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Feb. 6th, 2015 07:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmxratedSounds like you shouldn't be trying to write longass epics that require lots of content and set up to be coherent, and instead write short stories that quickly get to the scenarios you want.
-Chelle, third comment under this entry.
Really, though, that's exactly the thing. I didn't have any particular scenarios on mind when I conceived Starbound. That project was born primarily from some nostalgia I was having about Earthbound. I already wrote down everything I liked about that trilogy of games in the first cut in this entry. Those were what I was trying to fulfill, at least as closely as one possibly could without any kind of video game creation skills. I chose to make a Lucky Star fanfic out of it, because I wanted to do something meaningful with the idea of the girls' hair being arranged into beehives. (I did commission for something about that months earlier, but the final product was poorly written and barely did anything beyond the transformations themselves.)
Furthermore, I've already mentioned to both Jake and Chelle that, from the very beginning, I got into the concept of fanfiction for all the wrong reasons, and that is why I suck as an author. However, it remains my hobby of choice, because I like spending time with fictional characters. (That could be because I barely have any real friends, as Dad might infer, but even Chelle told me before that she isn't cut out to have much of a social life in the real world.)
-----
Anyway, yesterday, I told Jake that I might just be ready to finish up the lemon starting today, and asked if he'd be able to get started with The Original Story (that's what I'm gonna call the Beehive Brigade's story from now on), but he said that he's in the middle of finishing up a major project of his own.
Why I hired him to write it in the first place? It's because he wanted something other than Starbound to work on, and also because he's familiar enough with Earthbound to know what kind of story I'm looking for with this one. In fact, the reason I commissioned him to rewrite Starbound, was because I'm gonna be needing his help (anyone's who's played Earthbound, really) to figure out what goes on for most of the story, and he sorta complained about my own writing style while reading the first chapter himself. (Then again, he did come up with some ideas on how chapter 4 could play out, but that one ended up being something else entirely in the end.)
Get this too, the way Jake's friend Zerodius and my own friend Chelle see the game's plot are complete opposites. Quoting the former's words in this formerly f-locked entry:
Because the guy wanted to tell a story.
This is the shortest explanation but I will elaborate a bit.
With the Mother games, the goal is not for a generic quest. And that stems from two radically different goals. In Dragon Quest, the journey is the point. As in, the whole point is to beat up monsters, level-up, and beat up enemies with bloated stats eventually. 'Save the world' is an excuse to move to the next set of targets. And 'this town has X problem' is the excuse to stop at a town beyond buying equipment.
The Mother games tell a cohesive story with a clear beginning, events linking everything, that eventually lead to the end. With Earthbound, this is noticeable but in Mother 3, it's pretty much blatant that the game's structure is divided more into 'chapters' than in 'stages'. (Earthbound still separate events by location. Mother 3 echew this completely ; it's the game world that changes instead. Though you still move from area to area, the journey actually make you tread a lot less ground than Earthbound)
To summarize...
In Dragon Quest, the point is to beat up bad guys.
In Earthbound, this is Ness's journey.
In contrast, here's what Chelle surmised when I summed the game up during an email exchange:
[...] a lot of the subplots described there are random sidequest stuff that fits in with Earthbound's zany surreal tone. What I'm gathering here is that you don't want subplots related to the main plot, but just random things. That's going to depend on the locations the characters visit, I guess, and how much the world is turned surreal. But I already established I'm no good at this type of surreal humor.
[skipping to another relevant bit]
This isn't really complex from what I can tell. Characters move from point a to point b, learn and advance along the way. You could replace any enemy with rabid noodles, and the helpers with dancing trampolines and it wouldn't make a difference for the outcome. All of this plot is a long sequence of moving on. There may or may not be deep themes and characterization, but the plot itself? Nope. It's really, really simple.
Here's what the flow breaks down into :
1) Onett
- Set up.
-Ness defeats rabid noodles, is praised, earns plot coupon, moves on.
-Ness defeats rabid noodles, is stopped, questioned, defeats trampolines, moves on.
2) Twoson and Happy Happy Village
-Ness is drawn in my damsel in distress, who is threatened by rabid noodles.
-Ness fights rabid noodles who deliver plot relevant information.
-Ness meets useful side character.
-Ness goes somewhere, fights rabid noodles to obtain plot coupon to save damsel. Companion obtained.
-Ness and Paula go places for social interaction.
-Ness and Paula do something nice for dancing trampolines that allows them to move on.
[etc.]
