VN Member Headcount

Hello, all. I've met a few of you on the #thp channel, so some of you have no idea who this unknown fellow is. That aside, I'd like anyone still working on the project to post here with what you did when you joined and what you wanted to do, so we can get a sense of what we can do with this project.

I'd also like your opinion on how to proceed with this VN. As I see it, we have three options: abandon the project and kill our false hope, continue as we have with occassion contributions that ultimately amount to nothing, or step up and start piecing this project together.

Saying this probably makes me sound like a complete asshole with no respect for the work everyone else has already contributed, but there is a measure of truth here. I'm trying to end the stagnation this great project has wallowed in for several years now, and I would like to hear from everyone still out there as a first step towards that goal. I strongly support the last option, and await your responses.

Music.

Hey there. And you have a valid point, this has been a rather stagnant project as of lately, which honestly as one of the more attentive(used loosely) members of this project my interest is also dwindling.

As my role,

-Do alot of the more mundane and tedious things like general maintenance, keeping in contact with people and what not.

- -Supposed- to record what happens in the irc channel should progress or ideas occur and post them in the forums.

-Writing if needed.

- General forum modding when called for.

As for my opinion on the option of the three given.

1. I pray not, but it's certainly a reality we must consider.

2. I counter with an example such as Katawa Shoujo which got generally favorable reviews and reception. WHich was a project that was stalled for several years as well. But meh... I'm not really sure on this one.

3. Sure I do not mind at all, but remeber that this is still a volunteer project and will most likely remain a volunteer project since most of us are still fairly obligated to real life duties and what not but should we pick up I'll most certainly pay more attention to it now and do whatever I can.

Originally, I had offered to help with coding/scripting the VN but I believe the older people still sticking around could do better in that regard.

So if I had to shoehorn myself into a specific role, I could go with being an editor or backup writefag. Also open to anything else that needs attention aside from the art and sound department.

Like some have mentioned, what we lack most now is probably coordination and motivation. The talents are there; the issue is about getting people to get going and crank out VN material at the end of a long day of tiring work/classes/whatnot, which not everyone can do. A certain level of commitment and sacrifice would be required and that's not something we can easily extract out of aforementioned people.

I'm sure we the other people could use some load off their shoulder so I'd say you'll be fine as long as you both are working with the same source to achieve the same results.

Artist still here. Will have to start over from scratch since the change in area focus.

You can find me just sitting in the IRC channel.

I write. You can find everything I've written in the writebox. I also play editor in chief when Doc is gone and Hanzo's inactive, albeit with no actual authority.

I'm never sure how many writers we actually have; I remember having gotten confirmations on various scenes, but nothing has yet to materialise.

So that makes me the only active writer, which is a bit of a joke since I at most write once a month these days, if at all. To be honest I haven't been finding a lot of motivation to write these days; I keep hoping that another writer would be helping but that never happens. I love all the people volunteering for staff positions, but without anything on paper I still feel like a one-man band. The lack of peer support and pressure means that the script is never advanced much. Without a report from the other writers much of the writing is in stasis, along with a lot of the VN.

I also am only available on IRC these days only on weekdays or at odd hours; I'm from Australia and have to either work/study pretty much all day. If we're really trying to get the project into high-gear (or even mid-gear) again, I would really like to organise some meeting times (in GMT?) so that we know when it's crunch time every week. If we can't get a mutual time then I would like a lot more activity on the forums.

Okay, here's a proposal. Rather tl;dr so I'll try to make it simple.


The gist of things:
We haven't quite done any actual work beyond the occasional IRC brain-storming and forum posts. Given the probable time-zone disparity between the people still relatively involved at this point, it's conceivable that we probably won't get much done in the distant future.

What I'm trying to say is, to come up with something concrete and tangible, we're going to have to try something other than the usual "jump into IRC and hope activity happens" schtick.


What? NOWAI!
Believe me, I wish the development could be at a much more involved level, but it doesn't seem possible with the current state of things. So to keep it short, I'm suggesting we instead try a more detached approach towards kick-starting the project once again.

What we can possibly do now is work on a story-board version of the VN using Novelty. I know the plan was to go with Ren'Py, but hear me out for now.


First, we create a SVN repository to house the project.
This will allow our generous contributors and volunteer staff to update their assets (background images, character art, writing, audio) and keep the asset list consistent at their convenience instead of waiting on the relevant people to provide a framework (i.e. the VN engine) to house their hard work. Conversely, having a list of assets hot and ready for the coders will expedite and encourage them to put things together on a scripting level.


Next, storyboard based on Novelty
Why Novelty? It's inflexible compared to Ren'Py in many ways, but it's also very easy to use (think VB .Net compared to C++/Java for a rough comparison). This allows even non-programmers to work on scenes and test their story flow/art transition/music atmosphere and such without needing to ask an actual Ren'Py scripter to put things together for a preview.

Also, the project assets can be ported over to Ren'Py without too much of a hassle.


So what's all of this supposed to do?
Having something tangible which you can interact with tends to draw people in. They don't poke their heads in and say "Oh, this just looks like some vaporware." People want to see that there's really something going on before they even think about committing their time to an obscure project.


Before I ramble on too much/go too deep, I'll leave this to simmer for a bit and see what the general opinion is. Remember, it's just a proposal and not an ultimatum. Give your own thoughts, suggest alternatives, agree to disagree and whatnot. Who knows, maybe there's an even better way to go about doing things.

For the record, we've actually done a fair bit of work. Thrice, even. At our height of productivity we had some art, a day or two of writing, and a code demo. The way we organised things was mostly through the wiki; after determining beforehand the content we needed to work on all progress would be uploaded to the wiki where it is available for perusal and comment. When we rebooted the project we never got back to using it, which is a bit of a shame.

I do not know what Novelty is, but if Iwai recommends it I think it is worth having a look. For others interested, Iwai has another thread on this here: http://z4.invisionfree.com/touhouvn/index.php?showtopic=193.

After a long period of guilty inactivity on my part, I asked Kourin to upload the small Ren'py demo that was already finished. I've since downloaded it and am working on copying over all of NomDePlume's writing. Once that's finished, I'll shoot for releasing an updated version of the alpha every one or two weeks, depending on how much new content is generated.

In addition, I found a website that will be useful for determining hex colors for character names. So far, I'm thinking 6f9fff or 8fcfff for Sakuya, and cc2f3f or dd2233 for Remilia. This is the website: http://johncfish.com/bggallery/otherchart/index.htm.