À Mon Seul Désir: Melodies of a Fairytale

[Samu-kun]

In a classic move demonstrating the tendency of my plans to change abruptly and without warning, I've changed my mind about making another game in the same world as Raidaa no Asahi and instead opted to pick an entirely new setting all together. XD It turns out that the new script of Raidaa wasn't quite going in the direction I was hoping it would progress in (it started looking like Lucky Star, for goodness' sakes. XD), so I decided to revive another old project of mine and focus all my efforts on completing that. I think Raidaa no Asahi Volume 1 has enough cloture to stand as its own game. Atleast for now anyways. So what does this mean?

Well, the people who didn't like the fanservice or the stereotypical characters in Raidaa will be glad to know that there will not be any fanservice planned in Seul Desir. And the people who liked the mechas and the humor in Raidaa will be glad that there will still be capital ships, mechas, and quite a bit of comedy in this too. This is still me writing the story, afterall. XD But overall, I expect the finished story of Seul Desir to be much more darker and serious than Raidaa.

Before we begin, the obvious disclaimers still apply. This project is still very, very, very early in the development stage. Huge content changes, cuts, etc will definately be made very quickly. The biggest reason I decided to start this WIP topic this early is to formulate a written development plan. Writing down all my thoughts in the WIP topic of Raidaa no Asahi proved absolutely vital in getting the game finished, so I expect it'll play a huge role in getting this game completed as well. So treat this topic as a development diary of sorts where I record all the day to day problems I encounter while making this game and attempt to solve them. XD So, without further ado, here's the first entry in the À Mon Seul Désir official development diary. ^_^

À Mon Seul Désir
Melodies of a Fairytale

The World
À Mon Seul Désir takes place a fantasy world reminicant of the Final Fantasy series. A tyrannical government known as the Sovereign has ruled over all the land with an iron fist for nearly an entire millenia. The military and social power of the Sovereign is viewed as being undefeatable. They possess a formidable military, called the Second Section, which is comprised of magestic airships the size of castles and millions of smaller air fighters that give the Sovereign total supremacy over all foreign enemies. Furthermore, the Sovereign also has control over a darkly secretive and ruthless secret police/assassin's guild called the Third Section that keeps its own citizens in line. All law is formulated by the First Section, or the nobility. The highest of the nobility is the Emperor, who is viewed as being the voice of the Sovereign itself. The nexus of the Sovereign's power is the Capital. The entire city is built around the Emperial Palace, where the Emperor and the First Section resides. The rest of the inner city is exclusively reserved only for high ranking members of the Second Section. The inner core of the city is essentially a small paradise, where wealth, technology, and the arts have combined to form the very pinnacle of comfort. However, the outer city is a completely different story. Walled off from the inner city, poverty and crime run rampant. Here, life is not a guarntee. One must desperately cling to it in order to even hope to survive.

Our protagonist starts far detached from this life in the remote village of Stone Haven. Situated where a river, a meadow, and a forest meets far in the countryside, its inhabitants, while falling within the territory of the Sovereign, are relatively uninfluenced by the tyranny of the government. Nobody in the village has ever even seen an airship or a mechanized war machine before in their lives.

The Characters
Name: Maray Seule
Age: ???
Gender: F
-A young girl residing in the village of Stone Haven, it is through her eyes that the story is narrated from. She's somewhat shy and reserved and likes the quiet life offered to her by the village. However, she has a kind heart and wants to make the world a better place. However, unbeknownst to her, she has the gift and curse of magic. Magic is viewed as nothing but folklore by the majority of the Sovereign. However, there is a minority that believes legendary beings called the Guardians live in the darkest forests of the Sovereign that possess the ability to restore life to the death. Maray too believes magic is just a bunch of make belief created to scare children. However, as her powers become more and more manifest, and the corruption of the world becomes more and more appearent to her, she will take it into her own hands to change the world.

Name: Assassin/Valian
Age: 20
Gender: M
-An assassin sent to kill Maray, he later defects from the Third Section when he realizes Maray alone has the power to change the world. He is to first to "join her party." Known only as the Assassin, Maray takes to calling him Valian and develops feelings for him. However, it appears Valian has wounds too deep - perhaps so deep that he has lost the ability to even feel affection.

Name: General Cully
Age: 50
Gender: M
-A general of the Second Section, he is a fanatical believer of the Guardians and has dedicated his entire life to finding them. His young grand daughter has been terminally ill since birth, and all of technology has failed to cure her, so he seeks to beg the Guardians to spare her life. He defects from the Sovereign when he realizes that Maray may be the only link he has to the Guardians.

