Cyber Troops (vol.1) released

[Cybeat]

This is my first visual novel, so don't expect a lot. I went through a lot of crap to get everything done (script, processing, drawing, coloring, outlining, music, distributing, coding, uploading).
Please give me feedbacks:

Windows:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=93RIU9U5

Mac:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=60SNPLEE

Linux

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=REAEL1XM



Here's a little information on Cyber Troops:

Cyber Troops (vol.1) is just the 1st volume of the manga series I'm planning on writing.
My goal is to make a popular manga with a great story, unique characters, and unique
settings. I may change my mind and have the whole series in visual novels, with commercial
qualities.

--Now, some information on the story of Cyber Troops:

The setting is Floatland (a land that floats in space), year Galaxy 8080,
not in Earth's year. In this planet, life is slightly different. There are humans
living there, but tecnology is more advanced, there are different races and some
species of animals, they have fighter's guilds. A fighter is just a person who
skilled with his, or her, fighting skills and fights for justice. A guild is
just an organization that fighters join (think of this as a singer and their
record label). There are also opposing guild teams that fight for competition and
to prove they're the best by challenging other guilds, and their are also illgal
guilds that do crime. This story is mostly about the Neblin race. They resemble
humans, but the only difference is that their heads are round, their skin is white,
have round black eyes, and they have invisble torso, hands(visible fingers) and necks,
which is why they're always wearing their clothes, gloves and scarfs. Humans don't
know this. It's a secret to Neblins. They're hated by many humans because
they're different, but not by all humans. That's why many powerful Neblins
join fight guilds to prove they're good people. But some Neblins have other
purposes for joining guilds, like Light and Gun Kid.

--Characters:

Note: Neblins don't have true relatives and they don't know how old they are.

-Light

Age: He's a kid, but his age is uknown. His fake age is 10 (hence his personality).

Light is one of the 2 protagonist of this volume. He's usually happy and
silly most of the times. Childish character. He thinks being a fighter is his
destiny, but there's a real reason why. He keeps it a secret. Light is very fast at
running. He's partially Japanese (like myself).

-Gun Kid (Snipe)

Age: 10 (true age is unknown, like Light)

The second protagonist of this volume. He's laid back and is usually always
calm when danger is around. Serious character. He became a fighter to save the world
using his shooting skills. He true name is Snipe. Gun Kid is just an alias he thought of
when he became a fighter.

-010

Age: 20

Cyber Troop's guild leader. He's an adroid, known as Cyberoid, with a human spirit.
Little is known about him.

-Beam Kid (Tyke)

Age: 11 (true age is unknown)

The clerk of Starlight Sanctuary. He became a hotel clerk after he gave up looking
for a guild that accepts Neblins. Humans think it's funny that Beam Kid is proud
of who he is. Beam Kid thought of his alias before joining a guild that rejected
him after finding out he's a Neblin. He's skilled with hand/eye laser.

-Blaze

Age: 10 (true age unknown)

A martial artist, tae kwon do, that lives in Chaos city. Blaze and Alpha, gang leader
of Chaos City, were enemies since the day Blaze told some people he could beat Alpha.
He's also skilled with pyrokinesis. His reason for wanting to join a guild is unknown.

-Somersault Kid

Age: Unknown

A friend of Gun Kid and Light. Little is known about Somersault Kid, besides that
fact that he's skilled with agility, somersault fighting techniques, and
how negative he is about succeeding.

-Stick Kid (Shawn)

Age: 11 (true age unknown)

A ex-guild member that got replaced by another fighter that was a human. Stick Kid
is skilled with fighting with any weapon made of sticks (staff, nun-chucks, 3 section
staff).

-Ninja Kid

Age: Unknown

A ninja Neblin. Everything about him anonymous. He's looking for his friend, Devin.


-Mimic

Age: 1 (7 year old personality)

A gecko that has the ability to transform into anything he knows. He has a childish
personality. Mimic is originally from a little country town called Gecko Place.

