Now you TOO can draw elephants in Hungry Whispers

Evening all. Busily working on the engine and about to call it a day but just thought I'd let you all know that the best feature we ever decided to implement into this game is finally in. You can draw elephants. I enclose my rendition of one. Oh yeh and the optional choice question at the end of day 1 is in too but the buttons to press are all blank so I need to create something for that. Every things going pretty smoothly at the moment and it's really just a case of getting everything into the engine. I'm going through the script systematically and so everything up to the point of the drawing puzzle is now in, albeit in a rather rougth way. Some talky bits don't have any animations or it claims the wrong character is talking but at the moment I just wanna get everything in there before I start doing all that stuff. But either way there will be an engine update tomorrow. And as another fun treat I just thought I'd let you all have a look at the code for the train carriage scene so far.

Engine Update

http://flippinmental.deviantart.com/art/Wasabi-engine-with-stuff-261732236
Alright so its engine update time again and for the first time we actually have assets and dialog from the script in it! It might be worth downloading it onto your computer rather then playing it in browser due to the large file size which is a result of something I will get to later.  Please note that certain things like the character sprites I used the ones on the website and just edited them myself as I wanted to test it out. These along with anything else visual can always be changed and replaced at a later date but for now I'm more concerned with getting everything in and making sure it's working. Remember assets are super easy to swap out once they are actually in the engine. Cut scene isn't present this time as I'm still working on it and got a few more changes to make. Which reminds me I don't have the eerie sound effect, could you drop box that to me Jade?  Also the conversation between the guard and Yu seems a bit weird as a little tutorial will be placed there at a later stage. Oh and as one super awesome special surprise I've added the start of the drawing puzzle code (you get to it by pressing the arrow on carriage 4, and exit it by pressing the white square in the top left hand corner). I'm really pleased with this as it's actually nothing like what I intended to do. See I was going to create it by abusing the update function of flixel and just have it that on every update a sprite (that would be a little black circle) would be added at the x and y position of the mouse. That's fine and all but when you start moving fast it can't quite keep up. Anyway I decided to browse the Internet to see if anyone else had tried anything like that and I found something even better. I found a class library all for drawing. So I was able to inset a really smooth drawing tool into the engine in minutes. It's great! However this is the reason the file size is much larger then before. A quick search on some forums reveals that this is much the case with any drawing tools in flash. Have a play around with it. Things I'm going to do tomorrow and Thursday is add all the items into the game, finish off the cut scene and add a tutorial for using items as well as the first item that will do something :O How exciting! 

Oh yeh and there are weird quirks I'm aware of such as if you go to the item screen and exit it again you could end up in the wrong place. That's not a big I just haven't added the code for that yet.

Here's a list of things I've done today;

• Added the characters, and animations
• Corrected a bug that would prevent all other dialog from displaying if dialog is displayed as the first thing when you enter a room (which is the case for Yu's room and carriage 1)
• Made it so that once certain messages have been displayed once they will never appear again
• Begun work on the drawing puzzle's code
• Tweaked some things in the cutscene like adding random typing sounds 
• Added all the items and their dialog that you can look at in Yus room
• Added all the carriages, however only the first one has anything you can click on
• Added music to the opening cutscene and changed some of the timings for sounds to hopefully correct them

And something that I thought might be fun (very loose definition of the word fun) is to see how to code ends up looking for your typical room.

package
{
   
    import flash.ui.Mouse;
    import flash.utils.Endian;
    import org.flixel.*;
    import flash.utils.Timer;
    import org.flixel.system.FlxWindow;
   
    import flash.display.*;
    import flash.events.*;
   
    /**
     * ...
     * @author Michael
     */
    public class YusRoomTrain extends SceneState
    {
       
