A Super Mario Thing - Plot and cutscenes

[flameofdoubt]

Story is nice but we may be taking this a little too far, one reason the vips were good was that they never stopped making fun of the whole thing. i worry we're taking this a little too seriously.

On the subject of powerups though i always assumed the power came from eating them... it doesn't make sense to me that demo can use the food but still have it. Maybe the joke could be that she collected lots of food but ate it all on the way. Only problem with that would be the charlies' stores, but if you really wanted to go with that idea you could say the charlies store their food in all the question mark boxes, relying on the fact that charlies are one of the few enemies that can jump, so the kingdom's residents can't get them.

[rubberfishy]

How about Demo's on a quest to get her other umbrella back, but after defeating the end boss it turns out he didn't have it after all.

[Daze]

Story is nice but we may be taking this a little too far, one reason the vips were good was that they never stopped making fun of the whole thing. i worry we're taking this a little too seriously.

On the subject of powerups though i always assumed the power came from eating them... it doesn't make sense to me that demo can use the food but still have it. Maybe the joke could be that she collected lots of food but ate it all on the way. Only problem with that would be the charlies' stores, but if you really wanted to go with that idea you could say the charlies store their food in all the question mark boxes, relying on the fact that charlies are one of the few enemies that can jump, so the kingdom's residents can't get them.

Hmm... Maybe she uses up the food along the way, knowing that all the big stores are at Charles' castle and she can just take what she likes then? Maybe the question mark blocks are the Yoshis' way of hiding their own supplies all across the land. Charlies, not being terribly bright, wouldn't be able to find where the Yoshi Resistance is keeping its food because of that fact (it was referenced in the opening cutscene that the Charlies can't figure out how the resistance can hide its supplies from them). Either they're smart, or they're dumb.

As for seriousness... I don't know, man. I think we're having plenty of fun with this thing, at least from reading the other threads. Maybe story threads are more serious because we have to make something that meshes with everything else, but I don't think we're off-base. We're trying to make a game of VIP caliber, not VIP 6. Either way, if we have to scale back the story, then we will. It shouldn't be a problem, though.

EDIT:
@rubberfishy: We have the reasoning behind Demo's journey pretty much hammered out, I'd say (I posted a recap on the last page). Skim through the previous posts, and feel free to help us come up with other stuff, though.

[flameofdoubt]

Fair enough Dazedouji, and yeah i was thinking a similar thing with maybe those being stores for the resistance instead. A coherent plot would probably be a lot more preferable to randomness at the end of each castle, and like you say it can always be scaled back. Just maybe try to put some humour in the plot too? the plot side of it is rather good and all the holes are being ironed out but it'd be nice to get some comedy in there too. if it doesn't fit though then nevermind.

[FRK]

Why not make a plot with Demo accidentaly landing on a land of some sorts and she decides to destroy something out of boredom.

[flameofdoubt]

Well if we were going to lean towards a Vipish plot, like it seems raocow was expecting if not wants, i'd suggest this:

-Keep the demo's master and teleport intro but prune it heavily. "Get me food. Kay. *bzzt*"
-Forget the resistence, some yoshis are good, some bad, we don't need to say why, it's for fun.
-Keep king charlie as the "final" boss, and definitely have black plague in there, though i'm not sure black plague, as a one off joke, is important enough to be the ending boss.
-Rather than explaining why the void appears and why she goes there, just have king charlie activate the teleport at the start of the battle and have nothing happen in-battle. When she wins the void is there because KC accidentally caused it
-Demo ends the game sat on a huge sack of veg and the words "thank you for playing! Demo count: XXX"
-Make castle dialogues largely random and humourous, and change what she rescues to become sacks of vegetables if possible.

if we decide to go with the emphasis on plot though, disregard this.

[Alex-R]

I think the plot is just fine, the only thing is that we shouldn't over analyze it in the actual hack, and just have a sort of abridged version of it.

[Argumentable]

I'm saying it again, keep the story to the non-level hut and castle end messages. If you want to explain stuff about the king battle, I say we use the power-up place that's supposed to open after the battle to explain everything. If it uses more than two messageboxes worth, its probably too much.

[BlackDS]

Oh, like hey, know it is dumb to think about the 2nd one already, but I was going to plan out three levels for it (if it ever happens ;) ). One of them would be mass yoshi murder, then later in the game "yoshi's revenge", where going on a yoshi would kill you. Would that affect anything if you guys want to make another novel story for the se/prequel?

