And no one else will.

Here’s a few sprites though. Basically, all the base sprites are now done (a few need redlining) and only poses, expressions and clothing are going to be added to avoid the endless loop of me wanting to redraw older sprites.

I’ve had a text-only version of WiP’s design doc for a while, decided to make a visual version to make things easier to read through specific things. Here’s a few pages (thanks to Curchack for the cover image!)

Eventually.

Something I’ve been chewing over for a long time has been how I’m tying these three together. I’ve had quite a few disjointed thoughts since the beginning on how I planned to and now that Act 1 is well into its second half, I’ve found a handful of good ways to put all my ideas together. Now, I want to state a handful of things about choices (as it’s the part that easily has the most influence over the other two in the title) before I start jumping all over the place.

  ⚫ There should be no non-choices (IE: Choices that appear different but change nothing, choices that all amount to the same decision, or ones that provide minimal additional flavor) in any given decision provided to the reader.

Why? Because it’s irritating to the reader to be handed a false sense of choice or freedom. 

  ⚫Each choice should have some sort of lasting effect on the story.

Why? Well, what’s the point of making a decision if it doesn’t actually matter? I might as well just skip the extra coding for someone else and just make it part of the narrative.

  ⚫ Choices should be neither too vague, nor heavy-handed; it also goes without saying that they shouldn’t mislead the reader, either.

This should be pretty obvious. The choices that lead to good or bad results shouldn’t be immediately apparent, as choices are what give the reader pause to evaluate the character, the situation, the atmosphere and a load of other minutia that helps keep them focused and engaged in what they’re reading. As for the latter part, no one likes being given a red herring for a choice, to find out what seemed to be the obvious good choice has lead them to getting hit by a metaphorical truck because the protagonist said something unpredictable.

I also recently brought up making it so that there could be a line of internal dialogue from Oliver pending on what choice the reader is hovering over, so on more ambiguous choices, you’d have a little insight into how he’ll behave. This is a pretty new idea and involves UI/programming, so consider it non-existant until otherwise stated as it could interfere with our current (and stable) design choices.

  ⚫ No choices should immediately lead the reader to an immediate bad end.

See the previous explanation. Additionally, if I didn’t follow the previous rules, odds are it’ll be obvious and skipped, or the reader will get annoyed for it being too subtle to tell it was a bad decision. On top of all that, it’s annoying and jarring to be put in a situation where you’re forced back to the main menu to retread the writing (or hold the skip key until you get to the choice) so you can return to where you were. It breaks immersion and generally doesn’t have as much effect as compared to a person being invested in a negative ending.

With these guidelines in mind, I’ve built the world of WiP around the idea that there shouldn’t be anything that wanders too far into what I categorize as needless. Each of the characters have a purpose that you can and will want to engage in, even though you can’t pursue each in the way I have planned out. This is where the choices begin becoming important! They each have their own pasts and personalities past what you just happen to bump into as a result of Caprice or Mekki trying to save Oliver from his own incompetence.

Despite the two main females being there to assist Oliver, Oliver will inevitably have to seek help from outside sources in a number of situations, which is where the respective club members start elbowing their way into play to help the ever-struggling Oliver with things that are beyond his knowledge.

So, where does failure come into play? I’ve already covered how I handle choices and generally described the importance of the supporting characters. Therein lies the rub. I’ve begun to think that the second half of act one shouldn’t have a branching tree for failure. Throughout the first act, you’ll be given bits of insight as to what the conflict is between Caprice and Mekki and how to handle it, along with choices that’ll bring you different avenues of insight regarding that person, as well as others.

I’ve begun thinking, “Why would I want to yank that out from under someone?”. I still have yet to come up with a good reason. All the good stuff starts in the first act. In the second act, things begin to get more complex for the reader and Oliver, which is also where I think the real opportunity for failure should be set. The first act is eases Oliver into the more difficult problems of act two, which’ll make “Man, I’m gonna flunk out of a community college” pale by comparison. The third act will end up being a lot more perilous and he’ll have to rely on the friends he’s (somehow) made throughout the first and second acts to keep him and the people closest to him afloat.

I suppose while I’m here, I’ll mention a small idea I’ve been toying around with for those two more problem-riddled acts. Naturally as things get more tense, between Oliver, Mekki and a number of other people, they’ll argue. I figure, hey, instead of just having Oliver and someone duke it out while the reader watches and waits for the smoke to clear, why not let the reader participate? Provided the system is implemented, I want there to be multiple choices during a heated argument, with good and bad choices peppered throughout them. It’ll be up to the person reading the visual novel to decide when to push, when to back off, when to apologize or when to not give in to the pressure. It won’t be timed (who likes timed sections in ANYTHING?), but I’m trying to come up with ways that’ll really capture the machine-gun pace of a high-tempo argument where sensibility isn’t necessarily involved. Can Oliver argue down Caprice? Might have to find out later.

I think I’ve dragged on long enough, yeah? With any hope, some of what I’ve talked about is informative or interesting.

