MAIN STORY CUTSCENE ZONE - "It's About Time (We Made The Thread. The Game Is Not About Time)"

[Lord Ruby]

Thirding Lost Woods, I think it's the best implementation of the joke.

Superspace could be expanded into Supermarketspace? Or maybe the supermarket is owned by cat planet cat.

Speaking of post game names, I think it would be funny if we named the star warp to the post game "The real AAT starts here", for the classic joke and since it's supposed to be unlocked with a game-spanning puzzle. I don't remember if warps can have individual names, but if not, well, it also works for the warp to the final world, I guess.

[KobaBeach]

Thirding Lost Woods, I think it's the best implementation of the joke.

(...)

Speaking of post game names, I think it would be funny if we named the star warp to the post game "The real AAT starts here", for the classic joke and since it's supposed to be unlocked with a game-spanning puzzle. I don't remember if warps can have individual names, but if not, well, it also works for the warp to the final world, I guess.

Fourthing the first, seconding the last. Warps can have individual names, but they rely on level ID names, so we'd have IDs 000 and 100 available by default (I forget if we filled all main IDs?)

It would be nice to have world intro blurbs like that, and I remember it being discussed before. But most of the worlds have multiple entrances, so that won't really work (unless we want to write different blurbs for each entrance). An idea I had: maybe we can have Rachel show up in each world's rest area, and talking to her reveals some lore about that specific part of the game. For example, she can give details about the different subplots for every world. This would make her a recurring character, and not just one who only shows up in a couple of cutscenes. I think it would make sense too, since the plan was to unlock a new quick warp location every time a new rest area is unlocked, and Rachel is there because she flew her helicopter. The drawback is that some rest areas aren't on the main path through worlds, and can be missed.

I like this idea a lot, though I don't think it's necessary to worry about rest areas not being mandatory. Players can seek out lore if they feel like it, it'll feel like a neat bonus.

[PSI Ninja]

Looks like it's safe to lock in "The Lost Woods" for Forest and "Food Desert Island" for the main map. "The Piedmont" and "Neo Montreal" appear to be the frontrunners for World 1 and Urban/Mountain, respectively.

Sky - While sunset picturesque and Overhang Ocean are nice names, they don't really fit the aesthetic that the sky area has (clouds with the night sky and moon peeking out at the top). Noctilucent fits almost perfectly, however. I personally like this one, but I'd be open to other names that lean more into space-y vibes.

How about "Skyspace" for Sky/Space World? That would be a very literal joke. Only thing is, it'll sound redundant if "Catspace" or "Supermarketspace" are chosen for the Final World.

Pipe Caverns - This got left out, but I guess we could just call it Pipe Caverns. I'll also propose the names "Underground Entanglement" and "Subroot Network"

Abstract - I think either Catspace or Superspace will work. While I understand the logic with calling it Superspace, it does feel a tad... generic? Worth noting is that the supermarket is only at the end of the world, and there are other levels with various themes surrounding it. Catspace isn't particularly more fitting, but I do like this name, and think it has a tad more personality. Wonder if there is an elegant way to somehow combine the two.

As a side note, if we did decide to call it Catspace, I like the idea of adding cat ears to the giant rift. Maybe something that can be done regardless? I think it adds a bit of character.

Postgame - I prefer the name One Last Thing; the only issue is that it can be accessed before the game has been completed, which would make it... potentially not the last thing.

For the Pipe Caverns, I'll throw my own suggestion into the mix: "The Tubes". Yes, it's very a British name.

If we go with Ruby's idea of naming the postgame star warp as "The real AAT starts here" (which I agree with), then how about matching that by calling the postgame "The Real AAT"? We could then name the Final World as "One Last Thing" or "One Final Thing", which might make more sense than using it for the postgame.

@ having rachel appear in various rest stops: we would like to let the record show we are not going to be writing that dialogue in particular if for no other reason than we don't wanna scope creep our own job over here (which is to sort out the main story & its cutscenes)

That's fine, just focus on the last three cutscenes for the main story when you're feeling better. All we need is the basic outline for dialogue to get a sense of direction for the story, then we can all work on fine-tuning it for characterizations and whatnot.

