[T][AU]Shattered Glass ○★○○○ (Case 0 Teaser available)

[TheDoctor]

Thank you. That means a lot coming from a moderator.

In response to part of your review...

Spoiler : :

I completely forgot about the sound effects playing when the witnesses are shocked, as well as the shouting sound effects. I'll go ahead and put those in there as there were a few minor adjustments I wanted to make to some of the non-story text (namely, the speed).

[Blizdi]

*slow clap*

Awesome case, dem meta jokes and such XD

Looking foward to what else you have in store

[drvonkitty]

I really enjoyed this case. For a first time trial, you've got practically all the basics down, and you don't end up running into any of the brick walls that most first time cases do. The premise is strong and provides a good hook to get players intrigued, the characters still feel like themselves despite the 'reversal' changing their creeds (which is perhaps the most impressive part of the case), and the crime, while simple, made sense. I'm very excited to see more from you!

Spoiler : a theory :

I think that pill bottle was forged. Something is very suspicious about Von Karma...

[Blizdi]

I really enjoyed this case. For a first time trial, you've got practically all the basics down, and you don't end up running into any of the brick walls that most first time cases do. The premise is strong and provides a good hook to get players intrigued, the characters still feel like themselves despite the 'reversal' changing their creeds (which is perhaps the most impressive part of the case), and the crime, while simple, made sense. I'm very excited to see more from you!

Spoiler : a theory :

I think that pill bottle was forged. Something is very suspicious about Von Karma...

I am making a reply to your theory with my own

Spoiler : reply to theory :

What if, instead of him doing everything to win a guilty... he now does everything to convict the REAL guilty... so he still finds the truth... but illegally

[TheDoctor]

In response to your theories...

Spoiler : :

Here's a question, do you think he's guilty of forging evidence because you don't trust the fact that the linchpin to the case was based on a longshot? Or do you think he's forging just because he's von Karma? Remember, the GS von Karma is a different person from the SG von Karma, so he may or may not have forged anything. I'll never tell, you'll have to find out for yourselves.

[Blizdi]

Oh... you

I want dat Case 2 like rit nao...

[drvonkitty]

Spoiler : response :

The former. The fact that it was just so out of the blue and was the absolute key to winning the case seems very, very suspicious. Especially considering it was found by his 'private investigation team', which sounds even more suspicious.

[mAc Chaos]

Spoiler : Review :

Wow, I love the concept. I was wondering if we'd see Nick or Kristoph or other people since there were references made to "7 years ago" and such. And it looks like it's taking place during AJ? But Edgeworth is just starting out... obviously lots of stuff got reshuffled.

I like the music, although it didn't play long enough in segments to really get full enjoyment of it. There were also lots of text errors and animations not playing at the right time or looping too much (like when someone slams the desk).

But as far as the content goes, the characters are just right and the case feels like an actual AU of 1-1. I also wonder if this means DL-6 had Mia behind it instead of Von Karma. I also liekd that bit with Edgeworth going, "I'd never be traumatized enough to imagine a fictional scenario!" Yeah okay. Maybe Nick is the one that got DL-6'd this time.

Also thank god there are no super objections.

Just finished part 1. For that last testimony, there is no real link between the evidence and the contradiction. There is nothing in the text of the evidence to link it at all. You just kind of have to randomly imagine that it was self defense for no reason.

Ah, I see DL-6 happened to Edgeworth after all.

[Blizdi]

Spoiler : Review :

Wow, I love the concept. I was wondering if we'd see Nick or Kristoph or other people since there were references made to "7 years ago" and such. And it looks like it's taking place during AJ? But Edgeworth is just starting out... obviously lots of stuff got reshuffled.

I like the music, although it didn't play long enough in segments to really get full enjoyment of it. There were also lots of text errors and animations not playing at the right time or looping too much (like when someone slams the desk).

But as far as the content goes, the characters are just right and the case feels like an actual AU of 1-1. I also wonder if this means DL-6 had Mia behind it instead of Von Karma. I also liekd that bit with Edgeworth going, "I'd never be traumatized enough to imagine a fictional scenario!" Yeah okay. Maybe Nick is the one that got DL-6'd this time.

Also thank god there are no super objections.

Just finished part 1. For that last testimony, there is no real link between the evidence and the contradiction. There is nothing in the text of the evidence to link it at all. You just kind of have to randomly imagine that it was self defense for no reason.

Ah, I see DL-6 happened to Edgeworth after all.

