Photographs as backgrounds?

[Ghost In The Steiner]

Before you're going to read this: The version I linked below went through some graphical and script changes the last days, I made every image in the part which is covered by the demo grayscale and added a blur effect to the non relevant areas of the images. It uses colored images from the moment on where you leave the room.

 

The last five months I started creating a relatively big visual novel about Steins;Gates Light Novel "The Distant Valhalla" with some other fans. That being said I know that this novel won't ever have the same quality than a commercial one, it's just a product of fans. I thought a long time about the backgrounds I wanted to use and ended up using photographs with several filters from Photoshop. Now please don't go straight to the comment section and write "This is bullshit", I already said it: This novel won't ever have the same quality than a commercial one. I don't have the time to draw every background and noone of our group is a good artist in general. I made up a strawpoll and asked the steinsgate reddit community if they liked the backgrounds and got a surprisingly positive result. The reason why I'm writing this is to get some more opinions. Main focus is not to make the images visual novel like, it's to make the novel enjoyable. So if you want to help me, you only need to play the current demo. Afterwards drop a honest comment here, I want to get as many feedbacks as possible. Please don't forget to read the information's in the release thread.

Link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/thedistantvalhalla/comments/3r97iz/rerelease_of_the_demo/

[Kaguya]

If you'd like to have feedback for the backgrounds you're probably better off posting images of the backgrounds instead of asking people to play the demo. I don't imagine you'll get lots of feedback this way...

Then again, I only skimmed the post. Maybe you did post links to the background images and I'm an idiot, on which case I'm sorry.

[Ghost In The Steiner]

12 minutes ago, Kaguya said:

If you'd like to have feedback for the background in general you're probably better off posting images of the backgrounds instead of asking people to play the demo. I don't imagine you'll get lots of feedback this way...

Then again, I only skimmed the post. Maybe you did post links to the background images and I'm an idiot, on which case I'm sorry.

I don't want to do this for a good reason: If I had only posted images, it wouldn't have had the same effect as it will have if you play it. People would just see the images, but with no music, no context and no animations. So it's more likely for them to start hating the backgrounds, it's just not how I want the pictures to be shown.

[ホアー ビち]

23 hours ago, Ghost In The Steiner said:

animations. 

O_O is it like nekopara?

[Ghost In The Steiner]

6 minutes ago, ロル ビち said:

O_O is it like nekopara?

Don't know what this is, sorry ('_v')

[ホアー ビち]

23 hours ago, Ghost In The Steiner said:

Don't know what this is, sorry ('_v')

google it and see the preview. animated sprites.

[Ghost In The Steiner]

18 minutes ago, ロル ビち said:

google it and see the preview. animated sprites.

The game has barely got animated sprites, however it uses sprites. Since I want to tell the novel in first person Okabe is only shown once everytime he changes his mood. This should support the story telling as far as possible.

[Deep Blue]

so far is good, I like the ambiance of the novel in general and the backgrounds are ok I guess they don't seem out of place in the novel so that's a good thing.

One thing that I noticed is that once I close the game I always encounter this error "fmodex.dll"

[Ghost In The Steiner]

4 hours ago, Deep Blue said:

so far is good, I like the ambiance of the novel in general and the backgrounds are ok I guess they don't seem out of place in the novel so that's a good thing.

One thing that I noticed is that one I close the game I always encounter this error "fmodex.dll"

Can't fix this error, the developer of novelty has discontinued the software. So it has many bugs in it, but it's still the best one to create good visual novels in a fast time. Another one would be that you can't resize the window everytime without triggering a crash.

 

Good to hear, however I also read something about that the backgrounds I included in the demo shouldn't create a dark ambience. So I'm currently trying to find some nice OST songs to make the setting a bit brighter. What do you think about that?

 

You said you like the ambience, could you explain it a bit more detailed? Are the backgrounds destroying the story telling and how much do you feel distracted by them? How much does the game in general look like a visual novel?

 

 

[Deep Blue]

it does feel darker I mean even rintarou sounds more serious than in steins;gate but in the setting he is in and what he is going through it makes sense, I don't know why the backgrounds shouldn't create a dark ambiance if that's what you are aiming for, they don't feel out of place that's all I can say about it,  I think the music is what truly creates the creepy atmosphere.

They don't destroy the story telling and this is obviously a fan made visual novel so aiming to copy steins;gate is not a good idea imo but still it feels like the visual novel in some way. I didn't feel distracted by them, maybe the door is too bright.

The pixel hunting was really bad, finding those little pills was a pain and boring, maybe because I hate pixel hunting games. Clicking on random things and read the thoughts of him wasn't bad, neither was moving around the place.