Spring Cleaning, Part 2

Mar 22 2023

Spring Cleaning, Part 2

Filed under Uncategorized

I didn’t get too far last night, so as I continue spring cleaning, let’s talk about a new topic.

One of the issues I’ve always had with my projects is the fact that, while I primarily focused on gamedev, there are tons of other things I’m also interested in. The advent calendar and the mini webcomics (Hyoukyo Mirror and Hyoukyo Traitor) are evidence of this, but they are far from the only side projects I considered. Unfortunately, my scheduling sucked and the exhaustion/motivation issues didn’t help either, so most of these extra projects never saw the light of day. “If I split my focus even more, I’ll never get anything done”, I thought… and then proceeded to not get anything done anyway.

Something that always seemed fun was the thought of sharing gaming experiences. Let’s Plays used to be a big part of my day around the time I made my first gamedev attempts, and I remember looking forward to watching the new “episodes” as soon as they got uploaded. Even now, after many of them vanished from YouTube or moved on to streaming on Twitch, there are some creators I follow and whose videos I listen to while working. I also recorded about a dozen RPs myself, but man… the quality sure was garbage. I didn’t have good equipment, nor stuck with it long enough to improve, and I have no idea if I was entertaining in any way.

A year after closing down Prismanga, I felt like sharing something again and opened a new Twitter account for the purpose of posting (retro) gaming screenshots and similar things. I didn’t announce this at all and just made a few Tweets now and then, until I eventually closed that account as well. But I had a lot of fun with the banner, which even had a special winter version! (Looking at the things I found while spring cleaning, a Halloween version was planned too, but I guess I never finished that one.)

The character is Maron, a kind and responsible boy who is a passionate retro gamer as well. (He also has a mischievous twin brother he needs to keep in check all the time…) This was some time after my otokonoko obsession got worse and I experimented with my drawings a little; the eyes in particular. Maybe it’s noticeable here.

And yep, I looked through all my favorite retro games to grab both “normal” and frosty screenshots. I even made sure to include some of my favorite places, like that bridge on top of Death Mountain in Zelda ALttP, or the Tall, Tall Mountain stage from Super Mario 64! The latter isn’t that great gameplay-wise (because almost every star requires you to climb the freaking mountain again and again), but it feels especially nostalgic for personal reasons.

I still think that sharing cool games in some way – by making videos, writing reviews or even Vtubing – would be fun, but it all takes time and effort. And I’m still very tired of never finishing anything I start, so I’d rather not open up any new accounts or channels right now. But if I ever became a Vtuber, you can bet that I would design a cute otokonoko character to represent me ww

Mar 21 2023

Spring Cleaning, Part 1

Filed under Tenkei Tales I

Ever since I decided to call it quits with game development, I was thinking about looking through my old files and doing some spring cleaning. 18 GB of sprites, CGs, planning and script documents, GUI and logo attempts, special artwork (like the advent calendar I did for two years) and loads of WIPs that mostly stayed sketches. Tonight, I started the spring cleaning and thought: “Why not share some things on the blog?”

Of course I’m not going to share those atrocious 5+ year old sketches or anything like that, but with that much data, I can already think of a bunch of topics. There are hundreds of folders in total, though, so I guess I’ll just post things randomly as I find them. Let’s start off with… memory issues.

Tenkei Tales I: Levellia

You may remember the little progress charts I made for this game, split up in seven categories to make them fit with the colors of the rainbow. Now, the 2nd iteration of these charts – for the first time I tried to remake the game – somewhat reached the halfway point before I stopped working on it. The original game’s chart, however… was completely filled, and I was a bit confused when I saw that. It’s been so long that I genuinely can’t remember if there ever was a fully playable version; one with proper ending and credits even.

There, that’s the original game’s progress chart. It’s from March 8 and, as you can see, all the bars are completely filled. I wonder what happened. Did I realize that the game was super boring, or simply became fed-up with my art again? Makes me wonder if there’s a fully playable version somewhere on this PC I kinda… forgot… since I was focused on all those remake shenanigans. I really don’t remember :’D

This is the last progress chart I ever did for the first attempt at remaking the game. I remember adding characters and a little extra scenario you could access by making the right choices. Of course, at some point I became unhappy with that too and stopped working on it yet again. For the final remake attempt in 2019, I never made a new progress chart.

By the way, I’m sorry if this posting looks a bit wonky. Even after all this time, WordPress still isn’t a fan of properly putting graphics and/or text side-by-side.

Anyway. Even though I remade the sprites two times, and half of the CGs once (the very first version didn’t even have any), that doesn’t change the fact that the story is boring. It’s basically a fetch quest with some minuscule riddles in between and at the end, which is probably okay in an atmospheric horror game… but if you walk through a brightly-lit house on a normal day and with nothing really interesting going on, it’s just a drag. So unless I have some genius idea to improve the story, this game will definitely stay shelved forever.

All the work with this stupid basement for nothing. How depressing.

But I still like Tsukasa’s and Setsuya’s room, even though round buildings kind of suck when it gets to event placement and walkable tiles. Should’ve just made a rectangular lighthouse.

