Left of Center [Comedy, Friendship, BxB/BxG, NaNo13] [DONE]

NaNoRenO is an event where creators make a game from scratch during the month of March.
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CheeryMoya
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Left of Center [Comedy, Friendship, BxB/BxG, NaNo13] [DONE]

#1 Post by CheeryMoya »

---
Image
Garrett Emmett is your a-bit-higher-than-average Sophomore in high school, but with his migraines only getting worse as he gets older, he decides to transfer to a more organized and disciplined private school. However, thanks to a mix-up in paper work, Garrett finds himself at Outré Academy, the wrong school, at the turn of the spring semester; it wouldn't be so bad if everyone wasn't half-crazy and bending the conventional rules left and right. But hey! At least things are exciting around here.
He takes a week to figure out whether he wants to stay at this school or not. A lot can happen during that time, you know.
A few unwritten rules you need to know about the school before you read the character profiles:
  • Everyone gets a stupid nickname because that's how things are run around here.
  • All students have to modify their uniform somehow, or else things get boring.
Characters (These are the flat colored sprites)

Image
Garrett Emmett, our protagonist. He has migraines that make it painful to be around crowds when it strikes so he's not a very social person by nature. He's prone to sarcasm and being doubtful about things, but he doesn't mean ill. Garrett's quite fond of retro and 8-bit inspired things though they're pretty bad when he has a migraine, making it a bit of a guilty pleasure. He's not very fond of the nickname "G-Force" for obvious reasons.

Image
Pia Ortize is your textbook example of a Pollyanna, which happens to be her nickname. She believes the best in everyone and wants to help everyone achieve their maximum potential, so she's always out there to lend a helping hand. As an advocate for several causes, she walks around campus with a sign and talks to anyone who's curious, avoiding initiating an unwanted conversation since she knows those aren't effective. She's well liked among her circles.

Image
Klaus Nikolayev is the self-designated class clown, and he's quite popular around campus. Even without having a nickname like "Santa," Klaus is generous and kind, willing to go the extra mile for his buddies. He's friendly, energetic, and easy to get along with, but don't talk shit or you'll get hit. Seriously. He lifts so you don't wanna mess with the stuff he cares about.

Image
Rita Alindogan is a drummer in a school rock band named the Counting Cards. Although you wouldn't think she'd mind being called "Lovely Rita" around campus, she would rather you left the adjective out while addressing her. Cold, reserved, and cool, Garrett will know her as the teacher aide during homeroom.

Image
Dr. James Han is Garrett's homeroom teacher, although that's Dr. "Jazz Hands" to you. A teacher first and psychologist second, he enjoys interacting with his students and is pretty chill. As his nickname implies, he enjoys listening to jazz in his free time.

Features
  • Randomized events for replay value
  • Soundtrack will consist of Chiptune, Jazz, and Rock music
  • Select from several tracks to listen to during the game
  • 3 character routes
  • Point-based, character-driven story
  • 6+ endings
  • 1280x720 Resolution
  • ???
  • Cicada Block
  • The amount of bad puns and jokes will make you cry, laugh, or a combination of the two
  • FRIENDZONE
Credits
Writing/Story: CheeryMoya
Programmers: CheeryMoya, leon
BG art: Uncle Mugen, leon
Art: Nuge (AKA fioricca), Elphie
Music: Various
Special Thanks: Ginger, moondeertribe, Mink

Updates
Feb 27 - Thread made. Original ending note:
If you've made it this far and actually read all the text then thank you ;n; As you can see, I don’t have a character artist. Mink's helping me out by drawing concepts but she can’t do sprites since she’s got her own game to do. If you can draw and wanna help me out, send me a PM! Beggars can't be choosers, but anything that leans more towards a comic style rather than anime would awesome here. Thank you, and feel free to leave comments/questions about anything in the thread.

