Three Realms

A blog for collecting together content for Three Realms, an RPGMaker game in development by Kintatsujo and Invidicon, as well as its sister game, Tower City cw:features some imagery inspired by religion (mostly angels)

[3realmsgame]

[image description: a top down rpg map of a very green forest.]

Pixel art preview! This is a testing map for some of the autotiles that I've been working on (with decorative and patching tiles added) which is of course why it's relatively sparse otherwise

I wanted the forest autotiles to be fairly nice to look at even before getting to the decoration and doodad stage, especially since the standard forest autotiles in Rpgmaker MV and MZ are just.... So bad lmao

I think I did all right.

I always start with Serenity when I'm working on pixel art for 3R because I've always had the clearest mental image of what it looks like; for everything else I'm pulling up all sorts of references and Townscaper models and the like.

[3realmsgame]

So I just picked up the Visustella lighting plug-in and while it's very nice to have something I won't have to worry about compatibility issues with, uhhhh it kind of sucks that there doesn't seem to be a way to alter the color presets in the plug-in parameter settings

Obviously I'm fussy as fuck about colors, and I like a dark purple over the blue shadow shade that rpgmaker lighting plug-ins always seem to favor; it creates a more natural look and doesn't do weird or gross things to most of the colors in my pallette (such as washing them out or "greening" the yellows). This is a preference I've arrived at after eighteen years of experimentation with different overlaid shading colors in my comics.

(also, and I did test this, it looks nicer interacting with the light settings)

so that basically means I'm gonna be pasting in the hexadecimal numbers every time I want a darkness overlay and won't really be able to use the shorthand of the presets.

Mostly it's just annoying, but the Community Lighting plug-in lets you go in and change the preset colors in the parameters, even if you do basically have to keep track of daylight hours there.

Not sure where to complain about this besides here tbh XD

[3realmsgame]

Yeah I went ahead and complained in the suggestion box, here's hoping XDD

[3realmsgame]

As of the first changelog, this issue has been fixed~

[3realmsgame]

So I just picked up the Visustella lighting plug-in and while it's very nice to have something I won't have to worry about compatibility issues with, uhhhh it kind of sucks that there doesn't seem to be a way to alter the color presets in the plug-in parameter settings

Obviously I'm fussy as fuck about colors, and I like a dark purple over the blue shadow shade that rpgmaker lighting plug-ins always seem to favor; it creates a more natural look and doesn't do weird or gross things to most of the colors in my pallette (such as washing them out or "greening" the yellows). This is a preference I've arrived at after eighteen years of experimentation with different overlaid shading colors in my comics.

(also, and I did test this, it looks nicer interacting with the light settings)

so that basically means I'm gonna be pasting in the hexadecimal numbers every time I want a darkness overlay and won't really be able to use the shorthand of the presets.

Mostly it's just annoying, but the Community Lighting plug-in lets you go in and change the preset colors in the parameters, even if you do basically have to keep track of daylight hours there.

Not sure where to complain about this besides here tbh XD

[3realmsgame]

Yeah I went ahead and complained in the suggestion box, here's hoping XDD

[3realmsgame]

So I just picked up the Visustella lighting plug-in and while it's very nice to have something I won't have to worry about compatibility issues with, uhhhh it kind of sucks that there doesn't seem to be a way to alter the color presets in the plug-in parameter settings

Obviously I'm fussy as fuck about colors, and I like a dark purple over the blue shadow shade that rpgmaker lighting plug-ins always seem to favor; it creates a more natural look and doesn't do weird or gross things to most of the colors in my pallette (such as washing them out or "greening" the yellows). This is a preference I've arrived at after eighteen years of experimentation with different overlaid shading colors in my comics.

(also, and I did test this, it looks nicer interacting with the light settings)

so that basically means I'm gonna be pasting in the hexadecimal numbers every time I want a darkness overlay and won't really be able to use the shorthand of the presets.

Mostly it's just annoying, but the Community Lighting plug-in lets you go in and change the preset colors in the parameters, even if you do basically have to keep track of daylight hours there.

Not sure where to complain about this besides here tbh XD

[3realmsgame]

[image description: a gif of a little person in a mask with faded yellow hair and blue clothes sitting behind a wooden table and passing their hands over a crystal ball. End ID.]

