(Demo)[Slice of Space Opera] 51ur8-90 [Gender Choice x Gender Choice][Sci-Fi][Romance] (16+)

[Notomys]

Demo:
https://notomys.itch.io/51ur8-90

Premise:

Like most Jovian colonies, 51ur8-90 isn't the type of place people intentionally visit.

It's far enough from the main trade routes that groceries cost an arm and a leg, but not quite distant enough to have any sense of frontier charm. It's where the careers of Federation officers go to die, and where wannabe space pirates go to find real jobs.

Bo Halloran runs an unlicensed repair shop on 51ur8-90. They dream of someday leaving the backwater colony, but life always seems to find a way to drag them back to their hometown. Their quiet life changes when they accidentally accept a job from the most infamous pilot in the Rebellion, and become inadvertently entwined with the Federation officer determined to hunt them down.

Characters:

Features:

• ~60k words.

• Free to play

• Choose the gender presentation and pronouns of the protagonist and the 3 romanceable characters.

• Support the Colonial Alliance, the Martian Federation, or try to stay neutral in the conflict regardless of which character(s) you choose to pursuit.

• 9 possible endings

Screenshots:

Credits:

• Story + CGs by Noto/list]
  • Sprites by Dahlia Wilder (viewtopic.php?t=43855[url]) [list]Music ... cityfires/)& J. Breeze(https://soundcloud.com/alcaknight)
  • Backgrounds by John Mugen (https://alte.itch.io/uncle-mugens-backgrounds) and Rachel Chen (https://rachelchen.itch.io/)
  • Additional backgrounds CC
  • Base UI code by BáiYù (https://baiyu.itch.io/)
  Progress:
  • Plot: 100%
  • Script draft: 100%
  • Coding: 25%
  • Sprites: 100%
  • UI: 40%
  • CGs: TBA
  Questions:
  
  • What are your first impressions of the setting and cast?
  • How do you feel about a story that combines lighthearted slice-of-life elements with more serious drama?
  • Would you prefer to have a greater level of customization over the main characters (for example, being able to select if they wear feminine or masculine clothing regardless of body type) or would you prefer to have more CGs?
  • Do you have any other questions, comments or feedback?

[Zelan]

This.... is basically everything that I want in a visual novel. Especially that choice of both pronouns and presentation for everybody, yes please.

What are your first impressions of the setting and cast?: Absolutely love it. I like this idea of the setting being the boring part of an interesting world, and each character seems like they'll have some really fun stories to explore.
How do you feel about a story that combines lighthearted slice-of-life elements with more serious drama?: Sounds perfect! I like a healthy balance of lighthearted and serious elements, I think that using them together gives both of them a greater effect.
Would you prefer to have a greater level of customization over the main characters (for example, being able to select if they wear feminine or masculine clothing regardless of body type) or would you prefer to have more CGs?: This is a really hard question, honestly. On the one hand, it's amazing that we're getting even just this level of customization, and I would love being able to see that reflected in lots of cool CGs. On the other hand, extensive customization to that level would be a real treat. I guess in an ideal world "both" would be the answer but that would be a loooot of work, which I'm assuming is why you're asking this question.

I think, ultimately, I would prefer to have more CGs (I like pretty art lol) but I would love the game regardless of which one you went with.

Will definitely be following this! I look forward to seeing more updates.

[gekiganwing]

How do you feel about a story that combines lighthearted slice-of-life elements with more serious drama?

In my opinion, this is a positive thing. It's good to have conflict as well as calm moments. Laser battles are nice, though too many can be numbing. Sorkinesque walk-and-talk is nice, though too much can be numbing.

Would you prefer to have a greater level of customization over the main characters (for example, being able to select if they wear feminine or masculine clothing regardless of body type) or would you prefer to have more CGs?

Be careful with the scope of your story. Write what you can handle. As you create your VN, there may be times when you will have to leave scenes, characters, or customization features on the cutting room floor.

[azureXtwilight]

I wholeheartedly support this, because the choices made the playthrough so much more fluid. But be careful of the idea of handling it! The variations might be too overwhelming! =D

[Notomys]

I guess in an ideal world "both" would be the answer but that would be a loooot of work, which I'm assuming is why you're asking this question.

You hit the nail on the head with this one!

