White Nights [visual novel]

[mikey]

Hello everyone,

Ummm, first, a visual novel - it's a digital form combining text and pictures, sometimes with music. Origin: Japan. And actually, to put it bluntly, most visual novels are manga-styled sex stories, just so you know. However, the concept isn't limited to hentai, as it is called. You can more or less express any story in a VN format - the format's  strengths are the first-person narrative and atmosphere that they can generate.

Anyway... ever since I came across VNs, I really thought that the concept would work with White Nights. It's probably not interesting for this forum just how close it feels to some of the manga concepts, but it actually does and it's one of the reasons I picked it.

And so, I have put together a VN version of White Nights. Download, unzip and double-click the exe.

I realize it's a really different community (we are normally focused on Japan-inspired anime/manga art and related topics), but still, maybe you can find it interesting. There have been film adaptations of White Nights, but I actually think that film isn't the perfect-fit medium - and the visual novel is, particularly because it still involves reading, but with the ability of combining it with images and optionally also sounds and speech.

Due to the nature of the project though, I couldn't (and didn't want to) make an "expensive" version - you could probably improve everything with new images, character sprites and whatnot, but I don't have the time or resources to make this with higher "production values".

Still, please enjoy. I found this forum just yesterday (the day I finished my project) and then I searched for other FMD forums, but really found only this one really specializing in him - others have only subsections for FMD, so well... here I am

The relevant links are the forums (no registration required to post, if you'd like to do it there)
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2387
The topic also explains a bit more about the production and why this or that was used.

and the project page
http://atp.manga.sk/prod/wn/wn.htm
(with two screenshots - you can only download the Win version in there, however the forum has Linux and Mac as well)

Thanks!

[Worm]

i was at first a bit sceptical about it, but when i watched it....
... i was amazed, i think it's great!  Congrats!

make more of this kind of stuff!!!

[mikey]

Thank you! I'm glad it came across positively

About making more... ugh, that is of course possible, but it would take a considerable amount of time (which I don't have at this moment) - White Nights is perfect in my opinion, but other works may not be so easy, since they are often much more resource-intensive.

I'd probably prefer first-person narrative, say Netochka, Underground Notes or Insulted/injured.

I'd love to do Insulted, because it's my favorite, but the resource requirements are just so daunting There are at least six important persons, sprites for each of them, with facial expressions and varying clothes... and then we only come to the environments, which become extremely difficult to do when the timespan of the work is longer (winter and summer). Still, I&I would be great. *sigh* Maybe there could be a less resource-intensive form of presentation, just faces instead of full-body sprites and black-and-white sketch-like backgrounds. Hmmm...  

[Worm]

well, definitely do keep an eye out for not wasting your time in a presentation that would suck in the end (b/c of for example, saving resources).. quality is important.

Underground Notes would be a beautiful one to make, imo.. part I also doesn't have too many characters.. it's mainly aimed at thought, rather than character interaction..


anyway,
definitely do post it on here if you finish anything!

[Worm]

There's an audio-recording of Notes from the Underground...
... perhaps you could use that, and combine it with visuals that you make..

http://librivox.org/notes-from-the-underground-by-fyodor-dostoyevsky/

could be good...

[mikey]

I wanted, actually, to get that Russian version of White Nights and have it as voiceover, it would have made for a nice effect, like a subtitled film. But the prospect of cutting the files into small bits according to the sentences (or parts of them) that are displayed was just so daunting.  

Anyway, for Notes, a powerful narrative would be a great addition, I agree.

However, just so that I don't get people's hopes up, I don't have immediate plans for other works (I am still tied up with my running projects at the moment) - as I said, I would love to do Insulted and Injured, but that's a huge project which would require a lot of planning - though it would definitely be worth it. Also on my potential list would be Notes from the Underground and Netochka Nezvanova. But again... I can't promise anything - but if do make another visual novel from a literary work, it will definitely be something from Dostoyevsky, that much I'm willing to promise

Thanks for all the tips!

[poor knight]

Well, I thought is was great. I liked the backgrounds very much. And yes, I can only imagine how labor intensive it must have been. But if you do go for another one, I would definitely put my vote in for Netochka Nezvanova. I think it would be very appealing because of the character's age and circumstances. Also, consider A Gentle Creature.

Nice work.

[Worm]

perhaps you can find a friend to help you with the labour, so it goes more quickly...



i thought it would be nice for Notes from Underground, if you choose to do that one, you could use imagery to backup the explanations of the Underground Man ... like balloons in comics with pictures in it ... instead of just visuals of a man talking in a room (which the first part of the novel kind of is).

