#projecttrinity

[vncdraws]

Throne Games

All Hail the Queen.

[team-jpde]

>Meinos: Hello there, and welcome to JPDE - Behind the Music! A new devlog series where we'll dive a little bit into a big part of what makes JPDE - Sonata of Fire the game it is: the music.

When I first started making the game, I didn't have the budget to commission original pieces, so pretty much 100% of the music I was using was from RPGMaker packs or other similar freeware/shareware resources.

That eventually changed! I started commissioning people regularly, starting with JoJo at PlotTwist Studios! One of his first works was Madness for a Penny, aka Penny's theme from the game. It was an ambitious endeavour, and he delivered. The track is structured in four segments, which detail four phases of Penny's descent into something I cannot go into due to spoilers (if you want to know more, you should totes check out the game, SINCE IT'S FREE!).

Then, further down the line, when it was time to go into the finale for Ruby Rose's route, there was one event that I needed to have: Ruby and Penny fighting in the semifinals of the Vytal Festival! Such an engagement deserved a suitable soundtrack... And that's where OddTillTheEnd came in.

Odd had already contributed quite a few tracks by then but this request from me was a first. I asked him to make a fighting track by mixing together Red Like Roses from the RWBY OST and segments from Madness for a Penny.

I didn't know if it was even a logical thing to ask, considering how different the two tracks are... Yet he did it, and mash-ups for fights became a regular occurrence since then! What do you think of the final result? Hopefully the new battle system I'm making for the game will finally be something worth it of its soundtrack...

What did you think of this track? Where were you when you first heard it? What tracks from the game would you like me to talk about next? Let me know in the replies!

ART BY - SaDui

P.S.: All the artists featured in this post are open for commission :)

[hummingbird-games]

*stage whispers* check out WoX!!

OKAY SO I'M TRYING TO DO SOMETHING I NEED SOME HELP- So I was talking with a friend and the subject fell back on the lack of poc focused characters in visual novels ( in the case o this topic dark skinned black romanceable characters since romance is one of the most popular genre)

So I wanted to try making a list of games that answer some criteria and I would really appreciate if people rebloged with more recommendation because it saddens me that the list is so short.

excluding error 143 ( for reason that I could elaborate if asked but aren't the focus of this post ) please reblog with games that answer this conditions : -The game must have one or more black character who's routes are given the same focus non black routes have.

-The characters aren't ambiguous to appeal for white passing beauty standard ( ex having straight hair with blue eyes, grey or very light skin, or a standard anime style face )

-They aren't covered in scars, treated as "exotique" or being sexualized for their ethnicity. (They aren't stereotypes)

additional but not obligatory : -The game is free / have a free demo -The game is not pegi 18 -It's not an abandoned game ( might be in development ) Here is my current list :

[nekojirou]

I remember this old comic I drew for @projecttrinity (you can watch it here)

I love how he wrote this one, despite my old, inexperience artstyle (I’m still not good, lol!) he managed to make it interesting. And now that I think of it, the boy is kinda creepier Hanako-kun! 

[plottwiststudios]

Our Discord Server For People Who Have An Interest In Working or Collaborating With Me and/or My Projects Is Open, Lovely Folks~!

LINK HERE

My little corner of Discord for creatives of all types to keep track of projects I'm recruiting for (Animations, games, books, art, music, singing, programming -- all of that and more I'll need at some point for some reason. Both for fun/no-pay and commercially/for-pay.) You can also post your own project in the appropriate channel if you yourself want to recruit a team!  

There will be a posting about needing a few singers and maybe one about art later this weekend!

[avarvarii]

VW Project Trinity in AUTO ZEITUNG

[tsuki-sennin]

Ngl this looks pretty neat. Gonna spread it a bit with whatever influence I have here.

-Some generic white guy who found this like three minutes ago and likes these creative developers... aka me.

I’m going to point out some weird things about @projecttrinity‘s upcoming visual novel “Women of Xal” in relation to this site.

