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This is a story that is currently readable as a web novel on Royal Road. It is currently undergoing a rewrite, but it is available for normal reading there.
Distant Leaps to Circinus is about a world of mysteries.
A century has gone by since humanity nearly wiped all life from the earth. Their lust for power and progress tempted them to tamper with an unknown entity and in turn, brought forth an enigma of change. The weather, animals, physics and even humans had all taken new forms. What does "The compass Planet" Circinus, offer to the children who are born upon its lands? What is the true nature of the "Second Sun"?
The lives of all living creatures are changed forever in an unforgiving world of rings. Enormous creatures roam the land, made up of the very life they were given. Crystals with entirely different elements, bring functionality and mystery to the world. Landmasses that triumph the continents of the past world, float along an ununderstood axis, carrying the lives of millions with them. Children who can communicate in ways not known to anyone but them.
The story takes place a century after the first humans mysteriously awakened on the new world. Majority of the story follows young characters who have just started to truly explore their world. While they grow and learn, the vast amount of content is centered around their life and how they take on the challenges that arise.
The story features many characters who, while young, still wish to survive and live their life to the fullest.
One of these characters is a child named, Zeais. He has dark brown hair, gray eyes, and is unfortunate enough to be born without the ability to see color. Despite his impairment, he can see color for very few reasons, reasons of which are also part of Circinus's mystery.
Another young child who is peculiar, is a girl named, Eris. With black hair and orange highlights, she holds eyes that were imbued with the markings of a halo. Part of a life that held mostly unfortunate loses, she still wishes to lead a life to where she can truly be happy.
Within the community of these special children, are those who were not born with any special traits at all. Anya, a young blond girl who only has her father, lives to run her family Inn and take care of her only family member. She searches for clues to become a great person and searches within herself for reasons to do the things she never thought she could do before.
Many other children have been born into the new world, many of them can no longer be called children, but they are still part of the world.
Sprites look the same as the Characters above, only two completed so far.
MUSIC
You can get a taste of what our music is like by clicking the piciture below.
Questions:
Does this story sound interesting enough to become a Visual Novel?
Do the characters, with a basic outline sound engaging?
Does the world invoke you to want to know more?
The story includes multiple leads, would you feel less attached to them as a character?
How would you feel if the Visual Novel offered both a Kinetic route and one with choices? (A normal Visual Novel option would include special chapters and characters, while a kinetic route would show the base ending. There are many more mysteries to the world than just the main characters.)
This story is published as an accessible free web novel on the site RoyalRoad. Do you feel like being able to both read and experience a visual format would be confusing?
The base VN will be offered for free with the same ending as the book, while the choices and side chapters will be a much longer story, offed for a small price.
Any critique on Art, Music and any other progress we have?
Last edited by Khailz on Mon Sep 23, 2019 12:38 pm, edited 6 times in total.
The GUI has come a good ways since it was last seen and Spirtes are much more detailed. There is also a new text box which will be a lot more minimalistic depending on settings.
Main Menu
Before: After:
Textbox
Before:
After:
There is also a new affect when transitioning to new chapters which hopefully feels atmospheric when first entering the game.
This week a lot was done for the GUI, some of the progress can be see on my twitter page.
An option to change the textbox from a normal VN GUI to a more immersive uncluttered look. I wanted to give players the option to read without seeing a bunch of clutter, since all the options show on screen can be found in the preferences menu. Below is a video demonstration of the updated GUI and the changing of the textbox. You will notice a good few improvements compared to the last video.
Along with GUI improvements, more script has been inserted into the VN. The script written around this time is about 60k words. The demo will be nearly half of this, sitting at 27-28k.
There is still more work to be done and I will update this thread with more updates.
I'd really appreciate some feedback on whats been seen so far to make this project really shine!
I think the GUI looks clean and very professional! I definitley prefer a more immersive feel, so actually having that option available to players is a really good idea when personal preference comes into play. I also like that the menus don't look cluttered or like there's too much going on as well-overall some great choices were made when creating this
FerventWriter wrote: ↑Mon Sep 23, 2019 6:20 pm
I think the GUI looks clean and very professional! I definitley prefer a more immersive feel, so actually having that option available to players is a really good idea when personal preference comes into play. I also like that the menus don't look cluttered or like there's too much going on as well-overall some great choices were made when creating this
Thank you Fervent, I'm no graphic designer by any means but it's good to hear that it looks good to you! I want a lot of player freedom, even though it's a kinetic novel, so more options will appear. Thank you for the input!
The Story First I will talk a little about what the story is about. Distant Leaps to Circinus is a dark fantasy story about a mysterious object in space that has ruined the earth. Of course the story takes place much farther in the future after these events take place. Where the story begins though is with a child named Zeais, who's eyes like other children born around his time, have developed special properties. These special properties can be figured out by reading more of the demo as it progresses and will ultimately key you in on the mysteries surrounding the world and the children. The entire setting is made to have a good amount of lore that not only provides information about characters and enemies, but from the day to day items and plants they use to live. Aside from children, adults and animals all have stories of their own, whether they are short or long.
The Goal Now I want to speak to you about the goal for this project. The overall goal for DLTC is for players to experience an immersive and enriching story that is kinetic in nature. While choices may or may not be included, I do not want to have branching arcs of what could or could not happen. Instead, to bring about a little more fun than just a kinetic story, I want various lore to be unlocked and tons of other information to be presented so players can piece together what happens on their own. This may not be fun for those who are used to branching narratives or choices, but I believe it will be better than just reading the story outright. It's not a new concept, but it's all to make for a much better playing experience. The word count goal for the story is 250,000. I want a long narrative that will be about more than just characters with a goal, I want this to be a world with happenings that the readers unravel. Art style is very important and we wanted to go for a look that could be remembered and look good with the detailed backgrounds and animals that appear in the story. For other information about goals, the plan is to have
30+ Music Tracks
Majority of scenes be CG's
Codex of information with interactive timelines and maps
Unlocakable short stories and side chapters
Animated scenes (Parallax based)
Accessibility options and alternative reading styles
30+ Music Tracks Majority of scenes be CG's Codex of information with interactive timelines and maps Unlocakable short stories and side chapters Animated scenes (Parallax based)Accessibility options and alternative reading styles Not all goals can be met of course and there is no guarantee that things will pan out just like we want them. To that we will try our best to make a great game and rich story that people will love.
The Progress Currently we are at about 60,000 words and the demo is set to be around 25-28k long. Total progress can't be said at this time but we are about 1/4th of the way there. Setbacks are mostly art related, but everything else is progressing smoothly and can be worked out while the art is being made. If you do not follow me or Studio Unlighted for current progress, be sure to check it out to see what we are up to during the weeks.��
We try to make our children cool, after all, they are they key to this story.o7
~Khailz
Recent Progress
The largest update to the game is the introduction of the codex. Lore information will be very important when it comes to connecting the pieces of Circinus's mystery. That's why the ability to search will speed up your theory crafting. You can search for names and description parts!
Been a bit quiet since last year but you can see a few of our posts made recently on our new twitter account.
More GUI improvements have been made to make things look a bit more memorable and easy to navigate. Optimization and several smaller feature not worth mentioning went in to further improve playability. A new notification system was put in to provide players with new information and unlocks. Hopefully it will be helpful in further exploring within Circinus's lore.
That's pretty much it for progress as there are other life priorities.
Happy Saturday!
Piper wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 10:16 am
I've been watching this one for a while, and the development is really coming along! Well done, and I look forward to seeing more updates.
Thank you very much! Glad to see that you are interested! We will try to keep posting more updates this year, hopefully this is the time where we can put out a solid demo.
