Hello everybody!

Bleeding Moons is still under construction. I have already drawn some new sprites poses, extended some scenes and redone some early maps.

Let me show you the one map that I wanted the most to recreate.
Valbois has been promoted from a little town in the countryside:


to the capital city it was supposed to be:

As you can notice, there's also a new logo for the game, made by KDS.

As for the translation into English, I'm halfway done. Literally. My currently done French text file is 1.4MB and its English counterpart is around 700KB. I must add that the translation was already done for the demo part (although rewritten since). On average, I write 15-20KB (including control codes) of text every day, so there's at least 2 months of translation work ahead of me. I still have to write the commentary mode, and translate it as well. And then, it'll have to be proofread and I hope to have it read by someone able to check against the original French version to fix translation errors and rewrite in a more natural English to native speakers. If you think you can do it, there will be a paid job offer about that when the text will be ready.
Other languages translators are welcome to contact me too.


Now, for one of the most important news in Bleeding Moons' history:
I have decided that Bleeding Moons will become a commercial game upon release.

Considering my personal investment in the making and the overall quality of the game, not to mention the positive feedback from the now 1-year old demo or the rewards won, I think Bleeding Moons is worthy to become a professional game.
In fact, some people had advised me to make it commercial after they played the demo, for it was already a good game back then.
After more than another year spent on it, the game is (almost) done and is better than ever.

Actually, I had this idea since its conception, but wasn't sure at first if I could make a good enough game. For that reason, I have used only resources that were either free or made sure that I had a proper licence, so the transition won't impact the game.

Bleeding Moons has become a major game, raising the bar on every aspect of RPG Maker made interactive novels.
By having it become a commercial game instead of a free game, I believe it will paradoxically have it access a broader audience. Only this way will my game be able to reach non-RM players and show them that there is more to RPG Maker games than your basic run-of-the-mill RPG that gave the engine its sometimes contested reputation, just like To the Moon made a great impression on unknowing players.
As a matter of fact, this is the very game that made me interested in creating mine, using RPG Maker to do so.

I hope I will be a good ambassador for the RM community and bring some more light to the wonderful people and games that are still covered with clouds despite their greatness.

Thank you for helping me make this game what it has become!

Hello everyone!

Finally, I've finished my biggest mission in the game!
This was a great amount of work, several times the scope of other missions. In fact, I had to cut several parts or it would have been too long. There was enough initial material to make an entire game just in this place, so I adapted my contents to make this more compact. It's more story driven than puzzle driven, since it's already a long mission. I didn't want the player to spend too much time there, stuck with a puzzle.

If numbers are talking to you better than words, here are a few stats for this mission alone:

• 117 new sprites sheets, including :
  37 handmade custom poses and
  12 handmade custom NPC animations
  

• 331 new busts shots, displaying the emotions of
  78 talking people.
  

• 19 new maps, each enhanced with parallax effects.
  

• 1846 lines of dialogue (not including control codes, only dialogue). That's more than the majority of movies scripts.
  

And a few screenshots to show you how it looks:
The capital city of the Thorem duchy (big size picture):


A tavern, the Singing Stein, although singers are lacking lately. A few custom poses and animations here:


The tavern cellar, where I tried a slightly improved lighting system:


The local prison front desk.


An inn interior. The maid is one of my custom handmade animated sprites.


After mapping a rich mansion in a previous mission, let's draw a slum for a change: (night shot)


This bridge too me a lot of time to get it right, especially the running water effect with a reflection of the bridge, all in 15 frames for a smoother result.


There are some great maps I can't show because I want to avoid spoilers and keep the surprise for the players. Rest assured that they're worth the time it took to create them!

A short changelog since most of my work was creating this big mission:

- Added an automatic saving of the Fullscreen or Windowed display choice when the game is launched for the first time, so it doesn't ask every time. Just delete the line or manually edit the Game.ini file to reset the option.
- Added a simple patching system to easily replace the language files should fixes be needed. It will only require the new language file instead of the whole game again.
- I didn't think of adding minigames since I thought they wouldn't fit, but have eventually done two. One is a combination puzzle with rotating pieces to open a secret box, the other some bottles you have to fill/empty/pour into to get a specific amount of liquid. Simple minigames but they work great. I've also included two levels of difficulty to the first one, for people who prefer a little challenge. And an option to skip them altogether if you don't like puzzles.

Now, I can work on the remaining smaller missions without that weight. I'm behind schedule because of the scope of this big mission, but I think the final result was worth it.

Release date is somewhere this year. I hope to have a playable version this summer (in French first). Translation into English will follow after I get confirmation that I don't need to change my dialogue lines anymore.

I'll post more updates meanwhile anyway.

Thank you for your support!

Hello everyone!

A little update for Valentine's day, which also happens to be my birthday \(^o^)/

The game is still in production of course and I'm beginning the making of the biggest mission in the game.
In fact, it was so large that I could have made an entire game with all that is happening. So I had to cut a lot of elements to keep it playable inside Bleeding Moons but it's still a big chunk.
Average mission maps count is around 5-6. This one has already 17 maps and I'll probably need to draw a couple more.
That will imply a lot of interactions and dialogues to write as well, plus sprites and busts to draw for numerous people.
It's a huge task, but doing it one small step at a time I'll eventually get it done.

I also worked on improving previously made elements too, so that the game looks better polished. I'm aiming for professional result, even though I'm an amateur. You can't get worse by aiming higher, can you?

