I mean, with 99% of the art done, toro’s retirement doesn’t prevent forks from getting finished.
It’s the fact that tron also wants to retire that’s killing forks. Toro’s retirement only kills/killed aria.
Tron was the writer for forks, tron wants to retire and not finish the writing. But what does getting a new writer even mean? Tron posted all the assets here in this thread, anyone who thinks they have the skills and time to write for forks is free to do so now.
My bet is no one will, because like I said, maybe only 2or3 writers out there have the skills to do the job, and they’re busy writing the projects they created that they want to write.
this is a sad day because, at least to me, forks was like one of THE games on this website but life happens and there’s nothing you can do about that. I wish you and the rest of team spoon good luck on your future endeavors, whether the be fetish games or children lol.
I’d say the bigger reason why this wouldn’t get finished by a fan is, regardless of having the time or skills to do so (even I could do it), the author’s writing style is harder to replicate moreso than any missing art assets left. In addition to the leftover story arcs from the asset dump unanswered:
Why does Hannah rebound and gain weight?
Why do Alex and Rea have chef uniforms?
Does Rea even do anything after she graduates?
Where does Rea’s mom fit into Rea’s backstory?
Does Alex’s mom forgive her daughter in the end?
Does Grace take up her family’s business, or is the new outfit for show?
Even if someone fills Tron’s shoes, the smallest differences in authors when writing and recalling from experiences can lead to a wildly different kind of story. Worse, what if fans competing with each other have written their own ends to Forks, but there’s no way to reconcile the two or more stories?
Although hiring a writer to finish the story is a bit brazen, it’s still a way for Tron to act as the director and approve where the story will go. With the story as it is right now, we can make some educated guesses, but due to everyone’s taste on the forum the end result could be wildly different. Morgan could have her own route; Aria’s assets could be used and kitbashed with the current story; new characters outside of Toro’s involvement could appear randomly. Someone might even do this in a new engine, with varying levels of open source.
Although I respect Tron’s decision to leave this project, even leaving some of this out of the open, it’s too vague for a fan to reasonably assemble together without author input, unless Tron has absolute faith in the forking of the project (pun not intended). It’s very generous to open the curtain to inspire other dev’s, and I might even play the fangames and mods, but the only canon routes can be made (or approved) by the author. I hope Tron can clear this up someday.
There’s no way 99 of the art is done in my opinion. The sprites while great, most of the mid to higher levels feel like they are missing entire sets of clothing unless for some story reason we were only ever going to see the different girls in a bed/ daytime situation. Which doesn’t make sense with the amount of care and craft that went into just the seasonal changes between backgrounds. Or even the storytelling of same clothes not being sized up yet with like missing a buttons or garments not fitting correctly that was done by toro. Plus atleast 3/4 of the cgs are missing.
The reality of trying to Frankenstein this project together with different art and writing doesn’t appeal to me. Time probably better spent just creating another project then toss a mismatch one together. Forks has already inspired multiple projects on the site and while not the legacy any fans were hoping for is probably the best that will come from it.
I wish that there was a bit more story to be shown. I know you were busy with Aria though. Is there a chance of getting a brief story outline of what we could have seen further into the game? Some of the clothes in later portraits hint at some great stuff.
For the hell of it, I went into GIMP and make gifs of the main 5 girls expanding. It’s not much, but it’s a good visualizer for how much they would have grown.
First of all, we’re going to need people who are good at edits and photoshop, artists that can replicate old toro sprites would be a dream come true but not realistic, people who can edit outfits for higher weight stages and do morphs though would be peak
pretty much just need some people with basic photoshop skills to morph the outfits on slightly lower weight stages to higher weight stages. anything more as far as art goes is bonus and not needed, but would be a dream-come-true
I mean, it’s complicated. While difficult, it wouldn’t be impossible to build on what has already been done. Even if a difference in writing style shows, well it is what it is.
However, as a dabbling writer, I can say without a doubt I would change things. My opinion is that Rea is a garbage character and I kind of hate that they gave her the largest size. My focus would be on making sure that Alex grows beyond and outpaces all the others, considering that was her goal from the outset (or at least what I gathered from the demo).
I wouldn’t compromise what I personally think would work better. But then it wouldn’t be Forks anymore.
I think it’s best to just let the original vision pass on. You never know, maybe one day Tron might decide to revive it. Stranger things have happened.
secondly it’s nice to see someone willing to take a crack at making a different story by using forks stuff but it’s a bit odd you just join and made this your first post no offense however you do see you do seem to know what you want to do by the three initial replies so i take it you have quite a bit of experience?.
Forth @Krodmandoon i’ll agree with you their i would say about most of the stages are done about two thirds to three quarters at best by the look of things but it might be possible to at least make more clothing for the later stages already their while using the current clothing they have as a sort of template to get a good idea on either how fitting their clothes are at the moment.
and finally @TittyMonsterLover … it’s very true no one will ever likely finish the story as the original developer envisioned but with what we know so far about each character and their pasts it does give those who want to give a chance a good idea to work from and while yes it won’t be the official Forks route but i think it will be nice to see what crazy stories other writers and artists can come up and also i wish to point to tfgamesite and the visual novel Student Transfer for an example… my god their scenario community is good and heck some of them become actual developers of the official game!
Who I really am is a secret but I’m sure you’d recognize me if I said my name
My experience with game development specifically is not fantastic, so coders/any and all help for this commandeering of the project would be much appreciated - however I am a professional writer and know how to manage a project
Worst case if there was no one to help me code I’d be able to learn and build off of the code already written for forks - so either way we’ll figure it out, but all-hands-on-deck is very much wanted
Sometime I love the community. I’m watching the comments form after the last two days. At first it was saddness for few hours then anger to hate. Now people are trying to piece things together and realising the game is very doable to being fixed and done.
This alone and simply can be recreated by an artist as most of the templates have multiple sprites.
@sfa And someone who says they have proffessional experiance in writing is a major start.
I joined this Forums from Forks and love to see how the community uptake to continuing its legacy comes.
I do agree that any game may be better than no game, but this project seems to be mutating fast. We’ve already got @sfa and @Morganism saying the game needs a shift in intent, and even retconning previous story to make every character shine. Now seeing the context of Rea as the “slob blob” in the art dump, it would be a controversial character in a more conventional dating sim, but I’m sure some in this community would prefer the crass nature in somebody like Rea irl. Tron already said that Rea’s and Hannah’s routes are separate continuities, so there’s plenty room to save the character and give them an arc without rewriting the story.
People will inevitably write what you don’t like, and although Tron left this out only asking for credit, we shouldn’t treat this like a Unity asset pack and destroy the author’s intent without being considerate. The community should take as much of the canon as possible, and playing to the strengths of the game, not just cherry picking to suit the new author’s whims (even if there’s nothing stopping them). Sure, there is somewhat an agenda when creating games yourself, but when you publish a game, the point is to make a story to share with other people, not just create “yes women” for a product.
Just to clarify, I’m not saying it needs a change in direction, I was saying if I was to continue working on it I would personally change much about it due to my own tastes/feelings.
Which is why I feel the project should be mourned and moved on from, so attention can be paid to the many other projects floating around right now.
but I’m sure you’d recognize me if I said my name