Umineko FanFiction Discussion

[Thunder Book]

Originally Posted by LyricalAura

I haven't actually released a forgery yet, so I don't know if I'm qualified to say this, but I find it easier to come up with tricks from the detective's perspective, as if I was solving a mystery that someone else made. To get into that mindset, I start with a bizarre crime scene first and then work backward trying to figure out how to construct it.

That's pretty helpful advice actually. I think I have a clearer idea of how to approach some of this now.

Renall's post was really helpful too.

[TwilightsCall]

From my experience over the past few days, I've found that once I've picked the culprit, the why-dunnit flows pretty naturally from it. Sort of like, if you are definitely the culprit, there is only so many reasons why you would choose to kill all these people, and it honestly felt like I was writing a multiple choice test where all the answers were correct.

After that, my thought process went to, well who is he/she going to kill? Why would they kill those people specifically? After that, I stole Meta's idea that I heard of from Kinjo's game, where I think 'if I was the culprit, and I wanted to make a closed room mystery out of this, how would I do it? How could I do it? Why would I do it that way, and how would I have to prepare for it before hand?'

And now I am currently at the stage of piecing together the narrative to try and give enough clues that its solvable. My biggest fear is that I will forget to leave a clue for something and end up having someone smack me with Knox's 8th

At first I planned to go about things in the way Renall's first option looked like, but in the end I seemed to have taken the second option without even realizing it >.>

All of your guys' posts have been very helpful, so thank you for your input

Also out of curiosity, would you guys rather try and solve a mystery where there are a wide variety of possibilities for culprits and you have to narrow it down, or it doesn't seem like anyone could be a culprit and you have to find out who it is despite that? I know both methods have their merits, but I'm curious if there's one style that people would prefer over the other for any reason.

[Captain Bluebeard]

Originally Posted by TwilightsCall

So I have a question to everyone who made those Forgeries in the past...


Does it always feel like, after you've written the mystery, that everyone is going to see through it instantly the first time they read it? Because honestly, I just finished making each of the murder scenes, and the answers feel so...obvious to me, that I find it hard to believe someone will have difficulty solving it.

Of course, it might change a bit once I've written the narration to fill in the spaces around it, but I just wanted to make sure that this isn't a red flag for 'way too easy'

I am currently working on a forgery based on an insane trick I've come up with a while ago (around when EP5 was released). Well, it doesn't seem obvious to me, in fact I tried to make it as unsolveable as possible, but that's only thanks to the red truth. Seriously, the particluar closed-room wouldn't work in a normal novel, because the very reason it becomes a closed room is because the door is open. Then again, I guess I'd have to see it surrounded by all the narrations and a couple of hints here and there to be able to tell for sure.

However, without the red truth, yes, it totally happens to me. I've had some friends of mine test a VN (indpended from Umineko) that I've been working on, and I've been worried they were going to solve it in a matter of seconds (seriously, all those foreshadowings), but since nothing of the sort happens, it just means that looking at an already solved riddle (which you created yourself) is bound to appear obvious. It also greatly depends on the reader.

[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Attention Renall.
Well you might nor agree with me, but a mystery is in the first place a work of narrative before a game.

Well, it depends what you're writing it for. It's certainly possible to write a little story that's, more or less, a game. That doesn't mean it can't have story value as a narrative unto itself, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but all the same you don't have to, especially with a short story.

Sometimes a short story can just be built around a cool idea you had. A lot of science fiction is pretty much a sci-fi author coming up with some cool concept but not having enough there to flesh out into a full work. You do get your big important works at times, but for every Foundation that Asimov wrote, he wrote a little robot story to explore some facet of his Three Laws idea or just his ideas about robots in general.

Similarly, you may just want to write a quick short story based entirely around a trick, trap, closed room, or murder concept. If you do, writing the story around that idea is fine. You can even handwave the why if you compartmentalize the story enough (maybe the reasons why aren't brought up in the section of narrative you've chosen to focus on).

If you're trying to write a full-on "Umineko-style forgery," then you probably at least want to try to put as much thought into all the whos and whys of construction as Ryukishi did. But I wouldn't say you have to, if it fails to suit your purposes.

