B-Post February 2020: The Characters of the HRP
about 4 years ago – Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 06:19:43 PM

Hey everybody, it's Mondo this time for another HRP B-Post! These are still a fairly new concept for all of us at Alienworks, so I apologize if I end up rambling. In any case, in the last post we talked about the setting and our general reasoning behind it, but setting alone doesn't tell us all that much about the Human Reignition Project. Since the game itself has a heavy focus on social interactions and what it means to be human in a modern world, we'd be missing the forest for the trees if we didn't take the time to discuss our characters. That's why today I'd like to go into some depth on how we breathe life into the many characters who occupy the world of the Human Reignition Project.

A long, long time ago, we started with something akin to your garden variety Visual Novel character archetypes: the sulky main character, the more outgoing friend, the energetic girl, and so on. Those archetypes weren't inherently bad per se, but it occurred to us that if we could identify our characters by only a word or two, then we would probably end up writing fairly one-dimensional characters. Now, people in real life can also just as easily be categorized by a major outstanding trait, but even in those cases there's usually something else going on under the hood, and such simple definitions don't really do proper justice. So, working on the idea that we wanted our characters to have a bit more "meat" to them, we set out to ensure that they would react to situations somewhat organically, rather than simply "This is what Main Character's Friend Character typically does in this situation." If a person would react to a situation in a certain way in the real world, we want our characters to respond just as organically in ours.

To continue that thought, reacting to situations organically does not mean HRP is aiming for 100% Realism. While our aim is to have characters with satisfying depth and growth, it's important to keep the medium in mind. Put very simply, both fans and non-fans come to expect certain things from Visual Novels, be they Western Visual Novels or Japanese Visual Novels. Whether it's humor, fun anime-esque shenanigans, cute characters, The Power of Friendship, or any number of other things, it's unavoidable that people come into this medium with certain preconceived notions of "what makes a good Visual Novel." What we at Alienworks want to do, rather than try to topple the beast of genre standards, is to find a happy medium between Visual Novel Character and Real Person. If you can find yourself emotionally invested in our pink-haired marshmallow trying to make friends, then we've done everything we'd hoped to.

In practice, our approach has involved separating ourselves from the characters more and more. Rather than seeing them as our own mouthpieces into the world, we try to view our characters and their interactions through the lens of the world that has shaped them, and how they've developed over our time writing them. Since we've all played a part in designing these characters and fine-tuning them over the years, they've evolved into something more than simply Whoever's Character. Instead of puzzling over "What should Setsuna do here?", for example, the question has shifted more toward "What would Setsuna do here?"

It's certainly not a perfect approach, but our hope is that if all of our in-universe elements are consistent and grounded in their own world (tonally, etc.) then it should be fairly easy for readers to immerse themselves in the world of the Human Reignition Project. Sure, maybe some things here and there would be a little weird in real life, but if all goes well, you won't even notice.

And as always, thanks for sticking with us for so long! We've got some more exciting news and progress to come soon, and we want you all to be the first to know.

February 2020: On Asset-Based Development
over 4 years ago – Mon, Feb 03, 2020 at 09:43:34 AM

Hey all, Kevin again.

The world has just barely made it through January, and all according to plan to set up the plot of HRP.

Since more and more of our artistic assets are already finished or reaching completion, this month was mostly focused on music as a part of our new approach regarding Asset-Based Development™.  Put simply, Asset-Based Development™ is our in-house rule regarding asset creation given the scale of both our team and the Human Reignition Project itself. The gist of it is that from now until HRP's eventual release, we're working around the art assets that we've already mapped out: what we've got in the works currently is all we're going to get. We've found that working with this system is an effective way to keep scale and potential distractions in check, which hopefully means we're working more efficiently and with better focus.  

Though Asset-Based Development™ is generally concerned with more visual elements, it certainly applies to the music and sound as well. However, since we have the advantage of having our music done "in-house," we have a bit more flex room there. While we already have plenty of serviceable music, we want to make sure that not only is our current music up to the task, but that we have fitting and engaging music for all planned story events and settings. In the process of figuring out whether we have music for those events, we had to make sure we knew concretely what they were going to be in the first place, else we'd end up either with a ton of rework or with a music list without any real "upper limit." While that would certainly mean more music overall, it also leads to questions like "How many sad piano tracks will we really need?", or "Oh, I made another of X track, maybe we can use it somewhere?" 

Questions that, for all intents and purposes would have no real answer.

You can already see the genius of Asset-Based Development™.

