Author Topic: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou VN. (July 2: Demo 2 is out!)  (Read 59411 times)

Graph

  • Let's go, Trombe!


An update.  New screenshots and a progress report, here.

Our progress on the demo:

Writing is done.  Programming of the scripts has started.

Character cut-ins: ~ 100% complete.
Backgrounds: I (Graph) am working on this.  ~ 66% complete.
Event CGs: Nobody working on this so far.  ~ 0% complete.
GUI: ~ 100% complete (As far as saying, it's functional)

SFX: We more or less have what we need for the demo.  ~90% complete.
Music: This one is getting done I think.  ~80% complete.

Sriggle

  • Drop the pills!
Gosh dang I'm looking forward to this~

I guess I could take a few CGs for Alice(I don't want to be spoiled too much, so just the description of what the scene should look like is fine), if my art style is alright.

http://img682.imageshack.us/content_round.php?page=done&l=img682/4845/workhouses.jpg&via=mupload
Japanese progress: To the point where I can read a manga with the help of an electronic dictionary.

Where do I go if I'm interested in being a beta tester :3

Iced Fairy

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Graph probably should have stated it's Beta testing for the demo.  As he said, we aren't really ready for testers yet.  We hope to have people on it in two weeks.

When we do get testers, we'll probably grab people who signed up for our forums first, just because it's easier to get constant feedback and to respond faster.

Netwarrior

  • Yeah that's a very pleasant attitude to have
If you didn't already got an artist, I would offer mimself to do the linearts of the characters ( I'm awful at coloring, but lineart is easy job for me ).

I'm also a programmer and programming a VN is easy enough even if it comes to programming it from scratch with C++ and SDL. But Ren'py is a nice tool, so you won't need another programmer.



There's just one thing I want to criticize...
It's just my opinion, but I think that VN's are supposed to have a cute artwork, something that the actual artwork doesn't look ( for me ).
When a child dies, we call the corpse an ADULT.

Graph

  • Let's go, Trombe!
Hi Netwarrior.  It's true that I didn't try to change up my style much-- it's a long haul so it's best for me to pick something I'm used to.  If the writers are fine with it I have no complaints.

The beta demo is going to be ready soon, so we're gonna hold off starting people on the work for a bit.  If you still want to try out as an artist, can you show a sample of your work?  Either here, on the dev site or by PM is fine.

Netwarrior

  • Yeah that's a very pleasant attitude to have
I've got an DeviantART, but almost all the drawings there are VERY VERY old ( something like 2 to 5 years old ) and they are all uncolored and their lineart is awful because I didn't use Paint Tool SAI at that time. I'll scan some newer drawings and send them by PM later.

For the time being, just take a look on my DeviantART.

http://yoshimizu.deviantart.com/
When a child dies, we call the corpse an ADULT.

Graph

  • Let's go, Trombe!
Sign-ups for beta testing are here!

If all goes well the beta demo should be ready in a few days.

Iced Fairy

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We have a demo release!  Find it here.  (Or here for non windows people).

We're about halfway done with the script and a third of the way done with the art and music, so we've got a ways to go, but we wanted to show a little bit of what we've put together in VN format.  I hope it entertains.

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #39 on: August 30, 2010, 10:59:37 AM »
Wow... This is very impressive. I especially liked Nitori (in general); I think you can guess why.

http://a.imageshack.us/img266/4702/easternstarlightromance.png
Just a link, I don't want to ruin the surprise.

Uwa

  • Nincompoop
Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #40 on: August 30, 2010, 11:13:16 AM »
Damn, demo ended right when things were getting good. Not that things weren't already good before the five hours it took me to get there. Excellent work here--nice character art, fitting backgrounds, great atmosphere and music, lots of options. (over 90 , not including selection branches  :o) Characterization and writing is vastly entertaining. Oh, Nitori.

Flattery be damned, this is only a demo release and yet it's already shaping up to be wayyyy more enjoyable than a lot of the professional VN stuff you can read/play for a price. I'll definitely be keeping an eager eye out for later releases. 

