Vignettes [character-driven,college,GxB,very short]

[arachni42]

Demo thread here
Download the demo here



Story:


You were a young, freshman woman who decided to attend a speed dating event. You didn't have high expectations, but hey, it was worth trying, right? You met five intelligent guys who were... "memorable." This is the story of how it went.

Concept:
The story is told as five interactive vignette-like encounters. Your choices don't define the protagonist's thoughts/opinions; they define how she says them. There are five different kinds of dialogue choices and six "personalities." "Getting the guys" is not necessarily the goal, although you can if you choose the kind of social interaction that each of them likes. Whether they like you or hate you, my goal has been to make all of the options... "interesting." Much levity is involved.

Characters:
Some are more in-progress than others.

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The protagonist (default name: Virginia): A sharp young woman. What is her personality like? You decide! (But right now it appears she's in a sarcastic mood...)

Chet: A spontaneous sort who loves snowboarding, bad math puns, and gardening.

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Jam: An architecture major who admits exhaustion from long nights in the studio. Claims to otherwise be a party animal. No, really.

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Red: Clearly intelligent, but you get the feeling he's sizing you up as he would a political opponent.

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Will: A computer geek. Or… perhaps "dork" would be the more appropriate term?

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Hunter: A handsome young man who seems to know what to say to make a girl feel special.


Screenshots:



(This one is from before Chet had a real body, and I apparently didn't crop it right... But it's good for posterity!)


(People's necks don't bend that way. But it's all about suspension of disbelief, right???)

Progress:
Demo with prologue and Chet's speed date complete.
(Well, the shadows on his sprite are still blocky, but, it's a demo. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

Writing: 40% -- Prologue and Chet's story complete. Dialogue for the other guys is partly written.
The total wordcount projection about is 36-37K -- much more than I originally planned, but I think it's for the better. I want all choices to reveal something about the characters.
Art: 60% -- Chet and the protagonist are mostly done but their clothing is incomplete. The other characters are in various stages of being in progress.
UI & Coding: 60% -- Interface is generally established, but I plan to have a custom help screen, clean up the preferences a little, and to have a "route" map. Chet's date is coded (obviously), and the others will be in conjunction with the writing.
Music: 5% -- I do plan to have music, but it's... well, in the planning stages.

There you have it. My magnum opus. (but only because it's my first VN)
I started this project because of NaNo13. I'm continuing because I PROMISED MYSELF I WOULD FINISH IT.

[ixWishing]

I see you have moved this, from the Nanoreno section, eh?
Anyways, I'll try out the demo sometime when I'm free!
Good luck completing this!

[kaleidofish]

I noticed you wrote "I want all choices to contribute in some way to the characters." How do you hope to achieve this?

It's interesting, because when I read that you were including six personality-type of choices to include from, I immediately thought about Lux-Pain. In that game, rather than choosing dialogue, you choose the character's facial expression/mood towards others, which elicits a particular response dependent on what you chose. I see in your screenshots that you're not headed in that direction, though, so never mind.

Will this be more of a comedy? How do you describe the mood of your piece? I have yet to play the demo, but I hope these questions provide some food for thought!

[saguaro]

I see you like banter. Me too.

Chet is a funny guy, and I enjoyed reading the get-to-know-you repartee. I played a few times with different dialogue options, and always got a few new conversations, and some were frankly pretty interesting and introspective. So it was cool to 'get to know' Chet a little more through subsequent playthroughs. I also enjoyed the comedic use of wait and pause, especially some of the awkward pauses when you choose to the unenthusiastic dialogue options.

I know you said Will is in-progress, but I wanted to point out that he looks like Sephiroth (which I'm sure he'd appreciate, but that's not really a compliment). Probably any hair color but gray would help him look more like a college student.

[arachni42]

I noticed you wrote "I want all choices to contribute in some way to the characters." How do you hope to achieve this?

Hmm... I think I could've worded that better. The direction it's gone with the demo is that the choices let you see different facets of the characters. At first I was writing them all to say a lot of the same things but in different ways... but it was looking too boring, so I did revisions such that there was fundamentally different content in each of the choices, in addition to a different kind of interaction.

Every time I write a dialogue I am thinking, "What does this show us about the characters?" If the answer is "nothing," I rewrite it in some way that I hope does show something.

It's interesting, because when I read that you were including six personality-type of choices to include from, I immediately thought about Lux-Pain. In that game, rather than choosing dialogue, you choose the character's facial expression/mood towards others, which elicits a particular response dependent on what you chose. I see in your screenshots that you're not headed in that direction, though, so never mind.

I might be interested in checking it out anyway.

Will this be more of a comedy? How do you describe the mood of your piece? I have yet to play the demo, but I hope these questions provide some food for thought!

I've been hesitant to use the "comedy" label because I don't want it to set up that expectation. While I envision a fair amount of sarcastic comments, some of the characters are much more serious than others, and comedy is incidental rather than a goal. Overall, though, I would call the mood lighthearted.

So it was cool to 'get to know' Chet a little more through subsequent playthroughs.

Glad you enjoyed it! I do like banter.

I know you said Will is in-progress, but I wanted to point out that he looks like Sephiroth (which I'm sure he'd appreciate, but that's not really a compliment). Probably any hair color but gray would help him look more like a college student.

LOL... I didn't think of Sephiroth. He probably would take it as a compliment. Well... looking like any fantasy character. Which lends itself to an interesting consideration... should my character design involve something along those lines but with the implication that he's doing it on purpose? I think I'm going to keep the gray for now while I work on getting the rest of his face to not look wonky, but color will be really easy to change around and get feedback on. *I* don't really want to invoke Sephiroth unless he really is, in fact, doing it on purpose, so, thank you for the comment!

[arachni42]

Updated! Basically, I've made progress on the sprites; see the OP for the current versions. Red is the furthest along... doing the pattern on his shirt was interesting because of the wrinkles.

I've made some progress on the writing, too, but not much more progress. Red's is almost done, but the other guys need a lot of work. Art progress is easier to show, anyway.

[Hazel-Bun]

Glad to see you're still working on this ^^ Looking forward to Athena as well! P.S Chet and his math puns are still my favorite no matter what <3