Name: Abigail Strom
Age: 19
Gender: F
-A young servant, she has been kicked out of her master's home for her clumsiness. Poor and destitute on the streets, she joins Maray's party to change the world.

Name: Sharon Windermere
Age: 22
Gender: F
-A shrine maiden in a remote mountain sanctuary, she joins Maray's group after the Sovereign burns it down. A believer in pacifism, she dislikes fighting and instead opts to be the healer. Despite being young, she has a mature and wise personality and quickly becomes Maray's older sister figure.

Name: The Voice
-Throughout her travels, Maray hears two voices in her mind. As her magical powers become more and more manifest, the frequency and power of these voices increases. The first voice tells Maray to be confident and believe in herself, yet still be selfless and practice restraint in using her powers. It believes that Maray's powers must be controlled and used with strict limits.

Name: The Other
-The second of the voices Maray hears in her mind. This voice urges Maray to use her powers to gain her own happiness. It urges that Maray is too shy and cannot take her own destiny into her own hands. As Maray's feelings towards Valian become frusterated, the Other becomes a more powerful influence on Maray and begins to increase Maray's powers beyond imagination.

---------MAYBE TO BE INCLUDED CHARACTERS---------------

Name: Ikkari Ichinaya
Age: 19
Gender: F
-An airship pilot who dreams to be the first person to fly into space. She becomes the captain of the party's own airship later in the game.

Name: Asaga Okashi
Age: 18
Gender: F
-...unlockable bonus character???? 8D

***Note: No need to include Chigara since she'd be wayyy too similar in character to Maray...

----------------------------------------------

Current Issues with the Game
1. Right now, I'm really stuck on what tone I should write the story in.
A good chunk of the story has already been written down prior to Raidaa no Asahi. As a matter of fact, I have roughly 80% of the story written down in the first draft of the script and 40% of the story written down in the second draft. The problem is that the first draft was written quite a long time ago and now that I see it in retrospect, it's very, very bad. XD The problem with the second draft of the story is that when I wrote it, I was uhhh... depressed and lonely and the tone of the story is much more darker than I would like it to be. (With like rape... and graphic violence... and suicide. Very bad. >_<;) So, I've endeavered to write a third draft of the story! This time, I hope there will be a somewhat more hopeful tone. But ultimately, I have still at a loss as to what the emotional "feeling" of the story should be.

In particular, I'm wondering just how much sexual content to have in this.

No matter what, hentai is out of the question. I'd rather not deal with all the future problems that I might cause with that. And I'd also like to distribute this to an much broader market as well.

But, it's still fully possible to have an erotic, yet still a non-hentai game as well. (eg. erotic text, but no HCGs. There are many novels that have erotic content, yet do not qualify as pornography since it is only done in text...) In any case, a huge part of the story will center around Maray growing up from just a girl living in the countryside to a mature woman. I think one of the over arching theme of the story will be Maray going from the somewhat blissful and ignorant girlhood in the countryside to a mature woman capable of changing the world. I think there's alot to be gained in terms of the emotional impact of the story if we also include how Maray comes in terms with her sexuality as well. Valian is her first true love - and in the end, it has no hope of ever coming into fruitation. In particular, I think there's a huge opportunity to deal with autoeroticism in the story. Not many eroges have actually dealt with that subject. Maray can't find true love from others. No matter what, she is different from everyone else. Many hate her and believe she is a witch that has come to destroy the world. Others view her as some sort of god and revire her. But no matter what, nobody ever loves her. Eventually, this leads her to believe that the only person that can truly love her is only herself. The Other only reinforces this view and encourages Maray to seek her own happiness above everything else.

However, this leads to a big problem.

2. The second issue is the medium through which I want to present the story in. When you read the world and the character descriptions, then a 1990's style SNES RPG seems almost inevitable. I mean - it's all there. An entire party of characters ready to run around a world map. A spell caster character, a tank character, a healer... I mean, the very essence of an RPG is all there to be used in the story. However, if I do that, then we can just about forget having any autoerotic themes in the story. I mean... You can only do so much with character sprites that are 32x32 big! And I don't think a 1990's RPG ever even dealt with sexuality as deep as Maray actually feeling her first self induced orgasm and worrying if it counted as cheating on Valian and horrified at how disappointed everyone will be at her if they found out. So yeah... I'm thinking that if we do decide to have autoerotic themes in the story, then the medium through which the story will have to be presented will be in a VN format.

So, it's a huge trade off.

On one hand, we can have a wonderful new theme to have some true character development and create a story about a girl's path to maturity...

While on the other hand, we can have an RPG reminiscant of the good old days of 16-bit gaming...

