Senior Year Development Thread

[EwanG]

Started October 15th. Coding and Artwork finished, December 4th.

My way of announcing that I made a final big push, and got the Annette track finished coding.

The only thing between me and beta testing now is getting my voice files from the actors. Which means I probably get a bit of a rest after I pull the scripts from the code.

Biggest problem I ran into today is that I have some dialog in the Annette track that gets me teary eyed. Hopefully it comes through properly if you don't have the complete image in your head that I did

Onward and upward...

[PyTom]

Congratulations. I look forward to seeing the finished game.

[monele]

Is the time including story writing ? Sounds pretty quick in any case ^^. Looking forward to this too.

[EwanG]

Yes, that's pretty much when I started working on the story. Had the idea floating around for a while, but hadn't wanted to invest in it until I knew I could actually produce it.

Have produced the script files, and have a couple of them out already. Mirielle hopefully will get an audition to me before all the parts are cast Or perhaps she has, and just used a different name in her email?

[DaFool]

I think the key is having all the materials available before you start the project, which is pretty much what happens here. The concept is there, most of the basic artwork (i.e. linework, bgs) is there (or easy to modify to suit the project), help is easily available, and its just scripting it all together.

Though I'm no veteran it seems like there are two ways to get your project out quickly.

1.) Do the whole story and programming first, call for help, and many people pitch in for build-to-order materials (i.e. Colorless Day, and also generally what people here recommend. However there is the risk of what if no people pitch in?)

2.) Ascertain and lay out all the materials (many off-the-shelf) within arms reach, then piece them all together like Lego blocks (i.e. Senior Year)

There you have it, 2 methods to success.

How NOT to do projects (I use me as a bad example):

Say I'm building a custom car
- design the chassis
- learn mechanical engineering
- redesign the chassis
- design the electrical system
- learn electrical engineering
- redesign the electrical system
- etc...


EwanG is now officially my idol

[EwanG]

Having backgrounds and music that I could pick and choose from definitely made a big difference. I've had to modify many of the backgrounds, but they were good enough to start hanging things from.

I think the big deal going forward with future games (mine or others) will be if someone comes out with a tool that lets you easily build decent CG characters - not only the hair and pose, but also the multiple expressions that you need. Having that tool will make the bar of entry that much lower for the writing community. How you make the bar lower for game makers who are artists but not writers is a thornier issue...

Of course, none of this would have been possible without PyTom's excellent engine!

[EwanG]

Well, have two of the roles definitely cast (Annette and Julie), and have made offers on two of the others (Becky and Linda). Carla is proving to be the tough character to fill - I suspect because I'd really like a light hispanic accent given her character and her character's story.

Current playtime for all five "good" routes is between 2 and 2.5 hours. I suspect the vocals will push that closer to the 2.5 hours since it's rude to click in the middle of a beautiful woman's voice

Interesting breakdown on number of character parts (1-3 lines each) -

Annette - 97

Becky - 75

Carla - 90

Julie - 135

Linda - 89

Which means I distributed them basically evenly, as I had tried to do. As for Julie, I can't say I'm surprised that her voice talent is expecting to take the full two weeks to get her lines recorded and in.

So, it looks like I'm definitely shooting for Christmas for Beta Testing. I suppose I should start asking for volunteers now. This will be the full game , so if you want to wait for it to be complete, you may want to pass on doing the Beta to keep the surprises fresh.

Given the amount of playing time, please make sure you actually have a few hours to give to this. Drop me a PM or an email if you're interested. Remember that this is a romantic PG-13 (suggestive situations, no nipples or such actually shown) Visual Novel. So if that isn't your kind of thing...

Onward and upward!

[Mirielle]

I'm sending my auditions in now! I'm sorry, I have had a cold for the past week...I'm still getting over it, so if I sound nasally...please ignore that. I don't usually sound so..."cold-like".

I sent auditions for Carla! Although I do not know if I did a hispanic accent!

And there they go. Sent.

[EwanG]

I have had a cold for the past week...I'm still getting over it, so if I sound nasally...please ignore that.

Don't worry. Given that the setting is Texas, I can always add in a bit that you suffer from Cedar allergies...

Will get back to you soon!

[EwanG]

Well, you almost certainly want to use the voice support, which consists of lines like:

voice "e00001.ogg"
e "This is an example of voice support in action."

voice "e00002.ogg"
e "The voice support automatically stops sounds from playing when we click to advance. It also plays sounds on a different channel, so they don't conflict with music or SFX."