-Psydric

Age: 2 (14 years old to a human)

A cyber dog. He's half gecko and half dog (strange mix). Psydric has an ability
similar to Beam Kid (only difference is Psydric shoots laser from his mouth).
He grew up with Mimic and is also from Gecko Place.

-Sari

Age: 10

A human girl that works at Paxon Enterprise. She lived in Paxon enterprise her
whole life, meaning she don't know how dangerous the outside world is. Sari is
bored with being inside Paxon Enterprise and wishes to start an adventure.
She's not a guild member and is certainly not a fighter.



For this project, I didn't do the best I could, since this is my 1st visual novel.
If there's anything wrong, let me know.

[monele]

I apologize as I'll probably be very negative ^^;...

- 110mb ?!... I admit I didn't go through the whole thing but given the content I saw, there's no reason this should be 110mb. Is the music in WAV format maybe? I suggest you check all this and try to compress what can be compressed before packaging your game. And if it *is* compressed, then you're using too many music files for a single game I'd say. Try to see what's taking all those megabytes ^^;
- The story telling is very dull, sorry. The narration sounds like you're actually explaining your story to a friend instead of telling it to an audience (ex : "Ok, now the setting..."). I suggest choosing a more regular story telling method and sticking to it (either have one of the protagonists tell the story or some omniscient narrator).
Also try to add some "flow" to the narration. You use a lot of very short sentences, either for describing or for dialogues and it feels very robotic.

A few spoilery nitpicks :

- "Later captain"? I dunno, it feels out of place to be all familiar with someone of a higher rank. I'd understand a little familiarity but here it's like "yo buddy!" ^^;
- The robot manager is a *bit* obvious . If you were trying to make this a surprise, I'd suggest being a lot more subtle about it. Otherwise, well, it's fine as it is.
- The three customers were a bit of a "huh?!" moment for me. Their recorded message too.

I stopped when the protagonists solved the hotel problem. There's just too many stuff packed into this without much logical flow I think.

- The graphics, while not high quality, do their job of showing places and characters. The "intro" was also a good idea (yey, positive note ^^;...)

Sorry if this sounds harsh but I do feel there's still a lot of work to do on this to make it fully enjoyable. Also, this opinion is mine and mine alone... I might not be the proper target for this game.

[Cybeat]

I apologize as I'll probably be very negative ^^;...

- 110mb ?!... I admit I didn't go through the whole thing but given the content I saw, there's no reason this should be 110mb. Is the music in WAV format maybe? I suggest you check all this and try to compress what can be compressed before packaging your game. And if it *is* compressed, then you're using too many music files for a single game I'd say. Try to see what's taking all those megabytes ^^;
- The story telling is very dull, sorry. The narration sounds like you're actually explaining your story to a friend instead of telling it to an audience (ex : "Ok, now the setting..."). I suggest choosing a more regular story telling method and sticking to it (either have one of the protagonists tell the story or some omniscient narrator).
Also try to add some "flow" to the narration. You use a lot of very short sentences, either for describing or for dialogues and it feels very robotic.

A few spoilery nitpicks :

- "Later captain"? I dunno, it feels out of place to be all familiar with someone of a higher rank. I'd understand a little familiarity but here it's like "yo buddy!" ^^;
- The robot manager is a *bit* obvious . If you were trying to make this a surprise, I'd suggest being a lot more subtle about it. Otherwise, well, it's fine as it is.
- The three customers were a bit of a "huh?!" moment for me. Their recorded message too.

I stopped when the protagonists solved the hotel problem. There's just too many stuff packed into this without much logical flow I think.

- The graphics, while not high quality, do their job of showing places and characters. The "intro" was also a good idea (yey, positive note ^^;...)

Sorry if this sounds harsh but I do feel there's still a lot of work to do on this to make it fully enjoyable. Also, this opinion is mine and mine alone... I might not be the proper target for this game.

