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laiktail

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Everything posted by laiktail

  1. I think the style more than anything else. I do like Jazz more than dubstep type stuff. There's probably an audience for both. Thank you both for the feedback I agree with the noisiness of the whole thing. It's a little too much all at once at parts, like you say. Although the trumpet is a voice, even when it's sung, things might still clash. I'll make a lot of adjustments based on your advice and be very conscious of it. Thanks again!!
  2. I actually liked Speed Jazz the most, too. The other pieces weren't that bad! The speed jazz one would be the most likely one to end up on my iPod out of all of them. The comics are...interesting. Thanks for the compliments!! hmm i was listening to it at 1:08-1:10 to try and figure out what you mean by the weird transition. You're right, I think the timing's off there. The piano chords as well might not have been as clean because I pressed some extra notes. Deliberately, the drums are "pushing" with a lot of swing that's (actually deliberately) a bit off the beat. All that combined with a big jump combined to make it sound kinda weird. I'll let you know when the final OP is out!
  3. I'm a he, not a she! LOL Hmmm I'll most likely be using my own compositions for OST (either that or maybe getting someone who's quite well known on the project). Thanks for the offer! But if you meant you'd like me to take a look, yeah sure thing!
  4. Critical is great! Thanks, I really appreciate your honesty. Oops about 0:00-0:01, that's purely an uploading error. I'm definitely gonna pay more attention to the quiet output, thanks for that! As for the trumpet piano war - the trumpet is actually going to be replaced by the female voice of my friend who's singing the song. So I'm really not too sure whether the clash will still exist or not. But I really like the sort of idea of less instruments rather than more as you've pointed out.
  5. Hmmm, good point. The VN I'm making is closest to fantasy/romcom, but it's not actually fantasy adventure (since no-one really goes anywhere outside of the city they're in).
  6. Hey all, I have a really rough uncompleted draft for an OP that I'm making. But, I'd love to know what you think of the basic sound of it and what do you think should be changed? The timing is a bit wrong for the melody (to be sung but currently is "sung" by brass), so don't worry about that. https://soundcloud.com/temporaneous/1-op-draft-no-2
  7. Sorry for double posting, I only just now figured out what the multiquote button is used for, haha. Spot on about this difference. Regarding famous anime or manga adaptations in visual novel format, there's actually quite a few. Not necessarily famous, but you can see Oreimo or Toradora in visual novel format. IceD, on 12 Jul 2014 - 01:28 AM, said: I don't think VNs are necessarily inaccessible, considering that many VNs are primarily reading by adult male teenagers. In addition, you say that there's a lot of stuff to sacrifice if you take away some of the things that make up a Japanese VN. Sure, Western visual novels won't necessarily be visual novels as we currently know it, but I think the only thing you'd have to change is the writing. Anime-styled graphics, although considered a niche, is still quite popular even if not mainstream. Music is mostly universal except for songs (where OPs and EDs are very different). I really agree with this statement, though: "We need games, which aren't simply otaku-pandering crap like Sakura Spirit, but games which revolve around western-themed settings, while retaining the most important factors - the graphics, style, presentation and form." Probably not, to be honest. This is speaking from an otaku perspective, so for most people that answer would lean towards no, probably. However, this is EXACTLY why VNs aren't necessarily popular. As open-minded as we may or may not be, the fact is that the familiar beats the unfamiliar in terms of what people like. This truth is rooted all the way down to a person's physical being, where people like you more if you're more like them. But, just like it may be hard to convince Westerner's to try VNs, it would be equally difficult for a Westerner to convince an otaku to read an Arabic legend. They are both probably very interesting at heart. That doesn't mean that that's enough to convince someone. Very, very true. It's a completely different culture. And a Western cultured novel will appeal more to Westerners, simply. 100% agree! The sooner Japanese tropes are ejected from OELVNs, the sooner progress can be made. I hope that OELVNs will one day become a term that is looked upon highly instead of "Japanese game clone". I hope they are truly written as 'ORIGINAL English Language Visual Novels'. It's really only a matter of time, I think, but it's going to require a few awesome people. I was doing some market research for my VN (a fancy term for "checking out the comments on Steam VNs") and you are precisely right about this lack of interactivity. Many of the comments clearly commented on the desire for greater interactivity. But with great interactivity comes great responsibility. Financial responsibility, of course. I think that certainly, a JRPG could be one step in the right direction. Just look at the insanely well funded Kickstarter, 'Soul Saga'. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/disastercake/soul-saga-a-j-rpg-inspired-by-playstation-classics If you can raise $195k for an ANIME-styled game, trust me, SOME sort of market exists. It's niche but it's not so infinitesimally small as people make it out to be, if you've expanded the net to include anime-lovers in general.
