We’ve just passed the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, Eastern Starlight Romance doesn’t feature the Aki sisters, nor does the game take place in autumn… Graph did contribute to that Aki sisters anthology quite a while back, though. That’s something, right?
Here’s how ESR has progressed since the last update:
- I’ve stayed at pretty much the same pace with the scripting. I’m also still doing a little bit of code cleanup, though I slowed down slightly compared to last time.
- Graph came out of inactivity and tracked down quite a few royalty-free SFX for use in ESR. As I was scripting new scenes, I had left ‘TODO’ comments in the script to mark SFX we wanted but didn’t have yet. We built up quite a few of these comments over time, and I also added a few more comments for ideas to spice up earlier scenes (before UFO). Graph managed to address almost all of the existing comments, and at the end of it, our SFX asset count had nearly doubled!
Here’s the updated progress scorecard. Note that for simplicity, passes 3 and 4 only count completed scenes as progress. So for example, ‘effects’ will only be updated when a scene has been addressed on both the visuals and sound departments. Thanks to the new wave of SFX, though, the pass 3 score should go up more quickly later.
- Pass 1, main writing: 83% (+0)
- Pass 2, scripting: 62% (+7)
- Pass 3, effects: 38% (+0, but many scenes only need visual effects now)
- Pass 4, minor writing: 27% (+0)
A few comments on our previous post got us thinking about plans for ESR once the game is finished, so I’d like to highlight those here. I should note that I’m answering somewhat conservatively because (1) our main writers still aren’t available to discuss these things, and (2) we’ve still got quite a ways to go until the game is finished. Nevertheless, I think there’s an appropriate level of forward thinking that we can start now.
Q1: Possibility of a Steam release?
A1: This definitely should be a possibility, since ZUN is okay with Touhou fangames on Steam these days, and Steam Direct replaced the stricter Greenlight process. Ren’Py has support for Steam achievements as well. Personally, I think it seems worth a shot – might as well go for more publicity if we’re putting all this time into ESR. Regardless of whether Steam works out for us, though, we should still do a self-hosted release of ESR, similar to our demos.
Q2: Thoughts on translations?
A2: I’m not sure if we’ll have the time to support ‘official’ translations built into ESR – I don’t think it’d be too complex on the technical side, but coordinating with translators for a 500,000-word game would take a lot of work. Not just on the translators’ part, but on our part as well, to ensure that the translation is good quality and mostly matches the intentions of the original script.
For what it’s worth, if we do want to support an official translation, I believe Japanese could be the most likely language candidate since multiple members on our core team can read Japanese to some degree. That means we would be able to look over a Japanese translation ourselves, and more-or-less confirm that it’s on the right track. Again, it’d be a big commitment, so we’ll see when we are done with the base game. Then we can gauge the game’s popularity, gauge our motivation and free time, and so on.
On the other hand, I see no issues with giving shoutouts to unofficial patch translations – with the understanding that we make no guarantees of quality. We actually do have one project to shout-out right now: SFY and their friend have been working on a Chinese patch of the ESR demo. If you’re interested in this translation patch, let SFY know in the comments!
Q3: Possibility of distributions at conventions like Comiket?
A3: I personally think this would be really neat, though I’d certainly want to see the reception of the finished game to determine whether it’s worth it. Traveling to a convention and setting up a booth is obviously a sizable commitment. Though that could be alleviated if, for example, we were already traveling to Japan for other reasons (Graph and I have visited Japan twice before, for what that’s worth).
A convention in the US might also be a decent idea, so that it’d be easier for us to actually converse with interested visitors. TouhouCon no longer exists though, so I guess it’d have to be something like Anime Expo if we went the stateside route.
Although this is something I want to confirm with the writers, I’m pretty sure we’d have trouble setting a price on ESR – since we’ve had such a scattered team in our early years, and I believe we’ve always had this understanding that the game wasn’t for profit. As such, traveling to a lot of conventions isn’t likely to be practical for us, in terms of the money and effort involved. But doing it once for the experience does seem like a nice idea.
That went longer than expected, but I guess that’s not a bad thing. Anyway, if you’ve got any more questions on things, feel free to ask. Let’s finish with some screenshots:
Alice is such a source of… flusterment? Flusteredness? Flustering? That seems like the right word, though it doesn’t sound as good.
Nice to see the wordcount progress.
Also, over 500,000 words? Wow.
Writing progress. Not wordcount. Sorry.
@Raineh Daze: I think flusterment works. Amusingly, ‘flustration’ is also listed in dictionaries, though its use is debatable (https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/107620/).
Yeah, the script in Ren’Py is currently at 347k words, so I reckon it’ll be around 500k by the time the scripting is 100% done.
Keep up the great work!
Looking forward to that Steam release.
I’ve been following this for quite a while now.
I’ve been looking forward to this game for years!
I purposely haven’t looked at the demo for the past year in hopes that I will forget the story and be able to experience it like it’s the first time again (though it stuck to me well enough that I still remember most of it). I’m really glad this is still getting worked on! I just wanted to send some words of appreciation because it looks great so far!
@Back, @Ace: Thanks for the kind words!
Thanks for the update.
I remember downloading demo 1 waaaaayyyyy back in the day. Apparently 2010 according to the download section. And here we are 9, almost 10, years later and progress is still being made. That is absolutely crazy! I always thought a stateside Touhou fan game would be cool, but I had no idea it would take anywhere close to this long to complete. Massive props to the entire team for the continued effort! I look forward to the final release. I’m sure it will be absolutely wonderful!
Hi, just dropping a comment in to say I’ve been keeping half an eye on this project since near the beginning and I’m really cheered to know it’s still going forward. Will definitely be recommending it to people when it comes out!
@Flan fan, @Lisa: Thanks – I don’t think any of us expected it to go on for this long either. And to think, the original story plans were a lot more ambitious! The amount of work that’s left now seems doable, though; just have to keep at it.
And you’ll always have my support. It’s been years already, what’s more waiting on my end?
Remember, it’s been 12 years since the last half life game.
If HL:A can exist then so can this. Keep up the good work and good luck.
A belated Merry Christmas to you all.
Will there be a Demo 4.0 or the next release will be the final one?
*Keep on the hard work, guys!
Thanks for the support! And here’s to more steady progress in 2020.
@Flafla: I think a Demo 4.0 would be a good idea, since the full game is planned to be free anyhow, and another round of feedback (as well as showing off concrete progress) can only help. We’ll need more progress before a new demo would make sense, though. Perhaps I’ll talk about that more in January’s blog post. But basically, I’ve been mainly working on the story scripting, and the other development aspects (especially minor writing, Pass 4) need to catch up before we can present more of the story in demo form.
Nice to think about.
Happy New Year.