Exit/Corners [Intrigue][Episodic]

[Percon]

~Game has changed a lot. Super late edit.~

[Fawn]

I've moved this to the ideas forum since you want more feedback on the idea of the game.

I read the articles on your blog and found them very interesting. There's some things I'd like to comment on in them, and I'll do so through your feedback questions here:


What do you think of the character sprites? Do you think that people who tend to avert anime will enjoy the look? What about those who will only play something with anime-esque aesthetics?

If a person doesn't want to play a game just because it doesn't have anime graphics they're obviously pretty shallow. It's the entire game itself that should be taken into consideration- however, in general, people like good graphics. They don't have to be anime, but, they have to be appealing.

I'll be honest about your sprites- they look messy and the shading is very bland. While the designs are great, the characters look pasty because there's too much white and black used in the shading. The anatomy isn't so great either. Sorry if I'm being harsh, but, these kinds of mistakes may turn players off.

Maybe try a more graphic style? It's a lot easier to pull off than realistic coloring and can also save you some time. It'll probably more appealing to both anime/manga AND comic book/webcomic fans as well. If you're using flash, why not do the artwork in flash? It's good for graphic-style art.

What do you think of some of the proposed changes to westernize the medium?

It makes me sad that many people can't enjoy a story-based visual novel and need more gameplay. Visual novels are really just choose-your-own-adventure books with graphics and sound, people seem to enjoy those so it makes me puzzled as to how why they're not enjoyable. Of course, the people who don't have probably not played many good ones, there are plenty of bad ones out there that are either full of porn with no story or just so long and dull you'd rather bang your head on the wall than read more.

That said, it's never bad to add more features. It can make it more palatable as long as the games are enjoyable and necessary to the plot. Stuffing it in where it's not needed just makes the game worse, many people complain about having to do mini games to get further in the story.


Just for fun: Do any of the character designs stand out as your favourite?

I like them all actually. They're all very unique, you can see their personalities easily. Sorry I couldn't pick a favorite, ha.


Again I hope I wasn't too harsh. Just giving you some honest critique since I can see you have a lot of potential. Thanks for sharing with us!

[Percon]

Thank you kindly for reading the blog posts; I know there's a lot to read.

And don't worry about sounding harsh; generally, I find that if people are preemptively apologizing for being harsh, they aren't being harsh at all. Besides, I'd rather have honest and harsh criticism than no criticism due to people not wanting to hurt my feelings or some such nonsense.

The sprites' messiness is something we're aware of and we plan on cleaning them up as we figure out how we're to be scaling them.

I'll be sure to forward your comments regarding the shading and the anatomy to my artist; just like me, she's always looking to improve and welcomes criticism. Also, not that I'd want to task anyone with doing work for us, but calling out specific anatomy mistakes/artifacts/inconsistencies is always a big help! I find that the tradeoff for choosing to go with such a realistic style is that there is less margin for error as all errors become more noticeable, but I'll think we'll be able to make this style work if we keep at it.

If a person doesn't want to play a game just because it doesn't have anime graphics they're obviously pretty shallow.

It makes me sad that many people can't enjoy a story-based visual novel and need more gameplay.

These are both unfortunate, but I fear they are the truth when it comes to a lot of gamers. I would even count myself among my own target audience; something about the traditional Japanese VN model simply doesn't strike a chord with me. Hopefully more games can emerge to bridge the gap between what the mainstream likes and VNs in their current state and make both audiences more tolerant in general.

[Aetheria]

It makes me sad that many people can't enjoy a story-based visual novel and need more gameplay.

These are both unfortunate, but I fear they are the truth when it comes to a lot of gamers. I would even count myself among my own target audience; something about the traditional Japanese VN model simply doesn't strike a chord with me.

Those who prefer more game-like story-driven games aren't necessarily suffering from a dislike of reading or a short attention span. I'm definitely in that boat - I find VNs without many "game" elements tedious, yet am also an avid reader of traditional novels, with at least enough of an attention span to have read War and Peace twice.

I attribute it to two things about the VNs I've played:

1. VN-style presentation is a pain to read for long stretches. Breaking the text up into lots of little boxes forces the reader to constantly click to continue and tends to produce a fragmented, jarring effect. If you just want to tell a static story, it would be easier on the reader to simply present it book-style with a lot of illustrations alongside.

2. Much of the writing I've seen in VNs isn't that good. (Yes, even in some popular ones that get a lot of praise - I guess I'm just picky.) This aggravates the first problem because one of the worst flaws is a tendency to ramble, or to describe things that are already obvious from the art. Mediocre writing is a lot easier to overlook if you don't have to wade through vast oceans of it to finish the game.

There are a lot of ways to tell a story with the aid of gorgeous art, and comics, anime and movies are all more accessible than kinetic novels. What the VN format really has going for it is the ability to make stories interactive. So, the more of that the better!

[gekiganwing]

Exit/Corners sounds a bit similar to interactive fiction. While I'm not an expert on the category, I do know that IF tends to emphasize puzzle solving. See this article for some info: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics ... ve_fiction Therefore, since it sounds like you want to create a unique western visual novel, it might be a good idea to take design cues from the world of interactive fiction and text/graphic adventures.

