[SciFi|Adventure|Christmas Release!] Adrift

[Taleweaver]

Story overview:
In a distant future, man has colonized the bottom of the ocean and built huge underwater cities to provide a home for the billions of people the surface of the Earth can no longer nourish. Millions of people are sent there as pioneers, living in self-dependent communities without any contact to the world above, or Dryland, as they call it. To provide for them and to serve as the administration of the underwater cities, a series of clones was designed as human supercomputers – the Supervisors – and placed in sensory deprivation tanks inside these cities, their minds connected to the life support systems of the communities they oversaw. The Supervisors were designed to sleep in a half-lucid state while their subconscious controlled everything in their cities, and if they died of old age, a new Supervisor would stand ready, cloned from the DNA of the first.

But now, in the city of Bluetide, something has gone wrong and the connection between the Supervisor in his sensory deprivation tank and the rest of the community has collapsed for some unknown reason. The Supervisor thus awakes for the first time in three generations and finds himself blind, deaf and mute. The only connection to Bluetide consists of four poorly maintained service robots he can still control – robots with very limited capabilities.
What happened in Bluetide? This is what the Supervisor needs to find out.

You are the Supervisor.

That's the basics - more to come as soon as we show the first sneak peeks at ADRIFT, my latest Sci-fi Ren'ai-Project. (SciFiRenAi - I like the sound of that!) Stay tuned for when we announce our artist!

[Taleweaver]

And we're back already announcing our artist: mangakaluna! Looks like Oregon is a good part of the U.S. to find talented people...

Here's a first example of the game's artwork:

First concept sketch of Minako and Hinami, two of the characters you will meet in ADRIFT.

These two lovely women live in Bluetide, and you'll soon learn more about them. Stay tuned for more news from ADRIFT!

[Machus]

Wow. Very unique idea.
I'm curious to see how you'll portray playing as a Helen Keller-esque protagonist.
The art you have so far is good as well.

Definitely watching this.

[mangakaluna]

Thank you! >u<

[Taleweaver]

Then let's see some more art, shall we?

Minako's updated character concept, and the other two women of ADRIFT, Erika and Sachiko

To the left you see what's probably the final version of Minako - I wanted her to be a little more boyish as that suits her character. In the middle is the first character concept of Erika, the third character in the game - this is probably not too far from how she will look like in the game. Finally, to the right, the first concept sketch of woman number four, Sachiko. Can you already guess what her personality will be like?

[Taleweaver]

Okay, another day, another update!

This time, I'd like to talk a little about the technical side of ADRIFT. This is going to be a game in 16:9 (1024x600 pixels) which happens to be the screen resolution of my netbook For the very first time, I'm trying out a non-linear game path in which you can move within a fixed setting rather freely, like in a classic adventure game, while still using the typical control scheme of a VN ("make your choice"). The events of the game will mostly be determined by what you do where in what order, and it will be possible to make mistakes on quite a few occasions, so I guess this will be a game where the True Ending is even more difficult to achieve than in The Dreaming. However, I'll make this up by offering four additional Good Endings (aside from four Bad Endings and one Sad Ending) worth the name "Good Ending".

I'm aiming for a late summer release, so there's around half a year of development time. I'm very confident I can finish the game until then.

As usual, comments are welcome!

[musical74]

Question: what version of ADRIFT will this be? (I ask this because I have versions 3.9 and 4.0)

Looking forwards to seeing this completed!! =)

[Kael]

Hmmm, so is this story kind of like BioShock? I guess I'll give it a try either way xP.
Art looks good by the way.

Good luck.

[Taleweaver]

Question: what version of ADRIFT will this be? (I ask this because I have versions 3.9 and 4.0)

Heh. In no version whatsoever. This is going to be a Ren'Py game.

I have some experience with the Adrift engine; I used it to create a few short text adventures when I was still working with the "Love Revolution" team many years ago. However, even though Adrift the Visual Novel is inspired by an old Infocom adventure, it is not a text adventure itself. It's SciFiRen'Ai and thus needs a Ren'ai engine

Hmmm, so is this story kind of like BioShock?

Not really. Bioshock is you, as an outsider, exploring a world you do not belong to. (Or rather, you think you don't belong to it... but that's the story of BioShock.) ADRIFT is you, disconnected from the world you once controlled and trying to regain control without having the appropriate ways.

(Also, compared to BioShock, it's much less Ayn Rand and much more Isaac Asimov. Who, I believe, is the better writer anyway.)

[musical74]

I think I must have a *DUH* somewhere on my face...I saw *ADRIFT* as was thinking the Adrift engine....

[Taleweaver]

Final update for this week; more to come next week.

The "movement system" I've been planning works out nicely. It's a little like in the old times when I wrote text adventures on my Commodore C=64 in BASIC, constantly struggling against the limitations of a mere 64 KB system memory while not having the skills to write a real parser: I program each room as one part of the entire game, prepare a set of commands that could appear in the room and then write if-clauses to check whether all necessary elements in that room exist to justify the appearance of that specific command. For example, talking to someone in a specific room requires that both the person to talk to and a means of communication are in that room.

