Author Topic: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou VN. (July 2: Demo 2 is out!) (Read 59754 times)

Sect · « **Reply #90 on:** July 03, 2011, 09:33:05 AM »

Well, I played this for... six hours? Kind of a relaxed pace, but I did a whole playthrough (doing a Flandre centric run, with edging towards Patchy and Alice a little; Reimu's path was cut off at the end). So, notes, spoilered for his and her protection:

Spoiler:

Anyways, highly enjoyed playing through it. I think I'll try again, going for a Shanghai ending.

Iced Fairy · « **Reply #91 on:** July 04, 2011, 12:37:06 AM »

Graphs updated the first post in the thread with screen shots for the interested.

Koakkuri · « **Reply #92 on:** July 04, 2011, 01:49:00 AM »

Played through it today, loved it immensely. The game definitely feels more polished in pretty much every regard, and having portraits for Marisa is a brilliant idea.
:3 Minor complaints: I spotted a then/than mix-up towards the end of the demo (unfortunately, I forgot where it was. :ohdear:), and the game ending on a cliffhanger again makes me very frustrated. =P. Anyway, can't wait for more, this game's amazing. Thank you very much.

Tired/Warm · « **Reply #93 on:** July 04, 2011, 02:01:22 AM »

Well. Wow. Where to start? For one, as it has been noted elsewhere the Marisa portraits are a really nice touch. For another, the character dialogue... Let me start at the beginning. Spoilers for game ahead-

Spoiler:

This has one of the most intricate choice/interaction systems I have ever seen in an visual novel - to be fair, I don't play that many, especially not ones with a companionship twist. But, the amount of insanely cool stuff I've noticed by playing around and trying different choice options is just amazing. For those who haven't tried it yet, you should give it a go for that alone.

And the unity! The music, character art - especially facial expressions, which I think suited every character perfectly - background, and writing just clinched together perfectly. And it's definitely not in need of Koakuma's grammar workshop!

Speaking of, the jokes are great - there are subtle jokes, references to games and things, and clever insertion of other mediums; Flandre and Joeseph Conrad is a brilliant thought. And as good as they are, the characterization and seriousness are paced even better. Again, the art and music does a lot to help with the transition between the two. I want to repeat that a lot, so instead just know that I'm thinking it.

In addition, this made me really think about Gensokyo. It has one of my favorite things in any fiction, world-building. For one thing, I've been convinced to add Rinnosuke/Yukari to my shipping wall, ohohoho! Secondarily... The amount of thought actually put into Marisa's quest for immortality... Geeze. As someone who couldn't imagine not dying, it's really mind-blowing.

There's a lot more I'd like to comment on, but word limitations and I talk far too much already. Lemme finish by saying that a certain chart-sequence cleared everything up for me, and now I only need one for all the choices - I go visiting Koishi too much as it is, eheheh!... This is amazing work. I don't know what else to say and for me that's uncommon. I usually can say something, even if it's useless!.. If you want me to go into more detail, please don't hesitate to ask. Seconding cliffhangerness - and again, is there a 'Tired you goofball, check things in this order' hidden document or something I could use? Either way - superb work. I can count the number of times I've enjoyed a visual novel so much on one hand.

GoldenArcher96 · « **Reply #94 on:** July 04, 2011, 01:13:02 PM »

I played the first demo a long time ago, then continued the same file in this second demo. I'm loving the new artwork, and I absolutely love all the new music. They just seem so much more... atmospheric. It's amazing. (More notes on what the music tended to... do to me in the spoiler below).

Anyway, I did a single run without going back and changing routes (other than simple curiosity, but I always went back to my original route). I tried going for an Alice-centric route. I was also trying to get close to Patchouli but I was more

Spoiler:

, I basically ignored Reimu until

Spoiler:

, and I would be nice to Flandre and

Spoiler:

. MAJOR spoilers coming up, because it explains my ending:

Spoiler:

I got bitten by Flandre, couldn't push her off, went to Reimu, killed her, and then got killed by Yukari. Goddammit. All that just so happened to be right after I was wondering if there could be a bad ending, too. Imma go back to the choices when she bites you and see what happens with different combinations. But I went the "BLAST HER OFF" route out of curiosity (before I got the game over above), and I went up until the screen turned black and white. I went back to my original file after that so there'd be no spoilers.

Anyway, as I said before, I loved the music. The Gensokyo Five scene made me laugh like crazy, but the background music was what sent me over the edge. It was, simply put, abso-freaking-lutely hilarious. The "romance" music also worked extremely well for the Koakuma and Patchouli scene. I ended up whispering for Koa to kiss her, and the music added up to the perfect "d'awwwww" scene.

