SoulSet [Mystery/Romance/Fantasy] (GxB, GxG) DEMO AVAILABLE!

[Nayru774]

@KairuKyun - Added! Thank you for letting me know and a huge thank you for bringing such a website to life in the first place! This is a great initiative for all indie Visual Novels.

[reist]

Hey there!

I just played the demo and was intrigued, so you've got another backer

The interactions and surprise flashbacks were really nice. Unless you'd like to prove me wrong, I'm going to hold onto the theory that that painting is 100% authentic, and soul-linking with a dragon does some interesting things to one's longevity. I'm guessing I'll have to play the full game to find out.


There are some things I noticed in the demo that bugged me...

You reverse sprites to make them look left and right. It takes a bit to notice, but is it possible to add the reverse in scenes with young Mariko? Using the same one with her hurt arm switching sides is painful to watch.

Is it also possible to drop the "thou" and "thy"? Going by some dictionaries and some middle-ages fiction with the authors researching things and leaving notes (tons of notes), the meaning for "thou" is:
"archaic dialect refers to the person addressed: used mainly in familiar address or to a younger person or inferior"
"You" was the respectful phrase and Hollywood ruined it for everyone.
This also made my reaction to the first scene in the demo go: "You're dying and just insulted the scary necromancer. Way to go, dragon dude!"

And for last, some spelling/wording issues:
"and since you kindly point" - "pointed"
"pretty pretty sure"
"It's not like have much choice" - the I's missing
"...Could you stop talking..." - the font got smaller in that line
"Both my name and family name is" - shouldn't this be "are"?
"loosing up" - "loosening up"?

[Nayru774]

@reist - Thank you kindly! I'm glad you enjoyed the demo enough to support us! =^^=

I'm also happy to hear that you liked the interactions and surprise flashbacks. As for the painting... it's probably authentic, but who knows. ;3 I can't really say anything more than that.

You're also not the first person to point out the reverse sprite thing, and the "thou" speech. While I would still want to fix the sprite problem, I don't know if I'll be able to find enough time for it at this point, and I'd rather pay attention to more crucial details that appear further in the game, but I'll definitely keep this in mind. As for the "dragon speech," I think it's time to admit that that kind of approach was a bad idea and needlessly complicates things. That's the feedback I've been getting, at least, so I think I shall indeed drop it. It really doesn't help that neither Mori nor I are native English speakers and wanting to do something like this turned out to be a bit too much for us.

Also, thanks for pointing out the grammar mistakes and typos! This is what happens when the same person writing the script is also responsible for spellcheck and it didn't help that I've read everything over 50+ times. My beta-tester friends also missed a lot of those.

Either way, we're giving the development of SoulSet our very best and we're glad to have you on board! Expect our monthly update sometime later today!

[Nayru774]

Development Progress for May!

First of all, we’ll be closing our InDemand service at the end of this month. So, to anyone out there that would still like to get the game at a discounted price, now is your last chance!

Other than that, we have some exciting news to share with you in this month’s update! Perhaps some of you still remember those amazing Yvonne and Apris fanarts that we posted in one of our previous updates.

We’re proud to announce that Marcianek will be joining us with the development of SoulSet as a third party member!



“HI I’M HERE TO DRAW TREES! ”

We’re glad to have you on board, Marcianek! o7

Marcianek will be helping us out with exterior backgrounds in the form of commission work (we won’t be spoiling her any parts of the story for the time being, since she’s also one of our trusted beta-testers for the full version of the game).

Expect to see some of Marcianek’s work in our next update!

Meanwhile, Nayru managed to finish all of the character sprites needed for the game! Woo! Along with the pajama and towel versions, in the end, we have… over 30 sprites?! That sure is a lot of sprites! And to think that initially, we planned for SoulSet to have only around 10 of them…

Here are two additional ones for Mariko as a teaser for your viewing pleasure.



Busy with sprites, I didn’t get around to write much this month. But now that my part of art-related work is done, I can fully give myself to the script, so further updates in that regard should be more fruitful from now on. Either way, I’ve been also writing a bit here and there, so here’s SoulSet’s script progress up to date:

- Marco’s Bad Route: 95% done, at 16k words.
- Yvonne’s Bad Route: 90% done, at 15k words.
- Apris’ Bad Route: 50% done, at 11k words.
- Shira’s Bad Route: 35% done, at 10k words.
- Shirr’s Bad Route: 35% done, at 10k words.
Prologue + all other routes: 18k words.
Total word count overall: 80k words.

Mori’s also been continuing his work on interior backgrounds, and as of today, we have only 3 of those left to go. Once those are done, Mori will be getting to CGs - and even though we didn’t manage to reach our stretch goal for those, we’ll still see how many we’ll be able to work on and include in the final version of the game.

Lastly, we have some more fanart to share with you!



