Errant Heart - Arrival at San Moritz

[Voight-Kampff]

Here is the revised introduction demo for Errant Heart.

If you've played the original release, here's the short of what's been changed:

The intro is pretty much the same. There's been a few dialog tweaks and edits. All the material that came after that, up until Lira arrives at the ferry docks to leave for San Moritz has been chopped out. It's been replaced with two new scenes that distill most of that information and repackage it. The rest of the scenes have been edited down a bit to remove excessive descriptive detail. This version of the game ends just after Lira arrives in the city.

There's a little extra artwork in the form of new sprites. Or rather, there's a CGed version of Mrs. Moretti, and a finalized inked version of Reme. Also, place-holder music is now found through out the whole demo.

The preferences menu - which used to crash the program - should have been...circumvented. It's not fixed, per se. However, we've removed all the custom button mapping, leaving the standard Ren'Py roundrect design. It ain't pretty, but it should work.

Like before, we're looking for generalized feedback: did this keep your interest, did the sprite animation look odd, did the music ruin the mood, were you surprised by anything, did you like anything in particular, etc. Also, if you run into any technical glitches, please point them out.

I expect all of the testing here to be pretty laid-back. If you can't get around to this version right away, don't worry. Just get to it when you can. Anyway, without further ado...


PC Version
http://www.errantheart.net/pre-pre-alph ... -win32.zip

Mac Version
http://www.errantheart.net/pre-pre-alph ... tz-mac.zip

Linux Version
http://www.errantheart.net/pre-pre-alph ... 86.tar.bz2

[sake-bento]

General thoughts: Definitely an interesting story. You managed to keep my attention, and I was very really confused as to whose POV I was reading from. Pacing was good, and the intro was especially catching. The music was a good selection throughout, and I like the panning across the scenery.

-The sprite alignment threw me off in quite a few places, especially with Mom. When she first appears in the kitchen, she looks much too short and small beside Lira. She also looks really short next to the two boys later on.

-Reme seems unusually tall when he's next to Lira. I think it's more a perspective issue than anything else, though, as it wouldn't be surprising for a guy to be a full head taller than her.

-Salima looks like she's a lot smaller than everyone else, proportionally. Her head is a lot smaller than the heads of the other sprites.

-The "document icon" ctc seems out of place, and it keeps switching off with the arrow for no reason that I can discern.

-Text box choices when sprites and backgrounds change is inconsistent. For the first scene with the angry doctor man, the text box stayed there when new characters showed up or disappeared. Later on with the sprites of Salima and Cassandra, the text box would disappear every time the sprites changed. I think you should stick with either the text box not disappearing ever, or the text box disappearing for every scene change. You can use $ _window_during_transitions = True to keep the text box up at all times.

-The different narration/speech boxes for the ADV portions was a little bit distracting. It is possible to just make the narration box the same as the speech box, except without the tab on it?


Specifics:
"With that, Cassandra rests her right hand on her hip..."
Looks a little close to the bottom of the text box. Might want to nvl clear before that line.

"Taunting my prey verbally, I try in vein..."
Should be "vain," I believe.

Lira: "Oh? Which part? The part where I had to..."
Would she really use a swear word so calmly? She seems like the super shy girl, so I can't imagine her swearing like it was just another word.

When Lira smirks after the "Probably...Maybe..." her sprite looks too sweet to be smirking.

When Priss is teasing Lira about the waiters and she "...responds by growing beet-red." the sprite should probably reflect that.

After Mom leaves the kitchen, the scene shifts back to Lira centers in the kitchen too abruptly. It should pan like it did when Mom entered.

"Although, he's very tall and very blonde."
Just a nitpick, and something of an old convention, but "blond" is for men and "blonde" is for women. I don't know how often people even use that these days, though, so if you leave it as "blonde," I think you'll be okay.

