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Cybil

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That's right! I've learned how to make music!

This is one of many already finished songs that I've made for "Melodi," my very first legitimate actual real not joking video game project!

"Melodi" tells the story of a malnourished and psychopathic elf girl named Melodi Ravenian, and is a character-driven game full of pixel art, animation and branching dialogue paths that lead you down various rabbit-holes and introduce you to various wacky and unsettling characters.

In this terribly violent game, you'll meet a little stuffed cat, brought to life by a magical candle known as the Heartflame. This cat, who is a species of animated objects known as "The Branded," believes her name is "Brandy."

For more up to date information on the current pre-alpha progress of Melodi, join the official Melodi Game Dev Discord: https://discord.gg/XDcTbtHd

"Melodi" is a project being made entirely by one person (me, hi)

All assets, music, characters and lore is © Jay "Luv" Tonique (me, hi)

Pixel Art, Animation and Music by Jay "Luv" Tonique (me, hi)

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With Melodi rapidly approaching being an actual game, I decided to touch up some of the game's system art.

I literally spent 8 hours making my own font for the game, some character expression portraits and nameplates, and some fancy choice graphics, all just to make the game feel more unique!

Yes, I literally made my own font.

Every letter and symbol drawn by me's truly.

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I get the feeling people are really gonna like Cybil when they play Melodi.

She's a cat.

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Mitsu was voted most likely to succeed

And she replied "Out of a DICK" and high fived her boyfriend.

Mitsu was going to be a sorta just background character in Melodi, who you could occasionally talk to, but she has been very much demanded to play a greater role.

So you'll all be happy to know, Mitsu and her boyfriend Clawven are going to be more integral to the plot.

Just look at that plot bouncin' left and right!

Did I spell nuisance right

I don't see a red underline, damn I'm good

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"What I am teaching you in my class is paramount to your survival in this world of ours. If you continue to put in as little effort as you are, those broken ribs will be a cherished happy memory someday. Now get back in your seat."

-Professor Eliah Sterium.

Melodi's teacher, and one of the antagonists of Episode 1 of Melodi.

We're getting close to the point where I'm gonna stop showing off what I'm working on and I'm gonna just hammer out the game and release it.

Few more character profiles and then I'm going full force on the first teaser trailer and a playable demo! :)

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Some kinda...

Some kinda fweaky elf or summin.

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Nawsty thing.

#Melodi #Melodi Ravenian #Elf #Game Dev #Pixel Art

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Cutscene Remake: Before and after changing the game's art style.

I have decided to go with pixel art and pixel animation, which means I need to remake every cutscene that I've already made (Not too many).

But as a result, I have gotten vastly better at pixel art.

So now our titular elfy girl can be much more lively in cutscenes.

Moving forward, I will be making animated pixel art of this nature for most cutscenes in the game.

If you thought I was just planning to shlock out some dime a dozen RPG Maker game, you were WRANG.

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Workin on the Melodi trailer!

And practicing my voice for Eliah, since he'll be narrating during the trailer.

Also! Melodi has adopted, as of today, a new Pixel Art style for cutscenes, since turns out I'm pretty decent at it. :)

Oh hey that symbol looks familiar.

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With 8-directional movement now complete for the main character, I may now move forward with creating the pre-rendered area backgrounds. I will be utilizing a combination of very many art tools at my disposal to hand-draw every background.

Sometime this month, I will have something to show that will serve as a teaser/hook for the game that will hopefully draw interested parties from all over.

For now, I present to you the completed 8-directional movement system. Coming next is the first major backdrop and some additional character sprites such as Cybil and Eliah.

Melodi is my very first attempt at a walk cycle of any kind (and I had to make 8), pixel animation that doesn't already have a skeleton base (Bestia had a base made by NotYourSagi that I used as a foundation and then modified things to make them line up), and utilizing sprite sheets and plugin coding.

I am now fully able to start production on the game proper as well as begin making other character sprites, starting with Cybil and Eliah and then later moving to Eidilon, Mitsu, Clawven and Brandy.

I am also going to make pre-rendered pixel-art backgrounds for each area in the game. The game will not be using the regular RPG Maker format of grid-based tilesets. Everything's gonna be hand-drawn and hand-animated. Everything. Every cutscene, every character animation, every death sequence (yeah you can die in it), every interactable event (and a lot of dialogue choices) will have unique art attached to them, EVERYTHING.

Now y'all might be thinking, "Jay, what if you burn yourself out?"

Look what I made in the last week. I learned to make music, making songs for the game. I learned to do pixel animation and made an 8-directional 6-frame movement and idle animation spritesheet for character movement. I learned shortcuts in Photoshop and Aseprite to speed up the process dramatically. Everything I've done in just a week has made me so motivated and so excited that I don't see myself slowing this train down at all until there's a playable proof of concept demo out there for all to play.

For the most WIP and production updates, please consider joining the Melodi RPG official Discord!

#Melodi #Melodi RPG #Melodi Ravenian

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Progress Update on Melodi

Hello, everyone!

Happy New Year!

On December 15th 2023, I made the public announcement that Lil Miss Rarity will receive no further comic updates from me, finally confirming a common theory that I had lost the will to continue creating it. Lil Miss Rarity, just to confirm here, is now public domain and I encourage fan-blogs and will proverbially pass the torch to anyone who would like to take up the mantle.

