Lemma Soft Forums

EDIT: It's done now! Check out Faust: Scene II for free on itch.io! http://meagantrott.itch.io/faust-scene-ii
Completed Games thread link:http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 11&t=32975

Hi! Some of you around here might recognize me as the background artist on Queen At Arms.

In addition to Queen, I've been working on a small side project just to teach myself Ren'Py and to get some more experience doing VN character sprites. Basically, I'm taking a scene from Faust by J. W. Goethe and turning it into a kinetic novel with an all-female cast.
It's mostly complete. There are still a couple art assets missing, and the choreography needs some fine-tuning.

...but I have a playable build, which you can download from Google Drive here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

I'd love to hear some feedback from you all. Thanks for reading!

Screenshots:

I played it! I was super stoked to see what Ulalaria could do with full control over all the sprites, backgrounds, and choreography. The text of Faust was also surprisingly powerful when relayed in this medium.

I got some feedback that there wasn't enough contrast between the text box and the font color, so it was hard on the eyes after awhile. So I'm playing around with the colors. What do you think?

Original:



Darker version:



Lighter version:

I know it's a kinetic novel, but still... it would be nice to have a little interaction. (Sign Contract/Don't Sign Contract?... you know, even if it's something simple like that, just to break up the pace a little.)

Really great character art though! I like the style a lot. :-)

LeonDaydreamer - Thanks for the feedback!
My reason for not having any interactivity in this project is basically because the text isn't mine. All the dialogue is more-or-less copied directly from an existing English translation of Faust with only a few minor modifications. Creating any kind of branching paths would mean producing extra scenes that stylistically match the source material, and frankly... I'm an artist, not a writer, haha. XP Since this is kind of just something I'm throwing together in my spare time and don't intend to sell it, I'm taking the path of least resistance.

I've been slowly making progress on the final background illustration. Once this is complete, there's only a CG left, and then I'll be done with the art assets!

The art is beautiful and wonderful!

Don't see any problem with the text box as it is.

I'll keep an eye on this thread for sure!

philip

Thanks, philip!

Quick progress update on the background illustration:



With Queen in crunch and all this UI stuff I have to do, I haven’t had a lot of time/energy for my personal stuff, but progress is still happening!

I like the art style and can see that the hands and eyes change on the sprites - nice.

Text box - I can't see a difference between light and dark. I don't particularly like the solid pale box as I feel it's separate to the rest of the page. I'm assuming there's a dark transparency behind the text but over the background? How does it look if you apply a gradient and have it darker in the lower part of the text box?

I don't know how other people feel, but trying to read text and still see the changes in the characters can be difficult particuarly in a widescreen format if your player is trying to read text that runs the full width of the screen. Some VNs restrict the words to a section of the text box to help with this but it all depends on the format you've picked.

Good luck with it.

Lesleigh63 wrote:I like the art style and can see that the hands and eyes change on the sprites - nice.

Text box - I can't see a difference between light and dark. I don't particularly like the solid pale box as I feel it's separate to the rest of the page. I'm assuming there's a dark transparency behind the text but over the background? How does it look if you apply a gradient and have it darker in the lower part of the text box?

I don't know how other people feel, but trying to read text and still see the changes in the characters can be difficult particuarly in a widescreen format if your player is trying to read text that runs the full width of the screen. Some VNs restrict the words to a section of the text box to help with this but it all depends on the format you've picked.

Good luck with it.

Thanks for your feedback!

Hmm, I haven't tried reversing the gradient in the text box so it's darker on the bottom yet. I'll have to see how that looks.
I do plan on shortening the whole text box so it's not the entire width of the screen. I just did that on Queen, in fact, and it looked a lot better than what we had before.

Playing around with some text to make a logo for the title screen.

Hey all, I'm writing a series of blog posts about this project over on the newly-launched VN dev blog collective http://theartofif.blogspot.com. Go check it out!

My first post:
All-Female Faust: Gendering Goethe

Well, I finally finished painting the background this weekend, which mean I get to do other things now like mocking up the title screen!

Excellent work on that title screen! It's simple, but has a ton of charm.