@ having a cutscene before world 8 to denote you need to do everything: we could potentially insert a sort of mini-cutscene between SCENE 2 and SCENE 3 to denote that "well, beyond this point is where the supermarket SHOULD be, but um... are we sure this is the right place?", and if they don't have all the other worlds cleared it could be smth like "hmm. there's something in the way. maybe i should wait/do something about it?". we can't think of a sufficiently silly-yet-effective roadblock for this at the moment because it is 1am but someone way smarter can probably think of a sufficiently funny yet reasonable ENOUGH reason for them to need to defeat all the bosses before proceeding, whether it be needing to collect stuff the bosses now leave behind, or maybe the obstacle is some food-themed creature that will only budge if demo shows her worth, or Some Other Silly But Cool Thing.

I can try to come up with a revised script for Cutscene #2 that will introduce both Rachel and the motivation to do the "thing". Don't worry, I won't make it too serious.

@ castle destruction cutscenes: we feel like we could probably leave those in for the sake of individual-world subplots, or at least have a corresponding sort of mini-cutscene. though those are 100% out of our jurisdiction soooo take our statements with a grain of salt,

I'm wondering now... do we even need to bother with subplots for every world? Seems like too much extra work, and it'll probably be hard to come up with good subplots that don't sound forced. Maybe we could just keep the Emerald Winston subplot for The Lost Woods since that's the most fleshed out so far, and because its rest area is actually unmissable. As a bonus, we can still have Rachel give lore in the rest areas of other worlds, like Koba said.

[SAJewers]

I'm wondering now... do we even need to bother with subplots for every world? Seems like too much extra work, and it'll probably be hard to come up with good subplots that don't sound forced. Maybe we could just keep the Emerald Winston subplot for The Lost Woods since that's the most fleshed out so far, and because its rest area is actually unmissable. As a bonus, we can still have Rachel give lore in the rest areas of other worlds, like Koba said.

We don't need fully fleshed subplots for every submap, but we will need asmt-style message boxes at the start of them; whether or not that includes some subplot or not is up to the writer (though we should give a reason why Demo is there in the first place)

[camwoodstock]

MANY words

@ drafting a revised script for scene 2: lay it on us! we might also do like a separate thing (possibly to append to our own scene 2) for our own idea bc we do think it'd be a silly explanation while not being like. TOO detrimental to people wanting to get invested

@ subplots: we know some worlds did already have subplots and we figure the ones that already have them should probably get to keep them, but also if some worlds are just subplot-less we figure it's probably not the end of the world. tho like SAJewers said we do still need to give them Establishing Text Blurbs regardless of if said world has an overarching story or not!

[SAJewers]

"The Piedmont" and "Neo Montreal" appear to be the frontrunners for World 1 and Urban/Mountain, respectively.

Something I just remembered, but A2XT1 had a world name Riffing on Montreal already. If we want a name riffing on a real place, we should go with Banff, Alberta, which apparently we had tentively marked down

@ subplots: we know some worlds did already have subplots and we figure the ones that already have them should probably get to keep them, but also if some worlds are just subplot-less we figure it's probably not the end of the world. tho like SAJewers said we do still need to give them Establishing Text Blurbs regardless of if said world has an overarching story or not!

Yeah, each world will need an establishing text and a castle destruction text; how deep we go into lore/plot is up to whoever writes it

Speaking of post game names, I think it would be funny if we named the star warp to the post game "The real AAT starts here", for the classic joke and since it's supposed to be unlocked with a game-spanning puzzle. I don't remember if warps can have individual names, but if not, well, it also works for the warp to the final world, I guess.

AFAIK we could if we had spare level spots (or never used a pipe or star warp anywhere else), but we don't.

