A Massive, Collaborative Visual Novel-- with a twist!

[pinqo]

That's perfect! And no worries; this is less about quantity and more about actually putting something out there, regardless of length.

[TheJerminator15]

Here's a Google Drive link to the VN story i've done. It's around 3000 words long. You should be able to download it and see if it's up to scratch. If you need descriptions of the character personalities I can also do that for you if you wish later.

Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzJ4E ... 09RUEREYVE

[Divona]

@pinqo
If I break down the script correctly, here is the list of the characters that need art:
1. Saya Sakamoto - a private investigator
2. Katherine - Lady Katherine of the Order of Dragon Slayers
3. Andy

Andy and Hiroshi always in first person, right? Or Andy is in third person?

CG:
1. Hiroshi wake up and find Katherine.

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[Shapes and colours mesh together in an incomprehensible mess.]
[Taking a few minutes to right my vision, I come across the most confusing sight.]
[A...cosplayer?]
Hiroshi: Uuuhh, don't tell me I passed out somewhere.
Hiroshi: I don't even remember drinking last night.
Hiroshi: Who are you?
----: Huh?
[Righting my position in an attempt to expel the remaining fatigue from my body, I focus my attention on this cosplayer.]
----: Oh, my sincerest apologies.
[Dusting off her costume and standing up, the girl lends a hand.]
[Gladly taking it, she turns out to be far physically stronger than anticipated as she pulls me up with relative ease.]

Locations:
1. EXT. Crowed Street
2. EXT. Dirty Alley
3. INT. Cafe or Diner?
4. EXT. Front of Building
5. INT. Corridoor to Elevator
6. INT. Outside Elevator
7. INT. Inside Elevator
8. INT. Straight Corridoor
9. INT. Front of the Door at the end of the hall (with Intercom)
10. INT. Saya's Office
11. EXT. Mandragora Plains

@TheJerminator15
- Would be nice to have short profile describes the features of these characters, so pinqo would have some direction of where to start with the drawing.
- Also, I'm rather confusing with the locations. Could you add in a note of where the characters are for each scene? I also have no idea in which country the story is set in. I'm also afraid that it's quite a lot of locations to cover... going to be tough to find all those BG arts for all those places...too ambition for the time we have left to complete, really. Unless we throw the word quality out of the window. Would it be possible to reduce down the number of locations?

Possible scenes to be cut or shorten:
1. Andy journey to Saya's office. -- this would reduce down at least 3-5 locations.

Collaboration:
** If anyone have some creative common BG arts that match with the location described in the script, feel free to post it here to help us out. Cheers!

[TheJerminator15]

Ah my bad, I completely forgot to add in those to the story. Also, I added description due to the fact that we didn't have many BGs but I thought it would make transitioning between scenes easier, such as we could still show the street but the description was describing the journey to her office in high detail so the player could get a decent image in their head as they travel between BGs. I can easily cut it out however (in the updated version there are markers showing that you can cut whatever you wish out of that scene to fit your available BGs).

Here is the updated link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzJ4E ... npiT3gzTHM

The location wasn't really thought out. I aimed for a quite generic Western city due to the resource limitation so nothing quite specific, I also tried to highlight this by how Hiroshi was the only distinctly Japanese name in the character roster. As for Hiroshi, as you can imagine he got transported to a fantasy world which can then lead to wacky adventures in future chapters by other writers.

As for the character descriptions, i'll put them right here.

Andy is a typically fun loving guy who despite his age regularly goes out and tries to be a ladykiller (though this usually backfires). Since he and Hiroshi are long time buddies, he always loves to take advantage of Hiroshi's competitive streak to drag him along on many adventures back in their world and as such has many stories he loves to regale. He's very much a bubbly guy who loves nothing more than lazing around and having fun, which is also why his determination to find his friend is even more surprising given his laidback attitude and his cheeky demeanour.

Saya is a pretty cold character. Since she's a private investigator, she likes to keep her distance from all clients and from the outside looks like a genius due to her impressive skills of deduction. Internally however, she's quite forthcoming and warm with people she is intimate with, even cracking a joke or two with them. Her skills of deduction are also linked to an incredibly overactive imagination and crazy work ethic which helps her to quickly think outside of the box and look at avenues not typically looked at. She has quite an interest in the occult as well since it can help satiate her active mind.