As of right now, I'm planning on doing all of the sprites and CGs myself, which means that keeping the scope under control is an important part of this project. As of right now, my general strategy is to organize the sprites in such a way to enable greater customizability down the road, which brings up some interesting trade-offs in itself (such as adopting a simpler shading style).

Be careful with the scope of your story. Write what you can handle. As you create your VN, there may be times when you will have to leave scenes, characters, or customization features on the cutting room floor.

Scope creep is a real challenge, second only to the challenge of editing out a scene/character/witty dialog quip that you're really attached do, but doesn't serve the plot. I wish sublime (the program I do most of my coding in) had a feature that scolded me whenever I started implementing something that isn't needed for my MVP. As the saying goes, done is better than perfect.

I wholeheartedly support this, because the choices made the playthrough so much more fluid. But be careful of the idea of handling it! The variations might be too overwhelming! =D

One of the choices that I made early in the process of worldbuilding for the story was that society as a whole had largely moved on from being concerned about the idea of gender/sexuality. This was actually a pretty difficult choice for me, as this option makes a lot of the customization options largely superficial, but in the end, I decided it was the right option to both keep the scope under control, and to indulge in an escapist fantasy.

... of course, I also decided that I wanted to add romantic/plutonic and polyamorous branches, but I never was very good with combinatorics

[Notomys]

As it turns out, my ambitions to release a demo early summer 2020 was a bit ambitious

As you probably have noticed 2020 has been a wild ride, and while things have continued to chug along nicely with this project. It's really exciting to watch things start to come together. There have been a few big changes since the last time I've updated this thread, the most important of which was my decision to bring on an additional artist to handle the character sprites. I've been working with the talented Dahlia Wilder (viewtopic.php?t=43855) and can't say enough good things about her! She's been a real joy to work with and I am incredibly excited with the assets she's produced.

Keep your eyes on this space for more updates in the near future. I am going to try to get into the habit of doing more regular (weekly?) dev updates. In the meantime, here is an updated screenshot of the main menu. At some point after I've gotten the demo out, I'll update the logo to look a little bit less like a purple blob - but in the meantime - there it is!

[Notomys]

Hello everyone!

As I approach the release of the demo, I'm going to try to get in the habit of giving weekly developer updates. Wednesday is the day that we end our sprints for my day job, so I figured that I might as well do the same for my passion projects.

This Week I Completed:
* I found that a lot of my backgrounds looked disjointed, so I followed the time honored tradition of slapping a gradient on the assets I'm using to make the lighting scheme look consistent. The end result came out pretty solidly OK. I also removed a lot of placeholder backgrounds (ones I found on google) and replaced them with the ones that I will be using in the demo (ones that I have the license to use). While I'm not 100% pleased with how they look, I think that they will be sufficient for the initial release of this project. Like most people, I definitely struggle a little bit with perfectionism - one of my big goals for this project is to ... you know ... actually release something, so I've had to repeat the mantra done is better than perfect about a bajillion times.
* Uploaded the new sprites into the game.
* Completed both variants of Shay CG01.
* Sketched out both variants of Alex CG01.
* Completed editing and updating the animation of chapter 1 (as in, the first chapter is completely done/edited/animated/cg'd).
* Fixed some bugs with the gender selection screens.
* Many small tweaks to the UI.

Goals for Next Week:
* Complete Alex CG01.
* Complete editing of Chapters 2 and 3.
* Review project plan to nail down concrete release dates. The demo will consist of chapters 1-5 plus the first chapter of each of the character's paralogs.
* Fix character art/restructure this thread a little bit ... it looks fine on mobile, but I just realized how wonky it looks on the desktop. TBH - I might spend more time actually working on the game instead of this, but I figured if I don't have the brains for art or editing, it would be a good alternative.

Questions:
* How do people feel about CG spoilers? Would you like to see previews of the art, and if so - what form? Full finished CGs in all of their spoilery glory? Bits and pieces of the final CG (close ups of eyes and faces)? Sketches and WIP? None? So far I have mostly been avoiding spoiling the CGs (because IMO, that's the best part of the game) but I figured I'd put it out there for people.
* The game itself will consist of four different parts. I am hoping to release part 1 (chapters 1-5 plus first chapter of the LI's paralogs) sometime around the end of the month. Would you rather the game be released as each of the parts are completed (ballpark estimations would put part 2 release around the end of October, Part 3 released November and Part 4/endings - (which is the biggest/branchiest) released early 2021)? Or would you prefer a single release with everything completed?