Breaking the text up into lots of little boxes forces the reader to constantly click to continue and tends to produce a fragmented, jarring effect. If you just want to tell a static story, it would be easier on the reader to simply present it book-style with a lot of illustrations alongside.

I actually never thought about that... so I can't say I've ever felt that clicking a mouse or pressing Enter made reading visual novels difficult. It just seemed like the electronic equivalent of turning a page, or the PC equivalent of pressing a gamepad button during dialogue in console RPGs.

Would it be easy to include auto-advancing text, or would it take custom software and quite a bit of effort? And if it's possible to let text advance on its own, would the player be able to adjust the speed?

[Sapphi]

1. VN-style presentation is a pain to read for long stretches. Breaking the text up into lots of little boxes forces the reader to constantly click to continue and tends to produce a fragmented, jarring effect. If you just want to tell a static story, it would be easier on the reader to simply present it book-style with a lot of illustrations alongside.

2. Much of the writing I've seen in VNs isn't that good. (Yes, even in some popular ones that get a lot of praise - I guess I'm just picky.) This aggravates the first problem because one of the worst flaws is a tendency to ramble, or to describe things that are already obvious from the art. Mediocre writing is a lot easier to overlook if you don't have to wade through vast oceans of it to finish the game.

In regards to the presentation, I actually like the way VNs break up text because I'm one of those people who has an unhealthy way of reading. When faced with a large paragraph, I tend to skim the entire paragraph, pinpoint what's interesting in it, and then go back to locate small details about the interesting thing. I do this more with news articles and forum posts than stories, but from time to time I still find myself skipping parts of paragraphs. (I'll know I did it when I flip back to find my place in the book later and start reading at what seems new to me, only to realize my actual stopping place was pages later. ) What I like about visual novels is that the small amount of sentences presented at the same time helps keep me focused and take one bit of information at a time, rather than getting overwhelmed and distracted.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on your second point, though. Every enter-strike a person makes is valuable! Make your story worth its weight in enter-strikes!

[Percon]

Alrighty... thanks for the feedback thus far. I've updated the blog with details concerning our engine, which currently produces something like this:



I've also posted a couple more character sprites on the blog for kicks. Check it out here: http://www.exitcorners.com/?p=137.

I'm not expecting to get too many questions concerning haXe or the engine itself, but if you're curious about either feel free to ask.

[Percon]

I've updated the site with a post on the episodic model we're following. Check it out here: http://www.exitcorners.com/?p=152

Hopefully this post is a bit more interesting than the last. Feedback on anything would still be awesome.

[Aetheria]

Interesting post. Releasing the game as a series of short episodes does sound like a good idea. I was a bit confused, though, by the way you described your story model:

[T]he game will sometimes present the player with a simple binary choice, and depending on what the player picks, it will alter the events of that particular episode. The choices will then be globally tallied, and the most popular choices will become the story’s canon, meaning it will have a bearing on future episodes.

Does this mean that you're going to poll players about what choices they make in the game and then call the most common choices canon for future episodes? (i.e. if 70% of players chose to overthrow the king in episode 1, you'll begin episode 2 mid-revolution) Or are you referring to a delayed-branching/stat-tracking model like this?

If the first, that would be interesting, but probably off-putting to a lot of players. If the second, I'm not sure why choices "cannot have any immediate effect on the story". They couldn't take the story off in a completely different direction, but they could well branch and merge back, in addition to incrementing whatever stat they affected, or simply be acknowledged with a few lines of text.

Anyway, it sounds like you've put a lot of thought into this, so I'm really interested to see how it's going to work!

[Percon]

If the first, that would be interesting, but probably off-putting to a lot of players. If the second, I'm not sure why choices "cannot have any immediate effect on the story". They couldn't take the story off in a completely different direction, but they could well branch and merge back, in addition to incrementing whatever stat they affected, or simply be acknowledged with a few lines of text.

I apologize for my lack of clarity; I'll update the blog and make it a bit easier to read.

Anyway, the choices are indeed more reminiscent of the delayed branching model. When I said "cannot have any immediate effect on the story", I probably should have instead said "you cannot immediately see the long-term implications of your choice". A decision you make will cause the episode to branch slightly, but these paths will always merge back together before the end of an episode. Later episodes might call back to that choice.

The choices come in a few different varieties and magnitudes.

Ink's Mental State:
There are a few points in the story where you can have the protagonist, Ink, respond to a situation in two or more different ways. For example, a choice early on asks whether Ink should be either assertive or wary. The former will make him more confident (and reckless) while the latter will make him more cautious (and paranoid). Ink's attitude attitude and dialogue will change based on which of the choices is most popular, and once a few of these types of choices have been aggregated it might have a significant bearing on his actions. If the split between the wary and assertive responses is closer to 50/50, there will won't be much change (though I will still have to designate one of the choices as canon).

