HTML Aurelian Nostrum [v2.2.0] [Adrian A.]

[Adrian A]

Overview:
It has been Five thousand years since the first empire fell. Five thousand years since the fate of Humanity was decided. Five thousand years since the last Emperor perished amidst the flames of a war that eclipsed all others. In its wake, mankind was decimated. All its technology lost, and its mighty cities turned to rubble and ash. That is how long it has taken for mankind to begin to scrape civilization from the ruins of the past.

Now after all those years the world finally begins to turn. As civilization rises once again what future shall mankind choose and what answers shall they discover in the shadows of the past? Enter a tale of love, death, and deception. A tale of how the fate of the human race was decided and how that conclusion would echo across time and space.​

Thread Updated: 2023-05-05
Release Date: 2023-04-20
Developer: Adrian A.

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Version: 2.2.0
OS: Windows, Mac, Linux
Language: English
Genre:

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Installation:

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Changelog:

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Developer Notes:

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​

 

[Imjusthereforgames2203]

You should make a discord so that you can get community feedback.

 

[Abibliboop]

Haven't played yet but concept sounds interesting. Only disadvantage I see so far based on screenshots is the text is very small and there is a lot of it per page (based on scroll bar sizes in the images). Especially with no images to break it up, I would increase font size a bit and try to fit it all on one page with no need to scroll and the next part of passage is just one click when there isn't choices. This could help with eye strain when playing your game. Doubly so if someone tries to resize it to make it more readable the scrolling in one page will become pretty long.

Curious about the 10 hours of content for a text only game. How much have you written so far, or is the length based on a large amount of vastly diverging path options? Sounds extremely impressive and I think it would be quite fun to dive into when I have time.

 

[Adrian A]

Haven't played yet but concept sounds interesting. Only disadvantage I see so far based on screenshots is the text is very small and there is a lot of it per page (based on scroll bar sizes in the images). Especially with no images to break it up, I would increase font size a bit and try to fit it all on one page with no need to scroll and the next part of passage is just one click when there isn't choices. This could help with eye strain when playing your game. Doubly so if someone tries to resize it to make it more readable the scrolling in one page will become pretty long.

Curious about the 10 hours of content for a text only game. How much have you written so far, or is the length based on a large amount of vastly diverging path options? Sounds extremely impressive and I think it would be quite fun to dive into when I have time.

Yes, I released this while I get money to pay an artist. I intend to make it into a visual novel but I released this first since I'm looking to make it something along how Fate Stay/Night is done for example. I need to gauge how good my writing is and get it up to standard before I potentially dump a few thousand into getting an artist to make sprites, CGs, backgrounds etc.

There are broadly 2 common routes that are interspersed by a second character so basically it is four hours give or take to get to one of the multiple "endings" that is where the major choices come in. For me I love visual novels and I've played choice based games before. I think they often get bogged down in meaningless choices and it hinders character development and narrative. For me the idea is to give the player less choices but more major choices.

For me, I can write quite fast so making ten+ hours of content every couple weeks is easy especially since this was by far the hardest part of the story for me to write. Already I started writing the next parts and I am flying through them so much so that even with far less time than before I'll probably have even more next update unless I move directly onto the visual novel stage.

Currently I suspect this is less than 1% of the final game product. I calculated how much time I thought it would take to finish this project fully and by myself I think two years give or take depending on whether I manage to guage up enough support to hire a cg artist full time and a programmer. As is I don't expect that to be the case for this first release since I don't have art and its not in the format I think it will shine best in. However, as mentioned this is more about getting my writing style good enough so that when I do release the VN version I can get the support I'll need for all my plans.

 

[Abibliboop]

Sounds like you've thought it out pretty well. I am extremely impressed if you can put out that much content consistently (avg english reading spead is a little over 200 words per minute which means you're writing around 120K words every couple weeks). I definitely wouldn't put pressure on yourself to put out that much content as writing blocks can crop up or it might get slowed down focusing on the different paths you take and I would feel bad if you felt like you weren't putting out as much as you feel you should or risked burning yourself out. But I'm super excited if you are able to generate a huge amount (web novels and light novels are one of my favorite ways to relax and unwind, but waiting for the next snippet is soooo frustrating).

I wouldn't worry too much about how long it will take to complete the game. So long as you are consistent with releases and keep engaging the fans of your work people are pretty loyal and will stick around for as long as it takes to put out a good project. Doubly so if you are planning to hire/work with others as their time can slow down your output and make you feel frustrated.

