Fatal Hearts - Awaiting Release

[monele]

Well it *is* rough, but poses and expressions are spot on I think ô_o. I'm pretty sure a cleanup of these should give good results ^^

[papillon]

It's important to me to get the right emotional suggestions across in the temporary artwork, so we can see how things will *feel* if not how they look. So I spend a good deal of time on _some_ of the character graphics even though I'm going to toss them out in the end, to be sure of how "sexy guy staring at the camera with smoldering eyes" goes with the text. (Can't show THAT picture, though, too much spoiler.)

[mikey]

More than two hours is impressive. Really impressive. It may be the first full-scale game then, huh...

[monele]

Wow, I didn't even spot the length! 2h... nice

(at which point would one consider this "full scale length" though?... Kinda subjective, isn't it ?)

[papillon]

Well, the game that I'm going to be pointing to as desperate proof that the genre is viable, Another Code / Trace Memory, clocks in at about 4-5 hours and has basically no reason to replay it. (There *is* slightly different bonus content if you play again, but it wasn't motivating enough for me to bother.) At which point it's generally complained that the game is very short, but people do still buy it.

At the current rate, a single path of this will probably take more like 3-4 hours, but the paths are strongly different and the game will try to make it very clear that you have not heard the whole story and you need to go back and play another path. (There isn't a magical path that explains everything that only opens up at the end, though. At least, I'm not currently planning one. I may need some sort of minigames that unlock as you complete paths, though... adventure gamers are bitchy about length. )

[monele]

Is it sold cheaper than other games though ? Usually shorter games use that scheme.

3-4 hours for a single path, so that would be around, what... 8 hours total ? (I don't remember how many paths you'll have, sorry ^^; ). Pretty good.

I don't think games with multiple paths need to have them add up to tell a complete story. Each path could stand on its own in a way, but could sport different versions of a similar situation, or just variations on a theme. I don't know how designers go about it but I like the "what if" stance

Edit : Or more importantly, showing the consequences of choices. Having choices leading to the exact same thing means your choices had no true meaning.

[mikey]

Actually, many of the commercial b-games are in fact about 2-3 hours for one path. Some are even shorter than that.

As for the paths that add up to make a full story, I kind of used this in Kaori, but I'm not sure that I would be willing to replay the same game over and over if it were a long one. Not in one playing session. I'd probably wait half a year or so before replaying again. In fact, I usually replay games after much longer, about 2 years or more.

[monele]

When it comes to immediate replay, the thing is to immediately bring fresh content to the player I think. Maybe if it feels like you're playing through "another episode" based in the same setting more than "going through the same stuff again". It's one of those things I'm researching ^.^;

[papillon]

It's mostly that instead of there being just different people you might wish to be with romantically, some people are actively *enemies*. If you choose to side with one group early on, you will hear only bad things about the other side, and so on. And people may lie to you.

So you could decide that you're content with the ending you got the first time around. It might be the best ending for you. But the other stories are there, and in the end it's really up to the player to decide what the best path is. (And the fast-skip of previously read content and previously-solved puzzles should make things easier.)

[Alessio]

I could use the services of someone more fluent in German than Babelfish is, for a few quotes that *aren't* supposed to be nonsensical.

I'm a bit late with this answer - but feel free to ask me. Among others I'm a native German speaker. ^_-

[mikey]

To be honest though, a VN will recycle things in the various paths and maybe people don't like it. I don't like to go through the same things again either. But I think that with multipath games, this is something inevitable and one of the reasons the games feel like they do and one of the reasons they can have the impact they have. So the focus is I think for most people on their first playthrough.

[Alessio]

In the beginning I didn't like replaying VNs at all, unless the game was just so much fun that I didn't mind playing it again (that happened only once AFAIR).

Funnily enough, hanging around this forum for a while and playing various VNs made me slowly change my mind. Some VNs are very replayable, and some would even be an incomplete experience without experiencing some story arcs.

So I guess there is no absolute truth here, it'll entirely depend on the player's approach. That wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the implication that the author must decide whether to invest time to create one long story arc (little replay value) or several separate short ones (little value for one-time players). Inevitably, either one will be a trade-off from some players' point of view.

