[T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●●○○ (Case 2 Remake Out!)

Find and discuss trials made by other members and showcase your own trials.

Moderators: EN - Forum Moderators, EN - Trial Reviewers

User avatar
256 Pi
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:03 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●●○○○

Post by 256 Pi »

Wow, three months since I've been here already?! Jeez, time sure flies by fast. :shock:

Well, thankfully (or not thankfully depending on your perspective), I haven't given up on this project, and I don't plan on ever doing so. To be honest, though, somewhat against my better judgment, I think I'll be starting work on Case 3 before I finish rewrites on Case 2. In my opinion, while Case 3 is still pretty short, I do think I put a lot more effort into the character design and the like into it, and I am very close to having all the sprites necessary to get started. Plus I have a lot more ideas in my head as to how I can flesh out Case 3 than I do Case 2. Maybe I can fix up some little technical things about Case 2 just to make it easier to play first, but yeah.

Either way, in case my incredibly long break from AAO didn't already tell you that, 90% of my spare time has been going into my YouTube videos. Generally speaking I have way more fun with those than I do with case-writing here, but then again I still just have these scripts lying around, and I'm not about to just throw them away without using them first. So needless to say, YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF ME! (apologies if that ancient CD-i meme made you puke. I couldn't help it.)
User avatar
256 Pi
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:03 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○

Post by 256 Pi »

Hello AAO. Miss me? ...No? OK then, remember me? No? Oh well, no big deal. I have been gone for way too long anyway.

The past couple of months I have been totally preoccupied with my YouTube channel, which suddenly has over 1000 subscribers now. :shock: I've been finding way more fun in making my videos than I was in case-writing like last year, so I don't see myself returning quite as often as I used to. But I haven't forgotten this series, and I do eventually want to finish it until the end, even if it'll take me a few years (and I suspect it will).

That being said, I did get the news that the AAOV6 editor is coming up soon, so I'm considering remaking the series on the new editor. I do have a whole bunch of rewrites in mind (especially for Case 2), so I'll be getting on that while waiting for it to release. More details on that in the OP.

So yeah, even though I now know that I don't really fit in this community too well, I do intend to finish this series to the best of my ability.
User avatar
Blizdi
Posts: 388
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 3:39 pm
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○

Post by Blizdi »

256 Pi wrote:Hello AAO. Miss me? ...No? OK then, remember me? No? Oh well, no big deal. I have been gone for way too long anyway.

The past couple of months I have been totally preoccupied with my YouTube channel, which suddenly has over 1000 subscribers now. :shock: I've been finding way more fun in making my videos than I was in case-writing like last year, so I don't see myself returning quite as often as I used to. But I haven't forgotten this series, and I do eventually want to finish it until the end, even if it'll take me a few years (and I suspect it will).

That being said, I did get the news that the AAOV6 editor is coming up soon, so I'm considering remaking the series on the new editor. I do have a whole bunch of rewrites in mind (especially for Case 2), so I'll be getting on that while waiting for it to release. More details on that in the OP.

So yeah, even though I now know that I don't really fit in this community too well, I do intend to finish this series to the best of my ability.
I'm sorry... who are you?

I'm only half kidding
Image
User avatar
256 Pi
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:03 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○

Post by 256 Pi »

Blizdi wrote:
I'm sorry... who are you?

I'm only half kidding
Someone who was more or less active in this community last summer, and... come to think of it, I don't really remember you either. :P
User avatar
256 Pi
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:03 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by 256 Pi »

Wow. It's been a year and a half since I last posted on this topic. Time flies, huh.
Well, guess what, something actually happened! I finally finished the remake of Case 1 of the series on AAOv6.

Despite the fact that this project has totally fallen by the wayside in favor of YouTube and college, I do still want to finish it eventually. I've spent too much time thinking about it and working on rewrites to just abandon it. Though it's probably going to be a long time before I'm completely done, I won't be able to rest easy until I've gotten this done in a non-embarrassing fashion. And now I've made my first actual step in the right direction by finally doing something on these forums. No idea how often I'll be here but if this turns out well then I'll probably be budgeting more time in working on the rest of the series. If it doesn't turn out well then I'll probably just be going back to my usual slacking off elsewhere, lol. But hope you all enjoy anyways.

