Errant Heart Discussion Forum

Well, being brand new, we need SOME sort of content to start populating the place. I'll post what I've got for Errant Heart. Most of this info has been posted elsewhere, so I don't necessarily expect much commentary on it. But I'll post it as an example of the sort of content I'd like to see in the WIP threads...


PREAMBLE:
In ancient times, Gods and Demons dwelled among man. But as mankind developed and his power grew, the influence of the Gods slowly receded. One culture—the first great civilization of humanity—chronicled the exploits of the Gods during their waning time among man.

The ancient Egyptian civilization knew of the Gods. They also knew of men who walked with the Gods. Men who were not men. These were the Servants of the Gods—and of Demons. It was the Servants who were charged with the protection of the order and tranquility first divined by the Gods. Yet, despite the rise and fall of the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans and countless other civilizations, these Servants, these men who are not men, walk among us still, vying to keep order intact and keep the forces of chaos at bay.

STORY:
Lira Moretti, a shy, young artist from a small island in the Mediterranean makes her way to the mainland city of San Moritz in pursuit of her career as a painter. There she encounters peculiar people whom she never before thought could exist, nor would she befriend.

As Lira spends more time in San Moritz, it becomes evident that she's being pulled into a world that she can scarcely comprehend, much less desires to be a part of. However, her developing friendships will help make her become a better person and prepare her to meet the ultimate destiny that awaits her.


PRIMARY CHARACTERS:


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SECONDARY CHARACTERS:


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IN-GAME SCREEN SHOTS






BACKGROUND INFO

You ever have an idea that you thought was really cool? You worked the idea over and over again, refining it, correcting deficiencies, adding concepts, etc. In the end, what you created bore little resemblance to that original idea? Yeah, that's what Errant Heart is.

The idea originally came about as a way to subvert and/or lampoon the Magical Girl genre. I mean, what happens to the evil baddies once they're defeated? Disintegrate into dust? My, that's convenient. What if they didn't? What if, after the battle, the magical girl(s) were left with a corpse? And what if this repeated week after week? Well hell, the cops would start getting involved in all the homicides.

That tongue-in-cheek approach eventually gave way to a more serious approach. Basically exploring just how screwed up a magical girl might become once immersed in the "magical world". So far, the result is what I consider a more...Shonen Jump-y title than a magical girl title. Although, if one were to take Bleach as an example of a quintessential Shonen Jump title, where it places a far heavier emphasis on fighting and "leveling up" versus character growth and development, Errant Heart takes the opposite approach, and emphasizes character growth and development over fighting. At least, the Visual Novel component does.

I've always found this project visual intriguing, and the variation in the sprites is very impressive. The backgrounds are, of course, beautiful, and I've seen them on DA.

I love tongue-in-cheek stuff and stuff that asks 'What if...' instead of following preset formulas. There sounds like there will an interesting mix of cause and effect that shows consequence to ones actions, as well as the unpredicatable nature of the world that will screw you over as readily as it will reward you. It's a nice balance.

The idea of having peace keepers between gods and demons is not a new one and has been explored many time. Constantine is an example were angels and demons keep the 'balance' while the high ups fight for human souls. It's pretty classic and it is something I am partial to because I like the whole idea of good and evil being two sides of the same coin. Good Omen is an absolutely brillant example of this theme... that is than is turned on it's head by it's authors XD

The sprite colouring looks a little inconsistent in the two examples. Are both going to be present in the final version, or are you picking one direction? I prefer the colouring on the main sprite, because I feel the other sprite is done too hard compared to the backgrounds, but it's not bad to look at or anything.

I've mentioned that I love the art deco theme, I did an entire real estate design project about it once. Is the theme relevent? Is the game set in that period, or is the town built in that period? Is there another reason for the choice?

I was very impressed by the sprite tinting, so much so that Camille and I borrowed the idea, though ours is done with layers and not coding. It does make a great difference visually.

