Developer Update #3
DISCLAIMER: Hot Hooves Gaming is an indie game developer with no ties to Hasbro or any of its properties. We don’t own any of the characters featured therein, save for the individual Original Character (OC) who has been created for this non-profit fan-made game project.
Wow! April has come and gone in a big way, and I can hardly believe that May is already here. The best part of all this is that classes are over for me and my next semester doesn’t kick in for another few months. Things have been moving particular slowly this month due to class projects and exams, but I’m hoping that May, June and July will be big productive months for our My Little Pony Visual Novel project. Moving on into the update, let’s go! ^_^
Let’s put a number on the project’s progress bar: 8%
Script
We had mentioned that during March, we would be progressing with the story lines for Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack. In a rather unfortunate way, this has proven to be a very slow process due to the complexity of the first arc we began tackling: Rarity’s romance arc.
This is arguably going to be one of the longest set ups in the game, as far as the romance arcs are concerned. You see, the way that the romance arcs work is that they are fan fictions within the game that advance the plot in one way or another. I wasn’t satisfied with saying, “This is going to be the romance arc for _______. The focus of this story is going to be choosing correct dialogue options that will eventually win the heart of the fair pony by the end of the arc, and they’ll have hearts in their eyes the rest of the story from that point on.”
LAME. And without proper context. So it’s easy to make the main character a lovable dork who gains the interest of all the girls simply because he’s the new colt, or because he is the one who will save the world. Or maybe he’s the main character of the visual novel and he’s supposed to get the girl, right? Well... technically he is. It’s built into the plot that after spending time getting to know the mane six - hey it would make sense to feel impassioned about one of them right?
But what about the mane six? As far as I know, they are not ones to embrace feelings of love toward another colt - in the romantic sort of way. The build for the girls in the visual novel is going to be slow and subtle, to the point that it should feel more natural for the girls to accept that they’ve fallen for the main character who wasn’t just saying the right things all the time, but who was interacting with them constantly and helping them with internal and external issues. “Dusk” tags along with the girls so he can get to know them, and as things spring up as a result of the Crystal Crisis, the girls find that having Dusk around is a much bigger deal than simply having Twilight, or Applejack as their companion when they set off on a trip.
What does this mean for Rarity’s romance arc? I mean to say that it’s going to be much more in depth than a simple scenario where Dusk and Rarity chat for a while and eventually return to Ponyville having grown a little closer after spending quality time together. There’s going to be more to it than that. Mystery. Intrigue. A change of clothes to fit the situation and the genre for the specific situation. It’s something we’re hoping ya’ll will be able to enjoy as a side story within the main campaign of the game.
It all culminates in the main campaign when Dusk has interacted with everyone and he has forged wonderful bonds that will sustain him for the rest of the story. Oops... at least... that’s what we want you to think anyway. >_o
Cliffnotes: Rarity’s story is still being scripted, so we’ll be working on that immediately! XD XD
Art
Art actually took a lot of attention during the month of April, thanks in part to some advice that we received from a follower on Tumblr. The gist of the conversation was spearheaded by the notion that we needed to get our artist and his respective works “out there”. Credibility, reputation, a following - these are very important factors that could make or break HHG if not handled sooner rather than later.
So during April, we released our Spring Heat Art Pack which featured six fan art pieces for MLP characters enjoying themselves in the warm Spring season. It was a great bit of practice for us, and a challenge to complete a couple of pictures a day during our Spring Break week.
We have also been working on sketch bases for characters who will be appearing in the visual novel including, Shinning Armor, Vinyl Scratch, and Octavia.
Working on other pieces of fan art, some of which will soon be featured in a future post has also lead to a great deal of practice and increased morale among the group. Some healthy, petting to our collective ego to let us know that we are not the only ones who think that our art is improving as time goes on, and that in the context of the full visual novel - many will be able to appreciate the final product when it finally manifests. ^_^
Programming
Not too much time has gone into programming or planning anymore parts of the visual novel game. We’ve already done a fair bit of experimenting using Tyranno Builder as our visual novel engine. We feel that the prototype menus are a great start to something that could become a little more sophisticated in the future.
However, we are still focused on the scripting phase of our pre-planning process in order to better understand what the game will end up looking like at the end of the production process. By doing more research into the way that other visual novels present themselves, we’re hoping we can come up with an aesthetically pleasing way of presenting our game. When the script is finished, it will be much easier to build the game according to the dialogue and narrative content.
Our main focus for this month is going to be completing the romance arcs for all of our characters in the story. That is, to finish the stories beyond the half way point that we have set up for each of the Mane 6. Twilight, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie have half of their arcs complete - next up will be the first half of Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Applejack. After ward, Dusk will take a full day to complete the rest of the romance arcs for all of the girls.
The main campaign will then continue with a very exciting revelation that will turn our main character’s world upside down. O_O
That’s going to wrap up this month’s Developer Update for the month of April (in May) XD. Class made things a bit slow for the month of April, but with May on the horizon, we hope to finish a lot of content in order to move the project ahead.
See ya’ll in the next update. And remember -
A crisis is coming...


