Muukyu :(

Dead Princess Sakana

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Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #41 on: August 30, 2010, 12:05:10 PM »
While I haven't gotten around to play the demo yet myself, what I have heard and seen here already tells me that you guys are doing great work here.

As such, I'm taking the liberty of stickying this thread until the end of this week in celebration of the demo. Keep up the good work~  :3

FinnKaenbyou

  • Formerly Roukanken
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Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #42 on: August 30, 2010, 12:34:53 PM »
Some light unmarked spoilers below, as a warning.

I admit, I had sort of forgotten about this until the demo came out. My response to starting the game up can be summed up as 'okay, let's go have some fun being a haremmaster- huh? Keine? ...Oh.'

Seriously, though, the first complaint I had was the fact that there didn't seem to be much freedom in choosing where to go. If you're aiming for the Reimu route, for example, it can be frustrating to find yourself visiting the SDM over and over without much of an option to go to the Hakurei shrine. Maybe have Koishi drop a point about how you can't consign yourself to one route yet during her initial monologue at the hot springs, or point out that Marisa has a strange tendency to wander who's yet to really make the important decisions.

Also, it's not obvious what the uses for the four stats are. In the demo, at least, I didn't see any point where the stats had any effect on the situation. Is each of them relevant to one of the routes? Is it possible to get a bad ending from being too low on said scores, or are they just for show?

But honestly, those are pretty minor criticisms compared to the scale of what you've achieved here. The writing is consistently entertaining, the music is fitting, the characters are different enough to be interesting (the only problem possibly being we haven't seen enough of Reimu and Alice in the demo) and the art is pleasing. I liked
Spoiler:
the UFO foreshadowing with Alice's bookshelf
, and
Spoiler:
Flan's slip at dinner
gave me goosebumps.

All in all, I'm now very excited to see how this turns out. Keep up the good work, guys, you're awesome.

(And for the record, I'll be chasing the Koishi path because she's grown on me after DRK and PLotSS because it's the hardest. Yeah. Totally. <_< >_>)
« Last Edit: August 30, 2010, 11:09:28 PM by Roukanken »

Iced Fairy

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Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #43 on: August 30, 2010, 10:19:42 PM »
Good to hear you guys liked it!  I was a little worried with how quiet our beta testers were, but I guess they were just distracted by Comiket's shinys.

Ah, in response to your two issues, I can totally underswtand the first.  We probably should mention early on that the game will take a while to break, (thank god Koishi can bypass the fourth wall).  We did the path breaks oddly for this game, so even after you make your final choice you'll still talk to the other girls, and possibly help them out with their own problems (or just become better friends with them).

As for stats...  well there weren't a lot of checks because the demo didn't go far enough along for players to have leveled their stats much.  Stats will become more and more improtant as the game progresses, there are certain points that have stat requirements, and they're each required to get the "Extra" end (though the stat required depends on the girl).  Koishi will probably mention that later.

Also Koishi path?  What Koishi path?
Spoiler:
It's... pretty obvious isn't it.

It was obvious the instant Marisa asked for help with the Koishi route in the hot spring. Also, she's on the game icon. :V
« Last Edit: August 30, 2010, 11:09:55 PM by Roukanken »

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #44 on: August 31, 2010, 01:04:47 PM »
...well, didn't see that coming.

So I think I'll just pick stuff that seems in Marisa's character; that seems to pop up pretty often. And hey, everyone else is in character too, even if Reimu's a bit nice. Hey, it's Nitori! Eh... invention number 218? It's a...

What is this I don't even

Also, it seems that Marisa is most inclined towards the Flandre-path character-wise. :/ The end-of-demo message was totally worth it, though -- "Hey, you're still alive! :V "

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #45 on: August 31, 2010, 04:05:07 PM »
Ugh I keep accidently clicking on choices when they suddenly pop up in my face, and then when I find out I can't rollback and I didn't save then well.... :getdown:

I'd say either create some unskippable delay before choices pop up or place them higher up on the screen or something like that.

