Notice that I've also taken down the demo. The plan is that the next link you'll see on there will be for the full game! Oh, and did I mention that I'm working on an OP movie?
-Kinjo
Goldbar Games |
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In all seriousness, I have made some progress with Detective Butler. All that's really left is to write one chapter and patch up some other parts of the story. I ended up changing a few scenes that were in the old demo, but the story remains the same. CGs have been redone by the character artist Shadilyn, as you can see in the picture above. I also changed the GUI and BG filter to something a lot more clean. You can find screenshots in the "Downloads" section of the Detective Butler website.
Notice that I've also taken down the demo. The plan is that the next link you'll see on there will be for the full game! Oh, and did I mention that I'm working on an OP movie? -Kinjo
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As you may have noticed, I've been rather secretive about Detective Butler's progress in recent blog posts. I sincerely thank all of you following my blog for sticking around and supporting me. So now I'll give you the announcement you've all been waiting for! A sneak peek into the story after the demo!
You see, I began writing the parts after the demo, and I realized something. I really came to love these characters. You know how sometimes the characters tend to write the story themselves after a while? I was getting that feeling, and it made me realize something else: writing a murder mystery is extremely difficult! I don't want to do it anymore! Here's what happens instead: Shortly after the end of the demo, the cruise ship hits an iceberg, and everyone is forced to abandon ship. Conveniently, the prime suspects all wash up on a nearby island, along with Gilligan and Butler. But incidentally, all of them happen to get amnesia and totally forget about the murder! Even the culprit doesn't remember they killed anyone! Taking advantage of the situation, Butler attempts to seduce the three ladies (they're the obtainables, you see!) while making sure the crafty Captain Jack doesn't steal his spotlight. Gilligan always happens to unintentionally thwart Butler's plans, resulting in slapstick comedy between the two. Donald cooks everyone's meals using various ingredients found on the island, and Howard is tragically lost at sea (not that anyone remembers him). In other words, the game is no longer a dark murder mystery, but is instead a lighthearted dating sim, which are always considerably superior. There will be no murders -- each episode will revolve around the zany antics taking place on the island between our seven stranded cast-aways. As such, the series will aptly be retitled "Gilligan's Island". Spring break is upon me now, and I'll have plenty of time to work on things that I've had to push aside for a while. In particular, I'll be finishing the writing, making a few revisions to the story, and working on another graphical overhaul. I might also have a surprise next update, depending on how things turn out.
But for now, a short update just to prove I'm still alive. See you later! -Kinjo I've been pretty busy lately IRL, which makes me glad I decided not to do NaNoReNo. Because it'd just turn out to be either a horribly rushed mess, or I wouldn't get it done at all. My schoolwork has gotten increasingly more demanding, with my assignments being critiqued considerably harsher -- what was once "A" level for me is now only average. And I've learned that, in order to see good results, I need to put in a much greater amount of effort. So, like any good student, I thought about how this relates to creating visual novels and decided to post about it on my blog!
