The Sight of Autumn

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M12
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The Sight of Autumn

#1 Post by M12 »

Originally this project was named "An Autumn's Requiem", but in any case, here it is at last:

http://rapidshare.com/files/18029818/Th ... n.zip.html

To ensure that everything is working properly, please ensure that you have Flash Player 8 or above.

And here is the official website:

http://geocities.com/marcusl_12/autumn/

Please take a moment to sign the guestbook there too.

Do let me know what you think. Thanks everyone.

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mikey
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#2 Post by mikey »

*gulp* I guess I'm the first...

The story does have a good way of reminding you that you have it all. I know it's not the point - and something like blindness won't mean the end of the world, but somehow...

Anyway, I don't really want to dissect the work into elements saying this was good and this was not-so. What's important is that the overall effect was delivered so nicely.

Of course, make no mistake about it, this is precisely not my type of story, but then the mood and even a lot of the ideas didn't come accross too pushy and melancholic - the protagonist's angry/frustrated attitude helped a lot, in fact this was really well done, and I think those negative thoughts were the most powerful part of the story.

Also I found this to be quite well tied together, especially the rainbow thought in light of the previous rain they had... it bring things to an ideological end of sorts.

So congratulations on the release, at least for me, this was time well spent (incidentally, I played this around the time of sunset, so realizing it was a nice addition to the atmosphere - my room got darker and darker ^_^)

Since we discussed it in the development thread, I suppose I can add this to the Ren'Ai Archives?

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#3 Post by Taleweaver »

mikey's rants, as usual, leave the really picky reviewing to me. So here's my two cents at "The Sight of Autumn":

First impression: The music is absolutely fantastic! The slow, laid-back piano tunes carry the melancholic mood powerfully, and all compositions really hit the spot. Kudos to Julieanne - it doesn't get much better than that.

Second impression: The game is a little short for my gusto, but unlike mikey, I like these kinds of stories. A little more time could have been spent on developing the Counselor's personality more or maybe add some more chemistry between her and our protagonist, but it works out quite well as it is. I'm not exactly a friend of Flash when it comes to gaming, so the engine (and missing elements like "text rewind") was a bit of a disappointment - and maybe the entire story would have worked better if it had been laid out like a movie, without the player having to push the button to advance.

The art was neat and tidy, perfectly fine for a fan-made project. The use of a short movie file for the Ferris wheel worked out well too, so again, thumbs up from me.

All in all: a nice KineNo with a gripping (if short) story, good presentation and amazing music. More of it!
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#4 Post by DaFool »

It took me a while to set the dependencies in order (Adobe Macromedia Flash Player...I actually didn't realize they merged -- I don't read the news lol)

I liked it, it was very well written, and well-animated. I was skeptical why you didn't go with Ren'Py and I realized exactly why the moment the uber-cool effects such as the rains, the rains with lights, rains with thunder and train scene...my gosh, that would have really bogged down the engine if it weren't Flash. The rain, the train, the textured artstyle reminded me of my Chapter 1: Melinda demo...I'm just wondering if it was just a coincidence?

I didn't quite get into the melancholy atmosphere until later, but by the ferris wheel scene the way it all comes together reminded me of the best professional visual novels.

I didn't cry, but almost :oops:

Congratulations!

BTW, can you make a standalone executable if you want it on the Archives?

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#5 Post by mikey »

Taleweaver >> Now you've made me look like I don't like it. :cry:

:P Really, I did. The project is well composed, the elements work together, there isn't much more to ask, honestly. Even though admittedly this isn't my cup of tea, I played it through without wanting to skip things - I thought the reply came out positively in the previous post. Oh well...

Anyway, since it's been mentioned, I really liked the Flash environment - it may not be as super-convenient, but it does give the game a different feel.

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#6 Post by monele »

"...... *soft sigh*...."