[PSI Ninja]

Something I just remembered, but A2XT1 had a world name Riffing on Montreal already. If we want a name riffing on a real place, we should go with Banff, Alberta, which apparently we had tentively marked down

I've seen you suggest that name several times, but I didn't know we reached a consensus on that. Some fun variations that I came up with: "World-Famous Banff" or "Resort City Banff". Would be ironic because the first few levels are a bathroom and a wasteyard.

@ drafting a revised script for scene 2: lay it on us! we might also do like a separate thing (possibly to append to our own scene 2) for our own idea bc we do think it'd be a silly explanation while not being like. TOO detrimental to people wanting to get invested

If you were planning to work on it, I think I'd rather see your own revision of Cutscene #2, so that we don't spend too much collective effort on writing stuff. It'll also be easier to wrangle dialogue edits if there aren't any competing scripts.

@ subplots: we know some worlds did already have subplots and we figure the ones that already have them should probably get to keep them, but also if some worlds are just subplot-less we figure it's probably not the end of the world. tho like SAJewers said we do still need to give them Establishing Text Blurbs regardless of if said world has an overarching story or not!

Yeah, each world will need an establishing text and a castle destruction text; how deep we go into lore/plot is up to whoever writes it

We should figure out which levels would be good candidates for containing the establishing text. For The Lost Woods, Silent Flower Forest seems like the best choice - both paths into that world lead to this level. Chrystal Caves has two exits that lead to different routes inside Banff, so this level is a possible candidate for having the message. However, it lies outside of the submap. Alternatively, we could have one dialogue box in the bathroom for the urban side of Banff, and another in DUCKMOUNTAIN for the mountain side. The Pipe Caverns probably don't need any exposition. For The Fishmarket, again, there are two entrances into this world leading to two different levels: City of Gulp Gulp and Revenge of the Sushi. They're very different, so we may need to write separate messages.

On the subject of The Fishmarket, I kind of wish that Cryotranquility was the final level in this world. Cirno is just a more charismatic character than the somewhat abstract Angry Sun/Fryguy graphics replacement we have in Spikes Do Hurt, and she may be better suited as that world's final boss. Alternatively, we could have Cirno show up again as the Angry Sun/Fryguy graphics replacement, though continued references to her might get tiresome.

Speaking of post game names, I think it would be funny if we named the star warp to the post game "The real AAT starts here", for the classic joke and since it's supposed to be unlocked with a game-spanning puzzle. I don't remember if warps can have individual names, but if not, well, it also works for the warp to the final world, I guess.

AFAIK we could if we had spare level spots (or never used a pipe or star warp anywhere else), but we don't.

As Koba suggested, is it possible to tie Level 100 to the postgame star warp, so it can have a unique name separate from the other warps? Admittedly, I know very little about how overworld stuff like this works.

[SAJewers]

Something I just remembered, but A2XT1 had a world name Riffing on Montreal already. If we want a name riffing on a real place, we should go with Banff, Alberta, which apparently we had tentively marked down

I've seen you suggest that name several times, but I didn't know we reached a consensus on that. Some fun variations that I came up with: "World-Famous Banff" or "Resort City Banff". Would be ironic because the first few levels are a bathroom and a wasteyard.

As long as it'll fit in the space afforded by this

We should figure out which levels would be good candidates for containing the establishing text. For The Lost Woods, Silent Flower Forest seems like the best choice - both paths into that world lead to this level. Chrystal Caves has two exits that lead to different routes inside Banff, so this level is a possible candidate for having the message. However, it lies outside of the submap. Alternatively, we could have one dialogue box in the bathroom for the urban side of Banff, and another in DUCKMOUNTAIN for the mountain side. The Pipe Caverns probably don't need any exposition. For The Fishmarket, again, there are two entrances into this world leading to two different levels: City of Gulp Gulp and Revenge of the Sushi. They're very different, so we may need to write separate messages.

I'd assume they'd be in the first level of each world/submap, just like asmt

As Koba suggested, is it possible to tie Level 100 to the postgame star warp, so it can have a unique name separate from the other warps? Admittedly, I know very little about how overworld stuff like this works.

It, and all other warps, has to be tied to level 0, the only level slot left (technically).