They're both extremely appealling options.

Now, this leads to the obvious answer. Why don't you just merge the two elements have have a VN-RPG hybrid? Well, I've thought about this too. Except, there's this weird taboo in the world of gaming about including sexual content in games... Doubly so if it's autoerotic sexual content. (Actually, I don't think a SINGLE RPG game I've ever played nor heard of has EVER dealt with that content matter. XD) So I'm afraid that if I do make a hybrid, then the sexual content presented through VN interludes will just jar wayyyy too much with the super deformed character sprites frolicing around in the world map and doing victory dances after winning random encounters... XD

But beyond that, there are some other problems with the story as well.

3. A problem is that Maray really is a non-typical fantasy action heroine. Instead of being spunky and "always on the look of adventure!" she's really shy and quiet and easily embaressed type. It's really troublesome that 90% of the time, she actively tries not to get into a huge adventure and just tries to live peacefully. Uguu... >_<;;

And I have some good news and bad news as well. Mainly, I finally decided to spend some money and bought a tablet and Photoshop Elements 5.0. This is a good thing because I have a much better hardware and software to make art with. This is also a bad thing because I have no idea how to work in Photoshop. XD I have a basic idea of layers and such, since I've been using Paint.Net and Pixia for a while now, but it's still quite jarring to work in a new environment. Not only that, but it'll take quite some time for me to get used to inking with the tablet. They were indeed good long term investments, but on the short term, I think my art's going to suffer a drastic reduction in quality. Atleast until I get used to working around in the tablet...

On the Photoshop end, I can always look up tutorials and such... But unfortunately, on the tablet end, it seems that the only way to correct that would be just to practice with it for awhile...

Ah, nearly forgot. Some artwork. ^_^ (wonders if he should post more up, since they're not really that good and probably not going to be included in the game...)

[Jake]

majestic airships the size of castles

OK, I'm sold.



...wait, there was more?

But, it's still fully possible to have an erotic, yet still a non-hentai game as well. (eg. erotic text, but no HCGs. There are many novels that have erotic content, yet do not qualify as pornography since it is only done in text...)

Under whose standard for 'pornography'? Just because you can get away with reading them at work doesn't make them 'not porn'! While I'd agree that it's perfectly possible to have a story which is erotic but not pornographic, I would note that it's also quite possible to have a story which is pornographic without explicit pictures. 'Pornography' is just material designed specifically to arouse the reader/viewer/whatever. (Sure, 'graph' makes it sound like it ought to be about pictures, but the Greek 'graphos' from which the suffix comes actually meant both drawing and writing. And there's no pictures in 'telegraph' either.

autoerotic
self induced orgasm
autoerotic
...
Except, there's this weird taboo in the world of gaming about including sexual content in games... Doubly so if it's autoerotic sexual content.

...and apparently a weird taboo against saying 'masturbation' in forum posts. Whoops!

Seriously, though - I don't think there's anything 'weird' about the taboo. It's the same taboo that many western cultures have - particularly the US - against sex in anything. It's the same taboo that decided that seeing Janet Jackson's breast would scar poor innocent young children for life. If you're going to write stories with sex in then really, it doesn't matter if you want to make them into comics or movies or videogames, the same [insert vitriolic perjoratives here] people will rail against them for the same reasons.

And I have some good news and bad news as well. Mainly, I finally decided to spend some money and bought a tablet and Photoshop Elements 5.0. This is a good thing because I have a much better hardware and software to make art with. This is also a bad thing because I have no idea how to work in Photoshop.

Well, if you have any questions, you only have to ask. There are several people on the forum and the IRC channel who use Photoshop on a regular basis, after all!

Atleast until I get used to working around in the tablet...

Mm. For me, it took probably about a week of usage (albeit not constant) before I was as happy sketching stuff on the tablet as I was on paper. But yeah, just practice. And that's good for drawing skills anyway.

[mikey]

Under whose standard for 'pornography'? Just because you can get away with reading them at work doesn't make them 'not porn'! While I'd agree that it's perfectly possible to have a story which is erotic but not pornographic, I would note that it's also quite possible to have a story which is pornographic without explicit pictures. 'Pornography' is just material designed specifically to arouse the reader/viewer/whatever.

Under those same rules though, I'd also say it's perfectly possible to make a game dealing with mmmm... mmmmaaa... oh I can't say it... with autoerotica, while still not making the work arousing.
Like Shinji Ikari in End of Evangelion.

On a related note (but I'll shut up quickly), even if something does not include sexual content, it can still be aimed at being arousing - I mean moe - seriously, the way the dresses are drawn, the poses, shiny thighs and all the supposedly cute features have a sexual tone to them - in fact I found most of the moe girls looking cute... but also a lot like underage prostitutes.