[GabrieliosP]

When I create mysteries, I tend to use the culprit's point of view. It is better (for me)to create closed rooms this way than using the detective's POV. I did this for the first twilight and it took me less time than I thought.

[Captain Bluebeard]

I would agree with Renall here, after all, every story begins with a sudden flash of inspiration that you later develop. Personally, every mystery I've ever created starts with a half-baked idea. A potential murderer, or a cool closed room, and then later fill into the blanks until it turns into a story, and in the end read through it again and correct any inaccuracies or put in hints and foreshadowings, but usually the pieces fall to place by themselves.

Originally Posted by GabrieliosP

When I create mysteries, I tend to use the culprit's point of view. It is better (for me)to create closed rooms this way than using the detective's POV. I did this for the first twilight and it took me less time than I thought.

How exactly do you mean that? I mean, isn't the culprit's point of view more like a confession rather than a mystery? Well, a novel which has the culprit of a classic 'Sherlock' case as the main character wouldn't definitely be exceptionally fascinating, but not a mystery. But I suppose you don't mean it that way.

Personally, the best part of writing a mystery (especially a loooong one like Umineko) is the moment where you write the answers and drop the bomb before everyone's face, and then the culprit talks about their sad past and boo-hoo tragic childhood, which is nice, because you get to actually show the pieces that make up a dark character which is fun to write, or perhaps completely deconstruct a character who has managed to trick everyone and appear amiable until that moment.

[GabrieliosP]

I meant in the process of creating the mystery, not writing the story. I thought "how would the culprit kill the first twilight victims?" and elaborated the answer for the mystery with that. That's why I said it was better to "create closed rooms" that way.

[SeagullCrazy]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

If you really want to be sure your story will keep being entertaining try to make several levels of mystery, so even if something gets solved something else might not. This also gives you the liberty of creating various level of difficulty.

It is boring if you solve everything but it isn't fun if you don't solve anything. Make it so the mystery has various levels from easy to very hard so that it will be impossible to get the whole picture, but easy to get at least some of it.

This is exactly it.

Spoiler for When the Seacats Cry:

Intentionally or not, this is how most of my mysteries in my fangames ended up being. Quite honestly I didn't even try to make a mystery "hard" or "easy", I just made a mystery and let it be the difficulty that it is.

Of course, my intention was to make Trick's closed rooms extremely difficult, but I think I accomplished that simply by not giving as much information as I could have right away, rather than making each closed room truly difficult.

What helped me write my mysteries is actually not coming up with a trick itself, from a character's perspective in the story, but instead from the reader's perspective. Umineko is a special case where you can intentionally show your reader false information, although it has to be relevant to the story in some way. In each of my forgeries I always focused on how I wanted the reader to see the game, and what I wanted to show them, and start from there. For example, I rotated the deaths of characters to give them all equal screen time (those who died early in the first game died later in the second game, and so on). I also rotated who was detective and who was culprit so that no one got the same "role" twice. And I don't use the same trick twice either. I also had fun ideas for fantasy scenes that I wanted to show (i.e. a 19th person) and so on. All of these became constraints that I then have to follow as I write.

This basically "eliminates" a lot of possibilities for the story as I go along, making it easier to decide things. So with the basic premise in mind that "I want Character A to die first" or "I want Character B to live until the end". I go through the story chronologically, with whatever idea I may have in mind (i.e. Kinzo is alive) and just have characters react in such a way to make sure that Character A dies first and Character B survives.

One more thing I should mention is revision. I made a LOT of revisions to each of the plots over the course of writing them. It's all about adding layers of mystery, as Jan said. I'd go through the story, and if I got another idea (i.e. Character C is dead before the start of the game) I'd stop, backtrack to the very beginning and make sure everything is consistent with that new idea. Then I'd carry on from where I left off and continue writing until I get a new idea.

It's not an easy thing to do, and I'm surprised that all of my mysteries have turned out to be so fun for many people. There's definitely an art to it, though, and you get better at it with the more mysteries you write. But remember this is just for Umineko; my process for writing a completely original mystery is very different, and I'm still not sure how good my original mysteries are.