Mar 1 - aleks has joined your party! Working on uniform concepts, script and placeholder images are coded in already. Basic Music Player code functions. Wordcount at 700+.
Mar 13 - Character concepts drawn, wordcount at 13K+, started on Day 4, about 60% done with story.
Mar 19 - Sprites and flat colors done, CGs sketched and details beginning to be added in, wordcount at 17K+.
Mar 23 - Wordcount at 20K, programmed main menu and fixed textbox issues.
Mar 28 - Raw script and sprites done, 2 CGs polished, wordcount at 22.5K. Editing in process.
Mar 31 - DONE
Last edited by CheeryMoya on Tue Apr 02, 2013 11:04 pm, edited 7 times in total.

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Sexo Grammaticus
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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#2 Post by Sexo Grammaticus »

Mark Millar licks goats indeed.
i have no signature and i must obscure game reference

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#3 Post by Patty »

*sees BxB on the thread title* *O* *totally excited*

Anyway, I love how fun the premise is :) It's a school setting, yet full of puns and jokes, definitely looking forward to a school VN that's not so cliche :D

I'm also excited for the music (oh yes 8-bit, Electronic, Jazz, and Rock 8) )
CheeryMoya wrote: I'd actually like some help on a few things too:
  • Better name for the school. Outré is just French for bizarre and that's kinda lame.
  • How many people would actually want/will use the feature to change songs during the game? It might bloat up filesize since audio is large.
  • Anyone mind if the school looks somewhat Japanese? There's an in-game explanation and I'm using Uncle Mugen's stuff.
Err... can't help with a name for the school since I'm lame in naming @@ For #2 though, I'd love a feature to change songs during the game :) And I don't mind if the school looks somewhat Japanese :D

Wishing you the best of luck! ^^
Letters for You [KN] [NaNoRenO 2012] : http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 50&t=14271

Paradox [NaNoReNo 2013] WIP: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 50&t=19714

Museum Adventure: The Ascension of Huks http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 11&t=28476

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#4 Post by CheeryMoya »

Sexo Grammaticus wrote:Mark Millar licks goats indeed.
Mink added that in for kicks, she and I were surprised someone recognized it O: I'll try and find a place for this sign during the game, or a variation of it.
Patty wrote:*sees BxB on the thread title* *O* *totally excited*
Holla Patty, long time no see! Do you plan on entering NaNo again this year?
Anywho, don't count on seeing any kissing CGs since the game is pretty short and I don't believe in making out with someone you hardly know >_> If we can we might have CGs in the epilogues but we'll cover what we need first.
I'd love a feature to change songs during the game
I took a look through all the music I downloaded so far and it's 88MB already D: It's only the 8-bit stuff and there's some repeats of moods, so my artist buddy(!) and I are gonna prune a few from the current list. I'm hoping that I can balance each mood with 3 songs, 1 from each of the musical genres, and still keep the filesize relatively small.

The way this "in-game jukebox" is gonna work is that there's a headphones icon in the top corner of the screen. Really bad and quickly-done mockup below:
Image
Players can click on the headphones to open a drop-down menu that'll list the tracks they can play during that scene. There'll be several track lists corresponding to a mood, that way you can't choose a happy song during a serious scene or vice versa.

In other great news, someone volunteered to do the sprites! *tosses confetti everywhere* We might have some sketches tomorrow so look forward to it!

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#5 Post by Cidz »

Whoo a BxB game! I was wondering if there would be any. I'm looking forward to this! i think you were the one that did the weregirl VN for last years nanoremo right? i got a real kick outta that, so i think ill enjoy this one too.

