Starlight Actor Interview!
Wow! The response to Starlight has been phenomenal! I’ve received a lot of attention directly on this blog and not just on the Ren’Py forums, which was completely unexpected! I apologize for not responding sooner (holidays don’cha’know) but I’ve asked the stars of Starlight to help me respond to the comments now that we are all back and ready to work in the new year!
Hmmm… now that I check my mail bag it seems the majority are bug reports… orz
Actually, I am very grateful! They are super helpful and they will all be addressed in the imminent (and hopefully final) 1.1 release. That said, onto the letters!
Author
The strangest thing for me is how all the characters look off-camera. This is the first ren-ai game I ever played, and so I cannot know if this is an aestetic and visual language of the genre, or a creative trick to let them talk to each other and the player without turning, or something else entirely. But it definitely stands out.
I’ll answer that! Author, you’re quite right. Visual Novels in general use a limited number of poses so you want each graphic to be as flexible as possible. That means usually they either always look at the camera and never at each other, or sometimes look at the camera when speaking directly at the player, and just somewhere off into space if they’re speaking to each other.
“Off into space?”
Ah, ha, ha! Um… Moving right along… why don’t you answer this next one?
Author
When played full-screen (which is the default), the picture is stretched to fit the widescreen dislplay. It should have been letterboxed off the sides at the minimum. Although it may be better to produce the whole thing 16:9, it’s 2007 after all.
Duh! Widescreen would be much cooler for our debut! If only Rocket wasn’t so lazy! Maybe for our next mission…
Right then… thanks for that… um… interesting reply. Rose, quick the next letter!
Ellume
Very well done! Heck, I would buy a game like this with a full story. I look forward to seeing more.
Oh! Thank you! We hope to bring you the first real episode of Starlight by this spring, but it will take lots of work so we look forward to getting some help!
sixten
Good stuff. I played through to “Good Ending 2/3″ and I was surprised how seriously I took the choices. I used to read Star Wars and Star Trek novels a lot in the past, but quit when my tastes turned to the moe side of the force. Not only does your game bring back memories, it also indulges my desire for cuteness. It’s like an amateur Galaxy Angel. You, sir, pierce the freaking heavens. … By comparing our work, it’s clear that we share the same moe obsession and technical drawing skills, so I’m guessing we think alike. And if that “Honi!” at the end of your credits is a Potemayo reference, not only do we think alike, we are kindred spirits.
Wow! Thanks! I think this letter deserves a special response, right Violet?
…
Violet!
Ah… “I’ve always dreamed of having a “bosom” friend…a true kindred spirit!”
Please help us Onee-chan! You’re our only hope!
Tags: Visual Novel
“When played full-screen (which is the default), the picture is stretched to fit the widescreen dislplay.”
Actually, this is generally controlled by your video drivers. On my laptop, the NVidia drivers give you a choice between not stretching at all, stretching to fill the screen, or stretching that maintains the aspect ration. You want the latter.
Did you just call me “Big Sister”?
Supposing I were to help you, what would you have me do? I do have to prepare for my exams, but I can’t just do nothing to help my brother after he asked so nicely. I did withdraw my original offer to help, but with a few Xbox-related sacrifices I think I can make some time for your project.
Email me and maybe we can work out a reasonable arrangement. I’d rather not make a stupid promise on your blog and have to ask you to delete it again.
That was fun to read… ^^ Looking forward to more Starlight!
Nice skit, I enjoyed that. But you could’ve backlinked. And now we’ll never know if my linkage did any good at all.
I’m not such a big visual novel fan, but I was completely charmed by Starlight. I’m looking forward to seeing more of it!
Out of curiosity, what’s the most time-consuming part of creating a game like this? Based on what I’ve seen, I’d guess it’s the various 3-D rendered backgrounds?
Actually the backgrounds are not that hard or time consuming thanks to way too much familiarity with Second Life.
For me the hardest part was the character sprites and event graphics, mostly because I had a certain min quality level I felt I needed to meet. The script took a fair number of days as well, but for whatever reason I am able to do a quite bit of writing much easier than just a little bit of drawing…
[...] novel that was a dating sim in a space opera setting. And let’s not forget Rocket’s standing offer from way back to join his team, which was also a visual novel about love in [...]