MorningStar

[Ivlivs]

Certainly my main regret with MorningStar is not spending more time balancing combat and working out the experience/spell cost/damage ratios so that combat was more 'fun' than 'chore'. Unfortunately, the battle engine didn't get finished 'til quite late in development thanks to the writing part taking a lot longer than we expected, so given that it was a NaNoRenO title we wanted to get it out rather than spend ages polishing it.

It was a NaNoRenO?! I'm surprised, given the battle system and all.

Don't beat yourself up over this. I have some regrets with Jitteh Dawn myself, but there's always the next game (to make.) Perhaps you can take that whole "Venus" storyline and run with it? There's some serious comic-book/side-story potential there.

[Riviera]

Yeah.. the *only* spot I disliked was the battles. The plot and characters are great.. it's so hard picking a girl!

My first playthrough is Sachiko, simply because it seems like it'd be cute.. next will be Miyako and then Sakura.

I think I like Sakura best. She's so shy!

[WATK]

OMG. Great job.
I've got to say that I agree with the majority of posts, but funnily enough, I thought the battles were easy...
Not to say I didn't like them. And I did use a couple of hard hitting spells, just for the hell of it, but... I can't say they became my faves... Sorry...
I'd love to see a 'plus' version, or similar, but I realise that you guys actually have lives, so it's pretty unfair to ask that of you, but I'm just saying - if you ever made another game, I'd download it straight.
Just a couple of suggestions for battles, mainly what already been said (sorry! )

• Lower costing spells (the main one, most definitely)
  
  Absolute advantage in an element and defined weaknesses for each girl
  (time consuming for you... Also, I would selfishly like Natsuki to be slightly better in battle; by the time she was an option for a partner Hikari was 225 HP, and my normal partner was just as powerful as Nat, which seemed a little strange [her being a teacher...]. Perhaps having a high YP price for spells but very high effectiveness? [eg. Basics shields, instead of +20, +40? Enough to big quite a big difference, at least.] Or less durability? [only lasts a turn?])
  More customised endings... Sorry to say, but repetitiveness is certainly a big let-down in the game.
  
  More impact from choices. Just as a general thing, ties in well with endings.
  
  Increased time frame. (A month seems too small... I LOVE this game! This is just because I want more.... and actually, as a practical thing, because I'd actually like to be able to pass things without studying everyday, or even getting the best possible scores on exams without studying [perfectionist. And proud of it.]

Anyway, I know it's not really anything extra to chew on, and you've probably already moved on to bigger and better things, but it's really well done, and it was a joy to play.
Thanks for posting it!
(spoilers just to be safe. Not really needed...)

[monele]

I just thought about this a few days ago : would it be a lot of work to include a cheat to skip battles? ^^;... It's just that I'd like to finally know the whole story, but I know I won't have enough patience for all the fighting ^^;

[ficedula]

We originally meant to release a plus version a couple of months later, but, well, that never happened...

It still might happen eventually but we're working on a different game for this year's NaNoRenO and then we'll probably want to release fixes etc for that.

If we do release a MorningStar update I'd guess battle skipping might be one of the things we'd add, 'cause it's been requested more than once and it's not too hard to add. Making the game longer isn't a request we've had very often - in fact we sort of aimed that given a month at school you wouldn't see every event, and that you'd have to play through with the other characters to see everything (although the chances of seeing everything are pretty damn small...) - we wanted it to have a decent replay value.

[Jake]

in fact we sort of aimed that given a month at school you wouldn't see every event, and that you'd have to play through with the other characters to see everything

Additionally - more game time would mean more writing, and already I think I spent more time in March last year writing for MorningStar than doing the art. And Fice did more of the writing than I! The conversation structure style meant a lot of writing. :/

(Personally, the main thing that stopped me putting a "skip battles" option in a long time ago was that to make the story continue to work, they'd have to be replaced by something. For example, the plot presumes that Hikari knows about the medical facility under the library in more than one place, because realistically she shouldn't have survived her first battle and thus should have had the post-battle scene there at least once. And I seem to recall that choosing particular partners for battle training helps you along with those girls... so realistically, there'd have to be a whole load of extra commentary to cover the things that would have happened in the battles if the player was actually playing them; to do it without breaking the game wouldn't be a 'quick fix'. :/)

[mikey]

I just thought about this a few days ago : would it be a lot of work to include a cheat to skip battles? ^^;... It's just that I'd like to finally know the whole story, but I know I won't have enough patience for all the fighting ^^;

I will add myself to the list, too. I think ER allows you to do this, as well as Raidaa... it would really be fantastic for me to finally be able to play the game.