"After a brief pause, the young man extends his arm..."
Touches the bottom of the text box. I think there should be some way to adjust the "borders" of the text box so that it stretches when there are larger chunks of text in it.

"Quickly, I use my coat sleeves to wipe my face and respond to mom."
I think it should be "Mom," since it's treating that as a name. Also, the sentence can be misconstrued as using coat sleeves to respond to Mom.

I crashed the game when I clicked on "Extras" in the main menu.
ScriptError: could not find label 'extra_no_entry'.
I assume that's because it's not there yet, but I figure I should mention it.

[Voight-Kampff]

Ah, thanks for the feedback.

I don't have the time ATM to go over each point. But something I should have mentioned first is that not all of the sprites are finished - nor do we have the full set of expressions for any of the characters. So, instances where a character is blushing, but the sprite doesn't reflect that, or if sizes seem off, it's almost certainly because haven't gotten around to making that sprite yet or finalizing the sprite.

And as for sprite alignment - yeah. We're still experimenting with that. We'd like to "shake things up" as much as we can, as far as "shot composition". But I think it's very easy to take it too far and stray into territory that isn't innovative, but rather, just odd.

Lira: "Oh? Which part? The part where I had to..."
Would she really use a swear word so calmly? She seems like the super shy girl, so I can't imagine her swearing like it was just another word.

I paused and contemplated that very issue as I was writing the line.

What I want to demonstrate in these few scenes of Lira at home, is her acting in her most comfortable, unguarded state. When she's out in the world, interacting with people she scarcely knows, there's no WAY she'd use a swear word. But when she's in front of her sister, with whom she's intimately comfortable with? I wonder if she would.

The idea being: the reader should be able to tell when Lira begins warming up to a character when she starts letting her guard down and starts saying things that she would normally censure herself from saying when in the presence of a random person.

[Voight-Kampff]

Text box choices when sprites and backgrounds change is inconsistent. For the first scene with the angry doctor man, the text box stayed there when new characters showed up or disappeared. Later on with the sprites of Salima and Cassandra, the text box would disappear every time the sprites changed. I think you should stick with either the text box not disappearing ever, or the text box disappearing for every scene change. You can use $ _window_during_transitions = True to keep the text box up at all times.

Ah. Yeah, again, that's us experimenting. I believe original thought was to get rid of the text box whenever there were sprite transitions because, in NVL mode, if there's a lot of text on screen, any transition for a sprite might get lost behind that text.

The same can be said for sprite placement. It probably doesn't work so well while in ADV mode. But in NVL mode, we suspect that having a sprite off to the side will help that sprite stand out from behind the text.

As for sprite sizes and such - you're the second person to mention that Mrs. M looks too small when placed in that one scene next to three other characters. I actually went back for this revision and increased the zoom level on her too.

Well, part of it may be due to the positioning system that we're using. Part of it may be due to the character heights themselves. You can check a character lineup here. If you suspect the issue is in the proportions of the characters themselves, you should be able to spot it in that pic.

Just a nitpick, and something of an old convention, but "blond" is for men and "blonde" is for women. I don't know how often people even use that these days, though, so if you leave it as "blonde," I think you'll be okay.

I wondered about that. I've never been sure on why there's a distinction between the two. I just chalked it up to variations in language. Like perhaps one version was British, one was American.

I crashed the game when I clicked on "Extras" in the main menu.
ScriptError: could not find label 'extra_no_entry'.
I assume that's because it's not there yet, but I figure I should mention it.

Whoops. Forgot about that completely. Yeah, there are no extras yet, consequently the crashiness.

[sayuri]

I just finished reading the demo and took notes. I'm sorry if I'm too critical, but that is probably more useful than saying how much I liked the game, frankly .

When describing the deaths of the people when Casandra returns to camp, minimalize the use of hyphens. Commas are less bulky.

The sprites do not have to be changed as often as they are now. Let us have a few seconds to realize what emotion the sprite shows before switching to the next.

