Arizona in Bellum Edition

Hey there, folks. Been a while, but we're still here. However, we have made a few changes to AiB that we think you should be aware of. You see, over the past several months we have grown bored with the trite and cliched setting of Amare in Bellum. It's something that's been done a million times before, and will surely be done a million more times. So after much discussion, we have taken it upon ourselves to... Tweak AiB.

We here at EDT are proud to present the new AiB—Arizona in Bellum!




That's right! We've gone ahead and changed the entire landscape of AiB! No longer does it take place in a dusty old refugee town. Oh no, it now takes place in the good ol' Copper State during the times of the Wild West!

Of course, because the setting has changed, the characters have to change to. They're keeping their names and their designs, but their occupations will be different. Let's take a look at some of their changes, shall we?

Amelia - Having grown up somewhere in the desert of Arizona, Amelia left her tribe to go the frontier town of Marin. Since her arrival, she has become a well-loved Deputy and is known to catch every crime in action with her big and bulky camera.

Sybil (The Aloof Arsonist) - Wanted for multiple counts of arson, The Aloof Arsonist is shrouded in mystery. With reports of a mysterious standing around in the burnt areas moments before it was engulfed by flames, the fiend always leaves without a trace. Except for scattered cigarette butts that is.

Julia - Julia is the daughter of the town prospector. Looking down on all inhabitants of the frontier town, Julia gets everything her cold black heart desires because her "pappy" is the richest man in town.

Vyra - There are only three certainties in the town of Marin: The heat, death, and the local bartender's cleanliness. Always washing the dishes and cups at the saloon, the bartender, Vyra, hates anything dirty. Unfortunately for her, she lives in the desert and lives in a place where showers are considered a luxury. Because of this, she tries her best to keep everything clean and tidy.

Sasha - Having lived in Marin her entire life, Sasha runs the ranch on the outskirts of town with her mother and sister. Spending her days, herding cows and taming horses, Sasha is a cowgirl through and through.

Vincent - Vincent is the main character of our story. He traveled to the town of Marin to find fame and glory as a gunslinger. How will he do that? By getting the bounty on the Aloof Arsonist's head. Things won't be easy, though, as he now has to deal with a new environment and the quirky inhabitants of the town.


Well, that just about does her. We'll have more info on this soon, but for now just hang tight and wait for more updates

Love,
EDT

Valentine's Day/We Still Aren't Dead Edition

Roses are red. Violets are Blue. Our Dev Team isn't dead, we still love you.

In fact, we’ve been busier than ever. A lot of stuff has happened since our last update, so grab your booze and enjoy spending Valentine’s Day alone while reading about an in-development eroge, because we got a lot of stuff to talk about.

Act 1 is coming along nicely. The outline for has been completed for sometime, and while a few adjustments are being made, writing is going smoothly. With some of us even starting work on our routes. However, there is some heart wrenching news. Material Tire decided to break up with us and leave his spot as Julia’s writer, but he's still around in an editorial. That hasn’t set us back, though, as the details for Julia’s route have been written down for a long time, so it’s only a matter of tweaking her a little and having our new writer type it all out.

Speaking of tweaking, we’ve tweaked some of the girls’ designs a little. We haven’t changed their body types or looks (Don’t worry, Amelia is still chubby), but we have changed their clothes a little. This was done so they look less like tourists and more like they came from a different country. It’s nothing too significant, but we’re happy with it.

We also know what we want our backgrounds to look like now. We have a few made and also a few samples, but we haven't settled with a BG artist yet. Hit us up if you’re interested.

Next up we have the first and official introduction of one of our side characters. We here at EDT are happy to introduce Charlotte, Sasha’s little sister! A.K.A. the little ghost hiding behind Sasha in the Halloween picture.

                                               

Charlotte Beleren

Age: 10

Birthday: October 21

Hair: Brunette

Eyes: Teal

Height: 4'3”

Favorite Food: Burgers, but only if they don't have the tomatoes. Claims to hate fish, but she'll eat it if she knows that Sasha or her mother can't see it. Generally prefers sugary foods, like any kid.

Favorite Color: Purple, almost a violet tint. She likes drawing with it because “it stands out more than the others.”

Other information:

-        Sasha taught her how to swim. She likes to play Marco Polo with other friends, but only when she isn't 'it'. Is a bit of a scrapper, tends to get rough and has a strong tomboy streak, commonly picking fights with other children her age.