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #46 on: September 02, 2010, 03:25:47 AM »
Also, it seems that Marisa is most inclined towards the Flandre-path character-wise. :/

That's interesting... because Alice is meant to be the 'default' path.
Could you elaborate more on this?



Fiction: August Star in Autumn Sky Eastern Wonderland Story Book 1

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #47 on: September 02, 2010, 06:51:57 PM »
That's interesting... because Alice is meant to be the 'default' path.
Could you elaborate more on this?
Well,  the Alice path isn't terribly subtle, so while it's probably the easiest to pursue, many of the choices are so overtly romantic (that bit where she shows up to the shrine ohanami comes to mind) that they'd be avoided by anyone a) trying to keep Marisa in-character, such as myself, b) trying to procrastinate about choosing and instead focusing on the immortality potion, such as myself, or c) who didn't go in trying to push the Alice path. (There's probably some of the Alice-path in those giant multiple-choice "what do I do now?" bits that I put into potion work, but...)

Mind you, I could be speaking from the perspective of Imperishable Night's script, or someone who thinks of Reimu as the main incident-solver, or... well, any number of perspectives that would drag me away from the Malice path. Still, I don't think it's much of a 'default,' though I'll admit it's very easy to find if you want it.

Mm, I'll play through it a bit more and see if I missed something, but...

[quote = Suikama]Ugh I keep accidently clicking on choices when they suddenly pop up in my face, and then when I find out I can't rollback and I didn't save then well.... :getdown:

I'd say either create some unskippable delay before choices pop up or place them higher up on the screen or something like that.[/quote]YES
Though I worked out how to quicksave, I think a choice I couldn't go back and retry is what put me on the Flan path in the first place, and is also why I EPICALLY FAILED at shipping Patchy and Koa. >.>

Iced Fairy

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Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #48 on: September 02, 2010, 07:07:19 PM »
Hm...  I think you might be surprised at what the best options for the Alice path are, and the actual results of those options.  I suppose people not knowing the affection values will make that a little hard to compare.  But yeah, personal assumptions about how Marisa should act will drive you in a direction.

I think that our length and the difference between us and the typical renai game may be our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.  Maybe I should have Koishi or Marisa make it more clear that pathlock is decently far into the story (well barring a few oddities).

We are tweaking the menus to dissolve in, giving a visual clue and a bit of time before actions can be taken.  If that's not enough we're looking into forcing the plyaer to move the mouse or hit an arrow key before allowing a selection.

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #49 on: September 05, 2010, 07:00:10 AM »
Haha, this is great. Heavy spoilers all over this post.

Right, so...
Seriously, though, the first complaint I had was the fact that there didn't seem to be much freedom in choosing where to go. If you're aiming for the Reimu route, for example, it can be frustrating to find yourself visiting the SDM over and over without much of an option to go to the Hakurei shrine. Maybe have Koishi drop a point about how you can't consign yourself to one route yet during her initial monologue at the hot springs, or point out that Marisa has a strange tendency to wander who's yet to really make the important decisions.

This, pretty hard. Many mornings had Marisa ask herself "What should I do today?" Which had me going "alright! Today I think we're going to the shrine to get some armpits!" Only to be cock-blocked by Marisa deciding she wants to go to the SDM to read some books, or something of that nature. Getting interrupted by Youmu wasn't an issue, since that at least didn't give the impression I was going to get a choice in the matter. Same thing with Reisen -- I knew there was an appointment with her in the future, so when I was told I have to go to the village instead of getting to decide where I wanted to go, I didn't have a problem with it. I figure, if Marisa is going to ask herself what she wants to do today, shouldn't the player get to decide? Even if you gave a silly excuse as to why I can't spend the day with Reimu or Alice (they're out doing something else, still recovering from yesterday when I invariably swooped them off their feet, hate my guts, whatever), I think I could take my forced route much better ;_;

Also, it seems that Marisa is most inclined towards the Flandre-path character-wise. :/

Agreed with this as well. It could be a product of this only being a demo, but it seemed that most of the "reasonable" Marisa choices seemed to point me to Flandre. Should I be stealing everything if I want a certain path? Be incredibly arrogant? Mess everything up with danmaku? IcedFairy saying that we'd be surprised what the best Alice choices are isn't really helping an argument towards her being the default path, either. There was also mention of a pathlock being decently far into the story... Is it going to be clear when that happens? Because I felt pretty pathlocked into Flandre after only making a few choices leaning towards her, mostly because I didn't want to go to the library and read books. It seemed Koishi pinned me for wanting to jump Flandres bones too, but I only wanted to see if my Fairy danmaku status would finally change to something more respectable.

