AJ: Downfall to the Turnabout [Announcement]

[DWaM]

Downfall to the Turnabout

All things must come to an end.

Download [Prologue - Full] Now!

Update

Alright, even though this thread may be unactive (though the CR thread wasn't any active, either, but w/e), I am hereby announcing a massive change. I have decided to make this entire case trial-only. In other words, no investigations. HOWEVER - there is one thing you should be aware of. When I say 'trial only', I don't mean starting a new trial after the prologue. No. Instead, I mean I will EXPAND the Prologue so that I can make it into a full case. While I had originally planned for another crime, entierly, I think some of the people will find it interesting in the direction this will take.

So, how will I change it? Well, Part 1 should be relatively untouched, while Part 2 will be seeing quite a bit of changes... pretty much taking the entire case in a new direction. ...So... Yeah.

The reason behind this? Simple - no inspiration. I have inspiration for an investigation. But I also have no will on doing a repeat of Prologue. Another reason is that I... don't really think I can reach that emotional level of Prologue's intro OR its conclusion. It's... not an exactly thing to go from.

So... yeah. In conclusion, I'm pulling a BioWare. Think of the case now as an Extended Cut of the Prologue.

That's all.

WARNING: 'Prologue' contains small Ace Attorney: Investigations 2 spoilers and a music track! You have been warned!

Alright, because I like to shamelessly promote myself (XD), I'm going to bring my PyWright fangame project that I started a couple of months ago.

OK, I think it's about fair time I show off my project (after all, I couldn't resist with all these other fangames in progress..) While I honestly wanted to announce the fangame itself until I had made at least 1/3 of the case, I first wanted to see what people think of the idea. I honestly don't know will the fangame itself ever be finished, I will make it my life's missionto get at least the first part out. Well, did that... So let's say I'll 'try' to do the rest of the parts.

The game will be made in PyWright. I thought about other engines, but, for legit reasons, I decided to go with PyWright simply because of the fact that I'm the most experienced with it and because of the custom features the game will have are most easily done for my with it. Speaking of which:

Features:
- Minigames ~ I already have quite a few in mind, and I can't wait to try the out. There isn't a doubt in my mind that they are possible to make.
- New Logic ~ While the system I have in mind might not seem professional to some, it's feature is quite interesting: It will allow the player to: A) Use it during Cross - Examinations and B) It will allow the player to combine more than two pieces of logic at the same time.
- A Darker Story ~ While this is not really a feature, it's worth mentioning that this is one story that... won't exactly as light-hearted as the original AA games. It'll still have humor, but... you'll see.
- Standard PW features ~ Do I really need to explain this one?

About:
The case takes place about half a year after the events of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. Apollo has had a few cases (mostly arranged by Phoenix) after the test trial, but nothing worth noting. However, when Phoenix gives him a call about a new case, Apollo has no idea that that would be the beginning of his eternal downfall.

All Parts and past releases:
The case will be split up into several parts:

Prologue ~ Rise and Fall (Old Version) [Completed]
---- Prologue 1/2 [Completed - Download Link: [http://pywright.dawnsoft.org/updates3/g ... A_DttT.zip]
---- Prologue 2/2 [Completed - Download Link: [http://www.mediafire.com/?au0atgz2lsc6026]

Downfall to the Turnabout - New Edition [In Progress]




Screenshots:

Prologue ~ Rise and Fall (Old Version)

Spoiler : Minor Spoilers :

Walkthroughs:

Prologue (Downfall - Old Version)

Spoiler : Walkthrough :

-- Prologue (Downfall - Old Version) Walkthrough --

[Investigation - Court Lobby]
Talk: The Trial
Talk: The murder weapon
Talk: Why were you there?
Talk: Witness?
Talk: You and Mr. Wright

[Cross Examination - Ema: Facts of the Crime]
Press the 2nd Statement
Pick 'Positions?'
Press the 2nd Statement
Pick 'Mr. Edgeworth?'
Press the New Revealed Statement
Present the Article on the New Revealed Statement
Press the 5th Statement
Present the Diagram or the 'Positions' logic piece on the 3rd Statement

[Cross Examination - Ema: Evidence]
Press the 3rd Statement
Press the 4th Statement
Pick 'Show Evidence'
Present the Crime Scene Photo or the Diagram
Present the Arrow on the 5th Statement
Press the Last Statement
Pick 'Something else at the scene?'
Proceed to the 'Helper Talk' (Just go all the way to the end of the C-E, passing the last statement)

[Minigame]
I won't really talk about HOW to do it, because it's just too easy.

