Unity Any interest in developing VN's in Unity without coding?

[VNX]

Hey there developers, and potential developers, of F95. I have been interested in visual novels for quite some time and have come across so many posts by people who are saying that they want to develop a visual novel but can't due to their lack of ability in programming.

Therefore I thought it might be interesting to have a programming-free solution for it and looked into it and found quite a few engines which allow creating Visual Novels without code. But almost all of them cost money, which most starting developers do not want to pay, or they are heavily outdated/abandoned.

I have been working with Unity for quite some time and was looking into making a package for Unity that would allow you to create visual novels without coding. Of course I want to create it in a way that you can add on to it if you do have the ability to code in C#.

Long story short, my actual question is the following:

How much interest would there actually be in a FREE Unity package that would allow you to make a visual novel without coding?

One of the main reasons I feel that Unity is a great choice is due to the sheer amount of resources out there for it. So if you wanted to add anything to your project or the framework, there would most likely be a tutorial or code snippet for it somewhere.

Anyways, I just wanted to know if there would be any interest in it. I have already started working on a prototype and already have most of the initial dialogue system setup.

If there would be any interest, feel free to reply post your opinion and questions.

PS, I hope this was the right thread to post this question in. If not, feel free to move it mods.

Regards
VNX

 

[InCompleteController]

If I were you I would honestly look into

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, as it's designed to be a VN engine for beginners. This means minimal coding and the little that is required is designed to be very human readable. You can still break out some actual python code, if you wish to flex your coding skills, but it's only needed if you are overly ambitious.

If do want to use Unity, then I would recommend looking at

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. Whilst I haven't used it myself, it does look interesting. I just valued the simplicity of Renpy above the flexibility of Unity.

 

[gzrtjhgtyhjljk]

^what he said. If you really want to code a complete framework, do one for Godot Engine. Unity already has VN frameworks and isn't very well suited for VN's in the first place.

 

[VNX]

If I were you I would honestly look into

You must be registered to see the links

, as it's designed to be a VN engine for beginners. This means minimal coding and the little that is required is designed to be very human readable. You can still break out some actual python code, if you wish to flex your coding skills, but it's only needed if you are overly ambitious.

If do want to use Unity, then I would recommend looking at

You must be registered to see the links

. Whilst I haven't used it myself, it does look interesting. I just valued the simplicity of Renpy above the flexibility of Unity.

Thank you for mentioning Fungus, I have not come across this one before. Looks really good! To be clear, I am not interested in making a VN myself More interested in creating tools to help others create VN's more easily. Well it seems that there is a well established free tool for Unity already then so no need to reinvent the wheel.

 

[VNX]

^what he said. If you really want to code a complete framework, do one for Godot Engine. Unity already has VN frameworks and isn't very well suited for VN's in the first place.

Interesting suggestion, I have thought about getting a bit into Godot but am not that familiar with it. I was waiting for C# to become better supported for the Godot before I start playing around with it too much. But will look into it a bit.

 

[Tompte]

I speak from experience, having written tools in my past that did pretty much exactly this, and I don't think there's ever been a time where there hasn't been a high demand for simple non-programming solutions. Even if other solutions exists, there are often multiple ways to attack the same problem.

Whenever you can reduce the burden of required knowledge, it becomes extremely attractive to beginner creatives looking to create something fast and easy.

VNs are relatively simple games, technically speaking, but when you're making a tool for making VNs you're basically making every VN. Any job that you want to take away from the user, the tool must do that job instead. So it can be surprisingly time consuming to write a tool or framework like this, especially those meant to be user friendly. Obviously it depends on your goals and ambitions. I'm just saying.

In my opinion, a VN engine needs to be good at two thing: making it easy to author text (write the story), and presentation (look good and play well for players). If your tool did just one of those things it'd still be pretty compelling I think.

Leveraging Unity could be one way to go. Unity has its own learning curve but it's definitely possible to make a turn-key solution that even beginners to Unity would be able figure out. Something where they just need to drag a file into a folder and it works.

