"Melolune" (formerly "The Blue Star") [*New Demo and Video*]

[miss matcha]

Hi everyone! I have to apologize for not updating in such a long time... these past few months have been super busy for me. I just finished up a bunch of projects, the biggest one being the soundtrack for a game called "Plants vs. Zombies"... which was released May 5th. We're so happy that it's been doing well, PC Gamer even gave it a 90%! Also, if you guys are bored and want something ridiculous to watch, I made a theme song with words called "Zombies on your Lawn," which was later turned into an awesome flash video for the ending credits... you can find it here.

In other news... I've still been chugging away at my game. I finished mapping several new sections including the Orderian Engineer's Guild, Ciro, and the Taezu Freedom Fighter base. I also got sick of how spread out and dull Basho was, so I redid that entire area and added a little sidequest. At this point I'm going through and replaying the game to try and reaquaint myself with the main storyline so that I can continue with events, quests, NPC dialogue, and cutscenes. Oh! And last but not least, GubiD is making a really awesome glider mini-game that you'll be able to access when you go to rescue Aero. Here are a few screenshots just to give you a taste of the new locations:

The ballroom in Ciro Castle:

Spoiler: I'll put the rest in a spoiler tag since there are quite a few

A room in Ciro's inn:

"Hikari," the OEG lamp shop. I wanted to make a tribute to Legend of Mana because I loved the sidequest where you had to sell lamps to the Dudbears... props if you know what I'm talking about :P

The mine outside of the Taezu Freedom Fighter base:

Basho Bakery:

@Axerax: I hope you enjoyed the song! Please let me know what you thought of the vocals; I haven't been able to receive PMs here because my mailbox keeps filling up, so if you left me feedback I probably didn't get it. Also, if it's not too much trouble, do you think you might be able to send the mp3 back to me so I can have a copy of it? When I put all my Sonar files onto my external harddrive before reformatting, I managed to lose the folder that had the vocal version... it's probably best to contact me via email (supershigi at yahoo dot com), as PMs for me here have been very spotty. Thank-you very much!

 

[Reives]

Again, looking great - everything's quite delicate and consistent. Side quests in towns are always a nice touch, good thing you found time for it. Oh, and the cat-talk is pretty adorable. c:

P.S. A random suggestion to some obscurely small detail!: In the second last screenshot, the waterfall at the top left corner could benefit from an increase in contrast and saturation (and maybe less opacity).

Good luck, seems like you're making some great progress despite the busy schedule.

 

[Diedrupo]

very cool, can't wait! you should give the plants and zombies cameos (where you get to kill plants with zombie help or something).

 

[miss matcha]

@Reives: Thank-you Reives Haha, that cat was inspired by this one really adorable and talkative cat I knew back in college... whenever his owner returned from school, the cat would look at him and meow in such a way that you really thought he might be trying to tell us about his day. Thanks for the suggestion about the waterfall; actually that reminds me... I have a quick question: Do you know of a way to make it so that when the player walks behind the waterfall autotile, their head isn't sticking out of the top? When Aero walks behind it, it's fine... but for most of the sprites, they totally stick out.

@Died: Thank-you Died! Oh, I SO want to do that! If you've played the part of the game where the party goes through the Doogay Swamp en route to Izaya, you'll notice all these weird talking signs and zombies. I really want to change the zombie sprites to George's original PvZ concept zombie sprites (provided that he's cool with it and everything). You would want to kill plants! Hahaha... killing plants with zombies, Leeble slaughters... >_<

 

[Reives]

Heheh, that reminds me of the cat that I just moved out from.
Going to the tileset tab and marking the priority of that waterfall (auto-tile) to something like 5 should do, unless I'm misunderstanding the problem.

 

[LostPetal]

This has the potential of being the best RMXP game on this website.
I enjoyed Traces, you have a nice voice. This is a very nice game. Keep it up, this game reminds me of an epic game that I've played in the past that I thought was a beautiful game.

Shades.

Um.. its still not taking the crown away from Akasha's Seal (Even an unfinished dinosaur of a game. It was the best game made in RMXP on this website.)

 

[purple_tegami]

I signed up here just to tell you how much I love your game. Your mapping is gorgeous; the Leeble forest probably has the best maps I've ever seen in an rmxp game... you put so much detail into everything, and the ambience is perfect. I also got really into the story by the end of the demo, I want to know more about why Dolby and Dominic are friends... and what happened to Achaius' brother and family?? I love how there are both serious things going on, and funny moments as well... I laughed so hard at the part in Izaya when the sign started talking to me... have you thought about adding a faceset for the signs in your game, sort of as a running joke?

And you did the music for Plants vs. Zombies?? That is so cool! You're like famous That sunflower song is like the next "Still Alive." Anyways, keep up the good work, I really hope you release another demo! Games this good don't come around very often.

 

[miss matcha]

You know, it occurred to me that I never posted this here! I wrote a vocal lullaby called "Carya de Mio" which is actually based off of Dominic's theme. It will play during a cutscene when Dominic is remembering his mother...

Carya de Mio

@Reives: Ah, thank-you... you know, I don't know why that didn't occur to me! Wait, so are you not moving back to that same place once school starts in the fall? That cat you lived with is so adorable, I'm going to vicariously miss him :P

@LostPetal: Thank-you for listening I'm glad that you liked it. Ah, I tried Shades shortly after joining Spongen, it was a very nice demo, the whole thing felt very polished. I haven't played Akasha's Seal however, but perhaps I should check it out.

