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InvertMouse

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Posts posted by InvertMouse

  1. On 9/3/2017 at 4:53 PM, Clephas said:

    http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/The_Last_Birdling/index.html

    Congrats on an excellent review, InvertMouse... RPGfan is infamous for being harsh on visual novel reviews. 

    Edit: Incidentally, I went ahead and purchased this myself... but since Utawarerumono comes out on Tuesday, I probably won't touch it until the middle of the month.

    Thank you for the heads up and support! Yeah, I will be getting Utawarerumono as well 8).

  2. Hi everyone :vinty:! I want to let you know The Last Birdling has been released:

    5re4aCFl.jpg

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/629430/The_Last_Birdling/

    GTzRsBhl.jpg

    Bimonia is one of the last Birdlings alive on this earth. The Birdlings see humans as sworn enemies, and Bimonia has been taught to kill on sight.

    One day, Bimonia meets Tayo, a human child hunting in the forest. Bimonia fails to kill Tayo, and they instead become friends. Mother will be furious if she finds out, or worse, this relationship may cause tension between the two species to erupt.

    The Last Birdling explores Bimonia and Tayo’s fight for their friendship as the world threatens to tear them apart.

    zpLUMKJl.jpg

    Follow Bimonia and Tayo’s journeys from alternating perspectives. With 21 decisions and 5 different endings, The Last Birdling is a culmination of all the lessons I have learned since 2012. There is a progress tracker available, which means players can unlock all the conclusions without any guides. I have also added a glossary feature, so those who wish to dive deeper can immerse themselves in the lore.

    V4woPnWl.jpg

    dLEMxFRl.jpg

    I hope you can give The Last Birdling a look and spread the word. As always, a review afterward would be much appreciated, since it will help other gamers out.

    MYAkCHCl.jpg

    Thank you for the last five years of support!

  3. Hey everyone, The Last Birdling is out!

    5re4aCFl.jpg

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/629430/The_Last_Birdling/

    GTzRsBhl.jpg

    Bimonia is one of the last Birdlings alive on this earth. The Birdlings see humans as sworn enemies, and Bimonia has been taught to kill on sight.

    One day, Bimonia meets Tayo, a human child hunting in the forest. Bimonia fails to kill Tayo, and they instead become friends. Mother will be furious if she finds out, or worse, this relationship may cause tension between the two species to erupt.

    The Last Birdling explores Bimonia and Tayo’s fight for their friendship as the world threatens to tear them apart.

    zpLUMKJl.jpg

    Follow Bimonia and Tayo’s journeys from alternating perspectives. With 21 decisions and 5 different endings, The Last Birdling is a culmination of all the lessons I have learned since 2012. There is a progress tracker available, which means players can unlock all the conclusions without any guides. I have also added a glossary feature, so those who wish to dive deeper can immerse themselves in the lore.

    dLEMxFRl.jpg

    V4woPnWl.jpg

    I hope you can give The Last Birdling a look and spread the word. As always, a review afterward would be much appreciated, since it will help other gamers out.

    MYAkCHCl.jpg

    Thank you for the last five years of support!

  4. 5 hours ago, Zalor said:

    Yeah, I've done some memory editing before. As you mentioned, changing stats and such is fairly easy since you can find specific values pretty easy. But other stuff, yeah that isn't as simple. For gba memory editing at least, I used to have lots of tutorials saved back when I was trying to learn this stuff. You may have to go into the graphics and figure out how big the tiles are, and how many tiles are in each screen. With that information, figuring out the X,Y coordinates shouldn't be too hard. Hell, I think certain emulators will have a debugger that will give you a bitmap of the background and if you click on an area it will give you the X,Y coordinates of that place. 

    The best thing you can do as a beginning rom-hacker is too look at codes written by other people. This is probably the best way to learn how things are done. So if you want to learn how to do a wall-hack in this game, look at how wall-hacks are done in other games. With that information you should be able to figure out the process of how a wall hack is done. Hopefully. Then you can try writing that code for yourself for the Saint Seiya game.  

    Awesome, thanks! I might try messing around with that tile info.

