[BL] Break Chance Memento / first post updated 12/28/2011

[Camille]

Ask and ye shall receive. XD Here it is: http://cloud.piratejewel.net/2e002k283j2Y0A0R441g If anyone does read it, I would really appreciate feedback because I don't write this sort of thing very often. This is also the writing style that BCM is in, so I'd rather know sooner if people find it cumbersome to read. (Shuuki's story is written in present tense, Natsume's story is written in past tense, but otherwise this is pretty much how I write)

Yeah we're still trying to work out a balance between pretty and obtrusive, haha. It's hard to reconcile the two. (also in the mock-up, the sprites are much smaller than they usually are) I do think it's a bit busy the way it is now, but I've found that as you play a VN, once you get used to the UI, you start tuning it out, almost, so. XD I've stared at this mock-up so much that aside from the height, I'm pretty much okay with it. There's just a tad too much negative space as it is. We're working on it, no worries. /o/

[EzzyAlpha]

I want to see the fic too *U*

Such a pretty GUI~

[Arcanum]

Oh my god… I wish I was on tumblr so I could post an appropriate reaction gif. My general response to the story was along the lines of LIFUALLIAWEV WSEFBAFAZZX LLESRIUGBLAIU KGAGB and there were no words appropriate enough…

It was great reading this, their personalities become much clearer for me… I'm finally able to understand them some more. Masa is a great character to write the story about since his point of view contrast nicely with those of his brothers (and since he's not getting a POV in game). Or at least I think. Since Shuuki is more used to being the promiscuous bi guy and Natsume is blamed for their sister's death, I think they're being judged a lot, while Masa is now viewed as a golden boy an has a… "reputation" to keep, living up to everyone's expectations? Those three brothers sure are a mess (and I loved every second of it!). Now I can't help but become more anxious at playing with Natsume… He's looking very mysterious.

I'm sorry if my post is incomprehensible… I'm still spazzing about it!

[Camille]

@Arcanum: Awww sldkfjsdf haha I'm so flattered. >//////< This is actually the first feedback I've gotten re: this fic, since none of my friends I sent it to last night have responded yet. I'm glad you don't think it's a total mess.

I have a lot of trouble just describing the BCM characters, because no 3-5 sentence descriptions can do them justice. Not really, anyway. They're too multifaceted for me to try to describe simply (though I tried), but I have a very clear idea of what they're like. It's a lot easier for me to just write them in situations like this. In fact, Auro said something similar after she played through my first draft of BCM Shuuki chapter one--that she had a clearer impression of the characters after seeing them "in action".

I feel like in the Amamiya trio, Masaharu is the straight man. He's the voice of reason, the normal guy. Unfortunately, living with Natsume and Shuuki has pretty much corrupted him, too, but he tries to not be influenced by them too much. Normally in a VN, Masaharu would be the main character because his POV would be less biased and he's a lot easier to relate to. He's a normal person. That's exactly why I didn't want him to be the MC. XD He's much more interesting when seen through his brothers' eyes, and it's very neat seeing two opposing views of him, I think. That's the fun of a dual-MC game like this.

They are a mess, these Amamiya brothers, but I love them. XD It will be fun to write how all of this gets resolved. Natsume is a very uh. Interesting character. I could probably write volumes about his personality and psychotic tendencies alone. He's definitely the hardest to write--it's much easier getting inside of Shuuki and Masaharu's heads. 8Db I hope his story in BCM is just as compelling as Shuuki's, even if it's different.

[Arcanum]

If you aren't capable of describing your character in a couple of lines, you're doing it right, I suppose XD It's much more fun when the characters are more than just "the sporty type" and so on - I specially enjoyed how you played it in the narrative, with everyone's expectations of Masa to fit in such a role, or Natsume to be "someone". It deconstructed the usual VN cliches in a marvelous way by playing them against the characters and having them react to it… (Or at least, we were aware of Masa's reaction - I hope we get to see Natsume and Shuuki in their actual gameplay.)

[Camille]

@Arcanum: I put a lot of thought into making the characters flawed and somewhat realistic, so it's good to hear that I'm probably doing it right. Yukinari pokes fun at BL stereotypes in one of the fics, too. I think a bit of tongue-in-cheek is kind of fun to do since most yaoi is very non-representative of reality. XD I think Shuuki and Natsume are harder to fit into a specific VN/anime/manga cliche, so I don't have to do that so much.



