Untitled Game : Stalker Boy Gets Chance to Date Dream Girl

[CandyStar]

Hello! Please let me know if I'm doing this wrong!

Title: Bah! Who needs titles. -___- I suck at them, soooo this remains blank!

Genre: Mystery game with romantic subplot

Setting: American high school

Synopsis (aka long ramble about the plot): You play as Theo, hopeless geek and stalker of the cranky redhead - Raven! Previously, Theo's tactics have been the usual: hacking her email, following her around, calling her and hanging up, leaving notes in her locker, taking pictures of her on his phone... the usual. After Raven finds out about his blog "The Raven's Nest" (All Raven, All the Time!)... he's in trouble. She flies into a rage, then, exasperated, she asks him if there is ANYTHING she can do that will make him stop stalking her. Stammering that he'd like to go out with her, Raven decides to make a bet with him. Some mystery student in the school has posted flyers all over school saying that they have set up an elaborate puzzle in the school, and there will be a prize to whoever can solve the puzzle. Handing him a flyer, Raven says that if he can solve that puzzle and bring her the prize, she will agree to go out with him. If not, however, he has to promise to leave her alone.

Characters:
(These are short on purpose, since I didn't want to give much away... figuring out more about the characters' personalities is a key component of the game... I swear they will have depth!! T_T If I'm supposed to post more... I will!)


THEO
This is you, as it were. Theophilus Maximilien Benedict the Fourth. You are the quintessential geek, barely able to function in high school society, let alone talk to girls you like.


RAVEN
The love of your life, Raven. She is sarcastic, cynical, argumentative, and pretty much hates you (Do you blame her? She once caught you licking her pen). She doesn't have many friends because she prefers a book and her ipod to human contact.


DEREK
Rival. Sort of a know-it-all obnoxious jerk who likes to mess with people. Has heard about your little puzzle game and is out to mess you up for fun. Raven sort of likes him, and you're worried!


STERLING
Sort of a rival. Sterling is a moody emo/goth type guy who really likes puzzles. He's playing the puzzle game because he likes puzzles, and has no real interest in the prize. ((My Fiance says Sterling looks too much like a girl... do you agree??))


MIA
Mia is everything feminine. She's shy, cute, cheerful and friendly. She's also going after the puzzle, but you have no idea why.

Miscellaneous Rambling
To get the best ending, you have to solve the puzzle. No matter how you solve it or whatever side-trails you take, the aim is to solve the puzzle... so this is ultimately a mystery-solving game. The romantic element is that in solving the puzzle, you can also date and befriend other characters and pursue your own interests outside the puzzle. If that makes sense...

--
Insecurities Section

This is my first game. EEP!

Soooo... the characters were made using this anime avatar maker I found on DollDivine.com. I'm going to make the backgrounds using The Sims 2, since I know how to make buildings and such on there... I don't think there's any copyright issues (if give credit and copyright to ea games) since they're designed by me... and ea games encourages users to make stories with their game, and upload them to their website and also to many fansites. (I would make it on the sims 3 only I hate the graphics haha)

The images will obviously not be the greatest, but I'm hoping that as far as a first-time game, it'll be good. The plot will be fun soooo... it'll make up for it, maybe? ^_^

[TyranX]

I think this sounds like it would be a really interesting story! To my knowledge no one has yet to take the obsessive stalker type of story yet so this should be a unique experience~

I really hope though that you don't plan on using that topic name as the title. Its kinda long XD

(My Fiance says Sterling looks too much like a girl... do you agree??))

Hmm, I'd say he's pretty borderline to looking like a girl. Not a girl yet, but the slightest amount of editing would make him look like one.

[CandyStar]

Hmm, I'd say he's pretty borderline to looking like a girl. Not a girl yet, but the slightest amount of editing would make him look like one.

I'm planning on doing voices... (voicing? voice acting? I don't know the term!) so that the characters talk... so hopefully the fact that he has a male voice will make things easier to understand. I gave him feminine eyes to indicate a more feminine personality. They do it sometimes in anime... in Fruits Basket, Yuki had very feminine eyes, whereas most of the other men did not.

No... the topic title was just to explain kind of what the game is to get people to click. XP I have no idea what to title it. I've often heard you shouldn't name something until you're finished with it. I'm awful at naming things, in general, though...

Really? No one's done this storyline? Haha I'm new to visual novels, so I'm not used to what's typical in the genre yet...

Thanks for your comment!!!! I've been obsessively hitting refresh @___@ I'm so excited!!

-Jesse

[J. Datie]

((My Fiance says Sterling looks too much like a girl... do you agree??))

I think the problem with that is this:



These two guys share the same base. Two male characters look similar because they're both male.



But then you have a female character and a male character sharing the same base. I saw Sterling's eyes and automatically thought "same eyes + mouth + shirt as the other girl = this one's a girl, too". You may want to change his shirt to the type the other guys are wearing, and maybe shrink his eyes a little.