1) It’s an upcoming Kickstarter bound otome game that very obviously is PoC / People of Color & WoC/ Women of Color centric. We’ve got a bi female lead with several romancable women. And it’s in a harsh matriarchal society ready to give some brutal parallels to our own. Being helmed by a very capable and snarky Black writer. The two programmers are women. The artists are women. The singers are women. One of the animators is a woman. AND THERE’S TANGIBLE QUALITY TO IT! I thought we’ve been asking for more projects like this for years now. But Tumblr has been the most quiet of the four sites it’s updating on??? (Youtube, Facebook, LemmSoftForums, Tumblr) 

2) How are hateful anons finding this project before everyone else? Why are we letting Black creatives feel like the anon has a point about Tumblr not caring? Isn’t this site notorious for propping up content like this? Where are my feminists at?!

Like, I truly get it: Most of you will have only just heard of this. And Tumblr didn’t make it easy in the first place. Tags and timing are madly important. But so are reblogs and follows! You’re reading this now - there’s nothing truly stopping you from showing that anon the middle finger. For every time WE DON’T JUST ‘HEART’ A CREATIVE’S POST and reblog/follow their content, we prove hateful anons like this wrong. And every time we prove them wrong, we send an encouraging message to other minorities who want to share their passions with the world, but face that uphill battle.

And hey, the writer clearly has faith in this site still:

You can find out more about the project here.

Or, better yet, follow, and support the team here!

(Bonus Note: If you’re someone who has been reblogging a lot of content from this team as well, cheers, fellow sisters! <3)

[playingforpix]

I love playing indie games in development, so I figured I'd give the demo for Women of Xal a try when their Kickstarter post crossed my dash. I've never played a dating sim before but I lost a fair amount of time to choose-your-own-adventure novels as a kid and I got a kick out of the concept of competing to win an alien space brothel in a matriarchal society.

The music and art are beautiful (especially those background settings - wow), and the game is chock-full of tumblr-esque humor and sly quips. If you give the demo a go I suggest playing it with a glass of (age appropriate?!) amber liquid that you can swirl coyly anytime your character manages a witty response.

[shaldreth]

Women of Xal Good Endings (+ Ending Checklist)

So since so many people are having problems getting the Good Endings, I decided to make a guide for it! And.... discovered I couldn’t get the Good Ending anymore, either. xD  For whatever reason, despite it working perfectly in all our betas, in Demo 1.2, it is actually kind of impossible to get the Good Ending.  For two reasons. 

>>>That’s why Demo 1.3 has now been released! [Link / PC / Mac]<<< 

Reason One: When we ported the game, a tiny little command line in the first scene got reverted and corrupted a crucial variable for the rest of the game. This has now been fixed

Reason Two: If you've unlocked New Game+, your computer may sometimes hold onto variables. We’re removing New Game+ to counter that., but you can also fix it by going to  C: / Users / Your Current Username / AppData / Local / Tyranoscript / and deleting the files inside the folder.

For everyone who downloads Demo 1.3 and wants a guide to the MANY available good endings, check below! <3 Spoilers, obviously. 

--------------------------

So there is actually a LOT of leeway when it comes to what you can and can’t say, and the “safest” options listed here aren’t always the most fun. You can experiment quite a lot since giving Nice answers will actually lower your Sass level, so if there are some dialogue options that you just can’t resist, then please! Go wild. Experiment. 

Airship: This scene is pretty straightforward. Velvet doesn’t really appreciate being hit on at the end of a 124-hour flight, even though it’s fun to fluster her. So fun. She really likes that suit of yours. 

- Either “[Sit down next to her]” or “Pretty sight, isn’t it?” will work here. - “I take it you're thinking about all the terrible things in life and it's messing you up.”  - “You nearly killed a woman over words?” - “You know what? You have my support.” - “Try to improve society too, honestly.”

Xragoon: Stopping to look at the Xragoon does not detract from your Nice score. PET ALL THE CUTIES <3 <3 

- “Stop to peek”

Xuna's Office: We can ask questions and be silly here! In fact, it's better to ask questions than it is to stay quiet, since it makes the other girls like you a little more. You want to avoid the “...But can we touch the boys?” option if it shows up.

- “[Lip Hey]” if you want to win points with Axay! Otherwise, just “[Smile and nod]”. - All of the questions are safe to ask, except for “...But can we touch the boys?” if it appears.  - “[Let Xuna Handle.... this]” - Staying quiet is safest, but choosing the other option will make Velvet a little happy. 

Lobby: Going to the Garden and picking a fight will inevitably lower your Nice points. If you do go, immediately back out with "Oops... sorry. [Leave]" There isn't really any benefit to going to Joy's office, but, I mean.... go anyway. <3

Xjena's Room: Choosing the “roommate” option does not hurt your score, and will actually open up a few more dialogue options later, referencing it. 