        [Embed (source = "../data/Backgrounds/yusroomday1a.png")] static public var yusroom:Class;
       
        private var bg:FlxSprite;
       
        private var laptop:Window;
       
        private var outwin:Window;
       
        private var bed:Window;
       
        private var luggage:Window;
       
        private var bathroomdoor:Window;
       
        private var wordsBath:Array;
       
        private var wordsLuggage:Array;
       
        private var wordsBed:Array;
       
        private var wordsLaptop:Array;
       
        private var wordsWindow:Array;
       
        private var wordsStart:Array;
       
        private var arrowright:Window;
       
       
       
       
       
        public var start_time:Number = 0;
       
        public function YusRoomTrain()
        {
               
        }
       
        override public function create():void
        {
           
           
            bg = new FlxSprite(0, 0,yusroom );
            add(bg);
           
           
            laptop = new Window(260, 480);
            laptop.makeGraphic(140, 50);
            laptop.clickFunction = clickLaptop;
            add(laptop);
           
            outwin = new Window(100, 170);
            outwin.makeGraphic(270, 320);
            outwin.clickFunction = clickWindow;
            add(outwin);
           
            bed = new Window(400, 600);
            bed.clickFunction = clickBed;
            bed.makeGraphic(600, 200);
            add(bed);
           
            luggage = new Window(500, 550);
            luggage.clickFunction = clickLuggage;
            luggage.makeGraphic(200, 100);
            add(luggage);
           
            bathroomdoor = new Window(900, 150);
            bathroomdoor.clickFunction = clickDoor;
            bathroomdoor.makeGraphic(100, 530);
            add(bathroomdoor);
           
                   
            arrowright = new Window(1100, 500);
            arrowright.loadGraphic(GlobalVars.arrowright);
            arrowright.alpha = 1;
            arrowright.clickFunction = clickArrow;
            add(arrowright);
           
           
           
           
            sceneNO = 4;
           
            wordsStart = new Array("Crap. I forgot to plug in the charger before I started typing. Sigh. Oh well, maybe I'll go explore the train for a bit and give my legs a stretch....maybe grab a drink too.");
           
            wordsLaptop = new Array("My laptop is charging at the moment. By the time I get back I should be able to save what I've written properly and watch a movie perhaps.")
           
            wordsWindow = new Array("The sun is starting to set … looks like we're passing by a few mountains.");
           
            wordsBed = new Array("It's worth forking out for a first class ticket. I don't want to deal with people at the moment ...");
           
            wordsLuggage = new Array("My bag. My novel is in there somewhere ... I might read it later.");
           
            wordsBath = new Array("I've no reason to go to the bathroom.");
           
           
           
           
           
           
            FlxG.stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, op);
           
            super.create();
           
        }
       
        private function op(e:Event):void
        {
           
           
           
           
           
           
            if (yuroomfirsttime == 0 )
            {
            dialog.showDialog(wordsStart);
            yuroomfirsttime = 1;
            }
            FlxG.stage.removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, op);
           
        }
       
       
       
       
       
        private function clickLaptop():void
        {
            dialog.showDialog(wordsLaptop);
        }
       
        private function clickWindow():void
        {
            dialog.showDialog(wordsWindow);
        }
       
        private function clickBed():void
        {
            dialog.showDialog(wordsBed);
        }
       
        private function clickLuggage():void
        {
            dialog.showDialog(wordsLuggage);
        }
       
        private function clickDoor():void
        {
            dialog.showDialog(wordsBath);
        }
       
        private function clickArrow():void
        {
            FlxG.fade(0x00000000, 1,afterfade);
        }
       
        private function afterfade():void
        {
            FlxG.switchState(new TrainCarriage01);
        }
    }
   
   
}

Did somebody say working cut scene?

