Short and Sweet

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DWaM
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by DWaM »

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singi killed my last dream

i must have this
Reverie
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by Reverie »

First of all, congratulations to enigma and DWaM.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I was waiting for both reviews to be posted before I replied.
With that said, replies in...
...Red is overrated.
Spoiler : Response to Ferdie :
Grave of the Turnabout is an ambitious unfinished trial by Spyromed. He experiments with many unusual devices here - multiple witnesses appearing in a single testimony, an unusual presentation technique,
If you think this was overmechanic'd, then the witnesses were initially going to say stuff that could be "stored," DanganRonpa-style, and used against other statements. Due to the complete lack of any actual contradictions, (two press-all testimonies, then the rebuttals instantly begin) this never wound up happening.

and a stepwise (and highly confusing) diagram of a key piece of evidence.
Yeah, I really need to either do a request for that on the art section or replace it with something that isn't so convoluted and confusing.

Does GOTT tell a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end?

As an unfinished case, GOTT doesn't tell a complete story. It meanders, requiring the player to make strange moves. The player may have figured out what I believe to be a major part of the actual crime, only to be diverted onto confusing side-avenues of argument. The opening is strong, if a little long, but the story just doesn't seem to go anywhere just yet.
I don't think I did too well tying the story into this. There IS a story, but as usual it's only fully revealed during the final confrontation, which doesn't exist yet.
Also, if by "figuring out a major part of the crime," you mean the lighter, and tried to present it when Rachel asked how she made Solomon leave, I already knew that was terrible and it's something I need to get fixed, somehow. I must have forgotten about that one, but I wasn't sure how to fix it without skipping a CE. Then again, there's likely a lot of other sections you could be talking about with that...


Does GOTT use frames effectively?

When we suggested that entrants "keep it simple" and that they make each frame count, we didn't expect to get a case with testimonies this huge. The first testimony contains about a dozen statements, which fill the CR with 14 pieces of evidence. The second is ALSO huge, and requires massive pressing, and simply does not do much good for the plot - a detailed elaboration of every single movement of every character. One large and frustrating segment goes basically nowhere.
I'm not really sure what the section that goes nowhere is because I think I've lost count of those. I'm hoping it was something that was going to be addressed later but wasn't. As for the former issue, I might just try adding some kind of investigation that isn't just talking to the characters so that the evidence isn't just dumped in one testimony.

Fatal bugs twice made me replay major stretches of the game, making the length of the opening portions of the case and trial even more tedious. I think the use of multiple witnesses in one testimony was intended to compress the case and make it shorter, but it feels longer.
It was intended to, yes. The bugs... well, I don't really know what I can say to that, I just failed to playtest this properly.

Does GOTT have good character development? Is the dialogue well-written?

Quite solid!
What.
GOTT takes its time to develop its characters, and with the exception of some forced clue mentions ("DID I MENTION THE WINDOW JAMS"), the dialogue clicks!
I don't think the window was the only thing that was forced. The accusation towards Lawrence was like this too, and that accusation was incredibly dumb, because Rachel hadn't exactly cleared her name at that point. The characers themselves... I'm not sure, I know I don't like them all that much, and I misjudged how many I should've used. They're all necessary in some way or another, but eight (alive) OCs was a severe misjudgement on my part for a 4,000 frame case.
I get the sense that these characters have a shared history, and that they know each other's quirks. They bounce off each other with jabs and retorts, and even if some are a little two-dimensional, they're all entertaining.
The two (living) Glades are supposed to be kinda "meh," simply because they have some development later on that, yet again, I didn't get to, but I figured would be eaiser if they didn't start out too complex. Simon, in particular, didn't go how I wanted him to and devloved into a guy with a stutter, and that was about it, while he was supposed to be mostly level-headed and somewhat relatable. Then I screwed this up, and now there's the version that exists now.
These people need a tighter story to inhabit, but they, themselves, are worth spending time with.

What about puzzle design and gameplay?

The puzzles are often opaque and forced. One seems to defy physical reality. Even after arguing with Enthalpy for a while about a key diagram, we couldn't agree on what the object in question looked like; color-coding would help a lot. Others require the player to make leaps of logic in service of answers that a savvy reader will know are probably wrong anyway. One involves a very misleading description paired with a free-entry text prompt. Another involves filling "holes" in an argument that doesn't make much sense in the first place.
I have good enough guesses at what most of these are, but I don't remember giving a misleading description with either of the free text entry prompts. The rest... yes, I really can't do logic very well at all, as you've probably gathered. The only remotely decent part is the "final trick," yet to be implemented, which, after thinking about it, seems like a rip-off of another central trick on this site. It has some differences, but a large part of it would probably make people just think back to that other case, had they played it.

Guesswork is the rule of the day.

While the ambition is appreciated on some level, "this is about making a good case, not an epic one" should have served as a caution against this sort of thing.

How's the presentation?

