Game ideas!

[fullofjoy]

As advertised, this is an outreach to any writer, artist, gamer, or anyone with ideas in general for this project. It'll probably be best to start off small, and start with the ideas first.

We need:
Face art
Sprites
A general storyline
Other things

Ideas for anything, from the story to art direction to gameplay, would be most appreciated.

Maybe this should start out with a demo first, an example of how it would work.

Edit: Also, if you have an idea don't be afraid to say it because we'll consider anything, and if all goes well we might do some side projects while working on a big main game, to flex our game-making muscles.

Comments

[freeandjoy]

haha I am down with this. Maybe the storyline could be a Road to the Olympics kind of thing?

[fullofjoy]

That's a good idea... have any more ideas along that line? It could be interesting to play Rin and Haru at separate locations for a time before it moves to a time where they are together again and continue to travel that road together. Finish a part of the game as Haru, the story moves to Rin, and back and forth. There would be some OCs needed for their respective swim teams in Tokyo and Australia for a time before Rin comes back to Japan. Then it goes on switching. Maybe?

[freeandjoy]

Yeah the back and forth is probably the best to go about this plotline (as well arguably the most interesting though ymmv there). Some oc character names on Rin's side could be Mark Smith or Joshua Lewis.

[fullofjoy]

Aha, names sound good to me.

What kind of things would happen in each of these sections?

[freeandjoy]

Rin: his 'revenge' obviously, as well learning to write/talk to his family/friends while in Australia maybe? The focus would be on harurin conversations for obvious reasons but some scenes with him talking with people like Sousuke, Gou, and Rei for example would be nice too. And making new friends with people on his swim team.

Haru: Getting more and more used to the competitive swimming world is a big one. I think you could something where he has some trouble adjusting to it at first but then he gets more used to it with the help of his new team (plus people like Rin and Makoto in the background). Other than that he, like Rin, could also probably learn how to talk to his friends now that he's a relatively good distance away from most of them.

[platina]

A game for a ship where the ship barely interacts seems kind of pointless.

I'm sure those are interesting things to explore, but personally I would not want to play that.

[fullofjoy]

Not even for the reunion sex at the end? Though I can see your point. They spend a lot of time apart already it would be nice for exploring time together. I would suggest those ideas maybe as a prologue? But that might not be enough time to explore it. Choices, choices. Well, we can still keep that idea for consideration.

What do you suggest? It can be any span of time or any kind of setting. Would you rather focus on the time after Rin gets back from Australia or go for a different plot?

A side note but Rin's hair is a journey to figure out how to draw.

[platina]

Rin's hair is easier to draw than Haru's if you ask me. It's less likely to just look.. big and weird.

WELL, I want all the reunion sex! But I would not want to sacrifice HaruRin interaction for it. It's actually why I like the visual novel style more. You COULD have end up in a plot thread where they separate and then have reunion sex. But, again, I'd probably skip most the time where they are separated. It's just not very interesting to me unless it directly relates to them as a couple (or, idk, gathering the right points/choices to have them end up as a couple). I want HaruRin the game, not Free! the game. XD

I'm not quite sure yet what kind of game you even want to make. Like, is there an aim you as the player work forward to? How is the gameplay supposed to work?

[fullofjoy]

There are a couple of ways to go about this.

Option 1: Basically an interactive fanfiction. There are different choices that can be made but they won't have a big impact on the scheme of things.

Option 2: More visual novel inclined, with different branches and paths leading to Haru and Rin in an relationship, or not depending on the ending the player gets to.

Option 1 is easier to make as a longer game of course, while option 2 will have a lot of flags and conditionals to keep track of. Option 2 is more of what I strive towards! But option 1 can turn out as a fine fun thing too, such as the game To The Moon. Which has a lot more production values than this of course, but yeah.

So, for this game, a good thing to clearly work towards is Haru and Rin having a romantic relationship. And managing that relationship would be interesting to do as well, but the first part will be the first goal. A lot of the gameplay for this kind of game is exploring surroundings and making choices in situations that have an impact later.

Of course I could also make them fight zombies. That's not quite as romantic, though.

[freeandjoy]

That's not quite as romantic, though.

lies, if there's anything fanfic has taught me it's that fighting zombies is totally romantic.