-        Has a fear of bugs, most of all bees and wasps. Strangely enough she isn't scared of spiders. “Mama told me spiders ain't a bug so I ain't a scared of them no more!”

-        Thinks fish are slimy and gross. Sasha frequently tries to take her fishing, but all she does is chill at the pier with Sasha while looking for things to do. Most of the time she tries to watch TV, but because of frequent power outages she either sits around and complains about how there's nothing to do, or she draws.

-        Goes to elementary school. There's only one in the town, and she shares a class with 30 other kids, at a school of about 60 other 4th graders.

-        Sasha always dresses her up in skirts and dresses, but she prefers shorts “like big sis.”

-        Isn't too conscious about the war going on. Understands that their neighbors are at war, but like most kids, doesn't think of it beyond people killing each other.

Also, here’s some Vincent concept art. We’ll do a Vincent Edition soon, but enjoy this for the time being.

Hopefully we’ll be introducing more side characters soon, so stick with us.

Well, that just about does her. But before you go, have some treats that the girls made to celebrate this occasion.

Happy Valentine’s Day, EDT.

Halloween Edition

Hey folks, we just wanted to drop by and wish you all a happy Halloween. Stay safe and have fun, you crazy hooligans.

Status Report Edition

We should elaborate on our upcoming preview, which we've dubbed "meet the girls," something our team has been building on the side for the last month or so. The title speaks for itself; it's a short sequence in visual novel format where you can get a glimpse of the girl's personality first hand.

The storyline is unrelated to the main game, following a man named Shiv Raker who is exploring Marin and gathering stories and experiences from the refugees, giving the reader an impression of the heroines. However, our programmer is having a bit of fun with it himself and is sneaking one or two easter eggs here and there for you to look for.

It's a bit of an experiment for us as well; we're planning to follow a new direction with the artstyle for the project and this allows us to see how it would work in motion and hear your feedback on it before we begin serious work on the main game's assets. The current sprites are only a placeholder for what we intend to have in the final piece, but will present a general feel for the direction we hope to take. We're looking forward to any comments or pointers you'll have on it.

As for the main story, our writers have also been collaborating on a definite script for act 1 and deciding which order and flow best fits for introducing the player, and Vincent, to the city of Marin. We've also fleshed out a few scenes within act 1 and gotten some foundation laid with regards to both interaction between characters and with their environment.

We're still continuing to work the many kinks out of our creative process, and we hope you look forward to meeting your moeblob soon.

Do you hear that? That's the sound of a Sybil chilling Edition

We continue our progress on our first public build, basically, a demo for people to know what Amare in Bellum is about and what we to await from this project.

Today we received some new content from our musician and I would like to share it with you guys.
This specifically, will be Sybil's theme in-game. A chill, relaxed song, just like Sybil.

Hope you like it, keep an eye on the blog for more updates on AiB and thank you for your support!

Our First Sprite Edition

Hey guys, Syon here. Just thought I'd swing by and show off our first sprite.

 As you can see, this a sprite of Sybil with her hands behind her head. This was done by our wonderful artist, Kiwi. 

This is the sprite in use.

Things are always subject to change, so this may not necessarily represent the final product, but I thought it was worth showing off. 

Anyway, that's all for now. See ya' next time. And remember, your feedback is always welcomed. 

The sounds of home Edition

Hello everybody and welcome July. We have had some good progress so far. Although we are somewhat limited in our art department (Kiwi is an amazing artist but she's got to work now and she can't do her magic in such short spans of time) we have continued our steady development pace for now.

Even better, our musician Jabs has finished a BGM that he had composed some time ago, it actually is in the widget to the right of the blog, along with the main menu theme. This is that same BGM but in its final form.



That's everything for now, thank you very much for reading this and your support (Specially you /ksb/, you guys are cool). See you soon!

WE DOT COM NOW Edition

Hey guys, Syon again. We have a couple of announcements we'd like to make.

Firstly, if you haven't noticed, we're dot com now. We registered a domain name, so instead of dealing with the ".blogspot" portion of the address you can just type in "editiondevteam.com" and you should arrive at our blog. Don't worry, we're not just using this for the blog. We are actively working on a website that will also use the domain name. If all goes according to plan, that should be up and running soon.

