Best engine for very text-heavy game

[Zenith_AU]

Hi folks,

I'm looking to create something that is less visuals with text, and more text with visuals. Essentially something akin to the Pick-A-Path/Choose Your Own Adventure/Fighting Fantasy books from the days of yore (yes, I'm old).

I could absolutely write them in HTML as I'm already pretty familar with HTML code and CSS, but I want to learn something new.

I have zero illusions about making a game that other people will want to play and pay/donate money - this is purely a pet project, I just don't want to invest time in learning something like Ren'Py only to discover that it doesn't really handle what I want. My experience with VNs - adult or otherwise - is that there really isn't great walls of text being thrown at the reader. Typically it's smaller quantities of text like a sentence or two being shown at a time. As I said, I pretty much want to bring up a page of text (multiple paragraphs at a minimum).

Has anyone had experience in writing text-heavy games, or can suggest which tools might be best?

 

[VirginChadDev]

Try

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[Winterfire]

Any engine, you can even write your own if you want to be fancy. Otherwise you could use Godot, Unity, Ren'Py, etc. I'd probably avoid unreal though.

 

[Zenith_AU]

Try

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That's probably a sensible suggestion for what I'm trying to achieve, but it appears to use HTML/CSS/JS which I'm already reasonably familiar with - the purpose of my undertaking is to learn something new via a project. I tend to be a very results-motivated learner.

As an example, I tried just sitting through Python tutorials and got nowhere fast. Instead I decided to task myself with writing a geometry app that calculated the perimeter/area of 2D and 3D shapes based on user input (number of sides/faces, length, etc). I learned far more that way.

So similarly, I want to learn a new thing and I'm leaning towards Ren'Py but I've not seen anyone implement something like what I wanted to achieve so I thought I would ask around to see what experiences people have had.

Though I really do appreciate the suggestion. I might actually also run a second project to recreate those pick-a-path books using Twine since it will probably be much easier based on my current skillset.

 

[Zenith_AU]

Any engine, you can even write your own if you want to be fancy. Otherwise you could use Godot, Unity, Ren'Py, etc. I'd probably avoid unreal though.

Write my own engine? I'm not that much of a masochist

I seem to recall some controversy around Unity so I sort of discounted it without looking much further. I agree that Unreal would probably be a very bad idea, although it might be good for designing backgrounds for the handful of images I'll probably make - I have a friend who uses it to create TTRPG maps.

Thanks for your feedback, I might have a crack at learning Ren'Py and try one of the others if I get stuck or frustrated.

 

[VirginChadDev]

After thinking it through a bit more, I know the ideal tool for you: creating Discord or Telegram bot.

You could still include images, but it would be much more text-based. For people who use those apps, it would be a fun way to pass the time compared to a regular text game posted on this forum or on itch.io. You could even make it multiplayer, with more than one player interacting with the bot.

It also solves the technical knowledge part. It's probably something new for you, and that knowledge would be way more useful if you want to use it again in the future.

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[Zenith_AU]

Now I'll be honest with you, I'm giving your question more attention than it really deserves. If you were serious about making a game, you'd probably be better off starting a development thread in the Programming, Development & Art section.

I'm sorry you feel this way, I'm new to the forum and thought this was the correct place to ask the question. Thanks for the Discord bot suggestion, I don't think it's the correct choice for me on this project - but I'll definitely look into how to create one in the future.

I have enough to go forward and will endeavour not to bother anyone else.

 

[Winterfire]

I'm sorry you feel this way, I'm new to the forum and thought this was the correct place to ask the question. Thanks for the Discord bot suggestion, I don't think it's the correct choice for me on this project - but I'll definitely look into how to create one in the future.

I have enough to go forward and will endeavour not to bother anyone else.

This is the correct place (Since this is a development related question), and if you have more questions/looking for feedback, don't be afraid to ask, it's not a bother since this is a forum - where people ask and discuss things

 

[osanaiko]

Hi folks,

I'm looking to create something that is less visuals with text, and more text with visuals. Essentially something akin to the Pick-A-Path/Choose Your Own Adventure/Fighting Fantasy books from the days of yore (yes, I'm old).

I could absolutely write them in HTML as I'm already pretty familar with HTML code and CSS, but I want to learn something new.

I have zero illusions about making a game that other people will want to play and pay/donate money - this is purely a pet project, I just don't want to invest time in learning something like Ren'Py only to discover that it doesn't really handle what I want. My experience with VNs - adult or otherwise - is that there really isn't great walls of text being thrown at the reader. Typically it's smaller quantities of text like a sentence or two being shown at a time. As I said, I pretty much want to bring up a page of text (multiple paragraphs at a minimum).

Has anyone had experience in writing text-heavy games, or can suggest which tools might be best?

Renp'y with NVL (novel) mode would fit your description of game style.
Renpy is basically a python based DSL (domain specific language), so you don't *need* to know or learn Python. It is quite "friendly" to new developers as long as you just "color within the lines", so how much you'd end up learning from a *programming* point of view is debatable.

However, but just by doing a game regardless of the chosen platform you would have a LOT of new things to cover: concept/plot development, story arc, writing, editing, rewriting, UI customization, art creation, asset management, and taking care of the 100s of small details to achieve a *quality* result.

