The Cask of Amontillado

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arttorney
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The Cask of Amontillado

#1 Post by arttorney »

Genre/Plot synopsis:
This is a horror short story by Edgar Allan Poe involving cold revenge by a scion of one very ancient family against the scion of another very ancient family. An unspecified but apparently grave insult had passed between them and the protagonist lured his victim into his catacombs on the pretext of testing a barrel of alcohol to determine if it was amontillado as advertised. After getting the victim highly inebriated, the protagonist shackles him in an alcove and proceeds to wall it up.


This kinetic novel version has four tracks that all follow Poe's story, but which vary the artwork, music, placement, and transitions so there are four different user experiences in reading the story.
Two tracks feature two dimensional art and two feature three dimensional art. One soundtrack features straight-up 19th Century classical music while the other starts with electronic fractal music, goes through a few panels of Japanese water harp, and then goes to medieval and renaissance vocal music down in the catacombs.

Characters:
Montresor is a man rich enough to have a Palazzo and an extensive wine collection. His family is old enough to have vast catacombs and a coat of arms. He has pride to a very great degree and is cunning. His family has fallen upon hard times compared to the glory they once enjoyed.

Fortunato is also rich and also from a great and ancient family. His ego is off the charts. His family remains very influential and powerful. He can be a little insensitive to the feelings of others when it comes to his expressions of satisfaction concerning his position of relative privilege.

I'd say this one is PG-13 because the plot is pretty creepy and there are skeletons all over the place.

Each track takes about 15 minutes to play.

Progress:
script= done, 11,923 words.
art= done.
story= done.
music= done.
sound effects= done.
main menu.png
amontilladowip3D-4.jpg
2D WIP-5.jpg
3Dwip6.jpg
2D-6.jpg
I just haven't bundled the final and play tested it. My artwork does not resemble most of what I see on here and so I am interested about what kind of reactions this will get.
Last edited by arttorney on Mon Dec 23, 2013 12:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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SilverxBlue
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Re: The Cask of Amontillado

#2 Post by SilverxBlue »

Ohhhh... This was my most favourite short story ever during High School... Well, I'm just biased in Edgar Allan Poe's works in general, so yeeep. XD

I'll be looking forward to see how the different artstyles? and music will affect the experience of reading the entire story all over again. XD

Oh, and I hope you don't mind for this, but I really had to get that out... @___@ Upon seeing the screenshot, I'm wondering if you can make the Narrator image of Edgar Allan Poe turn into a side image? Like you can just put it on the side of the dialogue box itself. I personally think it'd look better that way, but hey, it's still entirely up to you, so you can feel free to disregard my comment. ^^;
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arttorney
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Re: The Cask of Amontillado

#3 Post by arttorney »

That sprite is from a public domain daguerrotype I got from Wikimedia Commons. I had thought about modeling a 3D Poe for the 3D tracks. If I did that I would be able to turn him and perhaps even make a little video. That's an interesting idea. His head does pop in and out a little fast sometimes when the story switches from narration to dialog and I was worried it looked like an annoying game of whack-a-mole.

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Re: The Cask of Amontillado

#4 Post by fleet »

Congratulations on your VN.
I'd recommend having some close friends play it to double check for spelling and grammar errors. Typos have a nasty habit of sneaking into one's writing, even when using automated spelling and grammar checkers.
Some of my visual novels are at http://www.the-new-lagoon.com. They are NSFW
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Re: The Cask of Amontillado

#5 Post by tnm6 »

fleet wrote:Congratulations on your VN.
I'd recommend having some close friends play it to double check for spelling and grammar errors. Typos have a nasty habit of sneaking into one's writing, even when using automated spelling and grammar checkers.
I assume the writing for this game is copied verbatim from the short-story.

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arttorney
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Re: The Cask of Amontillado

#6 Post by arttorney »

The only change I made was where Fortunato disbelieves Montresor is a Mason saying "A sign, a sign!" and Narrator says "I produced a trowel ..."Producing a trowel from under my robe ..." or something to that effect.

I instead drew a Montresor sprite holding up a trowel, Montresor's dialog box says "It is this." and then the story is followed without deviation the rest of the way.

Edit: Thank you folks for your encouragement and congratulations. I think I will put in a little time to make character specific text boxes because I do believe it will solve a problem for me and make the game a little more accessible.

Further Edit: What I have done is to make a little image of each of them appear at the left of the text box as below. Now I have to go through a bit of re-scripting so I can not have too many extra images of Poe floating around and I can get more of the main characters into the primary scene. Thank you SilverxBlue. I think I like this. I just have to go through all the panels to make sure the words fit with the new margins.
example.jpg
12/28/2013 edit: Rather than create a special text box for each character I actually made little sprites for each that fit into the margin I created at the left. This allowed me to do fancy transitions with what otherwise appeared to be part of the text box. The script now has a total of 14,086 words (9012 words inside dialog boxes). Below is a screenshot of a panel in my "2D with alternative score" version which I caught in the middle of a blinds transition. Since all the mini-sprites are shown on the same brick background, it appears as though only the character is changing with blinds. The bricks are going through a blind transition too, but they are changing to the same thing so you don't see a difference. The text appears once the transformation is complete. You can just do straight hide/show with these things as long as there is not a scene change or movement of the larger sprites and the illusion of the mini-sprites being part of the text box is maintained. If other things move, the text box disappears and you are left with the mini-sprite hanging around down there in the lower left and you have to do something about that. My favorite method was to use moveoutleft on it and moveinright on the mini-sprite for the next speaker. It looks to the eye sort of like the image moving in right is dragging the text box in from the right. That's not really what is happening, but the illusion is pretty compelling.
example2.png

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Re: The Cask of Amontillado

#7 Post by Ran08 »

Oh! When I saw the title... ahh, I just thought I'd have to see this. Haha. I love that story, although being quite a claustrophobic... I absolutely hate the ending. Hahaha. It's like a love/hate thing.

Anyways, I'm quite curious as to how this will turn out. Haha. Who knows how the different artstyle/music will affect my perception of this story? :))

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arttorney
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Re: The Cask of Amontillado

#8 Post by arttorney »

Here is my thread introducing the beta versions: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 45&t=24533
I am especially interested in knowing whether it works OK on Mac and Linux. Thanks in advance.

12/30/13 Edit: and here is a link to a screencast of the "3D art with classical music" track of the work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhho2g31wkw

Here is the 2D art with alternative soundtrack version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guVX54B4TnI
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