I would much rather have my VNs torn down and destroyed by critics than never commented upon at all. I would also much rather have a truthfully harsh review than one that's too sugar-coated to even matter. Giving too gentle reviews lowers the standards for visual novels, while giving harsher reviews raises them. This is all plain and obvious, but a nice observation is that we have two polar opposites here: really nice, and really cruel. And there are two message boards which I have posted Detective Butler on and received such criticism from. Needless to say, I found the harsher criticism more helpful. It told me what I was doing wrong and why. Perhaps it stems from the anonymity of the board -- are people too afraid to give harsh reviews on boards where you have an identity? Or is it because of the heavy moderation which prevents such criticisms from being made? "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all" is a phrase I have heard since childhood and I cannot disagree more with it. Saying nothing when you have a problem only perpetuates the problem; it subtly acknowledges that you DO NOT HAVE a problem and that everything is fine, which leads to failures in communication. And from my experience thus far as a VN-dev, communication means everything (both concerning VNs and IRL). Enforcing such a policy only leads to people believing in something which is not true, a delusion. But, unfortunately, sometimes criticism can be so difficult to hear that it tears you apart, and you just want to give up. If you always hear harsh criticisms, no matter how hard you try, then wouldn't you just want to stop trying? Either that, or ignore the criticisms, but that's like closing your eyes and saying "if I can't see you, you can't see me!" What is MY opinion on this conundrum? Have close friends harshly review your project. Whether it's a VN or not, a friend will be someone who will know you well enough to phrase the criticism in such a way that it is both truthfully harsh yet not painful to hear. One might hear "this chapter is really boring" or "what this character is doing doesn't make sense" -- softer criticisms will brush them aside, but harsher ones will want to burn you alive for making such amateur mistakes. But a close friend, in theory, should be able to explain why it doesn't work, and how to go about fixing it -- for they are the reader, just like anyone else, but will neither be afraid to tell you of its problems nor too condemning for the mistakes you may have made. What matters is that, by the time of release, you have effectively "killed" all the elephants in the room -- the things which soft criticisms skirt around and harsh criticisms make as their target. Lately I've been working on what I'd call the more interactive chapters of Detective Butler, and it's gotten me curious about the concept of having an interactive visual novel. I believe it can be good, if done properly, but I'll examine the pros and cons in further detail.
I don't understand the appeal of most sim games. If you are not familiar with those, it should be easy to find quite a few of them on the Internet advertising themselves as visual novels. And I'm not sure what to make of that. I read visual novels to read a story about compelling characters and an interesting plot, not to click on the same button 50 times just to watch a dull animation 50 times before finally progressing into a very small segment of actual dialogue -- only to be interrupted by more pointless clicking. That formula just doesn't make sense to me; often times I don't want to bother thinking about the "strategy" behind clicking and just want to read the story. It gets in the way. That said, at times I think visual novels can be improved by adding interactive elements. Even for a kinetic novel, where there are no choices to affect the story, it might be nice to have something the player can control themselves. Case in point: Phoenix Wright. Many won't consider this a VN, but it's a good example for me to use to illustrate interactivity that doesn't change the plot. One con to this, however, is that interactivity does break immersion in the story. Immersion is already a rather difficult thing to accomplish in terms of writing; you have to set up an atmosphere with realistic characters and dialogue. But even if that is done correctly, it can all be torn to shreds by reminding the reader that this is merely a game. And in most cases -- where the gameplay only consists of clicking things that appear to have little variation -- I drop the sim games and move on to go do better things. The question for the people reading this is as follows: At what point would an interactive VN cease to be a VN? The key word here is "novel" -- so I think that once the VN is more about interactivity than it is about reading a story, it no longer deserves the title of "VN". I think interactive visual novels have a lot of potential entertainment value (see: WTSC EP3) but, then, is it still a VN? What's the perfect balance between interactivity and story? And how would one go about achieving it? I get the feeling I'll have to answer this myself over the next few weeks, but for now, feel free to contemplate it with me. Here's something I wrote a while back but didn't post anywhere. Enjoy:
