Lemma Soft Forums

Time for the obligatory monthly update! Though I haven't got much exciting to show this time-- I started postgrad a few weeks back, so my time is split three-ways between trying to get an Honours degree, trying to do my job, and trying to work on this game.

Since early March, I've done the following:

-Sized down the textbox/sized up the text again, to further increase the legibility!

(The game resolution is 1440x900 by default, so these screenshots are about 1/3 of the actual size-- it should be nice and readable for everyone, now)

-Written more of the ending extension



-And fixed a few odds and ends of code. Nothing all that interesting, but necessary polish stuff

I've hit a difficult patch on the script, but I'm plowing on, just a bit slower than I'd like (when isn't writing slower than I'd like, though?).

Anyway, for the sake of having something interesting in this post...

Whenever I'm trying to keep either the whole tone of a written work or the personality/role of a single character consistent, I'll make a playlist with relevant music. IN has a few playlists, and since I'm lacking in other stuff to share at the moment, why not post them for reference. Maybe y'all can speculate on what they mean? Ooh~ (spoiler, they mean I have a horrible taste in music : P )

Shell+Tris+Historical Trio



Alasdair



Astor








@Mad Harlequin-- It's every bit the trainwreck you're expecting, I guarantee. ; I

@Aviala-- Glad you think he's interesting, and thanks for your support and excitement! (I'm excited to finish it. Sometime. Eventually. ;_; )

I'm glad to see the update! It's not easy juggling school and work and a project like this at the same time, but I'm rooting for you. (Nice playlists!)

Looking great so far! Keep up the good work.
I love seeing your playlists, I often do the same thing!

Welp, it's been another month! Progress report time.

Since April, I've mostly been doing editing. I'm trying to polish up the game so that there aren't any plot holes, and so my cringey mid-2014 dialogue is mostly trimmed or cut. Given the better part of a year has gone by now, a lot of the earlier text is just... eesh. And it isn't very consistent, and there are historical inaccuracies. I've been fixing all that up.

Old text
New text
(can't link them as actual images without having to make them illegibly small)

Away from my side of things -- Cafechan finished up Astor's sprite, so he's looking cool and he's in the game now! : D Here's a looksee for everyone.



Anyhow! Once editing is done it's I'll be down to fixing code, getting in a few missing assets, and working on the extras. In other words I'm... back to the point I was at in Nov/Dec last year before I decided to alter the endings. Yayyy.

@Morhighan + Mad Harlequin: thanks for your continued support guys! <3 <3

Oop, haven't updated since May. Nice work me.

What's been achieved over the better part of two months? Mostly a lot of editing. The game is split over five parts (common route, bad route, Alas' route, Shell's route, and the extended ending), and at this point I've finished the editing on 2/5 parts (common + bad). I think (and hope) the bad route was the heftiest bit of editing, so I should be faster with polishing up the rest... buuut we'll see. I know for a fact that the extended end needs to be pretty much completely rewritten, and how time-consuming that'll be is a bit of a mystery.

Outside of writing, Cafechan has done some extra sprite assets -- Astor has a much larger range of emotions now, Alas has a change of clothes, and Shell is capable of anger.



And that's about that. Before I disappear for another month or whatever, a question for anyone who's reading: what're peoples opinions on a talking/conversation oriented game having a more action-oriented climax?

My problems with the extended ending at the moment are mostly because the way the plot plays out lends itself to action, but the rest of the game is much more low-key, so I tried to avoid letting any fighting go too long. The result is a finale which feels like it should have a lot of suspense and swashbuckling and running around, but instead has a lot of talking with someone occasionally getting hurt for drama. I think this is bad form, but it's probably more consistent with the rest of the game. Anyone have any ideas on which way to take it?

I'm a sucker for stories that involve time.

You have a very unique premise for your story. I can honestly say I've never seen a plot quite like that, especially once the synopsis mentioned the woman's commission and her insistence in finishing her tale (which I plan to complete).

kitsubasa wrote:Inverness Nights (formerly Seven Stories) is a game about the intersection of identity and time-- namely, the cost of belonging to a certain group in a certain time period, and the challenge of staying true to yourself over time without support.

