Red Horizon [mystery, sci-fi]

[saguaro]

This thread is for criticism/suggestions for the VN I'm working on.

Red Horizon is a mystery VN that takes place on board the Red Horizon, a decommissioned North American Outer Navy ship that has since been purchased and outfitted by Commercial Space Fleet for convoy missions from Earth to Mars.

The main character is You-Name-Her Reyes, a NAON officer who was recently discharged after her last tour of duty. As the prologue goes, the terrestrial economy has tanked, and Reyes goes months without work until a distant relative manages to wrangle her a communications post on the Red Horizon. The game takes place during the 40-day trip from Earth to Mars.

GAMEPLAY
Open navigation. You can opt out of solving the mysteries and the plot will go on without your intervention. My goal is to make every choice meaningful, whether it affects the overall plot or stats.

PROGRESS
Five chapters planned, each with its own main mystery, plus one overarching mystery plot. Chapter 1 is almost completely scripted. Chapter 2 has a detailed outline and the rest of the chapters have basic outlines.

Statistics:
The game contains 1,528 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 17,561 words,
for an average of 11.5 words per screen.
The game contains 132 menus.

My main concern is the art style. Here's where I'm at:



If I keep the colorbar header, I think I will make it fade out after the player enters the room. It's just too distracting hanging there behind the sprite the whole time.

edit: don't see the images so attached them

[PyTom]

Boosting for mars? Count me in.

It's hard to comment on the art style because the links seem to be broken. Please attach them to your post using the board's attachment feature.

[papillon]

With the sample image at least, having it hanging there makes it hard to see the otherwise quite dark background, because the letters are so big and bold and eyecatching. So yeah, probably fading it out after you enter the room would work.

[sciencewarrior]

You could do some fancy animation effects without too much effort, move in the colored strip, then the letters, pause for a half-second, and move them both out. Probably a bad idea to do this every time you enter a room, but it could be a nice touch if used with moderation.

[Nuxill]

What about using that design (and maybe some fancy animation like it's been suggested) for the area you're currently in the first time you enter the area, and subsequent visits use something a little smaller?

[saguaro]

Thanks guys. I'll try using the big-sized color bar with some kind of roll/fade in/out animation the first time the player sees the room, then use a smaller static version for repeat visits.

[saguaro]

I'm working on a fake OS with screens. I read in a dev article once that you should always streamline interface so the player is making as few clicks as possible to get to whatever he/she wants. Makes sense to me.

Considering this, I am not sure about my email system layout. I can do it with 2 viewports (click header info in top port to show message body in second) or I can have a single viewport where they click the header to open the message in a new window, then click again to hide the window.

I wonder if players have a preference. There will not be a lot of emails to read (I hope) so it could only be like a dozen extra clicks overall.

Those ss are so rough I'm almost scared to attach them. I know it's ugly! Please don't harden your hearts!

[saguaro]

Finished the fake OS and the overlay (and learned a lot about screen language). I may make some cosmetic changes but everything works like it should. The message system is really inefficient and uses a bunch of windows, but I've spent enough time on it for now.

I changed how the rooms work, too. Used to be, you would walk into a room and a conversation would immediately trigger. Now, when you click the chat icon, you can choose to investigate, ask about certain characters, make small talk, etc. I've added an "examine" function, to make up for background asset shortcomings.

I've made a few sprites, but I'm seriously thinking about trying to recruit an artist, at least for one neutral pose for each character.

[saguaro]

Trying to figure out the dialogue box thing. I really like having the name box be inside the dialogue box, but I'm not sure if it's too annoying/hard to read. Once I get the name tag, dialogue, and sprite in there... dunno. I prefer the white color scheme, but I'm not sure it's practical for gameplay.

Opinions welcome.

[Nuxill]

I think the white text box looks better graphics wise, but the inside of the box should either be darker or the name should be lighter. Otherwise I can imagine the text would be hard to read.

[sciencewarrior]

You can put a black outline around your text to make it easier to read, but I prefer the darker dialogue box, the lighter one calls too much attention to itself.

I also think the characters look fine. You're giving the whole game a very Western adventure game style, and they fit very well.

[saguaro]

Thanks for that feedback, it helped me figure out what to do. I took the elements that worked from both and put them together.

Saturday is Ren'py day, and I spent a good bit of it finding and fixing bugs. OH THE BUGS~~ they are everywhere. But it's coming together.

[Egressus]

It's looking awesome there :o

Judging from what you've posted, this is going to be a pretty epic game. The screens looks nice, too.
Definitely rooting for this. (and the whole space mystery/sci-fi)

[saguaro]

Thank you for your support.

I'm rooting for you too, actually. 16 chapters is nothing to sneeze at.

[Egressus]

No problem! Your game is looking more and more interesting when I think about it. I kinda wonder about the story, the mystery aspect and all, but I think I can wait.
It's kind of... surprising, though, to see 132 menus for 17k words. (It's amazing, actually.)

(The actual story is 50k words in novel form, with switching pov. The script might be longer with different endings and split paths. Not a good idea, maybe.)