AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

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E.D.Revolution
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by E.D.Revolution »

Nahh, don't apologize. You're just awesome! :pearlhappy:

I made this guide in response to recent failures (read: past month) in which I see a pattern of.

Do you have some advice you'd like to impart? You will be credited.

About people reading guides... That what I hope people do instead of just jumping into the thing and simply posting a case and then it gets bashed by experts. Yeah, we're doing this from experience.
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by Mimi »

It's difficult to get back up after being bashed, yes. (Remembers her noobie days...)
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by Jean Of mArc »

Hmmm... advice...

To be honest, I think you said just about everything I could have thought of! :)
Maybe that people shouldn't be afraid to request help, and get feedback and ideas from other people on the forum? I think new-comers might feel the need to "establish" themselves first before anyone is willing to talk to or help them.

Also, I think people have a tendency to forget (or just don't know) to manually hit the Enter key to make a new line. I think a lot of people just type the whole way though without making manual new lines. It looks fine in the editor, but in the player is runs to the end of the textbox and then jumps to a newline halfway through the word. I don't know about everyone else, but that's my pet peeve when I play AAO trials. :P

Also, and this is for newbies as well as experienced, is there a style check-list? I've noticed that many trials, even featured ones, have different styles than the actual games, for example no pauses between sentences, appropriate shake/flash and SFX combinations, or overusing dots, like this:
Um.......... the truth is
.............
..... I don't know.
Or I have also seen some trials that have too many run-ons, like this:
He was shot once, and
then he was stabbed, and then
he was put in the closet...
...where he was later found
by a guy walking by, who
was my best friend in...
...High School. He haven't
seen each other since then
because...
(You get the idea)

Anyway, I'm not sure if those are above the scope of this guide, but if there IS a style guide, it would be good to make some links to them, me thinks.

Again, great job! You've saved a lot of other people a lot of typing time, trying to tell new people the exact same things over and over.
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by Mimi »

A thought just came to me. I don't know if it could fit into this guide though.

What about a section for beta-testing? It could be in the Helpful Hints part.
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by E.D.Revolution »

@Jean, thanks for that little tidbit. I did cover a lot, hence the "Comprehensive" in the title. About the stylistics... That will be covered under Tap's QA guide, so it's out of the scope of the thread. :wink:

@Mimi, how do you suppose you can contribute to betatesting? That's something I can't easily explain.
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by Meph »

E.D.Revolution wrote:I made this guide in response to recent failures (read: past month) in which I see a pattern of.
Maybe the euphemism "learning curves" would be better. :P
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by E.D.Revolution »

Probably. Then again, I'm not the best when it comes to tact.
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by E.D.Revolution »

Added a whole entry under "Planning"
  • Also, don't forget to gather custom resources, if needed. Best place so far is Court-records, but Ace Attorney Spain and Doulifee are also good. Currently, the Editor does NOT have every piece of evidence, and some sprites are incorrect. You can use Bruce Goodman's sprites on the Editor, but you MUST credit Mikker in-trial and in-thread.
    • Note: if need something that belongs to another user, ask first. Then note who it's from and credit them (unless stated otherwise). NOT crediting the artist or author is the same as stealing and that is a punishable offense on AAO. Be careful.
    • On Court-records' media section, you do NOT need permission to use sprites or evidence. However, for custom poses you must either
      1. Ask permission or
      2. Credit them if you can't get hold of them right away.
    • Please do not hotlink from Court records, AA Spain, Doulifee, or anywhere that you have obtained the media. You must download them and upload them to a site that allows hotlinking, such as dropbox. The minute that a mod gets word that your trial contains hotlinks from those sites, the link to your trial will be removed.
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by SuperGanondorf »

E.D.Revolution wrote:Added a whole entry under "Planning"
  • Also, don't forget to gather custom resources, if needed. Best place so far is Court-records, but Ace Attorney Spain and Doulifee are also good. Currently, the Editor does NOT have every piece of evidence, and some sprites are incorrect. You can use Bruce Goodman's sprites on the Editor, but you MUST credit Mikker in-trial and in-thread.
    • Note: if need something that belongs to another user, ask first. Then note who it's from and credit them (unless stated otherwise). NOT crediting the artist or author is the same as stealing and that is a punishable offense on AAO. Be careful.
    • On Court-records' media section, you do NOT need permission to use sprites or evidence. However, for custom poses you must either
      1. Ask permission or
      2. Credit them if you can't get hold of them right away.
    • Please do not hotlink from Court records, AA Spain, Doulifee, or anywhere that you have obtained the media. You must download them and upload them to a site that allows hotlinking, such as dropbox. The minute that a mod gets word that your trial contains hotlinks from those sites, the link to your trial will be removed.
(bolded because it's too annoying to sort through the list BBCode)