That's a really fascinating theme you've got there! I don't recall any visual novels that deal with the "intersection of identity of time." I'm a sucker for stories involving psychology and identity as much as I'm a sucker for stories involving time, so that alone is enough to have me interested in playing this game. I will say that Tris comes off as rather stiff to me, but something tells me there will be nice character development on both the narrator ends and the pursuable characters that'll leave me satisfied. I can't blame him, though--he's basically immortal, so he's probably had to deal with a lot of crap, huh?

kitsubasa wrote: Before I disappear for another month or whatever, a question for anyone who's reading: what're peoples opinions on a talking/conversation oriented game having a more action-oriented climax?

You mention that the way the plot progresses lends itself to action, and so in my personal opinion, I think writing an action scene is the way to go if that's how the story naturally leads. It's okay if the action breaks "consistency" with the rest of the story, as long as there's a proper prelude to it, which I'm assuming is the rest of the narrative. Done right, I think breaking the conversational pace of the story with action will keep the readers on their toes, madly smashing the enter key/spacebar trying to find out what happens next.

If you're concerned about preserving the conversational nature of the game, you could certainly emphasize the dialogue during the action scenes as much as the action itself. Perhaps allow people to choose responses to opponents during the scenes as they're fighting? I don't know though; these thoughts are just my two cents, so no reason to change what you want for your story for me!

Anyhow, good luck! I look forward to the completion of this game.

Phew, been a while since I last updated! I made a resolution not to post again until I'd finished editing Alasdair's route, just to ensure I'd have some decent progress to report when I did... but finishing Alas' route took longer than anticipated so, here we are.

New things since last time I checked in...

-Alas' route is, as above, done and dusted and edited properly

-The word count has dropped from 84,000 words (before any editing) to 73,000 words (3/5 docs edited) -- I had a lot of superfluous and long winded sections which have been culled, so the story is hopefully somewhat tighter now, to say nothing of how I'm going to demolish Shell's story

-One of my musically talented friends has offered to help create a closing theme for the game with me, hoorah~

-I've hammered out most branching elements of the extended end, and only one needs re-conceptualising now. I've settled for an action-y closer, and depending what you choose in the preceding route, different characters will take the lead in the fight. Favour one of your supporting characters to get them invested, or hold off and see Tris or the antagonist receive the focus.

-I've settled on one of the unlockable features; after playing the six endings, a short story will be unlocked depicting a previous event which is alluded to a few times in the main game. I do have concepts and plans for several other short stories, but whether they happen depends on my patience once I've finished editing everything else. Only one is guaranteed.

Is that it? I think that's it. Sorry, no pictures to add to this one -- it's been a long, lonely trek up the mountain of editing I made for myself, and I haven't seen another collaborator in weeks. Planning to commission some odds and ends of missing assets soon though, so I'm crossing my fingers for more interesting content next time I update. Oh! I can at least offer a link to the track I've been editing to lately. It's been eerily appropriate and inspirational for revisiting Shell's route over a year on from its original writing.

neuropsy wrote:I'm a sucker for stories involving psychology and identity as much as I'm a sucker for stories involving time, so that alone is enough to have me interested in playing this game. I will say that Tris comes off as rather stiff to me, but something tells me there will be nice character development on both the narrator ends and the pursuable characters that'll leave me satisfied. I can't blame him, though--he's basically immortal, so he's probably had to deal with a lot of crap, huh?

(sorry my response to your comment took so long, I wrote one a month back but my computer crashed while I was posting it 8D;; )

Pretty much. Tris is around 800 years old, and in his earlier years he was an ultra-idealistic swordsman who fought passionately for King and country. Given the... rather contentious nature of Scotland's monarchy after a point, he decided he'd have a less frustrating time sitting in a house somewhere being nationalistic on his lonesome. He's been doing that for a while by the time of Inverness Nights, and given he's less dead than other Jacobite sympathisers in his locality he's not exactly motivated to change his lifestyle.

You can make him less stubborn, or you can let him continue as-is. Allowing him be his grumpy self can lead to some interesting places, but trying to be flexible is the nicer option, if nothing else.

As for the other two, Alas and Shell get development by the truckload, for better or for worse. Feedback from people who tried the alpha has been that Alas' arc is more emotional, while Shell is more logically engaging. Whether that's still true or not, I'm unsure, all I hope is that it's enjoyable... given it constitutes a route or so on its own.

Phew, time for the usual monthly-ish update!

I've finished editing 4/5 sections of the script, as such, I'm down to the last one. This one needs the heaviest editing of the lot since I'm really unhappy with some of the scenes/endings in it right now, but hey, it's still a good feeling being onto the final section!