OK, so silly me tried adding some lines like:

voice "becky_00010.mp3"

right before the screen, and now I get an error about mismatched indentation. Is there something else I have to setup first to make a voice call work? Looking in the renpy documentation, it talks about voice support, but I didn't see a documented "voice" call. So I'm guessing I'm missing something.

Help...

[PyTom]

Can you copy in the code? Mismatched indentation is just that, and is easier to diagnose if I can see an example (surrounding the problematic lines).

[EwanG]

Well, it's not the voice lines. I took those out, and am still getting the same error even after deleting the script.rpyc and bytecode files. First, the traceback:

Code: Select all

I'm sorry, but an exception occured while executing your Ren'Py
script.

ParseError: On line 17 of C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\Senior Year/game/annette_script.rpy: indentation mismatch.

While parsing C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\Senior Year/game/annette_script.rpy.

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

  File "C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\renpy\bootstrap.py", line 164, in bootstrap
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\renpy\main.py", line 162, in main
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\renpy\script.py", line 392, in load_script
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\renpy\script.py", line 138, in __init__
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\renpy\script.py", line 261, in load_file
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\renpy\script.py", line 204, in load_file_core
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\renpy\parser.py", line 1344, in parse
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\renpy\parser.py", line 242, in group_logical_lines
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\renpy\parser.py", line 230, in gll_core
ParseError: On line 17 of C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\Senior Year/game/annette_script.rpy: indentation mismatch.

While parsing C:\Documents and Settings\egrantham\Desktop\renpy\Senior Year/game/annette_script.rpy.

Ren'Py Version: Ren'Py 5.6.3a

Then, the code around the area of complaint (starting with line 1 to insure you can keep the same count):

Code: Select all

# Senior Year
# Copyright 2006, 2007 - Ewan Grantham
#
# This init block runs first, and sets up all sorts of things that
# are used by the rest of the game. Variables that are set in init
# blocks are _not_ saved, unless they are changed later on in the
# program.

init:
    
    # Set up the size of the screen, and the window title.
    $ config.screen_width = 800
    $ config.screen_height = 600
    $ config.window_title = "Senior Year"
    
    # Set up the theme for this game. This must be after the
    # library.script_version and config.screen_width lines.
    $ theme.roundrect()

    # Set this to true to enable some developer-specific
    # functionality. It should be false in a finished game.
    # Read the "Developer Tools" section of the reference
    # to see what this enables.
    $ config.developer = True
    
    #Setup Italics Font
    $ config.font_replacement_map["DejaVuSans.ttf", False, True] = ("DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf", False, False)
    
    # Declare the images that are used in the program.

    # Backgrounds.
    image bg splash = "splash.png"

Let me know if you can see what I possibly messed up. I've made sure that the files listed in this section are in the game directory where the script.rpy resides...

[EwanG]

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!

OK, I found out what the problem was. Though I'm not particularly happy about why it happens, I can understand the thinking.

I went in and changed my main script.rpy to see if I had a comment out of place, and got the same error message. How could I still have the same error in the same place after editing the file?

So I chose the Edit Script button from the RenPy launcher, and was surprised to see Annette's vocal script come up.

When I prepared my vocalists scripts, I called them annette_script.rpy, becky_script.rpy, etc. Evidently, RenPy thinks they're all part of the game.

Moving those scripts into a different directory got the game going again. I haven't tried adding the voice in yet (will do shortly), but thought I should mention this to save PyTom some debugging time, and to possibly save other authors from my same fate...

[EwanG]

While I was at it, I went ahead and moved to 5.6.4, which I had been meaning to do for some time.

Anyway, voice now works perfectly fine.

If y'all will excuse me, I'm going to apply my forehead to one of my office walls a few time until I add some "Christmas Red" to the color scheme...

Can only imagine how much fun I still have to look forward to when I try to package this all up for distribution.

[EwanG]

OK, now have all five vocals cast, and by a very fine cast of young women. So now it's a matter of waiting for the recordings to come in.

In the meantime, I'm trying to work up a good homepage for Senior Year. Any websites y'all can point me to that you think are good examples for effectively promoting a VN?

Also, still looking for Beta Testers...

Thanks,
Ewan