If you want to keep informed about this project without being spoiled, you should check my blog, I may post art and other things in there that will contain no spoilers
*If you came here looking for pictures, I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but there aren't many ^^;
There may be some every couple of pages or so, but right now the focus is the story and not the art!
Here it is a folder where you can find most of my sketches I've ever done for this thing... most of them really old and or very rough:
http://deji.ishtera.net/pics/cmstuff/
Hope you have fun looking at them
January 23th 2015 EDIT:
Some updates on our progress! Yay! Also WIP images
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 92#p354192
November 13th 2014 EDIT:
NECRO POSTING TO THE MAX.
APPLE CIDER IS TAKING OVER CARAMEL MOKACCINO!!
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 31#p346431
-------- old 2012 updates below (yup, it's been a while :') I STARTED THIS THREAD ON 2010, PLEASE KILL ME. )---------
August 22th EDIT:
CM has a new kind-of-placeholder website (: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 22#p218822
August 7th EDIT:
Nico sprite sketch: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 73#p215473
August 2nd EDIT:
Penny sprite art: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 73#p214573
July 28th EDIT - DEMO:
Image-less demo of week #1 has been uploaded! Please take some time if you can to read it and provide some much needed feedback (:
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 62#p213062
November 16th (2011) EDIT:
New pseudo rant-y (hopefully not very spoiler-y) devblog here: http://caramelmokaccino.tumblr.com/
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Hey guys C:
Remember my old project, Caramel Mokaccino?
Hiatused for ages due original writer not writing it at all and becasue I didn't really want to let it sit there without getting done, I decided to fight against my fear of writing and just do it myself on (some of) my spare time.
But because I'm so insecure and I really want to do this right, I'm asking for as much feedback as possible! Feel free to point out the things you find are wrong and if you could point me towards how to fix them, it'd be great. I'll be very happy if you can tell me what I'm doing right as well ^^ I really like this story and I want to get it done so maybe other people will enjoy it too C:
Please take into consideration that, even if I really want to do this, I'm a fickle person and I may drop this for a while in favour of other endeavours to do on my scarce free time (like doing commissions, drawing for myself or drawing for other things I may find interesting instead of writing this, or just , you know, going out, spend time with my boyfriend, play World of Warcraft, that kind of thing xD). I won't drop it completely, though (I still haven't droped any of the projects I'v ever thought of seriously, even if they haven't been touched in years ^^).
By the way, I'm no writer, and my mind is very... scattered? So this post,a nd probably the posts that i'll write klater on will have the ideas scattered everywhere and will be sometimes hard to read; I ask you to please bear with that ^^;
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So, in case you don't remember or you don't really want to read the original thread, Caramel Mokaccino is the story of Penelope (Penny), a 18 years old girl moving back to the city where she lived as a kid to attend college. On the beginning, she stays in the house of a family (the Salviatis) that has been old friends with her own family, but soon she feels out of place in there and looks for her own place. To do so, she seeks a part-time job at the Caramel Mokaccino, a café close to campus that is owned by the older member of the Salviati family (the rest of the money for her expenses comes from her parents).
In college and at work, she'll meet new friends, and she'll get close to them and help them solve whatever issues they have with their lives, forming strong bonds with them.
The point of the story/game is to get close to the new people in Penny's life, learn about them, care enough about them to learn what's troubling them (it won't be easy), and form ties with them (friendly or romantic). It'd be friendship/love GxB/GxG, I think.
There are 6 characters you can get close to during the story individually:
Nicola (Nico) from the Salviati family, who is still in high school and works at the Caramel,
Anaís (Annie), a cute female classmate,
Ian, an older classmate, taking some classes with Penny that lives nearby her new place,
Franco, upperclassman and Class Assistant (not sure the name in english, care to help mee with that?), happy, polite and liked by many girls in campus,
Bárbara (Barb? She hates to be called 'Barbie'), Franco's classmate, also Class Assistant, smart and polite,
and Julieta, a cheerful and flirty co-worker.
....though only 4 of them have endings on the first playthrough (one friendship ending, one romantic ending) and there is an extra 'what-I-decided-it's-the-tue-ending' ending once you clear at leats one ending for each of the other 4 characters, in which you manage to solve the problems and become close friends with everybody instead of just one (or two) characters. I also planned to award extra 'epilogue' scenes when some endings have been collected.
The story takes place in 58 days starting on Penny's first day in college (still deciding if I'm going to write ALL of them, or just skip the days where nothing important happens... it seems like a lot to write D:).
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Locations have been stablished, characters have been designed for ages, and basic plot for each character (and their intertwining stories) have been set. I'm currently working on the first 18 days, wherethe 'first act' or introduction to the story as a whole and to each individual character's story is told, with a slight turning point into the second act happends between day 16 and 18.
I made myself a grid calendar in a big piece of paper and cut some colored paper squares to represent each character, so I could place a similar number of each acrosss those days, so I could get around the same amount of exposition for all of them (it was quite fun, to be honest xD).