It wasn't an easy decision to make because of how many times I'd promised I would never stop updating it, and I did in fact have future plans for it (I will be making a video on YouTube describing how I'd planned to continue the story, and how I would have ended it if I ever did).

But in its wake came Melodi, a spiritual successor to Lil Miss Rarity, and I've decided that a story-driven video game with ongoing updates would be the smartest decision, at least for the introduction to the series.

And so along came this twiggy elf. (Important note: Her booby size on her sprite is exaggerated, same as her head size. The in-game art for cutscenes will show more proper body proportions.)

Melodi is now just four directional (diagonal movement) sprite animations away from being a complete character sprite, which means creating a proof of concept will be just a matter of time.

As of today, I have completed:

The intro cutscene for the game, leading to the introduction of Melodi and her teacher, Eliah Sterium (Multiple full color images accompany that cutscene)

Seven unique songs entirely composed by myself (Literally learned how to make music a week ago just for this project)

Four directional movement sprites consisting of 6 frames of pixel animation each direction (Including separating each part to make them usable for other characters' sprites)

Four directional idle animations consisting of 6 frames of animation each direction (Again, making paperdolls to use later for other characters)

A discord server for the ongoing production of Melodi RPG where I'll be answering questions, including answering as the characters from the game similar to the LMR ask-blog

27 (just counted) preliminary sketches to flesh out character designs and have reference for myself

Eliah Sterium's design, making the ladies go gaga

Mountains of lore (a lot of which can be found in the Discord's lore channels)

Personalities for the primary cast of deadbeat magic school students

Art for the title screen

The entire storyboard for Episode 1 and Episode 2

The pricing model for the game (Episode 1 will be a free demo, and all remaining episodes will be bundled together in a $10 purchase)

The "Pet Cwow" option on the Quit Game menu and what happens when you pet him (You'll see)

The entire intro in-engine (Screencapped above with Eliah there)

Many new fans/friends who've introduced themselves in the Discord

And, I have received (on December 31st) my very first negative review of the game, which I will cherish. Someone who knew nothing other than "It's a game about an elf who goes psychotic" and saw the title art said that the game was basically doomed to fail because Melodi has large breasts, to which I replied "Imagine being this fucking butthurt over tits existing" which set him off into an obnoxious and insulting rage that ended with "Enjoy nothing but horny virgins playing your game and ignoring the dog water, generic ass story." A quote that I will never, ever, ever forget, and if I someday make a physical release of the game, I promise you, that quote will be on the back of the box.

There's even more than just all this, I've already sunk tons of hours of time and effort into the production of Melodi and I am super excited to continue.

I want to thank everyone for the support of the game so far, and I hope once people know more about the story and characters, the game sees the same kind of fandom that Lil Miss Rarity once had.

Luv you all

~Jay Tonique

#Melodi #Melodi RPG #Sprite Art #Animated #Game Dev #Melodi Ravenian #Eliah Sterium

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Progress update for Melodi!

I have finished a forward-facing idle animation for our titular psychopath elf girl!

Complete with tits three times the size of her waist!

And this is only one of many outfits she'll wear throughout the game. And one of many hairstyles!

And I have to make this idle from 8 directions, and then make 8 walking animations, and then make 8 running animations, and then make 8 jumping animations, and then make all those for all the other characters too!

(AND I'M FUCKIN READY)

Melodi has a very long way to go, but I should be able to produce a demo by mid-to-late January if I keep working every day.

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There she is

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Melodi RPG Progress Report

An extremely large portion of the intro cutscene is now complete, and today I will be finishing it, as well as beginning to make the character sprites for the top-down RPG sections of the game.

While a vast majority of the game is going to be a visual novel using artwork like pictured above, there will be plenty of actual gameplay, using social interactions and observations as puzzle pieces to proverbial puzzles you have to solve to progress the game.

Melodi is very much a story-driven game, and an enormous portion of it is dialogue and storytelling. It will not have combat of any traditional kind, equipment, consumables, stats, anything like that.

Instead, "Combat" will be resolved the same as any conversation in the game in which you are given opportunities to fight back or flee, in a choose-your-own-adventure style "The wrong choice could have dire consequences" sort of way.

I can't wait to show people what I have in store.

I expect a teaser-trailer and the full intro to the game to be complete within a week to two weeks. The train is very much rolling full steam with 14 out of 16 full color images for the intro cutscene already being complete, the story already written, and a large amount of systems in RPG Maker MV already programmed.

For updates that happen as the development happens, consider joining the Melodi RPG Discord Server.

To help support the development of the game, consider supporting my Patreon (New $20 tier reward: Melodi cutscene images that don't contain major spoilers will be posted in full resolution), or donating money for food or vitamin supplements to my PayPal donate button in the upper right corner of my page.

Love you all, and thank you all for the support so far for Melodi!

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Join the Melodi Discord!

I just finished making the foundation for the Melodi Game Development Discord, where I’ll be posting any and all announcements, WIPs, development stream links, trailers, lore, etc. that involves the game, as well as being transparent about the development process, where I am, what needs to be done, and how I’m doing it! It’s also a place where you can discuss, theorize, suggest, etc. anything involving the game, its universe and its characters! https://discord.gg/cRXxXwck Come on in! Everyone’s welcome! (But please be warned fairly, the game is violent. M for Mature.) (It is not pornographic.)