Mariko & Mutik by Lawenda



Feathor by Marcianek

Thank you so much, you guys are amazing!

See you next month!

[ciggydel]

Hello Nayru774

For indie devs starting out, I like to think of a VN creation process as a triangle with its three vertices being writing, art, and marketing.

Art-wise, I can tell from your first post that a lot of work has been placed in this area. Kudos to the sprite/bg artist!

On writing, which frankly is what really drives a VN, I cannot say much because I haven't played the demo. I label myself as stuck in the 'Reply' stage of this trail: Browse > Skim > Reply > Play Demo > Buy VN. The reason to that will be further explained below...

On marketing, I feel that the first post I read could use a little more detail. The premise itself is widely used, so I feel that you need something 'special', something 'different'. I feel the artwork dominates much of the first post (I have to scroll quite a bit to read). I don't think you need so many images to prove your point that the artwork is enchanting (it is, I assure you).

I sincerely hope my comments will help you and encourage you with this journey (I am seriously reading your post!)

-ciggy

[Nayru774]

@ciggydel - Hello! I guess that triangle is mostly on my shoulders, since I'me the one doing the writing, character sprites and marketing (although taking care of PR-related stuff is so time consuming that I definitely don't spend as much time in that field as I'd like to). Either way, thank you for your kind words!

Like it's been already mentioned, the demo needs some polishing before it can make it to the full version of the game. Nevertheless, if you do get around to playing it, I hope you'll like it!

As for our marketing part and descriptions, I'll definitely keep that in mind and see if I can change them for the better. You're right that we could use some modifications before the full release.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts! We're always open to feedback because oftentimes it does help a lot!

[Nayru774]

Development Progress for June!

A small reminder: our fanart contest ends on the 31st of June. If you’d still like to take part and try winning some of our goodies, now’s your last chance! Let your creativity flow! (Of course, we’ll love receiving fanarts after the deadline just as much!)

In case you missed it, here are the details: [SoulSet Fanart Contest]

As always, here’s our current script progress:
- Marco’s Bad Route: 100% done, at 16k words. ☆
- Yvonne’s Bad Route: 100% done, at 15k words. ☆
- Apris’ Bad Route: 100% done, at 14k words. ☆
- Shira’s Bad Route: 70% done, at 12k words.
- Shirr’s Bad Route: 35% done, at 10k words.
Prologue + all other routes: 18k words.
Total word count overall: 85k words.

Writing the script hasn’t been going as smoothly and quickly as I wanted it to this past month, but I suppose this is what happens when you have that kind of plot where you need to be careful what every character says or does. Hopefully the plot bunnies will be more generous in this upcoming month. *throws some sparkles at them*

I’ve been also playing around with the GUI in-between my script-writing madness. These are all just mock ups for now, but I figured I’d share. How do you guys like it?





MstMori has been continuing work on interior backgrounds. Would you like to see another one of those? Of course you do. What’s better than a cozy bedroom you don’t know if you’ll survive the night in.



We also promised to share with you some of Marcianek’s work in this update, so here it is! Behold some insane trees and bushes!



SoulSet is slowly coming together, but we still have a ton of work left to do! While we can’t say anything definite just yet, we hope we’ll be able to finish the full game’s beta build by September.

See you next month!

[J-Ray]

Characters and Backgrounds look beautiful!
Going to try the demo

[Nayru774]

@J-Ray - I just replied to your PM. Thank you for giving the demo a try and thank you for such wonderful, constructive feedback! Cheers!

[Nayru774]

Update #25 - Development Progress for July!

This month turned out to be more of a coding month than a script-writing month for me.

After countless, sleepless nights of trying to figure things out, I'm proud to say that I managed to put together and code most of the GUI for SoulSet together - our Start Menu, Save/Load screens, Settings, Yes/No prompts, Galleries and a Log/Text History screen (in which I still need to figure out how to delete the default Ren'py menu, because I swear it's not supposed to be there). I also managed to add an animated, pulsing icon for indicating that the text can be advanced. You can't see the animation of it on the screens, but believe me, it's blinking!



And while I already mentioned Galleries - SoulSet is officially going to have a total 3 of those. You'll be able to access a CG Gallery, a Background Gallery and an Ending Gallery, which should be ideal for keeping track of the endings you've seen and how many more you still have left to witness. (All of the art and endings will unlock only after stumbling upon them in the game, of course.)

I also converted all of the character sprites into their .png forms (drawing them is one thing! Saving them on your drive for proper use is another!) Along with all of the sizes, outfits and different expressions, it ended up being over 2000 files. After coding them into the script, along with their blinking animations, it turned out to be almost 15k lines of code for defining the sprites alone. For reference, that's ¾ of the size of our demo. Something at the back of my mind is telling me that I might have overdone it a bit...