Here goes nothing: http://aceattorney.sparklin.org/player. ... l_id=82389
User avatar
Blizdi
Posts: 388
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 3:39 pm
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by Blizdi »

Wow! First we get a Dilemma update, and now this? Am I dreaming?
Image
User avatar
Enthalpy
Community Manager
Posts: 5169
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:40 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, limited Spanish

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by Enthalpy »

I've played through the case. First, this looks like an improvement from the original version, which is good. The introduction of Maya is much less rushed, the series seems to have more of a plot unifying the cases, and our first actual witness is better than I remembered her being.

If I can ask, how did you go about planning this case? I noticed some hiccups in the trial/cross-examination side and want to know how those came about.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
User avatar
256 Pi
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:03 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by 256 Pi »

Enthalpy wrote:If I can ask, how did you go about planning this case? I noticed some hiccups in the trial/cross-examination side and want to know how those came about.
Well, my #1 priority in this case was to get the backstory to work and to give the characters more personality, especially with Maya herself, as that seemed to be most people's biggest complaint (and quite honestly the thing that bugged me the most about the original version as well). As for the actual case and its logic I admittedly kind of just copied over the setup from the original version, not changing much fundamentally although making efforts to have it at least generally make sense and be easy to follow and play through, but it wasn't my main focus. I was just trying to at the very least make these characters memorable and get the backstory to make sense, that is what 90% of the planning for this case went into over the past 2 years.
I will admit though, I've never been a perfectionist, and writing serious things has never been my strong suit. This series is by far the most serious thing I've ever come up with (and I'm sure you can tell from a lot of the dialogue in the trial that I wasn't trying to make it ultra-serious to begin with), and not to mention the majority of the past two years was spent working not on this series but on my YouTube videos, which still had a plotline but were obviously just comedy and not meant to be taken seriously. Anyway, since trying to get featured here led to me feeling like I got kicked in the nether regions, I decided that it was an unreasonable goal, and that I would just make something that was fun, enjoyable, and not embarrassing for me to look back on in retrospect. That's all.

[I've got a bad feeling about this, lol]
Last edited by 256 Pi on Mon Jan 11, 2016 4:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Blizdi
Posts: 388
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 3:39 pm
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by Blizdi »

This is just my nitpicky nature, but I beg ya to fix her arm!
Image
User avatar
256 Pi
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:03 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by 256 Pi »

Blizdi wrote:This is just my nitpicky nature, but I beg ya to fix her arm!
lol. I've tried, I really have, but it just keeps coming out looking worse than it did before; this was about as good as I could make it look. A good spriter I ain't. :P
User avatar
Enthalpy
Community Manager
Posts: 5169
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:40 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, limited Spanish

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by Enthalpy »

I really recommend that you think about replanning this case from the ground up. Like I said, there were a fair number of hiccups, and those aren't all easy ones to fix.
Spoiler : :
One of the bigger things I noticed is that when you try to make a timeline/narrative of everything the killer did, there are quite a few things that don't add up. Why did Dormann shoot that gun at 1 o'clock? Why did Dormann decide to hide in the statue - did he really think that he could stay in there for two hours and not get noticed? Why did he hide in the statue, anyways? Did he know that Lotta was going to come in that room at the exact time there was going to be a blackout? Why did nobody hear the first gunshot?

Also - why did the court accept the Professor Layton puzzle as evidence? That isn't giving the court any actual evidence, but just rumors from a lot of people that get turned into a guess, if you can magically tell how many of them are lying. Why make us present that he was on the third floor at the start when we could just present the silencer from the beginning and end the rest? How do we get from "the clock was

I know you want to go on to the next case, but if you make those kinds of mistakes here, I'm very worried that when the case becomes more complicated, there will be bigger mistakes.
I can recommend some ways to do planning for a case if you'd like, but if you just want to go on to the next case, I'll leave it be.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
User avatar
256 Pi
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:03 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by 256 Pi »

Yep, I was afraid of this. Responses in red.
Enthalpy wrote:I really recommend that you think about replanning this case from the ground up. Like I said, there were a fair number of hiccups, and those aren't all easy ones to fix.
Spoiler : :
One of the bigger things I noticed is that when you try to make a timeline/narrative of everything the killer did, there are quite a few things that don't add up. Why did Dormann shoot that gun at 1 o'clock? Why did Dormann decide to hide in the statue - did he really think that he could stay in there for two hours and not get noticed? Why did he hide in the statue, anyways? Did he know that Lotta was going to come in that room at the exact time there was going to be a blackout? Why did nobody hear the first gunshot? Alright, this may sound like a total cop-out, but Norman was supposed to be an idiot who didn't think things through (he did, after all, go through the entire plot basically "for fun"). I suppose I didn't do such a good job on making this clear, probably should have touched on some of those other details. For instance, in the original setup the clock was shot because Norman thought that it would give him an alibi by making people think it was a different time (and before you jump out at me, I realize how absolutely ridiculous that sounds, like I said, Norman's an idiot.)