[Notomys]

Time for my second weekly update, I hope that everybody had a nice long weekend. It was a nice blend of productive and relaxing for me. Things are progressing towards my goal of getting a demo out by the end of the month. Repeat after me - done is better than perfect

Part 1 Progress:
* CGs - 3/4
* Coding (Part 1) - 35/40 pages

For the first three parts of the story you can choose to spend time and do things with the different LIs. Each character has a set of three "paralogs" that can be completed during the common route, there is a little bit of flexibility regarding which order these events can happen in, and the player is encouraged to spend time with more than one of the LIs (to encourage this, certain characters are unavailable at certain points in the story). After part III of the story, there are three additional branches determined by Bo's political affiliation, each of these branches has three different endings depending on who you have befriended/romanced in the common route.

This Week I Completed:
* Finished both variations Alex CG01
* Planned out bout CG01 for Kai -> once this set is completed I will have completed all of the CGs I need for the demo and can start working on the CGs for the rest of the game. Because each CG has 2+ variations, this represents the biggest chunk of work that is needed for the game to be complete.
* Completed coding for chapter 2, 3 AND 4 of part 1
* Made some structural changes to the first section of Kai's paralog.
* Narrowed down the final list of CGs to a more manageable number (19), it definitely pained me to cut some of these for the initial release, but it's important to make sure that I keep my scope manageable.

Goals for Next Week:
* Finish coding for Kai paralog 1
* Finish coding for Alex paralog 1
* Finish coding for Shay paralog 1

[Notomys]

Oops, I'm a day late with this update! It was a busy & productive week this week - and I hit a major milestone of getting the first part of this VN coded. Part of my editing process involves letting a piece sit for a short period of time so I can go back to it with fresh eyes - so I took a few days off of development.

This Week I Completed:
- Coded Kai, Alex and Shay Paralogs
- Coded Chapter 5
- Finished coding for the demo, it chocks in at 10,739 words - interestingly, there are a few scenes that I decided to punt to part 2, because I thought the pacing on some of the romances needed a little bit of work.

Goals for Next Week:
- Send alpha build to testers and incorporate feedback.
- Complete Kai CG01
- Prep itch.io pages

[Silken Sail]

Good to see you're making steady progress, I'm curious to see the demo for this one! It's ambitious to be able to choose not only the player's gender, but the genders of the other main characters, as well. I commend you for taking that on! To answer your questions:

- My first impressions are that the setting reminds me of The Expanse, and the cast makes me feel like there's shades of UC era Gundam as well (but maybe that's the "Red Star" nickname talking) which is an intriguing combination.

- I feel like slice of life and drama can be natural partners. Often a reader can get "softened up" by lighter, slice of life stuff that makes the drama hit that much harder, and I think that can be done without relying on a drastic tonal shift or a "You thought this was [genre x], but really it was [genre y]! Gotcha!" style twists, so I don't think you have much to worry about there.

- Generally agree with Zelan that while it's not an obvious call, ultimately CGs are going to be more rewarding for players. You already have a lot of customization that I think players will appreciate, so you're going to get more return by putting your effort into CGs, in my estimation.

Good luck! Hope to see the demo up soon.

[Notomys]

The cast makes me feel like there's shades of UC era Gundam as well (but maybe that's the "Red Star" nickname talking) which is an intriguing combination.

Thanks for your thoughts & feedback, I'm really looking forward to sharing this with everybody! I'm a big UC Gundam nerd, so there are a few Easter eggs in the script, so you're on the nose with that one

**
For this week's update, I have some exciting news - the release date for the demo will be October 4th, 2020. I was going through my records and found the initial project document was created on October 4th last year, so it seemed like a fitting date.

This Week I:
* Incorporated feedback from alpha testers (it's really amazing how you can read your script hundreds of times and completely miss some really glaring typos).
* Did some testing regarding the build packaging, and testing installs on different OS systems.
* Tweaked the transitions and animations in some scenes.
* Bugfixing!
* Made some good progress on the last CG that will be part of the demo. It's not quiiiiiiite done yet, but is getting closer to a final state.

Goals for Next Week:
* Wrap up bugfixing.
* Last round of edits.
* Minor UI tweaks.