  5. 53 minutes ago, Zalor said:

    In regards to the saving issue. It is an issue with the cartridges battery. After a certain amount of playtime, the battery will no longer be able to save. I know this is a huge issue with the pokemon games. So when I was a kid, one of my cartridges stopped saving. I then begged my parents to buy me another copy. But eventually, that other copy also stopped saving xD!

    By wall hacks, do you mean walking through walls? I am not sure how much I can help with with hacking the gameboy Saint Seiya game for 2 reasons. 1) Most of my hacking knowledge is focused on hacking Fire Emblem exclusively. Most of the work I do, is simply using the tools that the real hackers made. For the sake of making hacking and level creation more efficient, any game that has a hacking community around it usually has people who make programs to make the process easier. This is because true hacking requires poking around the games assembly code. And few people have the knowledge/understanding of such a low level language to actually be able to make use of that information. So often the people who do understand that complicated stuff, make tools for us commoners. 

    2) While I have attempted several times to learn Assembly for the Gameboy Advance (with only very moderate success), the original Gameboy uses a different processor than the GBA. If I were an active as well as a good hacker, it theoretically wouldn't be too hard to learn another assembly language after learning 1. But honestly, at best I only made small steps towards learning assembly for the gba. And ultimately I decided that hacking at that deep of a level wasn't really for me. 

    Yeah, I do mean walking through walls. So far, I have only been messing with memory values to manipulate stats etc. In that process, I actually did manage to get my character sprite to shift to another position. I was unable to replicate the hack, though. If I want to say change my attack stat from 134 to 255, that is easy enough. 134 is a specific number so not many other variables will share it. Character position, though, I have no idea how to look for that.

  6. Hi there :). Just want to see if you guys are big on autographs? Some enjoy it, while others think it is silly to obsess over a bunch of scribbles. I wouldn't line up for hours and hours, but I do have a few recent items to share:

    e1DoDKkl.jpg

    (Shizuka Ito)

    RAugknRl.jpg

    Yusuke Kozaki

    5gaqODkl.jpg

    Kotono Mitsuishi

    If you have items to share, I would be happy to see them :D!

  7. 49 minutes ago, Zalor said:

    Wow, Rom hacking yeah! I am quite familiar with the hobby. Ever since I was 12 I would periodically go through phases where I would work on a rom hack, only to drop it after a month or two. My most recent example would be a couple of months ago. This past April, May and part of June I was working on a rom hack, I had 3 levels designed a custom script and characters, but once my summer job started I got too busy and once again dropped the project. 

    Personally, all my experience is with the Fire Emblem hacking scene. I really really loved the GBA Fire Emblem games as a kid. To the extent that I played two cartridges of Fire Emblem 7 to the point where the games would no longer save for me. So in my very early adolescence when I got my first computer, I discovered the Fire Emblem hacking scene where fans were making their own custom levels, characters, and stories. As a kid I imagined lots of my own Fire Emblem-esque stories, so I naturally picked this hobby up. 

    If you have the ambition of making your own custom game through a rom-hack, it is very hard work and you are doomed to give up if you do it solo.  

    Anyway, my most recent rom-hacking triumph was inserting a song from another game into a Fire Emblem 7 rom. This sounds simple, but music insertion is actually a more complicated process than it should be. Specifically I inserted Katrina's theme from Romancing Saga 3 into Fire Emblem 7. This was supposed to be the map music of Chapter 3 of my hack, but I never got around to finishing Chapter 3: 

     

    Awesome! I for one would have no idea how to replace in-game music so this is pretty impressive. From memory, people disliked the music used in Final Fantasy VI on the GBA, so someone hacked the ROM and replaced that soundtrack with the SNES originals.

    When you said you played FE until the cartridge no longer saved, how does that work technically? Is it just a case where the batteries broke, or is there a limit to how many times you can physically save? I hear batteries dry out, so your cartridge saves will not last forever. As mentioned in the Reddit post, I was obsessed with that Gameboy Saint Seiya game as a kid. Recently, about 15-20 years later, I checked the cartridge, and my save from childhood was still there at least for now. Almost brought a tear to my eye.

