Ranma: The Visual Novel

[Arakawa]

http://www.ryo-oh-ki.net/ffirc/projects/round.htm

Yeah, generally the 'exquisite corpse' approach is used when you want the result to be entertainingly bad.

[Muphrid]

The general plan seems reasonable to me.  Just to get a feel for things, how much material (in words) would one expect in total for a project like this?

[Brian]

I'm interested. Is this project something where everyone throws ideas in a pot, or would it be better structured to have specific roles for contributors? Since so many people want to get in on this, it's probably best to appoint a head of design and to draw up a design document.

I'm willing to let everyone contribute, but, hmm....  Your suggestion is in line with what I was thinking; myself and Dune can oversee the main storyline, and will accept input from everyone else (or at least consider it); the 'branches' can be claimed by others as the managers of the project from where they diverge.

Ideally, the first part of the story will be neutral enough to lead into the differing paths -- and, as said before, the paths don't need to be perfectly consistent with one-another.  For example, if there's an explosion in the distance in the main story, the cause of it could be different in the divergent pathways.

Make sense?  Sound okay?

The general plan seems reasonable to me.  Just to get a feel for things, how much material (in words) would one expect in total for a project like this?

That's a very good question.  I would expect the main story should be deliverable in under 7-8k words, and probably aim for slightly less than that for each path.

I am, admittedly, completely guessing.  Trying to aim for somethig relatively simple as a proof-of-concept or vertical slice, you know? ;)

It may turn out taking more (or less), but unless my estimations are off, we should be able to do this roughly within those guidelines.

[KLSymph]

Ideally, the first part of the story will be neutral enough to lead into the differing paths -- and, as said before, the paths don't need to be perfectly consistent with one-another.  For example, if there's an explosion in the distance in the main story, the cause of it could be different in the divergent pathways.

Make sense?  Sound okay?

I recommend taking care with that. When an event has different causes over different paths, and paths are determined by player's choices, there should be a clear connection from player choice and event cause. If you use the same event and give it multiple causes, it implies the player doesn't affect the story. ...Which, now that I think about it, can work fine for a Ranma story, but you have to spin it a particular way to not feel contrived, and you should try not to use it too much.

Anyway, have you decided on the mechanics of the game? Fate/stay night has scenes and choices (and bad ends, Tiger Dojo). To Heart 2 adds a map-and-location selection mechanic. Some games use a New Game+ system to affect replays (or just to fill the art gallery). You should hammer down specifics before deciding on a technology to run the game.

Will you prototype?

[Jon]

Ideally, the first part of the story will be neutral enough to lead into the differing paths -- and, as said before, the paths don't need to be perfectly consistent with one-another.  For example, if there's an explosion in the distance in the main story, the cause of it could be different in the divergent pathways.

Make sense?  Sound okay?

I recommend taking care with that. When an event has different causes over different paths, and paths are determined by player's choices, there should be a clear connection from player choice and event cause. If you use the same event and give it multiple causes, it implies the player doesn't affect the story. ...Which, now that I think about it, can work fine for a Ranma story, but you have to spin it a particular way to not feel contrived, and you should try not to use it too much.

Well, you recall that notion I'd had that the world rules would quite literally vary upon which path you were going down? So if you were chasing Kodachi, all sort of Lovecraftian tropes would come into play, and the explosion might be caused by, I don't know, a Mi-go brain cylinder crash-landing. Whereas if you're going for the Ukyo ending, it's all honor and family and loyalty, so the explosion could actually be Ukyo's shop going up in flames because her dad thinks she's stagnating on her revenge quest.

[Brian]

Ideally, the first part of the story will be neutral enough to lead into the differing paths -- and, as said before, the paths don't need to be perfectly consistent with one-another.  For example, if there's an explosion in the distance in the main story, the cause of it could be different in the divergent pathways.

Make sense?  Sound okay?

