[WIP GxB] Machina Jewel | first post updated 7/20/2011+poll!

[Camille]

Just read the new character profiles and I can tell this is definitely going to be a game where I have to complete every guy's path! *~*

Thanks! *_* Is there one guy in particular that you're leaning towards (at least for your first playthrough)? My friend and I are really curious about which guy players will prefer.

Some quotes from chapters one and two~

Lucien: How many times have I explained this concept to you? I recapitulated the concepts not even half an hour ago and you've forgotten already.
> CHOICE: "Well, perhaps if you were a better teacher..."
Charlene*: Well, perhaps if you were a better teacher, I'd understand this easier.
Lucien: Hmph. I have tutored 5-year-old children who learn faster than you do.

- - - -

Tetsuyoshi: I-it's not as if I'm afraid of those things, you understand! It's just that I'm not used to them...
> CHOICE: Tease him about technology.
Charlene*: Not being used to them is one thing, but saying that a train will "carry its passengers to the underworld" is ano--
Tetsuyoshi: Aaaaah!! Enough of my embarrassing past, already!

- - - -

Alonzo: There's no time. It's not safe here, so you're going to have to leave now. Don't worry, I'm in contact with Azhar. We'll figure something out and let you know, all right?
> CHOICE: "But what if you're in danger, too?"
Charlene*: But what if you're in danger now, too? I don't want you getting hurt on my behalf! I hardly even know you!
Alonzo: That's kind of you, miss. Don't worry about me... Nobody's getting rid of Captain Alonzo that easily.

- - - -

Azhar: I have a question for you, little duchess. It may seem strange, but I want you to bear with me: what do you think the most important thing in life is?
> CHOICE: Love.
Charlene*: I think love is the most important thing...
Azhar: Hmm~? Little duchess, do you even know what love is?
Charlene*: I... I know enough about it to know it's important!

[dubunny]

Lucien was the most visually appealing to me at first /shallow and I love the fact he's sarcastic with close ones. Ok, just read his quote and I love him even more!

Azhar has me intrigued and I love the mystery surrounding his origins. He's not the most visually appealing out of the men for me, but I'm excited for his path to find out more about him.

Tetsuyoshi sounds adorable! I look forward to seeing him embarrassed! I have a bit of a thing for male characters who are awkward around girls so I'm sure his path will please me! He's also gorgeous. Dark hair is my favourite!

So it probably sounds like he's the guy I like best but at the moment I'm actually leaning towards Alonzo. What can I say, he's a pirate!! Jack Sparrow has influenced me ;_; He sounds like he's going to be really fun, and he has a parrot! How could I not love him? I love how he looks as well. The beads and ponytail and that open shirt And not gonna lie, his quote made me internally squee a little!

So yep, Alonzo is my favourite right now (with Tetsuyoshi close behind). I'll probably either play his path first in excitement or leave him until last.

I'm loving the female characters too! One of my best friends is called Sabine so I think I'm going to be biased towards that character haha.

I hope that helped!

[Camille]

Your comments were super helpful and very motivational, somehow! XD So thank you~ After asking a lot of people, it seems like Alonzo is the clear favorite at the moment... We'll have to work hard to make sure that the other guys are lovable, too! ;D

[Snowflower]

Perhaps this has been answered before, but demo soon?

[Camille]

Well, none of the sprites are done yet. ;_; So I'm afraid the game would look kind of silly with our placeholders in there. XD But if people are interested, I can make a demo containing just the first chapter of the game?

[Snowflower]

That would be magical. Thank you

[RemnantDream]

Thanks! *_* Is there one guy in particular that you're leaning towards (at least for your first playthrough)? My friend and I are really curious about which guy players will prefer.

I'm leaning towards Lucien or Azhar right now.. but mostly Azhar. I like foreign guys. And piano players. <3_<3

[dubunny]

I'm glad I could be of use! And I don't think you'll have to worry, all the characters sound like they'll be interesting and loveable ^^

Playing a demo would be amazing but I don't mind waiting for finished sprites either. Good things take time

[Camille]

Okay, we've decided to hold off on releasing a demo until the artwork is more polished. Hopefully we can get a demo released soon--thanks for your patience. XD

Also I'm glad Azhar and Lucien are getting love, too. Azhar is my personal favorite. (but I don't think it's obvious in the script or anything) Alonzo is the artist's favorite, which explains why he gets such a nice placeholder sprite and was the subject of our first test CG. xD

[Camille]

Today I finally finished (for the most part) our in-game GUI.



The hand mirror and pearls, when clicked, take you to the stats menu. The envelope takes you to the letters menu. (letters and photos fall out of the envelope when you hover over it) Here's a super sneak preview of the stats menu and letter system.

By the way, we are not going to have any sort of affection points menu. After a lot of thought, we decided that we drop enough hints throughout the story (also in the letters) as to whose route you're on/close to being on that having an affection menu seems kind of redundant. However, because the change in stats is a lot more subtle (one of the heroine's lines could have up to 8 different possibilities in the same situation depending on her stats, but you wouldn't know that unless you played the game a bunch of times), we decided to throw in a characteristics menu so you could see what stat points your heroine is racking up.