 

[VNX]

I speak from experience, having written tools in my past that did pretty much exactly this, and I don't think there's ever been a time where there hasn't been a high demand for simple non-programming solutions. Even if other solutions exists, there are often multiple ways to attack the same problem.

Whenever you can reduce the burden of required knowledge, it becomes extremely attractive to beginner creatives looking to create something fast and easy.

VNs are relatively simple games, technically speaking, but when you're making a tool for making VNs you're basically making every VN. Any job that you want to take away from the user, the tool must do that job instead. So it can be surprisingly time consuming to write a tool or framework like this, especially those meant to be user friendly. Obviously it depends on your goals and ambitions. I'm just saying.

In my opinion, a VN engine needs to be good at two thing: making it easy to author text (write the story), and presentation (look good and play well for players). If your tool did just one of those things it'd still be pretty compelling I think.

Leveraging Unity could be one way to go. Unity has its own learning curve but it's definitely possible to make a turn-key solution that even beginners to Unity would be able figure out. Something where they just need to drag a file into a folder and it works.

Thank you for the advice! I appreciate it I have been and will continue to work on it until I have atleast a basic version for people to test out. If there is still no interest then I will continue on to greener pastures.

 

[Winterfire]

isn't very well suited for VN's in the first place.

Completely false.

 

[lobotomist]

^what he said. If you really want to code a complete framework, do one for Godot Engine. Unity already has VN frameworks and isn't very well suited for VN's in the first place.

There's already rakugo for godot and the developer is a member of this forum.
Also unity is a multipurpose engine suited for pretty much any type of game.

 

[Jofur]

Honestly, I don't think Unity is hugely user friendly to people with no previous experience of game development. If someone JUST wants to use it has a visual novel editor I mean. If you are starting from square one learning Renpy is probably easier than Unity, since you have to not only learn the third party VN tools, but also all the built in stuff that makes Unity works. People who are just interested in the tools probably don't want to learn how to properly use the quirks of the component system or scriptable objects and stuff like that.

 

[Tompte]

That's fair.

I'm old school so I prefer the blank canvas Unity provides, but not everyone would jump at the opportunity to write everything themselves or would have the knowledge to do so. But considering the topic is about creating something to help beginners avoid some of that programming I still disagree that Unity would be a bad choice in this case.

 

[osanaiko]

Unless Fungus has had major updates since I tried it about 3 years ago, it's a huge pain in the ass to make anything interesting.

Renpy is 1000% easier for a low-code development experience if you are happy to go with default GUI and just make a kinetic novel.

Anything beyond a kinetic novel literally by definition requires some undertstanding of programming (even if you are connecting boxes a'la Scratch etc, it's still logically the same are coding.) Branches, variables, if/else, jumps. these are all the core concepts of programming. Making it "drag and drop" doesn't remove the need to understand the concepts. And anything like that must introduce limits on what you can acheive.

I appreciate your sentiment to want to contribute to the community, but I'm not sure the tool you imagine will solve whatever issue is holding would-be developers back.

Dedication, willingness to learn, logical organised thinking, abillity to create/source art, ability to write (at minimum understandably and then ideally entertaining) English. These are the skills/attributes that are needed to start and finish a VN. programming is only a very small part for most projects.

 

[Deleted member 1536527]

Everyone here gave valuable advice. I'd just add that although there are many games here that use Unity, if you're going to make a VN, using anything but Ren'py is probably going to be a mistake. It is very clear that consumers vastly prefer Ren'py over other engines, for VNs at least, due to its simplicity, features, light weight, and predictability. And seeing VNs in anything else usually deters at least a portion of the potential audience from even downloading it. (I've seen people use Unreal, talk about overkill).

That being said, you're right, I do feel like a lot of people want an easy no coding VN engine/tool. Although I think Ren'py is easy enough already. But I feel like this whole ease of development thing is a double edged sword.