Katherine is a duty bound officer who despite all attempts to act professional is typically quite clumsy and endearing to those around her. Related to nobles within the world Hiroshi finds himself in, her naive attitude to many situations and high status leave her easily tricked, something Hiroshi likes to exploit upon their travels for his comedic advantage. She also finds it hard to deal with high pressure situations (as shown when she began speaking like a commoner when panicking as Hiroshi would not awaken). Her love for expensive dragon meat is said to be the most terrifying thing about her.

Hiroshi looks quite out of it for a full time employee at such a prestigious company. However this apathetic appearance, his dull, monotonous and bored tone as well as his poker face do nothing but betray people with a false impression. Quite sociable and easily able to handle himself in such situations, Hiroshi's ability to always find a joke in everything is both a gift and a curse. He looks serious but is the exact opposite. As soon as he is finished with his responsibilities, this hard working and single minded man becomes an incredibly competitive prankster with a gift for sarcasm. His arrival in a new world does nothing but confuse and interest him with many new and strange situations, however this confusion only causes him to become even more sarcastic and less inclined to be pulled along. As someone who works incredibly hard but plays harder, he is seen as a dark horse to many when they first learn more of him. Typically the straight man between him and Katherine, his deflective sarcasm and staright-laced attitude to his new adventures make him appear as what he really is. A normal man who has been wrapped up in an incredibly crazy adventure.

I hope this is sufficient, I don't really want to go into incredible detail on the characters as I want future collaborators to be able to interpret and twist the characters however they want, which I feel really shows the point of ths project. Anything else that is required please don't hesitate to ask.

[Divona]

@TheJerminator15
Thanks! This is now look do able. I'll start putting this script to Ren'Py.
What is the name of the story?

@pinqo
Any notes from you on the characters? Would it be possible to have the characters art by 23rd? It's going to be tight, but start with quick sketches and I'll work on that while you do the detail one to replace the sketches on the last day. Do the best you can with the time we have. Let me know if there will be issue.

@pytom
In what time zone are we working on?

[кролик девушка]

Umm how is this possable .the songs will be too short and two musical. I feel. Likr the reader will read fast the music will be cut.

[Divona]

Umm how is this possable .the songs will be too short and two musical. I feel. Likr the reader will read fast the music will be cut.

It's a matter of using fade in and out at the start and end of the scene. How fast the reader would read is rather subjective, and shouldn't be affecting on the music in general.

From what I've read, many scene doesn't require background music. It seem the only scene that really need the BGM is in Saya's office. What would be your take on that?

UPDATE: All narrative and dialogues script are done in Ren'Py. The rest is about putting images, sounds, music together.

[TheJerminator15]

I didn't really think of a name for the story in all honesty haha.

[кролик девушка]

This is challening... the streets go from one place and another. Office i do not know what office? Do you mean policeman organization or privite room?

I need a theme.

[Divona]

I didn't really think of a name for the story in all honesty haha.
@TheJerminator15 - I'm currently using "Massive" as a code name...are we all happy to go with that...? Still have time to come up with name, though.

I need a theme.
@кролик девушка - Yup. It is challenging. Especially with the limited time we have. For the scene of Andy moving from places to places, I don't think that it need any BGM at all. Maybe at the cafe that he stop by, if you're keen.

Saya's office is describes in the script as:

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A leaning tower of pizza boxes decorate a corner of the room, paperwork has been piled into battalions on the person's desk, ready for any attack coming their way.

She is a private investigator, which is pretty much the person you go out and hired to find something or someone and collect information and such. Not belong to the police, but independent detective.

I don't know how you normally work as composer, but if the scene music doesn't work, you could go for the character theme instead. The Jerminator15 describes Saya as:

Saya is a pretty cold character. Since she's a private investigator, she likes to keep her distance from all clients and from the outside looks like a genius due to her impressive skills of deduction. Internally however, she's quite forthcoming and warm with people she is intimate with, even cracking a joke or two with them. Her skills of deduction are also linked to an incredibly overactive imagination and crazy work ethic which helps her to quickly think outside of the box and look at avenues not typically looked at. She has quite an interest in the occult as well since it can help satiate her active mind.

