(P)lanets 2 [Cancelled]
Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 10:14 pm
Undergoing heavy revisions. Check back later.
Supporting creators of visual novels and story-based games since 2003.
https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/
I hate to be off-topic but... I'm not sure exactly how to make a post in the player's chat? Is there something specific I need to put in the first post? I guess i can just redirect players and fans to the old wip for now. ^^ Please comment there if you aren't posting feedback, thanks~CheeryMoya wrote:*sigh* And despite the new forum rules, some users just don't understand how to follow them. teacup, you're going to want to make a Player's Chat topic for this soon if you want this thread to be useful at all.
Hopefully the player will feel more like they're in a psychic school now with the new features. You can attend psychic lessons, keep notes in your 'aura journal' and use your psychic power. You'll also be tested on how much information you've acquired about auras later in the game. Plus, for each of the guys, their psychic power is now closely related to their personality and back-story. It's because of their powers that they are the way that they are - so there is a much greater emphasis on powers than there was in the first game, instead of just generic high school drama. Hopefully this should help players feel that they really are in a psychic school and not just a regular school.My main gripe with (P)lanets 1 was that I didn't feel like Marin was an actual student there. I about know her special circumstances, but that's still no excuse for lack of immersion into the world of psychics. What I'm saying is that her powers of telepathy weren't heavily stressed enough. And aside from that, the boy's routes were lacking in depth. The execution was meh.Ryuu's scene at the hospital could definitely have been handled better. They were basically yelling at each other "BUT I LOVE YOU AND I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER!"The art, I think, was fine, except for a few CGs.
So to be blunt, what I'm hoping for in (P)lanets 2 is a deeper storyline. Doesn't have to be dark, but just more than what it was in (P)lanets 1.
So you basically just make a post and let things run on their own, I guess ._.PyTom in the sticky message wrote:Note that posts in this forum should remain developer centric. If you want comments from players, or to begin building a fanbase, you should make a second post in the Player Chat forum, and link to it from here.
I'll attribute the story's weaknesses to fast pacing and infodumping of the boys' histories. Only some days were played, and several weeks were fully skipped. This omitted lots of potential shenanigans that the boys could have done which, done correctly, would let the players know the boys' personalities and behavior even more. As for the infodumping problem, a solution would be to consider if they were really willing to spill everything about themselves to someone else that easily.teacup wrote:Do you have any advice on how to execute the routes better? What exactly about them did you think was poorly executed?
I see :3CheeryMoya wrote:To answer your question about the Player's Chat thread with a quote:So you basically just make a post and let things run on their own, I guess ._.PyTom in the sticky message wrote:Note that posts in this forum should remain developer centric. If you want comments from players, or to begin building a fanbase, you should make a second post in the Player Chat forum, and link to it from here.
I'll attribute the story's weaknesses to fast pacing and infodumping of the boys' histories. Only some days were played, and several weeks were fully skipped. This omitted lots of potential shenanigans that the boys could have done which, done correctly, would let the players know the boys' personalities and behavior even more. As for the infodumping problem, a solution would be to consider if they were really willing to spill everything about themselves to someone else that easily.teacup wrote:Do you have any advice on how to execute the routes better? What exactly about them did you think was poorly executed?Kaius could have been more hesitant to tell Marin what he did to his mother. Wouldn't a thought like "If I tell her this, then she'll never want to see me again" come up during that scene in the forest?And remember that you're writing a story set in a school setting. Feel free to write about the little things that go on during high school! They're the most fun, so don't skip out onthe butler cafe during the school festivalthem :3
Thank you. My biggest priority is to create a game that's a fun experience.ShadowBerry wrote:Oh my God!
Even if it wouldnt be an Otome Game I would so play it!
A year with seasonal Event etc., using your ability...
This is so much fun when I think of it!
