Seraphine: Into the Wind

[Aetheria]

Yay! I'm downloading now... more motivation to finish writing my paper so I'll have time to play tonight after class. <3

edit: Wow, I'm not sure whether it's the file hosting or the university connection, but it went really fast. o_o Either everyone should host files on Dropbox or I should always download them on campus!

[Aleema]

Campus internet connections are usually VERY fast! I was surprised by that once, too. I went to a computer lab and downloaded at 1mb/sec. Which is a lot.

It's different for the campus dorms, however. *grumble mumble*

[papillon]

The graphical polish looks nice! I keep stumbling over a lot of awkward wordings, though... (not always sure what's a typo and what's just strange language).

Ere: I am in the only person with knowledge outside of Landrea.

Since I've only just started, that could be a correct odd thing for her to say and I wouldn't know, if she's sharing her body with a spirit or something, but in that case I'd expect the person she's talking to to react a bit more to saying something so odd... of course, being me, weird sentences all sound pervy somehow or other.

[Aleema]

Lots of "strange wordings". Because that's how I wanted them to talk. If they're awkward in a very bad way, please tell me. Typos -- please let me know.
P.s.: yes, that was a typo. xD

Also, could people tell me if they played the game with the battles easy, hard, or off?

[Gryphbear]

I'm not using internet while on college campus, although I do have broadband, and it's only taken like 3-4 minutes to complete downloading.

Which is an excellent sign for Dropbox. DLs can be limited by the server download rate, and not just by your internet service.

[Ren]

I'm trying this, I most likely won't finish it tonight, still, I got an error:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\Ren\Games\Seraphine Demo 2.0-all\renpy\store.py:695: UnicodeWarning: Unicode equal comparison failed to convert both arguments to Unicode - interpreting them as being unequal

I was talking to Lander, asked him about Basil, about how the trip was progressing and about his ship. I then quit the game and got it after I hit "Yes" as I was asked whether I was sure I wanted to quit. I couldn't reproduce it by reloading the save I had just made before quitting. In case it's relevant, I was playing with the difficulty set as Hard and didn't skip the intro.

And this repetition:

She turned around to face to face the distant town.

Also, I'm more perverted than Papillon, I found this rather amusing:

Lander approached from behind with his spear ready.

So far, I'm interested. I am still afraid Ëre may end up being really special and chased by every male in the game (it's something that happens in way too many stories, for my taste and there were a couple of elements in the story that made me fear she may turn out to be like that), but I enjoyed the story so far. I quite liked the introduction and all the graphical niceties in it. I found that the music is rather fitting and nice to listen to, and it's nice to see all this effort put in the presentation and the addition of some game-play elements.

I did however not like the character art too much - I like Ëre's sprite, but I think Basil and Lander suffer of the problem a lot of female drawers in particular have, which is that they find it hard to draw a believable man. I also wouldn't have used a black outline for the line-arts, It seems to me it kind of clashes with the delicate effect you seem to want to achieve with the colouring.
I also thought in places that the UI was a bit constricted in such a small window.

I was also quite happy to hear her voice being a bit stronger than what you usually hear in games and animated series.


I'm also quite unsure as to what sort of feedback you welcome on this game: if I understood correctly, this is a project that you "abandoned" in favour of Rock Robin and was quite unsure about when thinking about releasing a demo. By default, if I think a certain amount of effort has gone into a drawing or game, I try to be as precise as possible about what I disliked, but I'd rather not come here and break the eggs in your basket if this is a project you'd rather protect a bit.


On a side note, I'm not a native English speaker, and didn't find it hard to follow the story I've read so far, but I assume I *am* losing some of the effects you want to create with your prose.

Edit: I forgot to mention the "silhouette scenes" - I really quite liked those. You may have created them to make up for the inability to buy loads of CG scenes from an artist (I am assuming), but they really give a nice touch to the game. I guess they let me project with my imagination and feel the gaps, or maybe they just work well, no need to rationalise.