Whenever you can reduce the burden of required knowledge, it becomes extremely attractive to beginner creatives looking to create something fast and easy.

Yup, and unfortunately the release of any such tools is shortly followed a plethora of low-effort and low-quality content. So even though it might be good in the long run, I'm still iffy about such extremely easy to use tools. (Although their ease of use usually makes them very limited in what you can achieve with them).

 

[VNX]

Anything beyond a kinetic novel literally by definition requires some undertstanding of programming (even if you are connecting boxes a'la Scratch etc, it's still logically the same are coding.) Branches, variables, if/else, jumps. these are all the core concepts of programming. Making it "drag and drop" doesn't remove the need to understand the concepts. And anything like that must introduce limits on what you can acheive.

Dedication, willingness to learn, logical organised thinking, abillity to create/source art, ability to write (at minimum understandably and then ideally entertaining) English. These are the skills/attributes that are needed to start and finish a VN.

I definitely agree that you do need to understand the core concepts. I studied a mixed course of Game Development and Animation which had us do programming as well as art etc. There were some more programming oriented people and a lot of more art oriented people. And almost all of the art oriented people struggled a lot with the programming side of the course, causing a lot of them to actually get expelled in the end because they could pass the exams. Now most of them did understand the basic concepts of programming (variables, conditionals etc.), however when it came to writing actual code they were very intimidated by it. As understanding the concepts and being able to implement it are two very different things.

This is why I feel like some of the artists who are interested in creating VN's or VN-esque games are scared off. Programming just looks too intimidating for a lot of people on the creative side of things. That is where I was focusing what I wanted to do, not for programmers who would be limited by it. Of course at some point the user might want to do something that is not in the scope of the framework but at that time they would need to decide whether they want to go into programming or not.

I was thinking of adding how to add custom events and things with code to the documentation but that is something that could come at a later stage.

programming is only a very small part for most projects.

I guess that depends on the project. But I should probably have been more clear in the title. When I am talking about VN's I am not talking only about traditional linear VN's but also others like sandbox types etc. I am not sure if you still count them as VN's or just more generally as games.

 

[VNX]

Everyone here gave valuable advice. I'd just add that although there are many games here that use Unity, if you're going to make a VN, using anything but Ren'py is probably going to be a mistake. It is very clear that consumers vastly prefer Ren'py over other engines, for VNs at least, due to its simplicity, features, light weight, and predictability. And seeing VNs in anything else usually deters at least a portion of the potential audience from even downloading it. (I've seen people use Unreal, talk about overkill).

I have noticed that a lot of people are attracted to the Ren'py tag above others and I see what you mean. Unreal is definitely overkill of something like a VN but I imagine that is being used exactly because of people wanting to avoid programming since you can use the Visual Scripting (Blueprint) system in it.

 

[VNX]

Honestly, I don't think Unity is hugely user friendly to people with no previous experience of game development. If someone JUST wants to use it has a visual novel editor I mean. If you are starting from square one learning Renpy is probably easier than Unity, since you have to not only learn the third party VN tools, but also all the built in stuff that makes Unity works. People who are just interested in the tools probably don't want to learn how to properly use the quirks of the component system or scriptable objects and stuff like that.

Yeah I get that but I guess that is where rigorous documentation would come in to walk newbies through the steps from creating a project to building it.

 

[Jofur]

Yeah I get that but I guess that is where rigorous documentation would come in to walk newbies through the steps from creating a project to building it.

True, it's not super hard to learn Unity, just a lot of extra effort you have to go through. That and I expect it might put a lot of people off compared to something more "self-contained" and less bloated. On the plus side, it does teach you to use a powerful game engine that you can either use to easily expand the VN aspect in unlimited ways, or make entire new games. I might be wrong, but Python aside Renpy skills aren't massively transferrable. There is also probably a fair amount of already existing semi-experienced Unity users(both inside and outside f95) who would like up-to-date, easy to use and free tools.