility on my shoulders. Now I’m definitely ready to settle down for a new life and develop all my upcoming games in a pleasurable and warm ambiance.

A house is definitely a great incentive reward to get EE:E finally released. Pray for me ^^

If I wasn’t so perfectionist the game had already been released during the holidays. I’ve put a lot of time to perfection my scripts and graphics to give the game a powerful unique feeling. The constant delay has nonetheless made me felt dispirited lately, I’m so impatient to have it finished and have you finally playing it. I can’t wait to start working on EE2 and some other 3D projects. Furthermore the Christmas period brought incredible memories of when my first game was launched in December 2008, I hoped to revive the same magical mood with the release of EE:E during the holidays.

In some way, I partly revived the experience again with the 2 Dollars Christmas Promotion on Eternal Eden. I of course didn’t fill my pockets with gold nuggets because at this price the game was given, but I earned a lot of new fans and my inbox folder became full of activity. It’s always pleasant to receive kind words from people who discovered the game for the first time. It also increased my confidence; if people can still greatly enjoy EE1 three years after its release, chances are high EE:E will be an instant hit.

Five hours are remaining until the year end, yet work isn’t over for me and I will persist to work until the game is released.

Happy New Year everyone!! Best wishes to all of you!

~ Birthing Process

Log 09 ~

I’m starting to think a caesarean section will be necessary to make Eternal Eden: Ecclesia completely out of my head (lol). No matter how hard I push difficulties seems to be more atrocious.

I’m not going to celebrate the holidays for sure. Don’t feel worried about me because it’s not some kind of self-inflicted punishment. Another reason is that my absorption in the development is too intense and in times like this I tend to avoid the company of other people. Even if I meet them my brain is constantly preoccupied with unresolved algorithms and they simply risk to talk to a wall, or even worse, a zombie that apparently doesn’t eat brains. Besides my haircut is long, my face is unshaven, my eyes are sleepy and filled with red lines – which visibly make me look like a junky on heroin… so I feel better in my room, in my little universe.

I’ll take a sweet walk in my favorite suburb (where I’m looking to purchase a house) during the Christmas Eve. I’ll watch Christmas decorations while appreciating the warm atmosphere of families celebrating together in houses. I’ll bring Connie with me (my other roommate’s Labrador), she will be freaking happy.

The only thing I care about is to release the game at the earliest opportunity (but of course with the expected quality). I definitely don’t want to eternalize the birthing process because I’m at the very end of my physical/mental capacities, even sensing a few health issues arising which will need immediate care (vacation).

I’ve been preparing a few official screenshots. Just need a few more retouches.

~ Birthing Process

Log 08 ~

Release for Christmas seems a bit premature despite my constant efforts. I persist to think it’s extremely close. You won’t wait for another year or several other months. It’s simply not possible to synchronize the launch of EE:E with Christmas, that’s all. Better have a healthy baby than a pre-mature one that must stay incubated twenty-four hours a day in an oxygen tank for survival, if you see what I mean. With all the efforts I’ve put to make sure EE:E is awesome it’s no time to rush the final instants and make the reception and great expectations suffer.

Today is precisely four months and one day since Kojak passed away. Again, time sure goes very fast. To me it merely seems like less than two months ago. Since then I’ve been working restlessly as a recluse, and I won’t rest until the game is finally out. EE:E will be dedicated to my lost friend. My dog even have a cameo appearance in the game to guide the soul of your old lost buddy! You know who I mean ;)

I’m not interested to celebrate Christmas Eve this year either. I just want to work. I don’t know how to explain this to my best friend because he expects me to celebrate with him and his family like some other preceding years. They’re nice people, and I greatly enjoy the presence of my best friend (more than anyone else on this planet), but in times like this being amidst the gathering of another family just remind me I’ve lost mine and make me feel apart inside. Last year I had to fight the tears secretly. You know, when everyone is happy in a party the last thing you want is bring their attention on your melancholy.

Fortunately spending Christmas alone doesn’t make me an Ebenezer Scrooge, there’s no reason for the Christmas spirits to haunt me (haha), I still have a heart of gold – or at least that’s what I’m believing, I always do my best to have good feelings toward others. I have created a Facebook page that became quite popular in which I’m conducting lots of interesting marketing experiments, and as a sign of gratitude for all the good fortune I’ve experienced since the release of EE1 I’m donating all the commissions I’m earning. I’ve been sufficiently unfortunate in the past to understand the meaning of it, and who knows, I may also become unfortunate again in the future. Life is like a dice, you never can tell on which face it will fall – although I also believe there’s a divine intervention to make sure the dice have a lucky star on each face. However, that’s my beliefs ^^ What’s important is what’s following: good fortune can be shared. So please, if you enjoy reading my blog, and especially if it inspires you, fill the life of someone else with your good fortune. It’s sensibly the best way to keep the balance between fortune and bad fortune. Trust me, there’s nothing more delightful for an unfortunate person than being surprised with a moment of happiness when he/she/it (example an animal) expect it the less.