I know you have been working on this for quite awhile, and the scope is pretty big. Where about would you say you were with progress?

Okay, so since someone has been pestering me to lead by example, I'm going to try and accommodate said someone.

It was brought to my attention that perhaps one of the ways in which to differentiate this place from LSF and Teacup is—rather than just talk and theorize—to show examples of problems and issues that we run into while creating our work and how we get around those problems.

So, one of the issues that we have with Errant Heart is the absurd amount of sprites. For the most part, the primary characters have roughly 20-or-so expressions. Those expressions are spread across three poses. Some of those poses have alternate arm positions. And in the case of a character like Salima, she has four costumes and four hair styles—not to mention the lighting system that gets applied on top of all of that.

Because of the paper doll system, some of this complexity is actually reduced quite a bit. At the start of every scene, all we have to do is declare some variables. In the case of Salima, we declare a variable for her hair style and for her outfit. We also declare a variable for the lighting in the scene. Then, when embedding sprites into the dialog, all we have to worry about remembering are the expressions. Um, and whether or not we want to use any "alternate" versions (meaning a sprite with an alternate arm position). Er, and whether or not we want to invoke a specialized "close-up" sprite. Oh, and we have to invoke the positioning system too.

So, yeah. As you can see, by including so much variety in our sprites, the complexity ramps up to ridiculous levels very quickly. One of the biggest issues is just how to keep all of that straight when deciding which expressions to invoke while embedding sprites into the dialog. If I rely just on my memory, it's very likely that I'll forget about specific sprite expressions. Thus, all the effort that went into creating the extra poses and expressions will have been lost.

Below is a snapshot of my desktop. In this case, I've got Jedit running and I'm in the middle of embedding some sprites into the story. Also, you can see that I've got Adobe bridge running to the side. But you know what? I don't like Bridge. Or rather, I don't like having to switch back and forth between two programs while I'm inserting sprites. I also didn't like the option of printing out samples of every sprite and every pose, thereby keeping stacks of papers hanging around.

The solution? Okay, this is probably going to seem a bit decadent, but—I use an iPad.

Basically, thanks to Archer, there is a handy "guide" that he put together for every sprite/expression/position etc. It needed to be done simply to make sure the paper doll system would work. But because of that, I'm able to grab snapshots of every character expression and pose (as well as their name), and then upload them to the iPad. I can use the iPad as the "contact sheet" for each character. I can either flick through each image individually, or as you can see from the bottom of the sample image, there's a scrubber bar at the bottom, which can be used to quickly navigate to a specific image.

I can either prop the iPad up on my desk or lay it in my lap. As I go through the script and need a new sprite expression/position, I merely need to flick through my collection of images until I land on the sprite that I want. Then I invoke the name and position in the script, and I move on. One of the side benefits being that the last image selected on the iPad is always there as a reference. So, if I go for pages without a new expression, I don't have to scroll back in Jedit to see what I used. I simply look down to the iPad to see what the last sprite was, and then I can pick the most appropriate follow-up sprite. This is surprisingly important, due to the fact that most sprites have three positions. It looks awkward if a sprite transitions from facing left to facing right. So I try to make sure sprites go through a progression of positions—left to center to right and back again.

So, there you have it. Strange as it may seem, an iPad actually CAN be used for work. Who'da thunk it? Anyway, I do have a follow-up "issue" along these same lines. But, I think I'll save that for later. This post will serve as a test to see if that someone's idea actually pans out—to see if people really are interested in observing/discussion this sort of "train of thought" in regards to development problems/solutions.

I do find it quite interesting in itself that you found a use for an iPad.

I also find it even more interesting to see how different scales for projects bring different needs - it's something that I only ever considered when discussing the process to follow for localisation with PyTom (longer games would be a nightmare to translate with the wrong tools, so I'm pushing him... giving him some friendly advice to accommodate longer projects) and it's certainly interesting to see how you solved the problem of having several sprites and expressions to use in your script.

