Lemma Soft Forums

[REMOVED DEMO CAUSE I WANT TO MAKE A BETTER ONE]

So beautiful!! I really like what I was able to play, and loved that there were a lot of choices & decisions right from the get go. Although I'm not a huge fan of how the characters flip when they turn. To me, it makes them seem like paper dolls, and looks a bit unnatural, taking me out of the game/breaking my immersion and reminding me it's just a game. You have all of this really cool art set up and fun dialogue/banter, and I enjoyed what I played, because you're building the world and setting things up for us. So it was disappointing to be taken out of that world (for me).

Sorry if that's too nitpicky or harsh, and if it is, please ignore! It's just my two cents.

Also, I ran into a few errors. One being that while I was talking to Lynae, I was unable to see her sprite, and Anise's sprite was transparent.

And then while Anise is giving Lynae a bath, I got a weird error/bug! I have no idea what it means, but have attached screenshots to show you what I'm talking about.

The Paper Mario style animation was a deliberate style choice like the traditional painting methods and leaving the paper text on.

Lynae was invisible in that scene because you clicked through the animation. I'm going to have to disable that or make it instantly finish, I just don't know how yet.

The error you got is me messing up my last minute code to short circuit the game and give a message to the player, you saw all the content.

I'll fix that bug tonight and update the downloadable. I clearly need to read the building distributions document more as well.

Double posting for great justice.

I've updated the download to fix the crash and other minor bugs. I also removed some unneeded files from the download, so it's now 215 MB. Almost all the sprites are in so it won't increase that much for the final game.

I did not disable clicking through animations, so wait a patient!

Hi! I was waiting for a demo for your game since I saw your tags and I was so happy to get my hands on it. I played it this afternoon and it's so, so cute.

Maybe the begining would be easier to understand with a small introduction, I think I would have been a bit lost if I hadn't read your presentation here first.

Otherwise, the writting is good, the heroine seems a bit helpless without being annoying and I really want to help her achieving her goals and see her character developpement. All characters are interesting so far and the wonderful character design may be part of the reason I was hooked so quickly
The art is incredible, the background for the first scene is so beautiful and full of details, it really give your game a unique feeling from the very firs seconds of gameplay! I also love how the sprites flip around, it makes it look a bit like an image book.

Gameplay speaking, I didn't try all options to see how much difference they made, but I was happy with the number of choices I had to make so far. And of course I can't wait to try the trading part of the game!

Good luck with your game, I really hope you can complete it, it soooo promising!

Wow the game looks beautiful and the mini game sounds great. I love the character designs and overall 'world' the game takes place in.

Best of luck on finishing it. I hope everything goes well :].

The art is just stunning!
I really like the textbox, it's very beautiful, but it'd be better if the text was only on the paper part of it - there was one longer phrase in the demo that went over the flowers.
Don't you plan to add preferences to the main menu? (because the first thing I usually do is tone down the music)
As for the writing I agree with Gabylc that it'd be good to add a bit more general world information into the first scenes. I personally also would like some more hints at Anise's romantic feelings, because as it is now the bath scene comes unexpected (I think there should be more Anise's inner thoughts and feelings' descriptions in general).

Anise's situation is supposed to come out through the dialogue so if that's not getting across I will need to know what you're confused about.

Edit: I've updated the demo with the rest of the day's content excepting the opening narration, which I couldn't get to work the way I wanted. I still have a lot to learn about renpy.

I've created a small staff section in the OP. Things aren't going as fast as I'd like. I might be hiring someone to help me, depends on if Miss Teatime can help with story programming or not.


The textbox thing I am not sure what to do, it seems renpy does not precalculate word length and adjust lines accordingly. Right padding also seems to not work as expected, since if I set it to half the screen width it doesn't seem to do anything. Hrm.

Making a longer post.

So TPF takes place in a fictional fantasy world, I have an unimplemented intro scene, but knowledge of the world should trickle in when it is needed. Can those of you who are playing the demo(s) let me know if you don't understand something?

