Talk:A day in the life of Lain

Tech Level

Do we want the setting to be 1999 tech, or modern? I would personally vote for modern, because it will be simpler to think about, and Lain with a smartphone could be interesting.

Scene Ideas

Scenes that should exist in this story:

• work on upgrading computers. Perhaps buying a pressure gauge somewhere?
• part of the splitting paths could be deciding if you go out or work on your computer each night (or if you even get to choose), and how upgraded the pc is could affect further scenes appearing or not [eg- playing an online game or not])

have social points and pc points. some events require at least however many of whatever kind of points, and some actions could grant/require both (Lain goes to hacker-con?).

Game Length

What if we make it into a time loop in a Kagetsu Tohya style, where you can raise flags and accumulate points that change the second, third etc. playthroughs? That way, each time it's played, only a day passes, but we can still make progress and watch Lain cover her room in wires and coolant. EDIT: Also, I put an example of the reality-warping qualities of this story. Perhaps we could use the school days for comedy and introduce serious plot elements into the weekends? Amysteriousgal 02:26, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I think looping on the day might be too short, unless we want to go into very minute detail,or we expect a large number of playthroughs, but in that case we would have to make a lot of content, so it might as well just be a continuous playthrough. I could see there being a bad end that is some sort of failed reset, so it goes back to almost the same, and maybe she manages to leave herself clues on the second time through (like that one star trek tng episode).Bytor 03:48, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I've played a bunch of slow-paced VNs recently, and there's a lot that we could do with one day, especially with the reality-warping effect. The more choices we include, the more replayable this story becomes, anyway. How about if time doesn't pass unless you make it the weekend? That would mean that the school day options won't change between playthroughs, but the weekend options will constantly change for a few days. On the ending menu after a day, the player can choose to go back and select another story or to live another day as Lain. After the first playthrough, I think this waking up scene won't be used anymore, but there can be an option that says "Today is... A weekday/A weekend". ...Or we could just organise this game into about a week's worth of, uh, Laining? The problem there is that we're forced to follow her actual weekly schedule, while the daily loop option would let us (and the readers) to be more flexible in which days to read about. Hmm... The reset idea is nice. Have you written any mystery stories before? I always wanted to try it. Amysteriousgal 08:34, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of "looping" with variation. Perhaps making the weekend days special somehow could improve the pacing in the long run. Also, I am going to adapt the term Laining into my vocabulary. --アラベスク 09:54, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Just threw some ideas on there for daily looping. It should be easy to adapt if we decide to make the chronology linear, though. Does it seem interesting so far? It'll need a lot of expanding, of course... Amysteriousgal 16:09, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I feel like making it only one day, but adding this content and structure to make each playthrough is making it more complicated than necessary. Like, if someone is going to play it through multiple days, where they do different things, why not just play through several things, and if we want events to happen that aren't based on the day of the week, just have them based on the player reaching certain milestones, like point counters or something? Bytor 16:15, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Regarding schedules, other than school, and going out to party, I don't think there's much that would be affected by day of the week (and even then, it seemed like the kids in SEL were irresponsible and partied at the club on whatever day it was, rather than just Friday). I think it would be neat to have one or two end-of-game type events, like have there be a huge party at Cyberia, or the knights make a move, in two weeks. That way, there are goal events you could work toward, and then there could be like a bad end reset, or mediocre end like she just continues to be shy and doesn't do much. Bytor 16:15, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Since there are three types of points, we could have a big event that you can do for each if it gets high enough.Bytor 16:22, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

A fair point. It would be a million times easier to structure it without the loop. For the "plot", maybe some comedic reality slippage happens, and Lain runs around secretly patching things up... Imagine if, I don't know, a LOLcat was found sitting on the teacher's desk at school when NAVI=2, or a giant tomato appears in the sky when Weird=3, or something. What if we have different endings depending on which point scale is maxed out first? Maximum Social would take place in Cyberia, where Lain maybe wins a karaoke contest; maximum NAVI might make Lain move back into the Wired and spend her days cyberstalking Alice; maximum Weird might lead to a reset which causes bear suits to become in fashion. Amysteriousgal 16:37, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Tone

I like the idea of keeping this one light-hearted, slice of life style, since the others will probably be more serious. Bytor 16:18, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I heard someone claim that Lain fans have no sense of humour. That sounds like a challenge... Amysteriousgal 16:40, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I think coloring will be an important part of this. I think flatter coloring, with less shading and more contrast would be best, and maybe have the background be bright and happy most of the time, but maybe still have Lain be moody looking? Bytor 16:45, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Hidamari Sketch-like pastel colours and probably cute and simple patterns - waves, large polka dots - during dialogue scenes... There should be plenty of cheerful music from TAM Music Factory that we can use. All the other characters can be similarly unshaded and pastelified - although all that black hair... Amysteriousgal 17:00, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

So maybe a random storyline like this would work? Also, augh help I can't write comedy Amysteriousgal 01:23, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I think we've definitely got the beginnings of a good plan here. As much as I do enjoy the brainstorming for this one, we probably ought to actually put our efforts into one the stories you've already made good progress on writing, so that we've got a better feel of the process. I'll have my evenings (CST -6) free starting Tuesday; until then I'll mostly be poking at this, so my efforts may stick to this story until then, but after that I am up for getting serious with this project. I personally have done basically zero writing, but I think if we bounce ideas around enough we can mold them into some kind of story, and as long as we keep it from being too SRS BSNS, we could probably find some subtle jokes and silliness to insert.Bytor 03:24, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Structure

What kind of level of choices do we want in this? If we lean towards a small number, it will be simpler to design, and more effort will be spent on writing longer pieces of content, but more choices will allow us to have more scenes that are divergent, though they will necessarily be shorter. I guess I'm asking: do we want breadth or depth? I've only played maybe 3-4 VNs myself, so I don't have a very good idea of what is the norm, but I could see it being 2-4 choices per day, depending on the day and choices taken.Bytor 22:28, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

For comedy VNs, there tend to be more choices - maybe 5 per day, sometimes up to 10. Serious ones usually have fewer, maybe 2 or 3 on average, unless they're designed to be adventure and/or horror. I was thinking 5 would be a reasonable number for each day, and in any case, it's relatively difficult to write extended pieces of fluff. Or maybe it would be easy for someone other than me. ^^; Amysteriousgal 23:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Quick ideas

In a pastiche of the cute-girls-doing-cute-things trope of school clubs, could Lain's school (I need to put my mind to a nice punny name for it) suddenly find itself with a computer club?

perhaps being sufficiently social and technical could get Lain an invite to join the computer club. Re: school name, we'll have to do some research on good names. I'd like to see it be a Japanese with some interesting, relevant meaning. Bytor 23:26, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I also rather like the idea of sending Taro and Myu-Myu to Lain's school.

Does the anime establish their age? (I suppose this wiki probably says...) If not, I'd say put them a grade or two younger. She could run into them in the hall, or in computer club maybe. Bytor 23:26, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Alice as class rep would be a nice little nod to, ahem, too. Ahania 22:35, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, a computer club! It magically appears in the school, or maybe it was always there and nobody noticed, or maybe it appeared as a result of all this reality slippage. What if the kids show up to take part in a competition? Inter-school gaming contest, using a game that Lain's school made? ...Was there already a class rep somewhere, though? Oh well, reality slippage is a good excuse for everything. Amysteriousgal 23:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)