In all seriousness though, I probably could have made it a 1000 times more clearer but option 2 was what I was trying to aim for too, I can be terrible at explaining myself sometimes. I think your idea of starting off with Rin coming back and going off from there would be a better way to go though.

[fullofjoy]

Okay then! So what should be the plot as Rin returns? Both are of course aiming for the Olympics still, but how does their relationship develop from his return? How long should it be from Rin's departure until he comes back?

Making Rin Haru's roommate would also would out pretty well for a lot of things.

[freeandjoy]

I think Olympics/romance would be enough for the plotline. I also think you could do something with the fact that this will the first time they will on the same team since they were 12 I'm just not sure what (celebration dinner? renting a movie? something else?).

How long should it be from Rin's departure until he comes back?

2 years maybe. I don't really know shit about how this works, but I think that would be enough time for Rin to do everything that he wants to do in Australia.

[fullofjoy]

Hmm, sounds good... so, what places should I make the locations for? Haru's apartment or dorm or something, the pool they train at...

It makes sense! I don't know much either, I can revise that kind of info later.

[freeandjoy]

Other than those two places the only place I can think of is the airport for the reunion scene. If you do go for the celebration dinner idea it might be a good idea to make one for a restaurant too.

[fullofjoy]

Making them look like convincing locations is... hard... but they are fun to make.

I need to make up some scenarios too that happen in the middle. They'll have some day to day stuff but there's going to be some extraordinary stuff that happens between the beginning and the end. Any ideas for that?

[platina]

porn endings b

(On a more serious note: fencer_x, some more people and I were talking about a dating sim ish harurinharu game with different endings depending on your route before, but we kind of.. were lost at the point where no one of us really know about how to go about coding it.

Do you ahve experience with this kind of stuff or know someone who can do the coding?

Other things you need: background, music, etc. The scripting is also kind of important (and not easy).)

[fullofjoy]

Hey, porn endings are a serious option here!

The fortunate thing about games today is that you don't have to be into C programming in order to make a full-fledged game so it's just a matter of getting to know the program, which is what I've been doing with rpgmaker along with a friend. It's pretty fun and intuitive! I've coded some games in the past in a couple of languages but this is easier.

There are some other programs out therefore focused on visual novel style that I've played with, but the same kind of thing can be done in rpgmaker too. Plus I like waking around and exploring an area. And maybe they can have battle scenes with something.

It came with a lot of DLC packs so there's some default backgrounds, but yes we will need some artists. There's going to be some character art aside from the sprites of course so there's artists needed (I'll fill in some art as placeholders at first). Unless we get someone volunteering to compose which would be really cool, I'll fill the music in with the Free OSTs and royalty free music.

[sonnedark]

I love the idea of a rinharu game, it sounds really promising and exciting (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ I would replay it 10000000 times lol. I want to contribute but I don't know what I could do. Mmmmmm... I never did sprites before....I want to try and see what I get, if the result is not horrible I'll show you haha.

Also if some drawings are needed or something I would love to help!

[fullofjoy]

I hope to make a game with a lot of replay value! Like multiple ways for the relationship to happen, not just a good end and bad end. But first of all I need to think how the branches will go! The whole thing depends on the plot being solid in the first place, so any ideas of what you'd like to see?

Hm! Would you like to do one/some of the drawings of the events? One of the CGs? At certain events pictures will pop up as opposed to the usual sprites and talking images.

[sonnedark]

If I have learnt something about RPG video games is that if you can mess things up like... really really mess up and get an ending where someone dies it makes you nervous and excited (or maybe I'm a bad person lol). I mean, like there's a bad ending where they don't end up together but there's a bad BAD ending at which one of them gets drowned or something.

Doing some drawings of the events... I would love to do it, count me in!

[fullofjoy]

I understand what you mean! A big part of motivation in games is the possible risk of bad things happening to the characters the player cares about, as much as it hurts to put either of them through too much pain. I remember Bridge to Terebitha or whatever the book was called...

There can also be a ridiculous ending where Rin finds a portal to hell and defeats all the demons and becomes the ruler of the underworld and dresses as a sexy devil costume.

And I'll be sure to contact you when I finally have this plot and all the scenarios figured out. It's really tough to plan out everything, and what will be the scenes I want to call attention to!