Breaking Into Game Developing

[StoneWall]

I (as many of you) like much of the content posted on this website. I'm a career software developer and chose to work outside the gaming industry since I didn't want my work life to be completely tied into my leisure life. However, I've been idling on the idea of making my own games for fun or joining others to help them out. I'm not that great of a writer and don't have a computer capable of generating high quality images. But I think I'm a damn good programmer and I hope to show that off.

So I decided to start small and rework some older small games in order to learn the ins and outs of Ren'py. I must say just from the small amount of things I've done so far, I hate it. The usage of jumps is always a product of path bugs. Seeing how it is setup for casual developers, I see now why creators throw out test builds periodically (especially for games with crazy amounts of branching paths).

The first two reworks I plan to do are two games by ChaptersInLove: A Night with Sara and Art with Carla. I will be using the same images and the games will be done in English. I've already started working on A Night with Sara. I'm probably about 1/3 of the way through the dialogue path. My plan is to finish the dialogue path first with all the choices and underlining flags in place. Then move to adding all the images. And finish it off by doing a bit of grammar and punctuation cleanup. Bonus work will be playing around with the UI layout.

In case anyone asks, no I am not the creator. I've also not contacted the creator. I am not getting paid for this. I am doing this on my own in an effort to get more familiar with Ren'py and to share my progress with you guys. Maybe get some tips, tricks, or even a collaboration with some of you. Thanks for reading.

 

[StoneWall]

Good news. Just finished the Ren'Py remake of A Night with Sara. I think it turned out very well considering. It was highly enjoyable and I look forward to using what I learned on the next game Art with Carla. Hope you guys check it out once I figure out how the Game posting process is done here.

 

[StoneWall]

A Night with Sara is up and ready for consumption. Was very informative on the basics of Ren'Py. The images are rough but my goal wasn't to re-do them. Maybe in the future when I tackle 3d rendering... Anyway, I'm moving onto Art with Carla. Same setup, I will be using the existing images and dialogue tree. Maybe I will find additional images that were not used that I can sneak in again. My main focus here will be learning more about manipulating the GUI and adding objects outside of the template. Art with Carla has a few indicators in it like a calendar countdown and skill counters. There is also a save limit which I aim to incorporate in Ren'Py.

 

[StoneWall]

Quick update on my progress with Art with Carla. Definitely going smooth so far. I'm currently around Day 18 in the dialogue path. Been adding the necessary logic and images required by each day. I've already implemented the random art question generator. Took me bit to figure out the syntax needed for Python but it works as intended. After I finish the dialogue path, my next focus will be on GUI modifications to add the count indicators, the calendar, and a gallery for the phone pictures while in-game. I've still not decided how I should incorporate the save functionality. I'm thinking I might keep it the same as the original but add an additional option for unlimited saves. Or I might just ignore that functionality entirely since playing the game on a higher difficulty has no game impact.

 

[StoneWall]

Got a bit sidetracked with work commitments with very sudden deadlines due to the New Year. I work in financial investments and a nasty calculation bug was found that would impact a large amount of our clients so my priority was on that. As far as the remake is going, I'm down to the code path of the last day. Game is a lot longer than I remembered. I did notice that some scene transitions don't make sense in the late game so I'll have to spend some time going through the game to correct that. As I mentioned before, the next big step will be GUI modifications. Still haven't decided on if the limited save functionality should be implemented or not. Hopefully, I will make a decision once I'm done with everything else. Until then...

 

[osanaiko]

I really like the way you are pushing forward, taking smaller achievable steps, rather than creating some huge idea of openworld with dozens of characters and non-linear story lines.

Good luck and fapspeed to you.

 

[The M.O.]

I (as many of you) like much of the content posted on this website. I'm a career software developer and chose to work outside the gaming industry since I didn't want my work life to be completely tied into my leisure life. However, I've been idling on the idea of making my own games for fun or joining others to help them out. I'm not that great of a writer and don't have a computer capable of generating high quality images. But I think I'm a damn good programmer and I hope to show that off.