Ah, me rambling again. I had to empty my heart of my Christmas thoughts. I have to go back to work. Merry Christmas in advance everyone!

And God (or whatever you believe in) bless you!

~ Birthing Process

Log 07 ~

Let it be clear.

I’m pushing as hard as it’s humanly possible to make EE:E come out during the Christmas holidays. If I succeed (which I immensely hope) it’s going to be just in the nick of time, if I don’t succeed please don’t feel alarmed: there’s no such thing as waiting another year or several other months. It’s the very last pushing session, so rest assured on this.

This last session is extremely exhausting, it’s mostly due to the amount of unexpected bugs and the undetermined amount of time to fix them. I’m doing efforts not to compromise the quality of the game with stress and agony because of a milestone.

I had several miscarriages in the past (no one need to recall this to me of course) however this time the baby will be carried to term. I just can’t guarantee an accurate date, even if December 21st is what I had secretly set in my head a few months ago. It’s a day by day process until the game is released.

The fantastic news is that I’m Super-Duper Ultra Hyper-Mega excited with the current state of the game. EE1 feel so small in comparison. I can’t believe I’ve created a game like this one ^^

I’m just wondering. After Eternal Eden: Ecclesia is out, would you like to play EE1 with all the upgraded features of EE:E? For example:

• Improved graphics
• Improved battle system
• Revised dialogues
• Localization of the game for more languages: French, German, Spanish, Japanese, etc

I must admit that with all these VX releases over the last three years I’m less and less pleased with EE1. I’ve been seriously thinking to discontinue the current version in a near future.

~ Birthing Process

Log 06 ~

The birthing process is driving me to insanity… sweat springs out on my forehead… and mopping off my face do no real improvement. In situations like this all you can do is endure the pain and be strong morally – which I must admit become harder and harder.

Implementing my code over Enterbrain’s original scripts is the part that is presently driving me bonkers. Their code is a maze of ambiguity. It’s like trying to untangle several balls of wire that’s been wrapping around themselves for years. I so very much regret I didn’t go on with my RGSS2++ scripts instead.

Fortunately most of the dirty work is done. The battle system and the enhanced tile map system are 95% operational; they are both the most complex features of the game.

Five days are remaining until December. I hope the coup de grace will happen shortly. I’m keeping pushing. That’s all I’m doing all days long. It hurts, I’m bleeding, but it’s required to let a great creation finally come out of my mind.

~ Birthing Process

Log 05 ~

The reason I love to connect with the past is because my inspiration was at its highest when I was a kid. It’s the child within me who possesses the spirit of making video games.

For me the stimulation isn’t the same today as before. The current generation of video games is surely to blame. We no longer can call them video games anyway, they’re products. Crappy products. The last time I was profoundly immersed in a RPG was a decade ago. It’s the same with the movie industry. Our society has changed radically; money and power became more dominant than real qualities. It’s a shame.

As an artist my muse is drying out, it no longer finds refreshing springs of water to drink from.

So I decided to approach that entity within me, that hearty child from various eras of wonders: era of Nintendo, TurboGrafx-16, Super Nintendo, and a few other great consoles of that time.

He has something valuable that I need, and there’s something he needs from me too. That child had an artistic creativity of raw purity. He was born in the heart of a magical realm after all. There was a problem though, he didn’t have the resources and the tools to make his dream come true. His dream remained a castle in the sky, a fantasy.

Thus we came to an agreement. It’s in this shared environment where past and present collide together that Eternal Eden: Ecclesia is being finalized. I provide my knowledge and technology, and he puts his soul in the game.

~ Birthing Process

Log 04 ~

Even though I was kidding in my previous blog entry, I am actually serious on the time traveling topic. I believe we can revisit earlier states of our mind and influence the current course of our decisions or actions.

The best time travel machine ever created is our remembrance faculty. Our memories are extremely powerful; they’re part of a complex network characterizing our consciousness.

My belief even extends to the possibility to alter the past and the future. I’m of course not referring to the course of our world history, but the events and the life experiences interpreted by our mind, the ones that affect the current state of our psyche and ego. Well unfortunately it’s a broad topic and it’s outside the scope of this development…

Nonetheless I am greatly motivated in teaming up with earlier states of me to bring the game in its purest form. It requires multiple travels back in time. Therefore for the next couple of weeks my hermitage study will be used as a nexus of time linking diverse periods of the 1980s and 1990s in which various versions of me will work together on the game. It’s always a good thing to delegate tasks, isn’t it?

I possibly… know an orthodox method that could increase my chances to release the game at the hoped date. I’m going to travel back in time. Yeah, it’s as simple as that. There’s someone special who can help me. Fall of 1991, it sounds like a very good destination.