Exposition Edition

Since this is my first blog post, I’d better introduce myself. I’m Ed, and I’m responsible for creating, editing, and maintaining the wiki for Amare in Bellum. We envisage this to be the repository for lore, backstory, and character profiles, and something that players can consult if they wish to know more about the girls, or any of the locations mentioned in the game. Right now this is still a work in progress and not ready for public consumption, but the production of articles is proceeding apace. This means that I can share some of the details of the countries involved in the wider setting of Amare in Bellum, and their relevance to the storyline. I’m sorry it’s a lot of WORDSWORDSWORDS and no pictures, but our artists have better things to be doing at the minute as we finalize our preparations for Act 1.



Rhen-Palait is the home country of the main character Vincent, as well as the girls Vyra, Sybil, and Amelia. Formed by the merger of the separate countries Rhen and Palait almost three hundred years ago, Rhen-Palait’s history is mainly characterized by violence and war, and as such it has grown into a totalitarian dictatorship headed by the oppressive political party known as the People’s Unification Front (PUF). Whilst powerful both economically and militarily due to its vast reserves of natural resources and high population, it suffers from chronic underdevelopment; the majority of its citizens still work as manual labourers and tradesmen in fields such as farming, mining, and factory production lines. It is currently at war with Baharistan, and it is this war which prompted Vincent’s conscription into the Rhelvian army. Their armed forces outnumber those of any other civilised nation by a considerable degree, but tend to be poorly equipped and trained.

Baharistan is Julia’s home country, and is the “enemy” in the ongoing war with Rhen-Palait. Smaller than Rhen-Palait and considerably less well-endowed with natural resources, its economy is almost entirely focused on service provision and highly-skilled professions. It is a world leader in almost all fields of scientific research and technological advancement, and its citizens enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. The Bahari government is a technocratic democracy – a relevant and accredited professional qualification is a prerequisite for serving in a cabinet role in the government, and numerous committees and advisory bodies have entrenched themselves into the legislative process. This sometimes leads to bureaucratic red tape delaying important decisions, but does ensure that they are always taken with the greatest care and consideration for their impact. The Bahari armed forces are relatively limited in numbers, but are well trained and equipped with the latest in battlefield innovations. They specialise in guerrilla and covert operations, but can be relied upon to give an excellent account of themselves in any combat situation.

Rhenish Braque is the nation in which most of Amare in Bellum is set – it is the country in which Marin, the setting of the game and the administrative headquarters of the government taskforce handling the influx of refugees, is located. The region of Braque declared independence from Rhen at the same time the two countries formally merged, and it retained the old governmental structure of Rhen including its monarchy. A small but proud nation steeped in tradition, it houses many areas of historical and natural interest, and tourism forms a major part of its economy. Its government is a constitutional elective monarchy, in which all citizens are given de facto freedom to choose the next monarch after the death or abdication of the previous one. Despite its historical ties to Rhen-Palait, Rhenish Braque is neutral – its safety is ensured through membership of the League of Non-Aligned Nations, an influential confederacy of nations across the world who are committed to non-interference in the affairs of other nations, and to offering mutual military aid to any member who might come under attack by a hostile aggressor. As part of its commitment to this agreement, Rhenish Braque maintains a small standing army of well-trained soldiers, but the war has caused a calamitous downturn in the Braquian economy, meaning that their army is nowhere near as well-equipped as it could be.

Perfect Girl Edition

Name: Vyra Wells

Age: 18

Sex: F

Blood type: A

Nationality: Rhen-Palait

Vyra, originally known as Victim-tan, comes from Rhen-Palait. She arrives at Marin shortly before Vincent.

Vyra Wells is the epitome of a perfectionist. It takes Vyra three minutes to do what a normal person could do in one. Vyra handles even the simplest of tasks with extreme care, as though every task should be her highest priority. She goes to such lengths as to redo someone's work if it isn't up to par with her own standards. While not particularly critical of others, Vyra is simply concerned with how others would judge her.

Vyra gets along well with most refugees, however she opts to stay impersonal in most relationships.She and Amelia are often at ends, with their vastly different approaches on how to come to solutions. Where Amelia would prefer to rush through something and get it done, Vyra would be precise and analytical. Vyra gets along well with most people, despite her fussiness over minute details.

Besides working at her part-time job, Vyra's time is best spent inside the refuge of her tent. Inside, she has around three guns to keep her company. Rather than shooting at targets or practicing her aim, Vyra simply enjoys assembling guns and taking them apart once they're done. The precision that's needed is a welcome aspect of gun-building.

Thank you for reading! We'll be sure to update more soon.

