The ELECT: Ascendance - Part 2 of 5 Completed

Ideas and games that are not yet publicly in production. This forum also contains the pre-2012 archives of the Works in Progress forum.
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Nafai
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The ELECT: Ascendance - Part 2 of 5 Completed

#1 Post by Nafai »

The portion below, and all posts before march 2008 refer to the original version of the game. Substantial revisions have been made - hopefully for the better. ^_^
“They’d always been there, they said.

The faeries and mutants, godlings and supermen.

Sometime when it all began, before recorded history as we know it, a wise and powerful wizard decided to separate and safeguard the mundane world from the battles of beings who could kill with a thought, who could level mountains with a blow.”

“To that end, he performed the single greatest feat of magic ever seen in either world, a feat that until only recently, most of us didn’t even known about.”

“He created the Veil.”

“The Veil was meant to shield regular ‘humanity’ from those more favored – or more cursed – than the norm. Anyone who crossed some threshold of ability was simply phased out of the normal world, and into another place, a sort of mirror world populated by beings of unearthly power. As for those left behind, they were secure in their own reality save for the odd dream, the rare mystery.”

“The Veil was meant to last forever.”


“It didn’t.”
Nafai presents:

THE ELECT

On Inspiration:

Well first, I love anime, manga, Japanese video games… But as I was growing up, my first love was always western-style comic book superheroes. I still follow them now, and when I decided to shoot for that ‘epic’ VN story, this was the first genre that came to mind. Of course my art style is too manga influenced at the moment for me to reign in back to the days when I could actually draw lips on characters (^_^;) but I thought I’d use them as the backdrop for the story, especially since I’d been getting a lot of super-hero centric story ideas from reading Civil War, the (first iteration) Authority, and the like.

On Style:

I’m not that experienced with VNs, but I do want to make it more of a… ‘graphic novel’ in look and feel. To this end I want to try mixing traditional chara-and-bg scenes with scenes that use panels, like comic books, or say event cgs which only take up one side of the screen while the other side has prose narration (like the Stardust graphic novel).

You can see some of that in the Proof/Demo below.

On Choices:

There are two reasons why I named the game as I did. One is because that’s what you call the ‘Justice League’ group of heroes in the game. The second, more indirect reason is because what has always set apart a VN for me as opposed to other mediums would be the ability to affect the story, in small and big ways. That said I’ll be trying to put in as many as I can, both in the form of flavor text changes, and in the form of branching storylines.

On Romance:

I won’t claim to be doing anything ground-breaking… there are only certain archtypes which I feel I could realistically write in a romance. That being said, I will try my best to make every character fully fleshed out, and more than just walking ‘roles’. That being said there will be at least two romanceable characters.

On Status:

Well, I’m actually letting myself post this as a reward to myself for reaching 50,000 words. I think this places me at around 2/3 - of the ‘true’ path, not the game as a whole, though the true path crosses most of the major events.

On Recruitment: Basically I'm looking for coders - who can make the game look unique and polished; tracers, since the real delay with the art for me is trying to get it all cleaned up; and a story editor to make sure I don't let the story get away from me.

Special thanks to SED - I'll be using some of his pictures from his thread way back when.

Whoops I set the text speed too low for the proof/demo - just adjust your preferences. Sorry![/b]
Attachments
Elect - Proof of Concept.zip
The Elect: Proof of Concept
(3.58 MiB) Downloaded 212 times
Elect Teaser.JPG
Last edited by Nafai on Fri Aug 01, 2008 11:28 am, edited 2 times in total.
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#2 Post by monele »

Lovely~... I was quite surprised by the left/right prose display ^^. I don't know *why* but it looked really cool :). Of course, I'm all for a more "comics/manga" look, so this is a project I can only approve of :).
As for help... I must say I'd like to at least give some help with programming... that is, at least try to simplify things when it comes to the use of bubbles and such so that the scripter doesn't have to deal with too many numbers and parameters, nor having to write the same code over and over.
Also, since it seems I'm getting specialized in this, if you need special effects, I should be able to help ^.^.

Just saying that I'd rather be called upon from time to time, so I can keep my motivation high and not end up bored ^^;... (it's either that or a big burst at the beginning and then nothing :/)

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#3 Post by DaFool »

This is a good dynamic storytelling technique...by keeping things black and white and cleanly lined, you get crisp, low-filesize images, and most of the bulk of animation will be in the code. Yet the 'Bang!' 'Zoom' will keep things kinetic.