Also - why did the court accept the Professor Layton puzzle as evidence? That isn't giving the court any actual evidence, but just rumors from a lot of people that get turned into a guess, if you can magically tell how many of them are lying. Why make us present that he was on the third floor at the start when we could just present the silencer from the beginning and end the rest? How do we get from "the clock was ...well, unfinished sentence aside (sorry) what I was going for wasn't that the phone conversation itself was the evidence (Norman pointed out not two seconds later that Adrian isn't the word of god) but rather Adrian's over-the-phone testimony, mentioning that Norman was out for a long time (but nothing else).
And as for the silencer thing... that's actually a better idea in retrospect. I was trying to make the case longer in order to make it feel more fleshed out, but I guess it kinda backfired in that case :oops:


I know you want to go on to the next case, but if you make those kinds of mistakes here, I'm very worried that when the case becomes more complicated, there will be bigger mistakes. True, though tbh I think all these problems came down to me copying the crime setup from the original version. I really don't have a good excuse for this; I've already more or less thrown out the original setups for Cases 2 and 4 in their entirety into the garbage to be rewritten from scratch but I didn't have the energy to start this one over, as it felt like I was just starting over from square one.
I can recommend some ways to do planning for a case if you'd like, but if you just want to go on to the next case, I'll leave it be. Though I do in fact still want to move on, I'm actually curious about this, maybe that could help me in the future and with rewriting the other cases. I would like to hear about this.
Either way, thanks for the feedback. I am at least glad you enjoyed the characterization and the backstory more, at least it's good to know this wasn't a total wasted effort and that the parts that I spent the most time on and mattered most to me actually did turn out well. I probably will make some more changes to Case 1 to further clear up some of these issues, but it always felt kinda ironic to me that I was constantly getting stuck at the part that I originally felt was the least important, and I just wanted to get it over with. I'm kind of torn as to whether or not I'll be starting over Case 1 from scratch; maybe I will, but for now I want to get to work on the other cases in the series. Guess it doesn't help that I've gotten used to not being taken completely seriously.
User avatar
Enthalpy
Community Manager
Posts: 5169
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:40 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, limited Spanish

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by Enthalpy »

Spoiler : Planning Notes :
There are always three things you should keep in mind:
What happened?
What do the police think happened?
How does the player show what happened?

Question those three questions, and don't stop until everything is answered. You can start with one, write that out completely, and move on to the next if you'd like, but I prefer to work on one until I get to a good stopping point, then move to the next, and so on, so the pieces work with each other. To give a quick example:

Let's say that I decide what happened is: for some reason, this guy really wants to kill Lotta. He hides in a hollow statue that's also an exhibit in the display, then emerges to shoot Lotta.

Simple enough, but this raises questions. Why kill Lotta? Why was he able to crawl in an exhibit like that? Why don't the police notice that a gun and shooter seem to have vanished into thin air. I focus on the last one - well, I tell myself, there's also the defendant in the room, and she is seen suspiciously close to a gun. Maybe an older (but still) functional one in a case. So the police simply think that she brought some ammunition, loaded it into the gun, and fired.

Moving on to the next question - how do we correct this story? Well, we'll need a witness, but we'll also need to explain why that witness didn't actually see the shooting. Maybe we combine this with our previous problem of how he got inside the exhibit. The electricity died, so the security systems died too...

And so on. The goal, I cannot emphasize enough, is to fully and satisfyingly answer the three questions at the top. And once you have an outline, you can focus on making the specific puzzles compliant with the rules of cross-examination.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
User avatar
256 Pi
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:03 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by 256 Pi »

Thank you, this looks like it will come in handy later.
User avatar
256 Pi
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:03 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [T] Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor ●○○○ (Case 1 remade!)

Post by 256 Pi »

Hi, I'm back.
I've just updated Case 1 to fix the many logical plotholes I might have left behind (as a few different people pointed out, there were quite a lot. Kept finding more and more, even after I made this post). Not completely sure if there's still something I missed but I think I covered everything for now :P

I've also finally deleted the old prologue and Case 2. Since they're not included in the plotline and I'm pretty much rewriting Case 2 entirely from scratch there's really no need for them to still be around.
Post Reply