[Luckwaive]

Something I just remembered, but A2XT1 had a world name Riffing on Montreal already. If we want a name riffing on a real place, we should go with Banff, Alberta, which apparently we had tentively marked down

I've seen you suggest that name several times, but I didn't know we reached a consensus on that. Some fun variations that I came up with: "World-Famous Banff" or "Resort City Banff". Would be ironic because the first few levels are a bathroom and a wasteyard.

Put me down for Resort City Banff, I like the name and find it funny for the reason you stated.

We should figure out which levels would be good candidates for containing the establishing text. For The Lost Woods, Silent Flower Forest seems like the best choice - both paths into that world lead to this level. Chrystal Caves has two exits that lead to different routes inside Banff, so this level is a possible candidate for having the message. However, it lies outside of the submap. Alternatively, we could have one dialogue box in the bathroom for the urban side of Banff, and another in DUCKMOUNTAIN for the mountain side. The Pipe Caverns probably don't need any exposition. For The Fishmarket, again, there are two entrances into this world leading to two different levels: City of Gulp Gulp and Revenge of the Sushi. They're very different, so we may need to write separate messages.

I'd assume they'd be in the first level of each world/submap, just like asmt

As was mentioned earlier, there are multiple entrances to most submaps that start with different levels, so there isn't really a clear "first level" due to the nonlinear nature of things. That's why we need to discuss the best level to place these message blocks.

I think most of these proposals are fine. For sky, it should probably be James Turner, although the secret exit of aileron moonbounce would skip this.

Pretty sure the normal exits of both city of gulp and revenge of sushi lead to the same level, so I'd maybe put it in there. Although this may be irrelevant due to the following...

On the subject of The Fishmarket, I kind of wish that Cryotranquility was the final level in this world. Cirno is just a more charismatic character than the somewhat abstract Angry Sun/Fryguy graphics replacement we have in Spikes Do Hurt, and she may be better suited as that world's final boss. Alternatively, we could have Cirno show up again as the Angry Sun/Fryguy graphics replacement, though continued references to her might get tiresome.

I'd be fine with doing this, it would just mean that the layout for fishmarket would need to be slightly rearranged. I would retool the secret exit of cryotranquility to lead to the blue switch palace instead, since that needs a place to go, and then maybe have revenge of sushi create the path split in Cryotranquility's place.

I would say keep the angry sun boss though; having cirno twice seems unnecessary to me, as persistent as she would be.

[KobaBeach]

+1 at not having cirno more than once. touhou is great, as messy as the games are, but touhou jokes get tired almost as quickly as jojokes. we mustn't overdo them, at least in my opinion. feel free to disagree

[camwoodstock]

oh god Everything Happened So Much last week so we haven't gotten to do much. we will say:

@ drafting a revised script for scene 2: lay it on us! we might also do like a separate thing (possibly to append to our own scene 2) for our own idea bc we do think it'd be a silly explanation while not being like. TOO detrimental to people wanting to get invested

If you were planning to work on it, I think I'd rather see your own revision of Cutscene #2, so that we don't spend too much collective effort on writing stuff. It'll also be easier to wrangle dialogue edits if there aren't any competing scripts.

PLEASE do not wait on us, life is hectic atm and odds are won't clear for at LEAST a few days. tbh we'd rather do the effort of having to sift thru things than just kinda hold any possible writing efforts hostage any more than we've done on accident, all bc we'd like to Eventually™ do a revision of our own when life stops comboing us

+1 at not having cirno more than once. touhou is great, as messy as the games are, but touhou jokes get tired almost as quickly as jojokes. we mustn't overdo them, at least in my opinion. feel free to disagree

we'd like to unofficially propose a Touhou Budget if for no other reason than we'd like to keep those basically to what we already have, lest we risk supersaturating them to the point of potentially being obnoxious to people who aren't full-on touhou fans. so like, keep it to whatever Calleoca is doing, and we guess a few seldom one-off nods. don't pull a Help!, basically FDGSJKL

[KobaBeach]

touhou is Banned From Digimon TCG Locals

[PSI Ninja]

I went ahead and added "Food Desert Island", "The Lost Woods", and "Resort City Banff" to the Worlds tab of the spreadsheet. That just leaves World 1, Sky/Space, and Final World without definitive names yet.

