ThinkBoxly was the original tech blog I started all the way back in 2012—before many of today's major web publications even existed! Initially, it was intended to be a tech news and reviews portal, but with time, it evolved into something more personal. From 2017-18, it served as a devblog for VNgen, the first product developed under the XGASOFT brand. Today, it lives on in these archives as a record of over 200 posts and 50 videos created in its lifetime, collectively generating hundreds of thousands of ...

About ThinkBoxly

When you've spent long enough on the journey, sometimes it's easy to forget the destination. When Yugure no Kagami was first conceived four years ago, I had no idea it would be this long before I got there. But as this devblog stands to witness, it's been a long process of laying the foundation for the purpose of saving time in the future. By building VNgen once and building it right, I've positioned myself (and other developers!) to quickly and easily create content without compromising on functionality ...

Update 36 - Starting From Zero

A wild devblog appears! For the past couples of months, I've taken a bit of a break from the regular devblog-style posts to cover some related topics instead. Each one was important to me, but there's another reason for the hiatus as well: behind the scenes, things were shifting gears in a big way. It's taken time, but the foundation is laid and I'm now settling into the process of building with tools, not just building tools. It's been enlightening to place myself in the shoes of a consumer using VNgen in ...

Update 35: Building (With) Tools

It's hard to believe almost a year has passed since XGASOFT's main site first went live, and along with it, the unveiling of Yugure no Kagami to the world. Since then, however, my development efforts have been laser-focused on completing VNgen, the engine designed to make it possible. It might've looked like nothing was happening, but the planets are aligning and it's time for that to change. And change it has: xgasoft.com has been completely revamped from backend to frontend, and is about to see a lot ...

Say Hello to XGASOFT 2.0!

For the past year-and-a-half, ThinkBoxly has been exclusively a devblog of my progress on developing original commercial content like VNgen. If you've followed me during that time, you've probably gotten used to the absence of editorial and feature-style posts (if you were ever aware they existed around here at all). But this is my blog, dang it, and I get to write what I want*. And as you can probably guess from the title, today's topic is hardly unrelated. Valve, it's time we developers had a little talk ...

On Steam, Valve, and Indie Developers

Way back in the summer of 2014 I began writing my first visual novel engine. Not VNgen, mind you, and not even Edge VN. This was a third, unreleased engine—and for good reason: it was a horrible, broken mess. You see, not only was this my first visual novel engine, but the first program I had ever written from scratch. I've come a long way in four years, leading my work to be praised by developers even with many more years of experience than I have. But while my coding practices may have changed, the ...

Update 33 - The End of the Beginning