To be fair, what I showed her was a simplified telling of EB's plot, as opposed to this more in-depth walkthrough. Something like this:
1) Onett
-The meteorite's landing, Ness's failed investigation, Ness helping Pokey to find Picky, Buzz Buzz emerging from the meteorite before the three of them head back down the hill, and their confrontation by the Starman Jr. right before Ness drops Pokey and Picky off back at their house.
-Ness takes on the Sharks gang at the local video arcade, makes a name for himself, and is appointed by the mayor, who gives him the key to a locked shack blocking the entrance to the cave of Giant Step.
-Ness emerges victorious after conquering Giant Step, only to be confronted by a police officer, who demands that he report to the police station. Once there, Captain Strong asks him if he really wants to go to Twoson, and then escorts him into a room and challenges him to fight five of his men, before fighting him himself.
2) Twoson and Happy Happy Village
-Ness is drawn here by telepathic pleas for help by a girl named Paula, who has been kidnapped by a cult called the Happy Happyists.
-During his time in Twoson, he also has a skirmish with a crime boss named Everdred, who then tells him of Paula's kidnapping and whereabouts.
-He also meets Apple Kid, one of a pair of inventors, who's inventions and role in things become vital after he funds something of his.
-Ness fights his way through Peaceful Rest Valley, arrives at Happy Happy Village, meets Paula in her prison cell, and takes to confronting Happy Happyist leader Carpainter for the key.
-After freeing Paula, the two of them enter a nearby cave leading to Lilliput Steps, before heading back to Twoson to let her say a few last words to her parents at Polestar Preschool before they leave.
-The two of them leave Polestar, and someone walks up to them requesting on Everdred's behalf that they pay him a visit. He gives them a wad of cash, and they use it to pay off the debts of a blues band called the Runaway Five. In return, the band gives them a ride in their tour bus through the otherwise impassible tunnel to Threed.
Chelle's aforementioned response is what I showed Jake that night, given how it conflicts with Zerodius's, but as I mentioned in the following day's blog entry, he was already tired of discussing the game's plot at that point.
Furthermore, there's this entry (4/24/13), where I actually explained how certain events throughout the game affects stuff to happen later on. That would obviously support Zerodius's point pretty well.
-----
So, what I want mainly, is to spend some time with Starbound, but without any ideas to work with, it's going nowhere fast. That's exactly part of the reason why I hired Jake to write The Original Story, since he's better at coming up with ideas than I am (the alternative would be to dig online for people I've never even met, and see if anyone is interested, and there's the obvious risk that they'll lose interest in it along the way). Meanwhile, I do also have plenty of planned spritesheets to work on, but it wasn't that long ago that I was working on a few, during which I couldn't help but think about everything else I wanted at least to enjoy viewing for myself. Voice acting in particular, but also stuff like music and special graphical effects.
My plan in the long run, is to showcase all my spritesheets on GameDev.net, in order to show that I'm capable of anything before I commission people to work on other aspects of the game. One of said aspects would be, you guessed it, the story. I'm pretty sure that the creators of Mother 4 only had to come up with the concept itself and whatever they happened to be capable of before hiring actual storywriters among everyone else involved. However, since GD.net is mostly about game creation, I've decided yesterday to instead call out to anyone on The Fanfiction Forum who would be interested in seeing or helping determine where Starbound goes as the fanfic it currently is.
(Yeah, I remember Chelle objecting to that before, but really, I don't know what else to do at this point, besides continuing with the spritesheets and commissioning for other stuff until something rings a bell (chronologically or otherwise).)
(Having already written all of the above, I actually do recall this subject having come up between me and Chelle more than once. This comment exchange in particular comes to mind.)
-Chelle, third comment under this entry.
Really, though, that's exactly the thing. I didn't have any particular scenarios on mind when I conceived Starbound. That project was born primarily from some nostalgia I was having about Earthbound. I already wrote down everything I liked about that trilogy of games in the first cut in this entry. Those were what I was trying to fulfill, at least as closely as one possibly could without any kind of video game creation skills. I chose to make a Lucky Star fanfic out of it, because I wanted to do something meaningful with the idea of the girls' hair being arranged into beehives. (I did commission for something about that months earlier, but the final product was poorly written and barely did anything beyond the transformations themselves.)
Furthermore, I've already mentioned to both Jake and Chelle that, from the very beginning, I got into the concept of fanfiction for all the wrong reasons, and that is why I suck as an author. However, it remains my hobby of choice, because I like spending time with fictional characters. (That could be because I barely have any real friends, as Dad might infer, but even Chelle told me before that she isn't cut out to have much of a social life in the real world.)