Pretty sure the normal exits of both city of gulp and revenge of sushi lead to the same level, so I'd maybe put it in there.

You're right, those two levels both lead to Lady Crithania. That would be a good place to put the intro message, then. I might even put Rachel at the dock outside of the boat, because why not.

I'd be fine with doing this, it would just mean that the layout for fishmarket would need to be slightly rearranged. I would retool the secret exit of cryotranquility to lead to the blue switch palace instead, since that needs a place to go, and then maybe have revenge of sushi create the path split in Cryotranquility's place.

Now I'm not sure if this is the best thing to do anymore. I mean, I still like the idea of Cirno being the endboss, but having the Blue Switch Palace as one of Cryotranquility's unlocks at the very end of the submap would make the Blue Switch blocks in Levels 101 (Spikes) and 12F (Whales) kind of useless. So it actually makes more sense the way the Fishmarket is laid out now. An easy way to fix this would be to replace the Blue Switch blocks in those levels with another color, but we'd have to ask the authors if they're okay with that first. Optionally, we could keep the old Fishmarket layout, but change the boss in Spikes Do Hurt to something else. Maybe it can be a large Bumpty, or something else ice-themed?

Speaking of Spikes Do Hurt, it kind of bothers me that it isn't water or ice-themed at all. It's the only level in the Fishmarket that doesn't thematically fit, and I'm pretty sure it was placed there as a leftover because all of the other castles fit better in other worlds. I'm wondering if we could change some of the palettes to be bluish to make the interior look colder, but again, we'd need to ask Scarfley if they're okay with that.

PLEASE do not wait on us, life is hectic atm and odds are won't clear for at LEAST a few days. tbh we'd rather do the effort of having to sift thru things than just kinda hold any possible writing efforts hostage any more than we've done on accident, all bc we'd like to Eventually™ do a revision of our own when life stops comboing us

I could come up with a new draft soon. I've been away for the Thanksgiving weekend, so I couldn't really do much with the collab this past week.

[Luckwaive]

Pretty sure the normal exits of both city of gulp and revenge of sushi lead to the same level, so I'd maybe put it in there.

You're right, those two levels both lead to Lady Crithania. That would be a good place to put the intro message, then. I might even put Rachel at the dock outside of the boat, because why not.

I'd be fine with doing this, it would just mean that the layout for fishmarket would need to be slightly rearranged. I would retool the secret exit of cryotranquility to lead to the blue switch palace instead, since that needs a place to go, and then maybe have revenge of sushi create the path split in Cryotranquility's place.

Now I'm not sure if this is the best thing to do anymore. I mean, I still like the idea of Cirno being the endboss, but having the Blue Switch Palace as one of Cryotranquility's unlocks at the very end of the submap would make the Blue Switch blocks in Levels 101 (Spikes) and 12F (Whales) kind of useless. So it actually makes more sense the way the Fishmarket is laid out now. An easy way to fix this would be to replace the Blue Switch blocks in those levels with another color, but we'd have to ask the authors if they're okay with that first. Optionally, we could keep the old Fishmarket layout, but change the boss in Spikes Do Hurt to something else. Maybe it can be a large Bumpty, or something else ice-themed?

Speaking of Spikes Do Hurt, it kind of bothers me that it isn't water or ice-themed at all. It's the only level in the Fishmarket that doesn't thematically fit, and I'm pretty sure it was placed there as a leftover because all of the other castles fit better in other worlds. I'm wondering if we could change some of the palettes to be bluish to make the interior look colder, but again, we'd need to ask Scarfley if they're okay with that.

I actually didn't realize that various levels in Fishmarket used the blue switch, so yeah, I think we should just leave the layout as is.