Of course, some of the music, as well as the scenes, ended up scaring me to death. Namely the whole Flandre biting scene. I got there at 4AM in the morning in the complete dark and with a headset with fairly loud volume. I'm scared pretty easily, but when it got to that scene with the music, I was practically pissing myself. And then when Marisa went insane with the dreams and then went and killed Reimu, I nearly lost it. And then that Game Over... God, dude, I'll admit, I wasn't particularly impressed with most of the music in the first demo, but in this demo, my opinion has changed DRASTICALLY. You've managed to make me fell sympathy with a lot of tracked, and you made me feel freaking scared with some of the tracks.

I'm wondering if it's a problem that I got too close to Flandre... I remember there being a choice whether or not to even try to get her to go out more. Maybe I shoulda picked no just to avoid Flandre altogether, but I was afraid that she'd end up throwing a fit and killing me for not being with her often. =P Of course, I haven't explored any other routes during the biting scene, mainly because it was 4AM and I didn't want to get another Game Over that would potentially give me more nightmares. XD

I'm really liking this. The story is really good, the art and music really work well together and set the atmosphere, and the game already has a lot of polish. I'll be looking forward to more demos in the future. =)

I might try restarting the game from the beginning if I don't find a solution to the... situation I explained. You said there were a lot of changes since the beginning, anyway, so I'll try to explore a few more things. =P

EDIT: More spoilers since I finished the demo, so yeah.

Spoiler:

Well, that's it. I'll be eagerly looking forward to the next demo, or the final release, depending on what it ends up being. =)

Iced Fairy · « **Reply #95 on:** July 04, 2011, 04:57:38 PM »

It's really great to hear all your replies. I'm passing them on to the other devs (that don't already check the site). I'll also try to cover some of the commentary, though if you have questions feel free to ask.

Bad Ends - There aren't a lot of bad ends for a variety of reasons. First because a lot of bad end setups just don't make sense (yandere Alice was cut for being stupid for example) second because they eat a lot of time. It's really hard to set up a bad ending that isn't something stupid like "you didn't wipe off the blood on your chest, now you die." And it's not very worthwhile in design time because the player will see it once, then reload. We tried introducing more flat ends and failure points. Flandre has a lot of places where she'll give up on going out, Reimu's prereqs are pretty tough, and you can hamstring your Patchouli relationship in a lot of ways. So it's less likely that well kill you and more likely that if you aim poorly you'll end up with only Alice willing to date you (if that).

Music - Mixtape really did will with his work, and the extra tracks he gave us allowed us to cover the emotional spread a lot better. For example your early meetings with Patchouli use his stronger locked girl arrangement to show the distance between the two magicians at the start. Just as an aside, you can unlock every track in the music room, though 2 tracks require you to get one of the bad ends, and one requires a very specific choice with Koakuma.

Spoiler:

Metaflare · « **Reply #96 on:** July 04, 2011, 06:08:46 PM »

Enjoyed this a ton. My thoughts on all the stuff added in 2.0 in the spoilers.

Spoiler:

I would've thought of more but I just woke up, but I really just wanted to say that you people put a lot of work into an amazing project. I can't wait for the full release.

Iced Fairy · « **Reply #97 on:** July 05, 2011, 02:23:55 AM »

I spoke with Mixtape, (our head composer) and he wanted to thank everyone again for the compliments. We removed Nuclear Fusion because it didn't really fit Koishi's segments well, but we'll bring it back in the full version, probably with some tweaks and improvements. (We can also include the original in the music room, if people want it.)

He also said that he tried to think up a second theme for Reimu, but he hasn't found any he was satisfied with yet.

Kips McKipzerson · « **Reply #98 on:** July 05, 2011, 02:23:10 PM »

Spoiler:

Also, How do I find certain characters themes? I'm half tempted to just upload all the themes on my youtube channel. That is, with your permission of course.

Spoiler:

Iced Fairy · « **Reply #99 on:** July 05, 2011, 02:50:05 PM »

If you try to go for the Patchy route (or one of the Harem routes) helping Koakuma to some degree is just fine. And if you do decide to pursue Patchouli you are given choices to act as a friendly rival. However those choices require you be knowledgeable and charming, while shooting Koakuma in the face before making your move is somewhat easier.

kips , there's a music room. Also our musician has a youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MixtapeSounds

Koakkuri · « **Reply #100 on:** July 05, 2011, 04:13:10 PM »

And what glorious music it is.

