Box figures are almost always better than stick figures. Just look at Problem Slueth or Dorf Quest. they allow you to add as much detail or as little as you like.

>>313937
Yeah, I actually tried that out specifically because of Problem Sleuth, but I found that I spent way too much time getting the poses just right, and even then I wasn't satisfied with how they looked. I have a mean streak of perfectionism, so if I aim for something simplistic I find I can achieve that standard and actually move on instead of being stuck eternally tweaking.

That being said, if the stick figures aren't working, if they can't communicate things properly than I'll try to make the switch. Maybe the best solution is for me to practice now in my spare time while continuing to use stick figures in the quest so I can easily make the transition for a hypothetical future quest.

One tip - make all your animations loop, please. It looked like at least one of the opening cutscene animations didn't, and that sucks. :(

Durandal!swQABHZA/E 2009/10/06(Tue)07:34 No. 4150 ID: 617449
File 125483969612.gif - (385.13KB , 640x400 , intro2.gif )

>>313949
Okay, thanks for the tip. I'll do so for future animations, and in the meantime I'll repost the two animations from the intro that didn't loop here.

This actually reminds me of an old idea I had when I was younger. Basically, there were twelve weapons. Each had an element and a principle. Such as "Fire/Love" or "Light/Guidance" or "Darkness/Deciet". That nature. Each weapon would be different - Polearms, knuckles, swords, I think I remember one of them being a katar, and another being a crossbow of some kind.

From what I've seen of the quest, it's been pretty good. Keep it up.

>>313955
That does sound like a cool quest idea. Why not run it some time?

And thanks for the encouragement. We've actually barely uncovered any of the world yet... there's a whole lot of fun stuff to find but we haven't left the first room, hehe. I'm a bit surprised that the chest puzzle is getting so much attention. It's a good surprised though; I thought people would be too impatient and leave to try out the Sword.

>>313956

I was actually hoping for some comments on the other idea I had, but perhaps I can incorporate the two. I hope it'd be interesting.

I've got about ten minutes before I run out the door, so I'll have to open up a discussion later tonight involving the idea I've got bottled up in my head. If I do get enough interest in it, then I'll try and run it. I can't promise consistent updates, but I'd be willing to go every Sunday or something.

>>313958
Well... I don't actually like the Unified Setting. That's just my personal tastes, nothing wrong with it and not even something I can specifically point to. But if the plot and characters are compelling enough then the setting isn't all too important.

>>313961

Will start a new thread when I get home. At Uni now, and will probably not get around to anything until at least 10 EST. Hope I garner some positive attention.

Sorry about the slow update times, to those of you readin' my quest. College stuff got in the way and, to put it simply, I'm still not very good so it takes a while for each picture. And even then the end result isn't that great. I've been trying to make up for the mediocre drawing and lack of shading with color and occasional animation though.

Is it working? I'm not really sure. It is more interesting to look at than the stark black on whites so who knows.

Durandal!swQABHZA/E 2009/10/14(Wed)03:53 No. 4687 ID: ba7e48
File 125551762629.gif - (13.67KB , 640x400 , Stat Card 1.gif )

Oh look! I made some stat cards!

This setting is rather high powered so I changed the scale of the dots. They go from 1 to 9 with 0 being deficient, 1 being human average, 2 being mortal maximum, and 9 being absolute maximum.

Remember this is just for comparison purposes, not set in stone, so anything in the stat cards is purely out of character knowledge. And I do mean anything.

I'll update them as stats change and abilities are discovered/unlocked.

Durandal!swQABHZA/E 2009/10/14(Wed)03:54 No. 4688 ID: ba7e48
File 125551765953.gif - (165.41KB , 640x400 , Stat Card 2.gif )

And here's Comfort's. I haven't finished Loyalty's yet but I'll get it posted later today.

I'm enjoying this quest - I'll try to post more. It was a really good decision to go box rather than stick figures, and I like the animations. Keep up the good work.

>>314491
Thanks, and I completely agree. The box figures allow me to be way more expressive than stick figures would have allowed. Took a while to get used to them but I'm glad I switched.