This section needs more clarification. You talk about CR's media page and then jump right into custom poses as though those two are in the same place. You make it sound like the custom poses are on the media page. These should be two entirely separate points, as custom sprites have nothing to do with CR's media. Here's how I would write the section:
  • Also, don't forget to gather custom resources, if needed. Best place so far is Court-records, but Ace Attorney Spain and Doulifee are also good. Currently, the Editor does NOT have every piece of evidence, and some sprites are incorrect. You can use Bruce Goodman's sprites on the Editor, but you MUST credit Mikker in-trial and in-thread.
    • Note: if need something that belongs to another user, ask first. Then note who it's from and credit them (unless stated otherwise). NOT crediting the artist or author is the same as stealing and that is a punishable offense on AAO. Be careful.
    • You do NOT need prior permission to use resources from Court-Records' media section, but you should still credit them.
    • For any other resource from anywhere, such as sprites or music made by other members or websites, you MUST either
      1. Ask permission or
      2. Credit them if you've done your best to reach them but can't.
      This is extremely important, as stealing others' work is totally unacceptable and will have consequences
    • Please do not hotlink from Court records, AA Spain, Doulifee, or anywhere that you have obtained the media. You must download them and upload them to a site that allows hotlinking, such as dropbox. The minute that a mod gets word that your trial contains hotlinks from those sites, the link to your trial will be removed.
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by E.D.Revolution »

Thank you, SG. It looks much crisper and more concise! :D

If anyone wants to contribute to a "betatesting" section, please do so. I will try to fit it in somewhere.

Actually, I might separate Execution/Presentation, since those are two different issues. I just need a good section on betatesting to go under Execution.
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by Phantom »

You know, I totally forgot to add something with the guide:

-Know the type of "base" of music to work with your character themes!
-Don't pick your favorite VGM, pick a song that works instead!


-For example, you shouldn't use Rock music for Godot, Godot is a Jazzy-type character (Even his theme song from the T&T proves this).

-People need to be careful when it comes to type of music they insert in their trial...I've seen a bunch of highly unfitting song choices used in quite a few trials and it could be a turn-off revealing it without actually testing to see if the song "works" for said trial scene.
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by Phantom »

One more question I need clarification for:
For a first-time trial case, the case in WHOLE should be a total of minimum 1000 frames correct?

Okay, so for each PART, what should the average frame count be in order to flesh things out? Can the experts help me out on this one?
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by SuperGanondorf »

To add on to Phantom's music tip, try to stay at least fairly consistent with your music. You don't need, for example, 50 different Objection themes for one trial. By no means should you restrict yourself to a certain number of songs or only one song for each purpose (on the contrary, you should experiment as much as possible for the bet effect), but you shouldn't use so much music that no song plays more than once. This makes your trial seem sloppy.
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Ace Attorneys: Emerging Legacies Team Member
Creator of AAO's #1 Roleplay, Endless Time! Come join today!

It even has a TVTropes page!

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ENDLESS TIME: WINNER OF BEST AAO RP
Also the winner of:
Spoiler : Endless Time's Awards :
Coolest Original Weapon or Power: The Relics
Best Villain: Thereme
Most Well-Written Character, Most Original Character Concept, Best Design: Narome (LunchPolice)
Most Depressing Character, Greatest Backstory: Kenneth Roymond (GuardianDreamer)
Greatest RP Moment Ever, Saddest Moment: Narome's Feeding off Mika
Best NPC: The Doctor (ShadowEdgeworth)
Best Fight Scene: Drey Wilkins vs. Narome (Drey Wilkins, LunchPolice)
Best World
Most Eccentric Character: Ewyn (GuardianDreamer)
Best Duo: Narome and Kea (LunchPolice, Paradoxinparticles)
Biggest Crowning Moment of Awesome: The Sabolin Battle
And Best GM: ME ;P
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Re: Guide: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by Mimi »

I have a character tip. Up to you to add it or not, since I guess it's a bit redundant. But it's a bit specific and it does tell the noobies the terrible mistake we all commit and hate.

-When writing OCs, make sure they're unique, but likable at the same time. Don't copy personalities from witnesses or characters already used in AA or slap on a different name on the character you're using sprites from and use the same personalities. Edgeworth could become extremely comical and such if written in a certain way. Dialogue can really influence how predetermined interpretations of a character. :wink:
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Re: AAO's Comprehensive Guide for New Trial Authors

Post by Holhol »

I think it should be worth noting that improvisation isn't generally a bad thing, just not the type of thing.

AA games are generally complicated, so it should require pre-planning. It's generally a bad idea to improvise when writing a case, and will most likely come out as a failure.

However, the way the guide is written, it makes it sound like it's always a bad idea to improvise. This is not the case, as if you're writing, say, a novel, improvisation is pretty much OK.

Just that part was bugging me. 'Tis all...
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