Jump to content

Nahilys

Members
  • Posts

    79
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Nahilys

  1. Hi everyone !

     

    I am starting this thread for Lekasoft Studio to discuss with the Visual Novel community about their first Work in Progress : Lost Winter Nights.

    Our team is very interested in people's opinion on our current skills and direction. We do believe every comment has a reason behind it, be it positive or negative and will consider them all equally.

    We would also want to make sure our opinions are well understood and do all we can to prevent misunderstanding. :)

    You can DL our DEV.Demo on ITCH.IO (free of charges.

    Also, feel free to check out a bit more about our thought process releasing this Developer Demo if you haven't yet.

     

    ~ Nahilys

  2. Hello there, long time no see ! :D

     

    - Lisbeth's new sprite lineart added.

    - New soundtrack by Mock Off "Days" added.

    - Aika & Morgan DEMO sprites sheets added (non-exhaustive).

     

     

    644705lis.jpg

    183198Morganexpsheet.png

    366906Aikaexpsheet.png

    We will be releasing a Developer Demo in the incoming DAYS hopefully, just waiting for our last soundtrack to be done. It will be a short introduction to our demo heroines Aika & Morgan as well as a quick showdown of our skills. In the same time, we will use this demo to look for a final Backgrounds Artist.

    More news on our Twitter : https://twitter.com/LekasoftStudio /

    Wait for it :D

     

    Nahilys,

    [email protected] / [email protected]

    https://www.facebook.com/lekasoft/

  3. On 22/12/2015 at 2:44 PM, Nosebleed said:

    Warning: I will assume people who read this thread have watched the movie.
    If you haven't, there will be heavy spoilers below. You have been warned.

     

    Okay so I watched the movie last night in a theatre with a couple of my friends and we discussed it a little bit but I wanted to think back on it before making a thread here. Now that i have slept on the issue, here are some of my thoughts on the newest movie.

    First off, let me just start by saying I really enjoyed the movie and have no regrets about seeing it. It never once got boring to watch and it packed all the action you could have wanted from Star Wars in 2 hours. Visually speaking, it was also great, everything from character designs to special effects felt like the producers have watched Star Wars and wanted to remain faithful to its style and what its fans love, and I really tip my hat off to that. In terms of soundtrack, something Star Wars is also known for, I found the movie to be less memorable in comparison to the first movies, but nonetheless utilizing the music to its benefit, so at least there was no jarring flaws with the soundtrack either. The fights, oh man the fights, from spaceships to light saber fights, the choreography was fast paced and spot on in its delivery, really showing the potential modern day film combat can bring.

    I think it was a very nice way to kick off the franchise once again, but with everything that's good, there's going to be some bad associated with it, and after thinking about it I do find some important flaws this movie has that sort of break the immersion a little bit, and as I'm sure it is the same with a lot of people, most of these flaws come from the characters, but some with the story.

    Starting with the movie's plot itself, please tell me I'm not the only one who feels like the entire movie was just a huge rehash of episode IV. Now look, I'm all cool with playing the nostalgia card, I was thrilled when I saw the Millenium Falcon, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C3PO, Leia and all the other things and references from the previous movies show up, but the overarching plot and narrative of the movie was literally the same as episode IV's plot: Droid has something important > Empire wants it > Random people find it > They bring it to the rebelssistance > Dark side has a new death star > They're going to destroy everything > Death Star hasa fatal flaw > Our heroes end up saving the day after drafting up a plan.

    There was no element of surprise when it came to the story itself, everything played out exactly like in episode IV, except this time the Death Star was the size of a planet and fed off on suns. For the love of god, who builds these death machines with a tunnel that leads to the core so it can just be destroyed? I mean, you'd figure Empire 2.0 would learn from the mistakes of its predecessors, but I guess not.

    It's not that the story itself doesn't hold up, it's just that it felt so much like a clone of Episode IV with small little tweaks that it feels a little cheap when you think back on it. When I left the theatre, I thought the movie was fun, had lots of great moments, but in the back of my head I just think "I've seen this story already", and that's sort of a joy kill.

    But moving on to the characters, and where I find the biggest problems with the movie to lie.

