teamspoon

Monday Morning Quickie

Hey, everyone! It's been a week and I wanted to give everyone an update. I'd estimate I'm about 80% of the way finished polishing the next Forks update, which means I'm a little behind schedule (what else is new -_-). Depending on how much free time I get this week, I should have it done within the next few days, or possibly by the start of next week. 

Aside from that, the schedule's the same, posting the Ren'Py Aria demo will be next! Goodnight, and hope everyone's Febr...

Update 1/31/21

Hi, everyone! Wanted to post this on the weekend, but as it's 3:10am Monday it looks like I may've missed it. Hopefully most of you are still sleeping!

Life-wise, I was able to go back into the office on the 24th after being out more or less since December 17th due to multiple Covid work scares (and thus, having to single-handedly raise my 6-month son since my wife works full time and nobody else could watch him). It's since swept through my workplace without anyone getting too ill, and...

2021 Year in Review

This may be a long one, so I'll put a dandy synopsis at the end with the takeaways. Look for the line of ***************** at the bottom!

Hey, all! With the New Year just beginning, I wanted to take some time to reflect on what we at Team Spoon have accomplished over the past 12 months. The baby's also asleep, so I should have enough time to type everything in one go! 

Most of you may know that, with the release of the first Forks demo and most of its assets comple...

Introducing May!

Hope you all have a nice weekend ahead, I know I will because I've just pushed out the last character intro for the upcoming demo! While Aria features several characters not yet introduced, May should close out the cast for now. Let's get to it!

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Accredited history begins with the Empire, and though it has cast a wide net to erase evidence of its forebears, fragments inevitably slip through. Curiosity, prohibition, and scarcity can make these artifacts espe...

Introducing Nahoko!

My son's taking up nearly all of my time now that he's getting more aware of his world, but I've got another character for everyone! Only one more to go before the new and improved demo roster is complete!

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The human body is a hardy engine, flexible in function and adaptive to its surroundings. Imperial scholars teach that humanity was homogeneous in its earliest days, but slowly diversified as new lands introduced new challenges. The harshest environments were o...

Introducing Zoe!

Been a while since we've had one of these, but a bigger demo means more characters, and here's another one!

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Sonda's Nyl's protected status under the Concert of Magic and extreme remoteness have made it a haven for the unconventional. Those whose abilities, research, or existence lie outside the norm enjoy a peaceful, if isolated freedom. Zoe is yet another of these residents, brought to Sonda Nyl specifically for how far away it is from chiding gossip.  2021-11-03 03:35:28 +0000 UTC View Post

Little 10/29/21

Hey, a new Little! It's been a while! Older baby + office time means I can finally juggle Aria and Forks with some regularity, so I hope to have more of these soon! This is a scene that was never planned to be in the first demo, but more dev time's made space for more content. 

Also, expect a new character intro soon. Toro's working on a TF sequence shot (attached), and after that should knock out the character card.

Update 10/23

Aha! It may be 4:15am in my timezone, but it's still Friday somewhere! If you've been wondering what the heck Toro's been doing all this time: Behold! Well, behold a piece of it at least!

We've always billed Aria as having an extensive cast of characters, and I hope this gives a better idea of what we mean. Compared to Forks, Toro's really been able to stretch his creativity, and you'll be seeing all of these characters in more depth once their introductions resume when the first demo r...

Quickie 10/22/2021

Hey, everyone! I just finished a Forks update on WG, and now it's time to post an Aria one! I'd been wanting to make the next update be the demo release, so much so that I've continuously delayed posting here in hopes I could finish it in a reasonable time. Unfortunately, so much time ended up passing that ANY news is now long past due!

Depending on how things are tomorrow, I plan to show you all everything that's been going on behind the scenes. Toro and I have been tireless and there'...

Update 9/4

Hey hey, that was better than keeping you all in the dark for a month! Thanks to having my mom able to help us watch the baby, I've finally been able to start working half-days at the office. It's already done wonders for my productivity, as if I've been in hibernation since starting WFH in February last year! I'm feeling GOOD about what's to come, and that means GOOD things for Aria! Let's go through a couple...

Rethinking Aria as a Character:

As I said in the pr...

Update 8/24

Hey, everyone! I have returned, and this time with pictures! Let's run through the past month's efforts!

To first address the elephant in the room: I went a month without updates and that's absolutely my fault. The new baby is a ton of work (he's 2 months old Sept. 1!) and his constant care didn't make for the best writing environment, but I should have popped my head in at least once to let everyone know what was going on (like this, only I should have done it weeks ago). Thankfully, h...

Little (8/24)

Hey, everyone! It's 2:45 am and I need to bed, but expect a longer update (with more pictures!) tomorrow. I've been reverse-engineering some of our programmer's custom code (in this case, the code that tells the game which scenes/locations are available on the world map at any given time) as he's been swamped with work and isn't readily available. His code is fine, I just needed to learn a little more about how it worked. Here, I needed all of the labels except for "Home Base" to disappear (a...

Little 7/23/21

Hey, everyone!  Baby brain's starting to improve a bit, it's been a tremendous help having others around to watch him too. Gives me time to finally get some work done, which I'll show bits of here!

First up: I've been adding a lot more dialogue to the opening scenes. Originally I wanted to try making the script super lean, but you end up flying through the story that way and dialogue doesn't come off as natural. This pass will hopefully improve that for the first demo!

Second...