Alright, so only two days after declaring it wasn't going to work in engine its all working in engine. Unfortunately it wasn't as simple as I wanted it to be of getting it into the engine. But I'm sure you don't care about all that!

 http://flippinmental.deviantart.com/art/Wasabi-Engine-with-cut-scene-260523678

There are some missing fonts, animations and sound effects but I shall add those later. I wanted to get something working together just to show everyone. Overall however I think doing it this way will in the long run it will make things a lot easier and better. Also I fixed the glitch (well it wasn't really a glitch but lets call it one for arguments sake) in which the text would 'jump' in the opening. It doesn't do that anymore. Few problems, the letter 'z' in 'froze' wont display and it doesn't like ampersands. God knows that my engine has got against those two. I'll work on finding that out though. The ampersand I can kinda understand but the letter 'z'!? Anyway, enjoy!

(lol just noticed a glitch where sounds from the opening start playing again. I forgot about that)

Some drawings and update

I am alive! Been sleepy most of this week, but should be online a lot more this coming week and have a lot more to show. Anyway I'll show some stuff I've done.

Here are some quick designs for the uniform for the bartender. It's actually pretty hard to come up with different designs for a bartender as it seems there's only so much you can do. But anyway I got several designs done here. The most left design is most similar to what I originally had him wearing in my drawings. The next one he's only wearing a shirt and bow tie. I also added some straps around his upper arm. I've seen some people wearing these, I'm not actually sure what the point of them is but I think its to pull up the sleeves or something like that, would make sense for a bartender. The very right I gave him a skinny tie as I was running out of ideas. In all of them he's wearing high rise trousers (I'm pretty sure that's not there name) but I figured seeing as we wont really see the trousers it dosnt matter too much.

The train card. I decided to design the logo like a parody of the national rail. I took their design and distorted it in a number of ways. Not really a 'ha ha' parody, just a visual one. The card from what I remember is also the key to Yu's room so I built a black strip into it for it to be used for that while also displaying all the travel information such as time date and route. The very bottom card I removed the strip with the idea being the strip would be on the back anyway.

The old man pose. Was thinking of what kind of stance the old man should have. I figured having him in a kind of huddled position might be nice. As I think we never talk to him when he's not sitting at the table I thought it would be ok to depict him sitting at a table in his pose. I also did a quick sketch of a possible redesign. I dunno, I felt like giving some facial hair.

Jade mentioned she had already finished him. So this is just a final drawing I did of the train guard a few days ago.

Inventory ideas and angry man designs (and not in that order)

So the title really says it all so lets get to it. (Jades watching us) So up first is the angry man on the train design. Kind of realised he hadn't been designed yet so I set about it yesterday. I did a couple of designs (didn't really go into clothes as I figured he would be wearing shirt/tie in any designs) so I focused on the face. There's one I think is the strongest design and believe works best, but I did a few more just to mess around a bit and make sure I'd got the right idea. I'll let everyone else see which one they like the most (the one in the upper left makes me laugth).

 
So I've also done some designs for the inventory system. I know Jade has had some trouble designing it and quite frankly I had trouble designing it too and one idea I hit upon is; do we really need a separate screen for the items. There's several reasons I thought this. For one the separate screen for the items adds nothing other then allowing us to see a close up of the item itself (hold on I'll come back to that) . We could of used it for combining items and we can, but it seems just as easy to do that in the main game screen (you'll select the item, press the combine button and then click the item you wish to combine with). Due to a quirk of the engine (and by quirk I mean really annoying glitch that means you can't select an item and then switch state - side note - a way around that just occurred to me this second but lets leave that for now) all the items have to be displayed on the main screen, which I think is quite helpful and makes selecting items easier anyway. There's little need for a screen purely for the inventory as it doesn't seem to do much. So what I propose is that we scrap that screen altogether and have it so that when you use the look function on an item in the inventory, it will display the dialog explaining what that item is and show a close up of that item on top of the screen. Like so;

BUT! Because I know this idea may not be popular or I've missed something that someone will bring up in the comments, I did a quick whip up of the layout for the inventory screen anyway. Though it does result in a lot of empty space which is a bit of a shame, but honestly I'm really struggling with it. This design I believe would be the most efficient and practical, all the items down one side and the description and image on the right when clicked on. Not all that different from the TKON one. For things like the phone there would be an option to use and by pressing on use it would then take you to another screen altogether (which is actually how it would work in the other design too).