Okay, presentation is solid but incomplete. Character sprites are well-chosen, but music and other details obviously haven't been added. The title screen is pixelated as well. Promising, but unfinished.
This is really the only point in the whole review that I hadn't picked up on beforehand. I'm not sure what the "other details" were, but the music works fine for me (and apparently Enthalpy, judging from his remark about it) even when logged out of kiwi6. The title screen... There's a lot in the case that looks like that that are mostly placeholders. The window, primarily. The master key's shoddy recoloring for another, and basically anything that wasn't the map is pretty terrible, graphics-wise.

Overall:

This is an unfinished case, and needs more beta testing. I do want to see it finished, but large chunks require cutting and rewriting. Evidence should be given more naturally, and the point should be gotten to sooner.
Yeah, I expected this (actually, I expected a much more negative review. The remark about the characters threw me off, considering only one of them came even remotely naturally to write, with the others just being one-dimensional character arcetypes that are seen all the time) after I finished failing to test the case and realised that most of it was horribly vague, in terms of the logic aspects. I was already working on a revamp before either review came in just because of the crime / rebuttals.

I do think the setup for the crime itself is intriguing, and the character work is great! I'm willing to help you develop this a bit more if you like. I'm undecided as to whether I really want to let someone waste their time on this or if I can try to revamp this myself and inevitably fail, but if it's something you'd honestly be willing to help with, I'd really appreciate that.
Spoiler : Response to Enth :
One Sentence Summary

This case quite clearly has not been completed or tested, and while there is enough to review, I am not comfortable being as explicit as I would be otherwise on this one.
...This makes me wonder what the SoC, final score, and an unedited, fully critial review would look like. (Incidentally, if any of those do exist, I'd be interested in seeing them, considering I'm going to try and rewrite this.)

Does it tell a complete story?

No. We had a beginning, but… it doesn’t feel like we’ve made any progress since then. There was one cross-examination that changed things, but by that point in the game, I had lost my sense of direction completely that I have no clue if that one cross-examination meant anything.


Is it economical with frame use and pacing?

Sadly, no. In the beginning, pacing started out alright, though certain dialogues (chiefly Ashley’s opening monologue and the talk with Lucy) needed trimming. Then we got to the trial. Its current structure requires tons of frame wasting, and poor pacing. I’ll quote Ferdie here:

“The first testimony contains about a dozen statements, which fill the CR with 14 pieces of evidence. The second is ALSO huge, and requires massive pressing, and simply does not do much good for the plot - a detailed elaboration of every single movement of every character. Worst of all, one large and frustrating segment goes basically nowhere, introducing practically no new information, when the player-character could have made a much stronger argument instead and saved time.”


Characters/Story

I was neutral to these characters. Certainly none of them were bad. And for the most part, the dialogue works. But I can’t find myself caring about them, or even entertained by them, or even remembering them. I suspect that this is in large part because everything was subsumed by the trial portion, which took all my attention to follow. That left me with the “meet the characters” portion which, while solid, was meant to support the characters everywhere else rather than carry everything by itself.
This is more how I feel about them myself, to be honest. They were meant to work on a basic level, with some simple development near the end, but neither ended up working out. Rachel has at least two of those female character tropes that are so prominent, and nothing else.

Gameplay/Puzzles

This was the trial's weakest point, and it constantly dragged down the rest of your case. Because I was constantly trying to figure out what was going on, I couldn’t pay attention to your characters, your dialogue, your presentation… Anything. I believe Ferdie has agreed to help you rework this. I highly recommend you take him on that.

Presentation

Presentation started out okay, but towards the end, it became clear that presentation details were being neglected in the interests of pumping out more frames. My only overarching concern is that the music selection is too large.

The amount of music is probably too much, but each one was actually chosen for a specific situation, and not just to play once. I could probably cut a few of these, though. As for the frames taking over the presentation, that's right on the mark; I was rushing to finish it, and ended up not doing so, while retaining that bad presentation.

I agree with Ferdie that the character sprites really worked for your characters.

Overall

This case has a lot of potential, and I think Spyromed as an author has a lot of potential. But this case didn’t actualize either of them. The idea is fine, but the trial needs a complete restructuring.
The trial's poor, the presentation due to the deadline, but the majority of it due to the fact that I kinda lost the focus of the case during planning. I wanted a good enough crime, and then focus on the characters. Then I got obsessed with making the crime "good enough" so that it wouldn't be too easy, and eventually everything got convoluted and collapsed in on itself, as well as leaving no room for the characters in the way I wanted there to be. Hell, the crime was even made the wrong way around, with what the player knows being done first, and the rest designed around that.

I'm not going to get too worked up about it - it doesn't even break 3,000 frames yet, which isn't really something that requires a massive amount of work - but I'm fairly sure that the case got a worse reaction from one of the judges than a certain livesteam they made of another case did.
Some of the issues are because I was going to rush it for the comp., and if I hadn't, maybe a couple would be fixed. I actually wasn't sure whether I wanted to submit it or not, but in some twisted way I glad I ended up doing so because now I know for sure not to release it yet. In fact, if this competition hadn't existed, then I probably wouldn't have aimed to make something less than 4,000 frames, and the bad qualities of this would've leaked over to some other case with even more frames.
So yes, time to revamp.
















