Developer Update #2
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.
Welcome everyone to Hot Hooves Gaming’s second developer update for our My Little Pony Visual Novel Project. It’s been a crazy March for HHG, what with our “Spring Heat” event taking place during our Spring Break (probably not your Spring Break XD), and a lot of story to progress with alongside some more character portraits that have increased the cast of characters to nearly overwhelming numbers. No time for April Fool’s jokes here, so we’ll be diving straight into the update.
Let’s put a number on the project’s progress bar: 7%
Script
The main arcs that we worked on in March were the romance arcs for Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. As far as the story goes, our main character Dusk and Twilight have gathered the Mane 6 and traveled to Canterlot to see Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Their search for answers took the group to the Canterlot Library, but with no clues and no leads to clear up the mysteries of the Crystal Crisis, everypony returns to Ponyville to do their own thing.
Twilight’s side story has presented a unique problem that’s stumped our writers and for good reason: we don’t know how to rhyme. XD Hahaha, as silly as that is - it’s an excruciating issue when you are attempting to write for Zecora the Zebra and one finds that it is impossible to rhyme words like a pro. Her lines have been written as if she is speaking normally, but at some point, we will have to come back and address this issue.
Surprisingly enough, Pinkie Pie’s story worked like a charm from beginning to end with no hiccups. Character development for the Pie family is on full display in this romance arc, and we are very excited to continue the second half of her story later.
Fluttershy’s story underwent a couple of rewrites, beginning in the brainstorming phase. Not only is the final draft different from the original brainstorm, but we actually started writing a completely different story (according to our best synopsis), but it was way too convoluted and confusing! During a time when were already progressing very slowly, we made the hard decision to scrap the chapter altogether and start over. This gave us a chance to come up with a different story that took away a major element we were trying to push from the start: Flutterbat. I guess we’ll have to give that another shot later if we want to include them in the story at all. Sorry ya’ll. However, we feel that the final draft for Fluttershy’s romance arc will not disappoint, and it is actually super duper sweet. Wait till you see it. >_O
With April coming into full swing soon, we have been reviewing where the story is heading now that we are going to the Crystal Empire. When we return to Ponyville, Dusk will be able to engage with Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash in the first half of their respective romance arcs.
Art
Some of our greatest efforts in the form of art has come in the form of a special set of pictures called “Spring Heat”. The challenge we had for our artist was to draw at least two pony fan art pieces every day during Spring Break. One picture would be a pony engaging in some SFW activity with a Spring theme attached to it. The second picture would be the same pony in a more unconventional NSFW situation O////O Oh my! The challenge was a success, with 12 pictures being produced over six days. Featured here are some of the SFW pics that are color sketched and ready to continue onto the coloring phase before completion.
These will be the first pieces of official fan art produced for public consumption by our artist at HHG, and if ya’ll could see what his first attempt at fan art was a few months ago… ~CRRRIIIIINNNNGGGEEE~ We try not to think of it.
This art pack will be posted once all of the pictures are completed with one set for the SFW pics and one set for the NSFW pics.
The cast of characters for the game has gone up by a few mares (and perhaps one or two stallions) thanks to the romance arcs that are being written along the way. Future additions may include Flim and Flam, Photo Finish, Vinyl Scratch, and Octavia. Featured below are a couple of new supporting characters who will be joining the story for the Mane Six’s romance arcs.
Programming
This is the area that has seen the least progress recently, and it’s thanks to the work that we have already completed up to this point. We already have a prototype menu for the pre-alpha version of the game, along with a message box, and in-game menus for the load game screen, the save game screen, the backlog, etc. HHG has other obligations that keep us from dedicating our time exclusively to the MLP VN project, so we do our best to progress a little bit in each field at a time. Preparing the script and assets for TyranoBuilder to use in the future takes priority over working on any builds of the game.
We’ll be doing our best to produce a proof of concept in the coming weeks in order to better showcase how the game is going to work and what features it will have such as the in-depth story, branching dialogue paths, and dramatic CG scenes.
We’re hoping to focus on one very important thing in particular this coming month and that is the SCRIPT. It is through the completion of the script that we will be able to identify all of the characters who need base character portraits; and with all of the major events and scenarios mapped out, we will be able to better plan for the CG scenes that will need to be drawn out.
Completing the script will also allow us to enter the Script Review/Editing Phase to examine dialogue and plot consistency through the entire main campaign. Allow us to emphasize this one more time in case our readers may be unaware: the My Little Pony Visual Novel Project is a narrative story centric dialogue-based character driven visual novel experience. Probably the most extensive of its kind, and we here at HHG are dedicated to bringing the fandom an experience that they will not soon forget.
Thank you everyone for coming to see our Developer Update for April. It is thanks to the inspiration of this series and its passionate fanbase that we are able to continue doing what we do best - creating deep stories and visual spectacles our audience can look back on with excitement and a thirst for more.
See ya’ll in the next post. And remember -
A crisis is coming…