*edit: I took a snapshot with my webcam Ian is red, franco is Blue, barbara is Green, Annie is pink, Nico is Yellow and Julieta is lilac. Last night, I was building a small test for the days where you can 'earn points' with each characters and how those points affect some later days (still during the 18 days). It came iup nice, but also made me realize you could actually just get no points - or go towards only one character that has no first playthorugh route, so if that happens, I'll need to give a warning to the player (" Hey, Penny, you seem to not have made friends with anybody yet... maybe you should talk more to them?" or something) and give them a new chance of earning extra points to get into one of the routes before just defaulting to the 'alone' ending.
I've been also toying with Franco's route, which is my leats favourite, treating it independently to see how it should develop. I plan to do the same with the rest of the characters one by one.
Now for the spoilers, here they are the characters and their issues.
*edit: spoiler-tagged for further guard for people not wanting to be spoiled with everything!
edit2:
Disclaimer: Since this is an ongoing development thread, and I'm not good at writing stories, there are things that come up during development and discussion that end up changing the story, from a little bit to really changing this character's route completely, you may want to read everything on this thread and not just what's whited-out here, which was the state of the story when I first made this thread.
Further development has been made on Nico's route, on the very main character, and on Franco and Ian's routes... so far!
Nico
Ian and Barbara are in friendly terms, though distant, and ian is very resented towards Franco. franco feels bad about all this but he's not doing anything about it. the relationship between Franco and Ms. V ended a long time ago (though she's styill after him), and she has threatened tpo ruin Franco's ccareer if he speaks up for his friend... and also Barbara's (the new Class Assistant),, since she know what her own issues are.
Ian won't speak up either because he still doesn't want to ruin Franco's career (he doens't know about Barbara being in the middle),a adn he thinks just by switching careers everything will be dropped... He's wrong.
To solve Ian's problems, you have to first figure out what's wrong with him (he's stubborn as hell), and find a way to save his ass from being expelled without exposing Franco (Franco and Ian get in a fight by the end of his route, not only because Ian has a grdge, but because he thinks (or learns?) Franco's cowardice is affecting Barbara as well). In the end everything is solved and Franco and Ian make up.
*If you choose to pursue Ian's friendship, you may help him mend his relationship with Barbara.
To solve Franco's problems, you have to learn about the shole story and make him be sincere about the whole thing (he's the type of person that will just look the other way and hope for things to fix themselves and not tell anybody or ask for help, even if there are some casualties). Then he has to confront the teacher and actually ask for Ian's help in the matter, making up with him.
She has a young and beautiful mother, and her loving father died when she was a kid; they have lived together all by themselves ever since... until recently, where her mother fell deeply in love with a man and they have announced they'll get married. Annie resents all this and refuses to even get to know this man in her mom's life, and tried to spend as much time in college, or swelling at the caramel or staying at Penny's home as possible. Things get works, when The preparations for the marriage and the new life as a family start.
To solve Annie's problems, you need to make her talk about them, talk with her mother and make them make up.
*Annie's feelings are fickle, she's never been in love before, except admiration-crushes towards some of her classmates, or gushing over cute guys on tv and magazines. She starts fangirling about Franco with Penny (that's why he's a rather default route in the game), but as she gets close to Penny, depending on her actions she may fall in love with her. If Penny neglects her in favour of pursuing other characters and solving their problems, she may find somebody else that cares about her~
Bárbara, and Franco as well, come from a wealthy (though not rich) family, that has some very successful enterprises. Bárbara would be the 'heir' of all this, so she was expected to study something that would help her run the bussiness. She's very smart and capable to do so, but her true passion is Literature. When she started college, she was sad she couldn't study what she really wanted, but then she saw Enzo (older Salviati sibling) open his café next to campus. She had met Enzo a few years before in some literary club/workshop, and she talked with him about her dilema. She decided to still start studying Literature, even if just a few courses each term, but she couldn't tell her parents and she couldn't pay for them.even if she had some money on her own, so with Enzo they deviced this new identity "Julieta", to take the extra classes and work at the Caramel to pay for them. The ones that know about this are Enzo, Nico and Franco... Ian has no idea. Evenetually Ms. V. finds out and uses this to threaten Franco against telling the truth.
Julieta has been the vent for Barbara, but she's getting stressed because of the double life, Franco's and Ian's issues.
To solve Barbara's problems, you need to get close to Barbara AND Julieta and realize there is a connection between them. You need to help Julieta when she decides to leave her house and eventually bust her being Bárbara, encouraging her to talk to her family about her true dreams and stop having two lives. (in any case, in the event Barbara wouldn't want to work on the family bussiness, there is always franco to cover up ).
*If you decide to pursue Barbara's friendship, you may help her mend her relationship with Ian.
I'll post more about the individual plots and what I'm working on (and the problems/doubts I'm facing) later on, but for now I'd like to hear what you guys think ^^
Thanks for reading ^^