    Do you have any general tips on how to write wall hacks? It would be like a dream come true for me :P. Thank you!

  8. Hi there :). I have always loved shorter VNs like Narcissu, Saya No Uta etc. This applies especially as we get older, and free time becomes more precious. I am in the mood for something light-hearted. Some cliche moege romance is all good with me. Thing is, all the ones I know tend to be 30-50 hours in length. Anyone with something shorter to recommend?

    Thank you!

  9. Hopefully it is okay for me to post this since I will not post any illegal links :ph34r:! I shared this story on Reddit a while back:

    Is anyone here into the ROM hacking scene? It can be a lot of fun, especially when it lets you mess with games you loved as a kid. With the aforementioned Saint Seiya game, I am actually hoping to clip through walls so I can see how the maps are structured. If anyone has tips on that type of thing, I would love to know about it. Will also be happy to hear any stories of gaming questions that drove you mad as a child, like that Mew truck in Pokemon Red and Blue.

    Thanks ^_^!

  10. 14 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

    As someone who's never played your games before, but is vaguely interested in The Last Birdling:  i know that talking up your own stuff can be bad, but you should also beware the other way around.  You might want to be a little less hard on yourself when describing your own body of work.  If the whole thing is "Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry that I suck" then you run the risk of causing people to say "Well, gee, this game looked good, but maybe I should reconsider..." :maple:

    Yeah, you are right about that Nandemonai :maple:. I definitely will not say bad things about The Last Birdling. TLB, then Without Within 3. After that, something is coming. My plans for 2018-2019? I am all positive for what is coming ahead.

  11. 4 hours ago, Silvz said:

    I don't have the like button, so imagine your post liked 3 times.

    I've only read Cursed Sight, although I've always been interested on Unhack and Without Within. I may go into them on my next vacations.

    It is awesome for you to not feel bad about your mistakes, but to grow from them - that's the point of trying. Even though the english-made novels are still criticized a lot, developers like you make the scene grow and improve. I recall you saying once that you were a group on InvertMouse, so congratulations to all involved on all these projects!

    No need to say that I'm pretty excited to read The Last Birdling :D

    Thank you so much Silvz! Really happy to have been here alongside you for quite a few years now ^_^.

  12. Hi everyone :vinty:! Thank you for allowing me to post here, not just today, but for the past five years. The Last Birdling will be released next week on September 1st, so I have decided to put my portfolio of games on sale:

    IaYGCz7l.jpg

    http://store.steampowered.com/bundle/2684/InvertMouse_Bundle/

    The Last Birdling marks my fifth year not in game development, but at least under the name InvertMouse. I have released five to six titles on Steam now, and they have all taught me valuable lessons. It all started with Unhack 1 on this very forum, so I want to thank those who have been around since 2012. I have grown from five years' worth of mistakes since then, and as you will see below, I cannot bring myself to overhype some of these older titles. They still have all of my heart in them, though. That I will always be able to promise.

    rk5hXHAl.jpg

    First, there was Unhack 1, which has many immature traits in retrospect. I must continue to accept critique even when it is for older titles that no longer reflect my skill level.

    lkxHKoql.jpg

    Then there is Bermuda, which I admit is a failure. I made plenty of management mistakes, and the results are out there for the world to see. Failure is not as scary once you have suffered through it. Please let me stress all the errors are on me, not anyone else on the team.

    HanSp8ql.jpg

    Next, we have Without Within 1 and 2. Initially, the first game received negative reviews from people who hated anime and/or visual novels. As the days went by, players who fell in love with Vinty have defended these titles. Vinty is kind, but she can also be a jerk. She is simply real.

    tJgyMvil.jpg

    There was Cursed Sight, featuring a protagonist who had caused some divided opinions. If I were to rewrite this story, I know I can do a much better job. Maybe I will revisit this one someday.

    VdkFERhl.jpg

    Then most recently came Unhack 2. This project was once a disaster due to my lack of research on AI. After months of study and rewrites, the game had evolved into my personal favorite. I hope more people may try out this title, because its themes have left me with plenty to think about.