I recommend taking care with that. When an event has different causes over different paths, and paths are determined by player's choices, there should be a clear connection from player choice and event cause. If you use the same event and give it multiple causes, it implies the player doesn't affect the story. ...Which, now that I think about it, can work fine for a Ranma story, but you have to spin it a particular way to not feel contrived, and you should try not to use it too much.

Anyway, have you decided on the mechanics of the game? Fate/stay night has scenes and choices (and bad ends, Tiger Dojo). To Heart 2 adds a map-and-location selection mechanic. Some games use a New Game+ system to affect replays (or just to fill the art gallery). You should hammer down specifics before deciding on a technology to run the game.

Will you prototype?

There was somrthing of a miscommunication here; When I'm back from getting my bacardi 151, I'll switch to a proper PC and clarify.

[Jason_Miao]

There was somrthing of a miscommunication here; When I'm back from getting my bacardi 151, I'll switch to a proper PC and clarify.

I laughed.

I don't plan to participate, myself, since I don't know what time I can commit to any particular project for awhile...Something that came to mind was that you might want to also make sure you unify the average story segment lengths from all contributors.  The choose your own adventure segments tended to be one or two complete pages long.  A badly written date sim may be longer.  Action-based ones, such as http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/cyoa/ are mostly a paragraph or three.  Ranma has the odd distinction of being action/adventure/romance.  If writers pick wildly different segment lengths, it will make your final product look weird, so whomever is going to manage this project might want to keep that in mind.

Of course, this is easy to prevent, but I thought it might be worthwhile to point it out up front.

[Brian]

Screw you, furball!  Your grubby paws will fumble over iPad input too.

Also, I swear!  My wish was for more good quality fanfics -- what's with this despair-inducing upswing of more depressing fics, too?  I'm starting to wonder about our contract!

(Bonus: I am now drunk and typing coherently on a real keyboard.  Eh?  Eh?  Eh?)

Watch me blow that.

Okay.

On the branching pathways contradicting: So, KL, what you suggest (the negative, confusing side-effect) shouldn't be possible.  The paths should not retcon the starting source.  We'll say, the base story.

In our example, there's an explosion in the base story.  It's in the distance and is not revealed as far as the source, only some details -- smoke, a loud sound, and a direction (maybe).

In Shampoo's path, this is some super badass martial arts guy that Ranma will later face-off with, and he was squaring off against some chump, or whatever.

In Ukyou's path, it was an industrial accident, and Ranma rescues some innocent folks from a burning building.

In other paths, etc. etc.

So, the contradictions are in parallel tracks, and shouldn't really be an issue in terms of the cause/effect loops you were describing.

And now:

Complexity level:

We walk before we run, right?  So, my suggestion is that for this one, we need no complex flags.  We don't need to (though, we _can_ , if we have an ambitious coder and everything goes great).  Aaaanyway.  I'm in discussion with Dune on this at the moment; I'll have clean logs posted when sober. :)

[KLSymph]

On the branching pathways contradicting: So, KL, what you suggest (the negative, confusing side-effect) shouldn't be possible.  The paths should not retcon the starting source.  We'll say, the base story.

In our example, there's an explosion in the base story.  It's in the distance and is not revealed as far as the source, only some details -- smoke, a loud sound, and a direction (maybe).

In Shampoo's path, this is some super badass martial arts guy that Ranma will later face-off with, and he was squaring off against some chump, or whatever.

In Ukyou's path, it was an industrial accident, and Ranma rescues some innocent folks from a burning building.

In other paths, etc. etc.

So, the contradictions are in parallel tracks, and shouldn't really be an issue in terms of the cause/effect loops you were describing.

That arrangement is fine. If an event exists as a premise across multiple paths, each path giving it a different cause, and paths are associated with a particular girl, I would just recommend that the event's cause be associated with the respective girl each time. Readers like patterns and associations.

