Lemma Soft Forums

Hatchken, a mathematician from the kingdom of the Sky nation, was once kidnapped by a witch when he was little. His sister, Hatchanna, was crying almost every day when she couldn't play with her brother after he had finished his homework. Struck deeply by this, she walked into his room and found a book in his library. This book, unlike others, had glowing letters "Cyan Code" on its cover. By reading the book, she couldn't understand much, but she played with various symbols and rewrote them in her room. including all of the magic symbols the book described.

Thinking the book was useless and her brother just had it in his library for some weird fun, she threw it on the floor, and cried again, worried that her brother will never return.

She then, after calming down, said:

"Hey..book... I guess we now share this location. That's what brother used to s- aa?!"

However she didn't know that when she said those words, she'd be transported into a world that her mind had created. What she saw in that world was something she would never forget, as she found herself before a mansion where a blind woman talked to her, never letting her in. But she talked to little Hatchanna and she listened. Her soothing words told her that if she ever feels alone again, she shouldn't be afraid to come back, looking for friends or even, her charming prince that she would marry. She also told her that her brother will come back for certain.

Well, once little Hatchanna left the mysterious world, her brother returned in a few days, all by himself, telling the family that a merchant from a distant land kidnapped him, instead of a witch. (Flow of Phantasmagory will explain this background story in much more depth★)

Hatchken never knew what Hatchanna did, as she was able to make it look like nothing happened. More than anything, she was happy to see her brother again, seeing that his hair color was dyed in a shade of green★ , she thought it was cool and dyed her hair in a light blue, cyan color.
What happens when a sister borrows a book called Cyan Code, which is not about love, but rather than the blending of Sky into Earth magic? The book in which the earth was through the sky weathered? A book which is about creating mirages and illusions that are in the language of the Sky element? ★

We now ridicule this location.
[GxB][Board Game][Comedy] and.. [Fantasy]

Hi there~!! I'm Geistbas, here I am with my NaNoRenO project, and my first attempt in this event.

This is, frankly, a solo work, but I have a lot of free time, so I think I can do this! I promise I'll release a demo if I don't.

A visual novel with a few dating sim and adventure elements, and mostly, a board game! Yes, you will use dice rolls in this game to advance the story. While I would love to place another huge block of text here, I won't, let's just simply get to the theme first:

Inspired by ALCOR_etc's NaNoRenO project about dating shapes, I thought I would try to develop something inspired by that, but not exactly, since I don't really like to copy others, but rather derive and make something different based on the basic fibers of the idea.

In this game, you will play as Hatchanna, as she comically finds herself in a completely different world than the one she got to when she was little.

Let's get with started with the characters! I only have sketches for now, but I will color them soon, along with reference sheet format. The story will explained under each character.

Note: Personality explanations will be in reference sheets, they still require some planning.

Hatchanna Asperiell
The Heroine

The baka sister of Hatchken. She took his book out of his library without even asking him or confirming what it truly does...

Lady Hexahedra aka Mother Cube
The Mother of Tetra and Octa, as well as the mother of all playing dice


Mother Cube is the first character Hatchanna meets. She tells her that her two sons, Tetra and Octa, are determined to marry Icosahedra Gen'ei, a watery nemesis and the impersonation the Icosahedron, the Twenty-faced solid. The journey to Icosahedra's lair is not the easiest, and it might take them a long time, however, Mother Cube is frightened that something bad will happen to her two sons, as Icosahedra is a smooth-talking trickster. Thus, she asks you if you could kindly make them come back to their senses and return home. Since the world is very difficult to travel in without special measures, a magical dice is what will help you to speed through the world. However, there is a catch. Since a dice rolls from 1 to 6, you might find yourself unlucky to meet Tetra and Octa, but you shouldn't give up!

She, however, doesn't tell you anything about dating them.

Mother Cube gives you a supply of dice. When you use a dice, it disappears, so you should choose carefully which places you visit. You can visit Mother Cube to resupply, but only once per in-game week. (this might change in plans) It is therefore reccomended that you find additional ways to move on the game board.