I have a question, if that's alright: How many endings are there planned to be in the full version? And how many playthroughs are necessary to see them all?

Iced Fairy · « **Reply #101 on:** July 05, 2011, 04:22:19 PM »

We plan to have 8 endings total, we hope to have 9 but that'll depend on design time. In addition there will be 4 bonus scenes attached to the main heroine endings.

In theory if you do things right you could have a save at a certain day that allows you to get 7 of the 8 paths we're sure to include. However you'd probably need at least four playthroughs to get all the endings and the bonus scenes.

If we have the time to implement it the ninth ending will require a full playthrough on its own.

Kips McKipzerson · « **Reply #102 on:** July 05, 2011, 04:24:44 PM »

Ninth ending should be MC perspective being switched to Nitori, and at the end finally gets Marisa.
I'd be down with it.

Metaflare · « **Reply #103 on:** July 05, 2011, 06:14:37 PM »

You know what could be neat for the final version? An image gallery, with backgrounds and special scenes being unlocked as you see them.

Graph · « **Reply #104 on:** July 05, 2011, 07:38:06 PM »

Quote from: Metaflare on July 05, 2011, 06:14:37 PM

You know what could be neat for the final version? An image gallery, with backgrounds and special scenes being unlocked as you see them.

The CG gallery was lower priority for a while since it grows linearly with the game's progress, as opposed to music where you get most of it pretty early on. Plus the CGs weren't impressive at all for a while, until about two weeks before our beta release for demo 2 when I found myself with some time after taking care of the other stuff. So I revised the CGs from demo 1 right around the end.

So yeah, CG gallery should show up in the final release. We'll discuss about including other image viewers in-game.

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **Reply #105 on:** July 05, 2011, 10:21:41 PM »

⑨th ending should be

Spoiler:

.....

:colonveeplusalpha:

Zelinko · « **Reply #106 on:** July 05, 2011, 11:31:56 PM »

Should this be spiking my processor at 100% usage (2.39Ghz P4, 1GB of RAM)?

Even in an "Idle State" (Everything loaded and waiting for input) it was doing a 100% Processor Draw.

Also quite the nice Koakuma you have there. Had a bit of a flashback to a certain WWC post...

Iced Fairy · « **Reply #107 on:** July 06, 2011, 12:00:59 AM »

Quote from: Zelinko on July 05, 2011, 11:31:56 PM

Should this be spiking my processor at 100% usage (2.39Ghz P4, 1GB of RAM)?

Even in an "Idle State" (Everything loaded and waiting for input) it was doing a 100% Processor Draw.

Hm... Did you minimize the game right before that? THere's a bug in the current Ren'py build we think that might cause that.

If not then that's just weird....

SleepKirby · « **Reply #108 on:** July 06, 2011, 12:20:33 AM »

I don't think it would be the minimize problem (see the "Known Bugs" section of the README for what that is), or you'd be seeing a screen glitch as well.

Once in a while I've seen ESR use a lot of memory (on the order of 500 MB out of my machine's 4 GB), but I didn't know what caused it. If you ever notice a correlation between certain actions and a CPU/memory spike, please let us know about it (as well as what OS you're using).

Suikama · « **Reply #109 on:** July 06, 2011, 01:32:57 AM »

I've also noticed ESR uses up a lot of memory, and it icreases a lot over time as well... Maybe it has to do with a custom function with poor runtime or a never ending loop or something...

Zelinko · « **Reply #110 on:** July 06, 2011, 03:38:31 AM »

Quote from: Iced Fairy on July 06, 2011, 12:00:59 AM

Hm... Did you minimize the game right before that? THere's a bug in the current Ren'py build we think that might cause that.

If not then that's just weird....

Running XP for my OS and I'll do a long term test to see that if its a constant thing or not. Check your PMs Iced for a cap of a monitored cpu usage chart with connected screenshot (Avoiding posting here because maybe spoiler or something and the image is wide.)

Notes: Date was 3/12 and it was raining.
When loaded in processor use spiked to 100% for a bit unless right clicked to bring up menu (would drop almost instantly to near 0%. When conversation began It'd head up to around 50-70% usage. The Dips actually coincided with

Spoiler:

Update: Its weird today and it's not drawing as much CPU usage. Maybe its that day that's kinda weird.

More testing seems to show that Rainy Day starts seem to cause the most noticeable spikes. Not sure exactly why but they seem to be connected

pineyappled · « **Reply #111 on:** July 06, 2011, 06:20:29 PM »

Milliparsees.