[Jake]

Typos -- please let me know. :)

In that case:

The city's was mostly dark and seemed almost deserted.
However, they found one source of light and sound coming from the local Inn.
Come, come. Let me get your something.
They were each shown their rooms by the Inn's staff.
They agreed on a time to leave in the morning before each heading in their separate rooms.
She fled for the scene of the crime, and then back towards Sable Rock, looking for traces of the theif-beast.
The vendor's eyes twinkled. Ëre cound not remember if this man remembered her from previous visits to the town, or if was really as keen as he said.
He freed himself from her gripped and took a step, removing the broken tip from his stomach.
Then we must be forced to require this woman, unfortunately.
Ëre scanned the grassy field and finally move to bend over towards the ground.
The threatening clouds forming above them was incentive enough.
Basil moved to door next to the shop and pounded on it.
Do not embarrass me or pass yourself as some of some relation to me.
Their voices here hushed and muffled.
Landrea was been attacked.
Lander gently set her back into chair, and looked upon her face.
As her eyes readjusted, she was surprised to she that Basil was who stood in front of her. She could not make out his face.
She stepped out into the city street. The scent of a rain past was strong in the air.
That is something I have not forgotten: Waylon and his bountiful of jokes.
Waylon and Lander joined behind her, and soon the company was complete as they silently tempted the theives' forest in front of them.
A shady dancers approached each of the men and got as close to them as they would allow.
We've seeked you out to ask a small favor.


Also:
- The use of the word 'slacks' stood out as pretty incongruous with the apparent old-world setting; it's a fairly modern word, and were the language of the setting to have evolved the same way ours has, people of this sort of era are more likely to refer to 'drawers' or 'trousers'.

- It seemed pretty weird that Ëre, Lander and Basil made the journey to castle-town-beginning-with-'G'-I-forget-the-name-of in haste, with a great point made of the fact that none of the other residents of Landrea dare to leave the town and no others are in residence who would make the journey, yet word of the attack on Landrea came almost immediately behind them and seems to have spread to all corners. Maybe there's some explanation for this which I'm yet to reach, but until the following-morning scene I wondered whether Lander had invented it for whatever reason.

(No other comments, since I've not got all the way through it.)

[Aleema]

I'm trying this, I most likely won't finish it tonight, still, I got an error:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\Ren\Games\Seraphine Demo 2.0-all\renpy\store.py:695: UnicodeWarning: Unicode equal comparison failed to convert both arguments to Unicode - interpreting them as being unequal

OH YES!! I forgot to mention this. This is a KNOWN error that I have no idea how to fix. I was going to make a thread for help eventually, but running the game with console sometimes tells me this error, so I was going to try to fix it myself. I will add this to my demo notes. Thanks for reminding me.

Thanks for the typo, too. That "spear ready" thing made me laugh VERY hard. Which I really needed right now.

So far, I'm interested. I am still afraid Seraphine may end up being really special and chased by every male in the game (it's something that happens in way too many stories, for my taste and there were a couple of elements in the story that made me fear she may turn out to be like that),

A rational fear. I try to be as fair as possible with the game's characters and be realistic -- and avoid any Mary-Sue tendencies. Hopefully, to dispel this, I will say straight up that she doesn't become a princess and have a lot of men to choose from to marry and happily ever after! No relationship is without trials, and everyone is special in their own way. :3 Still, I'd like to think that on some things, I'm allowed a guilty pleasure or two ...

I did however not like the character art too much - I like Ëre's sprite, but I think Basil and Lander suffer of the problem a lot of female drawers in particular have, which is that they find it hard to draw a believable man. I also wouldn't have used a black outline for the line-arts, It seems to me it kind of clashes with the delicate effect you seem to want to achieve with the colouring.

StriderDen (character artist) is a male from what I know ... I don't know if it has any weight to it, but he's from Brazil? So he doesn't have a traditional American or Japanese art style. It's very unique, and I agree it's not what we, as VN hobbyists, come to expect in our games. I do love that it's not anime style, though, and I will stand by it because they're what I've come to know and love. I was just giddy to see the characters come to life, frankly. Getting more glam anime style characters later have spoiled me. xD

I also agree with 640x480 being a small resolution to work with. It was so refreshing to work with 800x600 and larger with other games.