Complexity level:

We walk before we run, right?  So, my suggestion is that for this one, we need no complex flags.  We don't need to (though, we _can_ , if we have an ambitious coder and everything goes great).

It really depends on what you want the flags to do. If it's just to control which girl/ending the player gets, you could always go with a flagless branching system. One player choice to decide which girl he wants. I assume you'll want more interactivity though, and flag complexity will probably be proportional to that.

[Anastasia]

Chat logs as requested. Open up the spoiler box to see them:

[spoiler]

<DrunkenBri> Anyway, breaking it down/starting over from the beginning (I'll pore over these logs when sober):
<Kotono> Right.
<DrunkenBri> Anyway.  The structure of the story is going to be two parts, with one major decision hub.
<DrunkenBri> The base story is going to be a largely neutral introduction which gives us our setup and establishes all of the setting that we're going to use (and where this is in the timeline, etc. etc. etc.).
<DrunkenBri> This means it should try and ship all of the girls equally (or not at all), and shouldn't bash on anyone.
* Kotono nods.
<Kotono> Basically the setup for things and it shouldn't influence the choices you make.
<DrunkenBri> Right.  At least, not a whole lot.  Adding stuff in is complexity we don't need.
<DrunkenBri> 'Cool' doesn't mean
<DrunkenBri> 'good idea'.
<Kotono> Yes.
<DrunkenBri> Old tricks work for a reason, etc.
<Kotono> We can always start small and make a deluxe edition if this is a home run, anyway.
<DrunkenBri> It's going to cover the first half of the day, which we've decided (so far) should be ... Saturday, a half-day of school so we can use the school setting, (or not, as we wish~!)
<Kotono> Right.
<DrunkenBri> Well, my real hope it to establish a trend and get these made more often, with fewer people, etc.  Possibly get these ambitious programmy types to write up an 'anyone can make one of these' engine to spew these out for schulbs like me -- but that's a massive digression.
<DrunkenBri> Let's see about getting this one game off the ground first.
<Kotono> Right.
<Kotono> So what's going to motivate Ranma needing to choose?
<DrunkenBri> Don't actually have a good idea for that, yet.
<DrunkenBri> Everyone can contribute ideas to what should happen in the base story, so it'll be an agreed-upon thing; something everyone's happy with, and they can branch out into their own ideas from.
<Kotono> Mmmmm.
<DrunkenBri> I think I've clarified this in thread, but once we get to the major decision hub/split, events within the different paths can contradict (as long as they respect the base-path).
<Kotono> Maybe the motivation comes from Mom since she came up? The only way she'll accept his curse is if he's working on grand babies or whatever with a wife?
* Kotono nods.
<DrunkenBri> Ultimately, I've already slated you/me as the arbiters for what will/not go in the base-path >.>
<DrunkenBri> I figure if we're neutral, and we let people pick their sub-paths, it should be cool.
* Kotono nods.
<Kotono> Fair 'nough there.
<DrunkenBri> In terms of work, Mr. Clark asked how many words we'd be looking at.
<DrunkenBri> I don't know about the code, but judging by the number of suggestions tossed out by others, it shouldn't be too hard to get an engine/etc.
<Kotono> Mmmm.
<Kotono> Well, I'd say we write up the base path and see how long that runs first?
<DrunkenBri> I have set a goal for it.
<Kotono> Mmmm.
* Kotono nods.
<DrunkenBri> So, we're aiming for 8-10k words, which is up to 80k text.
<DrunkenBri> That's a 'top end'.
<DrunkenBri> If we can pull off what we want in less, that's cool.
* Kotono nods.
<DrunkenBri> Those numbers are 'we need to step back and take a look at what we're doing' levels.
<DrunkenBri> Okay.
<DrunkenBri> Ah, I like your story idea.
<DrunkenBri> It's kind of cheap, but reliable, and everyone will get it if they know Ranma without too much trouble.
* Kotono nods.
<Kotono> Let's not shoot any moons for a fancy concept. Whatever it is, let's make it a simple buy in.
<DrunkenBri> Nodoka arrives in the opening, things are hectic?
<Kotono> A fair thought, yes.
<DrunkenBri> Ranma's pissed about having to hide it and loses his temper, is about to reveal himself to his mom and then someone (Genma, probably, thus intruducing the 'Panda Sensei' joke idea) stops him and says, "Boy, if you're married, she can't argue non-manliness.  Just pick a girl (AKANE!) by the end of the day."
<Kotono> Makes sense. Maybe Genma pushes it a bit and makes him seriously consider everyone instead of just defaulting to Akane, too? Not enough to really skew it, just Genma being Genma.
<DrunkenBri> Goes to school. Hmm, we could do this ourselves, but let's farm out ideas from the others, too (though, I really like this opening).
<Kotono> So do I, but it's my idea so naturally I like it. <_<
<DrunkenBri> Heh.  We're the arbiters. ;)
<DrunkenBri> Okay, anyway, back to general gameplay ideas.