- “I was expecting a nice place, but....” - "Hey. ....May I help you?”  - If you want the Valimer ending, pick "Well, tell him he can come see me himself; I don’t bite.” Pick "You're a bag of pleasantries." if you don't want to see Valimer tonight.

Now, if you want to talk to Naxia, stay in bed! Otherwise, it’s on to the lobby.  Naxia/Nap:  - “You caught me.”  - “Met a... lovely lady there, actually...” - “If you’re on to something, please be careful.” 

Lobby 2.0: 

You actually get the most points by skipping the entire conversation, but if you want the Xobi ending, go with these: 

- “Like someone I need to be talking to.” - “So, where were you heading up until now?” - “I mean. ...Don't you think you're good at something other than cooking, cleaning, and sex?”

- “Hey, don’t knock my boy Xobi.”  - “I’m intrigued, but not sold. Let me see what comes up.”

Finally, Dinner!

- “To be fair, Clanice did rock the outfit.” - "They actually have some great things and people going for them" is the most beneficial, but “Well, no. They’re not too bad” also works if you don’t want to start an argument.   

After the break, you should know what ending you're on! If Clanice starts talking about the internet and Redtube, then you’re on Ending 2. If you’re referred to as “Miss Controversy”, you’re on Ending 3. If you get memes, you’re on Ending 1! Yay! Good job! Enjoy your warm fuzzies! <3 

If you want Artimis to show up, you should spend the night single. 

And that’s it! You’re done! Here’s a checklist for all the possible ending variations in the game. I may do a guide for some of the others, if there’s interest. Just let me know! 

Ending 1 (Good End): -Axay -Valimer -Xobi -Artimis Ending 2 (Neutral End): -Xuna -Proxis Ending 3 (Bad End): -Merixa -Proxis

[letsplaysocialjustice]

Just wanted to let your followers know that projecttrinity here on tumblr is looking for LPers to show off their otome game "Women of Xal"! They'll be giving out copies of the demo to people by January 27, so if anyone is a LPer, head that way, or tell your favorite LPers about them!

Thanks for the heads up! If @projecttrinity

[enbyleighlines]

projecttrinity replied to your post “I’ve played the Women of Xal demo like four times trying to change the...”

LORI! DON'T WORRY. WE'RE FIXING THAT BUG! And although not in this upcoming patch, Demo 2.0 will add in an extra option I think you'll all appreciate.

Yaaaaaay!! I’m looking forward to it~

[vncdraws]

... *shrug*

[zenide]

"A little boy went out to play. When he opened his door, he saw the world. As he passed through the doorway, he caused a reflection. Evil was born. Evil was born, and followed the boy." @kyle_maclachlan can it be Sunday already?! #itshappeningagain #projecttrinity #twinpeaks #doppleganger #theblacklodge #blacklodge #whitelodge #thewhitelodge #bob #laurapalmer #specialagentdalecooper #dalecooper #laurapalmer #goodandevil #beyondgoodandevil #kylemaclachlan

[trinitysoftware-blog]

We have received prints of the concept artwork done by our illustrator for Project Trinity. I’m at a loss for words… my gosh.

[plottwiststudios]

Did you all know I compose too?! I fuel both myself and Women of Xal with commission money, and starting today, I have a cheaper alternative for projects on smaller budgets! Type A tracks are for those who want to hear my most ambitious work on their project and not pay additional royalty/commercial fees! Type B are those who have personal projects or just want music for fun and probably have no desire to sell the soundtrack. The tunes are more modest in nature, but they’re so much cheaper on your wallet and easier for me to make! Everyone wins! Have a listen to my samples in the Soundcloud links below! And if you know someone who’s wanting to commission a composer, chuck them my way!

Type A Demo Reel

Type B Demo Reel

Email: TeamProjectTrinity@live.com

Discord: ProjectTrinity #1794

[game-meak]

A Proper Postmortem

Maybe?!  Heck if I know how to actually format a good post but let’s try.  As game development went on for almost four years, this is probably gonna be long... and also give away basically the whole game oops!  Read on with caution.

