RockRobin - Band Manager (Demo)

[Aleema]

@kosetsu: Glad you liked it for the most part.
The intro is the intro, and it's long. You don't really have to play through a character's branch at any time to just play the sim game. Story mode is more "dialogue heavy" than Open Mode, but you have to play through it once to get it. Not sure what you were expecting (were you looking for a short story, or were you more interested in the band manager sim?), but this isn't a typical VN. Especially when it comes to choices. It branches every so often, but not enough to where I can say that you'll get twenty different endings or something. There's an ending for when you win story mode, and then you get character endings after that for the individual guy romances, and then a lose ending if you didn't meet the final goal.

Also, glad to see you're interested in By The Lake.

[sheetcakeghost]

Hey guys! We need a little more writing help! Don't worry, this isn't as intensive as taking a character. It's gotten to the point where we need to come up with lots of band meeting conversations and we need a smidge of help coming up with topics and questions to spur them. So, if you guys could, please toss any questions or conversation topics for any character you want! You can post them here, but preferably post them at the forums so we'll be sure to see them!

http://www.aleema.com/rockrobin/index.p ... id=78#3631

Thanks for all the support you guys have been giving us and here's to us making a fantastic game for you!

[Aleema]

The new demo for RockRobin has been released for Valentine's Day!

The demo has almost doubled in size, and is now 174mb. I apologize for this, I really am sorry. I tried to cut it down as much as I could, and I just shaved 10mb off, at most. ^^; The writers have tested it, and it should work. If something is severely broken, please let me know. Feedback on the new systems would be nice, too.

Here is the "official" changelog:
- Gig mini-game added, with 2 difficulties you can toggle in the options screen.
- New sprites for Joel, Natasha, Marcus, Beau's mom, Dallas and others, including new silhouettes.
- Functional jukebox that the player can add their own music, featuring "POST MORTEM" by nmontes. To add your music, drag and drop an MP3, WAV, or OGG file into the folder called "jukebox" in the game folder.
- Achievements screen added and one achievement can be made during the demo. Not telling which!
- You can now visit the Public Opinion screen, and the shopping mall for gifts after you recruit Beau.
- Dallas has an intro CG by LinWest.
- Chibis for the band members are now shown for gigs, drawn by Starling, colored by Chansel. Their instruments will change as you upgrade them, too.
- BGs have been updated, and will likely continue to be updated for the full release.
- The storyline has been extended a scene, as an apology for how long the game is taking.
- Redone the in-game menu screens. There is now an option to turn minigames Off, or make them Easy or Hard. You can also toggle between continuous jukebox play, or let it be interrupted for genre music.
- Band session indicator at bottom of band manage screen.
- Quick save, load, skip, and auto-read buttons to the side of the dialogue box. You can also hit F5 for Q.Save and F9 for Q.Load on your keyboard.
- Monthly report brief window in the corner and does not interrupt gameplay unless you choose to.
- Game mode chooser if you've seen the intro for Story Mode (Open Ended Mode is forever locked for the demo, however).
- Save slots now show a little portrait of everyone in your band, and now include a screen shot.
- Better tutorial for the planner and manage screen. You can now click the ? icon in the upper-right corner for some screens. Likewise, you can now view your inventory in the mall and Band Meeting in the upper-left corner. Robin can consume items you don't want anymore by clicking them.
- Important: When a character stresses out, they now must "cool off" before you can reassign them another task. They must reach 50% stress again before you can touch them. To get them back quicker, use the group rest option.
- Various bugs, typos, and retcons.

Standard demo notes that still apply:
- Relationship meters in Band Meeting have yet to be coded.
- Recording songs does nothing for your band at this point in the game, but I - included it because that's when the action would be available in the full game.
- Demo is PG-13, meaning you should be mature enough to handle cursing and such. Adult themes.
- Song in the background for the opening scene is "Mr. Big Shot" by Sophia Marie.
- Typos and bug reporting would be awesome!

How's the game going? It's making fantastic progress, that's for sure! Some open mode characters are on the verge of completion, and so are 2 story mode characters. All of them have progress and are being written or scripted right now. Now that the scripting hell of the demo is over, I plan on tackling writing head out and making a real dent in it. I'd like to think we could at least get Story Mode done done done by the end of March, but if we have to be unfair to characters to make that deadline, then we're not going to rush it. We basically agree that leaving characters out of the game because we didn't flesh them out enough is unacceptable.