<DrunkenBri> I said that there should be one major decision hub to lead into the different pathways.  As far as making the rest of the game really a 'game' and to justify the format, I have an idea I'd like to sound off you:
<DrunkenBri> To avoid the complexity of flags, we can put in small forks that lead to two outcomes.  One of them goes to the rest of the story, one goes to basically an omake/side-scene.
<DrunkenBri> These can be joke 'bad ends' that then loop back to the same spot.
<Kotono> Basically a lot of A/B choices, and all the B choices lead to the BAD END/OMAKE/whatever scenes, yes?
<Kotono> Rather than a real flag/scoring system? Makes sense and is a lot less complex.
<DrunkenBri> Yes.
<DrunkenBri> Then instead of punishing the player and making them do it again, loop back straight to the original tree.
* Kotono nods.
<Iddy> Change it up. If you use B as the joke every time people can just ignore it.
<DrunkenBri> This will reward (admittedly) some 'bad' playing, but it also lets us have a lot more fun with things.
<DrunkenBri> Yeah, we'll do that; some places may even have 3/4 choices, depending.
<DrunkenBri> Probably not more than 3, typically.
<DrunkenBri> Though, there may be a point where we let the user type something in, and it doesn't matter what they do, the outcome is the same.
<DrunkenBri> (Basically, 'answer this impossible question' 'input' 'WRONG~!')
<Iddy> Make it like a Nasu-verse game. You have to suck it up and get through the fucked up story lines to get to the 'good' ones.
<Iddy> =p
<Kotono> In this sort of format I don't think we really need to penalize bad playing anyway.
<DrunkenBri> These 'bad end' omakes can feature (judging by the thread) either the 'Panda Dojo' advice threads or (uh ...) 'Hinako-in-bloomers' screens.
<DrunkenBri> Exactly.
<DrunkenBri> We want something simple and fun.
<DrunkenBri> And the 'loop back without tracking a thing or setting a flag' model does allow for infinite loops, but that's gotta be player choice, so not our problem. :D
<DrunkenBri> That being said:
<DrunkenBri> I think we have a solid idea of our framework/design, and what we want the game to look like.
<DrunkenBri> We just need to make sure everyone else is cool with it, and then develop content.
<DrunkenBri> Did you happen to want one of the paths?
<DrunkenBri> Oh, hmm.  Some details we can consider.  Ah ... style-guide?
<Kotono> Nah. I'm badly out of practice with real writing and if we have writers, I'd rather let them do it.
<DrunkenBri> Okay.  I'm gonna throw out: Since we have no real graphics, script-format is douchey.
<Kotono> No real reason to use it, no.
<DrunkenBri> I say: When possible, go for novel form when possible.  The big deal will be to be consistent, but as a tech writer, I can manage the style-guide (if we get to it).  Style only has to be consistent within the base story, anyway.  Paths only have to respect the base and be consistent internally.
<DrunkenBri> Because paths may have genre shifts that justify different styles.
* Kotono nods.
<DrunkenBri> Hmmm.
<DrunkenBri> I ... can't think of anything else.
<Kotono> That makes sense. Really just have one person do each path and set out basic guidelines. As long as you don't try and chop paths up...
<DrunkenBri> Yeah.
<Kotono> Would all the PANDA DOJOs or whatever be done by the section writer or by its own consistent writer?
<DrunkenBri> Hmmmm.
<DrunkenBri> You know what?  Let's go with something different for us, and let each path take its own guide.
<DrunkenBri> If we use 'panda dojo' in the baseline, we risk subtly advocating a bias.
<Kotono> Well, I wasn't seeing much/any bad choices in the lead up anyway. I thought those were all post path choice?
<DrunkenBri> Realistically, yeah.
<DrunkenBri> But we can buzz the others for content and have random insanity happen for fun, anyway.
<Kotono> My instinct is to have a distinct writer for those that works last. He can tie them together as he pleases and have a lot of fun with it. A bunch of different writers for 'em will have tone/style differences within the dojos.
* Kotono nods.
<DrunkenBri> So, you and I, old-school gamers.  What, some old INFOCOM-style 'in-game' help prompts?
<DrunkenBri> Yeah, so, we separate the guides out by paths, then.
* Kotono nods.
<DrunkenBri> Ooh.
<DrunkenBri> We could bring in Tofu?
<Kotono> That's a thought, too.
<DrunkenBri> Haha, he's our help guide.
<DrunkenBri> And a time lord.
<DrunkenBri> If the player manages to die, Tofu fixes him, sets him back after dusting him off.
<Kotono> Indeed.
<DrunkenBri> We'll play him like Deckard Cain.
<DrunkenBri> "Stay a while, and listen!"
<DrunkenBri> *sniff*
<Kotono> Plus he can have Mr. Panda there if you wanna do Genma stuff.
<DrunkenBri> "Nobody ever stays and listens...."
<DrunkenBri> Yeah, hehe.
<DrunkenBri> Alrighty.
<DrunkenBri> In that case, if you want to clean this log and post it, I ... think we may be good for the moment.
<DrunkenBri> Otherwise, as I said before, I'll do it when sober.
* Kotono nods.
* DrunkenBri doesn't see much value in posting, "We had a great chat about this, guys, but I'm drunk, so you'll see it later."