Speaking of sprites - we decided to change the sizes of the default ones a little bit. In the demo, the characters were shown from the waist up; now we'll be able to see a portion of their thighs. This decision was mainly influenced by the addition of towel sprites, since it seemed like a waste when those were cut-off too high.



In terms of GUI, all that's left for me to do is design and code custom choice buttons and then add all of the Gallery items, once I place them in the actual script. I didn't manage to make much progress with the script itself while I was busy with coding, but I'm already on 90% of Shira's Bad Route at this point of writing.

MstMori and Marcianek have been continuing work on interior and exterior backgrounds, respectively. We decided to re-draw some backgrounds from the demo to keep things more consistent with the newer versions for the full version of the game, so look forward to those!



Lastly, our dear supporter and songwriter Teofilo has been to Anime Messe Berlin this past month and he commissioned some wonderful people for SoulSet fanarts! Thank you so much, Teo, this made us really happy!

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[Nayru774]

Here's our Development Progress for September!

This month's update comes a little earlier than usual. We have things and news to share with you that we figured we didn't want to wait with anymore.

Most important of all, we need to address our release date. SoulSet had a tentative release date set for September, but as it stands, it is highly unlikely that we'll be able to make it happen till the end of this month. At the moment of writing, we have around 70% of the whole script and coding done (a few of our friends are beta-testing a 'bad route' build as we speak) and everything else is done at around 90%. The goal is closer with every single day.

However, instead of giving keywords such as "late October" or "early November," we will simply move SoulSet's release date to Q4 2016. We will continue working hard, and once we're finally ready, we will let you know!
We are sorry for the delay and hope for your understanding.

Now, onto more cheerful things! We've come a long way during these ~15 months of development. Looking back at our demo, we figured it's horribly outdated by now. As of today, we're making an updated "Prologue Demo 2.1" of SoulSet available, along with an updated Itch.io site!

https://nobreadstudio.itch.io/soulset

The most notable changes in the demo include:
- a new, custom GUI
- change of narrative (from 3rd to 1st person)
- modifications/cuts of some dialogues and descriptions
- re-drawing and addition of backgrounds
- re-drawing and addition of icons
- fixed and modified character sprites

The overall plot and atmosphere stays the same, so if you've played the old demo, there are no surprises in that regard. The new demo simply shows what you can expect of the full version of the game more adequately than the old one did.

If you clicked the link, you probably also noticed some major changes in our descriptions. We can finally make it official: Feathor is now also a romance option in the game. But that still doesn't add up to 7 characters, does it? Hmm...

We shall end this update with more exciting news. We also have a new trailer to show you, courtesy of @Amy_oai!

https://youtu.be/_vYZNwg1FXU

We hope you enjoy it!

Steam's Store page will be put up closer to our release date.

Thank you for sticking around, guys! You'll hear from us sometime soon again!

[Nayru774]

Hi, guys! I bring you some good news with this month’s update. Here's our Development Progress for October!

SoulSet’s script is now 100% done! Some re-reading and possible editing should still be in order, but the biggest chunk of work is finally complete! Woo!

Some of you probably remember how we promised that SoulSet will have over 10 possible endings when we released our first demo. That number rose to 15 when we released our updated version a little over than a month ago.

Well, now I can make it official. You guys are in for a treat, because the full version of SoulSet is going to have over 20 possible endings!

Did I overdo it? I probably did… I regret nothing.

Now, let’s talk some more about our release date. It took me around 3 days to code a single bad route into the game. Considering the ‘True Routes’ are a tad longer and there’s basically 7 of them… That should make it around 3 weeks to code. We still need to get the necessary paperwork done, get our Steam Store page ready, implement achievements into the game, and do a bit of testing before we can finally release the game to the public, of course. But if everything goes well, we are going to release SoulSet in the month of November. We will do our very best to make that happen! And we will keep you updated, of course.

I will also give you guys a more definitive word count as far as the script goes once I implement it into the game. It seems that the doc files I work in give different numbers than Ren'Py does, and considering Ren'Py lowers them down, I will consider those numbers the 'true’ ones.

Take care and see you around, guys!

[Zelan]

Oh my gosh, 20 endings? That's devotion right there.

I've been stalking this thread for months now, so it's awesome to see this VN come close to completion! ^_^ Congratulations on making it so far.

[Googaboga]

Congrats on finishing the script! I don't know when I'll be able to, but I definitely intend to get this sometime :].

[Nayru774]

@Zelan @Googaboga - Thank you for the kind words! =^^= I'm glad you're looking forward to it!

And yes, I definitely overdid myself with this project, especially for a first serious one. ;0 But I regret nothing and I'm hoping all the variations in plot-lines will be something people can have fun with while exploring the game. Writing the whole script was a very satisfying experience for me, at least.