Seriously? As soon as I got the

Spoiler : :

Anti-Depressants, and von Karma mentioned rage... I KNEW it was self-defense

[Gamer2002]

@two above

Spoiler : :

Not to mention Larry and Cindy had exact same rare blood-type. If knife left type O blood on the floor and Cindy wasn't injured by any knife, it had to be Larry's blood. Ergo, Cindy injured Larry and this was self-defense.

[TheDoctor]

@Gamer2002

Spoiler : :

Just want to say, O Positive is hardly a rare blood type. It's actually the most common one. The point is that Sawhit has type A Positive (which is incidentally the second most common type), meaning if it was the knife that left the stain, he couldn't have been the one injured by it.

@mAc Chaos

Spoiler : :

That last contradiction was a little tricky to handle. I tried to have von Karma give you a little gimme with the "anti-depressants are sometimes used to treat rage" thing, but at the same time, I didn't want to make it too obvious, so I didn't add the orange text there as that would have been a dead giveaway. Then there's also the knife itself. The victim doesn't have any wounds except for the statue's impact. Assuming the blood on the knife is O Positive (which is reasonable, since Sawhit saw the knife laying on the floor, and all the blood on the floor was tested as O Positive), this means that the blood had to have come from somewhere else. Can't be Sawhit since his blood type is wrong, so that leaves two possibilities. Either Larry Butz was wounded with it, and hid the knife to hide his own guilt, or the blood on the knife belonged to someone else entirely and disappeared for no reason.

As for the animation errors, that's more of a firefox issue. Chrome doesn't have this problem, but special sprites don't show up correct, and the APNGs used during the thought route don't animate at all. I am, however, curious as to what text errors you are referring to.

Incidentally, yes, there are some AJ era characters in this, and yes, Edgeworth is just starting out. The box art also indicates that Young!Franziska will be showing up, which in the GS universe is completely impossible, since that would mean we would need Young!Edgeworth instead of the current one. However, the SG universe is made by me, and I can reshuffle the timeline around as I see fit. Hence why Young!Franziska, AAEra!Edgeworth, and Old!Payne are all able to show up in the same series.

I also had a couple of reasons for doing it this way instead of the default timeline.

Spoiler : :

1: I'm using AJ!Ema because I wanted Gumshoe used as a Private Investigator. She's also kind of fun to write for.

2: I'm using Old!Payne because before this trial, he has only ever lost one other case. Can you guess who the defense was?

3: I'm using Young!Franziska because I just can't see her older self used as a sidekick.

[Enthalpy]

I played through the latest release.

Spoiler : General Thoughts :

First off, I really like it. It's great for a first-time trial! Really, it is. I'm looking forward to the continuation of this project. The mystery was (for the most part) solid, dialogue was funny when it was meant to be, and presentation effects worked mostly well. Tap covered a lot of what I would have wanted to say, so I'll stick to pointing out non-technical problems.

* The Thought Route doesn't quite work for me. As I relate below, I thought that the whole apartment was searched, but only that small portion was examined with Luminol. That's easy to fix by rewording the evidence.
* You have a much harder problem with the last testimony, which requires much more explanation. Think back to the final cross-examination in Turnabout of Courage, with the supra-objection. Were you able to "solve the mystery" there, or were you not able to see what the overall solution was? My guess is the former. Now, were there enough clues to get the individual components to the mystery? Yes, actually! Realizing that the original autopsy report was the correct one would tell you that the real murder scene wasn't the tower, as was when Stickler claimed he smacked the victim. Noticing that the time Edgeworth thought was correct almost exactly matched the time the guest to the tower was off by would tell you the person you saw could very well have been Edgeworth. Maria's testimony implies some sort of behind-the-scenes trick with Larry and Edgeworth, just like the switch trick we previously stated. Courage had the problem that instead of being given clues to the solution, we were given only clues to the clues to the solution and expected to figure it out from there. That's bad game design.
So why am I bringing this up now? The final cross-examination here has the same problem. The player is expected to deduce that Larry killed Cindy in justified self-defense because she attacked him with the knife due to not taking her medication to control her temper. What are the clues to this? Well, we know that in her house there is an unopened bottle of prescription anti-depressants from two weeks ago. We know (if we bothered to remember the long list of things it treats) that it treats anger. We know there was a bloodied knife that Larry removed from the scene, and that the victim bears no injuries. But can we get from here to your theory? I don't see how the player could. Just like what Courage did, you're giving the player clues to clues to a solution. We have clues that the victim might have had an anger problem, but certainly no hard proof. It makes sense that the blood was Larry's, and it seems reasonable that Cindy attacked Larry, but that's certainly not the only explanation.
I appreciate what you're trying to do here, make an honestly difficult puzzle, but at the moment, it's quite unfair. The player cannot be expected to go from the clues he or she is given to your solution.
* I had a feeling of detachment throughout the game. There wasn't enough focus on the defendant for there to be an emotional "acquit Frank Sahwit!" pull, and I couldn't quite bring myself to get fully pulled into the mystery because the courtroom drama felt too scaled back.