Oh yeah, one last thing. I’m gonna be rewriting the character bios in the future, since, well. Eh. Most of them suck. Too much addressing the audience (amongst other shortcomings), which I feel is a cheap tactic to get a character across to the person reading their information. It’s pretty old, so it could use a new coat of polish. That should be it. ‘Til next time.

Apart from general UI stuff, I get asked a lot about what I do on WiP. It’s hard to put into words without really sounding pretentious or useless really. While some on the team would claim I actually run the project, I’d personally specify that my job is to be an arrogant brute butting heads with anyone who I personally feel isn’t living up to the standards I expect for the project, hoping that they yield before I do. Prior to the demo being released, I was arguing for several days over things like how the characters in scene twenty should be SITTING as opposed to STANDING and after I won that argument we had another one immediately after about the angle of the tables that sit on the layer above the character sprites. Not to imply that the team is prone to taking shortcuts of course, working with this team has been absolutely amazing in terms of people setting their sights high and not settling for less.

There are three things I prioritize when looking at development, both from organizing as well as actually creating assets myself: consistency, equality, and acknowledging the medium that we’re using. While some/most/all(?) of this is common knowledge I’m sure, I’ve had the itch to actually push some kind of paper trail myself lately so I’m gonna run thru how I approach those three pillars and why I think WiP will stand out from others by taking these things to heart.

Consistency is the big one. The HUGE one. It’s something that consistently makes people flip between liking how the project is going and hating my decisions almost instantly. WiP has, for the entirety of it’s dev cycle, been run with a skeleton team. We’ve been very vocal about the pride we have by using only the bare minimum team to get everything done. When we have taken new blood in, it’s either been out of necessity (mudnut recently had to resign as our full time musician since he hasn’t had time to produce content, though he’s still on the team in some capacity so we had to bring in musician applicants) or if the new help wouldn’t immediately be visible on the surface but would undoubtedly help the quality of the VN (Skrats for example, is a dedicated redliner. While you won’t see his work in the VN, his influence will be present in every single art asset in the VN.) Consistency doesn’t just apply to art either—the tone of the writing has to match the visual identity of the vn, which has to match the genre of music, which has to match the tone of the writing. The entirety of the VN is being written by Mehkanik, and he’s kept on a very tight leash when it comes to consistency in the writing. If a character is acting in a way that contradicts the visual or audio presentation, he gets an earful. We don’t namedrop real people or brands, or make up cheap parody imitations. Even the UI itself was designed to have a personality. This focus on consistency comes with problems, however. If something is suddenly only “good” by our current standards that content will be entirely redone; we’ve thrown the entire VN out the window numerous times. Most recently, I got some nasty glares when I suggested completely throwing away all of mudnut’s music when it was revealed that he wouldn’t be able to work on music consistently anymore and that we’d probably need a new composer. With mudnut still on the team and composing it became a non-issue, but it was a move I was more than willing to make even if it set us back months, all for the sake of having the music be as consistent by possible, created only by active members of the team.

Equality, unlike consistency, is a lot more simple. People like to ask things like “when making a VN, what’s most important?” The answer, as far as I’m concerned anyway, is that you have to treat every single asset of development as if it’s the most important thing. You can have a VN with passable programming, passable art, passable music and rely on your narrative to carry your VN. You CAN choose to take that risk, but it really is much easier to give every part of the VN the same amount of respect and care instead of fretting where to put your attention. Don’t ever think it’s okay to put emphasis on one aspect over the other: as a developer you should want the ENTIRETY of your VN to shine the brightest it can, and you want to work with a team that feels appreciated and important.

VNs are weird, and it takes a certain mindset to adapt to them, or at least it took me a while. Like any other medium in order to actually be successful you need to take the position of your audience rather than just a creative vision making a thing that you like. If I’m reading a VN, I’m either going to be doing it at my desktop or maybe in a chair with a laptop, it’s not something you can necessarily pull out and read with the convenience of a book or even play with the convenience of a gaming handheld (mobile ports notwithstanding, I’m not sure if WiP will be taking that approach yet, will have to double check with Shiz later). The entirety of WiP’s presentation is built around this assumption. In our first iterations we had a very washed out color scheme, with pastels and bright colors while the sprites themselves were considerably darker. While that style still looked OKAY for what it was, swapping over to the brown and tan color palette made the entire VN easier on the eyes. It’s considerably less busy, and you don’t get tired looking at it. Our music is a lot more minimalistic than some piano pieces and melodies you may be used to in VNs just because we don’t really WANT our music to stand out to you while you read through—it’s best taken in as background noise, something pleasant but not in your face, distracting you from all the words and stuff. The UI has large buttons and focuses a lot on minimal words and visual cues. It also fits the aesthetic and stands out visually while not being distracting. Designing your presentation around the idea that people will actually be reading your VN in a certain way sounds like common sense, but (personally speaking) it’s something that a ton of people either don’t account for or fail at conveying.

Sorry for sounding pretentious and drowning you with walls of text, but to be honest I’ve been trying to put this into words for myself for a while as well, so this was a good chance to get it all out so I know where I lie myself.