-----
Anyway, yesterday, I told Jake that I might just be ready to finish up the lemon starting today, and asked if he'd be able to get started with The Original Story (that's what I'm gonna call the Beehive Brigade's story from now on), but he said that he's in the middle of finishing up a major project of his own.
Why I hired him to write it in the first place? It's because he wanted something other than Starbound to work on, and also because he's familiar enough with Earthbound to know what kind of story I'm looking for with this one. In fact, the reason I commissioned him to rewrite Starbound, was because I'm gonna be needing his help (anyone's who's played Earthbound, really) to figure out what goes on for most of the story, and he sorta complained about my own writing style while reading the first chapter himself. (Then again, he did come up with some ideas on how chapter 4 could play out, but that one ended up being something else entirely in the end.)
Get this too, the way Jake's friend Zerodius and my own friend Chelle see the game's plot are complete opposites. Quoting the former's words in this formerly f-locked entry:
Because the guy wanted to tell a story.
This is the shortest explanation but I will elaborate a bit.
With the Mother games, the goal is not for a generic quest. And that stems from two radically different goals. In Dragon Quest, the journey is the point. As in, the whole point is to beat up monsters, level-up, and beat up enemies with bloated stats eventually. 'Save the world' is an excuse to move to the next set of targets. And 'this town has X problem' is the excuse to stop at a town beyond buying equipment.
The Mother games tell a cohesive story with a clear beginning, events linking everything, that eventually lead to the end. With Earthbound, this is noticeable but in Mother 3, it's pretty much blatant that the game's structure is divided more into 'chapters' than in 'stages'. (Earthbound still separate events by location. Mother 3 echew this completely ; it's the game world that changes instead. Though you still move from area to area, the journey actually make you tread a lot less ground than Earthbound)
To summarize...
In Dragon Quest, the point is to beat up bad guys.
In Earthbound, this is Ness's journey.
In contrast, here's what Chelle surmised when I summed the game up during an email exchange:
[...] a lot of the subplots described there are random sidequest stuff that fits in with Earthbound's zany surreal tone. What I'm gathering here is that you don't want subplots related to the main plot, but just random things. That's going to depend on the locations the characters visit, I guess, and how much the world is turned surreal. But I already established I'm no good at this type of surreal humor.
[skipping to another relevant bit]
This isn't really complex from what I can tell. Characters move from point a to point b, learn and advance along the way. You could replace any enemy with rabid noodles, and the helpers with dancing trampolines and it wouldn't make a difference for the outcome. All of this plot is a long sequence of moving on. There may or may not be deep themes and characterization, but the plot itself? Nope. It's really, really simple.
Here's what the flow breaks down into :
1) Onett
- Set up.
-Ness defeats rabid noodles, is praised, earns plot coupon, moves on.
-Ness defeats rabid noodles, is stopped, questioned, defeats trampolines, moves on.
2) Twoson and Happy Happy Village
-Ness is drawn in my damsel in distress, who is threatened by rabid noodles.
-Ness fights rabid noodles who deliver plot relevant information.
-Ness meets useful side character.
-Ness goes somewhere, fights rabid noodles to obtain plot coupon to save damsel. Companion obtained.
-Ness and Paula go places for social interaction.
-Ness and Paula do something nice for dancing trampolines that allows them to move on.
[etc.]
To be fair, what I showed her was a simplified telling of EB's plot, as opposed to this more in-depth walkthrough. Something like this:
1) Onett
-The meteorite's landing, Ness's failed investigation, Ness helping Pokey to find Picky, Buzz Buzz emerging from the meteorite before the three of them head back down the hill, and their confrontation by the Starman Jr. right before Ness drops Pokey and Picky off back at their house.
-Ness takes on the Sharks gang at the local video arcade, makes a name for himself, and is appointed by the mayor, who gives him the key to a locked shack blocking the entrance to the cave of Giant Step.
-Ness emerges victorious after conquering Giant Step, only to be confronted by a police officer, who demands that he report to the police station. Once there, Captain Strong asks him if he really wants to go to Twoson, and then escorts him into a room and challenges him to fight five of his men, before fighting him himself.
2) Twoson and Happy Happy Village
-Ness is drawn here by telepathic pleas for help by a girl named Paula, who has been kidnapped by a cult called the Happy Happyists.