Update 7/17/21

Hey, everyone! Posted a Little last time, figured I should post a freebie today and let everyone know what's going on!

Last time I'd posted, I'd just gotten home from the hospital, and the sleepless nights of parenthood have continued to make the days run together. Today was my first day back at work (at home), and if we can fix the baby's sleep schedule I can start to transition back to in-office work. Kids are hard, but enough of that, here's how Aria's going:

Proof-of-concept d...

Little 7/4

Holy crap, happy 4th! I've been in the hospital with the wife since Tuesday, and today we've finally left post partum with our new son. I'm suddenly a parent, and I'm already feeling that sweet sleep deprivation! Now EVERY day gets to be like pulling an all-nighter to cram for a test!

This is the last bit of script I have typed, with the very last lines being from the hospital (I didn't get to do as much as I'd liked). Also uploaded some surprise new WIPS for some last-minute surprise b...

Update 6/21/21

21/21, yay! You only get twelve days of that this year, and one of them falls on an Aria update!

Truth be told, I'd planned to have more ready today, but I'd failed to account for an impromptu vacation by Toro, who's currently out having a lot of fun and will be back later this week. That means scraping together some drafts of his future works, which will likely change by the time you see them in-game. Robots and raves, both are certainly out of place for Aria's setting!

Those of ...

Another little (6/16/21)

I think I'll make these "littles" more common as I go along. They won't be anything major, just quick peeks for patrons between the public updates. Little more private, little more casual. I won't include the update banner, and may even include spoilers in future ones; these can be bubbles to talk shop in.

Those of you who followed Forks might know that my day job which funds Team Spoon also runs me ragged, and it can be difficult to pull my best self together at the end of the day for ...

Just a small update (6/15/21)

Hey, everyone! First of all, I want to say THANK YOU~! to all the new patrons, it's great to have you all here! It's a big moment, because we're about where we were when I announced that Forks was taking its break. I was really scared of disappointing people, so it's a relief to see it bounce back! I know I can be a little quiet, but you're all always welcome to message me or comment.

This isn't a proper update (I plan to do that this weekend), but I've been having a productive time tod...

Update 6/1

Hey, everyone! Happy June!

Good lord, is it really June already? I'd ask myself the same questions when we were deep in Forks dev, so I guess something must be going right! Slow and steady, but with progress to show you!

Biggest part of the project for the moment is the absolute mountain of assets, both for the proof-of-concept as well as future content. The Forks demo helped teach me how to write multiple distinct characters, so I've been excited to spread my wings with even more...

Utopian Girl

This image tripped the suggestive content filter, so I'm uploading her separately in a patron-only update :p

Update 5/15

Hey, everyone! My wife and I are in a mad scramble to prep our place for our first child, but you better believe I've got update for you!

Toro's been hard at work sketching more post-demo characters, e's waiting in the wings for more post demo content, and I'm wrangling the rest of the writing. Ars is still working on other contracts, but I hope to have him back soon.

As for who these characters are, I'll introduce them properly in their bios later, but we've got a cow girl who ma...

Introducing Fei!

Toroboro hasn't let up! We've got another post-demo character here for you: Fei!

Fei was born in the Kingdom of Lizhou, the last great power to rival the Empire. Its claim was short-lived, as within her first year her Queen was forced to sign away her country to little more than a trading hub for Imperial goods; the final link in its chain of global hegemony. From Fei's remote village however, life changed little as she grew up. 

Eventually, a priest journeyed to the village,...

Update 4/28

Hey, everyone! Got some new info for you all for this week, I'll try something new and categorize it:

Writing: The intro demo is very nearly done, I suspect it'll only be a few more sessions until I can let is rest. Like with Forks, I always begin with an outline of events, then let the characters take it from there. The end result can significantly deviate from my plans, which in turns means I need to draft new ones, but the upside seems to be stronger character voices, rather than the...

Update 4/19

Hey, everyone! Late night posting after a long day on the job, how's everyone doing? If you're feeling down, I've brought an update!

This week brings us to some important things! Toro's sketched up the first post-demo character, an aviator with some fun goggles. You'll be sure to see a character bio once she's finished! He's also begun character expressions, be sure to click the preview pics to see others.

Lastly for this week, e's started implementing my script into his customize...

Update 4/11

Hey, everyone! Happy Sunday, we've got an update for you :)

First of all, hello as always to the new Patrons! I hope you've enjoyed seeing our progress so far; we're slowly but surely putting the pieces together into a first demo!

At this point in development, we're starting focusing on putting all of our assets together into something that can actually be played. Taking e's reconfigured Ren'Py engine, Toro's art, my writing, and Ars's music. The music's pretty easy as it's just d...

Update 3/29/21

I swear I had this saved yesterday but didn't post it for some reason!

No new characters this week as we've previewed everyone that we plan to include within the first demo! Toro's been busy working on the rest of the backgrounds, two more of which you can see above. The second, outdoor background is still a WIP, but the interior shot is just about done. Nice and sunny!

Speaking of "just about done", the demo's events are all planned out and we can start to put even more of these ...

Update 3/21

Long week with a lot of behind-the-scenes progress! We're continuing to fill in demo assets, and the demo script is nearly complete. Ars has been busy with earlier contractual projects, but we hope to have some progress on the soundtrack soon. Otherwise, enjoy Aria's house! Players will be starting most days here, as well as enhancing the place as they meet narrative goals. There's an additional room that we'll show off in a future update.

Aria currently uses a day/night cycle, and so m...