Winn Freddie's Road to the Sadie Hawkins Dance: in progress

[gekiganwing]

It's been about two weeks. During that time I've created two endings each for two/five characters. One character will get slight variant endings, but at this time I'm planning to have all my endings done in 3-4 weeks.

I've mentioned before how I'm divided between 1) editing my script for characterization and dialogue when it's done and 2) editing before it's done. Both have good and bad points. So should I continue on with the first option, or should I take a break from writing?

[mikey]

It's up to you (big help, huh?).

But I think this can really be helpful. You need to make those decisions yourself. You're the man behind the game and you must know best. Sure it's okay to let people decide on something material - like one of two layouts for the game if you just happen to like both, but something personal, such as the way you work - no one will be able to really help you with it.

Just please be careful with disclosing too many details of the creative process - a developer's journal works for something like Ren'Py, but normally people write these things after the project is done (either backtracking or simply with a Making Of). Really. Or they have a reporter who is doing it. But never the staff member.

[gekiganwing]

Yes, I did give away a whole bunch of secrets about my game... and I probably have gone too long asking "should I do this or this?"

As of today, one character's endings left to go. So once I wrap up the rough draft early next week, I'll update the demo and get right on my rewrite.

[mikey]

Then again, I can be wrong - this system seems to work for you nicely and looking at the LJ entries there is a motivating trail of "Weeks" and what has been done. So to each his own .

[gekiganwing]

Thanks for replying again, Mikey. I know this reply is late...

Demo 1.2 is done! Again, it's my complete rough draft, covering all the days' events and all the endings. Turn on a pop up blocker and go to http://gekiganwing.tripod.com and look for the sadie.zip file. I tested the download from the site just to be sure.

Re-editing starts next week. I don't want that to drag, but I want a little time to work on dialogue and rethink a few plot events.

[JackalAndromeda]

I downloaded the most current demo (I also checked out your LJ, very nifty journal you have going on there.) I've only played a little bit of it, and I'm not sure how far I should go. On one hand I'm curious and it is nice so far, but I don't want to go *too* far in it, since it's not really done and all that.

I know you're in early stages and the place holder graphics are fine (though they sometimes overlap a little and make the labels hard to read) I was thinking maybe you could add some colour to the character names? If I'm not paying enough attention I sometimes miss when a different character starts talking. That's my fault of course.

Some of the dialouge was confusing me, I found Luigi a little hard to understand sometimes. Again, I know that you have editing that you want to do.

All in all I have a good impression of it so far, and I liked it even more than I thought I would from the summery. I'll play it all the way through when you think it's closer to being done, because I want to give it a more fair opinion.

[mikey]

Despite the fact that I don't know how motivated I'll be to play WF again once it will be fully done - because this is the full text version, so in terms of story there won't be any major changes - I took the chance and played through the game. So... here's the thoughts.

First of all, I had to get used to the fact that it's conversation-based and has many many characters and there's a lot of plotlines and backstories. I liked Oren's quasi-sophisticated ways (reminded me of Transfer Teacher in a way), and I grew to like the overall feel of the game - punchline conversations and comedy every fifth line of text - not the falling-off-chair ones, but ones that more or less keep a smile/grin on your face all the way. It truly feels like a US-made movie or (comedy) series - it's just about the best description I have for the game. There's lots of info (characterization?) on the characters and personally I hardly found a place where I could relax - there was just constantly something going on.

This said, I can't say it's a ren'ai game, despite the title. Because of the pace of the game you never have time with Winnie alone (inner monologue), nor are the conversations with the guys any longer so it's hard to decide with your heart. Utimately I felt that I knew more about the people's preferences and personal history than their personalities. This of course is well suited for the type of experience WF delivers (at least to me) and forcing romantic situations would be ruining it. Too bad for me, but perfectly fine for the game.

The challenge as I see it for the future is going to be finding suitable graphics and put in some extras - lots of SD, music changes and transitions - and then all the fun of the work will definitely surface. The text version alone is not enough I think to really deliver the experience, as WF is not the type of game that could be effectively stripped down to pure text. It just calls for wacky, crazy direction and if done properly, it will surely be a fun and very well rounded piece - a refreshing change from all those time shifts, twin sisters, depressed schoolboys and accident deaths (boy, am I feeling self-ironic today ^_^ ...)

I'd say great job, but also good luck with finishing it in a way that will bring forth all its advantages and points.

[gekiganwing]

Part of the rewriting process will involve tying plot threads together, since there were any number of ideas I just tossed together in the rough draft. Fixing those errors will help a lot.

But going with what Mikey said, part of the rewriting should answer questions such as "How humorous should this be? Should I keep my most unusual ending (even though it's a ripoff)? Should the game be fast paced? Is this a romance story? Is there any depth to _ character?"

[Watercolorheart]

Oh no!

Link is broken. :(

[/edit] Well, first link anyway. Second link ... won't load for me. I just get a black screen and then ... nothin'.

Do you think you could do something like, say, host it on a Yahoo! group or something else with free bandwidth? (If you have a Yahoo! account anyway ...)

http://groups.yahoo.com/

[/edit][/edit]
Nevermind, it was just my crappy Windows XP Internet Explorer blocking the pop-ups, thus not allowing site to load correctly ...

[gekiganwing]

I should scrap the old Tripod site and get a domain name. Visualnovel.com and visualnovels.com are wide open, and datingsims.com is a 'for sale' page.

Well, at least you were able to get the zip file. Sorry.

...Anyway, this is wrapup week. With the end of Sept 05 is the end of this project. So I'm making sure all the inconsistencies are GONE. The story won't be perfect, but it'll be as good as I can make it. And after that, I'll start getting hold of archive site people.

In Oct 05, I will start a new project with an interesting theme. Once I have something to show (a few scenes), I will -immediately- start asking for art help, because I can't create any on my own.