200th post get.
Last edited by Reverie on Sat Jan 24, 2015 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Zeel1™
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by Zeel1™ »

I didn't really expect to get second, that's awesome! Yeah, the ending lobby scene definitely needed more time. I did that with like two hours left 'till deadline and honestly I could have worked longer on that but KK was kinda rushing me at that point 'cause he really seemed really worried I wouldn't get it done in time... :P But yeah at that point I just really wanted to make sure it was all over with.
Spoiler : More spoilery stuff :
And honestly the 'message' was just a thing I did at the last minute 'cause I really liked that one speech and then as I was writing that last portion, it occurred to me all of the strangers you end up saving...

Kidman's not really meant to seem very realistic, in a way. For the most part you don't even see the real her in the first place, she was a goth for about twelve hours of her life, almost the entirety of her that you see is just a phase she's going through. And by the end she's more or less oblivious to the severity of the situation as she's too happy about her boyfriend to think about it too much. As the gothic thing was only temporary, I got to thinking of how she'd be presented if she ever came back. I felt like what would fit with what you see here is having her be a very highly emotional type, but only going one way at a time, if that makes any sense. Have her personality change completely depending entirely on how things are going for her, so if everything's alright for her personally, than she's perfectly alright regardless of what's going on around her. She can SEE that stuff is bad, but it doesn't exactly affect her. But if something bad happens in her personal life, she wears it around constantly. She doesn't give much thought to anything other than this.

There honestly wasn't much basis for her character, I kinda came up with her as I went. When coming up with this case, I quickly decided I wanted some kind of suicidally depressed character to be a witness for the sole purpose of doing that thing with the handcuffs. Of course you also need to get PAST that point. So, I needed a character that was so thoroughly depressed that they're perfectly okay with killing themselves and everyone else but also one that can be convinced not to as easily as showing them a single piece of evidence. That's where she came from.

Her namepun incidentally might not make much sense if she came back, it's based on Marilyn Manson. Because y'see... man-son, kid-man... :awesome:

Basically DIE thinks being a stranger makes you meaningless, under the basis that no one cares about anyone they don't know about. They see that they died, but they don't really think much about them or who is being hurt by it. To him, the only way to mean anything is to make as many people know you as possible, in other words, to become famous. He therefore wants to become a famous serial killer, so that he will mean something. It's also why he can kill so callously at all, they're strangers to HIM, so their lives don't matter to him. That's pretty much his motivation, he said all that at differing points.

It's kinda-sorta a commentary on how victims in general are often treated in cases, (both fangame and official, mind you) which I thought made it kind of an interesting thing to bring up.
Also I wouldn't mind co-hosting. If that's not something you wanna do, I could compromise by giving him the theme idea I had in mind. :P
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by enigma »

Zeel, it would be a pleasure to cohost with you (assuming the judges allow it but, hell, I don't see why they wouldn't.) I do have quite a few comp theme ideas rattling around, myself, so I figure we should probably chat sometime and see what we end up with.
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by Enthalpy »

@ DWaM, enigma, Zeel:

An enigma/Zeel hosting duo is perfectly allowed.

@ DragonTrainer:

Sure! First priority is getting back to Gamer on Angela Light, however.

@ Spyromed:

I'd say you're being too critical of yourself. Good luck on the rewrite!
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Was there anybody besides Zeel, Tap, and enigma/DWaM who requested SoCs?
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by Reverie »

Enthalpy wrote: Was there anybody besides Zeel, Tap, and enigma/DWaM who requested SoCs?
hello
(Also the final score, if possible.)
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by clcman »

Enthalpy wrote:
Was there anybody besides Zeel, Tap, and enigma/DWaM who requested SoCs?
Already got one from Ferdie, might as well get another.
Also (to the surprise of absolutely no one:)
Congratulations DWAM and enigma.
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by lazyplague »

Excuse u enth, I think we all know who the real winner is... MY TRIAL.

http://aceattorney.sparklin.org/jeu.php?id_proces=39588
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by enigma »

Just a note to say that me and Zeel have chosen a doozy of a theme and the new comp will be up tomorrow.

(Also, CLC, I was surprised... :( )
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by kwando1313 »

Dave wrote:Excuse u enth, I think we all know who the real winner is... MY TRIAL.

http://aceattorney.sparklin.org/jeu.php?id_proces=39588
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by drvonkitty »

Congratulations to DWAM + enigma! :D
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by Lind »

Dave wrote:Excuse u enth, I think we all know who the real winner is... MY TRIAL.

http://aceattorney.sparklin.org/jeu.php?id_proces=39588
Excuse YOU, because MY trial is undoubtedly the winner, as it is both the shortest AND the sweetest.

http://aceattorney.sparklin.org/jeu.php?id_proces=72043
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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by lazyplague »

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Re: Short and Sweet

Post by kwando1313 »

not loadable trials are best trials
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Re: Short and Sweet

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