Utsukushii Planet - 2nd french demo released

[PyTom]

Actually, there is a method for doing this, at least for say statements. Basically, you can use the condition parameter to Character to cause a say statement to conditionally execute.

Code: Select all

init:
    $ entom = Character("Tom", condition="lang == 'en'")
    $ frtom = Character("Tom", condition="lang == 'fr'")
    $ jptom = Character("Tom", condition="lang == 'jp'")


entom "I usually speak English."
frtom "Je parle habituellement français."
jptom "私は通常日本語を話す。"

One advantage of this method is that it's fairly flexible in the amount of text that can appear in each language, which may come in handy when different amounts of text are used to represent concepts in different languages.

Menus are less-well handled, but can be handled using conditions on the menu entries, immediately followed by jumps:

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menu menu1:
     "Yes." if lang == "en":
         jump menu1_yes
     "Oui." if lang == "fr":
         jump menu1_yes
     "はい。 " if lang == "jp":
         jump menu1_yes

(And similarly for other choices.)

[monele]

The first part has me squeal in delight ^.^. Very close to what I expected . And for menus, well... it's not like there are thousands of menus to work on, compared to say lines . Thanks a lot, I'll go apply this to my game once I'm home :3

[monele]

Gyuuuh ;3;... I was all happy, updating my files when I stumbled upon the first "thoughts" lines... The Character trick just doesn't work anymore and I'm sad

EDIT : Eeep, replying to myself :

Code: Select all

$ f = Character(None, condition="persistent.language == 'FR'")
    $ e = Character(None, condition="persistent.language == 'EN'")

I didn't know using None for the name would hide it ^.^. Now I use these unnamed "characters" for narration. Works like a charm

[Quin]

Carrying on a conversation with yourself AND hearing voices where None is talking? Oh, my, Monele... should I send the van with the men in white coats right away? ^_^

[monele]

Noooo!! I'm not going back there! No, no... *whimpers and bobs back and forth in a corner*

[Nafai]

(Its not necromancy if this is the sole place for comments on the demo right? ^_^)

As promised, I took a look and here are my thoughts:

~ Effects: As mentioned these were really good. The smoke, the movement of the stars... Well, lets just say I played it after re-reading my Banner of the Stars manga, and I think the Abh would have liked the sight ^_^

~ Structure: I think planet hopping lends itself well to your professed game type - what with the varied missions and all. I take it at some point there will be a central hub that serves as HQ? Or would that be the ship itself?

~ Characters: Not too many things to say here yet - but seeing the pics in this thread helped. It certainly helped - though, I can't imagine Katania

..slitting someones throat.

All in all it was a fun romp. Let me know if you still need plot help - I ooze stories from my pores some days. I already know what my second game is going to be @_@;

[monele]

I'm glad you took the time to review this and at the same time saddened that you can't see the last version ^.^;

*spent dozens of minutes wandering the web after looking up Banner of the Stars info... darn! XD*

Effects are clearly one of my "selling points" but I'm trying not to go too crazy with them ^^;. If it was up to me, UP would end up (*sigh*) being a movie of sorts >.>... (except I can't make a movie but eh). I just hope I can keep coming up with good stuff to show later in the game ^^;...

Structure : This the ever-changing point but things get clearer day by day. The hub will indeed be the ship. In-between missions, you get back to the hub, are allowed to talk to each person aboard once, and then get to choose your next mission. Sometimes, an additional scene will be triggered before or after the hub, not related to a mission (being lost in space, being attacked, etc...).

Characters : I still don't put too much effort into their visuals because I want their personality to be fleshed out before. Katania and Fabellia (the pirate) were completed early so I'm using them in the game now, but they might get an update or at least some upgrade (shadows and such). For other charas I either use rough sketches or just the regular silhouette placeholder. I'm also using placeholder faces (taken from various games) so I can already put expressions in the dialogues and have an idea for what will really be needed when I have to make the real face graphics. Works like a charm so far, but might be strange for someone who doesn't know the characters and/or knows the originals they're taken from ^^;
As for Kat, I'm not yet decided on this issue... Might keep it, might not... Will depend on how much impact it could have on the rest of the game.