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#6 Post by CheeryMoya »

Cidz wrote:i think you were the one that did the weregirl VN for last years nanoremo right? i got a real kick outta that, so i think ill enjoy this one too.
Ahhhh no that was Mink, who did the concept art you see for Rita and Pia. She should be putting up her own game's thread as soon as she gets the logo. We bounced ideas with each other >_>

Fun fact: We pretty much named each other's projects. Reject titles we brainstormed before reaching LoC:
  • Take It Personally Bro These People Are Wack
  • This is Not the Reality You Were Looking For
  • Sorry, Your Peace and Quiet is in Another School
  • Goddamn it You Should Beat Up the People Who Messed Up the Paperwork
  • Hit Me With Your Best Shot
  • Garrett Emmett and the Bizarre High School
  • Garrett Emmett and the High School of People Who Are All Possibly High off Something
  • Garrett Emmett and the High School with People Who Are All Off-kilter
  • Sorry, Your Sanity is in Another School
Yeah. You might see some of these as lines, maybe.

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#7 Post by Patty »

CheeryMoya wrote: Holla Patty, long time no see! Do you plan on entering NaNo again this year?
Anywho, don't count on seeing any kissing CGs since the game is pretty short and I don't believe in making out with someone you hardly know >_> If we can we might have CGs in the epilogues but we'll cover what we need first.
Ello, yeah, it's been a long time! :D Yeah, I'm planning on entering NaNo again this year (although the plot of what I'm doing this year is just asdfghjkl; *writing sucks*

And totally agree with the whole making out with someone you hardly know @_@
CheeryMoya wrote: I took a look through all the music I downloaded so far and it's 88MB already D: It's only the 8-bit stuff and there's some repeats of moods, so my artist buddy(!) and I are gonna prune a few from the current list. I'm hoping that I can balance each mood with 3 songs, 1 from each of the musical genres, and still keep the filesize relatively small.

The way this "in-game jukebox" is gonna work is that there's a headphones icon in the top corner of the screen. Really bad and quickly-done mockup below:
Image
Players can click on the headphones to open a drop-down menu that'll list the tracks they can play during that scene. There'll be several track lists corresponding to a mood, that way you can't choose a happy song during a serious scene or vice versa.

In other great news, someone volunteered to do the sprites! *tosses confetti everywhere* We might have some sketches tomorrow so look forward to it!
Oh my, that's a lot of MB O_O Good luck in shrinking the filesize >_< Anyhow, I like how the track selection depends on the scene. Playing happy music during a serious scene would totally be a mood killer XD Also, I like how you plan to do the track listing (the hover opacity thing) :)

Congrats with the sprites! Looking forward to the sketches :)
Letters for You [KN] [NaNoRenO 2012] : http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 50&t=14271

Paradox [NaNoReNo 2013] WIP: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 50&t=19714

Museum Adventure: The Ascension of Huks http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 11&t=28476

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#8 Post by CheeryMoya »

I had to start a little later than I would have liked, but the script is a bit over 700 words right now ❀◕ ‿ ◕❀ "That's not a lot," you say. Shut up Well, I was also putting the basic codes in so I could start posting screenshots and the like ASAP. With leon's help, we managed to get the music player thingy working \(^^)/
ImageImage
Everything besides the BG and text is probably placeholder, but it's proof that it works :3 The player also conveniently switches songs after one ends by default, so that's pretty cool. If there's enough demand for one track to loop until you change it I'll try to figure something out.

And aleks drew a really quick concept of the (unmodified) female uniform, we're gonna take out the white undershirt and sweater since it's springtime.

He's not sure whether he likes the colors or not, so any suggestions?

Uniform taken down because it's probably no longer relevant u_u
Last edited by CheeryMoya on Mon Mar 11, 2013 10:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#9 Post by CheeryMoya »

Garrett: "Is that graffiti on the walls?!"
Klaus: "Do you like it?"
Garrett: "This is vandalism, how am I supposed to like it?"
Klaus: "No man, it's called a mural. You just gotta open your mind and look at it as it really is. This is art."
And also...
Image

Code: Select all

The game contains 288 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 3,777 words,
for an average of 13.1 words per screen.
The game contains 9 menus.
I couldn't figure out how to write sleeping and waking up the next day without doing something like "I went to sleep." "Hell yeah it's morning let's go."
I had a fight with the latest build of Ren'Py too so that slowed me down a bit -n- Still not shabby IMO. I'm probably going to change the font for that screenshot above to a cooler font, so should it be clean like Majora's Mask or more retro for the hell of it?