What is however a problem, is that Mother Cube keeps drinking lemon tea with sugar cubes, along with sweets. If you fail to bring her two children back home in time, she will become obese from all those calories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube

Romanceables

Tetra
The Tetrahedron

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahedron

Mother Cube's younger son. He is the tetrahedron. A solid with four faces. You can find him in his land, knowing where exactly Icosahedra lives, but not being strong enough to get there.

If you manage to become Tetra's friend, he will be able to gift you "Tetrahedral Dice", when you use a tetrahedral dice, you can roll between 1 and 4, instead of 6, which can be useful when you don't want to miss an important field on a game board.

Well, of course, the better relationship you have with Tetra, the more tetrahedral dice he can conjure for you.

Tetrahedron was given the Fire element by Plato, which is true to Cyan Code Mirage as well.

He rivals his brother who also wants to marry Icosahedra.


Octa
The Octahedron

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octahedron

Mother Cube's elder son. He is the octahedron. A solid with eight faces. You can find him in his land, not being sharp-minded enough to figure where Icosahedra lives, but being ready to face any obstacle with his might.

If you manage to become Octa's friend, he will be able to give you "Octahedral Dice", when you use octahedral dice, you can roll between 1 and 8, instead of 6, which can be useful when you want to speed roll somewhere, even though the maximal difference is just +2, everything counts. This also helps when there is a combo of fields on the game board which you surely want to miss.

Again, of course, the better relationship you have with Octa, the more octahedral dice he can conjure for you.

Octahedron was given the Air element by Plato, which is instead Thunder in Cyan Code Mirage.


Dodecahedron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_dodecahedron

Dodecahedron is the combination of Tetra and Octa's powers. If you manage to at least become their friend, you will be given the power to use a dodecahedral dice, which will allow you to roll between 1 and 12 on the dice board when you wish so. You will still be able to get Tetrahedral and Octahedral dice, so don't worry.


Dodecahedron was given the Aether/Universe element by Plato, which doesn't really matter in Cyan Code Mirage, because it kicks butt is all you need to know.

Love Rival
Icosahedra Gen'ei

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_icosahedron

Supposedly, Icosahedra plans to seduce Tetra and Octa and drain away their powers. That's at least what Mother Cube tells to Hatchanna.
Nevertheless, Icosahedra is the rival of Hatchanna, as she came into this strange world in hopes to meet her love.

Icosahedra comes from Icosahedron, which was given the water element by Plato. However, Icosahedra is able to make water-based illusions and crystals. I got inspired to use crystals by the Japanese word 水晶 - suishou, meaning crystal. There is the kanji 水, which means water. Moreover, her last name, Gen'ei, comes from the word 幻影 Gen'ei, which means illusion, apparition or phantom. Icosahedra Gen'ei therefore means something like Illusion of Twenty-face Solid

Other Info

Other than that, every field on the game board will have a BG scene, so it won't be just a map-based game, but you will actually visit every field you land on. Don't worry about the difficulty to produce this, I won't make every field super distinct, I will just make like 1 or 2 background variations of every game board and put collections of landscape decorations such as rocks, tall grass, flowers and such. on them.

List of planned dice game levels:

• Level 1 - Methane Shade Forest --- The place where you gather better skills and meet Mother Cube. When you meet her, she will give you a few extra dice, but that's much less than you get from her outside of this level every in-game week. Even so, you can go to this place whenever you run out of dice, to attempt gathering more.
• A level where you meet Tetra -currently in plannng phase
• A level where you meet Octa -currently in planning phase
• A level that Icosahedra abandoned. Some mysteries may still be left behind by her.
• The final board. How much I will expland this will depend on how much time I have left, so please don't get disappointed if I won't make this thrilling if the fire under my but will begin being schorchy.

Changelog:


2016/3/6 - Set the basics for dice rolling and the dice faces of the various polyhedrons, as well as other minor features.
2016/3/6 - Added Icosahedra Gen'ei

2016/3/5 - Posted this thread.