[thepanda]

"It really depends on what you want the flags to do. If it's just to control which girl/ending the player gets, you could always go with a flagless branching system."

You mean, like,

explosion happens {go home/ investigate}
go home - (hear Kodachi aproach {ignore --begin Akane Path/ investigate --begin Kodachi path})
Investigate -(spot amazons approaching {talk --begin Shampoo path/ avoid --begin Ukyou path})

Something like that?

[Jon]

<DrunkenBri> We shall then need to make a new room.
<DrunkenBri> Propose it in thread.
<DrunkenBri> THUS I DECREE!

#nerima is not yet a registered channel. Thus, I have claimed it for the glory of Soulriders Fiction Industries, Ltd.

[Brian]

I appear to have managed to make slightly less of an ass of myself than usual while drunk.  In fact, that's ... pretty good work for drunken-me.

Okay!  Now that we've come this far, let's get an official role-call.  Who's still in?

Once we have that, we can start figuring out how our base story is going to go, and divide up the alternate paths as required.

This is our information/overview post (unless we get to where we need a subforum; a possibility once we start working on the paths): http://www.soulriders.net/forum/index.php/topic,101837.msg1024835.html#msg1024835

[Jon]

I think I'm mostly in as tech consultant, since I can be more confident of delivering on schedule that way.

But I still think there needs to be a crossover comedy option. (Probably Sailor Moon crossover, for historical reasons.)

[Anastasia]

I'm in'n'along.