(Prize to who ever spots the item that dosen't belong)
I didn't go all out on the graphics as I wanted to focus on the layout and get that down before worrying about the overall look of it.

Just in case anyone asks. I know in a lot of other games the items are displayed in like a drop down box and believe me I tried to get something like that working, its not the fault of as3 or flixel but mine that I just can't get it to work properly. It basically would end up crashing the file as it wouldn't frikkin disappear after you clicked and after much trial and error I just figured to leave it. But that's actually another reason I like the idea I've proposed, if you think to monkey island 4's inventory, that just appears over the current screen as do ermm probably a lot of other games that I cant think of right now!

Anyway enjoy. And if people really don't like this idea or the layout for the inventory screen I'm sure we can figure out some new design that works even better and I'll have a bit more a think about it.

Laptop CU

Okay, been working on the laptop close up. Taking me a bit longer then expected but I think its coming along alright. I think I'll add more detail to the laptop but other then that I think its nearly done. Obviously the rest of the background I havn't even started on so I'll start my work with that soon.

Defib puzzle rambling

I'll copy/pasta from my previous comment:


I was just thinking about the defib puzzle couple of days back.  Instead of having a close up of Kenny's chest I was thinking about Yu having a momentary flashback to one of his medical textbooks in how and when to use the defib.

You would need to turn on the defib for it to charge. In the meantime, you'll need to attach the pads to the right area of the chest.

There will be a diagram of a person and players would need to attach the  pads to the right place; possibly by trial and error?

Once they're attached, the defib analyses whether the person needs to be administered a shock (shockable rhythm or not) and will be shocked.  Maybe you need to hit the button when the needle points to shockable and you can't miss? Mike, let's discuss this puzzle nearer the time.

There is a time limit to get the patches right as well as administrating the shock.  I was thinking that the longer it takes for players to get it right, the visuals will start blurring/decaying and Yu will start having flashbacks from that day in A&E along with warped/creepy sound design.

If you fail this flashback scene, Yu has another mental breakdown and Kenny dies.  Actually this'll be a good narrative branch that we could possibly expand on for the full version.  Hmm let's keep it simple for now and just make it have a game over scene.  It'll be cool if the result this puzzle has an actual effect on the story though!

Anyway, that's my rambling.

I've added a 'Puzzle Design' tag and will go back and re-tag a few posts.

As an added bonus, I was re-playing the Edgeworth game and I took a few pictures:

This was literally Mike's reaction to reading the Korean horror comic. No joke.

This is similar to what I had in mind for having two characters on screen so it makes it quite nice to see both character reactions to certain statements.

Ema Skye is back! And she reminds me of Kemi :3

Lol.

Quick update

Heya all, just a quick update tonight as I'm not feeling too good and wanna get off to bed. But I need to put this up as I wanna get working on it all tomorrow so I basically need info on what ones people thing work better, and which don't.

First up is the computer close up. Jade already did a quick image that was used for the interface design post, so the first one is more similar to that.

But I was wondering if a slightly more angled pose would work better? So here's a quick rougth of that.

(The laptops dead).

Also I've done a few designs for the defib unit. The first is based off a real design while the others are based off of that but have a lot made up.

And finally I've got a quick paint over I did of ML's train background. A very quick paint over just to get an idea. I was wondering though what is the colour scheme going to be of the train? For this quickly I just went with Emma's. Obviously more detail would be added but it gives us an idea of what it will look like(possibly).

Train bedroom layout (wip)

Good evening to all! I've just been playing around with the room layout, working with previous concept images. I'm not sure if this is something that has been thought about much (and perhaps I'm being too fussy), however the train is already quite wide. If the bed was to be facing the door and have a wardrobe squeezed in there too, you're looking increasing the train width a great deal further. If you are happy for that, I'll stick to the concepts (which are awesome - I really like the sense of space - I know it seems slightly contradictory in bringing this issue up).
.