If you don't mind, I do have a comment to make, and possibly a couple of questions for you.


The comment would be on your main menu layout - I'm far from being an expert in this kind of thing (the only main menu I've ever done was for Tristan & Iseult, and it heavily borrowed graphics from inside the game itself) but I did look at it quite a while trying to figure out why it didn't quite work for me and came up with a couple of observations. At the moment it seems to me you don't have such a defined focus particularly in the main area. The title and drawing of a city behind it in my opinion fight for attention, making it so it's hard for me to concentrate on either and making the title itself look a bit pasted on. Were it me, I'd try to perhaps move the clouds around a bit to accommodate the title itself and move the city/horizon line down a bit so that there is less space for the sea - which feels to me like it's taking a bit too much space at the moment.
If you try and draw some lines where where there seems to be a direction suggested by the way the clouds are positioned you sort of get a "V" shape which as of now points to a bit of the city where there isn't a focal point (the bigger building is somewhere to the left) - the "Errant Heart" bit would probably fit better in the centre of that "V" shape. The city itself has a couple of lines that on its top seem to point upwards, but point to the left of the point where the clouds are pointing. Lastly, the frame of the menu also has a fairly strong line that comes down from the top-right almost diagonally to the bottom left and end in a curve but doesn't seem to work in any way with the others. Working more on how your force lines flow you could guide the eye of the viewer where you want and make the image more pleasing and easy to read as a result.
I would also consider using some colour from the menu itself in the illustration - the thing that comes to my mind more easily would be to use the ochre for the coast in front of the city. I'm suggesting this because I think it would tie the two main elements of the Main Menu a bit more, and make them less disjointed.

(Or course, I have no idea of how final that is.)

Still on the menus: I've seen the way it's animated and I think it really looks quite good - props for the work that has gone into making it work the way it does.


The idea that your sprites adapt to the lighting of the scene is something I really like. Not everyone would think of it, in fact animations seem to be the first thing people aim for when they want to give their characters a characteristic that may impress people. Personally, I think you concentrated on something that the quasi-totality of people overlook (I think only Mikan used a similar system quite some time ago) and it tells me you probably have interesting takes on other aspects of the creation of a visual novel.


As for questions; let's see:

I found it quite intriguing that you mentioned this story was supposed to be - at least in part - a different take on the sort of mahou shoujo story with battles and what have you. Recently I've seen Red Garden, which seemed to do that in part. How much of it is going to just deal with the practical problems you seem to be thinking of (ie: the deaths of the villains) and how much of it is going to deal with the internal conflicts the magical girls (I'm assuming it will be more than one) have and the conflicts with each other? I see that you emphasised the preamble with the ancient civilisations in the WIP post, but I have to say that all the implications I could think of on how you could twist the magical girl genre were the thing that interested me the most, so I wonder what is going to have more weight in the finished game... and you said "Visual Novel part", does it mean it's actually going to have some game play?

I've skimmed through the Lemma Soft thread for this game and I noticed that some people commented on how they felt some segments were too long: how do you personally approach this kind of critique? If you agree with the suggestion, it can mean you will have to do quite a lot of editing work on your script which you already worked on quite a lot. Do you find it hard to "kill your baby" or do you find that having comments from other people gives you a different perspective? I'm interested in this because even when I was sharing more of my work I rarely got in-depth critique - it was either mild praise or a very hazy idea of something the person didn't like. Either way, because I second-guess myself a lot I tended to start doubting everything I did. Do you manage to keep a fairly objective eye on your work when you receive interferences/opinions from the external work? Do you find that there's the risk of changing too much stuff because other people said so or too little because you're clinging to your original idea?