Speaking of Koishi, her diagram was amazing. Yukari's "ohohoho" had me giggling randomly all day yesterday. Nitori's antics were priceless too, great stuff. The writing in this is absolutely fantastic, it was a lot of fun to experience this small taste. Looking forward to a full release.

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #50 on: September 05, 2010, 03:35:19 PM »
Nothing beats the flowchart



REMI GIVES YOU WIIIINGS

Iced Fairy

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Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #51 on: September 05, 2010, 04:14:49 PM »
Right, so...
This, pretty hard. Many mornings had Marisa ask herself "What should I do today?" Which had me going "alright! Today I think we're going to the shrine to get some armpits!" Only to be cock-blocked by Marisa deciding she wants to go to the SDM to read some books, or something of that nature. Getting interrupted by Youmu wasn't an issue, since that at least didn't give the impression I was going to get a choice in the matter. Same thing with Reisen -- I knew there was an appointment with her in the future, so when I was told I have to go to the village instead of getting to decide where I wanted to go, I didn't have a problem with it. I figure, if Marisa is going to ask herself what she wants to do today, shouldn't the player get to decide? Even if you gave a silly excuse as to why I can't spend the day with Reimu or Alice (they're out doing something else, still recovering from yesterday when I invariably swooped them off their feet, hate my guts, whatever), I think I could take my forced route much better ;_;
Aha!  This is what I was missing.  I can definitely see how the illusion of choice would get your hopes up.  I'll work on making the setup more obvious so people don't feel like they missed something important.

Quote
Agreed with this as well. It could be a product of this only being a demo, but it seemed that most of the "reasonable" Marisa choices seemed to point me to Flandre. Should I be stealing everything if I want a certain path? Be incredibly arrogant? Mess everything up with danmaku? IcedFairy saying that we'd be surprised what the best Alice choices are isn't really helping an argument towards her being the default path, either. There was also mention of a pathlock being decently far into the story... Is it going to be clear when that happens? Because I felt pretty pathlocked into Flandre after only making a few choices leaning towards her, mostly because I didn't want to go to the library and read books. It seemed Koishi pinned me for wanting to jump Flandres bones too, but I only wanted to see if my Fairy danmaku status would finally change to something more respectable.
Now I really wish I could be peering over the shoulders of people as they play the game just to see the details.  I'm especially curious as to who people saw at the festival before waking up and seeing Alice.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it here, but the game's design actually started out more as Persona 4 style social links where you were allowed to choose where to go every day.  This turned out to be a nightmare, both in programming and script writing, so we had to drop it (mostly. Reimu still has some choice based variables).  Still you can think of each girls path as being a story in it's own right, each with a friendly/romantic end.

Thus because of that setup we have two breaks for most of the girls.  One break where you decide if your interest is romantic or friendly, and then a little latter pathlock where you decide which of the girls your going to stick with.  We're trying to make both blindingly obvious (assuming you meet the prereqs).  Flandre doesn't have the friends break, and her chance in the romantic pathlock is next to last (meaning you've already turned all the other main girls down) so it's likely most people not trying to get Flandre's end will have the story just be about Marisa and Flandre becoming friends.

The demo focused on Flandre a little bit because her story peaks first, making it a good cliffhanger to end on (that and Graph would have had to make art for Sanae if we had kept going).  It starts so early because you can actually quit or fail out of Flandre's friend path (and you can die a lot too).  Flandre's sort of a side quest and you can actually get boosts for the other girls

Oh and when we state Alice is the default path, that means the requirement for Alice's Normal end is "still breathing."  Basically we don't have a flat end, we have Alice Normal.  Doing Alice's path right however give you Alice True path which is in my mind incredibly awesome and blows Alice Normal path away.

