Fade

[lordcloudx]

short kinetic novel.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DFQRKFAU

[denzil]

Could you upload it to the forum as attachment? Or Rapidshare?
Because every single time I try to download something from megaupload I get "All download slots assigned to your country (Czech Republic) are currently in use." message.

[Enerccio]

Could you upload it to the forum as attachment? Or Rapidshare?
Because every single time I try to download something from megaupload I get "All download slots assigned to your country (Czech Republic) are currently in use." message.

http://megaupload.com/signup/

[DaFool]

Gee, talk about lack of advertising...

(And why do releases happen when I'm on dialup.)

[Enerccio]

Gee, talk about lack of advertising...

(And why do releases happen when I'm on dialup.)

well i just want to help him
LOL there are people who are on DIALUP ??? DAAAAAAMN....
(no offence but dial up is the worst type of internet connection)

OK few mirrors:
RAPIDSHARE: http://rapidshare.com/files/13684569/fade.zip
SENDSPACE: http://www.sendspace.com/file/pk3vnu

[Enerccio]

Well, i played it, so my opinion is this very good kinetic novel.
Very good sad music, quite well story.
Keep up good work

[lordcloudx]

Gee, talk about lack of advertising...

(And why do releases happen when I'm on dialup.)

hehe yeah, I have this superstitious belief that advertising while still in production might result in the project getting axed. Could be anything from lack of motivation or fear of trying to live up to expectations etc. etc.

Btw, that makes two of us on dial-up.

So... thank you very much for reading my VN and for the mirrors Enerccio. It takes me over an hour to upload 6+ mb on me freakin slow unstable (and everything negative) dial-up connection, well... anywayz I'll be upgrading to dsl sometime this year.

[PyTom]

Hm... An interesting story, not sure what I think of it yet.

Some technical notes:

The filename case is all wrong in the zip file. This prevents it from running correctly on Linux, and probably will also hurt Mac.

Midi music is no longer supported. It still works, but it has problems on the Mac, IIRC. I need to make it be an error.

You also probably want to include the fix at:

http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/releases/5.6.6

Which prevents a problem that causes sound to sometimes skip.

[Ignosco]

It comes across to me as an odd kind of morality story (from the names the characters have) - it's around the right length given that the focus seems to be solely on the message of the story... maybe message isn't the best description, because the what the kind strong girl said was a solution, but not one that will necessarily make the problems any better (and ... it seems like even her advice is not entirely right or helpful, because she can't seem to understand why someone like him would suffer). Quite a few issues are raised without any really clear answers to them being provided - but I think this kind of approach works well... it does make it different from other morality like stories.

The background art, the sound and the use of various special effects in Ren'py worked very well together (maybe a little too much use of the screen-shaking effect though).

The music seemed a bit ambiguous in feel, it did support the story quite well though.

It was interesting to read through this, congratulations

[mikey]

Whee, it's out so quickly!

Right, compared to the text-only version I read this final one is of course much more present and it's kind of the hikari-no-ribbon-type of work, kinetic poem or whichever word fits. I'm probably going to repeat some of the comments I sent you before, but anyway, the main thing for me is that you can feel there's something behind, as with all such stories. This one is more or less too unclear for me, mainly because unlike Wings it's much shorter, but that's kind of logical. And I also have to say I don't like these kinds of stories, I'm more into unimaginative, basic things. Still, as with Wings and others, I always find something in your works that makes them more friendly to me - maybe it's the very quick getting to the point, the absence of long lyrical parts and the fact that for some reason this is very emotional. On the other hand, I'm not too much into blood.

Well, I may have many remarks, but overall, my view is positive - unlike some other pieces, where I don't really have anything to say. So that's my view. Oh, and since the last part of the game is indeed what I thought it was, it's actually very similar to Milk Swim Ending 1 (IIRC), where I tried to capture a very similar (if not the same) emotion. So maybe that's what I like about your works - direct emotion, rather than philosophy or art. So congratulations on Project #5! Not counting the BH remake.

Oh, before I forget, I liked the visual presentation. Similarly to Ignosco I thought the blur was just a tiny bit too much, but on the other hand I appreciated that the effects were not overused, I noticed only a few, which is good - after all, it's not an animation, but a VN. And it has a very nice font.

On a different note, will we have permission to host it on the RAA? (We would wait for a version that has the issues that PyTom mentioned fixed)

[DaFool]

Microgames are alive and well

I like the art here, it's charming and works very well with the fuzzy effect.

[lordcloudx]

mikey: Yup, you have my permission to add this to the archives.

And here's a new fixed (hopefully) version with mp3 music.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CUXQA8PY

[Mr. E]

Well, I played this game a few days ago and I actually liked it. I've played all Radical Dramer's games and I think it developed a style all of it's own. It an intresting mixture of farytale, philosophic and slice-of-life in usually short stories. One thing I especially liked in Fade was the surrealist touch to the dialogues ( ASPIRIN! ). I also liked the blurry effect, it goes well with the title of the VN.
But of course, I HAVE to add a few critics, don't I? I MUST, otherwise I just won't feel well... So, here comes the nasty part of the reviewer: looking for mistakes. The blurry effect, as pointed by others, was a bit over-used. The sound effect when he says "Why don't you all just die!" (That sound effect that was like the raor of a monster) I felt was a bit out of place. Maybe it's because I know RPG maker well... And finally, although that's maybe a bit personal, I would like to see what you can do with a lengthy game. I realize that you do a lot of experimenting on your games, and believe me, that's good. It's nice to experiment on diferent things before doing something big, but I'm just curious in what you can do in a bigger project. Binary Heart's remake was very good, but still felt a bit restricted (I don't know why... I'm just telling what I felt.) So, here's my opinion: try to make something bigger. Not just in terms of length, but in terms of impact. Develop the story a bit more. You'vew already shown us you're not afraid of experimenting in short novels, so why not try experimenting with a bigger project?
Well... Opinion's something tricky, so feel free to discard anything I said. Best of luck with the other projects!

[lordcloudx]

Thanks for the review. Actually, making my games relatively short is always intentional on my part. I've got quite a few reasons.

a.) I'm usually a one-man team unless my back-up artist Richard volunteers to do some work for me. I know I'd lose focus on the other aspects of the VN if I concentrated all my energy into writing a loong story.

b.) Time management issues since I'm in law school. I know from experience that writing a more complete story requires a lot of time and focus... and lemme tell ya law school can really dampen the creative mood, which is why I usually finish writing my stories within 2-3 days during the weekend starting on friday night. coz it's back to cramming a lot of info that I don't really want to be learning into my head on sunday night.

c.) I usually make these games to prove something to myself. It just hasn't hit me to make a long production yet. I've already proven that I can do long stories through my multi-chapter fanfics and I'm planning to do an original fiction ala kino's journey sometime after I finish writing Dream Chasers (The Princess of Fire was just a necessary sidestory) which is currently stalled, but I doubt it would be translated into the VN format.

d.) I kinda like the directness (as mikey mentioned) of a short piece, since
I feel that it works really well for a visual novel. For example, I could have made fade a whole lot longer, maybe stretched it to about an hour or more by fleshing out the story, adding concrete characters and events, dialogue etc. but in essence, it would still be the same story executed differently. Also, it kinda takes away from the mystery and flexibility of the piece to interpretation since I want each unique reader to have a slightly different experience.

edit: Yeah, that was a monster's roar. I thought it kinda gave it an evangelion ending feel.