Left of Center [Comedy, Friendship, BxB/BxG, NaNo13]

[arachni42]

But again that might be my personal preference for how stories should flow in general; I realize it's certainly not a universal feeling. I might be the world's worst audience for a slice-of-life game.

Since it's fresh in my mind, I'll throw in my thoughts in this.

I had no problem with the premise, but with regards to payoff, I know what you're talking about. Because I do like the SOL, I accepted it for what's there, but I think there's still room for improvement. They've mentioned character epilogues in an update, so it's possible that will help.
By the time the concert rolled around, I suspected that it was going to be "summary," but because it is kind of a thing in some commercial stories to build up to a concert (probably so that they can commercially promote the music)... because of that, it did set up an expectation... although with the fact that it would be the last evening. In other words, a story like this would commonly feature the concert as a sort of "culminating event," during which you might interact with all of the characters, hear a track of music (that the band is playing), and come to some sort of conclusion about whether you want this to be your last day or not. It would be used as a device to tie things together. Given the time constraint of a month, I can see why they didn't do that, although it's something to consider for an update. I'd chalk up hashbrowns and psychology tests to the genre, but even for fans I think your point about the concert and ingredients coming together is quite applicable.

[Obscura]

Oh yeah, just to clarify, I didn't have a problem with premise per se, but the way in which it was executed that made me feel it could have been handled differently.

[CheeryMoya]

|´･ω･`)

@arachni42: Ah yeah, the backgrounds. One person commented that the quality of the renders varies a lot because they're a mix of Uncle Mugen's and leon's stuff. Since leon's rendering software isn't as nice as Mugen's it's easy to tell who did what. I mean, I can trace over and repaint the BGs to give them thicker lines entirely. While trying to think about how to respond I did this.

Klaus covered up the one table I drew.
That would eliminate the problem between the sprites and BGs clashing but I don't know how shading works >_> 'Tis my enemy.
We'll increase the opacity of the textbox, that should be easy to do. Occasionally the sprites will end up transparent if you skip, I'll see if I can fix that. And oh shit all those typos. Those are from the last few days when crunch time started I swear ;n;

@Obscura: You weren't as harsh as I though, but I-I still disappointed you (´Д｀。) I'm sorry

- OMG WOAH DISCUSSION IN LIBRARY JUST BECAME 18+
- Why is G-force running away from Santa? Because he was afraid of being tackled? This was a little odd in setup and execution.

Oh please, the stuff you're writing is probably more explicit :V And well, if someone was running towards you without explanation what would you do? Stand there? I'll try to see if I can find a way to make that scene better though orz

A lot of your points are probably the result of this being a character-driven school s'life leaning towards randomness but yeah, more logical connections from scene to scene can happen. I'm so sorry the execution fell below expectations ;A; Next NaNo I'll do something plot-driven for once why am I already planning for it.

Thank you guys for playing! AP testing is right around the corner so I won't be able to work as much as I'd like on this or my other projects, but I already have the planning for the extra stuff done. I'll take all of your points into consideration.

[OneHitPoint]

seems I ran into a bug somehow while playing through it. After going through one playthrough focusing on spending time with polyanna, I loaded a save and tried to avoid going with polyanna on the day you first see her getting bullied. Sadly when I went with her the next day G-Force somehow knew about the bullying anyway. I didn't like that inconsistency, so I reloaded again and decided to hang w/ Rita instead of the library. It was during that story path that I ran into the following:

Code: Select all

While running game code:
  File "game/rita.rpy", line 298, in script
Exception: Parameter 'new_widget' is not known by ATL Transform.

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\execution.py", line 288, in run
    node.execute()
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\ast.py", line 1102, in execute
    renpy.exports.with_statement(trans, paired)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\exports.py", line 941, in with_statement
    return renpy.game.interface.do_with(trans, paired, clear=clear)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\display\core.py", line 1526, in do_with
    clear=clear)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\display\core.py", line 1838, in interact
    repeat, rv = self.interact_core(preloads=preloads, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\display\core.py", line 2044, in interact_core
    new_widget=layers_root)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\atl.py", line 302, in __call__
    raise Exception('Parameter %r is not known by ATL Transform.' % k)
Exception: Parameter 'new_widget' is not known by ATL Transform.

Windows-7-6.1.7601-SP1
Ren'Py 6.15.1.275
Left of Center 0.95

I clicked the ignore button provided by your bug catcher and my character made a comment about still not having a ticket for the concert and it looks like the story's still progressing as usual...

up until Rita tells me about her Dad and how her Mom demands perfection from her. I ended that conversation by saying "Later" and got another bug message:

Code: Select all

While running game code:
  File "game/rita.rpy", line 366, in script
Exception: Parameter 'new_widget' is not known by ATL Transform.