Asset-Based Development™ also made us realize what is important, and what isn’t for the story. This lead to us streamlining a lot of the most boring parts of Act 1, which coincidentally lines up with what a lot of backers complained about in the original demo. With all of the new backgrounds, sprite fixes, music and writing fixes, HRP is almost an entirely different product now, even markedly different in some ways from our more recent Holiday Demo.

Finally, programming is moving in a decidedly non-linear way. Time is split in half between programming Hitomi’s route and Act 1, since it allows better division of time without fear that changes will be accidentally overwritten or cause problems later. We're all set to stay the course and keep working, and we'll keep you all posted as we move toward that distant finish line.

As always, thank you for sticking around for the development of HRP.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas of ‘73!
over 4 years ago – Sat, Jan 11, 2020 at 06:59:38 PM

Kevin Claus has returned after waking up from an eggnog-induced stupor to wish you all a (slightly late) Happy New Year! In the midst of said eggnog hangover, we forgot to bring you some Christmas treats, including this super cute sketch by myuto:

Additionally, Mondonater’s experimental Christmas jam was released right on time. It is an exploration into the feelings surrounding the nostalgia of Christmas’ past that you won’t forget: 

Of course, plenty of actual work on HRP was done in the meantime as well. Shion is now even more cute than previously shown, and now has the ability to show emotions other than disappointment when facing to the left. We have yet to decide whether this is canonically acceptable or not for Shion’s character.

Finally, we have one more particularly exciting reason for the delay this month: thanks to the fantastic efforts of Voloshenko and myuto, as of a week or so ago, all of the "essential" Human Reignition Project backgrounds are now complete, as well as all of the sprites! This brings us that much closer to launch as we reach more and more internal milestones. We're still hard at work on music and CGs, and things are progressing smoothly. Please look forward to many more samples in future updates.

Thank you all for sticking around with us into the new year. We’re still having fun working on HRP and bringing you these tiny tidbits of fun every month. Speaking of tidbits of fun:

The Human Reignition Project started in part due to inspiration from Katawa Shoujo, and so many of us, if we didn’t start on HRP, started on some other project that was also inspired by Katawa Shoujo. For me, myuto, and a few other writers, we started on Missing Stars. While Missing Stars has drifted back and forth to completion from its inception in 2012, the newest team has finished a very comprehensive Act 1 demo, and I think it’s worth a look (and definitely a listen if you like my musical stylings). You can find it here: https://somnova-studios.itch.io/missing-stars-act-one.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
over 4 years ago – Sat, Nov 30, 2019 at 08:09:15 PM

Ho, Ho, Ho, everyone, it is I, Kevin Claus, bringing you gifts of HRP and otherwise. This month, we continue the production and refinements of backgrounds and sprites, as our art elves myuto and Voloshenko continue to deliver fine work.

Indeed, we’re about to be 100% done with sprites, although there’s still room for 110% as we go through and replace sprites that we don’t think are good enough to be emotes in our Discord, which is still open to all and full of Christmas cheer/waifus.

Additionally, we’re almost through our core background list, which is all of the shared backgrounds that we knew we would need and were our highest priorities. There may be more backgrounds in the future as we need them, but the most important ones are close to completion.

Finally, the CGs continue to roll in, including the finished version of a CG that might be a little too real when it comes to showing the discomfort of including friends who don’t like video games.

There's also plenty of new music in the works, but we'll get to that in more detail later. For now, here's a new sample from Mondo, specifically the main theme for some of those same shenanigans within the HRP:

In addition, for those of you who played last year’s Christmas demo, you may be familiar with the AlienWorks Dumpster Christmas Jam, where we give Mondo various challenges and force him to write a song around those challenges. This marks the first day of work on said Christmas Jam for this year. Previous challenges from years past included:

• Write in 3/4 time
  
• Use bell tones
  
• Use a sample of Dennis Prager saying “Merry Christmas”
  
• Use Lil Jon samples
  
• Use a dad crying on a reality show as an instrument
  
• Rap about Santa
  
• Tell the story of Christmas, except it can’t be the story of Christmas
  
• Use Toad voice samples from Mario Party
  

This year’s challenges include:

• Write the song in Japan (✔︎)
  
• Use audio samples from English textbook New Horizons
  
• Get O.G. Willikers (2018 Christmas Jam) to record lines without actually knowing what the song sounds like
  
• FUTURE CHALLENGES FROM YOU, OUR FANS, ON TWITTER
  

That’s right, you get to contribute to this year’s AlienWorks Dumpster Christmas Jam! @Mondonater has a tweet that you can reply to with ideas, good or not, to include in the Christmas Jam.

