Hello, Graph here with an update for Chapter 2 of Touhou Mecha. The dialogue scenes are mostly done, save for a couple of CGs. The newcomers this time around include…

The magician mercenaries who call themselves the Magus Trio, and…

Prime Minister Satori! Her appearance in Chapter 1′s intro was unfortunately cut out with the rewrite, but now she makes an appearance in person.

I’ve still got the whole battle scene to do, but with any luck I’ll have an update on that before too long, as well. See you soon, everyone!

Hello all, it’s Graph. I’d like to announce that the re-release of Touhou Mecha Chapter 1 is now out!

Windows download (67.1 MB): here
Multiplatform download (80.9 MB): here

This was almost ready to be released around the end of December, but I decided to wait for new music to go with the new content in Chapter 1. Due to computer issues, 1.5 only has one new song from OverCoat, but you can look forward to more of his work in future releases!

Even though it’s a re-release, there’s a lot of new content, including:

-An added Extras section which includes the TM Database, Music Room and Hellcat Corner.
-A rewritten first half of Chapter 1, including a new battle scene.
-A shift from 4:3 screen ratio to 16:9. The art and GUI have been updated accordingly.

More Game info can be found at the Touhou Mecha section of the blog. Enjoy, and please tell us what you thought about it on this blog or the DSD forums!

Note for Touhou Mecha version 1.5 and later: Touhou Mecha uses DirectX or OpenGL for graphics, depending on the in-game settings. Please make sure the related drivers are up-to-date if GUI elements appear to be missing or misplaced. You can change the method Touhou Mecha uses to display graphics by pressing Shift + G while the game is running.

If you’ve read an earlier version of Chapter 1 and you haven’t changed to a different computer since then, it’s possible that the persistent data will make the game attempt to display in 800×600 resolution, when it’s supposed to be 1024×576 now. If this happens, go to your computer’s Roaming AppData, and under the folder RenPy -> Touhou Mecha-1310569953, delete the file called “persistent”.

It’s a new year, and with the new year I figured it was a good time to tell everyone where ESR stands, and how we’re going forward.

First, the good news. We’ve reached the final stretch for all the characters. Admittedly our pathlocked sections are going to be of a decent length, and we’ve got a number of them even if we make some cuts, but we’ve reached them and have started to solidify the script for the last time. It’ll be easier in general too since we don’t have to keep track of all the other characters as much.

Second, the bad news. All of us have been incredibly busy with jobs, school, or other issues. We’re all taking steps to help get more time for ESR and make the best of the time we have, but it’s not easy. With things up in the air as they are, any time predictions as to the release are foolish. We’ll do our very best of course, but real life is a harsh mistress.

However because we do want to finish the project, and we want to finish it quickly, we’re doing what we can to get our post production done early. Right now we have a desperate need for an editor. One that is capable both of correcting grammar and continuity errors, and one who is capable of taking our many complex scripts and filling in the alternate paths we left blank because they’re simply tweaked versions of the main paths. Thus, we’re asking for volunteers to join the DSD crew and work with us to complete the game.

This is a long term commitment, and a job worthy of a full time spot on the team. If you want to grab that position and think you have the grammar and writing skills, as well as the time needed to commit to the project, please sign up for our forums and drop me (Iced Fairy) a PM explaining your credentials (or just interest).

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Thanks to everyone who applied. We’ve gotten a new editor who’s now hard at work dealing with our terrible terrible grammar. Okay, my terrible terrible grammar. I apologize for those who applied that I haven’t managed to get back to yet but I’ve been swamped with lots of things. Anyways we’ll be introducing our new member in the fullness of time, but for now applications are closed. Thanks again to all our readers and helpers.

Hello folks, it’s Thanksgiving Day and I have an update on Touhou Mecha!

The addition to Chapter 1 has been written and coded. I’ve also finished the new mecha sprites and CGs. That leaves us with this remaining work:

- A few more expression sets for Utsuho, Rin and Yamame for the rewritten dialogue
- Rework the code on the old part of Chapter 1 to work with the new 1024×576 resolution
- Program a few extra features

What extra features, you ask? Here’s what’s planned right now…

-Music Room
-TM Database, explained in this post
-Hellcat Corner, which will contain some skits in which we freely break the 4th wall and talk about the story and world of Touhou Mecha itself!

At this point, there are no plans for a CG gallery, since the VN has been kept to a fairly modest screen size to simply the task of animation. Instead, I’m thinking of uploading select CGs to my Deviantart account and possibly the DSD forums, depending on image size limitations. You may see them in up to twice the size of how they appear in the VN!

