Sendspace: App + Media + Extra + Fanmade (update)
It's been a while since we had one of these, but apparently I'm taking a break from QBB, sorry~
So, thanks to ayrawinla who did all the work, here's an update with a new char adapted from our dear Shirow, Shion (Priestess):
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Well, some bad news!
ReplyDeleteI've done basically nothing on Tribe Shion or anything related to QBBattle since last update, so I have nothing to offer for an update right now. I'll get back to her eventually, though.
While I did basically nothing, I didn't do literally nothing... I've been feeling like drawing a bit lately, and it occured to me that I absolutely didn't follow through with my "promise" about Improved Art Ayra. So, I've actually done some pages this week. Result? Well, I think Slightly Less Lazy Ayra would be a more accurate term than Improved Art Ayra. It has a larger variety of poses, a bit more consistency, less image recycling and... that's about it. On the positive side, there is some slight art improvement but it's still ugly as sin...... But I'm pretty sure that the very newest images made do look better than at least Mattha, so Ayra won't have the ugliest book in the game anymore once I'm done. Yay! And, well, I'm actually learning some stuff while drawing the book so it's serving the purpose it was designed to.
Since I made some slight outfit changes, I'll only send the whole redrawn book is ready. No time-frame, but it hopefully shouldn't be months.
Quick question about Zara: Is it normal that you can keep using the instant-win move at will once you land the wolf bite move? My japanese isn't good enough to actually translate, but the troll that she's based on can only use the move right after landing a grab. By the way, reviews about the other characters incomming... eventually.
Yep, I noticed how you quitted drawing her, I kinda considered scolding you the other day that you came back... but I'm a softie :p
DeleteYou're right about Zara though, I think it's a typo in her S file (maybe changing "Always disable" to "Always Disable" fixes that? Can't check right now).
You totally could have scolded me :) Unfortunately, progress report is a bit ehh... I have done:
DeleteAway, Side Swing, Dazed, Load Special Ammo, Arm Wound, Turned Around, Extended Away, Incendiary Shot
With Kick having been restarted 5 times so far. I have an awesome "kick" page in my head, but putting it on paper is an entirely different matter... And I'm stubborn to keep at it until it's at least okay-ish. So unfortunately it'll be a while until I'm done with the 32 pages, especially since I started playing Dragon Dogma last week and that I'm absolutely loving the game which definitively cut into my drawing time... I might do a little something for QBBattle in between though so that it's not neglected too long.
You shouldn´t give a break to this sensational app. You tranfoprmed an otherwise complex, and, in a sense, tiresome game, in a very intuitive and easy-to-use interface. You should definitely try to keep in touch with the companies responsible for the gamebooks and offer your app. It would be very interesting in appstore, or even a pc digital store of some sorte. Don´t let all your incredible effort go to waste.
ReplyDeleteI've actually been thinking about suggering that very same thing, but decided against in the end. There's no problems with the application itself: It's slick, works very well and it certainly reduce the tedium of playing the actual book game (I tried it and resolving everything by hand slows the game down to a crawl). And if someone wants to keep the "head-to-head" aspect, it could actually be expanded to work on two iPads or some such.
DeleteThe problem though is the legality of the whole thing... The game's content comes from three sources:
1) Scanned character books that are basically redistributed each time someone downloads the game. Those include all the Queen Blade books and the old Lost Worlds books. Illegal.
2) Characters built with images comming from commercial material, like all the Shirow books (Shion for example). Also illegal.
3) Characters built with images from various fan artists and used without permission. Questionable.
While the app itself is legal, the one single character that's 100% legal to use with it right now is Ayra (since I'm giving Leecherboy permission to incorporate the character and images in the game). I do have plans to also make a character book using Daz 3D: Considering I'd be using assets I purchased and that you can use the renders in any way you see fit (commercial or not), it will also be 100% legal (and look a heck of a lot better than Ayra). Which means that we'll eventually get a grand total of two legal characters...
I know that in theory Leecherboy could just go and show the Lost Worlds or Queen Blade company the game so that they approve it and make it legal, but... Considering what's on this site (especially if you add in all the Vanquished Queen translations and other stuff), I'm kind of afraid that they'd more likely to send lawyers instead.
Why thanks Dea, it's always great to hear people appreciating the work I do.