*at the moment playing (P)lanets*
Aha yeah, that seems to be the most common complaint, which is understandable. So I'm glad you can see the effort being made to make the psychic school seem more.. well, like a psychic school XDWhat I didn't like about the first game was that the entire 'psychics' premise seemed to be included just as an attention grabbing device to pull in more players (I actually had no qualms about the art since there has been far, far worse. Also I like your art ovo). That being said, I am extremely happy to see that massive effort is being put in to expanding the world of the psychics, and I am extremely curious about how their powers will be explained and explored. And of course, I love that you're making an effort to improve on your drawing skills as well, it's quite a leap from the first [P]lanets game.
Ahaha, same here XD I've made the in-game phone a lot more simple than a real phone, of course!The cell-phone application is certainly a very interesting idea. I can see myself having trouble with it though, since my phone is completely neglected in real life ^^;
Yeah, you're right ^^; Not only would it be a pain to make the mouth movements look realistic, but it would probably just bother players who read more quickly [I'm one of those people who plays rather slowly on auto mode, so the text doesn't advance until the character has finished speaking]. I don't really wanna waste my time giving them mouth movements if it's just gonna be a nuisance, haha. I really just want to think of ways to make the game seem more animated and less static, and I think the blinking alone does a good job of thatFor the sprites, I quite like the blinking, but honestly, the moving mouths would bother me quite a bit, and not just because of the lack of voices. It's not really creepy as it is...annoying, I think is the word. It'd be a pain to make the character mouth each word perfectly, but moving mouths annoy me if the lip movements don't match the words (and especially so if it's just an open close animation). Then there's the reading speed problem. I read very fast, so it's likely that I'll have finished reading before the character has mouthed half the sentence. This makes it feel like I've cut them off, but I don't like having to wait for a character to finish before moving on. (It is for this reason that I usually turn voices off when I play a game.)
Okay, I took some time to edit a background for the seasons using Tag-'s suggestions. ^^As for the backgrounds, I don't know what kind of restrictions you're under for the backgrounds, but if they allow free editing, perhaps add some elements of the seasons in? For example, adding a few stray leaves for autumn or some more flowers for spring? Or another idea could be that you change the hue of the background or add an overlay to it? For example, adding an orange hue for autumn and a blue hue for winter. These are entirely just speculations though, I have no idea if they'd even work @_@;; I'd be willing to overlook them, although that means that the seasons will likely mean less to me (as in, I'd be more likely to not notice or forget the change or significance in seasons).
Sounds like fun to meAnd as a side note, the character sprites blink now. I'm thinking about making their mouths move as well, but I'm not sure about this considering they're not voiced. How would you feel about un-voiced characters whose mouths still move when they're 'talking'? Would that be creepy or cool? XD
Hmm for winter maybe you can show the snow falling? I'm not sure if this is what you were looking for, but I came across this in the cookbook: http://renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/cookboo ... now_effect Also if you have Photoshop you can try and make animated snow. I found this tutorial to be quite useful. However, if you cant make it more winter-y I don't think I would mind much if they were all the same. To be honest I live in California, USA. It doesn't snow here, and the weather is pretty constant all year around. So for me, I'm quite use to everything pretty much looking the same. (only thing is during spring we get a bit of rainfall so scenery turns a little greener, and in winter the air becomes more crisp and cooler)teacup wrote:
Anyway, I would like to get some more helpful feedback so I figured I should ask some questions.
As mentioned in the first post, this game will cover an entire year so naturally it'll go through the seasons. The problem with this is that I'm using free backgrounds, many of which only have the basic variations [day/afternoon/night]. Would you find it incredibly distracting if the season was winter, but the background still was the same as it is in all the other seasons? :/ [take the courtyard for example... the grass is still gonna be green, even in winter].
I'm not really sure how to go about fixing this since I don't know how to edit the backgrounds to give them a more wintery or autumn-like appearance. Any suggestions? Would you be able to overlook this considering the limited resources I'm working with?
And as a side note, the character sprites blink now. I'm thinking about making their mouths move as well, but I'm not sure about this considering they're not voiced. How would you feel about un-voiced characters whose mouths still move when they're 'talking'? Would that be creepy or cool? XD