[BlackDS]

Well if we were going to lean towards a Vipish plot, like it seems raocow was expecting if not wants, i'd suggest this:

-Keep the demo's master and teleport intro but prune it heavily. "Get me food. Kay. *bzzt*"
-Forget the resistence, some yoshis are good, some bad, we don't need to say why, it's for fun.
-Keep king charlie as the "final" boss, and definitely have black plague in there, though i'm not sure black plague, as a one off joke, is important enough to be the ending boss.
-Rather than explaining why the void appears and why she goes there, just have king charlie activate the teleport at the start of the battle and have nothing happen in-battle. When she wins the void is there because KC accidentally caused it
-Demo ends the game sat on a huge sack of veg and the words "thank you for playing! Demo count: XXX"
-Make castle dialogues largely random and humourous, and change what she rescues to become sacks of vegetables if possible.

if we decide to go with the emphasis on plot though, disregard this.

+1 vote, infact we should have a poll Novel vs. VIP story

[kilon]

NO! Real story for the go!!

we can add the humor in the castle destruction scenes and random message boxes.
For instance, plans are that at every first level of the new world, there will be a message box with Demo's thoughts about that land. A perfect place for humor if you ask me.

And one way to surpass VIP is by actually having a real story. I mean, everyone knows we can't surpass VIP4 (No Carol to help us with bosses and stuff). I'm hoping for VIP3 quality.

It's true that we go into minor details here which wouldn't come out to well in the game itself, but that is partially just for fun. I want to see raocows reaction of this thread when he reads it after the LP.

As for story not fitting with the levels and/or sprites. That's true. Mostly because we made levels before thinking about a plot. So there is your random "what the hell"

Sequel: I have tons of ideas for that, but it is WAY to early for that.Although I want that to take place on Demo's home planet..


Now that I got that out of my system, let's get back to business shall we?

ps. vote won't work anyway since it has to go in this thread. otherwise raocow gets suspicious and that would only clog this one up. so no.

[Argumentable]

We may need to create a poll to cut back on the back and forth

[TwilightArts]

When someting is really funny and humorous, you dont want it to end after 2 message blocks. You want it last longer, you want epic entertainment. Right? So why not a mix (lol, no vip/mix-pun intended) of both variants? More humor, yet still lots of text and cutscenes?

[kilon]

we can put some humor in the plot.

It's not like I want it to be 100% serious, but I do want a well developed story and not something that you can do in, say, 4 message boxes.

[Kil]

ps. vote won't work anyway since it has to go in this thread. otherwise raocow gets suspicious and that would only clog this one up. so no.

If we append (Spoilers!) to the title, raocow definitely won't read it. He's pretty careful about it

[Argumentable]

I think we need to make a bunch of poll threads, not just for the plot, anyway, to decide on things. I'm tired of looking at this thread just to see someone saying "No we need to make this a book" and another person going "No we don't"

We're never gonna decide on something if we don't put it to a vote

Doing what I hate (repeating myself), I don't give a crap one way or another about story. If you want a story in, fine, that's great. Don't make it the focus of the game. Minimal cutscenes, maybe a graphic for messageboxes so you know its story and not vital information to the level if you want messageboxes to tell the story. But keep in mind its a romhack of a mario game, if you're going to have a story, it shouldn't be overly serious.

[Daze]

I do agree that a decent number of threads (not just this one), are pretty back-and-forth on things. I think we're overestimating the "seriousness" of our hack here, though. True, there's a plot, with a power-hungry villain trying to rule over everything, but I don't think the Collab Hack is significantly more serious than some hacks out there (SMI? TSRPR?). There's gonna be plenty of room for humor. It's just a matter of laying down the framework first, in which the jokes will appear, and that's why it appears so serious right now. Some of us want to make a "quality" (for a romhack, anyway) story. We can come up with the humor when we know more about the castles and worlds and such.

As for cutscenes... besides the opening and before Charles (possibly Yoshi's House, too?), I don't think we really need them. Auto-messages and castle-end messages should be sufficient for any of Demo's thoughts or enemy dialogue that we would want to throw in (again, when things are slightly more concrete level-wise). If we were intending to the a full beta-test of the game, we could see if we need to cut back on story-related/humor-based/both-kinds-of messages.

((I can kinda feel the repetition, yeah... but I don't know if it merits polls or not. =/ I think all we need is slightly more organization.))

[kilon]

As far as cutscenes go, I think they should be here:
-opening cutscene (done. maybe minor tweaks)
-before KC (he introduces himself, tells about plans. Typical James Bond style so to speak)
-after KC (after all, there must be some way to tell the player that the Void World has appeared. Doesn't need to be a long cutscene. 2 or 3 screens tops can do the trick)
-after beating BP (the happy ending and the credits. After the credits the possible "oh my god, will there be a sequel" thing)

About the votes: you're right, but not make the titles something like "

Vote Cutscene after boss or not" as such a title is a spoiler in itself.