[Samu-kun]

Under whose standard for 'pornography'? Just because you can get away with reading them at work doesn't make them 'not porn'! While I'd agree that it's perfectly possible to have a story which is erotic but not pornographic, I would note that it's also quite possible to have a story which is pornographic without explicit pictures. 'Pornography' is just material designed specifically to arouse the reader/viewer/whatever. (Sure, 'graph' makes it sound like it ought to be about pictures, but the Greek 'graphos' from which the suffix comes actually meant both drawing and writing. And there's no pictures in 'telegraph' either.

That's actually a good point. There really is no bright red line that separates what constitutes an erotic work from a pornographic work. There certainly are works that aren't considered pornography by most people that still include erotic content, the most famous of these examples being perhaps Nobotov's Lolita. To give an honest answer, I think the standards for what separates a pornographic work from an erotic work would have to come mostly from the author. As one of the Supreme Court justices said, I can't really define what constitutes pornography on paper, but I can tell when I see it.

With that said, maybe I made the story sound alot more erotic than it actually will be. XD I'm putting alot more work to make the story a little more light hearted and more cute than previous drafts of the story have been. It's not like the entire story will be dedicated solely on Maray's sexual maturation. It won't be a hentai fest with one H scene every ten minutes. There'll be other stuff too... Like huge airships. In battle. And funny things happening too. This is me writing the story, you know...

...and apparently a weird taboo against saying 'masturbation' in forum posts. Whoops!

G-GWAH! Y-you said the word!!! G-grosss!!!!!!! *trips over himself running out of the topic screaming*

Kidding. XD

[bloodywyvern]

And another person loses himself in the endless swarm of ideas :/ jk, I just find it funny how quickly peoples decisions and ideas change. Not that it's always a bad things, it seems you have a real solid story going here!

Though the main character being unadventurous reminds me a bit of Valkyrie Profile 2, me thinks.

In a sense I find it somewhat plausible to say all pornography is erotic, but not all erotica is pornography. Since if your going in to the realm of pornography your obvious aim is to create an arousal in someone, if you fail at that then it can't be considered anything except the next dollar bin buy at the local XXX shop. Though in many cases just making something erotic can offend people all in it's own, even if only text. The Lolita book made a huge controversy and fuss, with national bans and the like. It's hard to really decide where to cut off the level of erotic before it begins to piss people off...

[Samu-kun]

Helllooo everybody again. I'm just checking in again to remind everyone that this project is still very well alive and kicking. As a matter of fact, when I'm not posting, you can assume that everything's going fine because it means that I'm not having any problems making the game. ^_^

Currently, all my efforts are concentrated around writing the script. But to be a bit more detailed, I shouldn't really call it the script, but more accurately "the vision." I'm writing down every single thing I want to see in the game in its most idealized form. When I'm writing the script, I'm not just focusing on the narrative and the dialouge, but also the graphics, music, gameplay, and sound effects, and how everything comes together to create a finished product. What's most important right now is to write a vision for the game, or what the game looks like inside my head and what should look like if I had unlimited resources to create it. Once production begins, I'll take this vision and start making huge content cuts to make the concrete version of the game. Throughout development, I'll have to gauge the difference in quality between the vision and the real product. The hope is that the difference, though it will be vast, is still within my own acceptable levels.

But enough talking about boring stuff like that. :3 I've figured out a way to solve the issue of balancing the RPG gameplay, the fantasy adventure, the sexual content, and the comedy. Mainly, I've decided to make the genre of A Mon Seul Désir a Visual Novel - Text Based Interactive Fiction - Role Playing Game hybrid.

I think the Visual Novel and Text Based Interactive Fiction genres really go hand in hand. By Interactive Fiction, I mean the type of games that you usually see created on the ADRIFT engine.

One of the biggest problems I mentioned last time was the fact that I wanted the game to play like an adventure RPG, with Maray and her party wandering around a decently sized world map and exploring old ruins, hiking through snowy mountain peeks, looting abandoned dungeons, navigating through swarmps, and the like. I think that this feeling of limited open ended adventure can be achieved through introducing aspects of the IF genre into the game. For example, early on in the game, Maray has to go exploring in a forest. If it were just a standard visual novel, then all the player would have had been able to do is click the mouse to progress the dialouge and perhaps make a decision somewhere along the adventure that makes the storyline branch. However, by incorperating aspects of the IF genre, we've introduced a little bit more player interactivity into the whole exploration through the forest.

