A quick update on one of the joys of game development and PC art creation.

So I use Manga Studio Debut (4) for my line art, and GIMP 2.1 for my colouring. Manga Studio is a really old program, it technically doesn’t even exist anymore after the parent company changed names – and really I should switch to Photoshop, but I’ve been working off of Manga Studio for years and years, old habits and all that.

I turned on my PC this evening and was greeted with the above picture.

THAT is the program telling me that the main file (which is like a “book” wherein you can store a bunch of drawings) is corrupted. Even though I opened the .cst (which is the file format Manga Studio uses) – “nope, wrong file, does not compute!”

All of the lineart for the game, gone. There is no fix for this.

And yes, this bug has affected all of my backups, even going back to LAST YEAR, meaning that the last time I was online, the program must’ve tried to update and since there’s nothing to update to, broke - OR (more likely) some new sneak Windows update broke it.

I think the phrase rhymes with “clucking bell”.

Fortunately, there is good news;

I still have all the JPG line art files AND the PNGs (coloured) for all the work currently in the game as is. This means that I can still insert the finished artwork back into Manga Studio or whatever drawing program, but I won’t have the layers anymore, meaning I effectively have to either preform a load of fiddly little erasing or have redraw each picture from scratch for the pictures I want to change, such as making the grab art/reaction art for conversations/ updating character eyes/makeup etc.

So most importantly, what does this mean for SnakeByte Blue?

Basically… nothing, now that I’ve had a minute to think about it. I was super pissed about it at first, like you wouldn’t believe, thought I had lost EVERYTHING!

Fortunately, I realised that it wasn’t a huge deal.

I still have a fair few grab artwork to put into the game – I knew that I wasn’t going to get every single piece of grab artwork into the game before next release (just aiming for the highest number I could) – so this corrupted file fiasco means that I’ll have to spend some extra time on updating the old art with the new outfits than planned from here on out. It’s fiddly, annoying, and time consuming, but – just like Kyrsten – totally do-able.

Oh, and I can still use the program to draw new stuff, so no worries there!

The moral of this story is; when something goes wrong, take a deep breath, and see what we can do to move forwards, rather than throwing the CPU at the wall (I was tempted).

Oh, and use the newest programs and software.

Right – I’m off to sell my soul to Adobe. See you tomorrow for the update report! :D