That's me at the ending. I hadn't gone through something so simply fulfilling for some time ^^. It just... makes you happy to be alive or something :).
Neat writing, neat drawing (and direction!) and neat music!
Wow ^.^
I didn't cry, but almost
I'm there with you, DaFool ^^;

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#7 Post by Mr. E »

I played the game, and liked it! Actually, the graphics of this game are quite above the standard, which is ironic in a game that talks about blindness, but that just makes the tragedy of the character losing his eyesight more evident. The beautiful sound effects and music reinforce the theme even more, so it all works well! :D
The story was very good too. I guess I'm part of the "almost cried" group. The only thing that bothered me (a bit) was that the main character changed from complete rejection to grumbling accepting a bit too quick (when the counselor came to his house for the second time) Maybe if there was at least some kind of sign that the wall was braking...
But that's just me, looking for a mistake to put in a review. (I always try to put at least one in every review I make. Ignore me.) Story good, graphics good, music good. That's pretty rare to find in an OELVN so congratulations!

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#8 Post by Hime »

Thank you for this novel, it's absolutely beautiful! The graphics are nice, the music is good, the plot is very touching and it's also very well written. You really described everything about blindness so well... Plus the vocal song in the credits was a very positive suprise! ^^ Cindy's character was also very lovely and deep, I liked her a lot. So, I enjoyed The Sight of Autum, and I enjoyed it a lot. Thumbs up! :)

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#9 Post by mikey »

Mr. E wrote:The only thing that bothered me (a bit) was that the main character changed from complete rejection to grumbling accepting a bit too quick
Actually this is what I meant by saying that the negative thoughts were the most powerful aspect - you could feel he could have easily completely destroyed any sort of "acceptance" that Cindy wanted to show him (and it got me thinknig about what would happen if he really refused to soften up) - but then we don't see his previous life and how everything came about, how he was before. So it seems there is more to his personality than the dark thoughts that he had once he was diagnosed.

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#10 Post by M12 »

Thanks for the feedback people 8).

"the textured artstyle reminded me of my Chapter 1: Melinda demo...I'm just wondering if it was just a coincidence?"
I apologise, but I have not played the game you have mentioned, so yes, it is in fact a coincidence. I guess my style happens to be similiar to another person's.

"can you make a standalone executable if you want it on the Archives?"
I could. But there are a few reasons as to why I would suggest against it:
1) Even if it's in EXE format, Flash Player will still be required for it to run properly.
2) An SWF file is much smaller than an EXE, and filesize is important.
3) SWF is more compatible. EXEs will not run on Macs etc.
For the above reasons, I would like to submit it as an SWF. Is that okay?

Thanks. And please, do sign my guestbook 8):
http://users3.smartgb.com/g/g.php?a=s&i=g32-04843-f6

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#11 Post by PyTom »

I just played it and enjoyed it, even if (like usual) I have little intelligent to say.

I did notice two issues:

- Some of the tracks were mixed funny. At least one track only had sound on the right side, while the end music had music on both sides, but voice only on the right. Since I use headphones, it's quite noticable.

- Since the aspect ration of my web browser was a bit wider than expected , I saw things off the left and the right of the main part of the screen.

In general, games in the RAA should be in as cross-platform a format as possible. For flash, that's the SWF (and FLV) files. I would suggest putting together an html page for the file to live in, as that should fix the aspect issue.
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#12 Post by M12 »

- It's unfortunate to hear about the soundtrack issues. My headphones are dead, so it's impossible for me to tell ^__^;...
- Yes the HTML page is a great idea, I will do that and then submit it to Ren'ai?

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#13 Post by mikey »

ML wrote:- Yes the HTML page is a great idea, I will do that and then submit it to Ren'ai?
Actually, it's even okay if you just include the HTML page here as an attachment - I'll include it in the zip that I downloaded before and add it like that. But of course you probably want to reupload the whole game as well, but if you don't have time, this is all we need for RAA.

And yes, one track (the ending song) is really almost exclusively in one ear. I rechecked it with headphones now, since I was using the monitor speakers.

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#14 Post by ShiraiJunichi »

Very nice little piece.

I liked the writing a lot, and some of the visuals were cool too- like the bouncing train with the trees passing by through the windows. Good work.

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#15 Post by monele »

Note : EXE doesn't need flash to run. It's just... an executable, independant. (it might need the FLV file as a separated file, though).
Flash can generate SIT files for MAC too. That leaves the SWF for Linux if needed.
Also, for players, it would be nice to point at the standalone Flash player distributions. This would let them play the game in a window, and then go fullscreen (that's what I did and that *has* to be better than playing in a browser o_O).

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