[Cross Examination - Ema: Evidence (Revisited)]
Press the Last Statement

[Rebuttal - Von Karma: Von Karma's Logic]
Proceed to the 'Helper Talk' (Just go all the way to the end of the C-E, passing the last statement)
Pick 'Use Logic'
Present 'Blood Spattered from Body'
Present 'No Blood Spatter'
Pick 'Combine Them'
Exit Logic
Press the 3rd Statement
Present 'Blood on Mr. Edgeworth' logic piece on the 3rd Statement
Present the People Park Floorplan
Point at the Killer's position

[Cross Examination - Doe: What I Saw]
Press the 2nd Statement
Present the 'Sound/Distance' logic piece on the 4th Statement

[Cross Examination - Doe: What I Saw, Pt. II]
Press the 1st Statement
Pick 'Your surroundings'
Press the 1st Statement
Pick 'What was the time?'
Press the newly revealed statement
Press the 'Then, at one moment, Ms. Holl turned around and Mr. Edgeworth stabbed her with the arrow.' statement
Present The Coat on the newly revealed statement
Press the 'On the other side, I was able to see the defendant and the victim, talking.' statement
Press the 'Naturally, I couldn't do anything but watch.' statement
Present Doe's profile on the 'The time I witnessed the crime was 2:13 AM.' statement (The revealed one)
Pick 'Had a Cellphone!'
Pick 'Accuse Doe'

[Apollo vs. Rudolf: Logic Chess Battle]
Present 'Von Karma's Experiment' logic piece
Present the arrow
Present the People Park Floorplan
Pick 'I can'
Present the People Park Floorplan OR the crime scene photo
Present Rudolf's profile
Present the People Park Floorplan or Holl's profile
Present 'No blood on Mr. Edgeworth' logic piece or Edgeworth's profile

Present the Crime Scene Photo
Point at the dirt on the ground


-- END OF PROLOGUE --

Summary:

Spoiler : Summary :

Apollo gets called down to the Courthouse by Phoenix. Apollo wasn't really surprised by the sudden call, at first, because it wasn't the first invitation Phoenix had given to the courtroom. However, as he find out, things are far from normal. The defendant is a famous prosecutor and Phoenix's friend, Miles Edgeworth. He was accused of killing a woman in the park, Catherine Holl, a teacher at Atlas High School in the center of People Park. Simple, at first. However, what dark secrets lurk between the edges? What is the mysterious connection between the victim and Phoenix Wright? Why was Edgeworth there in the first place? The answer to that lies in the long forgotten past...

Status:
Planning: 100%
Coding: 18%
Writing: 21%
Spriting: 40% ---------> I did a couple of sprites, but naturally, I'm not going to show them because they ARE spoiler-ish.
-----------------
Overall: 20%

Current Helpers:

nudalman - Revamping a sprite.

All Beta-Testers:

[Prologue 1/2]
0. Ropfa (He applied before the beta-testing process really began)
1. MayaPhoenix
2. nudalman
3. Bad Player

[Prologue 2/2]
1. drthingums
2. Ropfa
3. RoxasorSora

Known Issues/Bugs:

Spoiler : Spoiler for obvious reasons :

- The game crashes whenever I use logic! -> You're most likely NOT playing in dual screen mode. Switch to it and it should work.
- The texts cuts out from the text box! -> That's my fault. Sorry!
- The game suddenly crashes out of nowhere! -> If it's around the part where it seems someone is going to use actual logic (in other words, where you suspect the logic music might come up), open the part where it crashes in notepad (you'll be able to deduce it from the dialogue, I hope) and simply move the 'mus 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors OST - Digital Root.mp3' a few lines above and it should work.
- The logic chess section keep showing me errors that just keep getting bigger and bigger! They're going to eat my soullllll! -> The only advice I can give you on that one is that you make sure you're running on the newest version of PyWright.
- It's ROOK, not castle, you idiot! -> I know. Completely forgot - different language, different chess names.

Install Instructions:
I understand some people might be inexperienced with PyWright and how it works, so I'll break it down for ya.

1.) Download PyWright here. (Choose one depending on your OS)
2.) Extract the archive somewhere on your computer.
3.) Download 'Prologue - Full'.
4.) Extract the archive and place the 'DownfalltotheTurnabout' folder in the 'Games' folder in your PyWright directory.
5.) You're done! Simply run PyWright.exe and play the game.

To Do List:
Because I'm too lazy to write it somewhere else.