    The Last Birdling is a combination of all the lessons I have learned since 2012, and when it drops next week, I am sure I will grow from it yet again. I hope you will give the game a chance on September 1st. If you think the title is worth wishlisting, or if you are up for joining the Steam community, I would really appreciate it:

    Y4h8FaSl.jpg

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/629430/The_Last_Birdling/

    Thank you so much everyone. See you next week :vinty:!

  13. Hi everyone :vinty:! I started Persona 5 quite a few weeks ago, and before I even installed the game, I picked up Futaba’s wallpaper from the PSN Store to put myself in that mode. The Persona Mode, I guess.

    When both players and creators are in on the hype, that is when we have a great time. For instance, I can’t wait for Umaru season two, so I want to retweet messages from the official account, I want to support them with a bluray purchase, that sort of thing.

    I hope to support The Last Birdling in any way I can, so today, I have put together some wallpapers and avatars for gamers to use:

    UlpFct6l.jpg

    If anyone decides to support me by using these assets, I am the one who is thankful, not the other way around. You are doing me a massive favor, and in the process, I hope it will help build excitement for that September 1st release.

    Gamers want flexibility these days. Maybe you want the logo in a different position, or perhaps gone altogether. Depending on where your icons are positioned, you may also prefer the character(s) to shift left or right. To cater for this, I have included separate elements in each wallpaper for you to adjust as needed:

    cY7xvuDl.jpg

    These wallpapers are available in the highest available res. Even if you extracted those assets from the game, they will not be available at this size. Hopefully at least one of them will suit your tastes.

    All right, here is the pack:

    http://birdling.invertmouse.com/birdlings-media-pack.zip

    As usual, I hope you may consider wishlisting and/or joining our Steam community:

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/629430/The_Last_Birdling/

    Thank you!

  14. Hi everyone :D. Once again, I want to share a Last Birdling related post, but to make things fairer, we can turn this more into a general VN discussion.

    WlhcgZLh.jpg

    When I love a VN (999, Narcissu, Ever17 etc), I want to also pick up its artbook, though truth be told, this has become less of a necessity over the years. CGs of popular games are readily available online, and while it is nice to have those illustrations in print, physical space is limited. There are, however, still plenty of things that will draw my interest, as I have seen in several artbooks I own:

    - Interviews with developers (admittedly a struggle since they are usually in Japanese)

    - Fanart

    - Results for character popularity polls etc

    - 4koma (common with Narcissu related books)

    - Production sketches

    I am not too interested in character summaries or in-game walkthroughs. By the time I pick up the book, I have already completed the game anyway. At any rate, is there anything else you can think of? I would love to know. In particular, maybe things that you have never seen in a VN artbook, and you think, "Why don't they ever do this?"

    Here is my artbook preview post on The Last Birdling. It contains all the history, mistakes and lessons I have learned through the past five years:

    kLmDw4ul.jpg 

    Thank you :vinty:!

  15. Hi everyone :vinty:! Here is the same artbook preview post from my blog:

    vr2D9BVh.jpg

    Ever since Unhack 1, I have featured digital artbooks for my Steam releases, and The Last Birdling will be no different. I want to give you a preview today, and I also wish to detail some of the lessons I have learned through the past five years.

    ubtEJBDh.jpg

    Above are several pages from Cursed Sight’s artbook. As you can see, the layout is similar to the artbook from Unhack. My websites also share the same template across projects. Unhack 2 and The Last Birdling feature a new template, while past projects use an older layout. I create both these websites and artbooks on my own, so I make use of templates to speed up development time.

    CLPfb8ih.jpg

    My artbooks never feature story summaries. If you have taken the time to open these artbooks, I want to reward that effort with some new knowledge. Behind the scene processes, mistakes I have made, things along those lines.

    WlhcgZLh.jpg

    I put Unhack 2’s artbook together during a trip, and I spent all of my hotel hours on those pages. Every time I read through the artbook, I would spot one new spelling mistake, or perhaps phrases that were awkward to read. Before you know it, a couple of days have already gone by. Even if all the assets are available, an artbook is not something we can cobble together a day before release.