Oh and that chart was all Graph.  I only asked for the disclaimer.

(I've been hiding out in the Librarys IRC recently so anyone wanting to critique really minor things, or see if I slip and reveal more info, you all can hunt me down there.)

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #52 on: September 05, 2010, 05:43:46 PM »
I just want to make a comment about the music. It's really well done, but overall I feel that every track seems to lack intensity.

I'm not sure if it's exactly because of the quality of the instuments in the synth you're using or the lack in volume of instrument tracks compared to other songs, but if you compared each song to something like a ZUN track (yeah yeah he's ZUN but still :V) there's a clear lack of intensity.

Take a look at Oku's theme for instance. The ESR version starts of slow, which is nice, but it doesn't really build up much, and by "build up" I mean there's no cresendos, no increase in tempo, no increase in timbre volume, not really any of that good stuff. Then listen to this :V

Now on the other hand I understand that the music is mostly for ambience, but it can serve a much greater purpose than that. If you look at some of the comments on youtube for remixes of touhou songs done by the top names like dbu, UI, Redalice, whatever, people often comment about how they can invision all sorts of crazy danmaku fights just by listening to the song. Visual Novels are a mix of both words, sounds, and images, but the images don't move so a degree of imagination is still required on the reader's part. That's why having really intense music can stimulate the creative energy of the reader and make them a lot more engaged in the story.

So yeah my thoughts on the music :3

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #53 on: September 05, 2010, 06:59:20 PM »
I have the opposite opinion about the music. I found it much too distracting. In particular, the remix of Okuu's theme was way too cacophonous, the varying volume of the lead instruments was very distracting (and actually rather unpleasant). I could see where Suikama's coming from if this was a music CD or something, but I think the music should stay as ambience... Heck, I'd even slow down most tracks and make them more relaxing, except if they're used during a danmaku fight.

Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #54 on: September 05, 2010, 07:38:07 PM »
I have the opposite opinion about the music. I found it much too distracting. In particular, the remix of Okuu's theme was way too cacophonous, the varying volume of the lead instruments was very distracting (and actually rather unpleasant). I could see where Suikama's coming from if this was a music CD or something, but I think the music should stay as ambience... Heck, I'd even slow down most tracks and make them more relaxing, except if they're used during a danmaku fight.
I will fight you

Yeah I guess it does really depend on the situation. Stuff like Reimu and Flan's theme were nice and fit the atmosphere well. Still I'd try out different things and see what fits best.

Docteur Hartmann

  • Komeiji Koishi's Father
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Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #55 on: September 05, 2010, 10:17:15 PM »
I watched everywhere, but I didn't find the application you were using.
Can you precise just a bit? Thanks.
Bipolar, paranoid, half-crazy, hateful, philanthropic. That's me in a nutshell. And I'm a ddyk. Hahahaha, nobody's gonna get this one.

Graph

  • Let's go, Trombe!
Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #56 on: September 05, 2010, 10:50:24 PM »
Docteur Hartmann, if you're looking for the game downloads, they're on the first post of this topic now.  Or click one of the links in the quote here.

As of 29/8/10, the first demo's been released! Linking here so people don't have to crawl through the topic to find it. :P
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FinnKaenbyou

  • Formerly Roukanken
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Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #57 on: September 05, 2010, 11:07:42 PM »
I think he's asking which program you guys used to make this. It was Ren'py, right?

Iced Fairy

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Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #58 on: September 05, 2010, 11:10:03 PM »
Yeah.  We did a couple of Python tweaks, but it's mostly Ren'py.

Iced Fairy

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Re: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou Visual Novel. (The demo is out!)
« Reply #59 on: September 07, 2010, 03:38:58 PM »
Ah an important question I have.  For those who played through, did anyone actually visit Koishi during any of the optional visits?  And did people find the end of day stat choices to be mildly amusing interludes or just wastes of time?