I'd also like to use this post to advertise our new VN circle called "Happy Backwards". It includes Starling, Serenity Frost, Chansel, and myself. Yay!

[Snowflower]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
i'm excited!
Ten more minutes until it's downloadeddddd

[Starling]

Hey everyone, can you hold off on downloading the new demo. The wrong version has apparently been packaged. It's Aleema's testing version and there are bugs in it that I believe she has already fixed. Thanks and sorry~ The correct one will more than likely be uploaded as soon as Aleema can do it.

[Aleema]

The demo should now be fixed. You can download it now. For everyone who downloaded the old one, you'd be saving me a big bright red face if you just deleted it. ^^;

[Julie]

OMG I AM GOING TO DOWNLOAD THIS NOW!!

[blakjak]

Congratz on the release of your new demo =)

Here's a fan art of Seth, got inspired by the dangerous looks Lorey gave him, I think it's cool to have another "evil" protagonist in RR.




Keep up the good work !

[Aleema]

That's so awesome, blakjak!! You always blow me away! You really touch me with your art, thank you. This made my day.
You make him look so cool ... So edgey! So dangerous, like you said!

[maypaymusic]

will there be a walkthrough provided for this game? it'll be good to get it early

[Aleema]

Ha, no you won't get a walkthrough early. What would you rather me work on: the guide or the game? =P

We are (thinking about) making a donor-exclusive PDF booklet with my guide to the game. That'll be fun for me, because I like designing page layouts and guides. ^___^ And I want to thank the donors.

THAT said, the game doesn't need a walkthrough for obtaining guys, if that's what you were looking for. I can give the "answers" to the menu questions that will give them a relationship boost, but you can just rollback if they don't respond the way you want them to, and you can boost their relationship other ways ... it's fairly linear once you're on the dude's path. The sim portion of the game might need some tips, tricks and a thorough explanation, though. Annnd I guess the guide will show how to get all the achievements and scenes for completionists. ^^

[Riviera]

So if I stick my foot in my mouth every time I see them, I might still have a chance? This is good to know, since I can be really bad about that sometimes.. ~_~

For instance, in Shira Oka, I managed to alienate everyone but the two characters I didn't like. That was a lot of fun.

[MiSi]

(Simon)
I really enjoyed the demo... it's funny and I like the artwork
sometimes there's too much talking I think, but that's my opinion (others may appreciate much talking, I don't know )

[Aleema]

Thanks for playing MiSi! Still not sure what the "they talk to much" statement means, if by talking you mean the cutscenes before the sim game are too long to sit through to get to the best part of the game, or by talking, you mean they say pointless things you have to click through? Or just ... you're an "English as a second language" reader so the less dialogue and the more action, the better? This isn't a traditional VN by any means, and I like how the scenes are progressing to be actual, full scenes without just shuffling dialogue past you so you can get to the choices so you can kiss the boyz. If it's a flaw in my writing, however, that's bad and would like specific examples of "talking too much" so I can fix it.

@Riviera: Yeah, this really isn't a dating sim -- or at least, a great one. xD Once you decided what guy you want, you will get him provided you don't lose the band part of the game. The speed of his events unlocking depends on how fast you build your relationship with him. I ... really don't have time to make fifty good/bad endings for each character. They each have stories, and you play them out. No real branching. ;_; I'm struggling to write one damn path as it is. For open mode guys, there will be a point when you have to make a decision, and one of the decisions will lead to unlocking their romance path, the other will keep him as a friend. So I guess that's a branch?

[dstarsboy]

Played it for the first time and I have to say you made an amazing game. That was a really long demo! Practically felt like a whole game, hah. The script was very well done, as was the programming and directing. The game was so good that it (stop me if someone already mentioned this) left me wishing that you had drawn bgs (or maybe even 3d rendered ones) instead of photo ones, but that's just a personal preference. The band managing was by far the funnest part but it was nice to get back into the story here and there. The amount of work that you put into the options (especially the public opinion one) for band managing was pretty unreal.

One small suggestion is to make the default text speed something other than max. It just feels like a more interactive story for some reason if I read text while it's populating rather than having it show up immediately. Other than that, I can't think of anything else I would change about the game. Excellent work!