Thursday 15 December 2011

Welcome and hello!

To those who found this blog post before the site was even launched: Well done!

Hello to everyone anyway! I go by my pen name Yoyoli, and many thanks to those who have been so patient in awaiting for Azure Tales to actually announce any progress. Azure Tales started in August, and since then development has been focused on the website, research and our first project.

As you can see, this is a DevBlog! All the development and progress news will be updated here as well as via the Twitter account. I'll even post up some sketches and teasers here for upcoming projects. I won't be announcing anything as of yet, this post is purely for some clarifications and to say hello.

A lot of friends have been asking questions and are generally confused. Here's a small FAQ to help out:

Q) Wait, I know you by your real name and your site has it anyway. What's the point in a pen name?
A) True, my real name is clearly stated on site. I use a pen name because as you can see my real name is fairly common; to save people sounding formal using my full name I'd prefer you to use my pen name instead!

Q) What type of projects are you going to make?
A) My true goal is an RPG, though currently I'M STILL A LEARNING DEVELOPER. Please note it has taken me a while because I'm learning at the same time! The first project I will announce is a Visual Novel. I may also release comics/manga on the odd occasion!

Q) I hear you're using Visual Basic for this first project. Why not choose something like Ren'Py?
A) I like using Ren'Py, and it's so much easier! BUT I'm going to make a lot of projects, not just Visual Novels and so to get into practice during this learning curve I'm using Visual Basic. Once I've gotten my head around the basics I'll likely use Ren'Py for visual novels and kinetic novels in future =)

Q) Are the projects going to be free?
A) Yes and no. First few are going to be free so that I can get some feedback, but I do want to release commercial stuff in the future. THAT DOESN'T MEAN I'LL STOP FREE PROJECTS! I will continue to release free games/comics/manga along with commercial ones!

Q) Is there a release date for that first project?
A) I intended to get it done by this month, but I'm working on it in my free time which can be limited sometimes. So I'm looking at a Spring release perhaps.

Thanks for reading and I hope this has cleared some confusion (^_^)b