Thanks for all the tips!

 

you're welcome


helping other people should be done automatically~the most problems in life come from what people do to each other

[mikey]

Thanks,  poor knight. A Gentle Creature is also what I've considered.  

perhaps you can find a friend to help you with the labour, so it goes more quickly...

Well, I do have a team for every project, the core is always the writer and the artist. But it's been done before that several artists contributed to one project, and the result was really good - one just needs to watch the overall direction, so that the various styles harmonize.

i thought it would be nice for Notes from Underground, if you choose to do that one, you could use imagery to backup the explanations of the Underground Man ... like balloons in comics with pictures in it ... instead of just visuals of a man talking in a room (which the first part of the novel kind of is).

Well, I'm a friend of a very classic movie-ish aproach, the imagery could be done in flashback style, or a kind of sepia-toned memories, which would contrast with the man sitting in the room, there certainly are options.

helping other people should be done automatically~the most problems in life come from what people do to each other

Hmmm, so then, if I may, I do have a small problem which I haven't paid attention to, with White Nights.

I couldn't find a free English translation, and so I bought a book (from Oxford Publishing), scanned the story, fixed the mistakes that the letter-recognition software made and later on broke up the sentences so that they would fit on the screens. The problem is I didn't have a permission to use this translation, of course. At first I wanted to try whether it will even work, and then it went surprisingly smoothly and I was able to finish the visual novel in six days.

I didn't bother to ask for permission, since more or less it all started as an experiment, but then I had a finished thing on my hands and now I have a copyright problem associated with it. Of course I could just not care, but somehow I do, since with a permission, it would be really clean.

The easy solution would be to translate the story by myself, I could do that from the Czech or Slovak translations that I have (maybe consult the original, but my Russian isn't all that great to catch the finest nuances). But then, that's a lot of work and it's just not the same as a true translation.

I'm sure that if I was a schoolboy and this would be my project for literature class, well, I'd have no troubles presenting it and making it available. But since I'm now a responsible adult and all that   I have no academic-reason excuse.

So the question is, what can I do? More specifically, is there any chance that if I wrote to Oxford Publishing they's say "oh sure, go ahead"? Of course I probably didn't take any customers away from OP, and I didn't misuse the work I hope, but from the copyright perspective this doesn't matter. And it prevents me from presenting WN on at least one site, due to that.

So I don't know... does it make sense to contact the publisher and ask for permission?

[Worm]

Well, I don't have any experience in that area, so I'm not really qualified to talk about this...
... but, i guess, it's okay to contact the publisher and ask for permission...

...but the thing is, aren't there free English translations on the Internet?  I mean... The Brothers Karamazow is available for free (it's even on this very site), but White Nights wouldn't be available?.... ? ...

[mikey]

Sadly, no. I've looked everywhere I could. I would have preferred an e-text, since it would save me a lot of work, but I had to use the scan.

I think a lot of the translations that are available on this site are from Project Guttenberg, which has these works collected. I know for a fact that for instance Constance Garnett has translated everything from Dostoyevsky, yet only a few works are available through Project Guttenberg. I can't imagine how the other works could be copyrighted when others in the series are freely available. But still, they aren't available.

As for the translation I used, that's a rather new one, 1995. So that's the problem.

[Mogwai]

mikey,

Thanks so much for making this wonderful production.  I absolutely love it - what a unique way to experience such a great short story!  

If you were given short mp3 audio files for each scene (narrator, etc.), would you be able to use those?  I may have a person or two willing to do something like that.

Again, thanks so much for your remarkable efforts - I'm posting your project on the home page in a few minutes so no one misses it...

[Worm]

this is so nice

the link looks great on the main page, Mogwai

[mikey]

Thanks so much for featuring it!

As for the mp3 files, it would indeed be very time-consuming - not just the cutting of the mp3 (the engine will work better with oggs, but that can be converted), but also inserting it into the script, which is also almost a line-by-line work and may take a very long time. I haven't done this before, but again, it's not impossible by any means, it would just be really a very lengthy thing to do.

In any case, thank you for your suggestions and ideas - I'll be finishing my current projects soon, so later on I can look into the production of something else from Dostoyevsky (again, no promises), so maybe if someone would want to help out, we'd be better off channeling the efforts into something new? Oh well, that's for the future, maybe.

So thanks again for all your support!