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#10 Post by saguaro »

Did I tell you I liked your jukebox cause I do.

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#11 Post by CheeryMoya »

My internet's been out since last Monday and it's not coming back till tomorrow, you don't know how much this has distressed me. Sorry if anyone's PM'd me, I may or may not be able to respond till then :C While I'm still on my school's internet, let me give a quick update.
saguaro wrote:Did I tell you I liked your jukebox cause I do.
I wonder how many people will actually use it that often or even play the game to begin with sobs
Image

Code: Select all

The game contains 931 dialogue blocks, containing 12,438 words and 66,915
characters, for an average of 13.4 words and 72 characters per block.
Unfortunately, something came up and aleks can't work with me on this anymore D: Which leaves me sprite-less once more. During my downtime I tried to draw some placeholder sketches but that failed horribly and wasted a lot of my time OTL A-anyone want to help me?* Still gonna keep on writing though, I can safely say I'm about 45-50% done. Right now I'm just rushing to finish all 6 days and once I'm done with that I'll go back and add more details.

I can't ask leon to do GUI since it'd be a good idea to get a feel for the characters first, but I can ask for 3 BGs, I think that's all I'd need.

Having major anxiety that voice in the back of my head's telling me this was doomed past the idea stage no one's gonna play this when it's done ughhhhhh SHUT UP I'M GOING TO FINISH THIS

*Edit: Let me sort out PMs and things OTL
Last edited by CheeryMoya on Mon Mar 11, 2013 10:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#12 Post by saguaro »

CheeryMoya wrote:...The game contains 931 dialogue blocks, containing 12,438 words and 66,915
characters...

...Still gonna keep on writing though, I can safely say I'm about 45-50% done...
holy

Okay, you just motivated me to get my stuff in gear.

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#13 Post by CheeryMoya »

saguaro wrote:holy

Okay, you just motivated me to get my stuff in gear.
Slow but Steady I actually fell behind today because of my cramps, ugh.

Code: Select all

The game contains 1,024 dialogue blocks, containing 13,876 words and 74,446
characters, for an average of 13.6 words and 73 characters per block.

The game contains 27 menus, 0 images, and 16 screens.
And great news o: Ginger and moondeertribe volunteered to help out with the art. Ginger sketched some concepts of Garrett and Pia yesterday and moondeer just got Rita and Klaus in. They're subject to change but it's something to look at now :'D
Image
Image
Klaus is perf if you don't agree then sorry but you're wrong

I'll update the first post tomorrow, I gotta sleep right now >_>

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#14 Post by CheeryMoya »

Long time no update, but the project has still been going :V:V:V Hopefully I'm not jumping the gun by sharing these flat colored sprites right now, fioricca's been helping and she's super great :D
ImageImage
ImageImage
Image
Cuties. fioricca also sketched 3 CGs a while back and she's starting to add in the detail, but you'll have to wait till March is over until you can see those.

leon also made some headway on BGs and we're figuring out how to do the dorm's hallways. As a joke he did this, though I honestly wouldn't mind putting this in the final game >_>
Image
As for the script, take a look at the Lint if you want.

Code: Select all

The game contains 1,262 dialogue blocks, containing 17,156 words and 91,602
characters, for an average of 13.6 words and 73 characters per block.

The game contains 29 menus, 0 images, and 16 screens.
I had to take a few steps back because I didn't like the characterization I had going for some characters so I rewrote/cut some lines. It's going to be easier to write again though, so I'm confident that I can make up for lost time.

That's about it for now so I'm gonna jump back into Editra. Any comments, questions, etc. is totes welcome. See ya!

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Re: Left of Center [High School, Friendship, BxG/BxB, NaNo13

#15 Post by saguaro »

Man, those sprites are emotive. I feel like I can look at those images and ballpark the characters just by their attitudes. Very nice.

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