LINEAR - Chapter I

[CERA]

LINEAR - Divine Seer
Chapter I

Set in a ‘near-future’ on a fictional world, LINEAR follows the story of Lanis Rosenberg, a young and inexperienced medic working in the Loennian military. Doubtful of her abilities to cope in the army, and lost with her direction in life, Lanis’ world is suddenly turned upside-down the moment she meets Ash. An emotionless, biologically engineered soldier and her opposite in every way…

Format: Episodic Visual Novel
Genre: War / Sci-Fi / Drama
Platform: Flash (PC/Mac/Linux)
Duration: 30-40min

Click the 'Play Online' button at my website:
http://www.cerastudios.com/projects/linear-divine-seer/



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Creator's Note: Eeep, I couldn't tell you how many hours of my life went into getting this off the ground, and it's still just the first chapter! I actually started to get real nervous as the VN's release approached... and wondered how people would receive it, especially since this is technically a one-woman effort with so much time and sacrifice put in. XD Even though I'm an animator, I'm not terribly fluent with Flash, so a vast bulk of the time went towards tutorials to get me up to speed in using it.

The BETA 2.0 release included a 'Chapter Selection'. Seeing as it's a tad lengthy, at least if you are interrupted you won't need to start from the beginning of the chapter.

I hope you enjoy reading it!

[SorikaMosai]

Woot! First response. Uhhh- dude. I thought this was pretty awesome. I liked how they blinked- which brings me to another point: I liked the art, too. AND THE SOUNDS. Man. I really liked the sounds. And the BGM. Gosh, dude. I can hug this entire thing and play it over again for amusement's sake.

It was kinda weird to play this online and all that stuff; with no save points nor load points nor skipping-things (then again, I'm no creator of VN/KNs or anything) so the scene-selection thing was pretty handy. I didn't see how the choices changed anything major in the plot line (though, the choices might be there just to stimulate the brain a little) but I enjoyed how easily I could see the characters. Their personalities are pretty rounded out and consistent, and the background of the entire deal isn't just dumped onto the audience.

Overall, I've just decided to stalk whatever you'll make next. owo~

[CERA]

Thanks SorikaMosai! Your insight really helped quell some of the concerns I had about the story, especially how I fed the information to viewers. Being a sci-fi set in a different world... I have a lot of info and background to establish, so the biggest hurdle for me was to try and slowly feed information as the series progresses, without lumping it all in huge wads of boring text. XD

I understand what you mean with the inability to save and load. (Which is why I added the chapter points indeed.) That was one of my 'cons' with choosing to script an in-browser Flash VN over a VN engine like RenPY. Although I would love to do a project using RenPY, being from an animator background, I had a basic understanding of Flash where as RenPY I'd have had to learn from scratch. I'd already done that before when I learned to script for the Blade Visual Novel Engine, which they have decommissioned now.

The choices don't affect much in this chapter, but I'd like to play around with them in later chapters. Since it's an episodic VN I can't have decisions altering the overall story of course... so I'm thinking of using them as mechanisms for uncovering additional character scenes and altering the outcome of individual chapter story arcs at least.

Again, thanks so much for playing through and your valuable input!! It means a lot!

[Nellie]

This is seriously good!

I like your writing. I have been thinking about balance between whether or not a visual novel needs as much description as a novel, etc. Your writing has sufficient amount of descriptions and yet it doesn't seem lengthy enough to make me feel lazy enough to start skimming through... (And I have a VERY short attention spam). TL:DR I love your writing

Graphics are really decent as well. They're not the type that I prefer, but it is very well done and detailed. Ah yea, those blinking animations are SO cute. I hope you don't mind me stealing that idea =P

I love the SE as well, nicely selected and placed. Adds realism to the whole experience.

Argh, too much more praises to go - but in short, GREAT job! But yea, a save slot would be nice =P

[natkinos]

Didn't try yet, but the game looks interesting and make me want to play the it asap.
The art is awesome!

[Crocosquirrel]

Any chance of downloadable version? Please?

[CERA]

Well considering it was exported as an .swf, the only downloadable version I can offer you that self-contained .swf file on DeviantART.

http://cera-studios.deviantart.com/gall ... 9#/d4qb1l5
You'll see the Download File link to the right? You'll need a basic Flash player to play the file outside a browser window though.

So feel free to save it to your computer but if you extend the window beyond it's 800 x 600 constraints you might see some 'off-stage' stuff ^^; I should mask that all out in later releases if more people are going to download the raw SWF.

EDIT: The other option I have is to find a plugin which will allow me to export it as an executable file, in which case since it'll be installed on a computer and I'll be able to offer 'save spots'. It's a bit out of my actionscripting expertise at the moment, but who knows what skills I'll keep picking up through this project.

[Crocosquirrel]

Thank you kindly. Looking forward to seeing it

Just out of curiosity, who did your artwork?

[CERA]

I did all my own character and interface artwork. The backgrounds however, are a mix of 3D renders, some of my own photos, royalty-free stock... and are usually heavily photo-manipulated by me. I'd have loved to drawn my own backgrounds but it would slow my progress waaaaay too much.

[Crocosquirrel]

It's nice work. It's good to be able to do character art, especially to the quality standard you've achieved.

[Multimoonlite]

OMG! This was so amazing. I was losing myself in your novel! The whole "to be continued..." thing killed me lol. I need more!! Rawr! Everything fit so perfectly the music, characters, setting, dialogue, and story. I can't wait for your next chapter!!!

[blitzysixx]

This is incredible. It's so detailed and so visually beautiful. I cannot WAIT for chapter 2.

[psyduck]

the story is good and I love the art. btw, why did you put the character sprite in the right?

[CERA]

Hmm... not sure actually. Are you suggesting 'as opposed to the left?' I think a VN I was playing at the time also used that approach, and I looked up a lot of images to see which approaches other UI designers took with VNs.

I toyed with two ideas, one with the character sprite up in the main stage with the other characters, and the other with the sprite in the textbox. I did a vote with my DeviantART fans and the sprite in the textbox won. I think it just 'felt' better. No other ground-breaking reason. ^^;

[DragoonHP]

Pretty good story, looking forward to Chapter 2

And about save load, I think you can have that feature in Flash too... many flash games have save load options...

http://www.firecreature.com/2012/01/sav ... -game.html
http://freelanceflashgames.com/news/200 ... ad-button/

Slightly different approach: http://www.northcode.com/blog.php/2011/ ... e-in-Flash