For example, when Maray first enters the forest, we have this text displayed on the message box like a typical visual novel:

The ground was still muddy from the recent rain shower. Large pools of water had gathered across the forest, so I did my best to hop around them.

I could hardly see the clearing sky beyond the dense treetops of the forest. In the distance, I heard the eerie creaking of a dried out tree as it shook in the wind.

Although the forest was relatively safe during daylight, there were still many wild beasts and dangerous insects that roamed around. But as long as I kept my guard up and didn’t find myself ambushed, I should be fine.

The forest extends to the north, east, and south. I can return to the village by going west.

I should gather about 10 blue berries before leaving the forest.

After reading the text, the player is presented with four options, whether to go north, east, south, or west. From there, the player makes a decision. If she choses to head north, then we move to a new scene where this text is displayed.

I headed north.

There was a small grove of young trees here. Because the bigger trees soaked up most of the sunlight, it was an uncommon sight to see many saplings in the old forest. Even though they didn’t have much to go on, I guess they still found ways to survive. I better work hard to live on too.

I can head south to the forest entrance, or eastwards, further into the forest.

When making a straight up visual novel, having this many choices would be impossible because it would create far too many branches in the story and increase the writing burden exponentially. However, in a IF game, we bypass this problem altogether. In fact, there are only six "areas" in the forest: the entrance, the grove, the pond, the caves, the old oak tree, and the dusty fountain. The first time the player enters one of these areas, she gets the the full text displayed in VN format (that is, generally by single sentences or short paragraphs, like seen above). The second time she visits that area, she just gets the abbreviated form, eg. "I arrived at the forest entrance." In this model, we only need to write the descriptions for six scenes to create a whole new level of interactivity never found in standard visual novels.

This also allows the creation of a great adventure in a large fantasy world and still retains the emotional narrative of a young girl. Even though it certainly does soun like I'm trying to create a massive open ended world like we've seen in the Elder Scrolls series of games, that's really not what I'm trying to create. I want the game, through all its open-endedness and adventure, to feel warm and to have a heart. The story is about a girl who's growing up. Keeping the aspects of the VN genre will be able to show the moments of happiness, sadness, grief, and hope that accompany Maray's childhood.

Now, this leads to the next question of what RPG elements there will be in the game. Like in the above example, there will be parts of the game where Maray will head out into unsafe areas. Whenever she moves from one area to another, there's a chance of a RPG-style random battle occuring. I probably shouldn't make many promises on just what these battles will look like until atleast I finish programming the engine for it, but I assume that battles similar to old SNES RPGs like FFVI (IV in N. America) should not be too difficult to program. I'm also hoping to have some sort of character progress in the game with character stats and level ups and such... But obviously, the details of that'll come later in development. ^_^

[LVUER]

What kind of tool would you use? Renpy or Game Maker? If you want to make it like RPG, why don't you use RPG Maker XP (or 2000/3)? RPG Maker XP is better at resolution and displaying graphics (and keeping/locking your sources). It also uses more format (JPEG, PNG, MP3, MID, etc).

[Samu-kun]

Mm... I'm thinking of using GameMaker to program this, although I'm pretty confident that such a game would be possible in Ren'Py as well. Speaking of which, I should really consider using Ren'Py instead so I can get Mac and Linux compatability... It would take some time for me to relearn all the programming, but I would be able to get a larger audience and much better technical support when something goes wrong...

RPG Maker XP would probably not be one of my top choices to program this. It's really optimized only for creating straight up 16-bit era RPGs, which Seul Desir is not. It's really closer to a IF game like Myst that displays the story in the traditional VN style with some RPG battles in between to give it action. But I'm not surprised such a misunderstanding happened though, since my above post was rather confusing and jumbled. XD

Mmm... Further along development, I'll probably end up posting a video of the game in action like I did with Raidaa no Asahi so that people can better understand how the game works. It should explain it much better than I can with words. XD

[bloodywyvern]

You really love to make hybrids don't you? o.o everything you do is some sort of mix of tons of different aspects, it's actually quite interesting. It's really great that you do things like, since most people don't...though I'm seeing less and less *actual* VN's lately, it's still fun to see all the things people come up with. I wish you luck! I'd help if I could, but alas I don't have the skills.

Good luck, I'll be watching...always watching O.o dun dun dun (too much soda >.<).

[monele]

Your forest example really reminds me of my little Adventure engine in Ren'Py. If you ever plan to go Ren'Py and don't want to code everything, think about it .

I'm actually looking forward to seeing more hybrids, so keep it up

[Blue123]

You have a brilliant concept here.

[alley]

This looks awesome!