Well, I guess I’ll move on to the next thing. For nostalgia’s sake, I’m not going to delete any of the old assets, just some unneeded SAI files. Because, dang – this folder alone contains almost 4GB of stuff. That’s what happens when you keep trying to remake something over and over…

Mar 17 2023

Resurrection

Filed under News

“Greetings, dear strangers-“… wait, wrong kind of announcement. Ahem. Hey everyone, long time no see! It’s been 4 years, and last week, while pondering what to do with my general existence on the world wide web, I decided to resurrect Prismanga. For nostalgia’s sake, I decided to keep the old blog postings available, but I can not be held accountable if your eyes start burning while looking at the artwork. Don’t mind me being dramatic, I just tend to dislike most of my older art pieces. The older they are, the more I dislike them.

Anyway! As you may have noticed if you ever visited Prismanga before, I revamped the entire page. My last endeavors before closing it down had broken the layout, so I needed to figure out how to make it somewhat presentable again. I also deleted a bunch of old pages with pretty much no content – all stuff I eventually planned to expand on, but never finished. Like pretty much everything in my (solo) gamedev career, so why would the homepage be any different? Believe me when I say that no one will miss this stuff.

About Gamedev

Unfortunately, I also come bearing bad news. While this is indeed “the resurrection of Prismanga”, I’m talking about nothing more than the blog itself. Production of all my projects has stopped; perhaps forever. (Well, this could also be good news, depending on your viewpoint. Now you can finally bury your hopes of getting to play any of the games I recklessly announced and never finished. Yay! … ?)

Don’t get me wrong – I love my OCs the same I always loved them, and I still dream of several of my projects on a regular basis. Nothing changed about that whatsoever. But after trying for many, many years and never getting anywhere close to releasing anything, I can only come to two conclusions:
1) I’m just not cut out for long-term projects, because I lack both the skill to persevere, and the skill to not get distracted by shiny new endeavors all the time.
2) I’m always running on low batteries, which keeps me in a perpetual state of demotivation and exhaustion… so while I would love to work hard every day, I’m struggling to get things done in general. This also makes it very difficult to focus on big projects without getting burnt-out and might be a big reason for my failures.

If the first conclusion is the right one, then I’m never going to release any games of my own, unless I gather enough funds to hire a team first. At the end of the day, I absolutely love planning and drawing, but I just don’t have much passion for the rest. (Okay, writing can definitely be fun, but that’s another case of “I start to write a bunch of scripts and then never finish any of them”…)

If the second conclusion is the right one, I might have a shot if I finally manage to improve my garbage lifestyle. This is something I’ve hoped to do for a loooong time, but it never worked out either and I’m pretty sure I know the reasons. Bigger ones than just “you’re freaking lazy.”

At this point, I’m thinking that the only way for things to change would be to leave forever.

“What the heck are you doing here, then?” …Well. Just posting some art from time to time, accompanied by my usual rambling. Like I mentioned, I love my OCs dearly and I still draw them on a regular basis. Of course I could open up an account on Instagram, DeviantArt or something, but I think it would be more fun to use Prismanga. For old times’ sake, and because I’ve come to dislike social media a lot. I wish we could go back to the times when many people had a fun homepage of their own, about their projects or other passions, or simply their favorite characters or shows.

So yeah – don’t look for social media links; you won’t find any. I’m 100% done with personal accounts. There’s nothing I really want to tell the world anyway, aside from “I hope people on Twitter relearn to separate fiction and reality”, “cotton candy ice tea is delicious and you should try it” and “ever since August 2022, I become troubled when I have to make Tostadas in Cook, Serve, Delicious.” If I were to seriously restart my creative endeavors, I’d only make accounts for the purpose of project updates and/or posting art.

About Prismanga

Long story short, Prismanga is not a gamedev studio anymore, it’s just a personal blog with some history now. Therefore, we don’t need a mascot either. Sorry Zakuro, somehow you had even less to do than your predecessors. (But I get the feeling that he’d say “Oh, that’s a pity” in a somewhat distant tone and shrug.)

Instead, up there in the header, you can see… Niko. Remember him?

He was featured on Halloween art and White Day art, rising up the ranks from a side character in a VN I never even talked about, to being the main character in several other projects. He grew up quite a bit, didn’t he? Usually, I’d tease you with a “does he look kinda different because he got a redesign, or is something fishy about this?” line, but sadly there is no point if I’m not going to make games anymore.

For the time being, we’ll keep the Niko header around because he fits the usual Prismanga theme very well. He was always associated with colorful sky phenomena, after all. I actually have more new art of him I could show, but this posting is already getting a bit long, so let’s save this for another day.

As you can see, my style hasn’t become any less colorful and my sons are cuter than ever! That’s because I discovered a passion for otokonoko and crossdressing anime boys a few years back, and it really shows. My army of confusingly adorable male characters has grown considerably, and my desire to draw female characters has dropped like a rock. If I want femininity, I just draw a crossdresser instead of a girl nowadays, and I’m very unapologetic about it. Once I stopped caring about people’s opinions and started going all out with hairstyles, colors and outfits, I became very happy with my art. Following your passions does wonders~.

The Wrap-up

That’s more or less all I wanted to say for now. Comments are disabled because this is really a low-effort blog and I might not check it too often outside from posting updates, so I’d rather not have to moderate anything. If you wanted to comment, just let Niko know and hope that he delivers the message next time we meet in my dreams. (Don’t let yourself be stopped by the fact that I unfortunately never dreamt of him before.)

Wait, one more thing! I switched from using “Natsu” to “Shiki” last year, because it’s been bothering me forever that I accidentally named myself after the season I despise most. Feel free to call me either name, though. I can’t really go full Shiki anyway, because then we’d have to rename Gosatsu to Goshiki ww

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day~

Mar 05 2019