On Anise's feelings: I thought they were quite obvious but I have very strong yuri goggles. It's a balance between making it apparent to the player and not making Anise's loved ones seem like total morons. We decided long ago that this wouldn't be a VN with an internal monologue, but Anise occasionally talks to herself as a character quirk.

I plan to rework the main menu, I will have things like options and such. All of the mechanical details of the game are in a very early state.

Also, I've replaced the [Watercolor] tag with commercial, as I don't want anyone to give a false impression. I had to pay Deji for her time and I've spent quite a bit of time on this myself. I'm dedicated to the graphic novel price of $10 USD.

Thanks to everyone who has played and commented, here is a picture of our girls as toddlers as a reward:

Thanks for the detailed answer!
As for me it's not like I don't understand something about the world or Anise's situation, it's just that I'd like to know more and also that the very beginning seems a bit abrupt without any introduction (maybe part of it also came from that the game started when I clicked Extra? part of it definitely comes from the lack of internal monologue, it even takes some time to understand who MC is from all these people on screen)
Yes, I'm not very into yuri myself, so they seemed like perfect friends and nothing more to me, maybe some comments on Lynae's appearance in the beginning will help showing that Anise may be attracted to Lynae as more than just a friend. Or actually you can lighten the bath scene a bit - not like she suddenly gets nosebleed from seeing Lynae's legs but that she sees her beauty and is attracted by it, though it'd be probably difficult without internal monologue.

The girls are just so cute

I'm still experiencing that unexpected image load problem. I'm trying to knock it out before I continue, because if I have to change how I'm doing sprites I don't want to have more content to change. There's a good chance I can write a text parser to do any conversion, but there's a chance I can't and that would be devastating.

If any of you might know how to help, my thread in the questions forum is here:

http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =8&t=28629

I'll try to figure out what's going on in the next few days.

After re-playing it, I think the "confusion" (the word is a bit strong but I can't think of antoher one) lays in the dialogue about Anise's arranged wedding. We got hint during the dialogue with "???" but it's not enough to understand the conflict she faces because she loves someone else. We can get her to say it to Lynae, but it's only one dialogue option and we don't really have clues that could make us select this one. I chose it only because I knew from your topic the romance is supposed to be Anise/Lynae, and yeah I think you will market your idea as such, but I do think players should be able to understand it earlier, before theses choices about Anise's feelings.

I don't know if I'm really clear.... Sorry.

Apart from the romance issue, the beginning of your game may seems a bit abrupt, yes, but personnaly I like it. I hate info dumps with passion and inner monologue from the protagonist is a very, very boring introduction. You avoided all these and I still understood what was going on as the scene unfolded.

PyTom wrote:I'll try to figure out what's going on in the next few days.

Thank you so much, Tom.

Gabylc wrote:After re-playing it, I think the "confusion" (the word is a bit strong but I can't think of antoher one) lays in the dialogue about Anise's arranged wedding. We got hint during the dialogue with "???" but it's not enough to understand the conflict she faces because she loves someone else. We can get her to say it to Lynae, but it's only one dialogue option and we don't really have clues that could make us select this one. I chose it only because I knew from your topic the romance is supposed to be Anise/Lynae, and yeah I think you will market your idea as such, but I do think players should be able to understand it earlier, before theses choices about Anise's feelings.

I don't know if I'm really clear.... Sorry.

Apart from the romance issue, the beginning of your game may seems a bit abrupt, yes, but personnaly I like it. I hate info dumps with passion and inner monologue from the protagonist is a very, very boring introduction. You avoided all these and I still understood what was going on as the scene unfolded.

You're very clear, thanks for your thoughts. I'll probably write in something unavoidable that hints a little more strongly about Anise's feelings, but the bath scene is supposed to be the last stand for thinking Anise wants to just be friends.

The unimplemented intro scene (I'm so bad at photoshop) is about the history of The Parasol Festival itself so throwing the player into the Appian Guildhall unceremoniously was intended. I'll double check that it's clear they're preparing for the holiday as vendors.

Oh with the intro scene everything should be alright! And I think Anise and Lynae's positions as vendors are clear, no problem on that point ^^