-During his time in Twoson, he also has a skirmish with a crime boss named Everdred, who then tells him of Paula's kidnapping and whereabouts.
-He also meets Apple Kid, one of a pair of inventors, who's inventions and role in things become vital after he funds something of his.
-Ness fights his way through Peaceful Rest Valley, arrives at Happy Happy Village, meets Paula in her prison cell, and takes to confronting Happy Happyist leader Carpainter for the key.
-After freeing Paula, the two of them enter a nearby cave leading to Lilliput Steps, before heading back to Twoson to let her say a few last words to her parents at Polestar Preschool before they leave.
-The two of them leave Polestar, and someone walks up to them requesting on Everdred's behalf that they pay him a visit. He gives them a wad of cash, and they use it to pay off the debts of a blues band called the Runaway Five. In return, the band gives them a ride in their tour bus through the otherwise impassible tunnel to Threed.
Chelle's aforementioned response is what I showed Jake that night, given how it conflicts with Zerodius's, but as I mentioned in the following day's blog entry, he was already tired of discussing the game's plot at that point.
Furthermore, there's this entry (4/24/13), where I actually explained how certain events throughout the game affects stuff to happen later on. That would obviously support Zerodius's point pretty well.
-----
So, what I want mainly, is to spend some time with Starbound, but without any ideas to work with, it's going nowhere fast. That's exactly part of the reason why I hired Jake to write The Original Story, since he's better at coming up with ideas than I am (the alternative would be to dig online for people I've never even met, and see if anyone is interested, and there's the obvious risk that they'll lose interest in it along the way). Meanwhile, I do also have plenty of planned spritesheets to work on, but it wasn't that long ago that I was working on a few, during which I couldn't help but think about everything else I wanted at least to enjoy viewing for myself. Voice acting in particular, but also stuff like music and special graphical effects.
My plan in the long run, is to showcase all my spritesheets on GameDev.net, in order to show that I'm capable of anything before I commission people to work on other aspects of the game. One of said aspects would be, you guessed it, the story. I'm pretty sure that the creators of Mother 4 only had to come up with the concept itself and whatever they happened to be capable of before hiring actual storywriters among everyone else involved. However, since GD.net is mostly about game creation, I've decided yesterday to instead call out to anyone on The Fanfiction Forum who would be interested in seeing or helping determine where Starbound goes as the fanfic it currently is.
(Yeah, I remember Chelle objecting to that before, but really, I don't know what else to do at this point, besides continuing with the spritesheets and commissioning for other stuff until something rings a bell (chronologically or otherwise).)
(Having already written all of the above, I actually do recall this subject having come up between me and Chelle more than once. This comment exchange in particular comes to mind.)
no subject
Date: 2019-07-17 01:33 pm (UTC)What contrast? What opposites? What conflict? Zerodius talks about story and character arc, I talked about plot and event. Those are not the same thing. I did not deny the story of Earthbound was character driven.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-17 01:35 pm (UTC)The Mother games tell a cohesive story with a clear beginning, events linking everything, that eventually lead to the end.
Your lines:
[A] lot of the subplots described there are random sidequest stuff that fits in with Earthbound's zany surreal tone. What I'm gathering here is that you don't want subplots related to the main plot, but just random things.
This isn't really complex from what I can tell. Characters move from point a to point b, learn and advance along the way. You could replace any enemy with rabid noodles, and the helpers with dancing trampolines and it wouldn't make a difference for the outcome. All of this plot is a long sequence of moving on.
That said, yes, I do see the difference between the concepts of plot development and character development. Just that these two takes seemed contradictory to each other until now. Was just confused, is all.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-17 01:36 pm (UTC)My quoted lines : part a conversation about atmosphere, filler and PLOT development, if I recall correctly.
Actually, I meant that story and plot are different thing — notice how in the quotes in this entry, the word Zero uses is story, while I'm talking about main plot and sub plot?
It is possible to have side plots not tied to the main plot that nevertheless help another part of the overall story, like character development, relationship development or world building. So, which of those things do you want sideplots to serve in Starbound, and why can't those things happen during the main plot events?
On that note, if you already have difficulty coming up with ideas, why make it more difficult for yourself by adding in side plots?
no subject
Date: 2019-07-17 01:38 pm (UTC)In general, what I'm looking for mainly, is something relatively lengthy, but not overly simplistic or formulaic like Mon Colle Knights or Paper Mario. Character and relationship development are obvious priorities, though, since that's a great deal what the Earthbound trilogy was about.