Sometime around July 2014, a month after the initial release of my first game, my room was being remodeled and I was stuck with nothing for free time but a garbage laptop I could do anything on, an old flip phone, my sketchbook, and my 3DS.  So beyond playing an obscene amount of Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life, I at some point went “hey, what if I made a second game starring the kids.”  So I started trying to plan it out!  And it went

absolutely nowhere that I intended it to go!!!

For instance, this is the very first page of sketches.  This squirrel was supposed to be really important.  It’s not.  I don’t even KNOW what’s up with that duck.

A thing I like to think about before I set off making any of the story, assets, or scripts for my games tend to be themes and motifs.  And I kept circling back to a very important, very personal “theme.”  Without using the internet at large as my therapy couch, I was emotionally abused and taken advantage of multiple times in my life and it greatly impacts how I interact with people to this very day, as you’d expect events of such a degree would.  Particularly, I kept thinking that the RPG Maker fan crowd tends to skew young and be in the teenage range and at ages 14-16, I could’ve used something to help.

Of course, my entire thought process isn’t necessarily one of charity and selflessness.  It was also a way of me expressing what I’d dealt with in ways I’ve only ever communicated with my friends who were also victims of the same circumstances, the closest I would let myself come to personal stories and retellings with a cover of plastic children and wild adventures.  It was also in some ways a way of me verifying to myself that something ongoing was, in fact, bananas and should not have been happening, but that might be another story for another time.

As you can probably guess, Haze and Seal came into the picture since I needed to make two characters who would have this struggle.  A lot of decisions came about because of my personal experience.  They’re 15/16 because I was at the time of the incidents that primarily inspired me to make this game.  They’re both nonbinary because I am.  They love anime because I did (and do...?!)  One of their friends is even directly modeled off how one of my friends looked in high school.  To that degree, I guess someone, somewhere can call them self inserts.  But they’re also not, since I didn’t want to just do a personal retelling with fictional characters.  I’d just write a memoir or something at that point.

Haze’s design came first, and then Seal’s was sort of made as a foil to them.  Haze’s “colors” are pink, black, grey, and red.  Seal’s are teal and light purple... and also black.  Haze had a rabbit motif (which got toned down as I went on), Seal had an owl motif (which is now just a single mention in their list of likes...), etc.

Though in the beginning, the story was entirely different.  Initially, everything took place in the neon-ish areas with black sky and reflective, celestial water (that I, very eloquently, call “spacewater”).  The idea was that Haze and Seal were beings from another dimension and that their “fighting” was causing a rip in the universe that the kids stumbled into and therefore got wrapped up in this mess.  I had an entire script written and started making assets and when I went to sum up the game’s plot in a neat paragraph, I realized... I hated it!!!

So I chucked all I had done by that point writing-wise and started again.

In fact, I rewrote a lot.  After the first it was mostly small tweaks and adjustments, but the biggest ones (and the ones that still present a challenge to me!) usually involved trying to make Seal feel like a believable character.  I had shown an early draft to someone who said that Seal felt too much like trying to get back at someone, so I scrapped a ton of their lines and tried again.  I still worry whether or not they come across too Strawman-y, but I’ve done the best I can and whatever criticism people have can apply to my next writing attempts.  It’s very hard to separate yourself from subject matter you feel really personally attached to.  I don’t want to write them in a way that you immediately hate them, or hate me for writing such a blatant “villain” character, but in a way that you can formulate your own thoughts.  That said, though, I am violently allergic to people who call Seal a “tsundere,” even in jest.  So I guess I want people to have their own thoughts as long as it’s not that specific one...! (;;;;)

You may be thinking “heck, this is a lot of paragraphs in and you haven’t even brought up gameplay thoughts” and yes... that’s very true.  Shamefully, for a game where I thought “I should definitely, absolutely focus more on making it a Fun Game than a walking visual novel” I might’ve actually dropped the ball in that area.  I’d like to think I was more adventurous than I had been with my first game.  Some parts do kind of fall into the “walk to the next cutscene, find a key to unlock the next cutscene” pit, but I did put effort into figuring out what I could do with RMXP.  My obligatory “please don’t use this engine here, people thinking of using RPG Maker” statements here.  In the final product, though they’re very simple, I’m most proud of the chalkboard puzzle and the paint sorting puzzle.