-Kiwi

Direction of the VN Edition

Hello readers,

We are still working every day on the project, we have been working on discussing the direction and tone the story will take and many other lore-related stuff like common events, places, people and such. Of course this cannot be uploaded to the blog because we'd be spoiling the whole story.

"What about the artists?"
Well we got two artists in our team. Kiwi who is very active within the group, she's also writing a route though so she spends most of the time for now writing and discussing the story

WaffleBunny, our second artist, is still kinda fed up with stuff but she is still active within the team.

Sadly, they haven't given us any art that isn't concept that we'd rather keep in our storage.

We've also received some content form our musician member, Jabs. Though, he decided that the content wasn't good enough and is working on completely redoing it. Once he's done with it we'll be sure to update you.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Backgrounds and Seagull Edition

Since the moment we begun the project we contemplated using edited photographs as backgrounds a last resort in case we didn't had any access to Backgrounds artists.

As expected it was very hard finding an artist willing to do backgrounds for us. Even though we were able to receive help from several artists (Thank you very much Borongannonoypi and 3Deek!) they have their own projects and art to do and aren't able to assist us full time. Our newest backgrounds artist "Chuck" has been very busy with his personal life.

The intro is somewhere at 50%. We got the writing, the programming, some music and the sound FX. But we are still missing many backgrounds, CGs and some other music. So, in order to speed things up a little we've decided that we will go for our last resort.

Backgrounds is what we lack the most of, so we're now going for edited photographs for backgrounds. We've already taken our first steps in this. We've obtained several pictures for the beach scenes and forest. And our art department (Kiwi and WaffleBunny) is already working on editing the photographs to give them that VN style. So, we proudly present our newest content.

Beach/Departments. (Edited for VN style):

We are still working on the filters and effect and all that stuff, we are aware of the errors. WIP.

Beach / Pier. (Edited for VN style):

This photo has different filters/effects than the previous one. As I said we are still trying and testing with different techniques. WIP.

Forest Pathway (Unedited):

This image will be heavily edited once it goes into the VN.

The Seagull (Unedited) 

Total bro. Loves bread crumbs and shitting on people in the beach.

We got many other images but these ones were chosen to be shown in the blog. We will still probably use drawn backgrounds for CGs, but only time will tell.

That's everything for now, thank you very much for your attention and see you soon.

Waffle is back Edition

Waffle was absent for a while, she had some personal stuff to take care of, but she has now reported back for duty and delivered us this masterpiece. If you're under 18 please have your parents browse with you... Or not because this image is 2HOT4U, that'd be awkward anyways so just make sure to lock the door or put a shelf behind it I don't know.

DAMN!

Chuck and backgrounds Edition

We are still working hard on our VN "Amare in Bellum"

First off I've been spending uncountable hours in DeviantArt looking for a backgrounds artist. My quest finally brought results. We added ChuckSantos to our team!

Here's an example of his amazing work:

Chuck has already been added to our roster and we are working hard together to achieve this project!


We also have had several other Deviants lend us a hand like Borongannonoypi in the past.
Right now we received a backgrounds from our DeviantArt friend 3Deek. We asked if he could do a background on the café scenes. Here's his work so far.

We are loving the art so far, the artists are very talented and we are very glad to work with them. We hope we can bring you a more proper introduction of the project sometime soon.

This is it for now, thank you very much for your attention!

Update Edition 2: Electric Boogaloo

Hello.

We would like to inform you on our progress so far.

As of now we are working on developing our first "public build". We are working hard so this build reflects the Visual Novel we are striving for. We want people to get interested not only with the appearance of the VN but the characters and setting itself.

I've been doing several changes to the code. Mostly implementing new stuff and cleaning the code.

After spending many weeks looking for Backgrounds artist luck finally punched me in the face. In one day 2 artists replied to me showing interest in working in the project.

We have kept in contact with them. One of them has even already made a background that we are going to use in this upcoming build:

The artist's name is:
Borongannonoypi.

This is his DeviantArt account:
http://borongannonoypi.deviantart.com/

He has kept in constant communication with us and his ability has been really helpful to us.








Kiwi, in cooperation with Syon, have made some Sybil Artwork. I present you: The Many Faces of Sybil Dastun

We are making some changes to the build. Originally we planned to release only the intro. But we are aware that the story of a drafted boy getting shot wouldn't be really attractive to many members of the VN player base. We are planning to add a "Meet the girls" interactive session in the following build. Our artists are working hard on sprites and character drawings for the build.