I honestly did this Witchazel for giggles but yeah, this animation is obviously making it into the game

(yes it IS a reference to the hint fortune tellers from A Link to the Past)

[3realmsgame]

Unofficial devlog for the last (*checks*) idk, months

I mentioned this on my main but I have actually been plugging along here and there this entire silence, I'm just... Bad at logging lol

Currently mostly working on assets, finally got my work flow for pixel art (and in particular, autotiling) to a place where I can confidently just dump something in the engine without a lot of excessive testing back and forth.

Got a very important sprite done last night which is obviously part of what prompted me to make a devlog post in the first place:

[image description: a gif of a traffic light with the red, yellow and green lights flashing rhythmically. End ID.]

(apologies to mobile users lol)

Changed my mind a couple of times but typically in directions that will end with less work for me rather than more; I was strongly considering diagonal movement since I'm using Visustella plug-ins but every time I've walked in a diagonal path in the testing game it's cut the frame rate in half, lmao, so out the window THAT goes.

I have also officially made the MZ map layering system my bitch and created a pair of tree autotiles I don't hate (meant to be used together in layers and with patching tiles to get a more natural look) so that's pretty cool XD

Otherwise things have been... Mmmmmm something in my personal life so the fact that I'm chipping away at the assets at all is pretty good progress all in all.

[kintatsujo]

Yeah so when I say that 3R is based on "the games I want to play" I actually mean I'm designing it to facilitate my usual play style

I often forget to upgrade character equipment and skill trees so character upgrading is mostly automated or story related

I get bored easily with turn based combat unless it's got a lot of moving parts (for example I'm using some plug-ins to get in a few Octopath mechanics because they're fresh and exciting)

I like wandering around in rpg cities and talking to npcs so the environments are generally focused on that

I fume a little bit about some games I played as a kid having areas that were supposed to be dangerous city areas not integrating that idea in very much so that's reflected in the cities

I like having a choice about how much I do or don't run into fights so that's part of level design

I do still like wandering around nature areas so there are still those parts, but they won't be so excessively mazelike as to be frustrating

I enjoy visual novels and often feel like dialogue choices should be slightly more meaningful in some rpgs

I think it's funny as fuck when the protagonist railroads you with snark because I played a lot of point and click as a brat

And on that note I played a lot of point and click as a brat so I like convoluted but logical puzzle quests and fetch quests

And finally I spend a lot of time in games without a lot of interparty development wondering what my party members are thinking about, like there's a character in Dungeon Siege I joke about being my wife and it's literally just that you find her alone in the first dungeon, you don't even have to rescue her because Dungeon Siege's party functions like a miniature RTS faction. XD I like when a game cares about character relationships as much as I do.

So yeah that's most of the overarching design guideline I'm following for Three Realms

[kintatsujo]

Hey @wizqevelynart​ 

(Three Realms continues to cause me to produce absolutely amazing art)

[kintatsujo]

here’s the sprite turnaround on that doggo so far

[kintatsujo]

This is officially the fastest sprite I’ve done for this game so far and I have no idea if it’s because I’m getting better or if it’s because it’s a pug

I’d normally try to make that walk cycle from behind look less awkward but this is a pug

[kintatsujo]

Jo emote fingerguns preview because I’m too delighted with this to sit on it lol

She’s not in her full outfit because I do these to be easier to modify outfits onto XD

[3realmsgame]

Devlog, if you can call it that yet

Had an "oh duh" moment and fired up the testing project I already made to help myself sort out exactly what plug-ins I'm going to end up using as well as some other general gameplay details I wanted to test (for example; some maps are going to have both stronger on-map enemies the player can choose to stealth around and then weaker random encounters scattered in specific regions and I was testing out how that feels to play, which is pretty good actually) (I was also reminding myself where the fuck the "erase event" button is because if you don't set the on-map enemies so they refresh when you leave the map you risk turning things like experience and drops into a resource with a hard limit and that's Bad)

Jo now has a double finger guns animation started for her map sprite because she kept doing it in the sketch comics I've been doing to hammer out dialogue, which is as hilarious as it sounds

(on that note if I haven't mentioned it here I'm redoing her walk a little because of those sketch comics because every single time I drew her casually walking she stuck her hands in her pockets. I'm not sure where the pockets even are on those pants.)

Made another important decision about the mapping which should be helpful towards the final look of the game (not going too deeply into it because I'd have to figure out how to explain parallax mapping, but if you know what that is I'm planning to hybridize my maps between that and the tilesets I'm already working on)

Made some more minor character design decisions.