If I'm playing a Japanese VN I can pretty much assume it's at least decent. I don't question the author's intentions. But for English ones, everything is criticized because we don’t think very highly of English authors. You wouldn't find typos in a professionally finished work. Using words that seem unnatural could be used for character development instead of remnants of the author's mistaken grasping of the English language. Deviations in the visuals follow the same rule; if the author does something that isn’t standard we merely wonder if it was supposed to be done on purpose or not. The reader no longer trusts the author of an English VN. The reason for this, I have to conclude, is the close network of communication between author and reader. I have almost no knowledge of how Japanese VN makers communicate to their fanbase, but I get the feeling the problem does lie in the community. Not saying that the community is full of bad people, but that the openness to discussion – allowing readers to influence the creator via direct feedback – is a negative thing. Not in terms of constructive criticism, but in terms of the EVN being a game to be played by the reader. By communicating with each other, the EVN becomes less like “a game to be played” and more “a game made by this person to be played and commented upon by myself”. Of course, most makers would say they are VN hobbyists and do not consider themselves professional -- hence, they do not try. And as a result, we get a considerably different product than our Japanese counterparts. For EVNs, the author somehow influences the story just by being known as the author; the story loses credibility somehow, and it loses its immersion... and that's something I want to fix and get right. When you read a Japanese VN, you don't question things like that. The main reason is graphics and presentation –all the graphics, music, writing, and programming are highly polished, leaving the only criticisms up to the story itself. For English VNs, you get horribly plain default textboxes and MS-Paint cave-drawings half the time. Not to mention the same stock music (or blatantly STOLEN music) but I would say the visuals have more of an impact. And from that moment, from the very moment the art doesn't seem reliable, the moment the game LOOKS bad, the thought gets in your head that it MIGHT BE bad, and you question that while playing -- you constantly critique in your head, and there's no escaping that; the story has been doomed by its own author. I don't know how else to explain it. I guess I'm just sensing a lack of trust in the EVN scene, which might be appropriate due to the lack of professionals in the field. I don't blame teenagers for wanting to dive into video game making -- in fact I did the very same thing at their age. But I do wonder sometimes: how could a person possibly think this is good? A common occurrence of this is making the game unreadable due to extremely poorly-chosen colors for the font and textbox. How could someone consciously do this? I mean, they must've TRIED reading their game before sending it out, right? Then why keep the unreadable font?! But the point is that I can't focus on the game anymore; instead I am caught up wondering how intelligent the author is. If this happened once, it might be a mishap. If it happened twice, I might still not think much of it. But when things like this are in just about every EVN out there, when games worthy of being played are akin to diamonds in the rough -- I start to wonder if Japan is simply made of diamonds. During the past month I have contemplated whether or not to participate in NaNoReNo this year. Ultimately what I've decided... is that I won't.
I'll lead you through my thought process as to why I've decided against it. The first step to writing a story is to brainstorm ideas for one. I went to a fairly simple VN idea generator and came up with a bunch, only some of which I remotely thought were interesting. In the end I thought that none of them were really appealing enough for me to make a VN out of (I was looking for something that could be completed within one month) and wanted to go with a few ideas I had come up with in previous months. So I went onto the next step, outlining the plot and characters. Still, it felt really forced, since the story had to be condensed so much for NaNoReNo. I managed to find some decent stock music, and maybe I could learn to draw sprites with a tablet... but for backgrounds, I was completely stuck, unless I wanted to limit myself to photo filters again. But none of that is really what changed my mind. Instead, it was a much bigger question -- quality vs. quantity. Even if I decided to make a short VN, I could make lots and lots of them to make up for the length... right? That isn't how it works. Making a story for the sake of making a story is just doing it wrong. You either have a good idea and a desire to flesh it out, or nothing. And if I can't come up with something that I truly find worth making, then I shouldn't consider working on it. It wouldn't be memorable, it would be done poorly, and it would be taking away time I could be using for a significantly better project. Think about it in terms of other authors. After an author's Magnum Opus finishes, what are they going to do? Will anything else be as fun to read as that? No, of course not! They've set their own standards too high! The readers have become attached to the characters and setting of that one story, so no matter how good newer stories may be, what the reader truly wants is to continue following the old one. This might be the reason behind the success of those manga/anime which go on forever. Fans become fans of things for a reason, so isn't it only natural that a fanbase will lose interest in an author once they stop writing the things that hooked the fans in the first place? So in other words, I'm sticking with Detective Butler. It's a solid idea with characters and plot, which is something a lot harder to come up with than I realized. And, while the amount of feedback I've gotten on it is considerably lower than I would have liked, it has also been considerably positive, which I didn't expect. I'll make sure it's as polished as it can get before releasing the final version, and see where it takes me next. -Kinjo When I first started out writing Detective Butler, I didn't have much of a game plan. Create some characters and a story and see where things go. But at the same time I was given the incentive to make each chapter a certain length (at minimum). And during the early chapters, where I had little idea of where the story was going, it was incredibly painful to try and make that goal.