Even if, y’know... I somehow neglected to include the letter “k”

Speaking of, I’m not sure if this is a general RPG Maker thing, a “man I hate RMXP” thing, or a “meaka cannot gamemake” thing, but I had several event/puzzles just up and quit on me a few times.  Like they would work fine for months and months, but one day I’d go to them and just nope, suddenly they’re not working, sorry.  Copy+pasting the event to a new map wouldn’t work, so I’d have to manually redo the event.  One of them was the chalkboard puzzle.  The other was the sliding puzzle when Tony is by herself.  Which I’m also aware slows the game down a ton, but I have legitimately no idea how to fix that... I tried and I could never get to to not lag like crazy.

Like I said, I started in July 2014.  I’d shipped the game off to my beta testers in March 2018.  A vast majority of that time was spent creating the visual assets since everything you see in the game is custom.  All the sprites, all the tilesets, every little pixel of it.  All me!  Needless to say... it was very exhausting and very time consuming. I grossly underestimated how much time I thought it’d take.  I never accounted for the very real possibility of burnout, which is incredibly silly considering I was making something entirely by myself that was also an occasionally difficult subject matter...!  There were quite a few weeks where I touched nothing because I couldn’t bring myself to and even a few times where I just considered deleting everything and cancelling the project.  I knew I’d be mad at myself if I quit, especially as I got later into production, so I just tried my best to make sure I didn’t turn it into a huge chore.  Obviously, there were parts that were more tedious than others, but this game really is a very large labor of love that I put a lot of my heart into.

Part of that time is also a little bit of indecision.  Did you know I went through 3 possible title screens?  I sure did!  I’ve also publicly posted about redoing both Haze and Seal’s bust sprites before.  I almost redid all of the kids’, too, but I didn’t wanna get caught in the loop of remaking everything, so I opted to just leave them as they are.  Most of them don’t bug me as much.  M...most of them!

I’m hopping back on the Story train since obviously that was my main focus, but the decision to have Seal sort of “reveal” their true nature (or at least have a jealousy-related anger burst) to Octavio as an animated cutscene was one I’d decided pretty early.  Which is also why, unsurprisingly, I was debating getting voice actors for a hot minute.  But I wouldn’t have used it anywhere else in the game, so I opted not to.  I also wanted to keep the file size low, but that wound up not happening so much, h-haha...   For someone who uses the only engine without native support for videos, I sure do like making animated cutscenes, huh.

Anyway.  This scene originally bridged Octavio’s section of the game to Pablo’s, which would’ve been (for some reason) in an abandoned hospital.  But that didn’t pan out because it didn’t fit what I wanted the game to be and also by switching the order of the two, it builds up more tension(?) on the kind of character you expect Seal to be.  I hope their very first “fuck off, maybe” took someone out there by surprise!

This also was the point when I decided I wanted to commission an original soundtrack, since nothing quite got across what I wanted at the time.  Which is when I put out my silly ad post and somehow managed to get the amazing ProjectTrinity to compose for me...!  I’m still amazed by the sheer quality of music he made for my little RPGMaker game.

Having the teen characters curse was also something I waffled on for a bit.  Clearly, I dwell on the important things as a writer.  I wanted it to contrast the cutesy, kidlike way the siblings talk and also the sort of squeaky-clean image the witches (particularly Seal) present to the kids by contrasting how they talk to each other, most importantly how Seal talks to Haze and their other friends.  I did have the same issue with the Mother in my first game, but I opted to not have her curse at all either since she’s childish in her own way, too.  But that’s not for THIS game’s postmortem, get otta here!!!

I also very much was set on a “battle” with words being the final event of the game.  Though I had a hard time imagining what that would be initially, but eventually arrived at a sort of fake battle system that was introduced in the mine.  The setting for this battle changed with time (everywhere from the park to the academy and in between) was considered...!  The dirty secret is that while I did like the decision to make it take place in the voids between worlds, I also sort of did not want to draw the staircase in the witch academy.  Originally, the kids would’ve also helped Haze “reach” Seal (who was putting actual obstacles in the way), but I guess in my own way, I wanted to give Haze the ability to confront Seal on their own, one-on-one.  Or something like that...!  I also didn’t want to add too much needless backtracking.

I’m... unsure what other point I really want to make, so I guess I’ll end this here unless anyone has anything in particular that interests them they’d want me to answer!

All in all, this game means a lot to me and took a chunk of my life to make and I really hope it’s able to reach at least one person who might need it, even if it’s only a little.��

To all of you who gave it a try, thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart.

A shameless link to the game:  [itch.io] & [RMN]