It's already almost January, and I'm just now starting to get back into the groove of working on my game after putting it on hold to deal with school.
This new inspiration was fueled by my experience with a Japanese visual novel called "Hakuoki," which features an amazing story and loveable characters. Playing through a bit of it and watching the anime reminded me that a visual novel is just that: a novel. It's not about the fancy features or even the gameplay, but about the story and the characters.
I realized that "feature creep" had been causing me to lose sight of what's important, and served to make an already overwhelming project seem impossible to complete. Perhaps it is impossible, but I still want to try, and to do that, I need to step back and rethink what direction I want to take this project in.
The plan, then, is to cut back on some of the features I had planned and to focus instead on serving the plot as much justice as possible. This means expanding the timeline a bit so as to fit everything in. So, the first half of the game will be as originally planned: go to the three main cities, recruit party members (just the four), and figure out who killed Osirus. But instead of it then going right into the final confrontation, the story will continue. The second half will explore the rebellion and building civil war, and this is when Zuleika must find the means and the will to overthrow the emperor/take back her throne, if she so desires. I'm in the process of fleshing everything out now, and I hope to start writing for real soon.
That being said, my backgrounds are still bugging me. I ended up scrapping the photograph background idea, but I don't have enough free resource backgrounds to do everything I want. Specifically, I plan to have Chael's and Kirile's personal quests lead to their respective homes, but that would require very specific architectural backgrounds. I'm not sure I can even find suitable placeholders. Ah well... I'll just have to make do, I guess.
Anyway, I would like to thank everyone for their patience. This monster may not be finished any time soon, but I'll keep working on it as I can.