Plot help : these last days have seen huge changes to the structure and story (filling of holes mostly) so it seems I'm still doing good in this department. As Alessio said in older posts, I should give a clear idea of what the game will be and who the characters are before anyone can help me. This means I'll need to know these things clearly myself first ^^. I can say it's slowly coming, so maybe I'll be able to ask for help soon ^^

EDIT : Lil screenie

[Nafai]

Wow - I need to ask you some tips sometime soon: didn't even know you could put character faces in the text box! (Then again, I havent finished the manual yet)

The Ship as Hub w/ Character Development reminds me of Knights of the Old Republic - a very good thing

And Banner/Crest of the Stars is good for space-faring romance inspiration ^_^ I think any story I make will have a Lafiel-type romance interest

[monele]

Well it's not the kind of things you'll find in the manual unfortunately ^^;. Had to ask PyTom if it was possible and he showed me an example. Basically, there are many tools in RenPy that let you do fun stuff, but it's near impossible to guess what by yourself. Once the game is done, I'll add everything to the wiki. In the meantime, yes, the best thing is to ask on the forums ^^.

KotoR ? Never played it but sounds like an honorific reference ^.^

Never seen this series either but the name sounded familiar. I guess it's one of those classics .
Talking about inspirations, mine would be Stargate SG-1 for exploration and Firefly for the team type (Slayers and Fushigi Yuugi being other good examples of team type inspiration)

[monele]

Just noting that I added all screenshots made so far to the very first post of this thread, for reference. I'm picking screenshots with all things done by me (no placeholder art from other games and such).

In other news, the last week saw an interesting development with UP's game structure... At least for the introduction. It should give some variety even to someone restarting the game and yet ultimately go back to a central point where I know everyone's there. Various intros, yet safety for future scenes, make for a happy Moni ^^
Talking about the intro, it might end up being 1 hour and 30 minutes long depending on which paths you take and maybe 2 hours or 2.5 hours of *different* possible scenes overall. See this as a... pilot episode of sorts ^^;
Oh and to be reassuring, I've already written/scripted about 65 minutes of all this ^^.

[Nafai]

Wow, that's a good amount of play time ^_^ Really looking forward to this monele ^_^

[chronoluminaire]

Yes, this is looking really impressive. I love space travel plots, and Slayers-style comedy crews, and so on. In fact, the combination between the two reminds me of Outlaw Star rather. That one even had the three "datable" girls Crest/Banner of the Stars is an awesome series, as well, and Lafiel is so wonderfully cute.

I'd echo the warning about big projects. Basically, any game has a tendency to mushroom way beyond how big you expected it to be; if you start out gigantic, that will expand to uncompletably-big. Of course, it's fine to have a big project that takes four years to complete if you plan it that way.

If you personally are focusing on the overall plot, structure, and graphics and suchlike, maybe your co-writers could write the individual girls' plots?

That being the case, I'd love to get involved I've got one finished ren'ai game to my name.
One slight issue, though, is that I'm not going to be available for the next two or three weeks, due to getting married this Saturday. (:D:shock::D:shock::D ) So feel free to email or PM me, but know that I'll only get back to you in late August.

Either way, keep up the awesome work!

[monele]

Eeep, congratulations .

And it's ok, I still have a whole introduction to finish until then anyway XD. I might have this done by end of August, so this could work out.

My plan so far : finish all the intro paths. Once this is done and polished, I'll be pretty sure of each character's style and story. This means I'll be able to give these info to you guys and let you work on individual missions/scenes.

As explained in previous posts (I think o_o), the game will have a central hub (on the ship) where you move around and get to talk with crew members and passengers. There will be scenes discussing past missions and the choices you made. Quite a lot to have fun with ^^.
And from that hub, you'll go on missions. Here again, there will probably be lots to do, especially since you can make things happen on space stations, planets or ships. When it comes to missions, I'd like to try to have them be rather self-contained, and have rather radical choices determining how things end up. I'll try to give an example of this at some point ^^;.

I'm still not sure of any gameplay aspect except for Love Points of course. There might be Reputation (you do mission A from faction X and make choices that lead to victory or defeat, or just deal with the mission in ways that please or piss off that faction... but might piss off/please other factions).
If there's nothing relative to factions, then the game will just be story with choices but without any big consequences along the way.

