Invisible Paths [Mystery?][Supernatural?][NaNo13]

[Amorphous]

Hey, it's March! (and I'm a bit late with this topic...) And seeing that I have yet to make a visual novel, not a bad time for me to make my first one. And, after a week of terribly overdone soul-searching, it finally has a title!




Notes
This isn't a KN. There will be a few choices, and two major routes. EDIT: Which...will probably have to come after March, sadly. As of the 28th, I'm sadly, ridiculously behind, so I might just save Logan's route to be polished and released in April. Sorry guys!
Genre: I never think about genres while writing, but mystery / supernatural / philosophical musing? I guess?
Team: I'm doing everything except some of the music, which is being done by a friend of mine

Synopsis
It had been an especially dark, rainy night, so that might explain why things happened as they did. She just needed to drive over to her boyfriend's house, pick up a few books she left there, and drop some food off as payment. It wasn't like she hadn't done this fifty million and a half times before. Except this time, she ended up crashing her motorbike into the side of the school, killing both herself and the unlucky kid who had ended up in her path.

Even she didn't know what truly happened. Her mind had given away to terror, and then the world ended. She should've known that everything was over, she could've accepted it. Yet, something must've kept her attached to this world.

That's the only explanation for why, when a demon gave her a chance to visit the living world again as an intangible ghost, she took that chance without hesitation. It was almost impulse for her, despite knowing that she could only be an observer, that she could never get a second chance. Now, she wonders why she did something like that, and what she can see in a world that's trying to move on from her death...

Characters

Ghost
The protagonist, who probably needs a better name.

She's a ghost haunting the town, with the spirit of a girl who was killed yesterday in a motorcycle crash. Sarcastic, witty, but incredibly guilty over her role in an innocent boy's death, Ghost tries to figure out how the people around her have responded to her death, and what she can do to atone for her own mistakes.

Delano Kreiger
Ghost's boyfriend. Or former boyfriend, considering that she's dead.

He was a pretty popular, outgoing guy at school, as a member of both the basketball team and the choir, but all of his friends and confidence couldn't help him much when his girlfriend ended up dying. He'd always believed that if he put his mind to it, and set his dedication, he could accomplish anything. However, there was nothing he could do to stop this tragedy, nothing he can do now to bring her back.

Logan Stanton
On the night of the accident, Logan had been walking home from the park, taking a shortcut in front of the school, when he was hit and killed by a motorcycle. Neither Ghost nor Delano know much to anything about him, only that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Progress
Writing: Prologue written, Delano's route written
Art: Delano's character sprites done, found public domain photos to photoshop into backgrounds
Music: Main character themes written, no ambient tracks yet
Programming: GUI completed

[azureXtwilight]

Hey, the premise sounds interesting! Looking forward for completion!

[Amorphous]

Hey, the premise sounds interesting! Looking forward for completion!

Thanks! Hope I can make the final product as interesting as the premise.

Anyway, wrote some more script today, Ghost's narration is coming along quite nicely. At about 2000 words right now.

Here's a rough sketch of Ghost on her motorcycle. Ghost's not going to have any sprites of her own, but I do plan on drawing several scenes with her in them (no faceless protagonist! Yay!)

[Amorphous]

A very happy Amorphous has realized, after finally dabbling in Ren'py for the first time, that GUI customization is welcomingly like CSS. So after a quarter-day of experimenting, I managed to create a decent GUI. (background is not mine, was released into public domain on our CC forum, but I might replace it in the future):

Time to get back to writing!

[Amorphous]

Yay, screenshots!

I have realized that my order of doing things is not exactly going as planned. GUI wasn't supposed to be done until...third week? Oh well. Time to make a new todo list...

[SundownKid]

You seem to be doing pretty well so far, the GUI is minimalist but snazzy.

May I recommend the title "The Dark Road"? It sounds a bit more mysterious and supernatural. Or, "The Lost Road"...

[Amorphous]

You seem to be doing pretty well so far, the GUI is minimalist but snazzy.

May I recommend the title "The Dark Road"? It sounds a bit more mysterious and supernatural. Or, "The Lost Road"...

Thanks!

Oh, man, I suck at titles. I gave myself a full two weeks in February, and ended up with something like 'The Motorist' because I overthink things. At one point I had considered naming this thing 'Dharma Sankat'. I might just end up having to steal "The Lost Road" or a variation of it...Invisible Paths? (EDIT: After a few nights, this began to grow on me...so that's what I'm gonna use)

Hmm...you've actually given me quite a lot of ideas. Thanks again! ^_^

[Amorphous]

Alright, a week later, and I have a name...and a logo!



I tried using google to find reference images, but searching up 'motorcycle crash' on the internet is NOT a good idea. That, and there were very few images of a bike crashing into a wall...

At any rate, I'm pretty far in the art department now, although I have to catch up on script. That's what I'll be working on this weekend, then.

[saguaro]

I'm looking forward to this. Good luck, you seem to be off to a good start.

[Amorphous]

I'm looking forward to this. Good luck, you seem to be off to a good start.

Thanks! Although the past few days have been busy as heck for me, so I need to catch up a bit now.

At any rate, the rough draft of the script is now done...except I handwrote large parts of it, and I've realized that I still can't read my own handwriting half the time.

I'm also beginning work on BGs now, using spliced together photos (all in public domain) with filters to save time. The final game should have about 7-8, as far as I know.

Here's one of the school entrance, spliced together from about 4 images:

[Nuxill]

Looks good! I'm pretty impressed that you were able to splice together a group of different things and not having the perspective be completely out of whack.

[Auro-Cyanide]

Oh wow, the concept sounds great! Reminds me of The Wish List by Eion Colfer, which I really liked. I'm pretty impressed with the way you have photoshopped the photos together <hates working with photos. I wish you the best of luck, I would love to read it.

[Amorphous]

Well, my schedule for the second half of March kinda went completely to hell. I've got 3 days left, and a lot to get done.

But I'm crazy, so I'm going to try and get everything done anyway. I can definitely finish all of Delano's route by the end of the month (including effects, music, etc.) as all of the assets are there and I just have to put it together...Logan's route might be more of an issue, however, as there are quite a few backgrounds that I haven't made yet, and my friends rather recently found some pretty bad plot holes within his arc.

I don't want to release something incomplete, but I also want to at least have something to show for Nanoreno. So, at the end of the month, I'll be releasing whatever I have. If by some miracle I finish all of Logan's route, I get to release everything. If I still want to work on it some more, then I'll make a version with just Delano's route on it.

Time to get back to work!

[Amorphous]

WHAT THE HECK I ACTUALLY FINISHED THIS THING?

...granted I'm a bit late, but still! I finished my first visual novel! ^_^ (And I'm not too good at keeping a WIP thread updated, I've realized...oh well, next time!)

Check out the finished game here!

[arachni42]

WHAT THE HECK I ACTUALLY FINISHED THIS THING?

...granted I'm a bit late, but still! I finished my first visual novel! ^_^ (And I'm not too good at keeping a WIP thread updated, I've realized...oh well, next time!)

Grats!!

I'll download it and put it in my "to play" queue.