The CG where Casandra shoots the young girl is a bit fuzzy at first, but I like the zoom out effect. Nice touch.

The transition from the desert to normal time is a bit abrupt. Maybe a different transition or the new location on a black background.

I agree that Lira cussing is a bit off. It clashes with her personality and the time period. I’m sure girls in the 1940s were more ladylike than today. Also Priscilla’s overuse of the word prey was a bit distracting. ‘Unsuspecting victim’ or ‘target’ are some replacements. Also, during that conversation Lira’s clothes randomly changed color twice.

The option to rewind text would be a nice feature for people like me that are easily distracted .

Priscilla’s says “hotties” “erotic comics” and Mom (I think she could be called Mother, by the way) talks about “hang around”. These kinds of phrases are really out of place for the time period. It’s a little distracting to me personally.

Write out numbers please. So 20 or 100 are twenty and one hundred. 123 is represented in numbers though. It is really just a nit-picky thing. Another nit-pick is when Mom sees Lira off at the ferry and says “Ooo”. I think it’s “Ooh”; I might be wrong.

Priscilla says “down right smoking hot”. It’s down-right I believe. Anyway, that phrase sounds a bit unnatural in the sentence.

“And” really isn’t necessary when beginning a sentence and looks a bit clumsy. Same with “but”.

I think the moving sprites concept is pretty cool but at times they are uncomfortably close. Might want to save that for the romance scenes .

That's pretty much it. On the earlier version people were complaing that the mundane parts were too boring but I enjoyed the slow bits too. Maybe you just cleaned up a lot of the descriptions? Anyway I thouroughly enjoyed this, looking forward to more .

[Voight-Kampff]

The CG where Casandra shoots the young girl is a bit fuzzy at first, but I like the zoom out effect. Nice touch.

Like all the CGs, it's just a place-holder for now. The act of creating the zoom effect made it painfully obvious that the final version will need to be insanely huge in both resolution and file size. We're still debating how best to pull it off and not end up with the fuzziness of the place-holder.

The transition from the desert to normal time is a bit abrupt. Maybe a different transition or the new location on a black background.

I agree. I want to do more with the transition. But it's going to require a bit more effort to pull off, as far as coding goes. It didn't make the cut for this version.

I agree that Lira cussing is a bit off. It clashes with her personality and the time period. I’m sure girls in the 1940s were more ladylike than today. Also Priscilla’s overuse of the word prey was a bit distracting. ‘Unsuspecting victim’ or ‘target’ are some replacements. Also, during that conversation Lira’s clothes randomly changed color twice.

It's easy enough to remove. As for overuse of words, it's not surprising. That scene is just a first draft, while most of the others are second or third. And as for the clothes changing - yeah. We were experimenting with different color schemes. Each expression had a different color scheme, and that's all we had on-hand for this version.

The option to rewind text would be a nice feature for people like me that are easily distracted .

I agree. Actually, I find myself trying to scroll back through text myself.

Priscilla’s says “hotties” “erotic comics” and Mom (I think she could be called Mother, by the way) talks about “hang around”. These kinds of phrases are really out of place for the time period. It’s a little distracting to me personally.

I can understand that. However, rather than being a true "period piece", I'm leaning towards making it a bit more...up-to-date? Perhaps think of it in terms of the Kevin Sorbo version of Hercules. A TV show based on Greek mythology, but with modern-day (Californian) English.

The two examples of animes that I can think of that used period language, Chrono Crusade and Baccano! annoyed me because of that very issue. I felt like every time period slang was used, the writers were beating me over the head with it, shouting, "See? See? This is the 20's!".

I can see how the opposite could be just as jarring. I think perhaps I'll try to steer the dialog towards a more neutral approach.

“And” really isn’t necessary when beginning a sentence and looks a bit clumsy. Same with “but”.

I know. It's just a bad habit. And it's an easy trap to fall into.

