Lemma Soft Forums

*Updated 3/5/13*
-Added some extra info in character descriptions.
-Some more *Beautifully*coughcough drawn backgrounds.
-Character Game sprites
-Sample Screenie
Alternate Online is a dieing MMORPG made in 2005. This will be a story about two boys becoming good friends in the final days on this MMORPG.
You play two character stories:

Ron: a loner who tends to keep things to him and only himself. He never gets involved in other people problems but his own. One day His sister, Lisa, forces him into an old MMORPG called Alternate Online to help him make some friends. Before he ever starts, he gets surrounded by a group of player killers. Before they take any blows to him, he's saved by a called named (Alternate). He doesn't take being saved well and tries to attack him. Little does he know, (Alternate) is a high-level Player-killer-Player.

Klaus: A tall mute boy who gets picked on by three boys in his class. He tries to ignore their actions the best he can. Klaus has been playing Alternate online sense it first came out and he's one of the highest ranking players in the game. He's also a player-killer-player, and helps low-levels from being attacked by higher level players. One day he saves a low-level character named (Nervon). Shortly after, said player attacks him without warning. He doesn't know whither to think that this player is either very brave or a big moron.

Ron Verns:


Age: 17
Hair Color: Black
Height: 5'8
Likes: Music
Hates: People

Description:
"Can no one understand; I just want some peace to myself."
Ron's is a loner with a aggressive attitude. He hates when people try to barge into his life when there not wanted in.

Lisa Verns:


Age: 21
Hair Color: Black (Dyed Red)
Height: 5'9
Likes: Art
Hates: Hackers

Description:
"Not just an online game! The best online game to date; Alternate online!"
Lisa is a Affable woman who works on making obscure pieces of art for the annual art-shows happening in the city. She always tries to make her brother more out-going even with that foul attitude.

Klaus Rains:


Age: 17
Hair Color: Brown
Height: 6'5
Likes: ???
Hates: ???

Description:
"..."
Klaus is a tall mute boy who tries to avoid people's company. He enjoys staying inside playing his favorite MMORPG; Alternate Online.

Jock Mars (And his gang):

Age:17
Height: 6'1
Likes: ???
Hates: ???

Description:
Jock is a rough boy who's the leader of his little gang of thugs. He tends to pick on Klaus for some strange reason...

(Other Stuff)
Backgrounds:
(Real World)

Ron's Bedroom
(In-Game)

Town

Some Early Screen Shots~


Story/Art/Coding by : ShippoK
Music by: Monster-Cyborg
Program : Ren'py (Duh)

(Red Moon) production


Any questions/comments are always welcomed!
Oh man, oh geez, only 30 days to work on this, oh man, oh man.

(Oh god my Thread is all at the bottom I should update)

Worked around on making a quick menu-screen.



And a quick game-sprite that are characters play.



(M-Maybe people will reply this time, yeah!... Y-Yeah... ;_;)

Become a hero who can alternate anything or anyone.

I'm curious about this. The dictionary I checked gave me two definitions of alternate as a verb :

Occur in turn repeatedly
Do or perform in turn repeatedly

How does this apply in the context of this hero's powers? From your description, it seems the hero is capable of altering things instead.

And I'm wondering why PKers are allowed to attack newly created characters. Most online games I play give newbies a couple of levels before throwing them to the wolves - and in the case of games that allow pvp for low levels, there's an invitation process involved. Does this mean that your game is so old that these limitations don't apply? Or are they circumvented somehow?

Glad to see someone making an MMO themed VN though. They're really fun on the art side C:

(Oh boy a post, oh boy)

I'm curious about this. The dictionary I checked gave me two definitions of alternate as a verb :

Occur in turn repeatedly
Do or perform in turn repeatedly

How does this apply in the context of this hero's powers? From your description, it seems the hero is capable of altering things instead.

The name for this is more of Allegory then an actual game title... Don't want to spoil too much but it involves how the characters are online and offline.

And I'm wondering why PKers are allowed to attack newly created characters. Most online games I play give newbies a couple of levels before throwing them to the wolves - and in the case of games that allow pvp for low levels, there's an invitation process involved. Does this mean that your game is so old that these limitations don't apply? Or are they circumvented somehow?

I actually got a lot of my ideas for this novel from the .Hack series if anyone has played them. Hack G.U. had a big focus on PK/PKK'ers in there game. No matter what level you were, you can PK or PKK players in area worlds. I wanted to do try this idea as well and up the problem a little more.