To give a rough idea of current train width:

If not I have 2 propositions. First is that the bed is placed adjacent to the door - as opposed to perpendicular - so the room runs along the length of the train. The other option is to 'compact' the room. This wouldn't effect camera angles to an extent since walls can be removed in order to have a wider field of view. Below is some quick modelling to give a rough idea of item placement in the compact view.

Wall 'behind' desk slid to the side  - camera is where the bathroom would be.

 View from the room entrance. (L to R - bed, wardrobe desk)

I am off for the day on Thursday since I'm working on Saturday so I can sit down and get the room modeled out in detail once all is confirmed.

Take care everyone!

Train Interior (wip)

Hellooo! My apologies for not being around yet - I have been on the late shift at work! x_x Anyhow! I have some updates. Below is a sketch based on some of the interior concepts and Emma's painted concept which I began with for the 3D recreation. I had a phone conversation with JD, in which she suggested we go for sliding doors and are going for a bit of a futuristic look. I'm also trying to keep everything looking somewhat 'eerie' in keeping with the general atmosphere.

I have been rejigging the concept as I go along and have started to work on some of the lighting inside the train. Below is what I have so far!

I'm on a slightly shorter shift pattern this week, so more updates to come!

Mongoose out!

PS: really impressed by all the work here! Kudos! :D

PPS: Lighting update:

Glass, glass, glass (wip ?)

So I've finally (hopefully if everyone is pleased with it) finished the glass close up. I'm quite glad now that I chose something simple to go with first as it meant I had room to learn what I was actually doing. Anyone I think this has come out quite well. There are a few things I might (could) add to it. One of those is some sort of design or logo to go on the coaster. That wouldn't be too hard, design a logo and then I'd just deform it to get the perspective right. And as the bg is looking a bit dark maybe add details like menu or stuff for behind the bar. Either way here is the fruit of my efforts (oh yeh and I also corrected it to be a water and lime).

 

Oh and just because I felt like it here's the painting of the glass on its own.

As a super special fun update I've also decided to put the first attempt I had at painting the glass up as well. The one above is attempt number 4, the one below is attempt number 1 and given these were only days apart I think that's quite an improvement. 

Towel with ice.....or a rare species of squid...

So I spent a while trying to simulate the cloth to make it move around the ice and eventually I got to this...

It is basically the towel tied around the ice to make it like a make-shift ice pack.

Or it's a squid...

Towel WIP

I have redone the towel but I am having problems with getting the actual fabric texture right. On the sides it comes out as too strong and on the top its barely noticeable. I will try to edit it in Photoshop to see if I can change the levels.

Glass close up continued...

Urghh wow I hoped to get more done today but I spent most of it working on this. After several failed attempts and pretty much starting completely from scratch on this again I've finally got an update. I hope people like this and think its better then the last one. With the last one, the next day I pretty much regretted posting it as it really doesn't look that great. Maybe I'll have the same attitude towards this but I think it's at least an improvement. I started looking at after artists work and looking at digital painting tutorials. This isn't completed, still need to do the bg and the coaster. (I also used more layers with this one so I hopefully wont have to restart from scratch, The reflections are all on separate layers, I'm not too fond of them so I might change them later, and the edges are a bit raggedy so I'll probs smooth them out).

This is still a learning process but hopefully I'll get to an acceptable standard.

Glass WIP

Wha-wha-wha?? Two posts in one day! Yep, I decided not to play minecraft tonight and get onto some painting practice as its been some time and I'll need all the time I can get on it. I also wanna get a gauge of what people think of this and the way I've painted it. The white areas probably wont be so white in the final thing and of course the bg I havn't even started on yet. Maybe it's a bit too early to put this up but I figure it can't hurt.

I also wanted to post this now as I probably wont post anything tommorow, so I'm kinda making up for that. Plus that gives me a days worth of advice and opinions. Also puts me in a better frame of mind on Thursday when I come to work on this again.