On our music department, we got a new member, Sam Exner. Introduced to us by Raithfyre (they're in the same band, Love Theory). A talented guitar player, he, along with Jabs, will provide us the amazing soundtrack we want for the project. Here's one of Sam's songs:





That is all for now, we will make sure to keep you updated so keep an eye on this blog.

Best Girl Edition

Introducing Julia, which is the girl whose route I am writing.

Julia comes from one of Baharistan's prominent families, and was sent to Marin alone as a safety precaution. However, she still keeps a close eye on the war; staying up to date through various news reports and having lengthy phone calls to her family at home.

She is one of the few refugees in Marin exempt from working, as her family pays for her stay and expenses. The immense amount of free time that results from this is mostly used on finishing up her education via correspondance courses on arguing with the other residents for her own amusement. Despite being fond of arguments, she isn't very good at it, and often resorts to personal attacks instead, completely disregarding the feelings of those she might offend; she lives for herself, not others.

Apologies for the inaccuracy on the chinese checker board, our artist have never played it.

I think you'd be hard pressed to make a character more cliched than the basics of Julia, as she is simultaneously the foreign money-guy, rich girl who is full of herself and tsundere with a variation of twintails, on top of that she's a high school student, but hopefully it'll still end up as something I can be proud of.

The only other option is not releasing.

Update Edition

Hello! It has been a while since we posted something to this blog. We just want to let everyone know that we're still alive and working! Sorry if we haven't updated in a while. I have been programming the next build which will include the whole intro. I have added several Sound and Visual Effects as well as coded the whole script and lines. Just working on debugging and adding details here and there. We are looking for a Backgrounds artist so if you or anyone you know are/is a good background artist do not hesitate to contact us!

In the meanwhile our awesome artists Kiwi and WaffleBunny are working on temporal Backgrounds but we would really like someone that can take that position.

Jabs our awesome musician has improved the "Amare in Bellum: Title" song. It's embedded on the right panel of this webpage.

Our writers are already advancing into Act 1 and developing their corresponding girls attitude and personalities. We expect to introduce a new girl soon in this blog.

Kiwi has drawn some expressions for Amelia, she was presented in the previous blogpost:

We'll continue to work hard and report our progress.

Amelia Edition

Hey there, anyone, I'm the Outlander, one of the writers for Amare in Bellum. Originally, I just provided feedback on their forums as an outsider - hence the name Outlander - and soon found myself becoming a full member of the team. So which character did I hook up with? An adorable girl that goes by the name of Amelia Vahn.

Amelia was an old friend of Vincent's, but she moved away several years ago, fading out of Vincent's memory. She turns up in his life again at Marin, seeking refuge from the war, giving them the chance to rekindle their friendship. She's one of the happier residents of the town; always willing to lend a hand, or strike up a conversation, and never without her trusty camera ready to take a snapshot. Amelia chooses to ignore the war, disallowing it to be a part of her life. Her life is here, in the town, with the people.

I'm not big on cameras, but I think I got the best girl to write about; just looking at her artwork fills my head with ideas, it has gotten to a point where I spend more time writing for fun than I do playing video games. Very tragic, but I love it.

As for overall team progression: the writers are starting to create some scenarios for Act 1 and our code monkey, Fideon, is working on another build of the introduction with some assets to play around with. That's all for now, catch ya later.

 

EDition

Today Edition Development Team has an announcement to make.

We would like to welcome Edward Malus to the team!

He'll be helping us by organizing the lore, story, characters and the VN's info into helpful articles. We are working on them as we speak and we hope to release a wikipedia of sorts in the near future.

Welcome Edward Malus!

Sybil Edition

Greetings and salutations, my curious friends. I am the fabled Syon. I'm one of the writers working on our project, Amare in Bellum. My job is to write a route for one of the girls. In fact, the reason I'm here is so I can introduce the girl whose route I'm writing. So it is my pleasure to introduce to you, the three people reading this blog, Sybil Dastun!

Sybil is a refugee from the country of Rhen-Palait. Her deadpan demeanour and blunt statements distinguish her from the crowd along with her ever-present bandages that cover her head and her nasty smoking habit. She has become infamous among the residents of Marin as a class A moocher; lingering around shops and bothering people for food, refusing to take up any kind of work.

As you can see, we have some concept art (and a comic made by our wonderful artist Kiwi) drawn by WaffleBunny and Kiwi. Enjoy.

This is all we can show you right now, but rest assured, there will be more to present in the future.