@purple_tegami: Haha, I don't think I'm famous, but that makes me so happy to hear that you think the song is like the next "Still Alive." And thanks so much for checking out the demo! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Sometimes I think I put too much detail into the maps, I kind of have to remind myself that I need to move on otherwise I'll never finish. I like your suggestion about using a faceset for the signs, I'm actually strongly considering adding that, I think it would be hilarious XD

 

[Axerax]

Miss Matcha, Glad to see you released the 2nd demo! However, I still haven't received your vocal song to inform you. I don't know what happened, but you will have to try and resend it to me in PM. I'm gonna email you the normal version again, I didn't realize you said something about it recently.

I'll play this as soon as I get a chance!

EDIT: I FWD'd that same email back at you, it has the song attached.

 

[miss matcha]

Oh no... so you were never able to download the vocal version? I sent you a PM a while back with a temporary link to the uploaded vocal version and vox only tracks, but I don't actually have those anymore. I mentioned above that I had backed up all my Sonar files when I reformatted my computer but I lost a folder that had a lot of .org stuff in it, including the vocal versions (that's why I was asking if you could send them back to me, because I thought you'd gotten them... now I'm wondering how many of my other PMs to people never went through)... okay, that's okay, I still have the materials, I'll just have to re-record it.

>_<

 

[Axerax]

I actually never got a link to download it. But yeah, I emailed you it, just email me it back when you finish re-recording. I'm sorry for the bad communication.

 

[miss matcha]

It's okay, it's not your fault or anything. I'm just a bit frustrated because I spent several hours recording the background harmonies, and I'm hoping I'll be able to recreate it. That plus I'm fairly busy, so I'm going to have to figure out when to re-record, but I guess the silver lining is that it might be easier the second time around.

 

[Axerax]

Alrighty, I understand. You mentioned you didn't know much about the game or the character. Well I recently updated my game topic with new stuff, so if you wanna read that here is the link, to possibly help you.
viewtopic.php?f=78&t=63810

~Axerax

 

[purple_tegami]

Hey, I read about you in Gamasutra today! Are you going to be at E3 this year?
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=23666

I liked those old Capcom Disney games, too!

And one more comment about the game:

Spoiler

I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet or not, but if you spend a lot of time leveling in the beginning, it's really easy to get a ton of tonics. I had like 99 because I kept killing the soldiers... but then again, I killed a lot of soldiers. Beyond that though, the battles are surprisingly balanced. This game is so good, I can't wait until you release another demo.

 

[miss matcha]

Hi everyone, I have to apologize again for not having updated in such a long time! This past month I've been working a lot on my game, and I also have exciting news: I'm now being managed by the director of music at Sony Computer Entertainment as a singer/songwriter and VGM artist So about 1-2 times a week I've been going into their studios to record all sorts of different kinds of music... everything from video game projects, to singer/songwriter material. I've been enjoying it a lot, and I'm so thankful for such an opportunity.

Concerning the Blue Star, I've been going back and filling in all my towns with NPC dialogue, cut-scenes, and general gameplay. I just finished eventing everything in the Orderian Engineer's Guild... including the first time that your party meets Sophie. I also got the music for that location finished. Here are a couple screenshots:

This is Sophie's workshop. She's a member of Aerial 5, a faction in Ciro that designs airships and other related technology:

This is a small tribute to the "Faerie's Light" quest from Legend of Mana... In this sidequest, you can choose to help this woman sell her lights to foragers up north so that she can pay her rent.

@Axerax: I took a look at your project thread, and the game looks like it's coming along nicely. You've got a lot of great ideas, and it seems like you've put a lot of effort into your project, I wish you the best of luck with it! As soon as I get a chance to re-record the vocals, I'll make sure to send them to you.

@purple_tegami: Thank-you for posting that link I enjoy reading Gamasutra articles so it was nice to be featured there. I realize I'm responding to this late, but I wasn't at E3 this year. I usually only go to GDC. Were you there? Ah, and thanks for the tip about the tonics... a couple other people discovered that as well. I'll definitely be fixing that for the next release :P

 

[purple_tegami]

Wow, congratulations! That's funny because I was actually going to ask you earlier if you were planning on releasing any other albums. I went to your website, and your other music is really great, I especially liked "Faster." Are you going to release an album as a Sony artist? That is so cool.

The new screenshots look quite nice. The colors in Sophie's workshop are very warm and glowy, and I like all the funky things you did with the tiles there. Are you going to release a 3rd demo? The game must be very long by now.

 

[Nolund]

Wow miss matcha that's really incredible! Congratulations on your music career! It's always nice to see peoples' dream coming true

 

[Lazer Kirby]

This game looks awesome. I'll try it out whenever I have time.

 

[miss matcha]

@purple_tegami: Thank-you for checking out my other songs, I really appreciate it At this point I'm not sure how the album will be released. I think we're going to try and pump out a bunch of songs first and then see where to go from there... there's so much to do besides just the music, but it's all very fun and exciting. Right now, we're trying to set up a few photo shoots, developing a new website, finding a publicist, trying to get signed up with digital distributors, etc.

Although I'm not 100% sure, I'm planning on releasing one more demo before the final game is completed. It will probably include gameplay up to where the player reaches the Taezu Freedom Fighter base.

@NNolund: Thank-you very much I'm not sure what's going to happen yet, but I hope it goes well ^_^ Your project has a very interesting name, I'm going to go check it out.

@Lazer Kirby: Thank-you I hope you enjoy it!

 

[Delphinus]

I found this game in Quintessence forum and i love it!! The light sunshine and leebles're great, and those musics are amazing too!! :D
You have such a wonderful voices (Reives is lucky you sing to his game :P). I like Traces and Carya de Mio (BTW, what Carya de Mio means?).
I hope Sophie and Liele join the party (coz' only Aero is lady in the team -_-' )

Wanna see the continue of it!! :D :D