Lemma Soft Forums

Finally putting up my WIP! I started this project a while ago, but real life got in the way. So I decided NaNoRenO would be the perfect time to get it done. Note that this has nothing to do with the Freezing manga/anime.

Title: Freezing: Chapter 1
Genre: slice of life/supernatural

About: Freezing is a very short visual novel about a man who is cold at work and how the choice of beverage ultimately leads his life along strange new paths and nothing turns out at he expected.
I have ideas for at least 2 more chapters but I doubt they will be included in the NaNoRenO effort.

Characters (these details may or may not be apparent in the current chapter):
James Rutherford is a run-of-the-mill employee at a large insurance company called iSure (he thinks it’s lame too). He earns a decent salary but doesn’t always know what to spend it on. His favourite season is autumn but he doesn’t like winter and he really doesn’t like being cold. He thinks a girlfriend will help him with the latter, but as of this writing has had no success in finding one. He generally keeps to himself but is friendly on impact.

Amelia Katkar is a relatively new employee at iSure and a rising star in the insurance industry. She was headhunted from a rival company and walked into a well-paying and important position. She loves winter because the clothes are prettier and she has a high tolerance for the cold. She hasn’t been in a top-level position long enough to forget what it’s like at the bottom, so is seen as approachable, understanding and friendly by her co-workers.

Francis Miller is the branch manager where James and Amelia work. He is generally disliked by the employees and they enjoy making up nicknames for him. There is an unwritten rule that if Francis catches you using the current nickname it is your responsibility to think up a new one.

Candice Schmitt is an employee of iSure. Not much else is known about her at this point.

The Keeper is a spoilers!

Features:
Estimated word count: 2000-3000
Endings: 3 – 5 (still writing)
Customised GUI, most of which I did before NaNoRenO



Is it too late to recruit an artist? I’ll put up a thread anyway. When I started the project I needed fewer sprites than I do now. The artist who made the Amelia sprite isn’t available for more though, so if I can get someone to do the sprites that would be awesome. If they redo Amelia I need a total of 4. Otherwise I will have to find free sprites to use.
I will probably use stock resources for the backgrounds and music/sound.

Below is the title screen and the prefs screen.






UPDATE:

Credits or Look, look at these fantastic people making things for me for my project, bask in the glow of their greatness:
Backgrounds: luminarious
Music: Retribute
Sprites: Tokudaya

New resolution screenshot:

_________________
Freezing [NaNoRenO 2012]
Free Sprite Initiative

Awwww, that looks so cute!

My main project has a winter theme too, but you succeeded more with the interface! =w=
It looks so professional!

And the story is quite promising - I look forward to play it! =)

- R.

_________________

Lovely GUI! (I'm stealing ideas again xD)

I'm always freezing at work as well ... (wait, what work? I skive around too much xD) This shall be interesting

_________________

I'm not sure if you are familiar with Shinesman. But that's what I thought of when I read this. But yeah, there are more stories to be made about companies which have amusing or fascinating secrets just below their surface. Good luck writing.

Oh myyy *A* This looks interesting!
And the GUI looks so professional!
Good luck on finishing~!

FANTASTIC NEWS! The wonderful luminarious has agreed to do the backgrounds for me, which I am super happy about. I was not looking forward to finding and filtering photos since they never seem to look any good when I try that. Now I just need someone on sprites.

Progress update:

I'm happy with the writing and scripting I managed this weekend. I have about 1 major path and 2 endings to go, which I am hoping to finish today.

@Ryouko: Hi-five for winter themes. Despite my main character's problem with it, winter is actually my favourite season. I'm really please you think it looks professional. I'm always trying to think outside the box when it comes to what can be done with the GUI. Most of the time I get good ideas that I have no clue how to code though.

@Nellie: I know, right. I came up with this idea on a particularly cold day at work.

@gekiganwing: I'm not familiar with Shinesman, although the concept sounds interesting. In this one however the company (so far) has no real direct involvement in the supernatural happenings that take place.

@Aurehan: Thanks a lot. Hopefully I can make a game worthy or your expectations.