Current Phase: Coding

1.Do you think this is silly for a first Otome project?
2.Would you choose between bringing the boys home or just being cruel and letting Mother Cube become obese/something else?
3.Do you prefer Tetra or Octa, and can you describe what you think strategy-luck wise about the 1-4 vs 1-8 dice?
4.Do you like the game's freedom of exploration style? Since you can choose if you would rather pursue the boys first, or just visit some other places first, and so on.
5.Would you be scared of the luck-based system? I promise there will be many chances to meet the guys.
6.There is planned to be a simple inventory system, any thoughts?

I think this is a cute idea :) I actually like the idea of meshing a board game into an otome game model - why not have a bit more of a game-y element, if you like? It's cool.

My only misgiving is that "a girl will get fat" is a rather cruel motivation. I assume you were going for something lighthearted, but picking on fat people seems needlessly mean-spirited to me :\

Congrats on getting your thread up!

1.Do you think this is silly for a first Otome project?
Nope! Looks like it could be fun!

2.Would you choose between bringing the boys home or just being cruel and letting Mother Cube become obese?
I would bring the boys home because that's the sort of thing I'd usually aim for in a game, but I don't really think "letting Mother Cube become obese" should really be a demotivational thing. (See what Fox Lee said above!)

3.Do you prefer Tetra or Octa, and can you describe what you think strategy-luck wise about the 1-4 vs 1-8 dice?
I prefer Tetra, as I generally prefer brains > brawn. The 1-4 vs 1-8 dice thing is interesting--I imagine that 1-8 tends to get further (and maybe complete the game faster?), so maybe it'd be easier to forge ahead with 1-8 than 1-4.

4.Do you like the game's freedom of exploration style? Since you can choose if you would rather pursue the boys first, or just visit some other places first, and so on.
Yeah, that's awesome! I like VNs with a variety of choices. It gives the game more replayability, I think.

5.Would you be scared of the luck-based system? I promise there will be many chances to meet the guys.
A luck-based system does make me nervous, but I'll trust you on that. I hope this isn't unnecessarily hard to play XD

6.There is planned to be a simple inventory system, any thoughts?
That sounds interesting. I'm not really sure how I feel about an inventory system in a VN, as it sounds like more of an RPG thing, but go for it!

Update:
Finished the sketch of Icosahedra Gen'ei.


However, I will "unfortunately" tell you that I won't work on the graphical assets as much as coding. Because coding is the utmost first priority in this project. I will post about how far I am with the dice game system.

It seems that Python uses Mersenne Twister for PRNG, which I think is great, as it's said to be good for pseudo-random numbers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_Twister

Working with placeholder graphics, I will make sure to keep this thread updated about how far I am with this.

So, the To do list would be:

- rolling mechanics and buttons
- player placement on the map
- player moving on the map and events happening

I started with two classes for now.

Fox Lee wrote:I think this is a cute idea :) I actually like the idea of meshing a board game into an otome game model - why not have a bit more of a game-y element, if you like? It's cool.

My only misgiving is that "a girl will get fat" is a rather cruel motivation. I assume you were going for something lighthearted, but picking on fat people seems needlessly mean-spirited to me :\

I discussed this with my Project Manager --- err, just kidding, I mean, I asked around and generally got the impression that the topic of obesity as a punishment for when you fail to meet your goals is fat = bad, which might generally make some people disappointed. And it sounds somewhat like a cliché.

Yet, I kind of think there's some realism there, if you consider that people generally become obese when they are depressed and eat too much.

The chances are that something entirely different might happen, and thank you for your comment.

ALCOR_etc wrote:...

Awe thank you Alcor, I'm really glad there's no problem with getting inspired by your idea so much. :)

1:
Right? I personally find board games extremely addictive. When I was little, I designed amateurish board games. I once designed a board game like Halma, but i put various terrain types and magical crystals from which you got enery every turn, and could use spell cards...when I brought the game to school, we found out with my friends that it's heavily unbalanced, and my friend who played the blue side could use a blizzard spell to freeze one player, but before just when it ceased, he got enough energy to use it again so my other friend was stunlocked XD. Thank god there is almost nothing to balance in this game.