Talk to you later…

~ Birthing Process

Log [-999] ~

3600 days before the pregnancy even started

~ Birthing Process

Log 03 ~

The birthing phase of a game is mentally and psychologically draining. It’s a hardworking period a developer like me wish the game will be born healthily.

I’m putting all my energy into making Eternal Eden: Ecclesia available a little before the Christmas holidays. You have no idea how much I want it to happen, as a consequence I’m working double shifts on the game everyday.

I don’t know whether I’ll succeed or fail. I’m both filled with optimism and uncertainty. It will depend of the extent of the surgical complication.

As this blog entry is being published I’m merging the new battle system, dialogue system and mapping system altogether into a single project directory. The merging process involve me to fix several bugs on the fly. Some bugs (like syntax, arithmetic and resource bugs) are easy to fix while others (like logic bugs) cost extra days in the birthing phase.

One thing IS for sure: I can feel the baby’s head coming out. Keeping pushing is the trick, the specialists in pregnancy say.

~ Birthing Process

Log 02 ~

My biggest excitement with Eternal Eden: Ecclesia is it’s going to be my first published game showing my polymathic endeavors as a creator. My knowledge now spans a significant number of wide-ranging topic areas:

• software engineering
• programming
• mathematic
• writing
• visual arts
• music composition
• marketing
• business management
… and a few more.

It took more than a decade to build up my expertise. Surprisingly the need for learning never ends (remember this if you plan any long-term project). I still have to study new stuff everyday to master disciplines and to become a better game developer.

When I think about it it’s awesome I’ve come this far because I’m a high school dropout and I’ve always been a slow learner. Several people around me (teachers, friends, relatives) were persuaded I would just end up being a loser in life. They were wrong.

The release of EE:E will definitely be a big step in my career and a huge personal fulfillment. That’s why I’m so motivated right now!

~ Birthing Process

Log 01 ~

November. It looks like the ultimate milestone to me.

The coming weeks ain’t going to be without complications. The time has finally come to start pushing. The game project is now going from fetus to newborn. And like a mother giving birth, the contractions gonna hurt.

How will I fare with the situation? Time will tell. You will however assist this final stage of development with me. A miracle will happen before our very eyes.

My respiration and inspiration are turning rapid and short already… (from now on my next blog entries will be smaller than before). I… I just need to bear down. And push.

Hold my hand, please.

~ Final Phase

Log 15 ~

I like to compare the status of my development like a BitTorrent transfer. The status of a BitTorrent doesn’t progress sequentially; it rather progresses in no specific order, piece by piece, until it finally reaches 100% of its completion.

Most of Eternal Eden: Ecclesia has been built following this analogy. The game has been created by stripes under several distinct RPG Maker projects, in separate directories.

Example:
Directory A → development of the battle system.
Directory B → development of the text/window system, implementation of the cut scenes.
Directory C → development of the new graphics system, implementation of the tilesets.
Directory D → development of various special effects.
Directory E → development and implementation of various puzzles.
Directory F → mapping tests, dungeon designs, etc.
…and so on.

At the time I’m writing this blog entry these directories aren’t yet merged together to shape a fully playable game. For this reason it was difficult for me to share my experience with testers in the past months. They have seen random sections of the game, but they haven’t played the game from point A to point Z.

Treating each part of this development as modules greatly speeds up the development and makes it a lot easier to manage. Let’s remind that my mission with Eternal Eden: Ecclesia is to level it as close as possible to other cult RPGs made by Squaresoft during the late 1990s, consequently well thought-out strategies became a necessity. So far EE:E has been one year and one month into development (approximately) and without this approach, and other automation techniques, it could have been triple of this amount of time with what is aimed.

As November arrives my objective is to merge all these directories together to shape the final build of the game.  Then it’s way to go!

~ Final Phase

Log 14 ~

This blog entry is being written directly from my Sony Reader. I’m using two stylus (in a Chinese chopsticks approach) to make typing on the display more convenient. It’s not too bad, I’m getting used to it!

I’m using this technology in juxtaposition with my game developments since September. It allows me to import all my game development books, source codes, RGSS2 documents, and even the screenplay of Eternal Eden: Ecclesia, and study them anywhere I want to.

The reason I’ve chosen a Sony model is because Sony’s engineers designed smart features that allow editing documents and adding annotations. It’s brilliant and very helpful.

The benefit of e-ink is that it’s possible to view contents at sunlight, it’s a great advantage that laptops don’t offer yet – which I hope will happen soon (sadly technology is still not at this stage and might take more or less another five years).

It’s my dream to be able to fully develop my games in nature or on the road during daylight. Making computer programs or testing games on the beach would be bliss!

Oh. I started to write the walk-through of EE:E. It’s a sign that the game isn’t light years of its release ^^