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\execution.py", line 288, in run
    node.execute()
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\ast.py", line 1102, in execute
    renpy.exports.with_statement(trans, paired)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\exports.py", line 941, in with_statement
    return renpy.game.interface.do_with(trans, paired, clear=clear)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\display\core.py", line 1526, in do_with
    clear=clear)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\display\core.py", line 1838, in interact
    repeat, rv = self.interact_core(preloads=preloads, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\display\core.py", line 2044, in interact_core
    new_widget=layers_root)
  File "C:\Users\Owner\Saved Games\Gamefiles\Left of Center-0.95-win\renpy\atl.py", line 302, in __call__
    raise Exception('Parameter %r is not known by ATL Transform.' % k)
Exception: Parameter 'new_widget' is not known by ATL Transform.

Windows-7-6.1.7601-SP1
Ren'Py 6.15.1.275
Left of Center 0.95

Going to guess that whatever I broke at the first point broke the second thing, since that's what the ignore button says might happen. But I managed to reach the end without further incident. don't think I did very well with either playthrough, since everyone seemed to react to my shredding the transfer the same way both times.

[khfan12]

Finally got around to playing through this yesterday, and I loved it!

Here's a quick review:

Rita:

I went through hers first. My curiosity got the best of me. I thought that she was really interesting, and that the fact that behind her sunglasses, she was hiding the "proof of her senioritis". I thought she was an interesting and snarky character-someone I could get along with. Chicken Nuggets are her favorite food? Nice.

Pollyana:

Is it bad that I accidentally forget her real name on occasion? No? Alrighty then. I liked the fact that she was like a junior activist and the signs she made were the best! My favorite was "No Yolo" (I also agree with her that it was stupid and it died) I thought that it was sort of sad that she didn't see that the other guy was making fun of her, and I'm glad that Garret suck up for her, even though she didn't.

Santa:

Oh gosh, I thought he was adorable! I liked him right away, so I decided to save his route for last and I'm glad I did because I like it the best. One of my favorite parts was the cicada block That was so random, and oddly enough, I could see it happening to me or one of my friends IRL. I sort of figured out about his phobia before he told me about it, based on some of his actions. I loved the whole "hash browns" thing, and that he got so happy when you gave them to him xD

I also liked Jazz Hands, he reminds me of a teacher that I had in High School. My favorite character right now is Santa.

[eime-leen]

My thoughts on this game:

I couldn't wait anymore and had to play this (V 0.95)! And it was totally worth my time! I had lots of fun with the dialogue and the characters, and the slice-of-life feeling.

I loved the game design. Very neat, professional, and COOL, perfect for this type of game.
The game was fairly short, but was able to gain your interest in the other characters. I am aware of the time period of the story (one week). (I still wish it was longer, though) I thought it was good that you left it brief, and that you've only seen a small part of the characters' lives, again due to the time period (as well as the amount of time you had to make it).
Pia and Klaus seemed too interested in Garrett, even when they first met and stuff, but that's just my opinion (I would be estatic if two people I've never met became super-friendly with me all of a sudden!).

The concert was something that was being built up along the story, but concludes rather poorly. All the excitement built up for it just went away quickly.

If there were any references, then I've missed all of them sadly (besides morphogenetic field c:). I did like the personality quiz stuff, something I've never heard of before!
I really liked the environment. It seemed like a somewhat futuristic version of school, because the students are rather... unprofessional. Sometimes they'd complain about being tired, or just barge out of class, or not pay attention... But that's a very interesting twist! I enjoyed this very much!
Some scenes were definitely funny! "I don't know where that's been" was one of them for sure!

Whoops! Sorry for writing a lot!
Thanks to everyone who made this game! It's memorable, funny, and just cool, yo. (Santa is the best character)
If there's another update I'll be sure to go check it out!

[tashaj4de]

I found this on DA xD I've downloaded this but... I haven't gotten around to playing it yet xD I'll go play it and review after I play if a few times~

The characters seem really interesting, and I can tell that I'm gonna enjoy playing this x3 The art's awesome btw~

[CheeryMoya]

Sorry for late replies, school's tired me out to much to sit down and properly respond to this thread orz

@OneHitPoint: Oooh... fixing that sort of error is way out of my league. I think that the points system screwed up somehow and the save files got messed up. The only thing I can tell you to do is not to reload from that file, sorry :C

@khfan12 and eime-leen: I'm glad you enjoyed the characters :'D While writing this I kept asking myself "what stereotypes about school were created by mass media and what actually happens in the classroom?" Welp. To my defense, there's a group of boys in one of my classes which spontaneously starts clapping whenever someone enters the room, gets up to do anything, answers a question correctly, etc. They also keep talking back to the teacher which interrupts a lot of the lessons. At least they keep things entertaining.