Here is the complete changelog since last update:


Some visuals for people who prefer to see the result:
The new font and windowskin:


The system settings menu:


The new animated title screen:

Oh, wait. Commentary mode?
That's a little thing I wanted to add to the game. There's a lot of events happening in the story. Some of them have preceding echoes which will most probably not mean much to the player the first time they see them. I wanted to share my thoughts, anecdotes and behind-the-scenes revelations to people who have already finished playing the game.
Since there will be a lot of spoilers, I prefer to restrict access to this mode to people who already know the story.

In addition to the inside view I'll provide in this mode, I hope players will enjoy replaying the game by making other choices and see new outcomes. And, to keep the interest of the players who already know the story, I'm thinking of adding new scenes that Ian couldn't witness and add more to the characters and the chain of events.

Right now, I'm working on a dialogue where the lines will vary depending on the player's earlier actions.
The next picture illustrates the branching for this dialogue.
All blue text boxes are unique dialogue lines based on choices (the yellow diamonds) made earlier in the game.


And this dialogue is entirely optional. Sometimes I feel like I'm putting too much work on myself ;)

As you can see, it's a lot of work to take into account the previously made choices of the players and provide a coherent dialogue based on them.
The result is seamless to the player and it's read as a natural dialogue considering what's been done before, which is my aiming at writing this interactive story.

Most people will never notice it nor realize the amount of work done to make the dialogues flow naturally.
I didn't think about it either when I experienced it in games I've played. This all felt natural. On the contrary, when a choice is seemingly overlooked or unaccounted for, it breaks immersion so hard that you don't even look at the game with the same eyes.

It's only when you do it yourself that you understand how much work had been put into a game.

It's all those little things you get to know or understand when you actually create your own game that does game making a wonderful experience.

Thanks for reading and see you next time for some screenshots of the new areas.

Hello everybody,

The Bleeding Moons profile page has been viewed over 10,000 times in a little less than 7 months, for 555 downloads at this moment.
Considering the amount of games here on RMN, this is quite an achievement.

Thank you!

Actually, I didn't see it coming and didn't prepare anything for the occasion, so I'll keep this brief.

The game is at 60% completion and everything is still going smooth.

A little update for people who can read French:
The Alex d'Or contest has revealed the reviews of the games for the 2014 session, including Bleeding Moons of course. You can find them here.

And if you can't read it or are not interested, let me just show you a couple screens from the first half of the mission I'm currently designing:
(Still subject to minor updates)

Exterior of the garrison where you'll have to do your job.



And the interior. The idea will be to enter the secured Archives Room and swap intel reports with fake ones.
But a plan rarely comes together...

Hello folks!

I'm past the 50% milestone!

Right now I'm working on creating maps for the rest of the game. As I've found that it's my weakest point - and can sometimes almost stop me from going forward - I've decided to have my maps ready as much and as soon as possible. With what I've done so far, I can go smoothly to the 75% milestone.
Getting these tasks out of my way allows me to work serenely with the funnier part: creating the story events and the dialogues.
To have the game ready for full beta test sooner, I'm stopping temporarily my translation into english. Once the game will be done in french and the texts are OK, I'll resume my translation process. There are a few passages where I'm not sure if it won't be needing a rewrite so I prefer to get a stable text base first.

Talking numbers, the current english demo (without the control codes - pure dialogue) is 2,550 lines and 33,400 words.
Current french version is now 4,800 lines and 70,000 words. Much more than I thought initially. An early estimate was 80,000 for the entire game...
Of course, one playthrough won't cover every written dialogues as there are alternate paths. Rest assured, you won't be just reading while playng Bleeding Moons!

About the game, recently I merged two missions into one for some simple reasons.
1 - I prefer to have a good, entertaining mission rather than two boring ones.
2 - It keeps the flow at a faster rate.

I'm not trying to make a 20 hours game. Actually, for the kind of game I'm creating, that would be too long. If I can make it a 6-8 hours interactive story, I think that'll great.

And now here is the list of changes I made that concern parts you've seen in the demo (please note that the demo is NOT updated with these improvements. I'll upload one when I'm closer to the final product):

- Updated the Mouse script with a newest version that allows interaction on the whole height of the NPCs, not just their lower part.
- ...and added the possibility to run while holding down the middle mouse button.
- Slightly updated the multilanguage script to read and save successully with a UTF8 language name (previously only ASCII was allowed)
- Added a sprite for Ian when he picks up the flour bags. All 4 directions, of course.
- Quest for the flower: added a hint if the player cannot find it after some time.
- Quest for the flower: You no longer need to speak twice to River after having found the flower to activate the dialog.
- Some minor esthetic updates here and there. Recolors, pixel-size improvements etc.
- Remade the lightmap for the bakery's cellar.
- Truncated a name of a NPC which was too long for the display since I use busts now.
- Added reflections in the mirrors.
- Improved the worker's sprite in the warehouse when he's not holding a crate.
- Added animated water in the well of Valbois.
- Added in the inventory the waiver required by the worker in the warehouse. You only have it for a short time but, well, at some point you have it on you.
- Had to redo some sprites because of a licence issue that may arise later... Luckily the new ones look good too so that's OK.
- Remade the maps for the zone transition cutscenes in the forest. (Although I may rework them again some time later).
- Added an option to skip altogether the infiltration sequence if the player gets caught too often.
- Fixed some typos and spelling errors.

Things I intend to make, someday later:
- Remake the exterior maps. Valbois is so badly mapped... That was my first city done with RPGMaker, you bet it's crap.
- Redo the intro scene with the physician. I'll add an option to skip the tutorial (Ian's childhood) and also add dialogue lines to make it clearer that Ian is troubled by his past. Even if his memories are blurry, he'll remember some hard moments during this new intro.
As an incentive to catch the player's interest on what really happened ^^.

Come on Luna, smile to the world!