Lemma Soft Forums

Hello there ! After lurking for so long, I had to post something, right ? >.>... Well here it is : Utsukushii Planet, the proof of concept demo.

It takes place in space and on a few planets and even though romance will be involved in the full game, you won't see much of it here.

You have three different paths to follow (I tried to make them quite different from each other!). Each playthrough is about 10 minutes long. All scenes combined last 23 minutes or so.

Choices between brackets don't lead to anything (but are left to show the possibilities I intend to give).

Since this is just a proof of concept, I've included game musics. They will be replaced by original tunes when the game is done (and if I find a willing musician...) but I needed these to give the mood. Many sounds were taken & edited from I-War too.

[Old link removed]
Check out the latest posts for the latest demo (and hope it's still valid ^^;...)

(sorry but given the file size [~25Mb] I can't host it on my personal space)

Goal : get an opinion on what has been done so far (backgrounds, effects, script and overall style).
Characters are just placeholder graphics but I hope you will be able to see through them anyway ^^;
Also keep in mind that this has been translated from French and, even though it was kindly proofread by a friend, I'm sure the style will feel strange to native english speakers.

About the future : opinions I'll get from here will help me forge my new concept. Either I go on with this, or I scrap the whole script and restart from scratch with what I've learned.
My current plans are to add a *very small* RPG/Strategy aspect over the VN part you'll see in the demo. Basically a map where planets are discovered, explored and (maybe) exploited. I'll try to mix the concept of needing resources of some sort and dealing with the relationships within your team (romances and friendships).

EDIT : I'll keep a list of all the screenshots in this first post. Easier to go back to this way ^^

Screenshot EDIT : removed the old image links. Check out the gallery instead : http://monele.ifrance.com/gallery/index.php?list=12

Wow!

I really liked the little touches. The factory planet's background and the lighting on the desert planet were neat (and beautiful!). And the hyperspace effect is really cool. I like all the bumps and jars, too -- very immediate, and the music fits really well with it (but reminds me of something, can't quite put my finger on it?).

It has a really fun 'action-adventure' feel to it, which is unusual but enjoyable.

Looking forward to seeing more.

Glib~ Totally forgot to say the music comes from Chrono Cross and Super Robot Wars ^^;. I edited the original post to reflect this. I should add that sounds were taken & edited from I-War too. I hope these will be replaced by original counterparts when it's all done.

I'm glad you like all the bells & whistles since I really wanted a VN that is less static than usual.

(glerg, I have to leave immediately, I'll edit this later)

I was really, well... shocked! ^_^ Nice action, cool SpecialFX, moving FOG!!! The flight through the starfield that never ends, the humming of the engines, where will you stop?!?

Yes, obviously starship stories aren't my style, the rendered BGs are a bit cold (even though I suppose that was the idea), but it doesn't matter, if there's ren'ai later on, then I'm in for the ride. It should be a good one, because for the small portion it showed, the demo was really jam-packed with ideas.

Good luck!

Okay, I'm in a waiting line to download it. I'll review it la~ater ...

I've decided to name one of the scenes at the end of the demo the "hullabaloo scene".



I've been fiddling with Ren'Py to optimize it better, and have dropped it from 0.05 s/frame to 0.03 s/frame, and I'm hoping to do even a little better with some more optimizations.

... and some music too XDD... I went overboard didn't I ? . I think I could optimize that last scene actually since the backgrounds are really huge. In any case, I'll try to keep things runnable with an average machine but I'll appreciate any boost you can give me within Ren'Py ^.^.

Well, I currently have the hullabaloo scene down to .025ish s/frame, which is about as fast as I can make it without making radical changes to things.

That's about 40 fps ? Not too bad... on what kind of machine ? Personally I only get a few stutters on my new computer (3Ghz). I know the older one probably only displayed 15 or 20fps at that scene (1.5Ghz). The Urbania scene was the most taxing of them all.

= Edit =

Note to everyone : thanks for all your comments so far. I'm glad things are positive as it is ^.^. I'd just like to add that if you have spotted quirks or things that annoy you in what you've seen, it would be best to tell me now since I'll start working on the future of this project very soon and I'd rather know what has to be changed .

Also, when things are clearer in my mind, I'll try to introduce the stats-based part of the game in more details to know what you guys think.

After downloading the game 3 times and forgetting about it, I finally got around to testing it. I am very impressed with the special effects. You're really pushing renpy to its limits!

Unfortunately, this game does bug out on me right when the scene switched to the planet with the moving clouds. The sound gets messed up and the text goes wonky. It self-fixes itself in the next scene.

That's strange, I can't get it to run (WinXP). The window pops up for a fraction of a second and then closes again. Anyone else with the same problems?

Edit: It works when I put the game files (.rpyb, .rpyc, .rpa) into a fresh installation of RenPy 5.4.5

Edit 2:

All in all: Really impressive, really good! If you ever finish this one and need help with the music, feel free to ask! (And besides I know French ^_^)
Now I should test how all this animation would play on my PII/450. I remember even my G!MB VN was a bit sluggish on that one. :)

Edit 3: Quite playable even on my PII/450. Transitions are a bit rough, sound stutters sometimes, and text display is slow, but taking into account how much stuff is moving on the screen it's actually still pretty good.

Oooh, shiny effects. Everything worked fine for me (XP) although I think I missed the hullaballoo...

Now I'm sulking and trying to figure out how to pull some of those things off myself. (GM is capable of a lot more visual effects than I am currently capable of understanding. I only recently managed to set it to recolor backgrounds for sunset and night. And my 'spellcasting' effects are getting quite carried away... But I don't know how to do a warp or a streaky transition yet.)

Papillon, I can do all those things with relative ease. Why don't you consult me for your art, and tell me what you need? Or you can even send me a picture, and let me do the fancy motion blur/zoom blur/airbrushing effects.

When I tried to run this game under Windows XP Security Edition, I get this error generated:



What gives?

It seems that you have a corrupt font file on your system.

As a workaround, find the file Verdana.ttf on your system, and copy (not move!) it into the game directory.

I'm talking about programming the animation of the whooshy parts, not the artwork. When my game structure is complete and I have a total list of what I need to commission, worry not, I *will* probably ask you.

as a random example, this is a script someone wrote up to do 'water drops' on the screen, making small round distortions that travel across the background.



I look at this and I mostly just go "... Yeah. Okay. What?"

I'm a bit baffled by the math involved in stretching and distorting stuff.