Spoiler : To do :

[] Deal with the Auto-save thing once and for all.
[] Fix Rudolf's sprite... again.
[+] Rewrite Rudolf's introduction scene.
[+] Fix the article graphic.
[] Make an actual sprite for Catherine Holl.
[+] Fix all of the text clipping off.
[+] Convert all of the music to .ogg format.

Development Diaries:

Spoiler : Downfall to the Turnabout ~ Development Diary #1 :

Downfall to the Turnabout ~ Development Diary #1 (Creation)

The original idea for Downfall started exactly a year ago. I remember it was a time I just wanted to MAKE SOMETHING. I didn't know what it was about, I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I had this itch to just make an Ace Attorney fangame of my own. Don't ask why, because I don't know. So, I started to write a project titled: 'Downfall'. The original concept was to take place in an alternate reality where Matt Engarde got away in the events of 'Farewell, my Turnabout'. The events would take place in the AJ timeline and would pretty much be a 'What if?' story – but with a twist. One, it wasn't supposed to be very long (2-3 hours at most), but the player would be given many choices that would influnece how certain events happened that would eventually give him many different endings and the player would have the option of controlling all the essential characters (Apollo, Phoenix, Gumshoe, ect.) It was from this idea that this sprite was born:

This was meant to be the hobo Nick of the alternate universe.

It was my first attempt at a sprite and I was very happy. The problem was – I just had no ispiration. It felt like too much work and the culprit wasn't so much deduced from the 'How?' rather than the 'Why?' and it got... stale. Eventually, it just faded away and became nothing more than a distant memory.
Then, a few months later – I got another idea: It was a three-case series whose cases were very tightly connected to each other. The first case 'The Fool's Turnabout' was the case the Prologue of Downfall was based on – Edgeworth was arrested for the murder of Catherine Holl and the one who defended him would be Phoenix Wright. ...And yes, it was supposed to take place in the AJ timeline. The idea was that Phoenix pretended to have regained his badge in order to represent Edgeworth in court.

The Nick in 'The Fool's Turnabout'. Some might notice the similarity of his line with the one used in the 'Downfall'.

???: Wright.
Phoenix: Hmm?
???: Are you sure.... this'll work?
???: The risks you're taking... they're too big.
Phoenix: The truth must be preserved.
Phoenix: You said that yourself, remember?
???: I know. And I meant it.
???: But for your sake... I...
Phoenix: Trust me. I'll be fine.
???: I trust you, Wright.
???: ...But if you're caught...
Phoenix: I know. Your verdict will also be jeopardized.
Phoenix: Don't worry. Thanks to the jurist system, you'll be safe even if I am.
{pause}
???: Wright... I... Thank you.
Phoenix: That's what friends are for.. isn't it?

That idea quickly evolved when I decided to replace Phoenix with Apollo as my main protagonist. And soon, I kind of decided to combine all those three cases into one – Downfall to the Turnabout. It was going to be the first case of a fangame – 'Apollo Justice: A Game of Deception'.

I'm not going to lie – When I announced this on Court Records, the only concrete idea I had was for cases 1 and 4. The 2nd case was essentially character introductions and the third one... I had no idea. Despite this, I proceeded with the creation of Downfall. Eventually, after releasing the first part of what was going to be the first day, I suddenly got an idea – make case 1 and 4 into one case! Well, naturally details would have to be changed, but the concept would be the same. Another reason was that I was 80% precent sure that if I were to do 4 cases, the fangame would never be finished. So, I announced this and went directly to part two of the case. ...Only to stop dead in my tracks. I started to eventually stop working on it due to my schoolwork and became unable to find the time or the will to pick it up again. Something that people have to understand is that making a fangame, of any kind, isn't easy. It requires planning, dedication, endurance and the will to just throw everything out of the window and start again. It's a tedious and frustrating process, believe me.
Another, unsurprising problem was the coding. Not that the coding itself was hard – on the contrary, PyWright is an extremely easy program to use once you get used to it. The problem was how time consuming it was. Do you remember Doe's first testimony in Prologue Pt. 2? The easiest testimony in AA history? That took me two days straight to code. It was annoying and I just wanted to stop and say: 'Screw this!' and leave everything (like I had so many times before). But I didn't. My fingers hurt like hell, but at the end of the day, I managed to finally get through it. The point is – making a fangame isn't easy. It isn't easy to write it. It isn't easy to code it.