SleepKirby · « **Reply #112 on:** July 07, 2011, 04:21:15 AM »

Thanks for the info, Zelinko! It seems Graph (our artist) found the main CPU bottleneck just now.

It's the fading-in-and-out star that shows up at the end of a line of dialogue (and when you highlight a choice). As is, CPU during dialogue is 20-25% on my system (Win7, two 2.13-GHz cores, 4 GB RAM). If I disable the dialogue box star in my copy of the game, then CPU during dialogue can drop down to 1 or 2%! Crazy. Apparently, Graph had read something about Ren'Py fading effects using a lot of CPU. I'd like to read more about that... anyway, thanks for pointing us in the right direction! This'll definitely help.

Oh, I'm not sure what to say about your observation with the rainy days, though. I didn't notice that myself...

For memory usage, the only thing I've noticed is that memory usage goes up when the readback (previous text) window is opened, and especially when you scroll all the way up in the readback log. So that's one thing to look at, at least.

Graph · « **Reply #113 on:** July 07, 2011, 08:00:03 AM »

Quote from: SleepKirby on July 07, 2011, 04:21:15 AM

Apparently, Graph had read something about Ren'Py fading effects using a lot of CPU. I'd like to read more about that... anyway, thanks for pointing us in the right direction!

There really wasn't a definite answer, I just happened to get a lead. It seems like we're not the only ones with performance problems on alpha transitions. http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=9525

Kirby happened to notice that the CPU usage goes up when you highlight a choice, and that's when I put two and two together. We can probably fix this by making it a frame-by-frame animation instead of making Ren'py compute the images... though I find it strange that it has to work so hard just to show us a little blinking star...

Mr. Rabi · « **Reply #114 on:** July 07, 2011, 08:13:44 AM »

I spent a good few hours playing this. I have to say it's really good. Not much I can say on it (I'm not a good judge for Visual Novels), but there was one problem. If you right clicked to save or check your stats or go to the main menu at the wrong time the game would freeze up and I'd have to close it and restart it. Is there any way I could fix this problem?

Zelinko · « **Reply #115 on:** July 07, 2011, 03:45:24 PM »

Quote from: SleepKirby on July 07, 2011, 04:21:15 AM

Thanks for the info, Zelinko! It seems Graph (our artist) found the main CPU bottleneck just now.

It's the fading-in-and-out star that shows up at the end of a line of dialogue (and when you highlight a choice). As is, CPU during dialogue is 20-25% on my system (Win7, two 2.13-GHz cores, 4 GB RAM). If I disable the dialogue box star in my copy of the game, then CPU during dialogue can drop down to 1 or 2%! Crazy. Apparently, Graph had read something about Ren'Py fading effects using a lot of CPU. I'd like to read more about that... anyway, thanks for pointing us in the right direction! This'll definitely help.

Oh, I'm not sure what to say about your observation with the rainy days, though. I didn't notice that myself...

For memory usage, the only thing I've noticed is that memory usage goes up when the readback (previous text) window is opened, and especially when you scroll all the way up in the readback log. So that's one thing to look at, at least.

Maybe I was noticing the spikes for the star effect. Since That seems to coincide with spikes as well. Still the day was high usage until about 6 or so dialogue exchanges in. Even after the Rain sound effect was long gone. Perhaps its tied to the fade in effect and I only noticed it when I started hearing distortion of the music and general sluggishness.

Thing is that I've had entire game days where there is no maxing of CPU usage (maybe getting to 50% usage max.) I'll see if disabling the star fading (which option is that) makes it avoid the high CPU usage issues.

SleepKirby · « **Reply #116 on:** July 08, 2011, 07:09:31 AM »

Ah, well, players can't disable the star - I was able to do it since i can change the game code. >_> I'm pretty convinced that the star is the main CPU culprit, though in the interest of science, maybe I could put together a mini-demo with a star option for people to try out.

Vyrien · « **Reply #117 on:** July 08, 2011, 03:16:44 PM »

Posting to both follow and tell you guys how much I enjoyed this, I really REALLY can't wait until the entire novel is out, the myriad of choices were wonderful as was the stats tracker. Ended up becoming BFF's with Flan and Alice, ignored Reimu then felt incredibly bad for it

Spoiler:

:3

Author Topic: Eastern Starlight Romance: A Touhou VN. (July 2: Demo 2 is out!) (Read 59754 times)

pineyappled