I don't know how the events link everything, since I don't know how precisely the lead's character arc develops together with the plot.
I did hyperlink to an entry where I described that, but in case you forgot about it while reading the entry itself, here it is again:
https://dmxrated.dreamwidth.org/2013/04/24/
Actually, I meant that story and plot are different thing — notice how in the quotes in this entry, the word Zero uses is story, while I'm talking about main plot and sub plot?
On that note, if you already have difficulty coming up with ideas, why make it more difficult for yourself by adding in side plots?
Brought that up with Jake yesterday, and he made things clearer for me. Regarding Starbound, the examples I brought up were Hooters, Tristan, the Hunt Club, and the New Year's Festival. From what we reached, Hooters is part of the main plot, because it is a tactic employed by the aliens. New Years' relates to the main plot, because certain events need to take place there in order for the party's journey to succeed. The Hunt Club, though scrapped, would have been a sub-plot because it was its own entity that the party simply decides to confront during some downtime. And Tristan, meanwhile, is mainly a prop for character development.
If I were to take examples from Earthbound, the Sharks gang would be a sub-plot, because it bears no relationship to Giygas. Apple Kid's initial appearance would be a sub-plot for the same reason; just someone Ness decides to help out on the sideline along his way to saving Paula from the Happy Happyists.
The Happy Happyists, on the other hand, would figure into the main plot, due to Giygas's influence on Carpainter and his followers through the Mani Mani statue. The zombie plague in Threed would also be part of the main plot, as a tactic employed by a certain minion of Giygas's.
Hope I'm understanding the difference between concepts better so far.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-17 01:39 pm (UTC)Yeah, that sounds about right, though "is done by the villains" isn't always what makes something main plot. (For example, Princess Tutu's second season has a lot of episodes where Mytho tries to steal a heart, and all of those episodes have minor self-contained plots. The main plot isn't furthered by those, despite being done by a primary villain, those episodes just served character development.) It kinda depends on how opposed the villain's goals of that particular event are to blocking the leads from reaching their main goal.
If you want to add sub plot for character building, don't do something like the scrapped hunt club a la "okay heroes let's decide to deal with this other thing now " cause it's a bit like the author of a play stepping out from behind the curtains to provide the actors challenge cause they ran out of plot.
The Earthbound world is an inherently zany place, while in Starbound, the weirdness is only very recent and has a cause that can be found (aliens). So they can't run into a family that upholds a proud tradition of harvesting cellos for many generations, but they can run into people who are coping with the new world in zany ways like trying to specialize in instruments growing from the ground.
A huge risk in sub plots for the purpose of character development is that it may feel like side plot happen that are conveniently tailored to help the characters along, which can strain suspension of disbelief. (I once read a random Inuyasha chapter, where something sad or another had happened, and they just conveniently ran into a monster with powers that forced them to deal with it. Don't be that blatant.)
Don't reach the peak of the character development of the core four/five in sub plots, keep that for the rising action's peak.
If character relationships are important, then there needs to be more focus on interaction between the hero group. The core four are obviously friends, but what about everyone else? Who does Rokuna get along with best? What about the others? I don't there there's been a lot of talk about that yet.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-17 01:41 pm (UTC)Sorry this took so damn long to get around to.
Your write-up describes the plot progress, but doesn't tell me much of anything about how Ness's character arc develops.
Brought that up with Jake somewhere along the line. Here's what he had to say:
For starters, although the player wants to win and therefore complete the mission, the fact that Ness was prophecized to defeat Giygas doesn't mean he *had* to go on the journey.
So we take from that that Ness certainly is a responsible person.
The fact that he has to call his mom regularly means he's a lonely child... unlike the other kids (yes, Jeff is lonely too, but on the other hand, Jeff is more likely to be frustrated with his dad being... well, his dad).
Ness also might not be the type to think too much before he acts, if only due to some of the elements I remember (eating drugged food without even asking about it, trying to get into a hipster club or other bad places despite being underage).
Also, he certainly isn't greedy; he has no problem giving all that money away to help the Runaway Five.
Regarding your last paragraph, about characterization and interactions, I recall that's exactly why you told me about that personality test before. That's something I still have yet to come back to, and I've been planning to bring it up with you and Jake once I finish filling out at least some of everyone's information.
Same thing with Cult. Still planning to decide on certain things, just had a hard time getting around to stuff in general as of late.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-17 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-17 01:42 pm (UTC)