Redoing a thing that confused the fuck out of me when I tried to do it in XP and now confusing the fuck out of myself again in MZ, lmao, mostly because I'm changing the way I was coding it because I'm trying to make something that doesn't need ten different switches and want the type of sidequest it's modeling to be more easily standardized and refreshed (money is largely earned through this type of sidequest and I don't want THAT to be a hard limit either)

This is the entire reason Invid is getting a credit on the game because he basically manages my dyslexic tendencies for me

[3realmsgame]

Devlog if you can call it that

About a quarter of the furniture in Jo's apartment is done

A LOT of character designs are pinned down

........... Somehow I've added optional party members, I'm not sure how that happened

Started the more serious work on coding the actual battle system

[kintatsujo]

Okay here’s an underrated couples costume for you

[3realmsgame]

So naturally I’ve continued to be bad about posting actual updates HERE but if you follow my main you know I recently made some decisions about art style now that I’m more comfortable with pixel art on my own

Mostly that I’m going to be using slightly larger sprites in a style similar to but not aping the old XP style; I feel that trying to “match” other styles has been a major source of slowdown on the game because it’s never been the sort of thing I consider myself especially skilled at.

Further developments: Switching to MZ rather than MV almost entirely because I like the map layering system slightly better (This isn’t a big deal otherwise because the asset sizes are the same)

Attempting to systemize my spriting workflow to make it go faster (because I probably have ADHD and definitely get choice paralysis if I’m not creating processes to follow)

Also recently added a number of characters including a miniboss/boss squad for what’s informally the “second chapter” of the game (3R isn’t going to be divided that cleanly but my outline is chonked up that way)

Made some style decisions beyond spriting style; the game battles are now going to be side-view for example and rather than shops Jo walks through, entering a shop will pull up what’s effectively a VN-style background image.  (I got tired of trying to figure out cash registers in pixel art)

I currently consider the game to be in something like its “third draft.” 

The animation where Jo and Sam meet for the first time is about a third done with the major issue being a walk cycle I’m having trouble with for some reason; I know what I need to do to fix it though.

Currently I’m working on turnarounds for the party sprites; I’m going to be doing eight-directional turnarounds because I’m using the Visustella plug-ins for a number of things and I can’t see why not.

For the record this has resulted in the greatest piece of art I’ve ever done, which I just finished:

Spinny kitty.

[3realmsgame]

Visit Original Link

The only love songs that mean anything are the ones with too much floaty synthesizer and sound like they’re throwing back to the 80s

(seriously speaking synth is just Tower City’s instrumental theme in game)

Another song I was going to do with Vocaloid Ruby and ended up doing with Eleanor Forte because of the computer crash a while back, and on this one it’s like “I’d like to thank Eleanor Forte for my entire life and probably this project” because she absolutely kills it.

The intro to this one is obviously the bit that plays in the storyboard I posted a bit back; I haven’t decided if the looped version for their first conversation is actually going to have Ellie’s voice or if I’m going to have her humming instead or what.

“Love at first sight” is a concept I’m very fond of and think more queer romance stories could stand to have, and I definitely think that it’s possible to meet someone for the first time and just immediately have a strong connection (some of my stronger platonic relationships are like that for example), but it was also important to me that this song didn’t sound presumptive and possessive, which I’m hoping comes across in the lyrics.

[3realmsgame]

Happy freakin last day of Pride Month?????

I want Jo and Sam's first meeting to have a lot of punch, and I was having trouble getting the timing just right when I was using XP, so now that I'm switching the game over to MV I'm not even leaving it to chance and I'm using the practice I've been putting in for animating it instead.

As I progress on the chunks of animation for this I’ll be posting them to my Patreon but the final thing will be public.

...Final project might not have the exact same timing for parts.

Sound effects were taken from BigSoundBank.com, except for the train’s “boarding” tone and the glittery mess at the end, which were both done (by me, obviously) in MuseScore.  The whole thing was then put together (with some effects) in Audacity and storyboarded in CSP EX.

[3realmsgame]

Visit Original Link

this is gonna sound amazing when I manage to build my Vocaloid library back up and plug in the lyrics

[kintatsujo]

Visit Original Link

Anyway I was gonna hold onto this until I had Three Realms closer to release but I’ve kind of just had the urge to post things that have been hanging out in my Patreon feed forever lately 

Vocalist is the Synthesizer V voicebank Eleanor Forte; my first choice is still Vocaloid RUBY but until I can either rescue her from the crashed computer or repurchase her I’m pretty fucking happy with the Eleanor version

Warning for my mixing trending toward Loud