[Notomys]

Pretty much everything is ready for the release of the demo, just need to put a few more finishing touches on everything, and then set it off into the world. I started watching "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!" this week and let me tell you, it definitely fit with the overall vibe of this stage of the project - especially regarding cutting scope and focusing on getting things done

This week I
* Finished the last of the demo CGs
* Made a bunch of UI improvements.
* Final round of edits to the script.
* Prepped itch.io page

Next Week
* Put together an author's intent statement.
* Fix bug in gallery page.
* Resist the urge to tweak the choice boxes for the ninth time.
* Release demo!

[Notomys]

I've put up the first public version of the demo on itch.io.

https://notomys.itch.io/51ur8-90

[Notomys]

First off, I'd like to personally thank everybody who took the time out of their life to check out the demo. This was my first time putting this sort of project into the hands of the public <3

Now, time to get the rest of the game done

***

Progress
(Coding)
Chapter 1 - 100%
Chapter 2 - 10%
Chapter 3 - 0%
Chapter 4 - 0%
Federation Endings - 0%
Rebellion Endings - 0%
Special Endings - 0%

CGs:
4/22

***
This week I:
- Sketched out, inked and colored the feminine version of Kai's CG02
- Sketched out and inked masculine version of Kai's CG02
- Coded Alex's chapter 2 'bonus scene'

Goals for Next Week:
- Finish coding for Alex's chapter 2 bonus scene
- Code Chapter 1 part 1
- Code Shay's chapter 2 bonus scene
- Finish Kai's CG02

***
Extras

(Current WIP sneak peek)

I think I am also going to add a bonus 'question of the week' for my characters just for a little bit of fun, I'm currently just pulling the question from a list of random character-building ones, but if anybody has anything they'd like to ask the characters, feel free to post suggestions

QA #01
Would you ever tell a lie to get yourself out of trouble?

Bo -- The occasional white lie never hurt anybody, but when I find myself in serious trouble I generally stick with the truth. It's not that I'm morally opposed to lying, so much as that I am really bad at it. Seriously. I am a terrible liar. I just can't keep a straight face.

Alex -- That depends entirely on what sort of trouble you're talking about. I wouldn't lie to escape discipline that I rightly earned, but I would gladly do so if I felt that it would protect and preserve my homeland.

Kai -- Yes I have, and anybody who answers otherwise is a liar.

Shay - *smiles as they make pointed eye contact with Kai* Of course not.

[Notomys]

Some weeks you accomplish a ton of extra work and the words/code just seem to flow from your fingers ... other weeks you somehow manage to play 30 hours of legends of cold steel and eat too many carbs. Despite missing some of my goals, I still made some forward progress. One of the features of the game is that certain character-specific scenes can trigger in a few different places, depending on when you meet the conditions for them -- so part of the next week is adding the 'chapter 2' version of the first parts of the character routes.

I'm also trying to figure out the best way to track my general progress in terms of percentage complete. I'm currently using completed scenes, but I wonder if it would be more accurate to use words, pages or another metric (since some scenes are longer and more involved than others).

Progress:
Progress
(Coding)
Chapter 1 - 100% (11/11)
Chapter 2 - 18% (2/11)
Chapter 3 - 0%
Chapter 4 - 0%
Federation Endings - 0%
Rebellion Endings - 0%
Special Endings - 0%

CGs:
5/22 (23%)

Accomplishments this Week:
- Colored the masculine version of Kai's CG2, completing this CG set.
- Went back and edited Alex's chapter 2 bonus scene.
- Coded chapter 2 part 1.
- Did some general planning and editing to the structure of this chapter.

Goals for Next Week:
- Code 'chapter 2' variants of the first section of the character routes.
- Code Shay chapter 2 bonus scene.
- Code Kai chapter 2 bonus scene
- Code chapter 2 part 2.

Extras
QA #02
As a child, what were you most likely to be found doing?

Bo -- ‘Helping’ my Grandma around the shop. I learned pretty much everything I know about machines by watching her, and I'm really thankful that she put up with me always being underfoot.

Alex -- My childhood wasn’t unhappy, but it was very … regimented. Given my Father’s position there were certain expectations regarding my education and I took these expectations very seriously. So I guess I was usually in some sort of lesson.

Kai -- I spent as much time as possible outside running around with the other kids. The only rule my parents had was that we needed to be home by dinner. We got into all sorts of trouble.

Shay -- I used to love drawing and making up little stories. There weren’t any other children on the research vessel, so I had to find ways to entertain myself.