Shadow on the Bridge [Drama/Slice of Life] [NaNo 2012]

[Maelstrom-Fenrir]

Well, I wanted to have this up a long time ago. But well sudden unexpected errors caused a delay, along with all my review time...

(And the credits screen is still impossible to get out of.)



Title:
Shadow on the Bridge

Genre:
Drama/Slice of Life

Story:
Life is all about meetings and events. And sometimes one little event can cause a chain that changes the very direction of your life. This is the story of one guy's encounter with a girl standing on a bridge. And how both of their lives changed due to this one event.

Characters:

Ryo:
The main character of the tale. He has a nice family and a good life. But he doesn't realize the value of what he has. He has a very high IQ which has caused others around him at school to be envious of his talent. Due to this he has developed a cold and uncaring attitude for others.

Eve:
She stands on the bridge draped in her black cloak. Her hood covering her face as she stares down at the water's surface. She is kind and caring, but also full of faults and insecurities.





Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 19,000
Endings: About 8 (or was it 9)
Sprites by Chocojax
BG photos by Maelstrom-Fenrir (and a random website for the bathroom and kitchen) filtered using the method from some link on this site. (I'm terrible with names, I'm sorry)
Script: Maelstrom-Fenrir
Music: Maelstrom-Fenrir

Win/Mac/Linux: http://www.mediafire.com/?011m9z4p28238mk

___________________________________________________________________________

[Sunlit-Dreamer]

Since no one else has posted, I might as well. Just cuz I feel like it. Bwuahahaha.

You already know about the spelling errors since we already chatted yesterday while I was playing this. (Uqique.....lmao)

So have you decided yet on whether you'll fix this up later on and add the scenes you wanted in here? (As in making that one certain scene longer, but couldn't due to time restrictions)

*wags finger* And I STILL don't like the fact that you added....THAT ending...TOO UNREALISTIC! D=< Would never happen in real life! If it did, than the people involved

won't be together for very long. After all, love doesn't happen at "first sight" or after a few days. Even if he DID wait 6 months to see her again, they still only knew each other for about a week. Of course, I already nagged you about this. XD

I'm trying to decide on whether to attempt to get the true ending today or not. Since there are other nano vns to play and I already basically got all the good endings. *curses the bad endings*

And you weren't kidding about how making certain choices you think would be good, actually make things turn for the worse.

I'm curious as to how you'll do that THING you're planning. You know, with Shigeru, Mika, and Takashi. Since you told me you already had about 2 planned in your head within the same timeline or something like that. But remember that before you work on those vns (which you said you won't for a long time) to finish your other projects. Such as....*points at your ff.net account*

But enough about that, since this thread is specifically for THIS vn. Hmm...I have one tiny recommendation.

Maybe you should edit your first post and hint that it's possible that you or Eve will die depending on what you do.

One mooooore thing. I don't see any snow. Were you unable to make it work? Ran out of time due to the error attack? Or something else? I'll bug you on MSN about this later.

Hehehe....Eve: "Please don't go Eve. I need you, you are so interesting to talk to. You lighten up my boring, dull, gray, drab, pathetic, worthless life." Still one of my favorite lines that Eve says.

[papillon]

Downloading now - but as a quick thought, the way you have the dialog box set up is kinda hard to read. I know I have bad eyes, but I don't think I'm the only one. Also, I'm getting a lot of weird lines behind the names in the talker box. I suspect something in your font isn't working well with outlines? (I have a font where for unknown reasons ONE LETTER offsets the outline incorrectly.)

A dialog box backdrop with less internal contrast would be easier to read.

[Sunlit-Dreamer]

@ papillon

The name thing happens with all the names. I believe it's the font's style or something along those lines. I'm not really sure though. As for being able to read, it probably is dependent on each individual's vision since I was able to read with no problem. Although I have to admit there were a few times the lines ended up a teensy bit out of the dialogue box.

[Auro-Cyanide]

First up, congratulations on finishing you game for Nano. Good Job!

I've played through once and got the ending where Eve jumps off the bridge

As has been mentioned, the whole thing needs a good edit, there are a lot of grammatical and spelling errors, as well as sentences that could be a lot stronger. However, what you were saying was pretty good. I really enjoyed the banter between Eve and Ryo, is was quite natural and interesting to read. The conversations between Ryo and his other friends didn't feel as natural and so could probably use some work. There are some areas that need more transition, especially where Ryo would go to sleep and wake up. There wasn't enough time/description to explain the passing of time.