And I'd really appreciate more suggestions. There are lots of times I'm sitting there waiting for posts so I can draw the next update.


So here's a question for ya (and anyone else reading): Do I write too much? Use too many words? How's the balance between art and text?

Durandal!swQABHZA/E 2009/10/14(Wed)14:03 No. 4704 ID: 45396a
File 125555419189.gif - (155.35KB , 640x400 , Stat Card 3.gif )

>>314488
And as promised, here is Loyalty's stat card. Enjoy.

>>314492

Took a bit of time reading to catch up to the current events. Nice transition to box characters, much better. I don't see any problem in the writing but when you hit what you think is a good chapter 1 end you might want to write a summary of events so far in the form of inner monologue. Just to quick start new players and avoid the problem of:

>And I'd really appreciate more suggestions. There are lots of times I'm sitting there waiting for posts so I can draw the next update.

I've noticed that the moment a quest maker puts the players in a spot where there isin't any recent clearly spelled goal /quest/ stops like a deer in headlights. Everyone waiting for someone who's been there from the start to look through the thread to put clues together as to what to do next. Once that first post is made it gets better. So, if you don't want to wait for someone like me to come around try to keep at least one fresh option in the minds of people.

>>314522
>Box characters
Totally agree. And I'm very grateful to Gnome for pushing me toward them.

>Summary
A brilliant idea. And it shouldn't be hard to work in considering shit keeps getting dumped on Unity's plate, so a mental review of the previous events is very likely to occur.

>Post hesitation
Yeah, you don't have to tell me. I post too, and often when there's a quest I'm watching that has just updated I wait to let someone else respond so I can either agree or disagree.

I've been trying to end decision posts with a summary of available options, but I always feel bad doing that because I'm worried it's semi-railroading. I want posters to be as creative as they'd like, so giving them A, B, C, or none of the above choices seems to cheapen the experience. If it's helpful though, I'll keep doing it.

>>314543
>summary of available options

There dosen't even need to be that many. Just one innocent semi-hidden suggestion of I might have something intresting that way but there's hidden things all over. And then when players suddenly think for themselves for once and suggest something smart/different go with it.

It's just that it's damn hard to keep it semi-hidden enough that players won't just keep on the ready laid path when there's no need for that.

>>314545
Yeah, you've hit the nail right on the head. How to make it helpful enough to give an idea of what to do but subtle enough to be unobtrusive and non-habit forming.

I'd like to take the time here to say that I have a plot set for this quest, and no action the character does will be able to 'ruin' or 'break' that plot. The story doesn't rely on any instance of diplomacy being done successfully, it doesn't require any character to be kept alive til the end, nothing. I'm not going to railroad whatsoever.

Now, the character does have a personality. Kevin does respond to some suggestions with hesitation. But that does not mean that I'm saying they won't be done. Just that he needs persuasion and the posters need to agree that it's necessary. In his current state Kevin is pretty malleable, so just because he says 'I don't know' or 'I don't think that's necessary' doesn't mean you've hit an invisible wall.

Keep in mind though that every action impacts how events unfold. I'm not going to 'punish' one path over another you can expect realistic consequences to actions. Just please don't take those as me trying to keep you guys on a certain path.

Summary
If you're new to the story and want an easy way to get caught up without reading the whole thing, you can find a rather complete summary of the plot before chapter 5 (and probably my best drawing so far) here: http://www.tgchan.org/kusaba/quest/res/58374.html#65169


Empathy Points
I thought I'd take a minute to explain what Empathy Points are, how you get (or lose) them, and what they do.

Empathy Points are a quantitative measure of the characters 'humanity', or more literally a representation of their ability to relate to and care about others. Without any Empathy, Wielders become sociopathic beings of devastation.

Many Wielders find themselves with awesome powers and forget why they should care about people. A large number of Wielders also suffer negative side effects of their Sword that cause their attention to turn inward and focus only on how they can serve their own needs and desires. In other words, just owning and growing more attuned to a Sword can cause Empathy loss.