Whoops, I seem to have taken the cap before I bolded all of the stat names. Oh well, this is the general idea of what it looks like. I wanted to set up some sort of percentage, but it seems like Python won't let me divide one variable by another variable, so that's out the window. After the art's done, an image of Charlene will appear on the right with her expression and/or pose corresponding with which stat(s) are highest. (ie: she's wearing spectacles if her intelligence is highest)

The stat points themselves ultimately don't affect the endings, though, they just change how you go about getting there. For example, if you have a lot of deception points, in some dialogues you may gain the option to lie, which rewards you with different affection points or stat point additions, depending. But having a negative amount of kindness wouldn't give you a bad ending, it just means that your Charlene is not the nicest person in the world... And if you keep picking options that decrease kindness, chances are you're probably not going to be winning over Alonzo or Tetsuyoshi anytime soon. Just a hint! But if their affection points are high enough, it doesn't really matter how kind your heroine is... If that makes sense.

This is different from a lot of other dating sims where you actually NEED like 50 intelligence points to win over X guy. You don't NEED 50 intelligence points to win over Lucien, it's just that the intelligence answers tend to also raise his affection. (ie: int + 2, lucien_points +2) Since not all intelligent answers are automatically Lucien affection boosters and vice versa (ie: sarcasm + 2, lucien_points + 3), it's perfectly possible to get Lucien's ending and not have a super high amount of intelligence. It's just a bit harder to do so.



Aaaand letters! This window looks a little bare-bones at the moment (haha especially in comparison to the stats menu) so we might be spicing it up a bit later, but this is the general idea. Throughout the story (depending on decisions you make), the heroine will receive letters from people. These are meant to help showcase the other characters' personalities more so that it's a bit more plausible if/when Charlene falls in love with one of the guys, but the letters also sometimes contain important information that you can be quizzed on (ie: if a letter mentions Tetsuyoshi's birthday and you then forget his birthday, he will be very sad) so it's important to check them every once in a while.

I'm also thinking about implementing a system where you can actually respond (or choose from a few responses, anyway) to the letters and thus receive replies based on your responses. I've coded the framework for it, but the actual implementation is a whole lot of extra work so I'm not entirely sure about it yet...

[babyfish]

I'm loving the UI interface here, especially the antique feel created by the colors and texture. The art is absolutely beautiful as well, and I do look forward to see how such an intriguing plot will unfold.

[EternalDream]

The GUI looks so nice *w*
I love the colors used here... I could stare at it forever and not get tired of them xDD

[Arcanum]

That GUI is seriously awesome… It's a game so pretty to look at. And while it's pretty, I also admire how much effort you put into the content. That point system that allows you to get other answers looks seriously complicated - but so awesome! It makes the game really special, because then you can play with your own personality.

[Camille]

I'm loving the UI interface here, especially the antique feel created by the colors and texture. The art is absolutely beautiful as well, and I do look forward to see how such an intriguing plot will unfold.

Aww, thanks! I was really going for an antique feel, so I'm glad that that was conveyed properly. I'm sure the plot will unfold in ways that a lot of people probably won't expect, so you'll all have to be on your toes. (:

The GUI looks so nice *w*
I love the colors used here... I could stare at it forever and not get tired of them xDD

Hehe, considering how much reading you're going to have to be doing in this game, we wanted to make an interface that would be easy on the eyes, you know? XD So I'm glad you think so.

That GUI is seriously awesome… It's a game so pretty to look at. And while it's pretty, I also admire how much effort you put into the content. That point system that allows you to get other answers looks seriously complicated - but so awesome! It makes the game really special, because then you can play with your own personality.

Thank you! This comment made me feel really happy since I've been feeling like a lot of my scripting efforts are pretty much going to go unnoticed to people who only play through the game once. ;_; I hope that by adding a lot of variations to the dialogue and script in general, it'll encourage people to play the game more to see what other secrets and little tidbits they can unlock/see. I'm also planning on adding sort of a "secret scene gallery" with some special behind-the-scenes scenes of the guys and other minor characters (ie: scenes that don't involve the heroine directly, monologues, a day in the life of ____ guy) that unlock as you play through the game.

I've also decided to indeed add the letter reply system. It won't be possible for you to personally reply to ALL letters, however. For example, your first letter is from Tetsuyoshi, thanking you for your assistance in some matter. It's kind of hard to think of any legitimate reply to that other than "You're welcome" or "It was no problem", so the game just assumes that Charlene replies something like that and you as the player don't have to bother responding.

At the end of a day in a game, if you have letters that you CAN reply to, a unique scene will pop up in which Charlene sits down at her desk and you can choose to respond to the letters. You obviously don't get to reply to the letters word by word, but you can choose the tone of the letter and perhaps some of the phrases used, as well. This is one of the ways you can rack up affection points with the guys without having to meet them or choose dialogue options that they like.

For example, Lucien tends to prefer intelligent/sarcastic answers. However, if you want to play as a slightly less intelligent/sarcastic heroine and still get a Lucien ending, you can still get sufficient affection points with him through interactions and answering his letters properly. It's impossible to lose points from replying to letters, it's just a matter of which kinds of responses will give you more points.

Aaaand for more visuals, here's an updated version of the stats screen:


I'm still trying to decide how to display that "total points" part in a nice way, but that's the general idea of it right now. Oh yeah, the jewels shine as they "catch the light", but you can't see that animation here. ):


A peek at the options menu... I'm still in the process of changing the way the buttons look (the tough part about this watercolor, papery antique look is that everything has to fit with that theme, haha) but this is one of the "sliders".

The artist is currently taking some grueling summer art classes, so she's kind of creatively drained and we probably won't have any new art for a while, but I am hacking away at the story (and the UI), as usual. Thanks for all of your support! <3

[Snow Blossom]

O.O
Wow the stats screen is really beautiful! The aged paper look is a nice touch, as well as the jewels
The art is very pretty as well, looking forward to this ^^