Category: Dev Blog

Pisces: A Story of How My Team Rescued Me

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There were a lot of things different with how I built Song of Pisces compared to how I built Prologue. For starters, though there were customizations I’ve done with Prologue’s system, they were nothing compared to the customizations I have done for Song of Pisces. This project was such a massive lesson in itself for me; it felt like making a game for the first time.

First Steps

Pisces’ core story has been around for 10 years, written by me and my Ragnarok Online guildmates for the characters we built in that world. Creating a game with it was another matter entirely. For one thing, there was the issue of maturity. For another, there was the issue of differences in medium. Most important issue: this must become an original game in itself, with a story that is completely different from the world of Ragnarok Online. As an adult, a lot of the stuff I had written for my own characters a decade ago make me cringe now, and there were scenes you can easily write on paper that could not be translated just as easily in-game. Needless to say, before I embarked on the project, I knew that there was going to be a lot of re-writing involved. So I decided to start by re-creating my own characters first and sending them out to my favorite illustrator, Clarice “Sao” Menguito. Read More

From Senshi with Love

Eunice Grace Gatdula 1 Comment
The following passage was written by Eunice Grace Gatdula, who was an art intern for Senshi.Labs in late 2014, but continued to work with Senshi a couple of months after her internship. Eunice is Senshi’s very first intern and she also happens to be the vocalist of The Marty’s. Mathoria Team had her SoundCloud playlist on loop when they were working on their project, thereby turning her into their muse.

 

Well, I didn’t even know I was working on Adarna and Song of Pisces at first! It actually just started off as an activity: create monsters. And I just let it rip! When I started making things in the beginning, I didn’t even know what I was making it for. I mean, I knew it was a game, but I didn’t know any cheat codes or in-depth information about it. I didn’t even know the names of the main characters in the game. All I knew was, “Make this, and make it animate well.”
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Promoting Education

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It’s hard to describe Senshi.Labs as a business. In fact, when I was asked to write a business plan for it, I thought I was being asked to shoot myself. I always look at it as an incubation space, a training center, a place where ideas come to life. I wanted to build something that would promote education beyond school, beyond brands, beyond academe administrative limits. I am an educator first.

Promoting education by way of releasing free edutainment games is one thing. There’s another thing I only realized recently was taking place: training young interns to work like actual development teams who might one day want to build their own studios. Read More

Mathoria Development: An Underdog Story

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It was the beginning of the third term of the school year 2013-2014 for De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde when third year students fell in line to pick their thesis advisers. To be honest, I was surprised that the group of Arvin Cabang, Francisco Bate, Steven Escarlan, and Blue Vergara picked me. When I asked them why, Arvin said honestly that he didn’t care who his adviser would be in the next term but that he must learn how to be a producer for that particular term. He basically picked me because I was (still am) a producer.

Well, Mathoria was a test of endurance for all of us. It was a test of their design and programming skills and it was a test of my producer capabilities. To start with, this group had no artist. They were all designer-programmers. Steven was forced to become an artist, an endeavor that almost made him cry every night. Read More