Now let's talk about the presentation. I never actually intended to work on the presentation that much to begin with. But, as I started to make these small touches to improve it, I eventually became obsessed with it – from simple fade-ins or making sure that the Cross-Examination sign disappears after it shows to animated evidence adding, evidence boxes, 'Select your answer' fgs, Apollo zoom pose on the bottom screen whenever he objects, etc., etc. It didn't make my life any easier, but frankly, it was worth it, without a doubt.
It's actually one of the reasons why I won't be making say, an AAO version. The presentation in cluded in it is... simply far too complex to spend all that time making it, fine tuning it and uploading it with the danger of it being taken down.

Moving on to the writing. When making a fangame, you really need to make sure that: A) The pacing is right, B) You've got the characters down and C) That the crime itself is good. I'd say that Prologue had problems mostly with the A) (the lobby seen was dragged – but it was something I had to do) and C) – in other words, the crime wasn't that interesting or flashed out for people to understand it. This is something I'm working for in the next parts. If people are actually trying to solve the crime with Apollo, that means that I've succeeded. Will I? Only time will show...
As for the characters, I didn't actually have any trouble writing them. That's not to say my characterisation is 100% prefect – by no means, however people found that it all mostly worked. ...But that's for the characters that you've seen so far. Other characters (namely Trucy) I'm not so strong in writing. So we'll see.

I can understand I should talk about some of the things like Catherine Holl, Rudolf, DeKiller and possibly their ideas, characters, etc. – But I won't. The simplest reason I can give you is: 'It'll be explaned'. ...For most parts, anyway.

That concludes the first Development Diary of Downfall to the Turnabout. I can understand it wasn't that interesting, but I hope some people found it useful, anyway.

A Let's Play!
Fuandon, a Let's player from YouTube actually made a Let's Play of Prologue! I suggest you check it out and his channel (seriously, the guy is a good let's player).
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... ature=plcp -> Let's Play of Prologue
http://www.youtube.com/user/fuandon/featured -> Fuandon's channel

So, what do you think? Leave your comments and suggestions below. (Please?)

[lazyplague]

Finally got it on here? ;P

Anyway I've seen it around but never played it! I shall do it later. :3

[energizerspark]

Looks interesting.

[DWaM]

Sorry for the late replies, however I think It would've been nicer to actually post an update with it rather than beat around the bush.

Finally got it on here? ;P

Anyway I've seen it around but never played it! I shall do it later. :3

YOU DARED?! Gogogogogo! ...Nao.

Looks interesting.

Well, while it may look interesting... Is it actually interesting will depend on what you think of it after you played it (if you ever do).

----------------------------------------------

Small Update

Well, the first chapter (Awakening) has been fully planned. The script writing process has begun. (And yes, while I did say this earlier on CR, soon after that I ran into a massive writer's block and had to go back to the drawing board. XD)
As for Prologue, I have been working on fixing a couple of things here and there (along with those on my 'To do' list) - adding two more presents at the end, revamping a certain testimony (One I've gotten the most complaints about being unfair) and fixing small things like my alternation between the '..'s and '...'s or aligning Edgeworth's color scheme (by the way, did anyone do that around here? )

That's it so far.

[Themaniacree]

Most trials I go meh to except from Zeel's and Blackrune also Meph's but this one caught my attention. Not for any particular reason but it just did. So when it's done I shall play it.

[SwagmaWampyr]

Oh hey, I've been told about this. And I've recently learned that the prologue counts as a full case.

I'll check it out whenever I can pull myself away from Persona 3, EpicMafia, and Lollipop Chainsaw.

[DWaM]

Well, should any of you two get around to play it, I hope you enjoy it.

So when it's done I shall play it.

You might have to wait for a looooong time. XD

[DWaM]

Update

Alright, even though this thread may be unactive (though the CR thread wasn't any active, either, but w/e), I am hereby announcing a massive change. I have decided to make this entire case trial-only. In other words, no investigations. HOWEVER - there is one thing you should be aware of. When I say 'trial only', I don't mean starting a new trial after the prologue. No. Instead, I mean I will EXPAND the Prologue so that I can make it into a full case. While I had originally planned for another crime, entierly, I think some of the people will find it interesting in the direction this will take.

So, how will I change it? Well, Part 1 should be relatively untouched, while Part 2 will be seeing quite a bit of changes... pretty much taking the entire case in a new direction. ...So... Yeah.

The reason behind this? Simple - no inspiration. I have inspiration for an investigation. But I also have no will on doing a repeat of Prologue. Another reason is that I... don't really think I can reach that emotional level of Prologue's intro OR its conclusion. It's... not an exactly thing to go from.

So... yeah. In conclusion, I'm pulling a BioWare. Think of the case now as an Extended Cut of the Prologue.

That's all.

P. S. From now on, this thread will be updated with all the minor updates instead of the CR one. The major updates will still be on CR.