While I’m not sure “enjoy” is necessarily the word that you will use to describe experiencing the AlienWorks Dumpster Christmas Jam, we’re sure you won’t forget it.

Our First B-Post: Why the Setting?
over 4 years ago – Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 04:21:29 PM

November Update B

Hey all, something different this time. This is the first of what we're calling "B-Posts" internally, basically a supplement to the standard monthly updates (which we have no intention of changing or replacing.) If the monthly "A-Posts" are about our progress updates and some of the "how"s of the development process, we'd like the B-Posts to more represent the question "why?" Basically, we'd like to go a little more into detail about our decision-making process than we reasonably can in the monthly updates. I can't guarantee they'll be on as strict of a schedule as the monthly updates, but we're going to aim for one A-Post and one B-Post per month if possible.

So, getting right into it:

If we're talking about HRP fundamentals--and we are, in this update--it's important to talk about the framework that the story operates in. More than the minutiae of why Aya stares off into the distance sometimes, why Shion sneaks off and can't be found, or why Hitomi is so gosh darned cute, we'll be looking at only the broader strokes. Why is the setting the way it is?

Why Japan?

Japan is an interesting blend of old and new: the country is at once at the forefront of the digital age and lagging surprisingly behind it. For example, Mondo will be happy to chat with you about Japan's contemporary obsession over fax machines, which are quickly going the way of the Dodo elsewhere. When it comes to new technology, Japan is often the first to sample it and the first to have it integrated into its culture, as long as it gels with Japan's sense of identity. But if you really want to get at the heart of the matter, the truth is that Japan currently finds itself in a place of significant isolation. More and more people are "checking out" of society, and the extreme amount of social isolation available to the average person is enough to make loners of many. Is it any surprise that this trend is likely to continue? To get worse and worse until inevitably it reaches a breaking point? Though the whole world is experiencing this disconnect in communication, Japan has always been at the forefront of willful social separation, and that makes it the perfect setting to explore the themes we want to look at in Human Reignition Project.

Why so contemporary a story?

A great deal of what follows in the Human Reignition Project may seem like pipe dreams or something we'll have to deal with in the distant future, not today or tomorrow... but the more time passes, the more each prophecy comes true. In the world of the HRP, self-driving cars are the norm; yesterday they were Sci-Fi. Today they're not so far off. In the HRP, schooling is primarily an online exercise; yesterday, online colleges weren't "real." Today they're growing in representation and clout. In the world of the Human Reignition Project, social isolation is the accepted way of life. And with every passing day "checking out" gets a little bit easier, a little bit more common. And speaking of which...

Why this theme of isolation?

I think everyone on the team can relate to it, at least a little, and I think it's likely you can as well. Everyone has moments where it seems easier to simply shut the rest of the world out. For some of us, they aren't moments--they're months or even years. It can be alluring in a way to embrace solitude: no one will hurt you, no one will demand things of you, no one will be disappointed by you. Today people who choose to "check out" like this are considered abnormal, but their number grows daily. And what happens when they reach a critical mass, when society is more peopled by those who want to fade away than by those who are committed to putting themselves out there again and again?

That's where the HRP puts us.

Why these characters?

You may be semi-familiar with Kyou as a lovable and jokesy friend, with Setsuna as an aggressive and outspoken influence, or with Kojo as a mysterious old man with some curious ideas about technology. But each of these characters are reacting in their own way to the society around them, and if looked at just right exemplify different ways of coping with the world the HRP finds itself in. Ken, for example, is nearly at the end of his rope. He's not sure how Kyou manages to keep his enthusiasm for engaging strangers, opening conversations, finding friends. Ken has formed addictions to deal with the loneliness he feels since he doesn't know how else to cope. He's kept only from disappearing wholly into his movie collection by his friend Kyou. Each of the characters in the HRP are reacting in different ways to the themes of isolation and distance the world is suffused with, and exploring these coping mechanisms will go hand in hand with exploring their routes.

Themes of isolation and distance

Everything in the HRP is in some way related to these central themes, from story beats to art to music. Take for example this in-game representation of a lonely train car.

The same scene with a different soundtrack can create an entirely different mood:

Though this is a somewhat extreme example, the idea is that not everything in the world of the Human Reignition Project is so bleak. Wherever Ken can find companionship and conversation, life is necessarily more bright and meaningful, and the soundtrack and general mood shift to accommodate that change. But behind it all, this casual isolation always remains: a reality for many and a possible direction for everyone.