Some art I pilfered from Auro's DA account~ She seems to have fixed the characters up a bit, as Natsume looks even more attractive than before, that rogue. /).///////.(\ Sneak peek at a snippet of the beginning of BCM. (that's not how it starts, I scrolled down a bit to get more of the "action") This is why you should follow my VN dev Twitter~ I don't have much else to report as I've just gotten back from going out of town, so I haven't gotten anything done over the last few days. XD Will get right back to work on BCM and MJ, though class starts soon so I will be considerably less productive for a while.

[Camille]

Some GUI updates:


Main menu. It makes little sonar pings when you hover over stuff.


Preferences/options screen. The "main menu" button disappears if you access the screen from, well, the main menu, as does the "save" button.


Re-vamped character select screen a bit. This is before you hover over anything.


And when you hover over Shuuki... Voila! Color.


The app icon. I'll probably end up removing the BCM text there. This is how it looks in my dock (when hovered over).

Lazcht designed all the GUIs, I just tweaked them and coded them. Still, it took me about 6 hours to do that. XD; Those slider bars in the preferences were not fun to do.

[Celestie]

Ohh, I love the ..well, futuristic feel with the traditional pattern. It's twisting past and future/present...like time traveling? 8D

And damn, you must have a lot of patience sitting through this for six hours. And yes, I like what I see~

[Arcanum]

Pretty GUI is pretty *-* I love the patters/traitional look of it, while the shinny buttons make it look more futuristic. I really loved everything, but my favorite HAD to be the icon. It's really cool.

[PrettySammy09]

Wow! Beautiful GUI!

[Auro-Cyanide]

Chiaki's sprite is in progress and will be finished in the next couple days. I only have his casual outfit, emotions and accessories to go. http://auro-cyanide.tumblr.com/

[Auro-Cyanide]

I still have to do all his emotions, but this is Chiaki:

[Camille]

/o/ Current writing progress:

Ren'Py 6.12.2.1531 lint report, generated at: Tue Aug 23 12:09:50 2011
Statistics: The game contains 413 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 7,460 words,
for an average of 18.1 words per screen.
The game contains 2 menus.

I have finished Shuuki's chapter one. I'm now in the process of writing Natsume's. The rough draft should hopefully be done by the end of the week. Thanks for all the nice comments on the GUI. *_* I'm glad you guys like it. Futuristic + traditional Japanese is what we were going for. I feel like even GUIs should reflect the theme of a game, haha. So I'm glad that these GUIs evoke a feeling of past meeting present and time travel. <3 This is what it looks like in action, somewhat:



Made the video as a test.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I changed Chiaki's colour scheme because it was driving me up the proverbal wall. Do you think it looks better?

[Camille]

Hopefully silence = tacit approval because I quite like Chiaki's new color scheme. /o/ I finally started playing Nitro+Chiral games this week... Up until now I only watched videos and read some summaries, but I wanted to see more of what the Japanese BL games are like since the only one I've actually played up until now was Nessa no Rakuen. I started with Lamento because I really love immersive worlds and intricate storylines and this definitely didn't disappoint. I got some ideas for GUI styles and gameplay from it, as well.

So I spent a couple hours fixing up the default keymap for the game and making it so that right-click/escape pulls up this "shortcut keys" menu just like in Lamento. (it's meant to be a guide, but you can also click on some of the text to navigate, so it's also a menu in and of itself--again, just like in Lamento)


The menus are coordinated a lot better now as a result, and I think that the keys are more intuitive. This also makes it so that I don't have to have 3987434 buttons on the screen and players can still get to what they need to with very little effort. I still might change the keys up/add a few more between now and beta testing, but at least the basic framework is there so it'll be very easy for me to change/add keys if I feel like it later.

On the story front, I am approximately 3,000 words away from finishing Natsume's chapter one. I should be able to finish his chapter tonight or tomorrow, and then I'll spend a few days to edit/elaborate on it as well as match up details with Shuuki's chapter one. The writing is moving along pretty quickly, so I hope that it's done sooner rather than later. We still don't really have an official release date or anything, though, so keep watching this space for now.

Finally, I recently purchased a whole bunch of stock background music which will help a lot with BCM and any future projects I do. (sadly the music isn't really the right atmosphere for Machina Jewel, and anyway we already have a dedicated composer for that) If anyone would like to sample the BCM soundtrack, I've uploaded a few of the tracks here for your listening pleasure: http://bcm.piratejewel.net/play/ The terms of the contract make it so I can't let anyone download the music, but you can listen whenever you feel like it. Do let me know what you think! :3

edit 8/30 midnight: I've completed Natsume's chapter, though I have yet to script it. I will continue to write from here, but the scripts will likely change a lot towards the end because there's a lot of stuff like "If you do ____ in Shuuki's story, _____ happens in Natsume's story" that I obviously can't predict and thus haven't written in yet.