What was the reason for you to choose the visual novel medium? Does it offer something more than, say, publishing a comic? Was there something in your story that somehow fits well either with the presentation or the format itself with the possibility to have different endings or routes through your story?
Presently, I often find that a lot of story could work just as well as novels or comics - do you think you'll experiment with the "tools" you have to see how you can take advantage of them to deliver your story in a way you couldn't have had with other media?
This is something I'm really interested in myself for the projects I have planned: the way you make choices, the way you use the scene (dialogue window + characters + background), the way the endings work are all things that seem to be used more or less in the same way in most visual novels.

And the last one, which is probably a bit weird: was there any reason why you decided to give your protagonist an Italian-sounding name? :-)
I find it quite intriguing that you describe her as someone who's introverted and calm, as we tend to have the complete opposite reputation - we're often described as passionate and firey. I'd find it quite amusing if anyone remarked on the double clash of characteristics, but that's just me.


I do appreciate that I most likely asked some things that you don't want to share because they'd reveal too much of the story itself, and the post is quite long as it is so I don't expect an answer for everything. Take it as a cue for you to discuss anything related to your project that you may want feedback on. ;-)

Alright, so here's a good example of what the majority of the game is going to look like from a "directorial" standpoint. I've attached a sample scene from the middle of the introductory branch.

It's the first meeting with two of the primary characters. But, there's nothing particularly special-effect-y about the scene. There's no fighting or any particular action. It's just characters talking amongst themselves. So, the idea is to add a little bit of visual interest by occasionally panning or zooming or "cutting" to a new shot.

One thing I worry about is the large amount of expression changes in combination with the NVL window. Is it too distracting to have the window disappear every few seconds in order to display new expressions and poses? Should there be a longer delay before returning to the NVL window (in order to get a good long look at the new expressions)? Or should the NVL window NEVER go away during expression changes?

These are the things I wonder about.

Anyway, the demo shouldn't take too long to get through. Certainly no more than 10 minutes. Of course, it's disjointed from the story, so it won't make too much sense on it's own. But I'm putting this out here so it can be evaluated on its technical merits, rather than its literary merits.

A couple of things you may already have addressed:

- Preferences is mispelled when you start a new game.
- After a few very nice bacgrounds a filtered photo (in the flower shop) clashes a bit and is fairly noticeable.

A couple of interface things:

I'm not a great fan of the NVL mode, to be honest. I find it fairly obstructive, particularly when the text goes over the characters' faces. I'd have suggested a half-NVL mode like in Torrey and the Vampire, but I quite like the way your characters behave when there's more than one on the screen (and one is smaller 'cause they're farther away, and they slide here and there etc.), so it's not a viable solution. I was told that in your previous demo you used a normal text window - I'd personally go back to that.
I find it harder to differentiate the characters just based on their lines' colour if their text is all lumped together with all the narration from Lira, too, so that would be another reason why I'm not so fond of NVL here.

I play with Auto mode on and I found it a bit annoying to find that when I middle-clicked to see the characters or backgrounds it turned itself off. I then had to left-click, click on Preferences and turn it on again. According to PyTom he's made it so now you can just pause and un-pause Auto directly from inside the game - would it be possible to add that to your game? If you add the ability to use the feature, you may as well do it the best possible way. :-)

It seemed to me I barely had the time to see the characters, as it is. While this is kind of a moot point considering I'm suggesting not to hide the characters under the NVL window, I'll still say that I'd have liked to have more time to see them between poses.



Finally, I realise you asked only for feedback for the direction of your scenes, but I'd still like to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the presence of an epilogue at the beginning. It didn't have a lot of text nor did it last long, but I thought it was a nice touch - it did set the mood quite a lot, surprisingly, for me. I'd have liked it if the music faded a bit less abruptly, perhaps by fading right after the bells (or however you call them) and not letting the music almost continue but not really... I'm not sure I can explain it better than this.

So far I'm intrigued, there are a few things you do not in the way everyone else would to impress (like the sprites' hue and the epilogue instead of, say, blinking animations and a pretend animated intro) that are refreshingly your own thing.