Apart from those, the game was very well done!

Below is my hybrid Stream of Consciousness, with some technical notes. Note that I played in v6, and FXXXX denotes "Frame XXXX."

Spoiler : Technical Notes :

F006: Asterik missing.
F009: Two-dot ellipsis.
Nice synchronization with music and effects in prologue.
F0019: 4line
F0028: Color-speed glitch. Never enclose a text in span tags, but always separate colored text via merged frames.
F0036: Missing period.
F0039: to->too
F0047: Run-on. Missing nametag.
You have a problem with "ghost attorneys" in the beginning. This is where attorney mini-sprites don't show up in the courtroom overview.
F0081: Change lime green to blue.
F0107: 4line
F0111: 4line
F0113: Animation seems to happen one time more than needed.
F0137: Animation doesn't look quite right, again.
F0165: Add a space after the last two hyphens on the right.
F0246: subcriptions.->subscriptions; Take the period out of the color.
There should be a frame saying that the knife is mentally added to the Court Record, or something to that effect.
F0366: Add a space at the end.
F0380: Color-speed glitch.
F0382: 4line
F0388: "shabby, man"
F0415: It sounds odd to speak of a witness as having a side.
F0580: Timing is a bit off.
F0587: Color-span problem.
F0609: Timing off.
F0612: Color-span problem.
F0671: 4line
F0697: 4line; remove "to"
F0745-6: Animation seems a bit off. Can't quite place why.
F0754: Missing timer.
F0757: 4line
I feel like there should be more of a fight over getting Skye on the stand. Payne doesn't even try to resist.
F0793: Add "no background" command.
F0816: 4line
F0824: 4line
F0830: 4line
F0837: Missing period.
F0842: "on"->"of"
More ghost attorneys.
F0864-5: There's that troublesome Payne animation again.
F0867: This and the other merged frames form a 4line.
F1014: 4line
F1015: Missing period.
F1123: 4line
The Thought Route is... slightly off. I thought they searched the whole apartment but only applied Luminol to a portion, not that they only searched some. It's also unclear why the knife has to have been hidden in the apartment because what happened when Larry and Sahwit met is unclear.
F1158: 4line
F1196: 4line
F1213: 4line
F1236: 4line
Not enough drama...
... This is preposteorous. Forgery. Really.
F1311: 4line
F1325: Animation problem.
F1276: Get the question mark out of the orange.
Wait... WHERE DID WE GET THAT THE VICTIM WAS PLANNING TO KILL HIM!?!?
WAIT WHAT?!?!!? How did we conclude that the victim knifed the defendant...?
F1385: Timing seems off.
F1427: Missing merge?
Inconsistent on whether text blips for asides get blips. Compare to start.

[TheDoctor]

Fixed several issues mentioned in the Stream of Consciousness. However, the asterisk mentioned in F006 was not missing, that was a direct quote from The First Turnabout.

I left a couple of 4lines as is because I plan on fixing them later when I revamp the final confrontation a little bit. As for the animation timing, that's mainly a Firefox issue. Evidently it never stops looping the animation once it's in memory. Chrome doesn't have this issue, but it also doesn't play apng files.

[PWfan666]

Thank you Gumshoe, you deserve a raise.

Thanks for this case, it was a nice one. And it would be a good introduction for the other trials on AAO for the players who never played a Phoenix Wright game before.

Some comments :

Spoiler : :

The proof of anger management can hardly be called a proof, since there was no print nor blood type/dna identified on it. I found this a bit misleading.

You should put credits at the end, it never hurts.

[TheDoctor]

Thank you for playing. In response to your spoiler...

Spoiler : Response to above post :

Regarding the anger management issues, I do plan on reworking that point later on (a little too busy right now, unfortunately).

As for adding the credits at the end, I prefer to place them in the beginning just because it's more likely for people to notice them that way. I will be adding them to the end of the final case in Shattered Glass however, just to make it more like the official games.