I'm also quite unsure as to what sort of feedback you welcome on this game: if I understood correctly, this is a project that you "abandoned" in favour of Rock Robin and was quite unsure about when thinking about releasing a demo. By default, if I think a certain amount of effort has gone into a drawing or game, I try to be as precise as possible about what I disliked, but I'd rather not come here and break the eggs in your basket if this is a project you'd rather protect a bit.

Good question. I am open to feedback, and I have not abandoned this project. In fact, I could not be more eager to go back and work on it. To be very fair, here are things that are not changing no matter what you say (but you are welcome to say anyway): character art (coloring is okay, though), names of characters, basis of characters' personalities, how the characters speak (but how they say something is okay), the core of the battle system (attack once per turn, use of AP, etc -- just whatever changes it into a totally different system), sweeping changes to the plot, like, totally different events or something. o_O Anyway. Go ahead. Since the project is still in development, I'm more prone to receiving your ideas. If you think something will help, rather than just "this was bad", I'm open ears. I got most of my battle stuff from you guys, like knowing to make a cancel button or having the skill sets selectable and such ...

I am relieved to hear that you could grasp the language of the game well enough to understand.

@Jake: You dork.

I agree about the length to travel to Geirlaug. The only reason they even stopped at Hodgewick was to introduce the Inn system. If I were writing this as a pure novel, you bet I'd make the travel to Geirlaug longer and more perilous. I just really wanted to get the story moving because it's already very long. And if they spend more time together, I'm going to want to document it in great detail. So I spared everyone by just shuffling them along. I suppose them knowing of Landrea is a plot hole, and I will address it. I'll give Hodgewick a horsemaster or two.

[rosemirror]

I'm going to come out of my lurking to say I really enjoyed this demo! Even though it was long it kept my attention and I really like that Ere is not the typical (at least to me) otome main character! I was intrigued by the world and characters you've created and wanted to know more! I hope you do continue this after Rock Robin (you'll probably want a bit of a break though =P) because it was a lot of fun to play.

[Jake]

OH YES!! I forgot to mention this. This is a KNOWN error that I have no idea how to fix.

Spoilered in case you were really keen on finding it yourself:

The warning is telling you that you're comparing a unicode string with a non-unicode string which Python can't automatically convert from ASCII, so it's telling you that it just assumed that the two strings weren't equal and carried on.
Unicode is an encoding that allows any variety of characters - there's famously enough space in Unicode that they have character codes reserved for Klingon - while ASCII is an old standard describing only 128 different characters. If you check in Character Map under Windows, for example, it's everything up to and including the tilde ('~') - and you'll get this warning if you compare a Python unicode string to any non-unicode string which contains any character past the tilde in Character Map.

So for example, if I write the following code:

$ name = renpy.input("What is your name?")

if name == "Ëre":

I get that warning when I run it and then close Ren'Py.

However, it's easy to fix - just make sure that any strings you're comparing with non-ASCII characters in are defined as unicode strings, with the 'u' in front of them. If I change that code to the following, the warning no longer appears, because the string with the non-ASCII character in is already a unicode string:


$ name = renpy.input("What is your name?")

if name == u"Ëre":

[Aleema]

I figured it had to do with her name, but I thought it was in the battle code. That's much easier to fix. Yippee!

@rosemirror: De-lurking awesome people is my reward. :3

[Ren]

I am a bothersome person fixated with politeness: no "thank you" for him?


*pats Jake*

[Aleema]

No, I never thank Jake.

[Nellie]

*cough* *cough* Demo... is... OUT! I'm a die hard RPG fan... *downloading* Be back to comment after I've tried it xD

EDIT: I can't... save =(

[Aleema]

EDIT: I can't... save =(

Wut.

What happens when you try and, more importantly, what doesn't happen that should?
Is anyone else having saving problems?