Lemma Soft Forums

Thanks for the feedback, TheQueen and CaesMRaenes.


The vibe that I'm picking up from everyone so far is that pacing seems to be about right.

That has been one of my major concerns—That the story won't seem immersive enough and won't draw the reader in. It appears my default reaction was to include far too much detail. But, it seems that thanks to everyone's feedback, I've been able to re-balance that equation.

Beyond that, I have a particular aversion to stringing together too many coincidences, or too many important scenes. After all, this is a story of one person's daily life. I would certainly hope it's not jam-packed with unbelievable revelations and amazing incidents every five minutes. While at the same time...I certainly don't want to bore people with mundane details. It's a far more tricky task than I first anticipated.


Well that's just it. You can consider everything up to Lira's departure merely a prologue. Consequently, most of the characters are just incidental.

The next demo should provide a much better example of Lira's character, as well as the personalities of the primary characters.

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Errant Heart

Yeah, showing what someone's daily life is like (before a main plot kicks in) is really tricky. You don't want unusual happenings, but equally you do want a point and something interesting to each part of the scene.

(I'm having to speak in generalities because I still haven't managed to play the demo. I tried to play it to actually give informed feedback yesterday, but discovered that my download had broken. I've redownloaded it now; proper feedback coming RealSoonNow(TM).)

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Author of Elven Relations (IntRenAiMo 2007), When I Rule The World (NaNoRenO 2005), Cloud Fairy (Cute Light & Fluffy, 2009), the TileEngine and UnitEngine (LSF@5), and the fantasy novel Ultimate Dream (NaNoWriMo 2006 onwards).
In development (progress slow but ongoing):
Elven Relations 2: Mermaid Liaisons: Story 96% done, script 75% done, character art 95% done, event CGs 60% done, backgrounds 50% done, customisation 0% done; demo available

And I did play demo 1 (just as you release demo 2! )

Writing:
I'm not that keen on the style of NVL (or ADV) text with things like
"Cassandra stands up and says with alarm in her voice..."
"W-What?"
It might be a bit better with commas in place of the ellipses.

Well done on using em dashes where appropriate. Far too many writers just use hyphens.

I'm sure you've seen the rant about walls of ellipses before, so no more need be said here...

I agree the pacing seems about right. I think the scenes with Priss are perfect for their role - you're showing how Lira interacts with characters who know her well, but there's something significant happening too (preparing for departure).

I didn't mind the swearing - perhaps because I hadn't got a feel for Lira's character yet, though - and I certainly don't mind the sentences starting with "And" or "But". That's a stylistic thing.

Graphics:
When Cassandra's first shown: my reaction was literally "Ooh, damn she looks cool." I love her laughing sprite too, and in fact all of her character expressions are excellent. The aesthetics are great.

A slight dividing line is visible in the backgrounds (cave, camp, bedroom) when they're panning.

I think showing the characters at different sizes or positions works pretty well.

I'm sure these are on the way, but Lira needs a couple more sprites like smiles to match the text when it says she grins. She's got the smiling sprite as we see outside the ferry with Priss, so you could use that one - just needs some more expression changes adding.

I'm really impressed with the variety of fades and transitions. Not only are they impressively customised, but they also almost all fit the scene and don't seem gratuitous.

Ha. That's an interesting preference; I pretty much completely disagree. I think it's best to show characters' expressions changing as often as the text calls for it, which can be very often in fast-paced scenes like the opening one.

Typos:

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Author of Elven Relations (IntRenAiMo 2007), When I Rule The World (NaNoRenO 2005), Cloud Fairy (Cute Light & Fluffy, 2009), the TileEngine and UnitEngine (LSF@5), and the fantasy novel Ultimate Dream (NaNoWriMo 2006 onwards).
In development (progress slow but ongoing):
Elven Relations 2: Mermaid Liaisons: Story 96% done, script 75% done, character art 95% done, event CGs 60% done, backgrounds 50% done, customisation 0% done; demo available

I've considered that in the past. To me, however, it just doesn't feel right to let a sentence "end" on a comma. In my mind, the ellipse represents an appropriate lapse of time for those situations. But then again, I can't say I've ever had exhaustive instruction on the use of ellipses.