I actually just had an idea for the Fishmarket as I was thinking up my response to this. Instead of changing spikes do hurt, maybe we could keep everything as is and have the general plot be that the area used to be fully frozen over, but ever since the sun boss moved in it has slowly been melting. The result is that this icy wonderland has been largely melted into a large lake with various icebergs and sheets of ice remaining. If the boss is not defeated the area will only continue melting.

On the plus side, Cirno's presence in the area has actually helped to keep the snow and ice intact closer to the castle (completely unbeknownst to her). This is why the second half is more loaded with icy levels despite being closer to the castle.

This would help explain why the castle level at the end of the world has no ice theming at all, and why the boss is basically a sun.

[camwoodstock]

we have sadly not gotten to sit down and revise our scene 2 draft but um, silly question: is there anything in the rough draft for scenes 3-5 we need to address that we are not yet aware of, just so we can address those BEFORE we write down actual dialogue or create images for them? we'd like to hopefully finish drafting by the end of the month (and hopefully, revision can finish by january) so that's like, the biggest barrier thus far,

[SAJewers]

we have sadly not gotten to sit down and revise our scene 2 draft but um, silly question: is there anything in the rough draft for scenes 3-5 we need to address that we are not yet aware of, just so we can address those BEFORE we write down actual dialogue or create images for them? we'd like to hopefully finish drafting by the end of the month (and hopefully, revision can finish by january) so that's like, the biggest barrier thus far,

Only thing you should really know is that the Final Level has a mall theme, with each room being a shop in the mall (the shop front for the final boss still being a grocery store); replacing the castle entrance with the cutscene pretty much isn't going to happen at this point unfortunately (it might be better to have it at the start of the world anyway like asmt?)

Also, pre-postgame final boss cutscene is pretty much done since it's a copy of the asmt one, so don't worry about that

can't speak much about the maingame final boss

[camwoodstock]

we have sadly not gotten to sit down and revise our scene 2 draft but um, silly question: is there anything in the rough draft for scenes 3-5 we need to address that we are not yet aware of, just so we can address those BEFORE we write down actual dialogue or create images for them? we'd like to hopefully finish drafting by the end of the month (and hopefully, revision can finish by january) so that's like, the biggest barrier thus far,

Only thing you should really know is that the Final Level has a mall theme, with each room being a shop in the mall (the shop front for the final boss still being a grocery store); replacing the castle entrance with the cutscene pretty much isn't going to happen at this point unfortunately (it might be better to have it at the start of the world anyway like asmt?)

Also, pre-postgame final boss cutscene is pretty much done since it's a copy of the asmt one, so don't worry about that

can't speak much about the maingame final boss

honestly in the hellscape that is modern day capitalism in which kroger can get exclusive sonic DLC when it literally doesn't even have a video game shelf, we feel like a grocery store with a structure of a mall is only like, maybe 5 years away at this point, we feel like that's pretty easy to write around. the main thing would be the placement--if we stick it at the start of world 8 a-la ASMT, maybe the clerk that worked there would be just kind of in the outskirts of where demo & iris are entering from, and he'd hold his conversation of "Shit's wack yo" there?

we are not touching the postgame plot except for when ABSOLUTELY, DAPSOLUTELY, STRICTLY REQURIED (such as, say, fitting in that little foreshadow to it in the opening) so that's no skin off our back anyways; it'd be out of our jurisdiction anyhoo! ;P

speaking of the maingame final boss, we're assuming they're still a wish-granting NOVA-esque machine right? the timemaker/windrose? if this has changed substantially at all (y'know, beyond finally settling on a name--if nobody else will we will just go with "timemaker" because we think it'd be funny to do that even though it really, um, doesn't have anything to do with time anymore), we need to know NOW because the entire crux of the maingame finale does depend on that.

[KobaBeach]

honestly in the hellscape that is modern day capitalism in which kroger can get exclusive sonic DLC when it literally doesn't even have a video game shelf,

sonic team is so bad at what it does and i dont mean this to belittle the devs' work it's just that so much of it is just bizarrely misguided

/sonicfan