Speaking of rooms...

The room that holds the Supervisor's sensory deprivation tank

This is the first piece of BG concept art that mangakaluna created, showing the room with the sensory deprivation chamber the Supervisor lives inside. You can already see the basic design elements that will be used throughout Bluetide; I think it's a very beautiful and unique vision of an underwater city.

[Taleweaver]

Here's another update on ADRIFT and the current state of the script:

Statistics:

The game contains 213 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 2,422 words,
for an average of 11.4 words per screen.
The game contains 6 menus.

6 menus might sound not much, especially if you compare them to The Dreaming's 22. However, I was able to base the entire movement on five menus altogether; the sixth menu is the first choice in the game.

So far, only the introduction to ADRIFT really exists in script form, there's no real plot to speak of. I'm currently experimenting with the effect of ADV/NVL modes but think I'll do this project completely ADV style. There's no real "narrative voice" this time, and though the robot feedback messages would probably work as NVL-style readouts, they are probably too short to make this a viable option.

Events work the way I planned them, which is a good thing because it means I can concentrate on one thing after the other and need not worry about choices in one event affecting another event. All I need is to make sure that the choices manipulate the circumstances under which certain events happen or are skipped and it will all make sense. Also, this allows me to grant you players almost total liberty in finding your own way through the plot. I'll probably add another ending or two to take into account possible situations in which all other endings are no longer available but the player can theoretically move around Bluetide forever without ever getting to a conclusion, but that will happen during the final stages.

Next update will revolve around the characters of the game again, don't miss it!

[Taleweaver]

It's me again, and this time, as promised, more on the characters.

First of all, two more concept sketches:

Erika in megane mode and Sachiko's second version

For Erika, I wasn't sure whether I should give her glasses or not. After all, ADRIFT is set in the far future; would people still be wearing glasses then? Then again, her character type almost requires a megane girl according to the unwritten laws of manga... Really, I am not even sure about her now.

Sachiko, as you can see, was a little too loli for my taste in her first concept, so mangakaluna made her look more mature, which I believe is much more appropriate for her role in the game...

...speaking of which, I haven't even begun to talk about the characters' roles in ADRIFT! So this time it's

Meet The Girls
Erika
The normal inhabitants of Bluetide generally live their lives without having many cares. Machine do the menial work, food and clothing are automatically produced and nobody is really responsible for what's happening in the city. Most people are thus lazy and barely interested in what's going on around them. Not so Erika: she is a curious person interested in science and technology and hungry for knowledge. Doing real research is hard to do inside the city, but Erika has studied everything around her as well as she could possibly manage, and her knowledge of the ocean and her understanding of the processes that keep Bluetide running are unparalleled. Unfortunately, she has only a limited concept of human relationships and hardly any friends.

Minako
If Erika's scientific knowledge sets her apart from most other people in Bluetide, Minako is different from the rest because of her rebellious nature and dissatisfaction with the current status quo. She hates not being able to leave the city, she hates having to lead a life governed by machines, and she has millions of great ideas about how to make everything better - without a single opportunity to really put them into action. Though some people in Bluetide believe she's dangerous and best avoided, her great charisma and passionate personality make her a natural leader of people, and quite a few are willing to listen when she speaks.

Hinami
In a city of reason and technology, Hinami is one of the last true dreamers. She sings, she writes poems and reads them to other people, and she's an unswerving optimist. Very much like Minako, she is passionate in whatever she does, though she'd much rather watch, listen and see the good side in everything than actually taking action against the things that don't work out. Hinami is good-hearted to the point of being outright naive in some respects, but her bubbly personality and her sincere compassion for other people make her very pleasant company - not surprisingly, she has many friends in Bluetide.

Sachiko
Sachiko easily stands out in any crowd as the most attractive, most charming and most trustworthy woman - and that is just the way she wants it to look. She is an almost perfect manipulator of people, willing and able to use not only her physical beauty but also her sharp wit and social skills to make others do whatever she pleases. She usually thinks of her own advantage first, but most of the time, there's some additional profit in it for the people who help her achieve her goals. Sachiko's network of connections and personal relationships reaches throughout Bluetide, and if there's any problem, there's a good chance that Sachiko knows the right person to solve it - if there's any benefit in it for her...


Your interactions with these four women (and the interactions between these women) will determine the fate of Bluetide in ADRIFT. Stay tuned when we reveal more about the storyline later this week.

[Machus]

Ah, I love Erika's design!
Megane <3

I'm also interested in seeing some eventual art of Hinami! ^^

Keep it up!

[Taleweaver]

I'm also interested in seeing some eventual art of Hinami! ^^

Scroll the page up just a little; Hinami's concept art (the final one) is right in the first preview picture up there.