Love Revolution

[musical74]

I'm just wondering when to expect a demo of LR...I know it's in the works, and I'm sure there's other things keeping you busy, just wondering if you have a ballpark idea - say, December of 2005? In reading the backgrounds and your comments about LR, Taleweaver, I'm thinking more and more *I gotta try this game*...just hope that will be reasonable soon =) I'm sure I'm not the only person that's looking forwards yo playing this

[rioka]

Love Revolution, I do not know when it will come out but Love Revolution: Fragile Hearts I'm pushing for a demo release before Autumn if all goes well...

[mikey]

Oh, LoveRevo. Well, I have to say, it's a disappointing and sad story so far. A demo was announced for Christmas 2003 and look at the date now. But it's already past the point to ask why. It's simply just so frustrating to check back almost every day (I just can't let it go) and being let down as a fan.

So as for me, I'm not giving it many chances. It will have to take people who are more enthusiastic about it all to move forward, because there seems to be the spark missing. This is the third year of (public) development and the original LR project has turned up next to nothing.

Effectively, I know the project is dead. I only wish that someone could take responsibility and tell the world officially. Blue Lemma did it and it's an honest approach. Regardless of the reasons and never-ending optimism, fans like me have been staring at the same page for two years. It's just not fair to claim it's still on the road.

This said, I hope Fragile Hearts makes it and will become the true Love Revo. Although I don't mind the title. I'd even say by naming it Fragile Hearts (without including LoveRevo), it won't be carrying that LR legacy, which is becoming increasingly negative.

Hmmm... should I say I'm sorry? I don't know. It's just the way I feel about the project.

[Blue Lemma]

Regardless of the reasons and never-ending optimism, fans like me have been staring at the same page for two years. It's just not fair to claim it's still on the road.

Yep, that's why I took the ToL 2 info down for now >_> The link will be gone on the next site redesign, until it gets going again. I'm going with a "don't post info until something is done" philosophy now ^_^

It's too bad... I had some decent hopes for LR

[Taleweaver]

Effectively, I know the project is dead. I only wish that someone could take responsibility and tell the world officially.

Well, "dead" might be too strong a word, but I agree that LoveRevo is essentially in coma with no real hope of recovery anytime soon. It's a shame as I already wrote the game's only REALLY detailed VN sequence (as we were planning to build our demo upon that scene) and that took quite some of my spare time. After that, we went through not one but two artist changes and STILL don't have all basic character art. I don't know about the state of the engine - we have a working calendar/event management system and all the theoretical basics of our DS system plus all generic reactions for the girls... but there is still no user interface at all.

Tralu, who originally started the project, hasn't really taken an effort to keep everybody working. We have a very talented programmer, but I understand perfectly well why he doesn't devote more of his time to a project that seems to have lost its management. If we found someone to take responsibility, I'm very confident we can finish LoveRevo - we have tons of puzzle pieces just waiting to be put together - but this will require an enormous amount of leadership.

[musical74]

It sounds like Love Revo is in limbo...do you think that it someone were to get everyone working together on this again it would be finished?Based on what you have said, Taleweaver, it sounds like it could very well get feet again and go back to getting on track for a release date if the leadership piece is added...is this true?

[Taleweaver]

Leadership for LoveRevo would require:

- determining exactly how much of the engine is done
- contacting all artists, especially Kiele, our most recent character artist
- getting Tralu to give up the project to somebody else and to open the forum to the new team leader
- contacting everybody to give up his copyright on the source material
- finding new members to do the "grunt work", i.e. the boring little tidbits like buttons, interface screen, mouse support etc

Theoretically, LoveRevo could be converted into Ren'Py, but I doubt the effort is worth it. Plus, that would mean all the programmers' work on it would be wasted.

[Dre]

This sounds like a good game. Where can I find info, pictures, so on of this? I just want to see how it looks. It dose run base on the idea I though of right?

[Taleweaver]

http://loverevo.hyperboards.com/<- the forums
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jdcruz/loverevo/<- the info page

[mikey]

Based on what you have said, Taleweaver, it sounds like it could very well get feet again and go back to getting on track for a release date if the leadership piece is added...is this true?