[CandyStar]

These two guys share the same base. Two male characters look similar because they're both male.

By base do you mean their head shape? Or eyes? Their eyes are actually different but it's subtle.... heh. But I get what you mean.

EDIT: Actually their eyes ARE the same! Wha? I thought I chose different eyes. o.O;;; maybe I changed my mind at the last minute. Neverminnnd.

You may want to change his shirt to the type the other guys are wearing, and maybe shrink his eyes a little.

I can change the shirt, but I can't shrink the eyes. I made these on a generator with pre-set everything, and I wouldn't even know how to BEGIN shrinking the eyes.

-Jesse

[J. Datie]

I can change the shirt, but I can't shrink the eyes. I made these on a generator with pre-set everything, and I wouldn't even know how to BEGIN shrinking the eyes.

Which generator were these made with? It may be possible to edit individual pieces.

[TyranX]

Well another clever way you could make your characters (which I plan to use myself but haven't yet), is to get the pieces of the portrait (eyes, head shape, hair, mouth ect.) as separate images, and then put them together yourself to make the characters. (Thats basically what the generator is doing for you but doing it yourself provides greater customization abilities.)

[Zumi]

Generator's here, as said in the first post.
I just took the parts separately and shank/erased/lengthened parts of them in Photoshop, but I'm sure you'd be able to do this in any other program with a transform tool or something like it.

Oh look he already looks a little less girly! (I think?) Is it a little less apparent that he shares the same base as the girl?
This is basically just what TyranX suggested, I guess.
Taking and editing the parts themselves opens up a lot of new choices.

[CandyStar]

Taking and editing the parts themselves opens up a lot of new choices.

WOOOOW o________o I'm amazed... haha. I hadn't thought to save the parts.

[fortaat]

You play as Theo, hopeless geek and stalker of the cranky redhead - Raven! Previously, Theo's tactics have been the usual: hacking her email, following her around, calling her and hanging up, leaving notes in her locker, taking pictures of her on his phone... the usual. After Raven finds out about his blog "The Raven's Nest" (All Raven, All the Time!)... he's in trouble. She flies into a rage

And tells everyone he's a creep. The entire school gangs up on him, and the school psychiatrist suggest he should be expeled. Can you help Theo navigate through a year of loneliness and constant death threats? Can he dodge the bullies, or will he risk losing fingers, and stand up for himself? How many mental scars will he carry into adulthood?

Back to your story, you have to give some hints that she likes him before finding out he's a stalker, otherwise her "conditions" sounds too silly. She has no reason not to report him to someone.

[Koizumi]

Wow, Goodluck on your project ^^

I'm making one too but I'm going to use adobe flash :/ to implement some features etc. etc.

[CandyStar]

You play as Theo, hopeless geek and stalker of the cranky redhead - Raven! Previously, Theo's tactics have been the usual: hacking her email, following her around, calling her and hanging up, leaving notes in her locker, taking pictures of her on his phone... the usual. After Raven finds out about his blog "The Raven's Nest" (All Raven, All the Time!)... he's in trouble. She flies into a rage

And tells everyone he's a creep. The entire school gangs up on him, and the school psychiatrist suggest he should be expeled. Can you help Theo navigate through a year of loneliness and constant death threats? Can he dodge the bullies, or will he risk losing fingers, and stand up for himself? How many mental scars will he carry into adulthood?

Back to your story, you have to give some hints that she likes him before finding out he's a stalker, otherwise her "conditions" sounds too silly. She has no reason not to report him to someone.

Hmmm.... true. Haha but when you're like 14, you don't think about reporting anyone to the authorities. A lot of weird stalkery stuff went on with my friends in high school and no one ever got reported unless it became unsafe. I was thinking the scene would kind of be like.... she didn't really realize he wanted to date her, since all his actions so far have just been annoying... Hmm. Will need more pondering about.... but I still think when you're in high school, bringing "adults" into the situation never comes up. Bullying can go drastically far before it's brought to teachers, so can sexual harassment and stalking and other things... because students often don't confide in adults, or think that adults will do anything about it.

[CandyStar]

I'm making one too but I'm going to use adobe flash

Doesn't the flash editing program cost a lot of money? I know my dad always wanted to use flash for his websites (he does some freelance web design) but said that the program is so expensive it wouldn't be worth it

[fortaat]

I thought they were older. I guess not brining adults into the picture is logical, but if she hates him she has no reason not to tell about him to her friends (and thus the entire school). In terms of plausibility, the story would be better off if she had some tendency to give him a chance.
For example, she could think he's kinda oddly sweet, but not want to show it because her friends would make fun of her for dating a creep.
This scenario gives her a reason not to rat on him, and makes the story more believable.

[sheetcakeghost]

This does look interesting if not incredibly unpolished as of yet. I would probably play the final product if only to figure out what it was about.