Revive That Dying Flame - Voting and Discussion Thread

[Epiphany]

Wonderful! Always neat to run into someone familiar with the genre. Though as you can likely tell, this story's quite a bit more Western than VNs usually are. I also appreciate the offer for help. If you have music you've posted online, I'd be happy to give it a listen! As for writing, I'm not exactly opposed to another collaborator but I envision this project as already requiring at least 3+ people. Namely:

1. Art work
2. Potentially more art work, if someone's really good at characters and someone else is really good at landscapes and I can't find the package deal so to speak.
3. Composer.
4. Potentially a sound guy for footsteps, doors, heart beats, and other audible description elements (this may end up being me anyway, we'll see).
5. Potentially a programmer. The default would be me but I have to admit it's a bit intimidating to think about having to plug in all the changes in character poses, changes in scenery, doing fancy stuff with moving character images around or transitions, etc. It's not too hard for me (I don't think) but it's likely to be really tedious and I'm likely to spend all my time thinking "I could be writing book 2 instead of doing this".

We'll see. I'd like to get the first draft script done before I get too involved with a lot more people, especially since I'd like to try selling the game via Steam, Google Play, etc.

 

[Esbilon]

I've no idea how Ren'Py works, but I know some programming and have been meaning to get more into it, but I have lacked a project to make that happen.

 

[Esbilon]

Shame I'm not Christiany

I think even Carma would be hard-pressed to be a religion

Great stuff again, and vindication for my vampire theory! Vampire-with-arcane-fate though she be. Well, and possibly without the drinking of blood.

I'm all for rising and overcoming (or collapsing in Carma's arms, that sounds quite lovely, though perhaps not fruitful), but to be honest, I think the first question should be about what exactly the problem is. This thing has a lot of moving parts, and figuring out exactly what Alley wants seems like it should be the first priority.

I think I'll need to do some thinking too, my gamer's urge to get on with the story seems at odds with a real person's loss at hearing their family doesn't care any more.

 

[Error 420]

I'd say get out of there. There's nothing to indicate that we can even trust these people that anything they're talking about.

 

[Esbilon]

Why wouldn't we be able to trust Alley's friends of years and years? Everything they've said that we have been able to check independently has been correct.

Confirming the rest later seems reasonable, but so far they've given us no reason not to trust them.

Also, go where? To a mother who won't even answer Alley's calls?

 

[Esbilon]

After some more thought, I'm definitely behind "Rise and overcome." These people are Alley's friends and they want to help her, let's let them do so. This is a weird situation Alley never saw herself in, but sometimes that's how it goes.

Double checking the stuff Carma and Jim said they did seems reasonable, but not a priority. Making contact with Alley's family should probably be done, though. Maybe things will be different if she shows up in person?

 

[Epiphany]

No comment on Carma's ability to be a religion beyond her comment plainly showing she doesn't share the religious identification that Chen, probably Jim and evidently Alley share.

The truth of what happened to Alley is something of a slow burn. If I do it right, readers along with Alley will draw a conclusion and question it at least three times over the series. You guys are my practice audience so, again, appreciate you being along for the ride so far.

So far, that's a vote for rising and overcoming and a vote for getting out of there. I'll give it another day or so and then pick one and move forward. Next post is likely to be shorter at least (not for lack of content but because it's the tail end of the big text block I broke into three for the sake of forum posting).

 

[Epiphany]

Yep, so I went with "Rise and overcome" which is probably the closest to Alley's 'default' personality.

As always, if you guys have other choices you'd rather do, write them in!

 

[Esbilon]

Another excellent post, I do like your writing and the little bits of characterization you drop on us in between the primary content

Mmm, I'm very much in doubt here. The Library seems like the least attractive. It's not going to have any definitive answers, and I think we have enough ideas of how vampires could work to get us started. I'd like to know some more about Jim's professor before agreeing, this doesn't seem like the realm of e.g. Shakespearean Litterature or economics. Church to me seems unlikely to be all that productive, at most probably informing us that Alley is barred from holy ground and takes Aggravated damage from people with True Faith. A doctor... Again, I'm not sure what we could gain, and there's the risk of getting Alley's fucked up situation entered into the system even indirectly, which I think is something we don't want. Is usually something we don't want.

 

[Epiphany]

Given no one else has said anything, I wonder if the choices have stalled the game.

Of course in the traditional VN route, people will typically end up doing all routes so it's less of a hang up there. In a somewhat more traditionally plotted movie or game, there'd already be an external actor forcing the protagonist into action through opposition by now. I'm wondering if I shouldn't have done the same...

 

[Esbilon]

Well, all things being equal, I'm on team Carma.

 

[Error 420]

With IRL logic, I'd go to the hospital. But in game logic, it sounds far more rewarding to check out the Professor. That route sounds the most interesting.

 

[Epiphany]

Awesome. Now I just need a tie-breaker...

 

[Esbilon]

I'm fine with going to the professor. Though, like I said, I'd like to know what kind of professor he is.

 

[Epiphany]

The Professor it is!

Man, that post ran long. In part because in classic Visual Novel style, lots of dialogue is evidently a good thing. And in part because Alley and Jim tend to run away with each other, and Eliot's rather fun to write into that mix as well.

Only went with two options because they seem to be the obvious ones. Write-ins are always welcome though!

 

[Esbilon]

Yay! Another update to wake up to

Excellent as always, though I do have a couple of points of order.

Whoa. That was an interesting observation

It's really not. It's pretty freaking obvious, and Alley making a point of it makes her look like an idiot. Or rather, like the author thinks the audience is.

Progressive metal, which to me sounds like someone blending regular rock 'n roll and film scores together.

From knowing you, I'm guessing you were thinking of Dream Theater while you wrote that. Most progessive metal, though, sounds nothing like rock 'n' roll mixed with a film score, that's a description that'd make most people (who know anything about metal subgenres) think of symphonic metal. Here are a couple of examples.

Spoiler: Progressive Metal

Which I guess goes to show how "progressive metal" alone isn't really terribly descriptive, except that it requires quite the level of skill from the artists in question. And this is not an important point, but I tend to go off when I encounter an opportunity to discuss the grand family tree of metal music

For the more substantial content, though! The professor is indeed weird, who wears a silver bowler anywhere other than a new year's party, much less when holding court in your own library?

The revelation that there are enough other vampires (let's call them that for now and revise later if it turns out to be misleading) that they get picked up on local news when having a fight is pretty interesting. That they're confident enough that they won't get seen to do that is also pretty interesting. That Jim (and Alley) can see other vampires is pretty interesting. Doesn't really bring us closer to what's really going on, though, but pieces to put into place later is good too.

For what to do... I'm with Jim. We have no idea what we'd be walking into, going there, and we'd get nothing out of the Professor if we up and left him now. Not saying we'll get anything out of him by staying, I'm with Alley in finding him a bit annoyingly mysterious-to-be-mysterious.

Plus, "I heard a gun, maybe I'm in over my head," really? Your best friend just punched you in the face and you barely noticed, and the gunshot is what makes you think you're in over your head? This may sound harsher than I mean it, but you're making Alley sound like a bit of an idiot here. Which is the second time in the chapter, and that's something that makes my hackles rise. And by "makes my hackles rise," I mean that this is the kind of thing that made me throw down the second Dresden Files book in disgust and never touch it again (except when reorganizing my home library).