2:
Of course, that's to be expected. As I mentioned above, I might choose something else than obesity.

3:
1-4 is good for decreasing the number of possible results. you have one third less sides, which makes every side have a 25% chance, instead of 16.666% (1-6). Let's say you need to roll either 3 or 4, because those 2 fields have something special. If you used the standard dice, the chances are like this: 1 2 3 4 5 6. That's 2 in 6
While rolling 1 and 2 won't matter absolutely, rolling 5 and 6 means you have missed those fields, and you need to restart the level. This is NOT a way to meet the guys, that works on a different method, but there will be various fields on the map that have some auspicious effects if you land on them, and so, your chances become better if you can roll just 1-4.

As for 1-8, every number counts I presume. It might help to avoid some gaps in the board that you certainly want to miss, as the 1-8 is a 12.5% chance for every side.

4, 5 and 6:

Freedom of exploration + luck. I will just say that quite possibly, I could somehow alter some things so that time limit won't be a problem...maybe to some generous deadline. During that time, you could explore the levels and find various things in them, and maybe even completely avoid the romance part if you'd wish - that, I'm not sure yet, but I just thought it could be very possible if someone decided to do so.

As for the inventory system, those would be items found in the levels that you can stockpile and use for various purposes, all done in a simple interface that just works like pretty much any dating sim with items, except that there are dice mechanics thrown in, and you get these items from certain fields in the world, some items may be rarer than others~

I will say I do like the idea and it seems very interesting. Art is nice as well. However, I will say that the whole obesity thing is a bit iffy. As someone who is big myself, I will say having something like that is/can be a bit hurtful when saying being bigger=bad. I'm not too sure if you are saying that, but I think maybe you should change it to something that doesn't hurt any type of body type. Some visual novels, especially Japanese ones, show being bigger as being bad when it's not. Yes too big can be horrible for your health, but there are people who are chubby and not thin. There are many different body types and all have their own beauty. Of course it's your game and it's up to you, but I just don't think saying that about bigger people is very good....Still I wish you the best of luck with the game.

As the first day of intensive coding, I have to say that today was both hit and miss. I learned many things for sure, and will use them for the next day.

I managed to get a more clear picture how screens.rpy actually works, which is just amazing.

Also began writing some classes, which I wasn't able to test yet because of them needing to be run through means that I will begin coding tommorow.

I was able to install all of the dice today, and test their PRNG. Everything seems to work well so far.

While I do have a blog, it needs some maintenance first, and I planned it for Flow of Phantasmagory anyway, however, chances are that I will begin posting once I finish coding.

infel wrote:I will say I do like the idea and it seems very interesting. Art is nice as well. However, I will say that the whole obesity thing is a bit iffy. As someone who is big myself, I will say having something like that is/can be a bit hurtful when saying being bigger=bad. I'm not too sure if you are saying that, but I think maybe you should change it to something that doesn't hurt any type of body type. Some visual novels, especially Japanese ones, show being bigger as being bad when it's not. Yes too big can be horrible for your health, but there are people who are chubby and not thin. There are many different body types and all have their own beauty. Of course it's your game and it's up to you, but I just don't think saying that about bigger people is very good....Still I wish you the best of luck with the game.

While I do have a few reasons why I'd not change it, I also have second thoughts. Not about the obesity being taken badly, but about the general idea being less important, as I'd rather focus on other things.

I would be glad if people didn't discuss obesity anymore on this thread, I know I started it, but let's please concentrate on the other, interesting details of the game. I didn't see a comment about the fact of polyhedrons itself, for example.

So, confirming that there won't be obese Mother Cube.

Not so surprisingly, (for me) I'm actually going to code the movement on the board game itself tommorow.

3/11

Everything's almost going well, except for a little bug:



EDIT: Graphics are placeholders of course.
List of the dice game features so far:

• Able to roll a stage from finish to end
• Able to roll backwards
• Able to move outside of normal pathways with "arrow" dice (Left direction buggy)
• Multiple stage support - data structure
• Much more that's still in development.

With this, I'm possibly 60%~ done with coding.