Lemma Soft Forums

Hello everyone!

Like many other users of this forum, I am hoping to create a VN using Ren'Py. I wanted to save this until later but my friend, the artist for the game, insisted that I sign up and make a topic.

The original idea was mine and I'll be the one writing the script. In fact, that is what will be taking up most of my time from now. I'll stop rambling and give you a brief outline of the plot.

You play the role of the heir to a wealthy chain store. The main character, Eton Farman, soon finds himself being carted off to an obscure country village called Deeplake. His father, the current CEO of the Farman Company, doesn't believe that Eton has the experience to take his position once he retires. Thus, Eton is forced to run an old store far away from the comforts of the capital for an undetermined amount of time.

The player progresses through each day, making choices when necessary. There are seven different characters whose story you can choose to play, depending on your choices. The first week of play will introduce the characters and allow the player to make choices which will affect what path they take. After the first week the story can branch into one of seven completely different paths for each character.

Not only that, but each character will have multiple endings. I'm hoping that this will add a lot of replayability to the VN. My main aim with creating this VN was to avoid the need to skip through a lot of dialogue that the player had already read before. Of course, this means that I'll have to write a pretty big script but I'm working on it.

Any comments would be appreciated, so by all means please tell me what you think.

Deeplake Demo

Windows: http://rapidshare.com/files/57346562/De ... o_v1.3.zip

Mac: http://rapidshare.com/files/57349168/De ... .3-mac.zip

Linux: http://rapidshare.com/files/57351397/De ... 86.tar.bz2

I'm the said artist for this project, while I don't have anything to show you right now, I have a bit of a portfolio in the signature below.

I won't be able to dedicate my time towards this project much till I finish my university module which has a hand in date of the 29th of may. After that though theres the huge holiday the universirty throws at you with lots of spare time gained for (insert name once there is one here)

We also have a friend who is living with me at university doing the music, ill get him to introduce himself on the forum sometime. With the 3 of use I think we have all the bases covered so hopefully we will be able to release a demo suring the summer.

DEEPLAKE TRAILER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TupfPglEe04

Welcome to the forums! I'm always glad to see more people getting into VN-making.

I will say that your project (with seven "winnable" characters, and a span of multiple weeks) is quite ambitious. You may want to consider initially focusing on only one part of the story, like one of those seven characters, so that you can gain experience with VN-making before embarking on a large project.

Anway, it's always glad to see new people.

Welcome everyone

This is cool, another college team. The fact that you can see each other in RL increases your productivity.

Septimus >> interesting premise. But if you are writing diverging paths which split and split so you won't have to repeat text, that is a lot of work to increase replayability. The best form of replayability is to make what few scenes have lots of impact. Think classic movies or even music -- they're linear, but they're replayable! So write as much as you can, but don't force paths if they're really not needed.

May the force be with you.

Welcome to the Forums

And don't forget the most important thing...

have fun while doing it and good luck...

looking forward to seeing the finished project.

Welcome!

I'll just voice the typical concerns about the project being too big - but of course everyone is entitled to make the decision for themselves. I'm more or less sure that you can release a demo in the summer, but after that it will get tough, especially since the scope is so big with 7 characters with multiple endings each.

My suggestion is to try to make something else to warm up - this can be a new 40-minute standalone game for instance - this way you'll refine your way of working, you'll see how much time is available and so on. It's like stretching before running the marathon. Making a big VN is far more work than it may seem, so it makes good sense IMO to prepare for it by, well... "training" a bit.

But in any case, good luck with your project!

Yeah we are kind of going ambitious for the first renpy game but the way we are going to be planning it out, basically we are doing one route at a time.

Just focus on that path and once thats finished move onto another character. This way if it all ends up that we won't be able to carry on with the project we at least have one linear path game to show with.

Besides, the script writer has at the moment, all the time in the world to do this project and nothing else going on.

Art wise for me, I just got a wacom intus 3 which is really going to help speed up my production times. Other than that I enjoy drawing anyway.

Some of my concerns are after summer with my last year of university. There a lot of work to be done then so I may not be able to carry on for a good while at that point, and I know the game won't be done before that time.

Just thought I'd post a little more information. First of all, I apologize, there aren't 7 character routes. Actually, there are 8, which means more work for me. It'll be worth it in the end though, hopefully...

Anyway, as soon as I've finished writing the script for the first week I'll make it into a demo. Once the demo is complete then you'll receive an image and a message that will tell you which character's route you would have ended up on.

Ah, one last thing. I just want to make this clear but there is no adult content in this game. Apologies to anyone who might have thought so.

This sounds like a lot of fun, and exactly the sort of game I drool over.

I think you have a sound approach, too, of writing out each "route" one at a time, although my preference is usually for intertwined paths (I really enjoy seeing each event from multiple perspectives). I've used this technique, and while it can be daunting ("Okay, one down, only... nine more... to go."), there's something very comforting about knowing that you're done with a complete, concrete part of the game every time you finish a route.

And welcome to the forums and all that good stuff!

Sounds like the kind of game I've tried to make numerous times (see Utsukushii Planet...), so I'm all for it . And a very good point about still having a single path even if you abandon half-way through. Sounds like good planning ^_^.
Will this be a love story or something even more varied?

Well I've avoided saying too much about the characters because there's not a lot I hate more than spoiling my own plots. However, I will say that all of the characters who have routes are female so romance will play a big part. There are other characters who play a supporting role but the main focus will be on the ones with routes.

Even if you find yourself on 'Character A's route you'll still see a lot of 'Characters B-I'. I'm hoping that this will help people to decide which character's story they would like to see next.

Sounds very good ^__^

hmm... the premise for the story isn't my thing.
Anyway, welcome to the forums aspiring creators.

Well I finished the prologue, it turned out pretty well in my opinion. I decided that the title for this VN will be 'Deeplake', once me and SD are ready to show our work I'll give it a proper topic, so is there a way for me to delete this one once we're ready?

There's no way to delete a topic. Well, administrators can do it, but I don't see why this topic should be deleted... it contains a lot of information that will be valuable to the historians who shall one day write of our accomplishments.

Anyway, you can either change the name of the topic (by editing the first post), or just start a new thread with the new name.