Hmmm...I actually see his points as a confirmation of a bad situation .

Nothing of that is easy to make and I can imagine people with the kind of leadership that LR would need simply going for their own projects, from scratch, without any legacies. Often when a (commercial) project is put under a new studio, few things are left in place. The new team has its own people and ideas and will feel its hands are tied if forced to re-use "old" fragments. Plus, it's a tremendous time burden to familiarize yourself with the project, talk to the original developers and have their ideas explained. Plus, a new team (or simply a new producer) may not be inclined to feel obligated to work in the spirit of the original intentions (short: he/they want to do 'their' LoveRevo). When new management takes over, it cannot (and will not) feel all too bound by the original, unless it's a long-running IP/franchise title. Admittedly, the above said does apply to commercial projects, but I doubt that the problems would be very different with a fan project.

It's just the sad thing of seeing the work of many people simply in vain. And I had my fair share of ideas and documents, scripts... simply not being used. What I did was then officially leaving and taking them with me (not giving up copyight), and now pieces of them can be found in my own games. While there's a collective aspect of a given project, there's still the individual aspect as well. Whether it's creative design work, text or the technical programming, people want to see their work materialize.

So I think that LR is in fact possible, but most probably if it ever should be seriously done and "revived", not to say finished, it will be a very different Love Revo by then.

[ShiraiJunichi]

The way I see it, the story is the most important part. It's the part that requires the most inspiration and imagination. Everything else can be redone, and the game will be, at a very basic level, the same. So, the way I see it is if only a small portion of the script is done, it isn't worth having someone else work on. If a majority of the script is done, then I say release the script to someone who's willing to finish it, and let them do what they want with it. Sure, the game will be different from what it would have been, but a different game is better than no game at all.

Taleweaver >>
Why isn't Akari's story and Namiki's story at the archives? Are they not ren'ai?

[mikey]

The way I see it, the story is the most important part. It's the part that requires the most inspiration and imagination.

BUT... the least amount of "muscle" work. It's often the case that a game designer writes a detailed design document (doesn't have to be as grand as Xenallure), but then what? A design/story is what people will admire, but something that can never be mistaken for a milestone in the project's development. The Eiffel Tower - sure you like it because of how it looks, but imagine someone coming to you with a building plan and claiming the most important thing is there. Now you can go and find the guys and material to build it.

This is not to put down the importance of story and design. It's to raise the importance of the other elements. Because most stopped projects do have all the inspirational and storywise elements. But they lack just about everything else. It's something I myself had to learn in much the same way (if not public) as all the cancelled projects we're talking about now.

Ever since then, I believe the most important parts are the technology (engine) and the team (reliability) as such.

If a majority of the script is done, then I say release the script to someone who's willing to finish it, and let them do what they want with it. Sure, the game will be different from what it would have been, but a different game is better than no game at all .

Exactly. Same goes for engine. It sounds like a salvage yard concept, but that freedom might be just what the new project leader will need.

[PyTom]

IMO, the Ren'Ai games we make seem to be most dependent on a good script being finished.

Please note that I say "script" and not "story". A script has everything that will be shown to the user in it, a story is just an outline treatement. The latter has many many blanks to be filled in, the former is mostly complete.

The script gives structure to the game. I can look at it, and show it to artists and musicians, and we can figure out what needs to be done to finish the game. Before that point, the team is contributing to a fairly amorphous game, which would seem to me to make it hard to get it done.

Concrete example... MB was in script form for quite some time (a year), undergoing a team change, and still managed to get done.

If someone comes to me with a finished script in hand, and tells me that they need Ren'Py to do X, Y, and Z to make the game work, I'll do my damndest to help them out. (Within reason... Ren'Py is not an RPG engine.) But without that script, I put the ideas on the feature pile for later consideration.

[Taleweaver]

Why isn't Akari's story and Namiki's story at the archives? Are they not ren'ai?

Nope, they're not. They're just teasers where you get a very small glimpse at the everyday lives of two of the LoveRevo girls, in Interactive Novel form. Essentially, they're very simple text adventures.