    Starting off with the new protagonist, Rey. Rey is basically Luke 2.0 when it comes ot her origin story. I know she is his daughter, but you could have made her a bit less obviously the same as Luke in terms of background. However, my biggest problem with Rey comes from the fact that she's essentially a Mary Sue. Do you know why Luke had charm? Because he starts off as a kid with little experience and gets defeated in the first movies, and then gets strong enough to fight back, but even when he fights back, he's still pretty much on par with Darth Vader and not even a match for the emperor's powers. But Rey? Rey can literally do anything in the film, she's pretty much flawless in everything she does there, so much so that the movie almost ends up devolving into this "So how is Rey going to save everything now?" type of back and forth. She's able to pilot the Millennium Falcon right from the start, better than freaking Lando Calrissian in episode VI, even though she doesn't appear to have any prior experience with it. But even accepting that she's somehow a skilled pilot, you can not tell me her becoming a Jedi master in mere minutes, when Luke himself had to train with Yoda to be able to even offer some kind of meaningful resistence, is somehow justified. I was baffled that she suddenly is able to use the force to such an extent that she can defeat Kylo Ren every time and escape every single trap she's put in, it just didn't feel believable that such a Jedi newbie could go so far when they had not had any sort of experience whatsoever and I was a little underwhelmed by her character because of it. I applaud them for introducing a strong female protagonist, she really felt like she could grow so much, but I did not expect that growth to be like this. If you introduce a character and make them exceed at everything they do right from the start, there's honestly not much to like or relate to about them, they just become this figure that you know is never going to lose, and that broke off the tension for me a lot of the times.

    Moving on to Finn. I don't have a lot of problems with Finn's personality and way of acting and I actually really found his premise to be the most interesting out of all the characters. He was freed from the grasp of the First Order and wants to get away, a completely reasonable choice to make, but my major problem with his character was how he came to be. He's a soldier who was trained from when he was a child to be a lifeless murderer, just like every single storm trooper ever, and you're going to tell me he, and just he could suddenly flip a switch inside his head that made him realize: "Wait a minute, this is fucked up" ? I had a very hard time coming to terms with the way this character is born, and I honestly still do, it just doesn't feel consistent with everything that's happened before. Outside of that, there's that one part where it's revealed Finn was essentially just a janitor in Death Star 2.0, yet he's essentially able to deactivate its shields and know basically everything about the biggest death gun the empire has yet built, I can't help but question how these people instruct their troops if even a janitor is able to take out the entire base if they just have outside help. 

    Lastly, Kylo Ren, or should I say, emo kid who's totally not going through a phase, dad! When I first saw Kylo Ren, I thought he looked menacing as hell, his character design is so good and the light saber he has just helps make him look all edgy. But the moment you're revealed who he is and the moment he takes off his mask... oh boy the disappointment settled in. Why did you take off the mask, Ren? He looks like he's about to cry every time he takes off the mask like some emo teenager who had daddy issues. Now don't get me wrong, I'm okay with a more emotionally unstable version of Darth Vader, there's a lot of potential in him for the upcoming films and even Darth Vader himself started off as more emotionally unstable, but Kylo Ren just didn't have the presence you'd normally think of when you think of a main villain, and the fact that he clearly showcases how strongly he uses the force, yet gets instantly defeated by Rey was really the biggest issue I had with the movie. Rey being a Mary Sue and Kylo Ren being really weak at the end just didn't add up to me and I feel as though she should not have won so easily against someone who's supposed to be the next Vader.

    But I don't think all hope is lost, my thinking is that Kylo Ren will now be transformed into a murder machine like Vader was in the upcoming movies and Rey will actually get strong using the proper methods, then we'll have a more decent fight between the two, but man these two characters really felt like they had their roles reversed and the immersion kinda broke at the end because of it for me.

    To close off the rant, I still would like to say I loved the movie and I think there's extra potential for the upcoming movies because of it, so there's nothing that makes the movie really bad or anything of the sort, and if you're reading this thread without having seen it, I avidly recommend you do so, because it really is great. Nonetheless, when you compare it to its prequels, I do think this movie had some rather apparent flaws, which I genuinely hope will be fixed in the future, and of course I'll be going to both sequels whenever they come out.

    So what are your thoughts on the movie and the reboot of the franchise in general?

    Agree.

    Except the fact that all your points which are mostly negative points to me as a screenwriter made me cry of disgust watching that movie. Especally this :

     

  4. Some new looks for our heroines by Vaatry :3

     

                         ~ Aika swimsuit outfit ~                                                                     ~ Morgan swimsuit outfit ~                                        

     

    457404resize19.png943142resize44.png

     

    ~ Alice's design rework sketch ~

    718751alicerough3.jpg

     

     

    More news on our Twitter !

    ~ Nahilys

  5. Usually :

    - Long, straight hair. Mostly black, but brown, red or blond accepted !

    - Thin body, small breasts (Not loli though)

    - Dominant. Not really Tsundere, just dominant overall.

    - Younger OR older (I'm 22 :D) by a few years.