I could probably talk a lot more about this but I'm not sure if there's an easy way to explain it all. Just write naturally and let the characters do what they do. They'll create the mysteries themselves; all you have to do then is make it presentable for the reader, and to do it in such a way that the reader has no clue what's going on. Know what your characters are doing from the very beginning, but don't let the reader know a single thing until the very end.

[AuraTwilight]

Speaking of which, @AuraTwilight: Santa Cross is currently stalled by an annoying logic error I discovered, but you'll get a new and improved version as soon as I figure out how to unravel it.

Cool, lemme know if I can be of any help.

[Captain Bluebeard]

Quick question: How the hell are costum sprites imported in ONscripter? I've tried almost everything, not even Kinjo's tutorial seems to work. I've only managed to import Black Battler by copy-pasting the codes from Hane, and that only after giving an exhausting battle with my stupidity to figure out I needed to compile it into an arc.nsa file to actually show.

[Jan-Poo]

Actually no. There is no need to compile or compress anything in Onscripter, that feature is completely optional.

Also the term "importing" is misleading in this case. With a script of onscripter you can technically use any kind of graphic or sound files that exists in your computer, provided you give it the right path. Pretty much like the HTML code.

the easiest way to familiarize with it is to place your file inside the same directory of your onscripter. Let's say "temp.png"

To visualize the image you can use the lsp command like this:

lsp 1,":c;temp.png",0,0
print 1

this will make appear temp.png in the center of the screen without any alpha channel. If your image uses an alpha channel then write

lsp 1,":a;temp.png",0,0
print 1

the initial number refers to the priority of the image, 1 will cover 2, 2 will cover 3 and so on.
Each sprite must be given a different number.

To tell a specific path, let's say your graphic file is inside a directory called "png" inside the main directory then you write it like this:

lsp 1,":a;png\temp.png",0,0
print 1


This covers the basis of summoning graphics in onscripter. Now for the portraits it's a bit trickier. It depends on the version of the script you are using.

If you use the script from EP5 or earlier or the script edited by me in W&W or Kinjo's "When the seacats cry", you simply write:

ld c,":a;png\temp.png",1

the "c" after "ld" stands for center. You can use "r" or "l" instead if you want the sprite to appear to the right or the left.
The number refers to print effects. 1 is the default print command without any special effect.

There are various pregrogrammed effects in the Umineko script. "80" or "22" are your best bet.


For what concerns the most recent scripts... honestly... I DON'T KNOW! I never bothered to learn! ^^;
All I can tell you is that you can write "_ld" instead of "ld" and should work, but as far as I remember it doesn't work well with the print effects.

The best solution would be to add your entry in the right places of the script, but I'm not sure what are all the variables that need to be set.

[RedKey]

If you find it a bother to write the full path every time, you can also assign aliases. For instance, writing

numalias CUS_DefA1,%0 :inc %0

together with the other numaliases at the top of the script, and

mov $CUS_DefA1,":a;png\tati\cus\CUS_DefA1.png"

in the subroutine *DATA_SET (png\tati\cus\CUS_DefA1.png would be where the sprite file in your arc.nsa is).
At this point, you can use something like

ld c,$CUS_DefA1,22
`"Oh look, I have a sprite now!"`\

Keep in mind that this only works using EP5 script, though.

[battle22]

Originally Posted by Captain Bluebeard

Quick question: How the hell are costum sprites imported in ONscripter? I've tried almost everything, not even Kinjo's tutorial seems to work. I've only managed to import Black Battler by copy-pasting the codes from Hane, and that only after giving an exhausting battle with my stupidity to figure out I needed to compile it into an arc.nsa file to actually show.

Easy. instead of ld command , use _ld and yhr file dictionary,
Example _ld l,":a;sprites\cla\1\cla_a11_komaru1.png",23 ,That's how Umi tweak adds special PS3 sprites

[Captain Bluebeard]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Actually no. There is no need to compile or compress anything in Onscripter, that feature is completely optional.

Yeah...That's my mistake. BBattler wouldn't show until I did that, so I figured I needed to compile him, but in the end it seems I was just making some error in the path....