  8. I didn't say it, so I apologize for not making it clearer, but I was referring specifically to OELVNs here. Ecchi = no. As soon as that stigma becomes widespread, then making visual novels a mainstream thing is going to be a LOT harder, because you instantly lose social currency for sporting porn. Luckily, those sorts of VNs are at this point relatively unknown. Hopefully, it stays that way. Thank you Babiker! I'll try my best. I'm taking a bit of a different route to most of the Western visual novels I've seen in that I'm trying to raise capital through other business dealings before I start to make the VN. I have an artist in mind (who I think is mindblowingly amazing) and a significant amount of money will be spent on marketing as well as trying to get a few people well-known in the anime community to contribute bits to the VN. I'll be heavily play-testing whatever I write in the battlefield: with the help of a critical anime lover who's not afraid to say what's awesome and what's crap. We've got a recording studio lined up for the OP/ED. So, I'd love for this VN to be one of the groundbreakers. It may only be 1-2 hours long, even, but the aim is for it to be mostly perfect. I doubt that's easy, but there's a small possibility of that happening and that should be enough to work with.
  9. Q: How to make VNs popular in the West? A: Throw lots of money at it and direct it at kids. I think that children are mostly open minded about things moreso than adults. Western adults don't pick up VNs. However, Western adults who already like anime may pick up VNs. With the case of the former - adults who never grew up with VNs - a VN is a pretty abstract concept to consider. People like what they're familiar with. That's why people CAN make the transition from anime to VN - lovers of anime can still get a similar enjoyment out of VNs. Before blowing holes right through this argument, I'm going to say that there's no such thing as an absolute and that obviously there are some exceptions to this. Whilst you may agree or disagree, however, there is one absolute that cannot be denied: Much money must be thrown. If you're trying to make VNs popular, a super-high quality VN with in-built virality should suffice. Basically, to make an explosion of popularity in the West, I think you just need one (or a few) really really really ridiculously good VNs. So good that people spread the word to non-anime lovers. So good that it no longer becomes a niche thing but a mainstream thing. But to become a mainstream thing, it has to become the "cool" thing because that's how virality works - on using things as social currency. For example, if you HAVEN'T watched Game of Thrones, you're clearly the exception (...I'm actually in this category here). Popularity begets popularity. But how does the initial popularity happen? With lots of effort, for one. And one other rule: Much money must be thrown.
  10. This looks like an interesting project and the art is actually nice! I'm kinda confused about how it is going to be a murder mystery whilst being a comedy romance drama at the same time, but will definitely want to give it a shot when it comes out. I slightly disagree with the choice of Flash for the engine, but I think that it's not all bad news. For example, you could get it on Newgrounds and get a whole bunch of publicity there. I don't know if Android supports Flash but iOS definitely doesn't, so porting it to mobile would be a gigantic hassle. Either way, wishing you guys the best of luck, let us know how it goes.
  11. Saya No Uta looks too gory for me! But the premise sounds interesting, I've always wondered what the story is about. You're right, everything has different sides to it. Great comparison between Stockholm and the plot in Saya No Uta. Just from reading Wikipedia, it sounds like the heroine is just some beast who is perceived as a beauty by the protag with serious mental health issues. So the perception is completely twisted. ...I'm still not going to play the game though, especially after reading the sentence "He perceives the world as a hellish nightmare with a black sky and buildings covered in pulsating flesh, where all the streets and building interiors are splattered with blood, giant organs and cartilage." That sounds scary as hell.
  12. Interesting! Do you have a reason the VN needs this to happen, though? If you're following the protag., they obviously have their own worldview and need to develop in some direction, so what is their objective/motive? That is to say, what are they chasing after that will make them drop everything in order to get it? Are they trying to find meaning or happiness in the world or something? For you, Life, and everyone else: here is an awesome article about story structure. I'll be using this pretty much to a T, personally.
  13. That's interesting as! I think you've concisely captured a concept I had in the back of my head but couldn't articulate. You're right - in this world, we can only conceptualize what we can imagine which is pretty much based on what we've seen (or, rather, variations/combinations of what we've seen). So in that sense, nothing is ever "created". I'm totally going to use your last quote, by the way - that's so awesome. Objective reality versus subjective reality - the topic of many mindscrews. The thing about something like color is that people don't see the same thing. They might see an object 'X' which is translated into their brain as 'X' as taught to every person by their teachers. So everyone refers to object 'X' as 'X', because that's the common consensus. If you see "green" where "red" used to be through someone else's eyes, then that person would in their mind still refer to these things as everyone else refers to them. So ultimately, the "green" that you see is something that you'll actually still call "red", because everyone else refers to that colour that way. Mindscrew /10.
  14. What an interesting viewpoint. But, if the entire world is shifting - how would it work for people with staggered ages? For example, let's say someone is born in 2000. By your premise, they grow up and the world becomes more and more twisted as they grow older - let's say to 16 years old. But what about the person born in 2016? Does the world reset...? In which case, the 16 year old's world becomes innocent again. But if you have this on the scale of an entire population, it theoretically couldn't work. Unless, you follow the viewpoint of one person, and then everything only changes for that one special individual. That's really dark. I love anything that uses the http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnreliableNarrator trope. The reveal is pretty nuts. I've always disliked horror stories (as they scare me to smithereens) so I think it's better if someone else comments on whether they'd think that the true end is a satisfactory one, though.