I give the seal of efficiency two thumbs up! :D

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#4 Post by DrakeNavarone »

Sounds like a really neat idea, and the proof of concept demo was very nice. I'm really looking forward to it. I'd love to be the story editor. Also, if you need any beta-testers, I'll volunteer for that too. I'm building up a bit of a resume in that department.
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#5 Post by Nafai »

Monele: Great to hear you liked the "picture book" style with prose and picture. And I'll definitely try to capture that comic book look in more scenes.

It'll be great to have your help with the coding monele ^_^ UPlanet still stands out for me as a great example of effects use in Ren'py, and MBoutique is a truly innovative, polished game so your skills will definitely be welcome. Even just finding more efficient and simple ways to code will be great.

We'll use your method then, and I'll consult with you from time to time, so that you don't get burned out ^_^ Thanks Moni:)

DaFool: Dynamism and efficiency are definitely major things to aim for, and I'm glad that its so far so good. Thanks for the kind words!

DrakeNavarone: Alright! A story editor (and beta tester!) right off the bat - that's sort of one of the priorities now, since I find myself having to carefully go over 50,000 words to check if my story details are consistent. Also I know first hand that it can be hard for an author to look at his work objectively, so it'd be good to have another opinion on the quality of the story. Glad you liked the demo - hope you like the actual story as well. Will send you the script so far - all 220 pages of it ^_^ Many thanks Drake ^_^
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#6 Post by monele »

No problem ^^. I'll be glad if I can help nudge this towards completion :). Let me know what kind of specifics you need so I can start thinking stuff up. Things like the kinds of dialogue styles you're going to use, what kind of animations (movements, rotations, zooms) you'll need, transitions if any, etc... ;).
Also, will there be a need for a specific interface or will it be regular VN for that matter?

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#7 Post by Mihel »

I just thought I'd point out that as someone proficient in Greek (Attic) I can't help but read your logo as "Select" :P
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#8 Post by Nafai »

*laughs* I know - that's the "S" in the greek font, but considering some of the characters in the story hail from mythology, I figured it was apt. ^_^
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#9 Post by Nafai »

Status Update: April 18 2007

Script: 59,795 (True Path only)

Art: Approximately 12 new pictures made.

Other Notes:
~ Brainstorming with Moni over possible effects and working on one critical scene.
~ Editing and improving story with Drake - first run through done, second in progress.
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#10 Post by Nafai »

Status Update: April 30 2007

Script: 63, 901 words (still only true path)

Art: Not as much progress - mostly gathering more reference pictures from http://www.animepaper.net and http://www.comicartcommunity.com

Other Notes:
~ Sent the most recent chunk of the True path to Drake for checking.
~ Moni sent me some really cool you tube videos that showed what we could potentially do for the comic strip scenes and the action scenes. Really has me rethinking some scenes to take advantage of those effects ^_^ (Must resist the urge to get sidetracked from finishing the story though)
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#11 Post by Lee_Hitsugaya »

I may be buring myself in a bit of work but i do pretty well in colorizing using photoshop and I love creating special effects. (although they do look campy but with the right facial expressions anything is possible). so if you need help in the graphic arts department count me in....coding, on the other hand....as far as im concidered. your on your own. ^^" sorry
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#12 Post by Nafai »

Wow thanks for the offer Lee :) I'm planning to make the game primarily black and white save for color use for the special effects and certain emphasized points - i.e. like the blood effect in Sin City.

Hm... Maybe I can do full color poster stuff too. I'll figure out a color scheme and let you know if ever.

What would be really cool is if you do the pen-tracing in photoshop, which really makes penciled art into clean black line art. If you can do that for me, then that'd be wonderful :D

Thanks again for offering Lee :)
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#13 Post by Lee_Hitsugaya »

@_@ p-pen tracing??? I didn't even know about that feature X_X lol, i still have a HELL of a lot to learn.
in a perfect world those who can do it teach others how to do it. but were not in a perfect world. So were primarily stuck with teachers who don't kno jack.

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#14 Post by Nafai »

Well not pen-tracing as an automatic thing - more like meticulous tracing using the pen tool :P

i.e. http://search.deviantart.com/?section=b ... +pen+tool+
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#15 Post by F.I.A »

Just to say that pen tracing is indeed best for a far better linear, but it is a rather time consuming ordeal. So you will need to clarify the ammount of work needs to be pen-traced beforehand(So the one doing it can know what to expect.).
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