Well, I understand. I knew my drawing quality wasn't good (I still suck at lineart) but I am practicing. The story, that's gonna change a bit when I focus on making the manga version. Each chapter will have more details. This game is only a small, not so high quality version of what I'm really trying to write. And the megabytes, I don't know why. They're mostly mp3, not wav. Wav is for sound affects.

[Samu-kun]

Mm... I think I'm going to be repeating most of what Monele said...

110 mb is kind of crazy large. People with an older internet connection probably won't be able to download something that huge.

There are some issues with the story telling as well. First, we have the obvious grammatical mistakes. You generally don't use ordinal numbers for numbers smaller than 10. Even then, the writing style is too informal. It sounds like a poorly translated, stripped down anime you'd find on Cartoon Network... o_o; The strange South Park-esque drawing style doesn't really help in this regard. And the fact that the main characters have dots for eyes kind of makes them look baffled all the time. In anime, when somebody looks like ._. it means they're confused or dazing off. The battle scene in the hotel was good, but could have used some improvement too. The attack effect looked like they were put together in Paint in a matter of 10 seconds. Like Monele, I lost interest by the time the hotel story arc was finished... There just isn't enough good things about the VN compelling me to stay for more than a couple of minutes.

But I guess we all have to start somewhere. ^_^ After a couple years of gaining experiance, you'll get alot better. Whenever I look at my earlier creations, I'm always ashamed of how bad they are. You gain experiance very quickly when making games. After a couple more releases, I'm sure you'll get much better. ^_^

[Cybeat]

Mm... I think I'm going to be repeating most of what Monele said...

110 mb is kind of crazy large. People with an older internet connection probably won't be able to download something that huge.

There are some issues with the story telling as well. First, we have the obvious grammatical mistakes. You generally don't use ordinal numbers for numbers smaller than 10. Even then, the writing style is too informal. It sounds like a poorly translated, stripped down anime you'd find on Cartoon Network... o_o; The strange South Park-esque drawing style doesn't really help in this regard. And the fact that the main characters have dots for eyes kind of makes them look baffled all the time. In anime, when somebody looks like ._. it means they're confused or dazing off. The battle scene in the hotel was good, but could have used some improvement too. The attack effect looked like they were put together in Paint in a matter of 10 seconds. Like Monele, I lost interest by the time the hotel story arc was finished... There just isn't enough good things about the VN compelling me to stay for more than a couple of minutes.

But I guess we all have to start somewhere. ^_^ After a couple years of gaining experiance, you'll get alot better. Whenever I look at my earlier creations, I'm always ashamed of how bad they are. You gain experiance very quickly when making games. After a couple more releases, I'm sure you'll get much better. ^_^

Dang.......I have to make a remake of this game somewhere, because the story is important to me. What's even more important is getting it right. The main characters, that's the way they look. I really don't know how I'll improve that. The megabytes, I don't know why. The story, I'll fix that.

[Kaihaku]

I'd download it and give it a try...but I' m one of those poor saps the others in this thread were talking about. 110 MB would take me all day to download, if even a whole day was enough. Since I get my internet through internet shops and cafes rather than at home, it's not really an option. :/

Could you offer a music-less version perhaps? I know elven relations did which was very helpful.

[Cybeat]

I'd download it and give it a try...but I' m one of those poor saps the others in this thread were talking about. 110 MB would take me all day to download, if even a whole day was enough. Since I get my internet through internet shops and cafes rather than at home, it's not really an option. :/

Could you offer a music-less version perhaps? I know elven relations did which was very helpful.

Yeah, let me put it up. What computer do you usually use? Mac, Linux or Windows?
I ask this because it'll save you time and it'll definately save my time.