  15. Just curious if you have any past works to look at?
  16. Great. hmm, even a small audience either way is great in cross-promo, it's a strategy used very often in the app world. Regardless of whether you have an audience or not, I'll be happy to send a recommendation/push notification or whatever to your VN to help drive traffic; by the sounds of it, though, yours will be released much earlier than mine (which is restricted by financial issues currently, since I plan to be less democratic and hire people to work on it whilst making executive choices/writing). We'll keep in touch, I'll PM you now.
  17. I showed this to my friend and this is his reply:
  18. re: Unity: Free VN toolkit at http://u3d.as/content/sol-tribe/visual-novel-toolkit-free/53G Pro version of the same thing at http://u3d.as/content/sol-tribe/visual-novel-toolkit/585 I haven't tried it personally though; I may be developing my own engine or make a modification of that one. By all means, lots of devs use Ren'Py though, so that's your executive decision.
  19. Zodai - I'll be making a VN myself (as you already know since you commented on my last thread) so I won't be able to commit to working on your VN with you; however, our fanbase will undoubtedly be similar and marketing contacts will be similar too, so I'd love to do cross promotion with you (that is, advertise via my channels towards your game so you get more users, and vice versa). What do you think? If you need any advice on the iOS side of things, I've also released a few apps (albeit by hiring a programmer) so I can tell you a few things about the app store if you don't have experience there. I'll let you know that for a cross-platform game, I will most likely be using Unity instead as it ports easily to iOS, Android, PS Vita etc. Plus, there's no native way to use Ren'Py on iOS except for whatever thing Dischan has developed (which is proprietary). I'll PM you my Skype/Facebook address if you want? EDIT: Also, when do you want to release your game by? My current date is May of 2015 but it'll depend on how much capital I can raise from a side business.
  20. Amazing. Thank you for pointing all these things out I will absolutely be reading through these meticulously. It's actually pretty funny - I just had a quick browse then and I noticed this paragraph basically stated what I said (and this has got to be confirmation bias kicking in at its finest): "There are a lot of potential worldbuilding pitfalls a fantasy and science fiction writer can stumble into. One of these is making your story boring by overburdening it with too much expository worldbuilding. This, in turn, is often a symptom of a writer who spent years and years practicing worldbuilding—but not much practicing the actual craft of writing." Love the idea about limitations exceeding the powers. As for the first law you've said, the "magic" in the story can be succinctly boiled down to "if you think really hard about stuff then it will be created". So its actually quite simple - just, the connotations of this power are not simple. Despite this, I think the VN is going to be more light-hearted with serious moments rather than serious with light-hearted moments. Definitely going to re-read this. Thanks again!
  21. Whoa...the art is cute but the script is like GTA...
  22. @Life If it's a jail, that's easy enough to fix as a plot hole - 1. legalised stripping of the criminal's money, so they can no longer create. If I was passionate about this kind of topic, I'd probably expound on it further. @Clephas Subconscious things won't manifest. Otherwise, the entire city would be absolutely destroyed at night, every single night. As far as the restrictions go: no, people aren't equal, so there would be some societal haves and have nots in the VN too. Making any one person too OP is boring (although SAO fans may say otherwise) and making them not OP enough is probably not going to be as interesting (although that's more characterisation having to shoulder more of the weight). @everyone To be honest, the exposition will be explored a bit to answer some interesting questions about how things work in this world, but I'm won't be writing it as some gigantic super-detailed world with tons of rules and tons of unnecessary details to patch plot holes. Plot holes will be a problem only if they relate to the actual plot. I'll explore the world in a fair bit of detail because it'd be a shame not to - but, primarily, the focus will be on the characters more than anything else. And there are certain things they can take advantage of in this world, or are restricted by. As much as I'd make the world as believable as possible (even though you need suspension of belief to conceptualise it), it's the characters which will ultimately drive the story and the world is actually an accessory to that (albeit an important accessory). As you say, Clephas, the community may not be as forgiving with an English VN. I'll try my best though and I think it'll work out.
  23. Great point. I think you're definitely right about not necessarily being the first to come up with ideas like this. And you're absolutely correct about building on previously existing ideas, since that's essentially how everything mankind has created is made. It gives me a solid excuse to watch it, too.
  24. Honestly, I totally even didn't think about the minds of children. As for people being hindered by their own creativity - I think this is actually the case in real life. Anyone can truly create anything they imagine, but not everyone has the resources to. People can create rockets if they want to (see Elon Musk and SpaceX) but not everyone has the dough like selling PayPal to Ebay gives you. Another restriction is that you cannot change living things or create living things, because that would make things rather insane in the world (eg a mad person has a hallucination of a monster which materializes; one person hates another person so they imagine that their face turns into an onion etc.) But what about imagining something like a bomb? Well, people CAN imagine that. It's just illegal; the appropriate law enforcement dudes are around to make sure stuff like that doesn't happen. As for why the protag is a loner - that's a great idea. I don't want to make him a loner because he just doesn't need anyone else, though - this is probably much of where the focus of the visual novel is going to lie from a plot and characterisation point of view, because there's a lot of messages I want to convey about this particular issue. This part is something that I'll have to develop and I think there will be a substantive backstory for him being the way he is, because everybody gets to some place somehow.
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