As of now we don't have either sketches or the background art for this scene, yet. So it will all have to come from what image you have in your head from reading this character profile, and what the scene has been described in the script. If we wait until then I'm afraid it will be too late to have original music composed for.

Let's go with what you have in mind, and lets the randomness guide you. We just running out of time to actually do it properly, so we'll have to embrace the element of surprise. It's challenging being the first team running.

Meanwhile, I'll be scouting creative common resources as backup.

Collaborators
** If anyone want to help finding the creative common arts / sounds / or anything to help out with the project, feel free to drop by the link to such resources. Cheers!

You can read the scenario script here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzJ4E ... npiT3gzTHM

[pinqo]

@Divona: wahhh-- sorry for not being responsive for a few days!! i'll definitely get something whipped up tomorrow;; 2 college girls and 1 mc (boy) correct? i'll try to read the script tonight!

thank you for all your help in organization. ; w ;

does anyone want to make a discord or skype chat to keep things more organized?

[Divona]

@Divona: wahhh-- sorry for not being responsive for a few days!! i'll definitely get something whipped up tomorrow;; 2 college girls and 1 mc (boy) correct? i'll try to read the script tonight!

thank you for all your help in organization. ; w ;

does anyone want to make a discord or skype chat to keep things more organized?

2 girls 1 boy (not mc, probably optional as well). I don't think they're college girls age, but I'll leave that to you to interprets the script.

1. Saya
2. Katherine
3. Andy (optional)

TheJerminator15 did post the character descriptions here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40732&start=30#p431857

Would you be able to do the facial expression also, pinqo?

Also, I'll see about making Discord channel. Real time communication surely is a much better way to organizing this.

[Divona]

The time is up, also need to get back to the main project, so I will post here the full source code of the project so far for the next team to pick it up and continue on the work as they see fit.

You can download it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6jMHh ... sp=sharing

I suggest that you take it to it own WIP page and continue there, instead of Creator Discussion. I will have to get back to the main project now, so wish for the best to the next teams!

Also I'll leave here of what went wrong, and how it should be done better...

1. Communication - It was a mistake of organising the team through forum, which is much slower to get responses than setup a Discord channel or use Slack to communicate with the team. Especially for this project with short deadline. Fast communication and responses is the key to get things done.

2. Time Management - I should have remember back when doing 48 Hour Filmmaking, we only had one Friday night to plan and write 7 minutes script, while arrange the locations, wardrobe, props. With writer on hand, we communicate what we can or cannot do based on the resources we have (locations, wardrobe, props, etc). Shoot on Saturday, and edit on Sunday morning, export and hand in the work by evening. For this project, I missed all that, and ended up with script that would requires for more than one artist to handle. The writing time could have been shorter also, as the art and music would need to start as soon as possible, especially in the way we organised and communicated. So in the end, the art has not been complete as planed. I also forgot about the time zone differences, which 'cause such delay to response on the forum.

Those are two main things that came to mind, that could have change the outcome. If anyone who have followed on the journey and spot the mistakes that we have made, feel free to leave it here for the next team, so they can avoid making the same mistake again.

[TheJerminator15]

Agreed on that. I also have to hold my hands up and admit that whilst I did manage to finish the story on schedule by when I said, by not keeping in communication with the others whilst working on it it led to resource problems with the background. The writing time could also have been shorter which is my fault entirely.

I'm still open to the idea and I am glad we seem to have actually made more progress than a lot of the other projects which attempted something similar. However Discord or Skype would definitely be a requirement for any team wishing to take up the mantle so to speak. Until i actually posted the script and afterwards there were points in time where the forum was silent for multiple days.

As some advice it may also be prudent for anyone attempting it in the future to have a general manager over the project who spearheads communication between the writers, artists and such so a strict schedule can be kept. It would keep everyone up to date on the teams.

In hindsight as well, I should have posted character descriptions before completing or working on the script. That would have given pleny of extra time for the artist(s) to work on designing the characters.

[Kinsman]

So for the first few days, I'll do character art for Part 1 while I wait for the script of Part 2.
(EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm fine with that, and I like that I'll get the chance to do character design.)

Edel, just let me know when you've got something. Since I'm handling coding, I'll also handle file management for the project - you can either give me a general script or a more specific one with visual direction, and I'll translate it into Ren'py.

(You might need to give me a general script, just because I'm not sure what the list of sprites will be until I make them.)