[DaFool]

Well, 110mb isn't too bad (this coming from a dial-up user).
If there's anything else I can suggest after I play, I'll do so.
I know it's disheartening for a first-time maker to have less than positive comments after release.
Although aside from blatant bug-fixes of the game-crashing sort, it's very rare that improved versions of games come soon after the initial release. In that light, I would most likely consider this release as a complete game.

[Cybeat]

How is it rare? I mean, all I have to do is make another one with better stories graphics as if it was a completely new game. Am I wrong? And, thanks for understanding my pain.

[monele]

I know it's disheartening for a first-time maker to have less than positive comments after release.

It's what makes me feel bad about this ^^;... but I also think it's more helpful to be blunt about the current flaws so they can be fixed. The biggest problem now is that I don't know "how" to fix them. It's easy to say "this is wrong" but it's very hard to give actual examples of how to fix it ^^;;... Plus I'm no great storyteller myself so that won't help much ~_~;...

For graphics, the only advice is "train". And that means drawing and drawing and drawing... Of course, looking at tutorials and books helps, but nothing can replace years of drawing.
For writing, I don't even know if training is possible. I tend to think it has a lot to do with one's sensitivity... but things that could help is to read a lot of books/mangas to get a feeling of how to tell a good story. As for coming up with good stories, I wish I knew how it works ^^;

[Jake]

Before I say anything, I should note that I've not had a chance to look at the game yet - I'm totally short on time recently. :/ But the things here are fairly general things, all the same.

How is it rare? I mean, all I have to do is make another one with better stories graphics as if it was a completely new game. Am I wrong?

The problem is that the games industry has been trying to do just that for years, and they don't always succeed! In order to improve upon your previous work, you need to properly understand what it was that went wrong, and why it went wrong, with your first attempt. Then you need to be in a position where you can effectively eliminate the problems you've identified. Sometimes that isn't possible - you might be under time constraints that mean you can't do anything better than the last time, or you might be up against the limit of your skill in an area.

If it's the latter, though, then I'd add to what Monele said:

For drawing, I would advise paying attention to two things in particular. Although they're very general, broad subjects, so it's not really that narrow a focus: perspective, and anatomy of the human body.

Perspective is important because without at least a one-point perspective, scenes just look 'wrong', even if the observer can't tell you why they look odd. Learn where the horizon goes, which sides of which objects to show, and your backgrounds and scenery will suddenly look a lot more convincing.

Anatomy is important even for anime-styled drawing, but certainly for realism. There are some rules which stylised forms like manga ignore, but there are a set of fundamental rules which even manga complies with - it helps vastly to understand how the human form fits together before trying to draw it in whatever style you choose. Even Picasso was a good realist before moving into cubism.

For writing, I don't even know if training is possible.

Of course it's possible. At the very least:
Read a lot. No, more than that. Take every English (or local equivalent)/Creative Writing class you can. (I know in the English school system, 'English Language' has more creative writing than 'English Literature', which is all about analysing other people's work - but both are useful to an extent.) Write often, even if you don't write much that's very long, and get people to read and critique it. Listen to their critique.

[Cybeat]

I'll find out what went wrong. I'm going to do many things before I get back to my first story. I think my problem was. I released this game too early. I should've done short stories and projects before writing longer stories. About the critique thing, that was my other problem. Nobody read my work (I think it's beause it was 55 pages long), and nobody has ever judged my work. So, you guys are the first to ever judge this story.

[Jake]

About the critique thing, that was my other problem. Nobody read my work (I think it's beause it was 55 pages long), and nobody has ever judged my work. So, you guys are the first to ever judge this story.

A good critique is nothing like a judging, though - a judging assigns a score or worth to a work; a critique tries to highlight which bits were good and which bits weren't. From being judged, you find out whether someone liked your work, but usually don't learn anything about why they did or didn't enjoy it. A critique should hopefully inform you how to grow and improve your work, and really shouldn't have much to do with whether the critic actually liked it or not.