However, I have since found the secret. It's world-building. Take some time to elaborate on the story and CREATE the story in order to get out a good-sized wordcount. Filler scenes aren't any good. They add nothing, and unless you're a wizard then they only put the reader to sleep. So, then, what is world-building? As an author, you may not know your characters or setting that well. That's fine. In fact, that's the point. Write the scene, but do not deviate from the story. It's tempting to avoid what I'll call "the darkness" of the story. It's unknown territory, even to the author! But since you ARE the author, you're the only one who can shine the light in the darkness and expose your story's world. So confront the unknown. You don't know how that character should act? You don't know their job, their personality, their birthday, their home life, their hobbies...? Each one of those is a branch that offers even more branches. Like taking your light and burning those branches with it to light up the darkness of your story. Oh, so your character works here? Is it a popular place? Who else works there? Do they get along? Answer all of these tangential questions and more and more will pop up. Don't hesitate to ask yourself; don't stop thinking! Before you know it, you'll have answered all of these, and when addressing them in the story you'll realize that you've suddenly gained a gigantic amount of words added to your wordcount. Naturally, there is also an element of balancing out how you convey the information (infodumping isn't good) but as they say it's better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. -Kinjo EDIT: Detective Butler Demo patch here. Fixes game-breaking bugs.
Darn, one day earlier and I would've updated twice in a single month! On that note, I think I will actually start posting more often. One thing I do want to make clear is that, while I have obviously been discussing fangames and Detective Butler frequently, I am coming up with ideas and stories for future games. My personal preference when working with games is to keep things very much under wraps until I have something close to being finished. I think one of the more interesting things about games is the element of surprise. Revealing a game early on will of course spoil any surprises. A game without surprises is just plain boring and predictable. Naturally, a mystery game needs to keep things hidden, so it's very difficult to mention progress in that regard. But I still think keeping things hidden before final release is important for any game. Projects should remain secretly in development for a certain period of time, then when they are closer to being finished can they begin to reveal anything. Unless you're a professional game company with experience in making deadlines, plenty of unforeseen circumstances can arise with will delay the game. And naturally, people dislike delays. This strategy worked for me with the WTSC fan-series; abandoning that strategy for an original game of even greater complexity was a mistake on my part. So for that reason I will be keeping additional works in progress hidden from public view until they are at least somewhere near completion. This will leave plenty of surprises(!) in store for you whenever you decide to check this blog. Wouldn't it be nice if a totally unexpected game showed up out of nowhere? As I said, I would like to post more often. Maybe not so much on "updates" but my thoughts on game development in general. I often think to myself of how I can make my games better, and I have learned a lot from this, but I think it would be a very interesting discussion to post these tidbits online and see what others have to say. (It also might bring some life to the forum, or something!) -Kinjo Welp, my break is over, and so now is a good time to make an update.
I'll be announcing another fangame, On the Night of Kinjo's Redemption. It's the sequel to Repercussion, taking place in the land of Higanbana. Expect it to take another half-year, or something similar. Now, for Detective Butler's progress. I've stated before that the full game will have ten chapters, and the first four are included in the demo. I've been going through and doing some re-organizing of the story to make sure everything works out nicely (been doing that for a while actually). What does this mean? It means that I'm trying to fix some pacing issues. Many have noted that the old demo is REALLY long and the latter chapters are turning out to be shorter than I thought they would be. Maybe that's just a side effect of them being so mystery-intensive, but in any case the first half was pretty long. Another thing I'll be changing is the background filters. I've received some feedback on how they were contrasting with the sprites on-screen and have found a filter which truly puts the background... in the background. Lastly, in terms of what I have done: chapters 5, 6, and 10 are pretty much finished. 7 and 9 have some interactive bits which are taking some more time, and 8 needs some pacing adjustments as well. All of the graphics are also finished, which is nice, so everything left is on the writing/programming side. -Kinjo |