A semi-kinetic short story about experiencing someone else's past
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"In the early 21st century, humanity developed a means to convert memories into a digital format. But with this advancement came a startling phenomenon...
"When memories extracted from a recently deceased human were inputted into an AI's code, the AI began acting well outside the designs of its code, even blatantly ignoring them in many instances.
"These 'AI' took on personality of their own and even began showing signs of sentience.
"To this day the nature of this phenomenon is the subject of much debate. Has humanity accomplished the digitization of the human consciousness? Is it a continuation of life for the deceased or is it an entirely new life? Can it even be considered human? Can it even be considered alive?
"One thing is for certain, though: something exists within those digitized memories. And that something has come to be widely referred to by the name of 'ghost.'"
"When memories extracted from a recently deceased human were inputted into an AI's code, the AI began acting well outside the designs of its code, even blatantly ignoring them in many instances.
"These 'AI' took on personality of their own and even began showing signs of sentience.
"To this day the nature of this phenomenon is the subject of much debate. Has humanity accomplished the digitization of the human consciousness? Is it a continuation of life for the deceased or is it an entirely new life? Can it even be considered human? Can it even be considered alive?
"One thing is for certain, though: something exists within those digitized memories. And that something has come to be widely referred to by the name of 'ghost.'"
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In "A Digital Ghost Story," you play the role of a ghost whisperer tasked with the job of awakening a dormant ghost. In the process you learn of the ghost's first experience with love and its tragic end.About 8.5k words in length, it will contain 3 sprites, 4 BG's (probably), and some branching at the end that will result in 3 endings. ((There is also a chance of some CG, but don't get your hopes up.))
Gameplay will have you directly playing the role of the Ghost Whisperer, answering questions with the responses pre-determined by the asker ((there are a reasonable number of questions like these, but most will only result in some immediate dialogue change)). You will transition between memory and discussing the memory with, at first, your partner and then later with the actual ghost.
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The project is being done by myself (story idea, writing, "coding" [if you can call it that >_>], and "director") while the sprites are being done by khanachi (http://khanachi.deviantart.com/). We might already have a GUI artist, the backgrounds are a bit up in the air right now, and the game will have cc-licensed music for the soundtrack.
Progress:
Writing: "100%" (Will probably go back and change a few lines of dialogue)
Sprites: 70%~80%
Coding: Lol (Does it run from beginning to end, properly displaying the sprites, changing scenes, and playing music in a way that doesn't glitch? Yes. Does it do so in a way that doesn't cause me to grimace every time I open the code? No...)
BG's: Still a bit up in the air
Music: 90% (Just want to change a song or two and change some timing)
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Now to show some assets. Because the BG's and UI are still in their placeholder stage, I'll instead show you the sprites. And since I feel like being a big tease, I'll show them off one at a time (saving the Ghost for last).
First off is Rahven. Easy-going and pleasant to be around, he has the ability to converse with anyone.
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And for those interested, a little background on this project:
I have been interested in being a writing for awhile now, although I have finished very few works (it's mostly notebooks full of unfinished works). I first became interested in writing VN's after playing "Analogue: A Hate Story" and "Hate Plus," and "A Digital Ghost Story" is the direct result. With this project, my first VN, I hope to hone my skills and better understand what goes into the production of a VN. My end goal is to hopefully become a professional writing, either for VN's or for some other form of storytelling.