_________________
Freezing [NaNoRenO 2012]
Free Sprite Initiative

YAY finished the script! I write directly into jEdit when I can, so the basic coding is done too. Final word count baring edits and proofreading:

Ren'Py 6.12.1.1501 lint report, generated at: Tue Mar 13 21:59:12 2012
The game contains 271 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 3,988 words,
for an average of 14.7 words per screen.
The game contains 3 menus.

And a total of 5 ends. Now I have to start putting in the images/place holders, finish the GUI, music and sound effects, work out what the hell I'm gonna do for CG's, if anything... Yikes, lots of work still to do... And the storyline's gone off a bit in it's own direction.

But YAY \(^__^)/ I have written a visual novel game!

_________________
Freezing [NaNoRenO 2012]
Free Sprite Initiative

5 endings, and you're finished writing this early! Whoa! A congratulations is in order for you, served up with a smile. Here's two just for being nice. :D I can't wait until I can say the same thing, haha. Good luck on finishing the rest of the project. I like the plot a lot. Everything's seemingly ordinary on the surface until...it's not. XD

Nice preference screen, by the way. There's something suspicious about the Keeper. Looking forward to finding out about this whole struck-through Keeper person when I play the game.

_________________
Main Website * Tumblr
Play: In This Dream of Ours (5/7/2012)
Working on: Skylines, Dream's Dénouement, The Girl in Red
ouroborosconnect.com

OMG wait, done? :O That was...s-so fast! You legend!
Can't wait to play it! The GUI looks so beautiful

_________________
My DA Account: http://xprincess-akina.deviantart.com It is very, very outdated and on hiatus, so don't expect much from there.
My Blog: http://xsakurahime.wordpress.com Somewhat on hiatus, because I'm super busy at the moment.

Why thank you, smiles are great. ^__^

YES, that is exactly what happens! Well done, you've described the plot better than I have in the intro. Maybe that should be my subtitle: Everything seems ordinary until... it's not! XD

Thanks! I'm happy to be finished, but then again the script itself isn't very long anyway.

_________________
Freezing [NaNoRenO 2012]
Free Sprite Initiative

Updates:

More good news! retribute is composing original music for me, which I am super grateful for and is something I honestly didn't expect to have for my first project.

By suggestion of my BG artist, the resolution's been upped a bit to 960x600. Unfortunately I couldn't go much higher because redoing the GUI would take too much time.

I have also decided to go with Tokudaya sprites and finally learned how to code ConditionSwitch for their expressions.

Credits and a new screencap has been added to the OP.

_________________
Freezing [NaNoRenO 2012]
Free Sprite Initiative

I like the GUI and all...

But maybe it's just me, or it's cause the screenshot is small, but my eyes aren't really liking the font/design for the dialogue box >_< It looks fancy and cool/freezing ... but it'll be quite tiring to read after a while. Maybe I just have bad eyes =/

_________________

Here's a full size cap, let me know if it's still problematic and I'll see what I can do. ^__^ I wasn't sure about that font so thanks for the feedback.

_________________
Freezing [NaNoRenO 2012]
Free Sprite Initiative

I can sympathise with this guy ;_; Even at this moment my toes are turning into icecbes at my desk. I have to wear a cardigan all year round >_<

I love all the snowflakes, they are very cute. I can read the typeface okay, but it could be easier to read. It might get especially difficult if there was a lot of text in the text box or the length is too long. You could try using a thin san-serif instead? It should give a similar feel but be much easier to read.

_________________
The other 1/2 of Cyanide Tea l My Deviantart Account I My Tumber Account I Break Chance Memento I Ristorante Amore

Holy cow it took FOREVER to get the game ready and done. Most of the day was used just getting a functional game distribution built.

You can find version 1.0 here: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=14651

Of course it would happen that in the last week I get so sick that I spent a day in hospital. So I didn't get to cool things like coding a music room. I am planning a version 2.0 with all of the stuff I couldn't finish. The game's a bit too short to release just a demo. I actually had a fully functioning unlockable epilogue but decided to hold it back for the next version, so that I at least have some more story in that release and not just coding extras.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who showed interest and please let me know what you think of the game over in the new thread. NaNoRenO was lots of fun and I now have a functional game to my name - awesome! Now I have to make time for everyone else's games. I think I'm going to make an alphabetical list of all the NaNo games and play them in order. ^__^

_________________
Freezing [NaNoRenO 2012]
Free Sprite Initiative