[monele]

Jake : I'm really thinking of something close to a cheat. You would still choose who to fight with but you could choose to immediately win or lose the fight if you're in that "story-only" mode. And you could force the first fight to be a losing one just to ensure everything's okay and then let the player decide.

[Ivlivs]

I just noticed something about the story of MorningStar.

The design of the logo and the "school of Venuses" concept seems to be inspired by My-HiME.

The "kiss to activate Meta powers" is based on the method used to activate a Pactio in Negima.

The fact that you need two Venuses (Veni?) to use one's powers effectively seems to be copied from Futari wa Pretty Cure.

Am I correct about any of these?

[Jake]

Certainly the game is full of references -

The design of the logo and the "school of Venuses" concept seems to be inspired by My-HiME.

More precisely, the whole game is borrowing quite heavily from My-Otome. But they're practically the same series anyway. And yeah, the logo was a deliberate pastiche.

The "kiss to activate Meta powers" is based on the method used to activate a Pactio in Negima.

I don't think Fice or I have seen Negima at all; I for one was put off anything Akamatsu-derived by Love Hina. This is actually nicked from Simoun, where the all-female fighter pilots kiss to activate their aircraft.

The fact that you need two Venuses (Veni?) to use one's powers effectively seems to be copied from Futari wa Pretty Cure.

I've not seen that, either, although I couldn't vouch for Fice; IIRC it was more that we needed an excuse for Venuses to pair up so they could exchange pendants (MariMite), and that not only seemed as good a reason as any but also tied in neatly with the three-element combat system.

[North Hawk]

because realistically she shouldn't have survived her first battle and thus should have had the post-battle scene there at least once.

Heheh... maybe I'm just too good at this game for my own good, but I've only -ever- wound up like that once in any playthrough. And I've played it a good number of times, honestly. I tend to delete old VNs after a while, regardless of... anything... but this one has survived every single purge I've gone through since downloading it, and is the only one to have survived this long. Be proud.

[arcueid]

i have a question.. what's the problem when the text are so slow? I tried adjusting the speed but it still is slow.... does that mean I really have to install that Network1.1? ^^-

..1 more thing....I haven't really gone far on the game (I'm on my first battle, the last time I played it.. and didn't even finish it)... anyway,can someone provide a walkthrough or tips on how to get the partner you want at the end? eheheheheheh sankyu~ |3

[Jake]

i have a question.. what's the problem when the text are so slow? I tried adjusting the speed but it still is slow.... does that mean I really have to install that Network1.1? ^^-

Huh. I believe that if you set the text speed to the fastest setting it should be practically instant, although it was a while ago I last went through it...

If you've not got .NET at all (nothing to do with networks, as it goes; it's Microsoft's silly name for a programming/runtime environment and libraries) then the game won't run; if you have 1.0 you should really upgrade to 1.1 anyway, I guess... but I don't know that it'll necessarily speed the text up.

But you probably have .NET1.1 anyway, if you've been running Windows Update; I seem to recall it was pushed out sometime around WinXP SP1, and it's included by default on a Vista system.

anyway,can someone provide a walkthrough or tips on how to get the partner you want at the end?

The simple answer is "be their friend". It should become clear what each of the girls is interested in, what kind of personality they have; play to that.

[Guest]

I see isee... thanks~! ^^-

[Jaye]

I don't suppose you could publish your battle system scripts?

And On-Topic: I've been having heaps of fun with this. They all seem so interesting! I'm not very far into the game... But so far it's been so good!