Instead of Area worlds, PK/PKKer's can attack anyone, anywhere; Towns, Fields, their own party members, etc. No Invite, no nothing. (Hack G.U. actually had a part in the game which this happen and it was a big plot point for Disk2)

PK/PKK's are a big problem in Alternate Online.
(Hint, hint)

Glad to see someone making an MMO themed VN though. They're really fun on the art side C:

I wanted to keep this a secret but I might as well say this before a lot of people get the wrong idea...
This is not a heavy MMO themed novel.
It's still there, but it's going to be focus more on the two boys and how their daily lives are online and offline.

It'll will focus a little on describing what classes there are in the game, how the alternating functions work, what the battle-system is like, etc; So you'll get a little taste of the MMO theme parts there.

Sorry if I disappointing anyone if they were expecting an awesome pack MMO themed novel. You can always check out Nanolife for a closer MMO feel.

Thanks for the feedback, I felt like background for a couple of days...

Update because why not~

I was debating whether or not to draw another character due to time, but I ended up drawing him up anyway because my creativity was acting up and it needed something to draw- STAT!

This is Jock (Minus his gang, they're background)
I was going for a 80's greasier look for this guy because I always wanted to draw a greasier character. Too bad he's in the 21ist century and not the 80's. (Can't into clothes, argh!)

Sneak-peek Screenie I made~


Quick look on some of the text-box interface the game has. Hopefully the text doesn't look too hard to read, I'm debating if I should keep the shadows or not to make it look better or worse.

Aw, I love the premise of this story. It almost has that dystopian friendship thing going on where two lonely people become friends just prior to the end of their world. I like that it incorporates an online game. I think there's something really sad and relatable about a dying MMORPG. (I hate when things like that disappear or get bought out and changed. I remember and miss the good old days of Neopets before Viacom bought it. I still venture on but it just isn't the same... Nobody makes petpages anymore... the staff is much more trigger-happy and impersonal with their account freezing. The magic is mostly gone now... )

ShippoK wrote: Quick look on some of the text-box interface the game has. Hopefully the text doesn't look too hard to read, I'm debating if I should keep the shadows or not to make it look better or worse.

I really don't like that font. I don't know if shadows/no shadows will help... the problem is that the characters are wider than they are tall. It's okay for design purposes, like your "Hair/Face/Color" headlines there, but I would not want to read a story written in a font like that at all, no matter how good it was!

BTW your tiny text comments made me laugh :b

Sapphi wrote:Aw, I love the premise of this story. It almost has that dystopian friendship thing going on where two lonely people become friends just prior to the end of their world.

Thanks, I like the example you gave there, I never thought it like that way.

Sapphi wrote: I like that it incorporates an online game. I think there's something really sad and relatable about a dying MMORPG.

I recently had a MMO game I'd played for 4 years got transferred over to another company. A lot of people left because of the sudden news that the formal company (We were informed about 3 weeks after it was transferred over). The formal company made everything worse with screwing people over with money refunds and making it difficult to get transfer of old accounts over to the new site. Everyone I knew either quit or went to another game entirely. I had a lot of memories of that game and I'm greatly upset that it pretty much died because of the companies bad handling of it...

Sapphi wrote: I really don't like that font. I don't know if shadows/no shadows will help... the problem is that the characters are wider than they are tall. It's okay for design purposes, like your "Hair/Face/Color" headlines there, but I would not want to read a story written in a font like that at all, no matter how good it was!

Thanks for the feedback about the text, I needed some help figuring out if it was any good or not.
I'll get around to finding something better... I just wish Ren'py was picky with some of the Text-font it wants me to use.

Ren'py: (NO OPENTYPE, TRUETYPE ONLY!)
Me: O-OK Ren'py...

Sapphi wrote: BTW your tiny text comments made me laugh :b

(I try)

~Quick update~

I know much hasn't happen for the project... Or almost none at all.
In a nutshell...


I ended up pushes this off my work-list and focused more on other things. (I blame my lack of focus on small things- Oo, kitties in the backyard!)

Alternate Online is still going, it's just going very slowly. So I might not actually make the NaNoRen0 this year, tis sad.
I actually just wanted to see if I can challenge myself if I could beat a scheduled timed project. Then I realized I always turned my projects half-done in a lot of my classes... I don't want to turn this in half-done so I'll probably end up putting this in the work in-progress once the Nanoren0 is over.

I find this a great opportunity to add in some things I felt unable to do due to time, which I'm happy with. Maybe add in some more stories and characters while I'm at it.

Thanks for everyone who posted there questions and support! It means a lot to me that my project got some interest in people's eyes. I hope to finish this project very soon, can't work on it forever now.

Oh, here are the sad little small Statistic of my project if anyone wanted to know.

The game contains 561 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 3,477 words,
for an average of 6.2 words per screen.
The game contains 1 menus.

Look at all the work! (Typing was never my strong spot)