I didn't mind the filter you used on the photos. It wasn't perfect but it worked really well in some areas. I was a little confused as to why some parts of the story had a couple backgrounds that seemed to change for no reason and some parts that had no background at all for long periods of time. I enjoyed the times when you had a scene fade into night time.

The sprite for Eve was quite nice. The face had a very distinctive style to it and her emotions were strong. I also liked the fact her eye shine disappeared at some parts of the story to emphasise emotion. I think her outfit was probably too out of the ordinary, a clock by itself would probably have been enough, but it was still well done.

I applaud your efforts of customising the GUI. That's always nice to see. I'm not terribly fond of it, but it is nice to see you went to the effort. I think it's too busy at the moment, you could have gone for something much simpler. GUI is a very complicated thing though. Some research into the area may help, look at what other people have done and areas of on-screen design. Less would have been more in this case. The other issue I had was, as far as I could tell, no distinction between Ryo's words and his thoughts, and that could get a little confusing.

I really liked the messages you were tackling in the story. I liked that Ryo started to change for the better after meeting Eve and started to enjoy life more and I enjoyed when his friends, by themselves, learnt they couldn't bother him for help all the time. But most of all I think I enjoyed Eve's message. I think the writing for it could have been a little stronger and clearer, but I did like where you were going with it. Her death especially could have been more dramatic, but I liked when she asked Ryo to go with her. The message about masks was also very relevant since that is how most people work.

Overall, I think you did a great job getting this out in a month ^_^ You have some good ideas and your dialogue writing is one of your stronger points. I think if you cleaned up and tightened your style a little you could tell so very interesting stories. Good work and I hope to see more from you.

[Maelstrom-Fenrir]

You already know about the spelling errors since we already chatted yesterday while I was playing this. (Uqique.....lmao)

yeah that. My errors are sometimes so silly. If only I would have time to actually go through it.

So have you decided yet on whether you'll fix this up later on and add the scenes you wanted in here? (As in making that one certain scene longer, but couldn't due to time restrictions)

I have. I've already begun to rewrite it, to fix the mistakes, tighten the writing, and add the scenes I would have liked to add.

*wags finger* And I STILL don't like the fact that you added....THAT ending...TOO UNREALISTIC! D=< Would never happen in real life! If it did, than the people involved
won't be together for very long. After all, love doesn't happen at "first sight" or after a few days. Even if he DID wait 6 months to see her again, they still only knew each other for about a week. Of course, I already nagged you about this. XD

In the rewritten version it might be hopefully be better.

I'm trying to decide on whether to attempt to get the true ending today or not. Since there are other nano vns to play and I already basically got all the good endings. *curses the bad endings*

And you weren't kidding about how making certain choices you think would be good, actually make things turn for the worse.

It was actually harder before even to avoid the bad ends, since I had more choices, and more ways to get the same bad ends.

Maybe you should edit your first post and hint that it's possible that you or Eve will die depending on what you do.

That might be a good idea.

One mooooore thing. I don't see any snow. Were you unable to make it work? Ran out of time due to the error attack? Or something else? I'll bug you on MSN about this later.

Yeah, I ran out of time, and then it slipped my mind completely. Just another thing I need to add to my list to add in the rewriting version.

Downloading now - but as a quick thought, the way you have the dialog box set up is kinda hard to read. I know I have bad eyes, but I don't think I'm the only one. Also, I'm getting a lot of weird lines behind the names in the talker box. I suspect something in your font isn't working well with outlines? (I have a font where for unknown reasons ONE LETTER offsets the outline incorrectly.)

A dialog box backdrop with less internal contrast would be easier to read.

Noted, I make sure to change the dialogue box to something easier in my rewriting version, and to remember that from now on.

Yeah, the text in the Namebox is supposed to have those lines, it is the style of font. For some reason I liked it, it made it feel different.

Although I have to admit there were a few times the lines ended up a teensy bit out of the dialogue box.

Yeah, the settings aren't fully correct. But I didn't have time to go back and perfect them. Just another thing to add to my list.

First up, congratulations on finishing you game for Nano. Good Job!

Thanks, it was a lot more work than I was first planning. But I had fun the whole time, so it really felt like time was flying by. Or maybe that was due to the work crunch and stress.

