Tomas Elliot

This guy is that good...

WARNING: I am posting this from my phone, so here be lots of typos. So, you know those guys who make Nuzlocke runs of Reborn or other Pokemon games, and post journals of their adventure here? Well, I was planning to do a similar thing for Ar Tonelico. You see, I just got a new computer, and I am going to celebrate by starting a fresh new playthrough of one of my emulated PS2 games... And it just HAS to be Ar Tonelico, since it's the one I love the most. So yeah, to spice things up a bit (while it's true that I cannot get enough of this game, it is also true that I have played it countless times, so I pretically know it by heart), I was planning to share my experience with you guys, complete with screens, mildly amusing jokes, and polls om what to do at the major turning points of the game... And well, I just wanted to know how many people would be interested in this. Also a qurstion for our mods: would it be ok to post such a topic in this section? Or would the Gaming General be better?

I had had that very idea, but I ultimately decided against it because Sky is asking specifically about dialogues and character development here, while that guide deals with other aspects of a fangame.

Well I strongly disagree with this. Firstly, the whole point about "creative differences" is moot: such differences can arise just as well among people who knew each other beforehand. Disagreeing is par of the coure when you interact with other people, you cannot expect everyone to always agree on everything. And this is FAR from a bad thing: it is by discussing with others, it is by finding compromises between seemingly contrasting ideas, that you can mold and refine a project, improving it more and more. A project you make on your own will never improve from its initial stage, because the only person who has a saying on how it should be done is yourelf, and of course you are going to agree with yourself on every idea you have. Having someone to tell you "look, this idea is bad/convoluted/impossible to code in" is critical to the success of a project: sure, this can cause arguments, but... Do you honestly believe that members of succesful projects never argue? That professionals never argue? Heck, Se7en's team is as cohesive as ever, and our project is about to become a reality: want to know how many times we have argued over even the mallest thing to get to this point? But again, arguing is part of social interaction, and if done constructively it helps you evolve and improve: "I shall do everything on my own, thi way nobody will contraddict me and I won't have to argue" is a very poisonous mentality, which can lead you to be stubborn, underestimating difficulties and refuing help in critical times... Which in turn will lead your project to failure. And there is also the fact that a game made by a team, whose members are each great at one aspect, is going to turn out better compared to a game made by a single person who is mediocre at everything. This is mere common sense.

Except not, I am sure I have removed any reference to us needing help with anything from the OP now. The only thing we are kinda sorta struggling with is music (to the point that we will probably have a placeholder soundtrack for Ep 1), everything else is done and set in stone, and has been so for quite some time...

Adding to the above, I have found that creating characters on your own is much harder, compared to having someone to discuss them with. Leaving aside the fact that, if you are trying to make a fangame, you should definitely have a team (I am talking from direct experience here, you cannot possibly hope to do everything on your own), this is a general matter: characters are people. And the best way to figure out how people would behave is to talk to actual people. And by this, I don't mean "ask people for advice in creating a character", I literally mean "borrow quirks, verbal tics, idiosyncrasies and whatnot from people you know". Many authors, specially in anime/manga/jap games (thanks to the fact that Japanese has MUCH more different speech patterns compared to English, making for a more flexible narrative tool) make their characters colorful and easily recognizable by inserting something memorable, if minor, in the way they speak. Allow me to make an example from Fairy Tail, which is my fav anime: let's say that Natsu is facing off against two mooks, that is, two minor characters hired by the current villain to mess with him. Basically, the message the dialogue is trying to get across is simply Mook 1: Let's beat him down! Mook 2: Yeah, we will kick his ass for sure! Natsu: Bring it on! However, this isn't very creative nor very memorable, is it? So Hiro Mashima adds a little quirk to spice things up: Mook 1: Let's beat him down, Zatou-niichan! Mook 2: Yeah, we will kick his ass for sure, Gatou-niichan! Natsu: Uh... How comes both of you are the older brother? There. It's the same exact dialogie as before, but while in the first example there was nothing worthy of being remembered, the second one will be remembered by loyal fans as "that one scene with those two guys who were both the older brother". So yeah, Commander in his post spoke about the substance, here I am talking about the appearance: because sure, the substance is the most important thing, but in narration appearance is important too, the first impression a character leaves on the public is the one that is going to define said character, for better or worse. Which means that making your characters unique (by doing what Commander and the others suggested) is good and all, but it won't be as effective if the public cannot immediately tell that they are indeed unique. So yeah, unfortunately you are making your game in English, which means you have much more limited means at your disposal to achieve this result, compared to Japanese or Italian, but there are still many things you can do: some characters could end every line of theirs with a specific word, some characters could overreact to something very specific, and some characters could insist to be addressed with specific titles or terms. And your source of inspiration for such quirks should be... Well, pretty much anything: minor characters from anime/manga/games/western comics/movies/books/whatever you like, people you know, or even yourself. That is why I said, it is important to interact with people, in order to create characters, who are also people.

EPISODES. I have told you in the main conversation as well, don't call them "versions" or "demos", call them episodes <.<

Something I found that is kinda sorta related to the topic but hey, it made me laugh:

Considering that myself and Zim created the first embryo of this project back in february, it's been a LONG time coming... But all of the effort each and every member, each and every contributor has but into it is finally starting to give fruits, at long last. The best is yet to come

Dude, when I tried to write a Fairy Tail fanfiction, people flamed and hated me for NOT including openly sexual scenes involving their fav shipping. I ain't even joking. EDIT: reading the previous posts again, it would seem I completely misunderstood what the OP meant by "rabid" fanbase ;-;

Back when we made the screen of Kelon, we didn't want to reveal our protagonists yet, so we purposedly kept the quality low to prevent you from making out too many details. That is why Tim and Jason looked so similar back then. And thanks for the compliments

There, I did say we would announce a redhead eventually. Happy Red?

If you want to go there, how about Majestic Dragon being topdecked at will? Or heck, how about Yuma being outright stated to have the power to create the ZWs mid-duel in Zexal?