The easiest way to familiarize with it is to place your file inside the same directory of your onscripter. Let's say "temp.png"

To visualize the image you can use the lsp command like this:

lsp 1,":c;temp.png",0,0
print 1

this will make appear temp.png in the center of the screen without any alpha channel. If your image uses an alpha channel then write

lsp 1,":a;temp.png",0,0
print 1

the initial number refers to the priority of the image, 1 will cover 2, 2 will cover 3 and so on.
Each sprite must be given a different number.

To tell a specific path, let's say your graphic file is inside a directory called "png" inside the main directory then you write it like this:

lsp 1,":a;png\temp.png",0,0
print 1

Thanks a lot. Well, since I'm no good at scripting, I tried to go by observing Umineko's way, but I kinda got lost with the whole number alias thing. But this works just as well, and it's much easier for me at this point.

For what concerns the most recent scripts... honestly... I DON'T KNOW! I never bothered to learn! ^^;
All I can tell you is that you can write "_ld" instead of "ld" and should work, but as far as I remember it doesn't work well with the print effects.

I'm actually using the EP8 script, but that's okay, I'm getting the hang of handling the already defined sprites.

Originally Posted by RedKey

If you find it a bother to write the full path every time, you can also assign aliases. For instance, writing

together with the other numaliases at the top of the script, and

in the subroutine *DATA_SET (png\tati\cus\CUS_DefA1.png would be where the sprite file in your arc.nsa is).
At this point, you can use something like


Keep in mind that this only works using EP5 script, though.

I'm using EP8, which changes the way sprites are defined a little. Thanks a lot, anyway.

Originally Posted by battle22

Easy. instead of ld command , use _ld and yhr file dictionary,
Example _ld l,":a;sprites\cla\1\cla_a11_komaru1.png",23 ,That's how Umi tweak adds special PS3 sprites

Thank you, this works perfectly, I think I'm going to use that.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the tips guys, you've made my life a lot easier.

[Renall]

Boy, aren't you sad you didn't stick with Renpy now!

Seriously though I do like that I can move things in and out of folders and not have to declare them in Renpy, just point it at a folder and say "incorporate everything here" and it does it automatically every time it loads.

It definitely has more trouble with animation than ONScripter does though.

[Captain Bluebeard]

Am I sad? Well....I should be, (boy, I've wasted so many hour of my life trying to figure this out it's almost tragic) but on the contrary I am over the moon~!

Onscrpiter looks much more...how should I put it, 'refined' than Ren'py, and even though it's hard to get the knack of (not that I have, yet), the result is adequately rewarding. Plus it has many cool effects, and you don't have to put 'nvl clear' every time you want to clear the page, which I always forgot, causing a mess on my screen. The bright side is, I'm currently using the EP1 Demo script to do my work, and it's much simpler than the EP8 one.

All in all, yeah, I'm a masochist.

[GabrieliosP]

After considering things for a time, I decided to change the resolution of Revival of the Golden Witch from 640x480 to 1020x576, because it would lessen the edges of sprites and backgrounds since I have to resize them. And to show proof that progress is being made:

Spoiler for Screenshot of Fantasy Scene:

Magical Genji, go go!

[battle22]

Here is the website for my and Azules VN.
http://totalseacats.wordpress.com/

[phfatbeatrice]

Hello,

I'm new to this site, so I'm not so sure of how I'm supposed to talk or anything....

Ummm, I wanted to post about my Bern-x-Lambda story that I wrote a while back. I will post an external link and warn ahead of time that it is rated MA and obviously is Yuri.

http://phfatbeatrice.tumblr.com/post...780/fanfiction

[Asuka0NK]

So I am planning to make a Umineko Fan VN and I wanted to know HOW THE HELL does ONscripter work it is so confusing. Are there tutorials and the like. I really want to make my Umineko fangames on ONscripter so they have the feel of Umineko and I don't want to use Ren'py or anything else even though I know it is much simpler.
So far I already have two stories. I have made Miracle of the Golden Witch which is supposed to be yet another outcome for Yasu where she still fell off the cliff yet Rudolf actually talked to Battler about everything and revealed much earlier that

Spoiler for Umineko:

Kyrie was his real mother

so he didn't run away and returned to Rokkenjima in 1981.
Then I have another which is another actual forgery but I haven't thought of a title yet.