As for project size... I know it's big. I know it will be bigger than expected. But I just *live* for epic projects XD... And so far, I've been able to get back to this project even after it died (for a week). That's a feat in itself and tells me this project has chances to be finished.
Also, I found a way to wrap things up early and, in a sense, have the game go on from a single point after the intro (all main characters are present). I'm liking what I have so far ^^

EDIT : for kicks, a far away view of the introduction diagram :



The upper left quarter part is 50 minutes long >.>....

[mikey]

chronoluminaire >> congratulations, all the best to you two!

monele >> that diagram... ^_^ MY diagrams are scribbled into my green notebook, I feel so unprofessional now
But whatever, I suppose if it gets the job done... but OTOH it happens sometimes that I can't read my own writing after a while.

Anyhow, I'll just say the project is huge and basically impossible to finish. I think that after a year it WILL start getting on your nerves, unless you somehow completely love it, take mental breaks and stay as focused as you possibly can. So yes, I think it IS doable, but...

I think that the style of work is also very time-consuming, if you think about it, in a year, Ren'Py 7 will be out and it will support (I've checked this) real-time rendering of environmental lighting in a fully 3D environment, supporting the latest accelerator technology. Okay, so that may not be the case, but there may come other effects that you'll want to use, other features that you'll probably want to implement, maybe even additions to the dating sim engine... and you'll have to insert that into an existing game, redo and re-insert new effects to the whole game, changing its nature and risking overall consistency.

So yes, my advice is to have the basics of the game layed out, the skeleton, so to say. Without it, predictions are impossible and also, it's very hard for anyone who wants to participate to judge the project as such. I think that finishing your intro part is a good starting point, but then, if you want to really have UP see the light of day, you'll probably need to change the planning style to something more skeletal. It would be such a shame for this project to end badly, especially as it is, together with LoveRevo and maybe a handful of others, one of the largest projects here. Let me just formulate it this way... as a project, it is impressive, but it will only impress as a finished game.

[Watercolorheart]

I think that the style of work is also very time-consuming, if you think about it, in a year, Ren'Py 7 will be out and it will support (I've checked this) real-time rendering of environmental lighting in a fully 3D environment, supporting the latest accelerator technology. Okay, so that may not be the case, but there may come other effects that you'll want to use, other features that you'll probably want to implement, maybe even additions to the dating sim engine... and you'll have to insert that into an existing game, redo and re-insert new effects to the whole game, changing its nature and risking overall consistency.

So yes, my advice is to have the basics of the game layed out, the skeleton, so to say. Without it, predictions are impossible and also, it's very hard for anyone who wants to participate to judge the project as such. I think that finishing your intro part is a good starting point, but then, if you want to really have UP see the light of day, you'll probably need to change the planning style to something more skeletal. It would be such a shame for this project to end badly, especially as it is, together with LoveRevo and maybe a handful of others, one of the largest projects here. Let me just formulate it this way... as a project, it is impressive, but it will only impress as a finished game.

(nod) I agree completely.

It's very hard to get other people to help you without some proof of your work. For me, it's my script. That's the "skeleton" of my game, all lying in the text right now. There is art too, but it's extraneous until the script is complete.

So, when people e-mail me saying they're interested, I send them back the text that's been written, beg them not to be intimidated by its size and there's no rush, and tell them there will be some kind of working beta in the future when the first script is complete.

The project I started has a massive amount of writing, so much so that I started accepting story contributions by other authors. Of course, two nabbed the scenes I wanted to do, but as long as it all gets done ...

LOL, I found that I was writing more on my script just so I'd finish it before someone else wrote it for me. >_>;;

Sometimes I despair that I'll never get it done at all before I end up going back and writing some more and feel a little better. Also, knowing that other people have your back if you fall down and feel overwhelmed, sometimes it's enough to keep going.

You know, I made a branch chart at some point waaaay before I started writing, as well as a four-page summary, and I'm just working off of what's in my head nowadays, after laying out the menus. ^^;; I distributed the script as an HTML file in order to keep the menu links intact. It was slightly more coherent that way.

I did like your demo and your transitions package (which I hope to use some of the transitions in there at some point) but I'll like it even better when it's finished.