27/5/2025

Hello again!

Scarred By Heaven Updates

Development work over the past few weeks has just been making cutscenes for the most part. I'm about 60% of the way through Chapter 2's story cutscenes now. Hopefully progress should start to snowball as I get more and more reusable animations made for the major characters.

Chapter 2 is where the game's overworld fully opens up, so once I'm done with it, I might pass a demo around to some friends to get feedback on the writing and gameplay up that point. It'll be my first time showing off the 'actual' game to anyone, because it'll be the first time the 'actual' game would be playable. And it's only taken six years...!

I've tried to set myself a goal of having Part 1 finished by around July of next year. I'm not entirely sure if it's doable or not, but I think having some kind of vague imagined deadline might help whenever I find myself procrastinating or overscoping. Too much time can be a bad thing for creative works, sometimes...

I've also done a little work improving some of the existing songs on the soundtrack, and uploaded two new tracks to my Youtube channel--Livio's boss theme, and the 'Otherworld' battle theme. They're my two favorite tracks I've made so far.

A big motivation for me get through making the story cutscenes is actually just because I'm really excited to start composing battle themes for the later boss fights...

Personal Notes

The greatest enemy of game development continues to be my sleep deprivation. Not for a lack of trying, I just seem to be bad at it, and always wake up at 3 - 6 AM regardless of when I go to bed. It's hard not to think it's a curse of some kind.

In better news, winter's finally falling on the southern hemisphere, where I live. It's probably my favorite season, since it doesn't get cold enough here to pose any major problems for me personally, and is the one time of year I can comfortably flatten myself below multiple heavy blankets without overheating. (It also makes my job in a kitchen way more bearable when the weather isn't hot...)

Sometimes I actually like deliberately leaving the heating off in my house to keep everything cold so I can enjoy bundling up more. Maybe there's some kind of primal thrill in feeling like I'm actively protecting myself from the weather's threat?

In terms of non-game hobbies, I've recently been learning how to use Linux, starting with the distro 'Mint' at the recommendation of a friend who's more knowledgeable on the OS than me. The customization potential provided by Linux is really appealing to me, and I do really like what I've used of it so far, when I'm not having strange, niche issues that leave that friend frightened and apologetic.

It seems like there's a somewhat steep learning curve to it when you're ingrained with so much Windows muscle memory, but I'm fortunate enough to have a spare laptop that I can use as a guinea pig instead of my main PC. I'm sure I can get used to it eventually.

I don't like the modern Windows OS much, so I'd like to switch to primarily using Linux in the future. Most of the software I use regularly seem to have Linux ports, or at least good equivalents... with the big exception being the 5-year-out-of-date version of Gamemaker I'm developing Scarred By Heaven on, which doesn't seem to work at all. A deal breaker... (^^;)

There is a modern Linux version of Gamemaker, though due to some engine changes I'd have to do a lot of work updating SBH's code to make the game even run on new versions, which isn't something I want to deal with right now... so maybe I should make the switch when I'm cleaning things up for Part 2, huh?

Bonus Art

Some extremely rare fanart from me.

I wanted some practice using a new, Linux-appropriate art program, Krita, and still have Touhou Project strangely on my mind, so I drew a little seasonal (for me) Reimu and Marisa.

I tried out a fangame called Sapphire Panlogism last night, which seems very nice, even if I could barely make it past Stage 3 with my pathetic dodging skills. But I'll keep at it...

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That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

- HSTopaz

4/5/2025

Hey!

I've done some work reformatting the site over the last month! It's still a bit of a work in progress, but I think it's a lot cleaner and cuter this way. My main goal was to make it more flexible to work with and add new stuff to--the old layout was pretty rigid and restricted to just game development-related stuff. I'm hoping to be a little less stiff with the site going forward.

Scarred By Heaven Updates

In terms of game development work, I spent most of April fleshing out the overworld with various small minigames and side attractions, including some basic cooking and room decoration mechanics, a secondary fishing minigame at the river, a few restaurants, and an aquarium you can visit to view fish caught from the beach fishing activity!

I also set up a 'Challenge Battle' activity in a local gym, in which you can play and try to complete various unique combat scenarios--a mix of actual challenges like winning within a certain time limit or beating a boss without taking damage, as well as a few sillier things that mess with the game's mechanics. The rewards for the most difficult challenges will likely just be decorative trophies you can put in Saki's room, so you won't be missing much if no-hitting isn't really your thing. :)

I always find toying with mini-games to be a lot of fun, so I try to save making them for when I feel like I need a break from the boring parts of development. Unfortunately, the vacation's over now, and it's about time I get back to spriting and coding all the Chapter 2 cutscenes... ahhh......

(With the site renovations, I also went back and revised the About and Character pages for the game, which I felt were kind of bloated and just a little bit dissatisfied with. They're both a lot smaller now, but hopefully more succinct.)

Personal Notes

I'm trying to keep these blog posts a little more 'lightweight' going forward--a lot of the older ones were kind of rigid and stuffy, looking back. It made writing them feel like I was writing an essay sometimes...

I haven't had much exciting going on in my personal life in the last month. The main game I've been playing in my downtime has been King's Field 3--also known as King's Field 2, unfortunately.

I realized playing the similar 'Eternal Ring' a while ago that I might actually have a taste for old, awkward dungeon crawlers. Part of it is just that I find 'old-school' RPG weirdness interesting and really funny, which KF3 has a lot of. (Having the option to deliberately softlock myself by selling key items is always appreciated.) But there is actually still a lot I enjoy about the game's open-ended exploration and loot-hunting outside of that, though. I've been using it as a semi-relaxing game to play while listening or watching something else in the background, though my ability to relax at all while playing it is probably owed to having access to save states. (^^;)

Bonus Art

Here's some rare non-SBH art of mine that I made a while ago and used to display on the now defunct 'Personal' part of the site. I'll have to get around to updating the Art Archive to the new version of the site.

Until then, that's about all I have for this post. Thanks for reading!

- Promising there won't be a dungeon crawler minigame in Scarred By Heaven, HSTopaz