But how do you gain or lose Empathy points? It's important to note that you don't get or lose Empathy by 'doing good' or 'doing evil.' Empathy is an aspect of personality, not a sum of actions. However there is enough of a correlation between them. For instance, killing someone in cold blood is usually a good indicator of low Empathy and will thus incur Empathy Point loss. But this isn't always true. Killing someone to accomplish a goal, even in the presence of other options, is not an indicator of evil and won't cause Empathy loss.

In the same way, just doing good things won't gain Empathy Points. You might help someone being attacked by bandits, but if you do it with an eye towards a reward, or out of bloodlust towards the bandits, you won't gain any Empathy Points. Even turning down a reward isn't a surefire way. You have to demonstrate a real concern for the person in trouble and a desire to help them.

So what does Empathy do? As we've seen, a lack of Empathy causes a disregard for human life. An extremely low Empathy can even cause a hatred for humans or a desire to see them suffer. On the other hand a high Empathy grants an appreciation for other people. For Unity, a low Empathy means he'll be much more cynical in his responses or outlook, and is more likely to agree with evil suggestions. A high Empathy does just the opposite.

Does that mean Empathy will affect which conclusion you get, a la KotOR? No, it will affect which middle, ending, and conclusion you get. Every step along the way will be impacted, and you can be sure they'll be more and more meaningful the later on in the game we get.


Hope that helps!

Durandal!swQABHZA/E 2009/10/21(Wed)12:09 No. 4971 ID: cbf4b2
File 125615215638.gif - (14.88KB , 640x400 , Stat Card 2.gif )

As promised, here is Comfort's new stat card with the improvements made during the training period. She only increased her Agile by 1 and gained a new level 2 ability, Agony Loves Company.


If you're interested in this quest but haven't been following along and are intimidated by the amount of content you've missed, see the above post for a link to a thorough summary (just ignore the stuff about empathy points).

Also if anyone has any questions about the world feel free to post them here. Unity does know about the setting than has been asked so far, so I'm sure there are some questions I can address without even needing to make the answers OOC knowledge.

oh shit guys, banging this thread up for recent realization.

Unity doesn't just have us, the voices, he has mild schizophrenia because of the hallucination of comfort when we first saw her. i assumed merely the author just wanted simple mindfuckery and that's why comfort and loyalty have transformations in their character sheets. It's no fun little thing or an alternate secret form, it's a goddamn schizophrenic hallucination! This means that there might be more unpleasant voices that just might be us only involuntarily put there by Durandal or mind demons could attack us and shit like that and we wouldn't even know if its real or not!

>>315504
wat.

>>315504
Oh, hey, I'd forgotten about that hallucination. Also, I never noticed the stat cards' animations. Well done. (Wonder why the most recent Loyalty one isn't animated.)

>>315506
Unity doesn't have just multiple personality disorder. It's full blown schizophrenia. May include mindfuckery, paranoia, sociopolitical tendencies, sociopathic tendencies, mental redundancy, dancing skeletons and glimpses of Dark Gods.

Oh my, that is weird. How'd that get there?

But seriously, don't get all worked up about it. Probably nothing... probably. Good catch though. :D

>>315511
To put it simply, it's a lot of work to animate in GIMP. It's not really worth it to animate every time the stats change.


I should also take this chance to apologize for the lack of updates in the past week. Got busy with school stuff, not much fun. Sorry 'bout that.

I think I got a bit burned out updating so much. And I don't like my art... but nothin' I can do about that except keep goin'.

Anyway, I feel recharged from my break and I'd like to thank everyone who encouraged me to get off my ass and get going again. :3

Let's DO this thing
lets make this shit work
where MAKING THIS HAPEN

>>316080
I'm very happy to see Swords of Virtue back. <3

Um, sorry, forgot to announce this but very short hiatus for Swords of Virtue as I do not currently have access to my tablet. -_-

I should be able to resume on Monday for sure, but I'm hoping for sooner. It's all a bit of a crapshoot at this time, so I'm hoping for the best and planning for the worst. Sorry for not posting this earlier.