I've a question purely out of curiosity, since the NYPD is such an unusual setting for a VN have you put much thought into the games overall style?
The NYPD is a pretty popular setting for a lot of movies and TV shows. I feel like it popped into my head because of them. While those settings are tense and dramatic, I chose to write the 3rd Precinct (the setting of the NYPD) as a more peaceful place that rarely sees a lot of action to contrast with the chaotic premise of the story. In addition, considering there are some characters who don't get as much screen time as others, the quiet setting allows character development to be much more fluid without a whole lot of scenes.
I can't say that the art style was something I thought of from the go, but the feeling I wanted to convey has always been in my mind. Still I'm very, very pleased with the work EccentricKarma has done as the characters are very expressive. It's even more impressive because I had very little input in it and he/she has been winging it based off two sentences per character.
1. An environment that looks pretty realistic, but has been drawn by hand to accentuate the more grim features, looking more shady than the real thing(think:Dividead)
2.Something to resemble film noir with stylized photography(think:something like the Sin City movie)
3.Something more familiar from manga, displaying NY as a technological metropolis with a more airy feel.
Or some amalgamation of the above.
It is very hard to find someone to draw the background art. I've looked around, and a lot of the artists I'm interested in require commissions and are pretty expensive. In addition to that, it wouldn't feel right paying one artist and not paying the other. I also need another coder who can assist me with the customization of the game windows and theme. Haven't found a single one yet.
Also congratulations on a job well done, the community needs more people like you who are capable of making the extra effort so others won't have to(look whose talking ;_;)
Thanks. I mean, I don't know a whole lot about VNs. I thought that Ren'Py provided a tool that could help make an adventure game without all the terrible pixel hunting that you see in point-and-click games. I played a bunch of VNs and kind of noticed a trend of some sort, so I wanted to take an unorthodox approach and make something that would stand out.
One thing that kind of troubled me during development was sex. Instead of using it as, say, a scene or interaction between two characters, I focused on making it more of a small theme in the story. No nudity or anything.
One thing I don't understand is why you're shy about using Dawkins as a reference, since the people who are put off by it are certainly worth it even if just one more finds it deeply involving. Its a popular book from what I understand and most of the anime fan community is pretty heathenish.
Mostly because it's the theme behind the book that turns people off. As I go from being a kid to a teen, then from being a teen to an adult, the question "why are we here" continues to pop into my mind a lot. Most people following an organized religion have morals against that kind of thinking. I'm not atheist, I kind of consider myself religious. But even then, I always think about our purpose in existence, and that is what mostly inspired this project. The main character questions their existence and purpose, just like myself.
And as for the comment about anime fans, I really don't know too much about anime. I don't know what makes an anime, anime. Is it the style of the art? I don't watch anime a whole lot, nor do I read comics or manga. Last anime I watched was Haruhi Suzumiya because of the way it presented the story. I like watching, reading, and listening to whatever is good and inspires me. And even though I don't really dabble in it, I really enjoy going to conventions and hanging out with anime fans. Some are too hyper, but I find a lot of them to be as expressive as the shows they watch.