    - Sexually innocent OR very experienced.

    - Preferably voiced by Hanazawa Kana or Chiwa Saito (Ayana Taketatsu or Hayami Saori accepted !)

     

    I'm not really into equality in a relationship...

  6. 4 minutes ago, Rooke said:

    Screenwriting is different from novel writing because on the screen, the narration is told completely by pictures whereas in VNs, unless you have a big budget, you can't do this. Although Telltale does this sort of thing very well. Scripts and novels are fairly different, although there are novels which tend to have minimal narration.

    I can't tell without looking at the writing. I like it best when stories shift pacing to better suit it's needs, though. It's like when people write in present tense (mostly found in young adult novels) because it increases immediacy, and yeah it does increase immediacy, but doing it for the whole novel is a serious 'con' for a lot of people.

    Pacing tends to increase during action scenes and decrease during atmospheric, suspenseful scenes. One of the ways to do this is through manipulation of detail. Imo, building an atmosphere is, for example, requires a lot of detail in the narration whereas a fast paced action scene would tend to have less detail. The fact that your novel is all 'fast paced' makes me suspect that just means 'light on detail.' I could be wrong, but that's just the hunch I get. 

    Japanese VNs tend to go overboard in the other direction, slowing things down to glacial pace. But how do they do this when narration of external events in most VNs is minimal due? Internal monologues which go on and on and on, and scenes which do nothing. It makes me suspect the writers are getting paid 'per character' so they're gonna include as many characters as possible because they have a family to feed, and looky looky, 3 billion Japanese characters! 

    So yeah, look at ALL that speculation :P And none of it will matter because the writing hasn't been shown, so nobody can tell ;) 

    Still very interesting thoughts that I'll be able to think about & talk with our writer :D

    I should be able to release a developer demo in the incoming week so we can talk a bit more on that matter !

  7. 9 minutes ago, Black Sands Entertainment said:

    2 minutes is like a quest update. I play a lot of RPGs so anything under 2 minutes if nothing more then an update to me.

    I am not sure I get your point, but I understand that it's definitely too fast for you. We'll remember that. I did edit my previous post cause I felt lile using words numbers might be better.

    I didn't do it on all scenes, but I can't find any going over 900words. Some of the first ones are hardly around 300 words.

    While reading it myself, I think of it more of an anime kind of pacing rather than a book, which makes me like it, especially because they're mostly dialogues. I'm currently working on a developer demo with a few scenes of my choice so people can have a better idea of its writing.


  8.  

    15 minutes ago, Black Sands Entertainment said:

    Botheirng with VN format with 2 minute scenes is just silly.

    Due to a lot of dialogues, we believe voice acting will slow down the whole thing.

    Also, I like your reaction altough I am not sure I understand it. What is wrong in reading shorter scenes in your opinion ?

  9. I first started this thread because our scenes last around 2 min at average reading speed (250 to 850 words/scene) which is more like a movie scene speed in comparison to VN I've read/tried where a single scene can last for very long. I wanted to know how would people react to such writing which is a style we kinda like within the team. It makes music composing a bit difficult cause we wouldn't want to change the music every 2min, but I think we found a good way to deal with it :P

    @Fred the Barber We indeed focus mostly on the plot. Thank you a lot for your detailed opinion ! :)

  10. Sure. I understand your point, thank you for sharing it. I do use the Visual Novel name just because we are using the same presentation (Background + sprite + textbox).

    As a quick example, our demo will feature the whole Introductory Chapter of the story which is a total of 6 days ingame for a total of around 18 500 words (18 422 at the moment, few more to be added). The final game is meant to last 10 weeks. People say a 200k words story is pretty good, although we mostly have dialogues and not much narration nor description (by choice).

  11. Hi,

     

    I am currently working on an English Visual Novel called Lost Winter Nights which has a very fast paced writing and I was wondering how the public would react to when our demo comes out. I am not a very big fan of Japanese Visual Novels because of very slow paced stories which tire me a lot since I am not a native english speaker. I am a student here in France to become a professional screenwriter and I have been noticing that stories can be told very shortly, simply but still be very interesting and fun especially with great art backing them up.
    As the leader for the project, I was worried for quite some time that this type of writing may not be well appreciated by the community but I started to like it myself, as it feels actually more like a theatre play with dialogues for the most part. I have to admit that voice acting is a must for that kind of writing though, which is something we totally plan to have.

    What do you guys people think of that kind of writing ? I could potentially show some samples from our writer to illustrate my words.

    Looking forward to hearing your opinions on that matter :)

×
×
  • Create New...