Oh, don't thank me. Thank @berration. I was willing to settle with just hyphens. He took the time to replace them all with em dashes. Fortunately, since that time, I've finally found the "easy" way of reproducing them out of Windows' character set: alt + 0151.

Well, I'll be honest: our intention is to load up the "front end" with as much eye candy as we can muster. Gotta make sure the hook actually, um, hooks people. So that means lots of sprites and lots of special event images. Whether or not we can keep up that pace for all of the game remains to be seen.

It'll get better as we get more finalized sprites set against finalized backgrounds.

We're attempting to approach this project as though it were film, not necessarily a VN. Once we're done, I'd like to think of the finished product as some sort of animatic that one could take and produce animation out of. Okay, so I'm using just a bit of hyperbole, but it's not too far off the mark.

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Errant Heart

Before I start with this one but I had to make sure: the FF7 Costa Del Sol theme of the previous demo was just a stand-in, right?

Anyways, lemme start. I particularly enjoyed the pacing of this demo. Actually playing through it made me feel like the first demo was slow in some parts as far as the overuse of descriptions. The first problem that I noticed was a story problem that I had to point out: Lira mentions Mrs. Hinze's name before Elena even mentions anything about Mrs. Hinze. Elena had simply called her "grandmother". Other story problems were the randomly, stray grammatical and spelling errors such as the usage of "it's/its" and "renassance" (correctly spelt as Renaissance).

Also, towards the beginning of the demo, I forgot who Priss was. A little mention that she was the older/younger sister would be helpful.

I loved the interaction between Lira and the characters here as well as the characters amongst themselves. Nina is charming and I love her rambunctious nature while Eva was silly, being that she was sexy but puts off the lazy, sleepy woman quite well. My favorite character from this demo though had to be Elena. She was silent but aloof and is quite hard to read, but her caring nature for the boarding house just makes her lovable in my eyes.

Keeping with NVL mode throughout the whole demo made me think that it should stay NVL all throughout. The switching between NVL and ADV was distracting in comparison to this demo and I suppose I realized this when there wasn't any change in this one.

Overall, I loved the new characters in this demo. Their personalities really showed through for the few moments they appeared and their design was simply appealing and delicious. The story's pacing here feels more comfortable than the first demo and the dialogue felt very natural. Salima's short appearance and conversation also made me wonder even more since the end of the first demo.

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a.k.a. DragonfaeryYume on dA
The Vault in the Sky (Dev Blog)

Projects:
WIP The Aces
WIP (Head Artist) 軽い夏: The Sun Will Shine Through (tentative title)

I was wondering when someone was going to mention that. All the musical tracks are place-holders. In this case, Costa Del Sol just kinda seemed to have the right feel to it. Hmm...then again, maybe it was my subconscious trying to tell me that the track was used in a very similar situation in another story.


Lira knows who Mrs. Hinze is because she had to deal with her (presumably through written correspondence) in order to secure her lease at the boarding house.


Now that's surprising.


We've decided that first person, NVL mode is reserved solely for Lira. Third person NVL mode was only used at the beginning so we could properly craft our hook. If we switch out to another character's perspective during the course of the story, it will be ADV mode. That way, there shouldn't be any question ot what the reader is reading—if it's ADV, it's someone else's perspective.

That being said, I don't expect to use ADV mode very much throughout the rest of the story.

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Errant Heart

Ack. Of all the... I posted in the thread for the first demo when I wrote for the second demo. Oh well. Glad you picked me out anyways.


Was that mentioned in the first demo? If it was briefly, then it must've slipped my mind. It probably would be nice then to mention that Lira had done a deal with her before or something.

_________________
a.k.a. DragonfaeryYume on dA
The Vault in the Sky (Dev Blog)

Projects:
WIP The Aces
WIP (Head Artist) 軽い夏: The Sun Will Shine Through (tentative title)

No, it's implied.

Obviously, Lira can't just travel to a new city and walk into the first boarding house or apartment she sees. In the weeks prior to her departure, she found a promising place and via written correspondence with the owner (Mrs. Hinze), secured a room. Consequently, she knows about Mrs. Hinze, if she doesn't know precisely what she looks like. She does know that she's a little old lady and that's about it. Thus the gamble Lira was taking by assuming that Elena was her granddaughter.

In fact, if you noticed,

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Errant Heart