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[TeeGee]

Our next visual novel. Made with the same team as Cinders.

(click to enlarge)

Website

An exotic city in the middle of a frozen wasteland, cut off from the world by raging blizzards. Inhabited only by a small group of misfits, who either can’t or don’t want to leave for the dead winter season.

When the local archaeologist goes missing, an ambitious doctor on a contract and a mysterious young woman, who arrived with the last dog sled caravan, start asking questions..

There's going to be lots of pretty, lots of mystery, lots of snow, and shitloads of secrets.

[Hipshot]

Is it really that good to name the game as the NES game Soltice?

http://retrogamesdojo.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/solstice_11.jpg

I like that - shitload of secrets =)

[TeeGee]

I don't think a very old and unknown game of the same title is a problem, really .

[Ichigo Jam]

I thought Solstice was reasonably well known - at least, I was half expecting to see a remake of it when I clicked on this thread.

Still, I don't think you should change the name - as soon as you have some screenshots it should be more than obvious it's not related to the isometric NES game. (And there are already other games out there which re-use names of older games without any real connection)

[TeeGee]

Yeah, I think so too. Though I didn't know NES Solstice was any popular.

And actually, that image there is a screenshot. From the main menu, but a screenshot none the less .

[pluckyporcupine]

Looking great already.

[TeeGee]

We released a short video presenting Solstice in motion:





I'm really curious how the animated characters look to you. We think it makes a big difference, making it more like Ace Attorney rather than the usual static indie VNs, but we're worried if it doesn't seem too jaggy.

[pluckyporcupine]

We released a short video presenting Solstice in motion:





I'm really curious how the animated characters look to you. We think it makes a big difference, making it more like Ace Attorney rather than the usual static indie VNs, but we're worried if it doesn't seem too jaggy.

I can't tell if it's sped up or not (still waking up) but to me, the mouth movements look fine, but some of the arm motions look really "jaggy" as you put it.

When moving the arm from a position where the hand is near the chest/neck/head to where the arm is at the character's side or vice versa are fine because the slight blurring indicates that the character is moving to a new animation, or sort of makes up for the lack of a more steady animation in between. Point being that there's a clear visual cue that something is shifting.

However, the one part where the character is playing with her hair looked particularly bad to me. It was a really messy animation, made up of too few frames and the frames that were there made the motion look awkward. The Constance character. Around 0:15.

Small hand motions also bother me a bit, despite being nice touches. Animations like the characters tapping their fingers on their arms. I just don't envision anyone ever moving their entire hand at once to tap it impatiently on their arm. When I think of someone tapping their fingers impatiently on their arm, it's more of a wave from the pinky to the index finger. (EDIT: I just tried doing the motion they do in the video. It was pretty awkward.)

But that's nitpicking.

Otherwise, it looks really good so far.

[wccrawford]

That looks amazing!

The arm movements are kind of startling at first, but I think I'll get used to them rather quickly.  I've seen games with that animation style before, and I don't think it bothered me for long.  I don't think they moved quite as much, though.

[Fallsburg]

The mouth and hand motions look good, but the drastic arm motions look jarring. I think that it might be better without the blur? 

[TeeGee]

Thanks, guys. That's precisely the kind of feedback we were looking for. Very useful. 

It's the first time we're doing animations in this scale and with semi-realistic characters, so we're still learning. I guess we may need to make the movements within one pose more subtle. Like the Aunt Ghede and her finger pointing, and not like Constance moving her hand around to fiddle with her hair.

[airman4]

Hi !
Very cool game !

For the animation , why not using this technique also , the blink eye ?

I'm an animator and it's a technique i would use for that game , among the other , but not the transparency onion thing , it's a bit strange , it's kinda works on fast animation mostly .

Take a look here please

You see the blink stuff ?

I uploaded it on my deviantart , if you want me to put it down, tell me , and sorry if it's not authorized
http://k-hermann.deviantart.com/art/Solstice-animation-346520254?ga_submit=10%3A1357251183&ga_type=edit&ga_recent=1

Since i have a whole lot of works , i did it fast ,if the blink is faster , it can be better again

[TeeGee]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think it would get annoying very quickly, especially as it gets in the way of reading. Characters change their poses way too often for that.

[airman4]

I see , it's fair enough if there is a lot of movment involved.
Keep it up !

[pluckyporcupine]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think it would get annoying very quickly, especially as it gets in the way of reading. Characters change their poses way too often for that.

I concur. It looks fine in terms of the GIF presented, but if that happened too often, it'd get a bit annoying.

[eigenbom]

Just wanna say Solstice on the NES was one of my favourite games!

[Uykered]

Would be so much cooler if there was voice acting, I wonder if there are any games in this genre that do that.

[TeeGee]

There are some. Like this one. But it's mostly very amateur voice acting, which often makes me wish there wasn't any in the first place.

I thought about it before, but the costs of doing it right would be higher than what a VN can earn. For instance, Cinders has 450 pages of dialogue. Back at the company I worked for before going indie, we paid $500-$700 for just a few pages of professional voice acting. And that was very cheap, as we contacted the actors directly to skip the middle man and pulled some favors. Recording something like Cinders would be in tens of thousands.

Not to mention the logistics of it. Maintaining the quality of VO of such length, cutting it into lines, directing the actors, requesting re-recordings -- it would be a full time job. Also, once something is recorded, you can't change the text, as it would require another session. Which means we would have to do it only after the game is done and tested, pushing the release date by another few months.

All in all, it's completely beyond the reach of a small indie like us.

[Uykered]

Ok, thanks.

[pluckyporcupine]

-snip-

Thank you for posting that. One of the things I've always wondered but never bothered to ask (I couldn't afford it one way or the other) was how much VOs cost.