Lemma Soft Forums

Hey everyone, I think this is like my third post or something, but I've lurked for awhile.

Anyway, I completed my master's degree this morning, after going back to school last year. I liked it so much I'm going to stick around for the next level, but that gives me this summer mostly free. I plan to dedicate a fair chunk of the summer to writing a VN, which I started last summer to the tune of perhaps 40k words, but put on hold once I moved countries for said degree.

(This is where you shake your head and snicker. "Oh look, another writer with no other skills bearing vaporware.")

Full disclosure: I am looking for people. I guess this is where I talk about the game as I've planned it. Probably I'll end up rewriting it eighteen times until someone slaps me upside the head.

Pure visual novel, no minigames or whatnot. I know absolutely nothing about Japan except what I've read off the internet, so this is a decidedly more western game than is common: no Japanese names, no schoolgirls, etc. (A lesson learned the hard way.) I grew up in a place called Newfoundland, which at the time was depopulating about as fast as Western Europe circa the black plague, except for economic reasons, not medical. In fact, my family's hometown was forcibly emptied by government in the 1950s (I'm in my 20s) after it was decided it was uneconomic for anyone to live that far in the middle of nowhere.

A couple years ago, the prime minister of Canada termed the eastern provinces as wallowing in a "culture of defeat". It would probably be more correct to say a "culture of hopelessness". I've tried to build around that theme, aiming to construct romantic stories against the background of an 'old ones' sci-fi/thriller/mystery bit. I could detail the characters and whatnot, but I feel that those stat blobs of name/age/hair/eyes/blah are somewhat pointless. The basic idea is that the protagonist returns home after some years away living in the big city, falls in love and falls into the abyss simultaneously.

I've compiled what I've written. There are some images and sounds, but they're there purely because I wanted to mess with ren'py, and you shouldn't consider them representative. The writing is at a first-draft stage, it should be fairly free of errors but it needs proofing for consistency. I wanted to get this up as soon as possible, so it may crash as well.

Link: http://ncane.com/cgr [mediafire, 34MB]

Despite what this sounds like, I do have professional qualifications. I've written paid freelance for both of Canada's national daily newspapers, Canada's top weekly magazine, and have a journal article forthcoming in the Journal of Public Economics.

So, that's my pitch. Feel free to reply, PM, email at causeforaremedy@gmail.com, post questions or ridicule me. The latter is probably appropriate. If I don't hear from anyone, my plan is to grind out the first route, put up some placeholder art, grab some music freeware and come back in August with something more substantive to show, so stay tuned.

I would suggest giving a better idea of who you're trying to recruit. Do you need artists, musicians, programmers, voice actors, or something else. As an introductory post, this one is more interesting than most... but it isn't terribly actionable as it stands.

Thanks for the feedback. I wholeheartedly agree. I was not entirely sober while typing that last night, post-exam celebration. Okay, that's my bad. The problem is I see lots of introductory first posts that look something like:

Name:
Age:
Birthday:
Likes:
---

Name:
Age:
.
.

You get the point. Which I was strenously trying to avoid. What I was trying to do was to make it sound interesting enough so that someone would download it, which probably gives a better idea of what I'm trying to do.

General:
Type: Medium-length three-route
Genre: Romance/Thriller/Mystery
Rating: TBD. I've debated the inclusion of adult content. Often it's included in VNs as a way to sell copies and is at best tangentially related to the plot. But on the flip side, it's a crucial human element. Try reading Jude the Obscure or Lady Chatterly without it.

I am actively looking for, and not necessarily in this order:
(i) artists
(ii) musicians (youtube the Irish Descendants)
(iii) writers
(iv) programmers
(v) anyone who feels they have skills to bring to a VN project.

I don't want to make anyone out there feel like this is "my" project and they're just lackeys. If someone says "you're a moron, here's how this arc should go", they're generally right. Editors are a wonderful resource. Voice acting is way too ambitious to even contemplate at this point.

I am particularly inspired by the game "True Remembrance". I thought that was brilliantly executed, achieved exactly what it set out to do, and could easily be adapted to book form. I highly recommend you try it out.

POSTSCRIPT: Man, it took forever to work up the courage to actually read the reply. Throwing creative ideas out into the public sphere is a lot harder than things which are at least based somewhat on fact or theory. Useful knowledge. Tom, if you have any other ideas on what would make this more 'actionable', please post.

Have a nice day.

Here is a four-page pdf outlining the characters/setting/etc that I am currently working with.

The setting is intriguing - not so much because of the characters but because of the romantic plot within a bleak background. I did a similar thing (though with a different philosophical approach) for MetBlues, and I am pretty sure this willl work and create an atmosphere of constant depression with a small ray of hope coming from the element of human relationship.

I am not entirely sure, though, where the "'old ones' sci-fi/thriller/mystery bit" would fit in. However, with a little more background, I think I could help your project as assistant writer and editor. Yes, that includes the tedious proofreading. I'd like to have the opportunity to write a few scenes or maybe one sub-plot; maybe you could give me a little more information on what general series of events you have in mind.

Just PM me in case you're interested. My VN portfolio is in my signature.

Is your book's name "Cause for a Remedy"? Thanks for the tip on True Rememberance, I'm downloading it as we speak. I'll try her out tonight.

I'm not an artist or a ren'py guy but I'm working on an iPhone engine capable of basic non-statistical/non-minigame type VNs. Essentially, "choose your own adventure with pictures"... If we both get far enough along in our respective projects I hope you'd consider porting it to iPhone with me. Please keep this thread active with how you're doing!

Good luck.

Thanks for the replies and motivation, guys. Talesweaver, you've been PM'd. Oh, and for the record, any images or music in the game is not supposed to be permanent, that's just me experimenting with the engine.