@tashaj4de: Do come back once you're done and tell me what you think. I wonder where everyone else on the first page went.

In terms of progress towards a proper V.1 (or should I just jump to V.2?? I don't know how I'm numbering these builds), I haven't been able to sit down and write thanks to school work. What a drag. I did start tracing over the BGs so they have thicker lines to match the sprites, I'm really leaning towards omitting some scenes so I don't have to do those BGs (basket ball, concert; those were really extraneous and I think the game can do without them). Those scenes will be replaced, though if anyone will really miss them I'll keep the NaNo version up after the update for old time's sake.

You also might have noticed the bouncing pixels in my sig. I made them over here and turned them into .gifs afterwards. Here's the larger pixels for funsies also because I stayed up one night animating them only to find out LSF had an image height restriction of 90 pixels. Damn.

[khfan12]

Sorry for late replies, school's tired me out to much to sit down and properly respond to this thread orz[/center]

Haha, it's totally fine!

I did start tracing over the BGs so they have thicker lines to match the sprites, I'm really leaning towards omitting some scenes so I don't have to do those BGs (basket ball, concert; those were really extraneous and I think the game can do without them). Those scenes will be replaced, though if anyone will really miss them I'll keep the NaNo version up after the update for old time's sake.

Those BGs look gorgeous. Can't wait to see another version of the game, but don't strain yourself too much!

You also might have noticed the bouncing pixels in my sig. I made them over here and turned them into .gifs afterwards. Here's the larger pixels for funsies also because I stayed up one night animating them only to find out LSF had an image height restriction of 90 pixels. Damn

Those pixels are amazing!

[Dawnfire]

I really, really liked this game! The art was great, the writing was great, and all the routes were very fun. I was confused in thinking at first that the teacher had a route that was missing. xD (I would have loved to see that.) Santa was hands-down my favorite, but I really loved all of the characters and their realistic interactions despite the craziness of the school. I loved this and I can't wait for more projects, because I'm definitely following your future stuff.

[robotfinches]

I just started playing this, and I had to make an account to comment on it! Your art style has this very comic-book feel which I love, and the whole "Dawn of the ____ Day" reminded me so much of Majora's Mask.

I really like how you included the Myers-Brigg personality test too. Strangely enough, there was a day in my high school where all the juniors were herded to our computer lab and we had to take the test. I'm ISFJ--I always wonder what other people are, and it's cool that this school just has that as an identifier!

Will post more when I actually finish the game... xD

[CheeryMoya]

I really, really liked this game! The art was great, the writing was great, and all the routes were very fun. I was confused in thinking at first that the teacher had a route that was missing. xD (I would have loved to see that.) Santa was hands-down my favorite, but I really loved all of the characters and their realistic interactions despite the craziness of the school. I loved this and I can't wait for more projects, because I'm definitely following your future stuff.

T-thank _(:3_| |_)_ Now that it's summer I can get back to more important things like

Very important.

I just started playing this, and I had to make an account to comment on it! Your art style has this very comic-book feel which I love, and the whole "Dawn of the ____ Day" reminded me so much of Majora's Mask.

I really like how you included the Myers-Brigg personality test too. Strangely enough, there was a day in my high school where all the juniors were herded to our computer lab and we had to take the test. I'm ISFJ--I always wonder what other people are, and it's cool that this school just has that as an identifier!

Will post more when I actually finish the game... xD

I'm honored |´･ω･`) Looking back now I didn't elaborate much on the MB test, I would have if I had more time for editing. I hope you enjoy the rest of the game!

BTW, if you want to watch for more news on the updated version of LoC/our other games, follow TTG at our tumblr and Twitter. We'll post wordcount updates and other misc. WIPs there.

[Passerby]

I really enjoyed this VN. It's definitely a contender for my favorite.
I do have one question:

Is Pia's path friendship only? I asked because my play of Klaus's seemed to have more/actual flirtation.

[CheeryMoya]

I really enjoyed this VN. It's definitely a contender for my favorite.
I do have one question:

Is Pia's path friendship only? I asked because my play of Klaus's seemed to have more/actual flirtation.

Thank you for playing! It's not much of a spoiler, the only two characters that don't have romantic paths are Rita and (once I finish with the update) Dr. Hans.

[philip]

I have been through this story several times and really enjoyed it. Very well done - am looking forward to the expanded next version! Coming soon?