That's pretty much it. On the earlier version people were complaing that the mundane parts were too boring but I enjoyed the slow bits too. Maybe you just cleaned up a lot of the descriptions?

I completely chopped out over 40Kb of text between the end of the desert scene and Lira arriving at the docks and replaced it with a little less than 10Kb of text. Plus, most of the remaining descriptions were paired down as well.

[sake-bento]

The option to rewind text would be a nice feature for people like me that are easily distracted .

I agree. Actually, I find myself trying to scroll back through text myself.

You can just hit the "page up" key on your keyboard, and it'll go back to the previous text. Or if you have a mouse with a wheel, scrolling the wheel up will make you rollback, too.

[chronoluminaire]

Like all the CGs, it's just a place-holder for now. The act of creating the zoom effect made it painfully obvious that the final version will need to be insanely huge in both resolution and file size. We're still debating how best to pull it off and not end up with the fuzziness of the place-holder.

I haven't got a chance to play this yet, but I can comment on this: I did something similar in Elven Relations, and it did cause a big lag while Ren'Py preloaded the huge image. I think the way to do it (which I didn't do in Elven Relations) is to have a series of images each at 1.5-size the size of the screen. Something like, if the screen is 800x600:
Image A is 1200x900. Start off zoomed in to an 800x600 chunk of it, zoom out to the full picture at 0.66 res. Then immediately switch to...
Image B is 1200x900; there's an 800x600 chunk of it which matches the zoomed-out Image A. Start off zoomed in to that chunk, zoom out to the full picture.
Image C is 1200x900; there's an 800x600 chunk of it which matches the zoomed-out Image B... etc.

[sake-bento]

Looking at the height chart, I see Salima is actually much taller than I thought she was based on her sprite in the game, and Reme isn't as tall as I thought he was. Did you shrink Salima's sprite or something? She really does look rather small.

[Voight-Kampff]

Chronoluminaire, that's an interesting idea. I hadn't thought about cutting it up into chunk and stringing them along like that.

Looking at the height chart, I see Salima is actually much taller than I thought she was based on her sprite in the game, and Reme isn't as tall as I thought he was. Did you shrink Salima's sprite or something? She really does look rather small.

The versions that you see in that character lineup were directly used for the place-holder sprites. There may be some distortion due to the different zoom levels that we're using. But I suspect that since we're attempting to display tall and short characters next to each other in more-or-less correct perspective, it's something that most people just aren't used to in VN format.

Plus, the temporary BGs don't help since they don't match up with our character perspective at all. I'll worry about the issue more if things still look wonky with finalized BGs.

[mysterialize]

Sorry about not getting back to you on this for a while. I've had an unexpectedly stressful week. Sadly, now it seems like most people have already said what needs to be said. I have very little to add.

I do have to say that I do like the changed pace now. It's a lot easier for me to stay interested and follow what's going on when it's less wordy. My attention almost never drifted in this version. Though, I was a little disappointed to see that chicken scene was cut down. It was one of the few lengthy scenes that I actually liked.

As for positioning, it was definitely better this time, but there were still a few points where it seemed a little off. Most of the things I took issue with, such as people's heights, have already been mentioned, but there was one other little unmentioned thing that was a bit jarring. The shift from Lira and the mom standing close to the camera, to them shifting back with Reme, happened rather suddenly. There was no fade on the sprites to indicate that they had walked back there, so it made it look kind of like they just teleported.

This is completely unrelated to critique, but the place where it ended did kind of make me laugh. It made it look like the mysterious red-world wound up killing Lira, and there was nothing you could do about it. That was just it. No more story.

Again, sorry that there wasn't much else I could add. I look forward to seeing more though.

[Voight-Kampff]

Sorry about not getting back to you on this for a while. I've had an unexpectedly stressful week. Sadly, now it seems like most people have already said what needs to be said. I have very little to add.