As has been mentioned, the whole thing needs a good edit, there are a lot of grammatical and spelling errors, as well as sentences that could be a lot stronger. However, what you were saying was pretty good. I really enjoyed the banter between Eve and Ryo, is was quite natural and interesting to read. The conversations between Ryo and his other friends didn't feel as natural and so could probably use some work. There are some areas that need more transition, especially where Ryo would go to sleep and wake up. There wasn't enough time/description to explain the passing of time.

Yeah, I never got a chance to actually go back over it. This is a first draft level work. So I know the writing isn't all that great, full of errors, and tons of points where dialogue could be stronger, and overall points could come off more clear. I literally just typed sentence after sentence and then went to the next line. I never had a chance to go back over and correct/strengthen them.

Thanks, I spent quite a while focusing on Ryo and Eve's dialogue. So I am glad it came off sounding interesting and natural.

As for Ryo's friends, the conversations between his friends was supposed to sound clunky and funny. There is a reason for that. But I'll make sure I make look over that and fix it up a bit.

I'll remember that about the time transition.

I didn't mind the filter you used on the photos. It wasn't perfect but it worked really well in some areas. I was a little confused as to why some parts of the story had a couple backgrounds that seemed to change for no reason and some parts that had no background at all for long periods of time. I enjoyed the times when you had a scene fade into night time.

The bg changes were caused by the pictures I took. The lack of backgrounds at points was due to the lack of material. The school around my area would not let me in to take pictures, and I ran out of available time to search the internet for pictures. I couldn't find a picture that I felt matched Eve's living room. (At least not during the time I had) And my camera broke down right before I was going to take a picture for Ryo's room.

I'll make sure to fix the lack of bg in my rewrite, since yes I agree it is jarring to have no bgs for so long.

The sprite for Eve was quite nice. The face had a very distinctive style to it and her emotions were strong. I also liked the fact her eye shine disappeared at some parts of the story to emphasise emotion. I think her outfit was probably too out of the ordinary, a clock by itself would probably have been enough, but it was still well done.

I'll be sure to relate that to my friend who did sprites. Also funny story about the outfit. In my original concept sketch for her, she had just a plain ole dress. But my friend apparently decided to go with something more different. She worked really hard on them, and it was just a favor, so I didn't say anything. I'm happy with how it turned out.

I applaud your efforts of customising the GUI. That's always nice to see. I'm not terribly fond of it, but it is nice to see you went to the effort. I think it's too busy at the moment, you could have gone for something much simpler. GUI is a very complicated thing though. Some research into the area may help, look at what other people have done and areas of on-screen design. Less would have been more in this case. The other issue I had was, as far as I could tell, no distinction between Ryo's words and his thoughts, and that could get a little confusing.

Yeah, I notice that now. It is funny how sometimes you don't notice things like that until after you show it to someone. It was mostly just a test to see how it worked, how easy it was to edit and so on. And even though I pretty much failed, with each experience you learn, so that you can get better. So all failures have a point you can learn from. I will do that, research is a valuable tool, and now the month is over I can do that. I had no time to actually do it before, I only started using Ren'py that month.

And that is something I'm still trying to figure out, how to add quotes in the textbox. It just bugs me to not see those "Speech" around spoken words. So I need to figure out how to do it.

I think the writing for it could have been a little stronger and clearer, but I did like where you were going with it. Her death especially could have been more dramatic, but I liked when she asked Ryo to go with her. The message about masks was also very relevant since that is how most people work.

Just a restriction of only having a month and not being able to go over it. I didn't have to to go back through the scenes like I wanted to and make them stronger and overall longer. Especially the endings, I wanted them to be a lot longer..

Overall, I think you did a great job getting this out in a month ^_^ You have some good ideas and your dialogue writing is one of your stronger points. I think if you cleaned up and tightened your style a little you could tell so very interesting stories. Good work and I hope to see more from you.

Thanks, but I really don't feel that proud of it. I know it isn't my best work, and I know I could have made it so much better. Thank you, that means a lot. And I'll make sure to practice that, I'm still learning and trying to master the writing style for VNs, it interests me how different VN writing vs Non VN writing is. Thanks I hope to release more works eventually, but since my projects fall to the grand scale level, it will probably be a while. In my mind this is a tiny project only.