I'm bored...so let's disclose more PJ

[mikey]

Thanks for the detailed response Yang. Regrettably, I can't seem to figure out the things I asked. So... (sorry to ask this again), are there any total figures? Like how long is the whole novel is (you say book 1 but I don't know how many books there are or how long they are), and how many BGs you will have for the whole game. Again, I didn't want any clear numbers, an estimate is fine, just to get a feel for the scope of the whole project. It seems big, but is the (total, all branches included) text length 300 000 words for example? (not chinese, as I don't know how that relates to English word count.)

*looks at post*
This is too chaotic, sorry. Let's try it this way. Can you give me an estimate, pretending now that PJ is finished...

1. how many English words will PJ have (all paths included)
2. how many characters the player will see
3. how many BGs the player will see.

Again, I was just looking for some rough estimates, on the total project, not its individual parts (books, chapters, phases etc.). Sorry for bugging you, I am a little slow today it seems.

[RedSlash]

4. Estimated average play time.

Hope I'm not asking for too much. Screenshots are cool too! Yay!

[Yang Sei Fu@School]

Total word count expected in Book 1 (English, with all variable paths): Around 55,000~60,000
Expected size of book 2 (2 versions, as per the two main char's paths): 60,000+110,000, 2 side characters about an additional 10,000 to 22,000 each.
Expected size of book 3 (2 versions plus 2 extra storylines): 75,000 main paths, 30,000 to 50,000 each extra storyline.


Asides from the 20 BGs used in Book 1 (about 30~45 if counting variations), another new set would be used for Ei's Book 2 storyline (it takes place in Toronto, SPOILER). I have no idea how many BGs I need there and then, but probably around the same amount for 1 geographical location. But then, I could probably just process photographs. Much faster then.


I'm guessing, that without skip, playing through one path in the game straight - would take around...oh I dunno...some 6 to 10 hours? I hope I do have enough content for that kind of estimate...all I have on hand is a storyboard with layout for each major and minor event until the end of book 2...I only have a rough idea of what will happen in Book 3.

[darkknight]

one word....Wow

[mikey]

one word....Wow

Absolutely.

What gets me thinking though, is how you will hold the player's interest for such a long time. The full script can have 500 000 words - estimating an average word to have 4 characters... 2 000 000 characters, it's monstrous. The standard novel will have about 600 000 characters. PJ looks to be extremely long in this respect. Even if one single path would yield for about 1/3 of the script, it's still one big novel to read.

I am mentioning this because I have played some games that were text-intensive, but the characters were talking about things that got really tiring after a while (weather, things that were not relevant to the story or atmosphere...) In addition to that, many novels (PJ is based on a novel) have large parts of their text devoted to desciptions of surroundings and atmosphere, which you can easily avoid in VNs, as there will be graphics and music - so those 2 000 000 characters packed with relevant action - as darkknight said - Wow...

Will you be re-using bits of the story for other paths in PJ, or is every path genuine?

Seeing it now, I get a much better picture of the whole project, thanks! I think the BGs are going to be easily doable, even if 60, the characters as well, so the biggest challenge I see is really the story and the "readflow"... (god, where did I pick that word from...). As for Toronto - yay! do some lakeshore and queens quay and high park and and and...

[Yang Sei Fu]

2 millions words? Nah. I'm targeting half a million at most.

The storyline is heavily intertwined - how would the stories be powerful without a deep common ground as root?

Total finishable characters spanning the 3 volumes: 7 (2 finishable in V1, 3 new finishable in V2 but depending on storyline, and 2 "extra" substories in V3)

My novel is NOTHING compared to some Japanese works like Sorairo no Organ...22 chapters bilinear game path with over 75 hours worth of reading...and I still finished it (in 3 months). If the content is good, people will finish it. The only deadly point to these games are the excessive amounts of choices and endings - something I've tried to keep a minimum.

As for Toronto - don't worry, I've got everything along Bayview/Yonge planned - from Lakeshore all the way up to Aurora. Even if you are playing the Book 2 Japan route, there'll still be 1 part where the main character visits Canada...

The key to a good game - all characters are integrated...somehow.

[papillon]

Keeping choices to a minimum? Actually, that's what *kills* me with some japanese games... long stretches of time with nothing for me to do! I'm a fast reader, but I get worn out reading passage after passage in a tiny text box with nothing to do but click, click, click while my hand tires... the translated demo for fate/staynight was driving me nuts because I kept trying to push through to get to a point where I could *do* something.

I'd rather have frequent choices, even if they're unimportant ones, so that I still feel involved with what's happening.

[RedSlash]

Since the game IS based on a novel, I didn't imagine it were to have many choices in the first place, unless Yang is going to go through time to write new sections just for the game.

I agree that length isn't a problem if the content in it is good all the way. But if I heard 75 hours of reading, I think I'd be turned away. I think if were to take me 3 months to finish a game, then over the course of that 3 months I probably would've found a different game to play and forget about the first one in total. But your 6 ~ 10 hours seems okay.