Well, not much point in pretending this is still a NaNoRenO game ha. And alas, it's still not done. But I've redone my plans so I'm hoping if I can finally manage to really get into the writing that I can release it sometime next week, but with plans for an update later. The game was originally planned with 3 endings, then 4 when I realized there wasn't really a "happy" ending and that people might be a little bothered about that even in a clearly intentionally dark story. But I want to get this thing out there before it gets any more out of hand than it has. So here's the new plan. Mosaic'd for spoiler protection Shown here is my whole story outline, with varying levels of detail as far as each event's description goes. On the right are the 2 main routes, and on the left a shorter route split into 2 endings. For the initial release, I'm going to focus on only completing everything on the right half of this chart. This means the two main routes will be the only ones available but that I can get the game done sooner. The third one is simpler so I can go back to working on In Your Nature and just pick at that route when I feel like it until it's ready to add as well. While I only got one scene written since last update, I did at least get some art done and some things fixed. The audio bug turned out to be the tutorial I was using being out of date. Ren'py didn't catch the incorrect syntax as an error so I didn't know that that was the problem. So much fuss over something so easy! I finished Dahlia's kitchen BG as well, which you're sure to notice is something way simpler than what I was using before. Even though I've done animating and comics before, looks like I forgot about the K-I-S-S rule. Keep it simple, stupid! In this case, I'd recently been reading more visual novels and noticed that while characters did need to belong in the environment, rarely did scenes ever make use of the space itself. Some were even filtered photos and it worked perfectly fine. Fancy BGs would be nice! But one finished simple background is worth 20 half-baked complex ones. The same goes for CGs. A small project like this is probably a good time to learn I'm not a studio, but a solo artist, and there's no point burning myself out on details that in the end don't matter. In the case of CGs, I"m not going to be included more environmental detailing than is needed to get the point across. Mood really matters more if the setting isn't the main feature of the scene anyway, doesn't it? And an update to the GUI for very particular scenes. In this case, the example isn't one where I would actually be using it, but is just to show the new window for NVL mode. I'll be honest, I was inspired to do this very directly after playing the Corpse Factory demo since I really enjoyed the more flowing text of the NVL segments in situations where there aren't characters around to be giving dialogue. And since I'll need to skip some time in this story, I thought it could benefit from a similar feature. We'll see how it works out in the end as far as helping my pacing along. Progress Summary:
Misc. Visual Novel Thoughts I've been playing a lot of visual novels lately, especially horror ones to check out what kinds of things other devs are doing. I've always liked VNs in general, but it's easier to look at them with a critical eye for things that work and don't work for me when considering what to do for my own games. So I wanted to talk about some different ones I've played recently and what things I've liked about them. These aren't really reviews and I will be relating them mainly to my plans for In Your Nature in particular, but I'll still be linking to each one if others want to check them out! Also please be sure to check each one's content warnings before playing as all of them are of the Horror genre and some get very dark! Corpse Factory DemoSince I already mentioned this one while talking about Don't Toy With Me, I'll start here and keep it brief. I feel the demo had very good sound design and good pacing, acting as a self contained horror story of its own even without the rest of the game that hasn't been released yet. I'm looking forward to playing this one! I enjoyed how things switched to NVL mode when it came to scenes that worked better with longer narration that was neither dialogue or the perspective character's thoughts/observations and it's something I'll want to keep in mind for future work. Our WonderlandAnother one that isn't done yet, but also isn't a demo since it's being uploaded one route at a time. I felt a little nostalgic playing this one with all of its bad endings to collect. But the main thing that stood out to me as far as comparing it to other games was its very effective use of ATL / animation using Ren'py's built in methods. ATL is something I struggle a lot with but works great with the style of this game. There are normal VN sprites but also lots of unique character drawings only used in certain scenes and when combined with ATL give a cutscene kind of feeling. I especially enjoyed the Arc 2 ending. It's a lot like what I was picturing for myself with In Your Nature when I mentioned in my 'scope' discussion a while back that I'd love to have an animatic style for big ending scenes. It was even timed to music, which is great! Super impressive stuff and I'm definitely going to be thinking about it down the road. AmelieThis one sat in my library for a while before I actually got around to playing it but I'm glad I finally gave it a try. The artwork has this eerie but beautiful look with its watercolor style and pink tints under the characters' eyes. It's much more of a romantic horror than I usually care for but it's an effective story and I enjoyed seeing it played out in three parts, each the same night from a different character's perspective. While it's maybe the farthest from what I'm picturing for my story out of any of these, I still saw some atmosphere building techniques I wanted to remember. Primarily its use of camera work and the way it used sprite overlays to convey the characters in darker lighting. EchoDefinitely the longest on this list and thus the one I spent the most time with, Echo takes place in the southwest and carried a lot of very familiar imagery for me. Of course the furry one would have the more relatable setting for me, haha. And while I can't say I enjoyed every route, every route had something to like about it. And while I don't want to risk giving spoilers by talking a couple of big reveals or scares, I can still say I think it made really good use of photo filtered backgrounds and knowing when it should show something vs. when to keep it as a text description. I know some of it is due to the scope vs. the budget but I think in some cases it was a blessing in disguise. I'll definitely be thinking of this one when it comes to deciding how to best distribute my resources and on making relationships between various characters feel flawed and natural.
And as one last thing, both Amelie and Echo have Android releases, Echo having only added its Android build just recently. Since I've seen quite a few people on various platforms either complain of not having a computer to play VNs on or about the downside of advertising a non-mobile game on mobile-only platforms, I'll have to put some consideration into trying out mobile releases too. It would be nice to save myself some headache and plan for a mobile GUI as a sort of future-proofing then I work on In Your Nature's GUI ha. And that's all for this update! I know it was another big chunky one and half of it was talking about games that aren't mine, but they were things I was thinking about anyway so maybe they'll be of interest to someone. As usual, thank you for reading and see you next update! -Karma
2 Comments
Carrot
4/11/2022 01:14:33 am
Oh, gosh! Thank you so much for the little write-up/shout-out! It really made my day!! 😭 The ending sequences definitely took me the most time out of... well... ANY other part of the game so far. Using ATL is great and pretty easy and makes it much quicker to get out something that feels more advanced than it actually is, which makes it a great option if you want to add at least some little bits of animation throughout. Though at least when you set it to music, it can end up making it take so long to make because you need to rewatch it 50,000x from the beginning to time everything perfectly LOL 🤣
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Karma
4/11/2022 01:48:48 pm
No problem! I enjoyed your game and the style of cutscene definitely felt worth mentioning here haha. It's very ambitious but it paid off, even if it sounds like it was a pain to get just right!
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