As for art or visual novel side of things, that is a wonderful goal to have (I'm a very visual person hence my suggestion focusing on the layout of the pages). You might want to look into the recruitment section to see if there are any editors (super useful to have an outside opinion when you're writing as much as you are) or possibly an artist that might be willing to help out for free. I know art wise it probably wouldn't be enough to do a full fledged visual novel, but you might be able to get some page art or a random scene piece here or there to add to the pages to help break up the text a bit.

The snippets I've seen so far are really interesting world building and action. I might suggest also tossing up a screen shot of a smut scene or two if you have any you are proud of (currently you're showing 2 world building, 1 character interaction, and 1 combat scene but no smut) as writing styles vary quite a bit depending on what is going on in the scene. For example, I'm decent at world build and combat writing, but crap when it comes to dialogue or non-combat interaction between people (my characters always feel a bit wooden when I read what I've written outside of combat). That might also help draw in some others who like text based and use the screenshots to see if they like what they see enough to give it a try.

I also agree completely with you about pointless choices (that's a pet peeve of mine). Choices should only appear when it is genuinely relevant to a story and they MUST change something. So many VNs put in those flavor choices or completely meaningless choices and that is so frustrating. If a choice doesn't have consequences that change something then just get rid of it. *hops on a soap box and goes into a mouth frothing rant about fake VN choices*

If I get some spare time this weekend I'll give it a go and let you know what I think of it after I've had a chance to dig into it.

 

[Crow Armbrust]

THX

 

[Adrian A]

Thx mod team. You guys are great.

 

[Adrian A]

Sounds like you've thought it out pretty well. I am extremely impressed if you can put out that much content consistently (avg english reading spead is a little over 200 words per minute which means you're writing around 120K words every couple weeks). I definitely wouldn't put pressure on yourself to put out that much content as writing blocks can crop up or it might get slowed down focusing on the different paths you take and I would feel bad if you felt like you weren't putting out as much as you feel you should or risked burning yourself out. But I'm super excited if you are able to generate a huge amount (web novels and light novels are one of my favorite ways to relax and unwind, but waiting for the next snippet is soooo frustrating).

I wouldn't worry too much about how long it will take to complete the game. So long as you are consistent with releases and keep engaging the fans of your work people are pretty loyal and will stick around for as long as it takes to put out a good project. Doubly so if you are planning to hire/work with others as their time can slow down your output and make you feel frustrated.

As for art or visual novel side of things, that is a wonderful goal to have (I'm a very visual person hence my suggestion focusing on the layout of the pages). You might want to look into the recruitment section to see if there are any editors (super useful to have an outside opinion when you're writing as much as you are) or possibly an artist that might be willing to help out for free. I know art wise it probably wouldn't be enough to do a full fledged visual novel, but you might be able to get some page art or a random scene piece here or there to add to the pages to help break up the text a bit.

The snippets I've seen so far are really interesting world building and action. I might suggest also tossing up a screen shot of a smut scene or two if you have any you are proud of (currently you're showing 2 world building, 1 character interaction, and 1 combat scene but no smut) as writing styles vary quite a bit depending on what is going on in the scene. For example, I'm decent at world build and combat writing, but crap when it comes to dialogue or non-combat interaction between people (my characters always feel a bit wooden when I read what I've written outside of combat). That might also help draw in some others who like text based and use the screenshots to see if they like what they see enough to give it a try.

I also agree completely with you about pointless choices (that's a pet peeve of mine). Choices should only appear when it is genuinely relevant to a story and they MUST change something. So many VNs put in those flavor choices or completely meaningless choices and that is so frustrating. If a choice doesn't have consequences that change something then just get rid of it. *hops on a soap box and goes into a mouth frothing rant about fake VN choices*

If I get some spare time this weekend I'll give it a go and let you know what I think of it after I've had a chance to dig into it.

Don't worry I won't burn out. Frankly while writing this I feel great. One of the reasons I can put out so much is because I'm excited to write the next parts. For me the only thing that I'm worried about is not being able to make the story I see as good as I know it can be.

 

[Adrian A]

It has been brought to my attention that under boy is undefined. Undefined is me setting metadata to allow you to skip ahead during later playthroughs. Cythia is intended to function as the female protagonist and will be nameable in future versions. Originally I intended to have there be the ability to select male and female but ultimately I decided to have them both coexist in the same world and that is just a hold over that I didn't realize would cause confusion.