(Of course, having a fairly thick skin is very useful for getting good critique, because people find it easier to pick up on things they think could be improved than things which don't need work - and of course, it's generally more useful to the artist to hear about them, so critiques can often come across fairly negatively regardless of the amount of enjoyment the critic got from the thing in the first place.)

[Ren]

I'm mainly a drawer(and English isn't my first language) so I don't know how useful I can be but I played it until the ending...or sort of...

To be perfectly honest what Monele pointed out about the narration and some other things made me feel like you didn't put enough effort in this game(sorry, I know it sounds harsh but that's exactly how I felt).The intro idea is good, but you just put some images one after another without much thought about the effect they could have nor giving me a hint about the story.

The same applies to the story and game play, I like the general idea quite a lot but not the execution...I think it could have worked better if there was a "bigger" plot intertwined with the list of cases so that I wouldn't have felt so tempted to skip-skip-skip all the time.Same for the battles, I *had* to go through them to go on with the story but it was quite tedious, so much so it would have been better to just cut them all(or at least make them shorter, near the end they get way too long and I felt there was no logic behind any Game Over, it was more like a punishment.)

About the artwork, I'm probably the only one who liked the character design for the Neblins
Sure, you have to make a lot of improvements, but they can become something interesting.I'd suggest you take a peek at ZatchBell, he's weird too, but he's very interesting and well recognizable.You can elaborate more the way you want them to look.Maybe their bodies could resemble those of some marionettes, with very straight arms and legs and thin figures.You could put some variation for the eyes yet mantain some similarities to make them look like a race.

Also, please work on having a consistent style.
I can understand humans and Neblins are different but the way you draw girls is really Moe-ish while all the men that appear in the game have a much different style.

For the backgrounds:I concur with all the suggestions about perspective and what not.The key is not only practicing, you have to look at many reference images as well so that you can understand lighting, coloring and perspective.

All in all, I think it has quite some potential, you're just not ready yet...You need to control the force first D;.Work some more on your characterization and narration and try to start a bit smaller next time, you can do it!:D

[Cybeat]

I'm mainly a drawer(and English isn't my first language) so I don't know how useful I can be but I played it until the ending...or sort of...

To be perfectly honest what Monele pointed out about the narration and some other things made me feel like you didn't put enough effort in this game(sorry, I know it sounds harsh but that's exactly how I felt).The intro idea is good, but you just put some images one after another without much thought about the effect they could have nor giving me a hint about the story.

The same applies to the story and game play, I like the general idea quite a lot but not the execution...I think it could have worked better if there was a "bigger" plot intertwined with the list of cases so that I wouldn't have felt so tempted to skip-skip-skip all the time.Same for the battles, I *had* to go through them to go on with the story but it was quite tedious, so much so it would have been better to just cut them all(or at least make them shorter, near the end they get way too long and I felt there was no logic behind any Game Over, it was more like a punishment.)

About the artwork, I'm probably the only one who liked the character design for the Neblins
Sure, you have to make a lot of improvements, but they can become something interesting.I'd suggest you take a peek at ZatchBell, he's weird too, but he's very interesting and well recognizable.You can elaborate more the way you want them to look.Maybe their bodies could resemble those of some marionettes, with very straight arms and legs and thin figures.You could put some variation for the eyes yet mantain some similarities to make them look like a race.

Also, please work on having a consistent style.
I can understand humans and Neblins are different but the way you draw girls is really Moe-ish while all the men that appear in the game have a much different style.

For the backgrounds:I concur with all the suggestions about perspective and what not.The key is not only practicing, you have to look at many reference images as well so that you can understand lighting, coloring and perspective.

All in all, I think it has quite some potential, you're just not ready yet...You need to control the force first D;.Work some more on your characterization and narration and try to start a bit smaller next time, you can do it!:D

Thanks for some positive feedbacks. I'll work on everything, but Neblins, I don't know. I'm going to remake this game after a few projects. I can't let this story die. I hope everyone understands.