Lakeside Sunset (Final version)

[dizzcity]

(Note: The development thread for Lakeside Sunset can be found here).

Okay, here's the final version of Lakeside Sunset, copyright-violation-free and modified with bells-and-whistles attached. Vatina graciously redrew the character of Flora, and I really like how it turned out. Menus and some text and backgrounds have been changed to better fit the stylistic mood of the piece. Icons have also been added.

Thanks to all for helping to make this first project of mine a success, and let's hope that there will be many more in the future!

-Dizzy-

EDIT: Final version Mark III uploaded, with Py'Tom's suggested modifications included.

[Watercolorheart]

I'm going to play it again ...

[denzil]

This is really nice game. And the Czech translation is out. Look here.

[Alessio]

denzil strikes again. ^_^

Very nice story. A bit sad on one end. But very nice. Pity it's so short but then again this couldn't have been any longer. Good music and art, too.

(Since this will probably be featured on the Ren'Ai Archives/Ren'Py homepage, I'm wondering if it would make sense to point out the playing time? Could it happen that after downloading 10 MB people are taken aback by the shortness of a story? I don't mind at all, but what about people new to the world of Ren'Ai?)

[dizzcity]

I'm going to play it again ...

Play it slowly this time! ^.^ It works better if you synchronise your reading speed to the tempo of the music.

This is really nice game. And the Czech translation is out.

Thanks so much for translating it. I made a few changes to the script, though (for the second ending). Did you catch those?

denzil strikes again. ^_^

Very nice story. A bit sad on one end. But very nice. Pity it's so short but then again this couldn't have been any longer. Good music and art, too.

(Since this will probably be featured on the Ren'Ai Archives/Ren'Py homepage, I'm wondering if it would make sense to point out the playing time? Could it happen that after downloading 10 MB people are taken aback by the shortness of a story? I don't mind at all, but what about people new to the world of Ren'Ai?)

Thanks for the comments. Yeah, I really should put some sort of notice up. Okay, for whoever's planning to put this up on the Ren'ai archives:

Summary/Blurb: On a lazy summer evening, a young man thinks back to the girl he met and the promise he made two years ago, at this very lake.

Maker: Dizzcity
Website: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1382p (for now, at least... I really should go make use of that hosting account I just bought.)
Release Date: 2006-10-03
Playtime: 3 minutes
Categories: BxG, VN
Rating: all
Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux/Unix. Cross-platform zip.

-Dizzy-

[PyTom]

(A technical post, but perhaps with some spoilers, so be warned.)

If you're willing to not call it done quite yet, I have a couple of suggestions that would improve the look of the game a little.

A bit of a peeve of mine is the character image floating in midair. Thankfully, this is easy to fix. The first thing to do is to make it so the window always appears. This can be done with the lines:

Code: Select all

init:
    $ _window_during_transitions = True

Second, we probably want to make the window solid. The alternative would be to precisely line up the character image with the top of the window, but that's harder.

The window can be made solid with the following line:

Code: Select all

    $ theme.roundrect(button_menu=False, window="#000")

Use it to replace the existing theme.roundrect line.

There's also the issue that Flora sometimes has her left shoulder stuck off the left side of the screen. We can fix that by redefining left a little:

Code: Select all

init:
    $ left = Position(xpos=30, xanchor=0.0)

Finally, the colored image is a little above the window. So you may want to trim it down a bit.

I think these would take a very little bit of work (5-10 minutes), and when done will improve the polish of the game. Hope this helps.

[dizzcity]

Thanks for the help, Py'Tom! Good eye for detail there. I noticed the graphics were slightly out of alignment, but was wondering if anyone else had spotted it or not.

Okay, I've included all of the above suggestions into the re-uploaded attachment in the first post.

-Dizzy-

[denzil]

Thanks so much for translating it. I made a few changes to the script, though (for the second ending). Did you catch those?

Yes I did. WinMerge proven useful once again. I will upload the new updated version tomorrow.

[PyTom]

Thanks for the help, Py'Tom! Good eye for detail there. I noticed the graphics were slightly out of alignment, but was wondering if anyone else had spotted it or not.

Alas, I sometimes see such things.

One more thing. In the new version, the window sometimes appears when it shouldn't. You can disable the window by writing:

Code: Select all

    $ _window_during_transitions = False
    with None

and re-enable it with:

Code: Select all

    $ _window_during_transitions = True
    with None

[dizzcity]

One more thing. In the new version, the window sometimes appears when it shouldn't.