    And now, here are some preview shots of The Last Birdling’s artbook:

    kLmDw4uh.jpg

    As usual, there will be character art, CGs and background illustrations available. Every finalized artwork will come with a piece of commentary.

    0DXOGvHh.jpg

    On top of that, just like with Unhack 2, I will include all the sketches used throughout the project:

    oF14n3Mh.jpg

    I never used to include roughs, because I wanted to show these artworks at their best. Then one day, I read a review for one of my artbooks, and it complained about the lack of sketches. That made me realize how foolish I had been. When I am a fan of other games, I always want to see the drafts, so why would it be different for anyone else? I had failed to think from the players’ perspective, but thanks to that review, I was able to make the switch.

    As usual, I hope you may consider wishlisting and/or joining our Steam community:

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/629430/The_Last_Birdling/

    Seven weeks to go! Thank you.

  16. Hi everyone :)! The journey is over, and at last, I can announce The Last Birdling’s release date. Here it is:

    DKthWlKl.jpg

    September 1st, 2017! The Last Birdling’s Steam page can now be accessed:

    XjWGsnal.jpg

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/629430/The_Last_Birdling/


    Recently, I have started to follow upcoming games that I want to keep on my radar. If you are willing to do the same for The Last Birdling, I would be so grateful. The “follow” and “add to your wishlist” buttons are available on the Steam page. I will be active on the community board, so I hope to hang out with you there.

    As the release date approaches, I plan to post a new article every week. These articles will be available on the Steam page as well as my Facebook, Tumblr and all the other usual suspects. My social media links can be found here:

    RljfdQyl.jpg

    http://invertmouse.com

    I am thankful to those who messaged in to say they fell in love with Bimonia and Tayo after the demo. After hundreds of development hours, those two have grown lives of their own. Once the game is released, I hope their story can be shared with as many people as possible.

    Thank you!

  17. Hi there ^_^. I was inspired by shortaporty's thread here:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/6h4iqe/patreon_and_its_role_in_western_vn_development/

    Let's say your favorite studio starts a Patreon account. What sort of rewards would you want to see? The default list I can think of:

    1) Behind the scenes development process

    2) Rewards like wallpapers/avatars

    3) Early access

    In my case, I love Stage Nana because they made Narcissu and Ame no Marginal. Cool, okay, I would support them. I want to think about item three first. Even if they made, say a AAA-budget Narcissu sequel, I would rather see it in one go when it is complete and not have my impression be tainted by seeing the game in its rough stages. Also, why am I paying to become their tester?

    I would, of course, love to have 1) and 2) at least. The thing is, I imagine a studio would want to make those available for free, since it helps with promotion. That said, you can always have some wallpapers/avatars be available to everyone, then have exclusives for patrons. What would be some reward ideas that are more fun and creative?

    With Patreon, you need a lot of backers to make it worthwhile. Otherwise, you need to sink production hours every month to deliver the rewards. I can't imagine being able to offer anything substantial, since that would affect how much time you can spend on the game you are trying to make.

    Thank you :ren:.

  18. 4 hours ago, Silvz said:

    I'm going against your purpose here, but I have to comment your BGs specifically :P and by yours, I mean the teams'.

    I love how the ones you posted have at the same time a professional and an amateurish flavors to them. I mean, I can see that this is not from a huge company with lots of money to spare, but at the same time I can see the quality I'd expect from them, you know?

    There seems to have a lot of details, but, and here's my first complaint, the pictures with sprites show blurry backgrounds. Is this on purpose? Why not show all their potention during the reading? Also, still on that, I usually dislike when games zoom in their BGs and make them all stretchy just for who knows why? I'd rather see a static BG during action scenes than a low quality moving one.

    A question: why do the sprites differ so much from the characters on CGs? Personally, I prefer them like in the latter, but still loved both. The question is really about the subtle change.

    Hey Silvz! Long time no talk 😎. The blur is up to personal preference and is on purpose. Players will get to see each background on its own during the game, of course. The characters and CGs are done by the same artist.

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