[papillon]

Vague progress note - I have been severely slowed down by Complications In My Love Life. There was a *reason* I said developing relationships could distract from projects...

That said, I am currently fitting in the last puzzle for this branch, after which I will only need to write all the endings for it. (It's one major branch, but it can end several different ways.) At which point, it would be nice to find someone interested in having a look to comment on story development. You would have to follow a strict walkthrough, since all other major plot branches of the game don't exist. You would have to accept that the graphics were wrong and the music is nonexistent. And, of course, you would have to be willing to fight your way through solving puzzles.

It may still be a month before I make that call for readthrough, though.

Also, the following is addressed to German Speakers, as I have only these two lines coming up in this branch that needs to be said by a character who actually speaks German...

The lines I need corrected are:

Der Teufel verrät seine eigenen Nachfolger. Nach mir sind Sie folgend!
(He yells: "The devil will betray his own followers. You will be next!")

and

Ich werde nicht Ihnen nichts erklären.
(He insists: "I'm not going to tell you anything.")

This character is imprisoned and very unhappy with the people he's speaking to.

The German I've got comes from Babelfish and is probably very broken. Suggestions?

[Jake]

I'm only a student of the language myself. I'm not very good at it, so a genuine native German-speaker would be incalculably better, but for what it's worth:

Der Teufel verrät seine eigenen Nachfolger. Nach mir sind Sie folgend!
(He yells: "The devil will betray his own followers. You will be next!")

I read this (with the help of a dictionary... ) as "The devil betrays his own successors. You are following after me!" - all in the present tense.
'Followers' in the 'subordinates' sense seems to be something more like 'Gefolgern' (which appears to mean more 'retinue' than 'agents'), 'Vertretern' ('representatives' or 'advocates'), or 'Jüngern' (disciples) or something.
I'd probably go with: "Der Teufel werde seine eigenen Jüngern verraten. Ihnen wirst folgen!" - literally, "The devil will betray his own disciples. You will follow!"
That said, "Nach mir sind Sie folgern" does sound like the sort of phrasing I'd expect from German idioms...

Ich werde nicht Ihnen nichts erklären.
(He insists: "I'm not going to tell you anything.")

I wouldn't have used two negatives here - I read that, translated, as "I'm not going to explain nothing", which doesn't quite have the same meaning.
As I understand it, 'erklären' means 'to explain', the verb choice obviously depends on what you really want him to mean. I'd probably have gone for something along the lines of "Ich werde [Ihnen] nichts sagen" (literally, "I will say nothing [to you]") or look into my German-English dictionary for alternatives: "Ich werde Ihnen nichts verraten" ("I will betray/disclose nothing to you")

[mikey]

From my POV...

From the given Ger sentences:

Der Teufel verrät seine eigenen Nachfolger.
[The devil betrays his own followers.]

Nach mir sind Sie folgend!
The sentence isn't really correct, or rather, it's not natural. The closest that I can think of is to change it to "Nach mir sind sie fällig." - which means something like the thing that was translated - you're next. Maybe it's better to tell the English meaning first, and then we'll probably be able to translate this better.

Ich werde nicht Ihnen nichts erklären.
[I will not explain anything to you.] And it should read: "Ich werde ihnen nichts erklären". Alternatively, for an irritated tone of voice:
- Ich habe Ihnen nichts zu sagen - I have nothing to say to you.

The other way around: From Eng to Ger

He yells: "The devil will betray his own followers. You will be next!
Er schreit: Der Teufel wird seine Nachfolger verraten. Ihr (the plural you) seid die nächsten!
You can also use "Ihr (olde singular you) seid der nächste." You can also use other words instead of "Nachfolger", although that's also very much dependent on the context.

and
He insists: "I'm not going to tell you anything
Er besteht darauf: Ich werde Ihnen nichts sagen. I would still probably opt for "Ich habe Ihnen nichts zu sagen.", but I like that phrase, so I'm biased ^_^

There are several more ways of translating this, depending on the context and style, of course.

Taleweaver should be the best last instance with this though.