Current wordcount reduction is 84,000 words before editing to 68,000 words after. I predict it'll go back up again as I expand and alter the last route.

Given I'm coming to a close on the writing front, my projection for development tasks from here is looking a little like this...

-Finish script
-Fix issues with code so broken menus function, transitions are cleaner, and sprites don't lose their faces at random
-Commission missing assets (4-5 CGs, 4-5 music tracks, several GUI pieces)
-Draw out all... the... backgrounds... (save the workshop)

In addition to the above, I'll be fiddling around with the unlockable side-stories I've mentioned before. I'm in a better place now to talk about what one of them'll actually be, and I even have a nice picture to go with it.



Once you've played through to a certain one of the endings, a new option will open in the extras menu to play through a short kinetic novel about Astor's home life outside the main plot -- given, y'know. Astor doesn't get along with the main cast and doesn't get to sit down and talk backstory with them. Since the main game is pretty dude-heavy, I've tried to swing this unlockable in the other direction with the lady characters pictured above. We've got Nafisa, a cool pirate; Avis, Astor's sister; Venus, a less cool pirate; and Yuri, a friend of Nafisa's. Astor also shows up, of course. It'll be a good time for everyone but the Faulkner siblings. Haven't quite settled on whether to do this thing purely in text, text with CGs, or fully sprited: budget and time'll settle that one.

So, all the above tasks and info listed out, I've got a rough projection again of when this might be done -- possibly/probably? Feb 2016 or thereabouts. Provided life doesn't get in the way too much, that's where I'll be aiming for, at least.

Anyway, adieu folks. Have a rad day, and thanks for reading. ; I

You go, kitsubasa!
I love those designs. *_*

It's been a few months, and I probably owe an update! Nothing much exciting to report -- as I mentioned in October I've been editing the 'true ending' of the game, so while I've been getting decent work done it's been spoilery stuff I can't post or discuss. Suffice that I chopped out 15,000 words of the original script and started rewriting them from scratch. It's been an uphill climb, but I'm near the end of rewriting this section (maybe 8k/2-3 weeks off?), and once I finish it up, I'll be into background art and commissioning missing assets. Still hoping for a release early-ish this year, I have fingers crossed for March or April.

Anyway, for the sake of something pretty to look at, ages back I commissioned my friend Toastyhat (who's also responsible for a handful of the game's CGs) to do a piece of promo art for the game. I forgot to post it here at the time, here it is now:



So hey, happy 2016 -- we're still getting somewhere. : )

Another month, another update! Couple of things to report since Jan...





I've been working on the lineart for a few backgrounds! I'll probably be painting them so they're lineless to match the sprites, but best to have something to work from, right? All three of these have a few details missing, but they're most of the way there.

The other news I have is that I'll be releasing a demo for the game in the next few weeks, once these backgrounds are complete and I've snagged some missing GUI. It'll include the common route of the game (15,000 words), which covers 3/7 days of the story. Should be a nice, substantial piece to chew on for the last couple of months before release!

Anyhow, back to backgrounds -- see y'all when the demo's done. BD

Haa haa haa 'in the next few weeks', oh, you precious spring flower, you naive child, you fool.

Long time no see, LSF! Despite my absence I've actually been hard at work on IN the past four months, mostly fumbling through backgrounds and spending much longer on them than anticipated. Oh, the woes of being untrained in art and attempting to do it anyway. I return with proof of my work (yay) and a more attainable promise to put out a demo in the actual next real few proper weeks -- given I just need to recolour a BG and tweak some code.

Without further ado: screencaps.






Do I have anything more interesting to add? Not really. Just wanted to breathe some life into the thread. Have a good day, all~ BD

Oh my gosh, it's an actual playable demo.

Go try it, and then tell me what you think!

Congratulations on coming so far ^v^. I hope I'll have time to play the demo at some point.

Googaboga -- thank you! I hope that if you get or have gotten the chance, it's a good time.

---

Oookay so, better part of a month on from the demo release. I've been chipping at BGs still. Someday I'll see the light at the end of the background tunnel, I'm sure...

All four of these're WIPs, most need light+shadow properly added, one needs... well, colour, for a start. All primarily for Alas' route, hence being redder than the other BGs so far.






'Side from that? Not much to report! If anyone's given the demo a go, feedback is still appreciated -- haven't had much from people who weren't already friends, so honest outsider opinions would be interesting. Thanks for reading, and hope y'all're having a good summer/winter, depending on the hemisphere. BD