Joan of Arc

[dbuske]

I will be starting a new game.  The subject is Joan of Arc,
It will be an interactive\documentary of her life.
I plan to make it kind of symbolic and at times even abstract in nature.  How to do this I have no idea.
She was different for sure.


Below is a link to my just finished game, Bapu: the Life of Gandhi.
http://www.mediafire.com/?3mdj5mo2zgfoff6

[GarageGothic]

Sounds really interesting. I've been studying a lot of Christian mysticism lately, so I'll be curious to see how you end up portraying her visions. I'd recommend looking into other historical figures who had mystical experiences, like Hildegard von Bingen and William Blake and compare their descriptions and illustrations of the transcendental.

I think the idea of a player character doing something by divine inspiration is a wonderful concept to work within. Because it doesn't matter whether you as the player think it's the right thing to do, or you worry about the consequence of their actions - she's on a mission from God and there's no turning back. Dreamweb did something similar (no spoiler warning, it's in the intro) with the main character being ordered in dream to kill seven 'evil' people  in the real world, and as a player you just had to accept and go along with that premise, even if you could never really know that he wasn't just crazy.

Good luck with the project! You're welcome to PM me if you ever need some feedback on your ideas.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Hi dbuske,

I'd highly recommend watching the movie with Sandrine Bonnaire, called "Jeanne La Pucelle" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_adQDEkTnmU ), which is WAY more realistic and close to her actual life than the Luc Besson blockbuster movie with Mila Jovovitch.

Of course you can learn a lot from books (darn, the one I wanted to recommed is discontinued), but I guess you'll be more interested in the graphical universe surrounding her, that's why I think movies help a lot.

Also, the most important thing to understand about Jeanne dÁrc is that she was a complete newbie AND a political tool for the King of France (Charles VII) who was fighting not only the English, but also their very powerful French allies (the Bourguignon(s)) who were almost besieging Paris. Charles VII "used" her as much as he could (wow, a mystical virgin coming out of nowhere, scaring the English and boosting the moral of the troops!!!), but when she got captured he didn't pay the ransom, and let her die.

Also the thing to understand about the time she spent in the Bourguignon/English prisons is that they definitely wanted to execute her, but at the same time they were shitting their pants of killing a messenger of God (or at least they were worried it would have a very bad impact on public opinion).
>> So they spent most of their time trying to trick her with silly theological questions, during very long trials -- the problem was that she was so naive and witty at the same time that their tricks didn't really work.

[dbuske]

Thanks alot for the good replies.
Wonderful comments and suggestions.
I will definitely follow up on them.
Also, in the looking for team members thread I posted looking for a scripter and artist for the project.
I can be contacted at dbuske@gmail.com

[dbuske]

The final version of the game will be uploaded on Oct. 11, 2011 or so.
Our internet bandwidth is low till then.
I learned alot since making this game, so I did alot of scripting improvements.
Improved photos, processing to png.
Added displays for inventory items.
Made the music level controlled by audiochannel in the script.