Not SDC-related, but still a nice pleasant blast down memory lane... and more relevant now given recent developments.
Anyway, good ol'
has decided to brush off the old source code for my former collaborative visual novel CameliaGirls and packaged it to the Android Play Store using the latest Android-compatible version of Ren'Py. So now it is freely available to download for all Android devices:play.google.com/store/apps/det…
I even played through it just now... clearly it hasn't aged well, but it was a collaboration and it was deeply rooted in Indonesian culture with an eclectic dash of Japanese Anime-references and some technological nods. As Ane-H noted, it is the spiritual ancestor of Sun-Dried Cherries in many ways.
Granted its' not really a "game" in the sense it was never finished and hence has no branching storyline like most normal visual novels... and even had I finished the game completely, it still would have simply been a glorified movie. But it was definitely a great tech demo to show off the capabilities of Ren'Py,... and although it never made it to Episode 1, Episode 2 featured the full OP intro I worked very hard to make at the time:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSS7j1…
Probably the first and last time I would ever make such a dynamic animated sequence, and certainly takes me back to interesting times... ^^
As for the future of CameliaGirls, I have to reiterate that at least for me -- and certainly for Haya -- it has no future. None. Zip. The price one pays for being emotionally invested in a creative project.
It is still open-source, though, so as Ane-H proved, it can still have some life to it if they're willing to use the source, even if it's just to take it apart and use it for their own project (which is fine too, it was kind of the point to the whole Creative Commons project anyway).
But as for the characters themselves...
I guess I'll get back to you... After about 2 years of my piñata and pony hiatus, I'm starting to feel like I want to work on some of these characters again. Not through a visual novel anymore, but at least through another comic, perhaps a step up above SDC. And seeing as it'll be just my project now, it'll be interesting to see how I can reimagine the story and characters for the new generation...
We'll see... I have some time to think this through as I'm going back to Central Florida next week.