Remember when I said I was going to kill you last? I LIED!

So I realised I haven't made a post here in quite some time and seeing as I've stopped been lazy and actually started doing some work I figured I'd upload it now rather then do a big update later in the week. So my main update is that I've finally got myself a graphics tablet, specifically wacom's bamboo pen (not touch, that would cost more and I really don't see any need for it) so I cant start doing some more work in the computer which basically means I can get painting and will also mean animation will become a lot easier to do too.

Anyway the first thing I have to show Is some rougth sketches for Yu's room on the train that I've done based of Jade's layout. I originally did the shot at the bottom but realised there was quite a few problems with it. Firstly it left out a lot of the details from Jade's original sketch due to the angle and also the angle itself made no sense. If we are supposed to be seeing from Yu's perspective then he must be about to jump out the window. The top drawing I think is better as it includes all the details and everything is a lot more visible. I'm not sure how striking it is though compared to the first one, so maybe it needs work but I figured that would be the general angle. I realised one of the reasons I went for the original angle was because of concern that the player wouldn't be able to click the door to leave but since we dropped that idea and simply have arrows to show where you can move it doesn't matter anymore.

This is for one of the close ups at the bar. It's actually not that great but I figured I'd post it as I want to talk about it a little bit. Rather then redrawing this I'm simply going to start painting over it and use it as a base.



http://flippinmental.deviantart.com/art/animationtest1-256557940


Did somebody say animation? I sure hope they did! As I've done one incredibly awkward looking and low fps (frames per second not first person shooter) test. I had a mini debate with myself as to weather I should bother posting this or not as I don't think it gives across very well what I want it to look like as this was done in a very sporadic way (random drawngs, scanned at different points in time and I think even drawen with different pencils). Future animations will probably be drawn straight into the computer rather then having any of that scanning mambo jumbo in the middle. Though I almost certainly will draw the key frames by hand and then scan them in as I find that so much easier.


http://flippinmental.deviantart.com/art/test2lol-256558726


Also I did a test for the wobble idea I had inspired by those korean comics. Again I'm not sure if this really gives across what it would look like but it gives a basic idea of what I was thinking.

Animations may be laggy and suck so download if its crashing or going too slow.

Things I plan to do this week;

- Start painting and finished the bar close up
- Start painting over some of Rumzi's finished objects
- Start doing animations for Yu

Yu/Kemi's House

I discovered a great way to plan out the environments, didn't' know why I didn't think about doing this before but drawing the environment from a top down view is incredibly useful to get a quick sense of space as well as experimenting with camera angles.  Doing it this way is also a quick and easy reference for perspectives.  (I did Yu's house first, then the train designs, then loads of ideas for Kemi's house).  Mike, here are the posts for the house plans.  Sorry if it doesn't really make sense to everyone - Mike and I have talked it out to the bone and we've even sorted out how the electricity grids will work especially in Yu's house XD

Yu's house:

- A lot of empty spaces in the middle such as the living room and bedroom (matches his mental state)
- Very clean and organised
- A lot of books
- Has a lot of Kemi's crap in there which sticks out like a sore thumb (think Nodame's stuff in Chiaki's room for those who has watched Nodame XD).
- Mike and I have decided that Yu has a thing for potted plants; particularly bonzais and Japanese peace-lilies XD. An idea that we had was that one of the things Yu can do whilst he waits for Kemi to come over was to cook dinner, read a book, watch tv, check email ... and water his plants.
- Uses minimalistic but semi expensive furniture
- I WANT YU'S HOUSE ;(.

Kemi's house (still WIP but the general idea's there):

Kemi's house is still under construction but there are certain elements written below that I thought would be good to mirror her mind state such as being chaotic, lots of magazines, plushies, books, CDs, DVDs and post-it notes everywhere.  Generally a lot of junk but cosy.