I think we already have the main story figured out. Now it is our job to work it out so we can tell it in relatively short time without a serious drop of quality.

[kilon]

A first alpha version of the cutscene before you fight KC.
I don't really like it just yet as there could be more humor. It might also be a tad boring as the images only change once with this text.
There are plenty of other things to discuss, but I had nothing to do so here you go:

[KC in the shadows]
???: Ah, you've finally arrived.
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Charles the Fourth, King of the Mushroom Kingdom,
Dinosaur Land and the other Realms and Territories King. Head of the Common Wealth,
Defender of the Faith and, most importantly, Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Army.
[KC steps forward, is visible for the first time]
Demo: ...
You're just another Charlie guy?
King Charles: Eh, quiet you little one-eyed... thing! You can't even see in depth with
one eye!
Demo: Well, it-
KC: What are you anyway, a demo of some sorts?
Demo: I-
KC: That's enough talk from you! Now, since my entire army wasn't strong enough to
stop you, I'll just have to defeat you myself.
Demo: You don't have to do that. You can just give me my teleportation device and I'm
on my way. I won't bother you again. Ever. Promised.
KC: Haha, you would like that, wouldn't you. There is one thing that stops me from doing that though. With the help of this 'teleportation device' as you call it, I can finally take over the entire Universe. Muhahahaha!
[If possible, add lighting effect]
KC: Now then, get ready to be squashed!

[flameofdoubt]

I like the introduction, but the word "king" twice in the first line sounds iffy. I really like the final line. "get ready to be squashed!" is such an awkward battlecry, i think it's great. I like the idea of mocking demo's lack of depth perception, and i like demo's lines, but i think Charles' lines don't quite match his charachter. Comments like "eh" and "haha, you'd like that wouldn't you" and "now, since you managed to beat my entire army..." are a little awkward. Personally i'd say he should be well spoken, but quick to anger, so something like "This, from one who cannot even percieve the depth of their own surroundings!?" or "I trained those troops myself. I loved every one of them as i would a son, and each has fought and died for me. A scattered few remain; and me. I have little left to live for, but it is now my turn. Come! Take from me the one thing i have left!"

That might be setting something of the wrong tone though xP so i was just trying to have a little fun. Would work better if there's a "KC is impotent" subplot.

[TwilightArts]

I really like the plot and the dialogs so far. Before the boss fight, however, I had the idea to use something "special" - a guilty gear reference due to raocow's love to the guilty gear series.
After the conversation they engage in a fight, right? In most fighting games, there is text on the screen before the fight like: "Round 1 - Ready? - Fight!". In Guilty Gear, however, they changed it to something unique: "Heaven or Hell - Duel 1 - Let's Rock!"
See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wneMdNs6yNs

Including something like that before the start of the boss fight would be awesometastic as hell.

[flameofdoubt]

xD that's a brilliant idea! Would probably be a bit much to try and do the gears and machinery graphic, but the words is a great idea!

[TwilightArts]

Yeah, adapting the gear and machinery graphics would probably be too much, but only the words should be enough. Adding the original voices too, would be awesome, but too difficult for a snes-romhack. I'm sure rao would still smile when he noticed the reference when just reading the words.

[kilon]

I like the introduction, but the word "king" twice in the first line sounds iffy.

This is inspired by the title of Queen Elizabeth II in Canada.

I really like the final line. "get ready to be squashed!" is such an awkward battlecry, i think it's great. I like the idea of mocking demo's lack of depth perception, and i like demo's lines, but i think Charles' lines don't quite match his charachter. Comments like "eh" and "haha, you'd like that wouldn't you" and "now, since you managed to beat my entire army..." are a little awkward.

This is made while not exactly knowing what character KC will be. So that can easily be changed once we know that.


As for the "Heaven or Hell - Duel 1 - Let's Rock!", nice reference, but unless we add a second stage of the boss battle, it looks kinda weird if you call it Duel 1. Unless we use the same thing before the battle against BP. But that way it might look like BP and KC are directly related, which they are not.

[yoshicookiezeus]

KC: Now then, get ready to be squashed!

Though what about the fact that the giant Thwomp thing gets stuck in the ceiling and doesn't fall until right at the end of the battle? You should probably have Charles acknowledge that fact (perhaps by getting angry at the machinery?), or the battle itself won't really match up with the cutscene. I have a video of a prototype of the boss here, sp that you know what is going to happen after the cutscene.