If you wanted to learn programing in a new style/language/platform, then implementing on Unity would be much more challenging. There are variuous plugins/code packages on the unity marketplace that would help but you'd still need to learn quite a bit of C# and unity specific ways of doing stuff to get to a reasonable facsimile of a game.

As another person said Twine would be perfect but you've got reasons for not doing that so it's a non-starter.

And as mentioned above: this is definitely the right subforum to ask these sort of questions. ignore the grumpy bugger.

 

[Zenith_AU]

Renp'y with NVL (novel) mode would fit your description of game style.
Renpy is basically a python based DSL (domain specific language), so you don't *need* to know or learn Python. It is quite "friendly" to new developers as long as you just "color within the lines", so how much you'd end up learning from a *programming* point of view is debatable.

However, but just by doing a game regardless of the chosen platform you would have a LOT of new things to cover: concept/plot development, story arc, writing, editing, rewriting, UI customization, art creation, asset management, and taking care of the 100s of small details to achieve a *quality* result.

If you wanted to learn programing in a new style/language/platform, then implementing on Unity would be much more challenging. There are variuous plugins/code packages on the unity marketplace that would help but you'd still need to learn quite a bit of C# and unity specific ways of doing stuff to get to a reasonable facsimile of a game.

As another person said Twine would be perfect but you've got reasons for not doing that so it's a non-starter.

And as mentioned above: this is definitely the right subforum to ask these sort of questions. ignore the grumpy bugger.

Thanks for the information!

Yes, I've started building with Ren'Py and you're spot on - the NVL mode is working a treat so far.

Because I'm apparently not the sharpest tool in the shed, it didn't click that the Py was for Python which I already have some experience with - but the implementation of writing a VN is far enough outside the realms of what I've used it for previously that I don't feel I'm covering old ground. If I can come to terms with it all, I'll hopefully have an RPG-lite character system, inventory and combat.

I'm going to focus on Ren'Py for now, but since there's now 2 votes for Twine I should probably investigate that further at some point in the future.

 

[osanaiko]

One more thing to add:

Twine games, being basic HTML with very basic CSS, always feel to me like they are very "low budget". So unless you spend time to add some custom CSS / image assets it's hard to get an immersive UI experience. Even then you're still trapped inside a browser window and have to deal with weirdness like save file exports and the back button

Renpy out of the box feels more polished, partly because it runs as a standalone app and not inside a webbrowser, and partly because the default UI is not horrible times new roman. But then of course pretty much all of the new games just keep using defaults for layout and font and colors etc. And that makes them as almost completely indistinguishable from a UI point of view.

 

[Winterfire]

Also, keep in mind that if you use Ren'Py, you won't have to give up on browser (which is the highest amount of players on itch.io, so tons of visibility):

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So yes, no real reason to use twine. There are some good examples of using twine (Games by Airell and Tukann) if you want to check them out.

 

[Zenith_AU]

Also, keep in mind that if you use Ren'Py, you won't have to give up on browser (which is the highest amount of players on itch.io, so tons of visibility):

You must be registered to see the links

So yes, no real reason to use twine. There are some good examples of using twine (Games by Airell and Tukann) if you want to check them out.

Thanks!

This first attempt is mostly around me learning the code aspect of RenPy, so I've decided to bypass worrying about story and characters because I'm almost entirely ripping off an old lewd novel I found online. I'll just be introducing some pathing to it (the book is a collection of smaller stories of the same MC bedding a variety of women, so it won't take much effort to turn them into different choices the player can make).

Which is why this particular project will never see a public release - while I'm totally fine with plagiarism for personal education, I would never publish what is essentially going to be 95% of someone else's work without permission, or worse, to expect people to pay me.

Maybe one day if I become comfortable with RenPy and can afford an artist (or figure out how to make my own art), I might have a crack at creating my own original game that is released to the public. Naturally, if I do I'll instantly have thousands of Patreon subscribers and become internet famous... right?

 

[osanaiko]

This first attempt is mostly around me learning the code aspect of RenPy, so I've decided to bypass worrying about story and characters because I'm almost entirely ripping off an old lewd novel I found online. I'll just be introducing some pathing to it (the book is a collection of smaller stories of the same MC bedding a variety of women, so it won't take much effort to turn them into different choices the player can make).

Sound cool, and a great idea to dip your toes in to work out if you enjoy the process of creating games enough to double down and make a fully original work later.

Which is why this particular project will never see a public release - while I'm totally fine with plagiarism for personal education, I would never publish what is essentially going to be 95% of someone else's work without permission, or worse, to expect people to pay me.

On the scale of moral hazard, I'd suggest that taking a 20+ year old abandon-ware adult story and giving it a new lease on life by format-shifting it from text to interactive fiction with illustrations is pretty low.

If you tried to make money off it that's a different case... but even then if the amount of value you add in the reinterpretation is significant then few people would be upset. Worst case, the original author pops up, is willing to publicly declare themselves a pornographic writer, and starts some legal process to claim the $513.17 you've made on patreon over the past 3 years. And your carefully curated anonymous online personna has it's reputation ruined and is left IN TATTERS. Oh the humanity.