The idea behind this one is to have a turntable tv which is the centre of Kemi's life.  She can turn it to watch it in the living area, the bed, her little dressing table and her desk.  Oh yeh and the kitchen too I guess.  I had an idea that at one point when Yu visits her house, maybe every time he comes out from a room, the tv would be turned around to always face him...

Design 2, no turntable tv but the flow of the house is a lot better with a bigger desk.

Design 3 I tweaked the living room and made the place more fitting for 2 people.  Again not sure which design to go for depending on concept art BUT we should get the assets done for day1-2 first! Can't wait to get the ball rolling now.  What's everyone up to now?

Train interiors/CU concepts

Right.  Mike visiting me here in Bath proved to be highly fruitful for the HW project as we managed to get loads done.  I'll split up the scans from my sketchbook into different posts just to make it easier.

This post focuses on some of the train interiors and concepts.  Perhaps the guys working in 3D can give make us a quick draft so that we can experiment with camera angles?  I like the idea that Rumzi started with modelling stuff in greyscale then the normal artists can just paint over them.

Some random concepts for the CU such as the glass of water that the bartender gives Yu, Kenny's scribble book and the magazine concept.  If anyone wants to the page layouts/cover of the mag please feel free to...

Blue print for carriage 5-6.  I'd like to add a few more chairs and make it lo/ok cramp to give the impression that it's bigger than it actually is.  Any help from the 3D people?  Door to carriage 4 is at the bottom and 6 or 7 haven't decided is the door at the top of the scan.

Yu's compartment, didn't bother drawing the bathroom since there's no point to go in there.

Forgot to scanned this and I couldn't be asked to use the scanner so I just re-drew the CU concept I had Yu's phone.  Rumzi, do you think you can model more of Yu's phone so that we can just paint over and animated some flashing lights?

Asset list for day1&2 + moar concept art

The asset list for day 1&2 has been combined seeing as they're based on the same kind of environment so I just combined them.  I've added more character expressions for Kenny, Riko, Bartender, Phone Guy and the crazy Old Man, however I've just added some words to describe their emotions.  I figured that it'll just help with the visual brain storm for the characters before we start refining and cutting down the amount of expressive animation needed.  Hopefully it's more helpful that way?

Also more background stuff is added like the game cutscenes (usually consisting of closeups) and more item designs like a defibrillator, ice and towel items which will be combined to make a make-shift ice pack.  Anyway I hope you guys can check it out and start thumbnail brainstorming for the characters at least.

I've left out the audio assets for the time being as I'm writing out a sound map for the story events.  I'll post it up once I'm done so that you guys can check it out if you're interested XD.

http://www.mediafire.com/?9efbi5ern9jd4ga

Yu's room on train concept

Also this is my rendition of Yu's room on the train.  I've just modernised it a bit and added a bathroom with the right angle for the window/laptop.

The magazine rack is above the bed head bit - maybe add a little bed headrest to make it a bit more fancy? There's a spring nightlight with a switch above the bed for reading.  Blinds have been changed to the type in which you can pull the string and it'll roll up/down.  Was trying to make the room's interior more streamlined/economical.  The desk juts out from the wall (no table legs) to optimise space.  Maybe add some thin desk drawers.  There's also a hole bit under the desk to store luggage. Oh I forgot to add the laptop charger into the pic but you get the idea.  Some artwork above the desk and oh yeh, all the doors are the sliding sort.  Again going with the whole streamline/economic approach as Tim previously suggested.  The main door should look a bit bulkier compared to the bathroom door because it has machines in it to read train tickets (which is used as compartment keys).  I'm thinking about the ones in hotels where you either slide down the ticket to open/lock the door or you insert it.  Anyway, just throwing in some ideas.

Hooray! Emma has done some awesome concept art :B

Love the atmosphere of this especially with how lights are depicted to give it a slightly dreamy touch.  I think having this kind of experience for the player will be best as it suits Yu's mind set at the moment - almost like the past events doesn't seem real at all...yet it is D:

Poor Yuey, we love you no matter how emo you getz :V