That's not a problem. In fact, you bring up a good point that I'd like everyone to take note of:

Don't worry if you don't get around to a critique as quickly as you'd like. And don't worry if what you have to say has already been said by others. I still want to hear what you think. After all, if multiple people agree on the same point, then I'm more prone to believe it's a legitimate issue, rather than just one person's opinion.

Though, I was a little disappointed to see that chicken scene was cut down. It was one of the few lengthy scenes that I actually liked.

Well, that's the sort of thing you'll have to specify in the future. Point out particular things you like, as well. Otherwise, I can only assume a given sequence just didn't work and thus it'll end up on the chopping block.

This is completely unrelated to critique, but the place where it ended did kind of make me laugh. It made it look like the mysterious red-world wound up killing Lira, and there was nothing you could do about it. That was just it. No more story.

Heh. Well, in fact, we are toying with the idea of adding an unlockable branch in that spot for Karl, in which, Lira ends up meeting with him on the ferry. Consequently, when they disembark, Salima is never encountered. But that's quite a ways down the road.

Now I have a question that's been bugging me for a while...

Units of measure. Since this is based around a fictional 1940's Europe, should units of measure, like distance and weight, be mentioned in metric units? I'm pretty sure that even Brittan wasn't using Imperial units at that time.

I also wonder about British English versus American English. Perhaps I should be replacing words like "color" and "gray" with "colour" and "grey". But I suspect that such a change would be too subtle for an American like myself to do justice too. The end result would just make a European snort and think to themselves, "Stupid American! Tying to pretend he knows British English...". Whereas units of measure are simple enough to convert. I suspect I can pull that much off.

Even so, I'd like to hear if anyone has an opinion on either matter.

[sake-bento]

I would definitely use the metric system. As for British English, you're the one writing the story, right? It's okay to use "gray." The spelling depends more on the author than the context of the story. What if it were a modern setting and someone was traveling between the U.S. and the U.K? It would be weird to keep changing the way "gra/ey" is spelled in the text based on which side of the ocean your protagonist is currently on.

Although if anyone writes a note to anyone else, then it should probably be spelled "grey," instead.

[TheQueen]

First I want to say that I loved this game. I can't wait to play the rest of it and see how things play out.

I will keep this short as most of what I have to say has already been said. I did notice a lot of things that the other players noticed.

1. I noticed that the heights of the sprites were a bit off.

2. Others have commented that they couldn't rewind the text. I was able to do it without any problem by just rolling the wheel on my mouse.

3. It was weird in places to see Lira's dress just change colors. I know that you are trying out the color schemes but it was off putting.

4. The "extra" screen crashes. Of course I know why now. I think us testers should have been warned about that.

5. It did seem odd for Lira to be swearing. Even with family a lot of people as shy as Lira just wouldn't do that.

6 I liked the way that the story flowed. I felt that the pace was good. Not too fast or too slow.


I'm sorry that I can't contribute much more than this. I hope I've been a little bit helpful.

[CaesMRaenes]

Haha. Wow, timing in college is impeccable. I haven't been able to complete through the demo but thus far (I played until the point of Lira getting onto the ferry) I enjoy the story. It catches me off guard every now and then and sometimes the description would drone for a little then pick back up, possibly due to the fact that I'm packed up in classes so I'll check the demo out again over break.

There were a lot of grammatical errors and such so I would suggest looking it over. Really simple ones such as the "it's/its" problem. There were a few spelling mistakes as well such as "entrace."

Design wise, I love the characters. Personality wise, the first person who we see through their eyes had the most personality (well, from what I read so far). The mother was also fun to learn about since teasing her was just humorous. And the magazine she worked for. The other characters, not so much, since they didn't have a lot of screen time but maybe that's the case.

But yes, that's the extra stuff that I'm adding on to other people's notice. I'll get back to you when I go through for a second run. Hopefully, by then, I'll be less stressed and more relaxed.