 

[ASERDDERERT]

Haven't played yet but concept sounds interesting. Only disadvantage I see so far based on screenshots is the text is very small and there is a lot of it per page (based on scroll bar sizes in the images). Especially with no images to break it up, I would increase font size a bit and try to fit it all on one page with no need to scroll and the next part of passage is just one click when there isn't choices. This could help with eye strain when playing your game. Doubly so if someone tries to resize it to make it more readable the scrolling in one page will become pretty long.

Curious about the 10 hours of content for a text only game. How much have you written so far, or is the length based on a large amount of vastly diverging path options? Sounds extremely impressive and I think it would be quite fun to dive into when I have time.

Agree, about not needing to scroll.
But about pic, I kind of disagree. Usually, the more pic devs, in general, add, the less actual content we end up having.

Aaand, I didn't grasp how much actual H-content here? Since we on the f95zone...

 

[portiamento]

Interesting read but the ideas of multiple protagonists really not my cup of tea, good luck devs.

 

[Abibliboop]

But about pic, I kind of disagree. Usually, the more pic devs, in general, add, the less actual content we end up having.

I completely agree with you about not needing pics for a text based game. However, it is helpful as a large portion of the audience on this is sight is visually oriented (hence why most HTML games here have pics of some sort), but it definitely is not necessary. As for it being less content for more pics, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, especially if the intent is just an occasional scene or character art piece. Doubly so since the dev is a writer this means the focus on story development will always be the priority. When it bogs down for content is typically when its an artist trying to tell a story around the art work and more time tends to go towards the art than the story. I don't think we'll have any issues with that here.

My suggestion was more because the future intent is for it to be a visual novel already. It might be possible to get some artists that may be willing to do tidbits here and there to help flesh out the visual aspect of the game while still in mostly text form and help see if visual novel is the right direction for the game (if artists have difficulty converting world and characters to look as intended then it may be best to keep it as a text based game, but that limits the target audience). As one of the reasons was not having money to hire an artist for a full visual novel just yet, the opportunity to get some potential early concept art for no or minimal cost might be helpful.

There are a few good examples of text based games that only have 1 pic every few pages scattered around to help the player visualize certain scenes. But as said earlier, not necessary at all for the current intent of helping get feedback on story and current game play.

 

[vessna]

this game has any visual content? any pics? gifs? other stuff?

 

[Adrian A]

this game has any visual content? any pics? gifs? other stuff?

Not currently, at the moment I am scanning artists to determine who I intend to hire to do visual assets. As is, I released this to get feedback as to my writing ability while I compile visual assets for the game over the coming months. I intend to keep updating this as I do so since I am not the artist but at this time and so long as this remains in twine no, currently there is none. If you want you can wait for the Visual Novel release which I expect will happen in three or four months if all goes as planned though it could be sooner or later.

 

[fulipe]

Incredible concept

 

[issue28]

I am at a point where the games loops to the same choice over and over again no matter what i pick

 

[Crosaith.]

Is it possible to play as only the male protagonist? I find it difficult to play as multiple protagonists these days. Gonna blame it on reading the Wheel of Time series. Lowkey remember being very frustrated when Rand only got a few chapters in some of those giant-ass books.

 

[telc0ntar]

AdrianEXO7333
Alright,I checked out your project. I like it, which is why I'm typing out this long-ass comment. I genuinely hope you continue and keep on working on it.

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In the end: This is really great, and there seems to be a grand story planned, and I'm looking forward it. But, as I've suggested, there's a few improvements that can be made which will make it far more better than what it is now.

 

[anon6076]

If I wanted to read a book I would just read a book, not click continue all the time. Besides, the story is not even interesting.

 

[Adrian A]

AdrianEXO7333
Alright,I checked out your project. I like it, which is why I'm typing out this long-ass comment. I genuinely hope you continue and keep on working on it.

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In the end: This is really great, and there seems to be a grand story planned, and I'm looking forward it. But, as I've suggested, there's a few improvements that can be made which will make it far more better than what it is now.

AdrianEXO7333
Alright,I checked out your project. I like it, which is why I'm typing out this long-ass comment. I genuinely hope you continue and keep on working on it.

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In the end: This is really great, and there seems to be a grand story planned, and I'm looking forward it. But, as I've suggested, there's a few improvements that can be made which will make it far more better than what it is now.

Thanks for the advice, I am a native english speaker but my situation is a bit complicated. I was hoping grammerly would cover up for my failings but I might have to subscribe to a Premium subscription for that and try to learn some stuff as well. I will take your advice to heart and try to work on this. Honestly, I've never programmed or did anything of the sort before.

The style sheet changes would be nice. Even if I don't go with it exactly just having example code would help a lot.