Funny, that. The window appeared if I hovered my mouse over it, but disappeared if I didn't. I wonder if that can actually become a feature in some other game. (Hmmm... invisible pop-up windows that appear when mouseover...) In any case, modified again.

...

Maybe I should just stop calling it "Final Version", considering how many times I'm editing it. (Beta and Gold releases might be a better naming scheme.)

-Dizzy-

[mikey]

Maybe I should just stop calling it "Final Version", considering how many times I'm editing it. (Beta and Gold releases might be a better naming scheme.)

... and then Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond, Pearl... ^_^

You can take comfort in that the Czech translation is very nice. I played it just now and it had the same atmosphere like the original, so I take that as a success. Even though I still can't be friends with the lyrical parts about the waves, but that just proves the point.

A bit too bad that it's so short, from the standpoint of megabytes vs. playtime, it's really one of the cruelest ratios - then again who cares, honestly, it's finished and with Vatina's art it looks even better than with that borrowed picture before. Congratulations.

[dizzcity]

Even though I still can't be friends with the lyrical parts about the waves, but that just proves the point.

Actually, I didn't particularly like the ripples part myself. I thought I was stretching it a little too far. That was the most difficult part to write. No choice, though. I was working with what I had - which were a lot of pictures of water.

A bit too bad that it's so short, from the standpoint of megabytes vs. playtime, it's really one of the cruelest ratios - then again who cares, honestly, it's finished and with Vatina's art it looks even better than with that borrowed picture before. Congratulations.

Thank you.

I think I've realised the ratio of elements size really sucks in a VN, though:

One 4-min music file ~ 7,000 kb
One background or char picture ~ 150 kb
Four minutes worth of script (~ 1,000 words) ~ 10 kb

Which means a single picture is worth 15,000 words, and a music file is equivalent to 700,000 words. That seems to point towards small-file VNs being illustrated novels, while large-file VNs are more like narrated movies.

Just by content-consumption rates alone, words win out by far (it takes much longer to read through 15,000 words than to look at 1 picture). And yet, arguably, music and visuals do more for the genre than words do. (I would much prefer a shorter, less wordy and more visual VN than pure text). Is there any way around this problem? Cropping the visuals and reusing music are the only things I can think of... but that might get stale.

-Dizzy-

[monele]

There's probably something to do with the music file since it's what's bloats the zip size the most ^^;. OGG maybe ?

[PyTom]

Picking it apart with info-zip, here are the biggest files in the zip:

Code: Select all

 Length   Method    Size  Ratio   Date   Time   CRC-32    Name
--------  ------  ------- -----   ----   ----   ------    ----
 7205096  Defl:N  6643777   8%  09-17-06 13:01  d518a5a6  game/lazy_lake_reflections.mp3
 4220664  Defl:N  1471985  65%  09-13-06 23:07  e80c2c51  renpy.code
  974915  Defl:N   434693  55%  12-18-03 20:22  13065aeb  python23.dll
  479440  Defl:N   253610  47%  08-27-06 17:05  7d68aa8a  common/DejaVuSans.ttf
  187868  Defl:N   185696   1%  09-15-06 23:01  28cc9c5a  game/sunset-sun-x4.JPG  
137759  Defl:N   137208   0%  10-05-06 00:16  a9d43d7a  game/flora_colour.png
  130358  Defl:N   121769   7%  09-17-06 00:32  f3490bc8  game/lamp-sunset-ol46.jpg
  110158  Defl:N   108581   1%  09-15-06 23:05  5a626015  game/river-stones_photo.jpg
  105223  Defl:N   104309   1%  09-16-06 23:32  00b1bacc  game/mainmenu.jpg

The third column is the compressed size of the file, the first is the disk-size.

So, yeah, it's mostly taken up by the mp3, with Ren'Py (at about 3MB) taking up most of the rest.

[Alessio]

One 4-min music file ~ 7,000 kb

Maybe you can still work a little on that. Use ogg instead of mp3 (slightly better quality per size), and experiment with different compression ratios. 4 mins of music are approx. 40 MB uncompressed. That can be squeezed into ~3.1 MB with good quality (@ 128 kbps), or ~2.3 MB with acceptable quality (@ 96 kbps). For G!MB I used 96 kbps, and the whole VN zip is 9.5 MB.