DeleteSimilar suggestions have been made in the past, but like Ayra says, the legality is an important problem: making more original chars would be a solution, but maybe it'd be too much work to get average results. The most important problem to get it on an Iphone or Steam or another platform, though, would be porting all the code: even if the development tools were free, it'd be an unholy amount of work to get it running elsewhere.
As for consulting it with the original companies, when I started this, I thought that's how QBB was gonna end: either they found out and Cease & Desisted me, or they found out and bought me the idea or something. But with the barely surviving Flying Buffalo and Hobby Japan rapidly losing momentum, I don't think they'd be interested right now... so we'll have to keep this going on for now and see what happens :D
I most certainly do enjoy your work and I am very thankful for it: That applies even when I call one character a WIMPIL :)
Delete"Average" result? I sure hope you'd have another artist in mind since I can't draw anything comming close to average unfortunately. :)
Well, honestly, I am kinda proud of the page I drew yesterday, but it's just good compared to my previous works: It's certainly not going to amaze anyone else and no one would ever be willing to pay for a game featuring art like that.
On the other hand, I do feel that something like Daz can make something pretty good. I don't have a "character-only" image on hand right now, but here's my current computer background that I made as an example:
http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/5171/earthbreakernewlight.jpg
I purchased the hair and armor (so it's legal to use images generated using them for anything I want), the environment wouldn't get used in the game (well, it's also legal but those are not present in QB chars) and the character herself is also legal (Character comes from base and I tweaked her using in-application modifications and sliders). She's easily posable at will, so making all the various poses is easy-ish. And it looks darn good, at least in my opinion.
Of course, there's two big problems:
1) I expect that making one character like this is going to go pretty smoothly compared to most of the characters I made so far... But making like 30 characters for diversity sake is certainly a whole heck of work.
2) Lack of name recognition. It's new characters that don't come from anywhere else. It's not QB characters with multiple books and anime, it's not recognized game or anime character and it doesn't have a specific artist's touch. How big of an issue is this? For me it's not much of one, but I expect that's not the same for a lot of players. Could the game be a success with only new characters being featured in it?
So yeah, as you mentionned, I guess that keep going as is is the best plan for now!
I know Ayra, that's why I love ya gal :D
DeleteI'd never heard about that Daz 3d thing, looks pretty cool. Just don't feel obligated now to churn out chars, you know you get better results when you take your time.
Also, maybe there's no name recognition, but if the "theme" is strong, people should appreciate it, right? Like a vampiress, or a dark sorceress, those kinds of things... You remember the "Peters" books I mention every once in a blue moon, don't you? If you're actually going to make chars from scratch now, those could help more than ever, I think.
Well, I failed...
ReplyDeleteI will be extremely short of time for a while very soon so today was the last day I had seriously finish Improved Art Ayra unless I delay it by like 2 more months. So I did the scanning, and wham: Really bad scanning artefacts that I can't get rid of easily, drawings that were made too small and look atrocious when resized to the proper format, a few drawings that are completely unusable after scanning...
And, well, it doesn't actually look much better than the previous version. I did learn quite a bit while doing it and I can now do an equivalent drawing much faster than previously, but... An actual Improved Art version is not possible right now unless I spend like 3 hours per drawing and I just don't have the patience (or time) for that at the moment.
It is definitively a less lazy version though. So Slightly Less Lazy Ayra is done, but it unfortunately still is the ugliest book in the game.
http://www.putlocker.com/file/739881D750C04A87
No need to make a version just for that obviously, but next time you do make a version, would it be possible to include those images instead? It's not prettier, but at least it's not a blatant "Let's use the same image 10 times" thing anymore.
So there you go again being that hard on yourself :p, what matters is that you're improving and she really is looking better now (imho), just keep doing your best whenever you have the time :D
DeletePage 49 is way lazier than ever before, though.
I was wondering what you meant and I rechecked and... well... That wasn't intentional actually. I had cleared the image as I had done with all of them and I had used all the usable drawings I had and forgot about it. Meh, I'll try to squeeze something as soon as I can.
DeletePage done, sorry for delay.
Deletehttp://img29.imageshack.us/img29/930/ayra30.jpg
Oh, once again, that is pretty good :)
Delete