A first-half-of December release should be possible if I control the urge to redraw a bunch of things. Already tempted to redo Utsuho’s sprite set… but anyway, Happy Thanksgiving! We’ll see you all again soon.

Hello folks! It’s Graph, creator of Touhou Mecha. Over the summer I did a bit of drawing for other peoples’ game/VN projects, but since those games are still in development it’ll take a bit of time before those ventures bear fruit.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing my work on Touhou Mecha. I’ve decided to make a few key changes before starting on Chapter 2 proper:

1. Convert Touhou Mecha to widescreen resolution, or something close to it. Seen here:

For reference, here’s what it looked like before. It’s just 224 extra pixels, but the elbow room gained ain’t trivial! Now we don’t have to crowd the sprites together quite so much, other than the intentional ones like the elevator scene shown a couple of posts down.

2. Upgrade the game engine to Ren’py version 6.14. The DirectX compatibility seems to make it a bit more efficient than the previous 6.12, mostly by way of making my laptop fan run one speed quieter.

3. A rewrite of the first half of Chapter 1, based on some feedback I’ve gotten on Touhou Mecha’s first release. It’s more focused, going over the story so far so that you don’t have to dig up the webcomic to get what’s going on (it’s not like I want people to do that, at this point. Gives me more freedom to straight-up retcon that old thing). Also, the third-person narration that was present at the beginning has been replaced with a new battle scene!

The Chapter 1 re-release will also contain the TM Database mentioned in the previous post, and possibly other extras. We’ve got our work cut out for us, but I’m hoping for a November or early December release for this one. See you all again soon!

Hi folks, we’ve started working on Chapter 2 of Touhou Mecha. However, alongside that we’ve also been working on a few extras that’ll show up when we release Chapter 2.

The Music Room and CG Gallery are obligatory for the Visual Novel format, so no surprise there. However, one other thing that’ll make an appearance is the Touhou Mecha Database. It contains information on the various mecha, characters and terminology that appear in the story; some of it is a recap, and some of it is information that wouldn’t fit into the story, such as performance stats and equipment info for all the mecha.

We hope it makes for a richer experience all around. We have a preview video of this new feature up:

TM Database preview

We’ve made a quick update for Touhou Mecha Chapter 1– Touhou Mecha version 1.1.

The main reason for this update is because we recently discovered an image compression technique used by developers in the Ren’py community called JCC compression. Basically, it lets us use JPG images instead of PNGs while keeping the ability to use transparent pixels, something the JPG format isn’t normally very good at.

Windows download (43.3 MB): here
Multiplatform download (54.3 MB): here

The size of the Windows download was reduced from 83.8 MB to 43.3 MB!

Of course, there’s traces of JPG artifacts if you look closely while playing the VN now, but I think it’s barely noticable, especially when sprites start moving about. If this change goes over well enough, we’d like to make the compression technique the standard for the VN package. If the demand is high enough we may release an uncompressed version when the final Chapter is released.

Info, previews and downloads now have their own sections under “Pages” on the right-hand side of this blog. The full changelist for the Touhou Mecha releases is on the new Downloads page.

We’ve also made another preview video of Chapter 1, this time focusing on the intro sequence. As before, the framerate and picture quality of the videos aren’t as high as they are in-game, so be sure to pick up the VN itself as well!

Intro trailer

We’d like to take a moment to mention a project hosted by OverCoat, Touhou Mecha’s main composer and the newest addition to the DSD team!

Touhou Tuesday is a radio show dedicated to Touhou Project music. It’s being hosted on areciboradio.com, airing on Tuesdays from 8-10 PM EST. If you’re interested, be sure to catch it tomorrow!

Hello folks, Graph here. The first Chapter of Touhou Mecha, “The Fledgling Sun God”, is out! I’d like to thank the beta testers for their comments, and you all for your patience in waiting for this game’s completion.

Windows download (83.8 MB): here
Multiplatform download (94.8 MB): here

More Game info can be found at the Touhou Mecha section of the blog.

You can see a video preview of the action segments on Youtube:

We hope you enjoy the story!

Hello all, Chapter 1 of Touhou Mecha will soon be entering the beta testing phase. We’d like to have a few people test the game before it the public release. We’re looking to make this one fairly quick compared to the ESR testing phase. It takes about an hour to run through, and it doesn’t branch like ESR, so I’m thinking of getting 3 or 4 testers for this one.

EDIT: We’ve got enough testers for this round. Thanks!