Aria Ren'Py Build (2021 Version)

Hey, everyone! Happy 2am, hope you're all doing well; I'm looking forward to sleeping after this! Anyway, I've cleaned up the Aria Ren'Py demo and wanted to show you all part of what we worked on throughout the last year (and why we ultimately decided to try again in Unity). If ya' don't care about any of that and just want to jump in, here ya' go!

Note: To use the interactive map, first click on one of the bouncing diamonds, then on the choice box that pops up.

Like that!

Also, some scenes may fail to load properly (keeping you in an endless loop of picking Neone/Rena/Tiffany, instead of the home or downtown). Fixing this would require coding beyond my skills, and with our programmer busy, we've had to leave it as-is. I do not expect the same to happen in Unity.

Windows/Linux: https://1drv.ms/u/s!As3dPnoUi_USgpsvSv5H3i26rice9Q?e=I9VYRa

Mac: https://1drv.ms/u/s!As3dPnoUi_USgpsuiLY7UwxXUc4vLw?e=DLtjoW

If you DO care, here's some context for why the demo's the way it is:

- It's short, isn't it? What you're playing began as a proof-of-concept to test various gameplay ideas, which expanded into a full narrative once we'd settled on a set. Unfortunately, we noticed performance issues that hadn't cropped up with only 1-2 portraits on-screen, but did with 3+. Unlike Forks, Ren'Py Aria suffers from poor performance, and we weren't ever able to figure out the cause. Several systems were even disabled to get this demo performing as well as it is.

- No music because our composer, Ars, became extremely busy with his professional life. He's working with actual production companies now, and while he was able to squeeze in a few new Forks songs, he wasn't able to get far in Aria. He experimented with 1930s' tropical jazz mixed with American folk music, but had to take a hiatus before any songs could come of it. 

- Writing the branching conversations turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. I also took time to redo them as I really didn't like how much of a blank slate Aria was. She originally had no lines aside from whatever was in the choice boxes!

- Demo was made with native 4K play in mind, but the art might look a little "squished" at lower resolutions (I tested at around ~1080p and experienced this). Lowering the resolution might fix it (Forks is 1440p and doesn't seem to have this issue). 

- Demo ends abruptly as the performance issues were bogging the experience, and I wanted to fix them before writing more. While they were never fixed, I got to write more Forks as we tried!

- We ultimately decided to retool parts of Aria's narrative, so it didn't make sense to continue this older one. The next update will focus on what those changes are.

-Toro and I spent a significant amount of time concepting Aria's world before a single line was written or coded. Once we built the world, as with Forks, we populated it until it started to tell its own story. The silver lining to this approach is that ~95% of our world building is intact (it's mostly the execution that's changing), so the Unity version shouldn't suffer any major delays beyond the time it takes me to learn the tools.

And that's about it! Again, the next update will focus on what's changing from this Ren'Py version to the Unity version. See you then ^_^!