The Censor [Dystopian/SF] [Nano 2013] - Demo completed

[fioricca]

AHHhhhh I played Locked in and was absolutely in love with it. One thing I always love about your games is how you're not afraid to experiment with new ways of presenting visuals and stylising them for a unique, mysterious look. I love how you're bringing back the silhouetted figures from Locked-in in the form of silhouettes with digits; I love the window panels, and if the polygons are going to serve as space for the textbox, I am taking my hat off to your ingenuity. This is all so, so amazing. This is definitely another project I'm looking forward to playing! *o*

You posted three different types of floors, I wonder if you meant to choose one among them? My favourite is the second as the floor area is consistent with the area taken up by the panels. The first one looks rough, and the character looks like he's standing on a long corridor in the third one.

[Carassaurat]

I like the way you're coming up with new ideas to use RenPy's simple graphics system. I am not, however, convinced on the aesthetic you've got. Hexagons have been the cheap sci-fi thing for four decades now; they're ugly and impractical and the only reason people use them is because it's pretty much the equivalent of writing "science-fiction" on your assets. In thise case, I also think the angularity and needless complexity of a hexagon floor clashes with the rounded and simple look of the furniture you've modeled up. Lastly, the glowy lines, too, are a cheap sci-fi gimmick, that draw a lot of attention from the viewer because of their high contrast; which is a shame because you've got these cool panels that ought to be the stars of the show, but I'm getting distracted by the floor, of all things.

I know most people won't be bothered by this, or not in the same way that I am, so it's perfectly acceptable to keep what you've got — certainly now that the deadline's approaching quickly — but I still think it's a cheap trick that doesn't do justice to the amount of thought you've put into how to present your scenes.

[saguaro]

@fioricca
Thank you for your comments, I wasn't sure if people would be receptive to the concept or the sprites, so it means a lot to me that you're on board. I have speech bubbles at the top for most of the dialogue, not sure if that will stay now that the BGs have changed but I want to keep the player eye at a higher level as much as possible.

The three pictures are just examples of how I was refining the idea over time, so my current "working" look is the bottom one. However, regarding the hexagons...

I am not, however, convinced on the aesthetic you've got. Hexagons have been the cheap sci-fi thing for four decades now; they're ugly and impractical and the only reason people use them is because it's pretty much the equivalent of writing "science-fiction" on your assets. In thise case, I also think the angularity and needless complexity of a hexagon floor clashes with the rounded and simple look of the furniture you've modeled up. Lastly, the glowy lines, too, are a cheap sci-fi gimmick, that draw a lot of attention from the viewer because of their high contrast; which is a shame because you've got these cool panels that ought to be the stars of the show, but I'm getting distracted by the floor, of all things.

lol OK this is why you're supposed to share wip screenshots, feedback! Thank you for your honest opinion, you really articulated what's wrong and you've inspired me to look for a more elegant solution.

The floor is only important in the sense that is is the "rails" of the background, and we will travel along it, so doing something simpler will actually make the "living room" idea work better.

[saguaro]

LSFriends I honestly worked a lot on this last week. I'm trying to do this the right way, and not the super craptastic saguaro way.

I keep waffling between wanting to finish (probable crappy game) versus releasing a short demo now and a full release (probable good game) in a month. Eight days is actually a long time so I guess I don't have to decide yet.

I finished the room-to-room movement and all of the basic sprites. Here's a test screen. It took me a bit to figure out how to do the Voice sprite on the right. I wanted it to hover, but obviously it couldn't double as a text box that way, so I settled for making two bars that hover. Still not satisfied with the floor, you have no idea how many things I tried, but this tiles easily and looks pretty decent in motion.

And because I find it funny to compare my current title screen to the other awesome ones that are being released, here ya go.

The cursor blinks. I bet you're excited now!

[saguaro]

I posted a little on tumblr but not here for some reason. On track to release a demo that maybe covers 10% of the game, it's mostly an overview of the main features. I originally wrote about 5k words, but after testing Li'l told me I need to write a lot more and I agree, I'm feelin' it, so hopefully the end result will be much longer than 5k.

Speaking of, I just recruited Li'l for the soundtrack. Li'l is currently obsessed with minimoog, so expect a lot of ambient synthy stuff.

Here is the current environment, including a little pattern testing at the bottom there. My process isn't very efficient, basically I try 25 visuals and usually the 26th thing feels right. So 10 patterns from now we'll have a winner for the Commons Room, which is where that scene takes place.

[Nuxill]

ooh, it's coming along nicely. Do you have a goal for the final word count in mind?

[saguaro]

I'm not sure. I originally wanted to shoot for something in the 10k range so that might be a good benchmark for now.

[saguaro]

Watching all the full-release teams FREAKING OUT/DYING makes me feel simultaneously guilty and relieved that I'm only releasing a short demo.

I decided to add some wall glyph things to the background. Originally they glowed on a 3 second rotation, but Li'l told me I was going to, "give everyone an aneurysm," which is possibly true, so I made a much more subtle wave effect that hopefully doesn't look like crap. I realize I am throwing a lot of moving parts in there just because I can, which is a terrible design philosophy, but whatever.

Also, Li'l just gave me two music tracks for the demo. The ambiance is pretty cool, I hope people enjoy it. After listening, I lifted my cap on .ogg file size and told Li'l to make whatever music feels right. JUST TAKE THE KEYS AND DRIIIIIIIVE

I feel the demo is actually too short. It ends right before a major scene that is written, but needs to be rescripted and needs new assets. I'm going to try to get that scene ready, but I'm not sure it will make the deadline.

[saguaro]

Demo: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 43&t=20134

postmortem at the new wip thread