Character Relations:
Tensions run high in The Four Elements Hotel, so there will often be fighting amongst Contestants. Ink will sometimes be given the opportunity to favor one character over another; for example, you might be given the choice to side with character X and make character Y angry or side with Y and make X angry. Once again, these will be tallied globally and will affect Ink's relations with the other characters. Not only their dialogue and actions change, but they might even be less inclined to help Ink out during puzzles if they don't think very highly of him. While I must once again designate a choice as canon once enough votes have been cast, if the split is close to even I'll probably reach a compromise.

Information:
This one is pretty straightforward - Ink can learn one piece of information by taking one path and learn another piece of information by taking another. The most popular choice will become canon, and the corresponding piece of information may or may not come in handy to Ink as some point during his adventure. I can't write any compromises for this path, though, since having Ink know both bits of information would be both odd and unfair.

Immediate Branching:
Okay... so I lied a bit. As of right now, there is a single instance where and episode ends with a choice, and the next episode will change based on which choice was picked the most. I'm mostly doing this to see how it works and what the feedback is like and I don't expect this type of choice to be a common occurrence.

As of right now, the choices in the first couple episodes don't have a huge impact on the overall story, as I imagine that we will not have a very large fanbase when we launch. I'd like to give the community a little time to grow before I thrust an important decision on them.

...I guess that was a bit longer than intended. Whoops!

[Percon]

So... we're making progress! Believe it or not I actually update the blog on occasion. Check out the latest entry here: http://www.exitcorners.com/?p=179

As you can see, the story part of the game technically works, what with correct parsing, scrolling/skipping text, character positioning and background display. There is still a lot of polish we need to go through for this section, such as getting some real UI, character dialogue boxes, and some smoother transitions and light animation. There are a few other things we want to add, too, but as of right now, you could technically read the whole thing and understand what is going on.

We are currently working on the puzzle engine for a bit, and once core puzzle gameplay is done we're going to start getting some internal feedback as we gradually add polish. Making an engine from the ground-up certainly is a lot more work, but I think it'll be worth the experience and the flexibility we'll have in the end.

Right now I'm wondering what kind of extra story-related functionality we'll need to include. Some options, such as choosing how fast the text scrolls, is both easy to include and kind of a no-brainer. I'm a little hung up on a few of the other elements, though. So I ask: what functionality is absolutely essential in a game like this?

For example, what about saving your game? I imagine that in a long VN, saving is essential, but I'm wondering if it is worth including in E/C. The game is meant to be played for about 10 minutes at a time (the average length of a single episode), and you'll always be able to chose what episode you want to start playing from, so I'm not sure if making a robust save system is worth it. I'm also fairly certain that a save system won't be needed to handle player choice based on how we plan on handling the stat-tracking.

Still, I'd like to know everyone's thoughts on save games and other VN functionality. What can I afford to drop? What can I not live without? I'd really appreciate some insight from some more seasoned VN players. Thanks!

[gekiganwing]

I remembered reading about a distinctly western visual novel on this forum not that long ago, but I couldn't remember its name. ...Anyway, thank you for updating. I'm glad to hear that your project is still being written.

[AxemRed]

Right now I'm wondering what kind of extra story-related functionality we'll need to include. Some options, such as choosing how fast the text scrolls, is both easy to include and kind of a no-brainer. I'm a little hung up on a few of the other elements, though. So I ask: what functionality is absolutely essential in a game like this?

Essential:
1. Text log
2. Skip mode

Don't forget:
a. You need to layout the whole paragraph in advance or else the word wrapping jitters as text fades in.
b. Allow keyboard for advancing text.
c. There needs to be some visual clue that the text has finished fading in.

[Percon]

Essential:
1. Text log
2. Skip mode

What is the standard practice for scene-skipping? I've seen it done a few ways but I'm wondering which is preferred. Should it be "hold a button down so that the text scrolls by super fast until you let go or are presented with a dialogue choice or puzzle" or "break the episode up into scenes, then use a button to straight-up jump to the next scene"?

(sorry for being an inexperienced dork)

Don't forget:
a. You need to layout the whole paragraph in advance or else the word wrapping jitters as text fades in.
b. Allow keyboard for advancing text.
c. There needs to be some visual clue that the text has finished fading in.

Gotcha. These'll probably be thrown in a bit later since they're more appearance/polish oriented but this kind of stuff will see implementation for sure.

Thank you very much for your input.

[AxemRed]

What is the standard practice for scene-skipping? I've seen it done a few ways but I'm wondering which is preferred. Should it be "hold a button down so that the text scrolls by super fast until you let go or are presented with a dialogue choice or puzzle" or "break the episode up into scenes, then use a button to straight-up jump to the next scene"?

The standard is a button that while held does:
- text displays instantly
- text auto-advances to the next line at a rate of max. 1 'screen' per frame
- graphics animations/transitions are sped up or omitted
- sound effects are sometimes ignored while skipping

Every VN has a skip/quickread as described. The only VN I know of that has a "skip scene" button is Fate/Stay Night. If an episode is only 10 minutes long, the standard skip function should be plenty.