What a great thread. Someone ploughing into some work to help others down the line. And what a nice surprise for the original author of those games to be able to find that someone has revisited their work.

You touched on writing and image making. Just let me tell you, both are those are time consuming. I'm starting out on my games, and writing for interactive fiction is time consuming. Banging out something on a page can be done fairly quickly for most. You might think adding the interactive elements would make it interesting. When you have to do both at the same time, it's long work. It can take me a day to do a simple scenario. A Daz character alone, possibly the guts of a day. Just so you know, anyone that comes your way will be coming at you after a long process.

 

[StoneWall]

You touched on writing and image making. Just let me tell you, both are those are time consuming. I'm starting out on my games, and writing for interactive fiction is time consuming. Banging out something on a page can be done fairly quickly for most. You might think adding the interactive elements would make it interesting. When you have to do both at the same time, it's long work. It can take me a day to do a simple scenario. A Daz character alone, possibly the guts of a day. Just so you know, anyone that comes your way will be coming at you after a long process.

Oh I understand the time commitment. Just doing these reworks have been a time dump and the dialogue and picture are already done. Which is why any game I tackle on my own, will be done at my own pace. I like great storylines and deep characters as much as the "sexy times." I think they should go hand-in-hand and I would want to do it so that I feel great about the result. I have been working up some ideas for games already, mostly notes atm. Might be making 3-4 demos after this rework to see which one draws the most intrigue.

 

[StoneWall]

I really like the way you are pushing forward, taking smaller achievable steps, rather than creating some huge idea of openworld with dozens of characters and non-linear story lines.

That's a good way to burn yourself out before even making something.

 

[parasolka]

A Night with Sara is up and ready for consumption. Was very informative on the basics of Ren'Py. The images are rough but my goal wasn't to re-do them. Maybe in the future when I tackle 3d rendering...

Hey, !
My message will likely contain a lot of mistakes - sorry, English is not my native language. Glory to Google translator.
I sometimes render in Daz3d and decided to try to re-render the images from Night with Sara in my own way. It was much easier to work with your version of the game, so I did it with him, I will attach examples of pictures under the spoiler. Write to me if you want to attach a revised version of the game on the forum. I was too lazy to look for a dragon and make an exact copy, so there need to slightly redo the text of the original.
And I also made a translation into Russian. If you don't mind, I would like to share my Russian version somewhere)

Spoiler: images

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[StoneWall]

Hey, !
My message will likely contain a lot of mistakes - sorry, English is not my native language. Glory to Google translator.
I sometimes render in Daz3d and decided to try to re-render the images from Night with Sara in my own way. It was much easier to work with your version of the game, so I did it with him, I will attach examples of pictures under the spoiler. Write to me if you want to attach a revised version of the game on the forum. I was too lazy to look for a dragon and make an exact copy, so there need to slightly redo the text of the original.
And I also made a translation into Russian. If you don't mind, I would like to share my Russian version somewhere)

I've been trying not to do too much with these reworks (especially now that the actual developer has reappeared and plans to go back to these stories). The whole point of this was to learn about Ren'py. The original game had quite a few translations in it. I just didn't use them since my foreign language skills are poor. Those renders do look amazing though, nice work.

 

[StoneWall]

Quick update: I have been seriously swamped at work these past few months and have not looked at my rework at all. Believe the last things I've done are finished testing all paths for flag checks and path breaks. I do remember I decided to not implement the limit save feature since there is no reward for it (but is something I might keep in mind for a future project). Rework is in a playable state. The last major thing left is to figure out how I want to do the picture viewer on the phone. Once I finish and release the rework, I will be diving into image rendering as well as story planning. The remaining work is minuscule but given the fact that I haven't looked at it in months, expect the rework to be done by mid-April at the latest.