VN Ren'Py Cutting Room Floor [Development Thread]

[Mr Editor]

My visual novel is called 'Cutting Room Floor' and will be collection of short stories.

When writing down ideas for a visual novel I had many intimate scenes. At first I tried to join these together into a story, but it felt forced. I decided to turn these many scenes into their own stories.

I hope to expand on the stories/characters who prove popular.

This game is not just a collection of intimate scenes. There is build up and choices to be made with respect to characters. But the setting of these stories will be smaller than other games.

The stories will generally focus on a small cast of characters in a few locations. Once you finish a story you can move onto the next one with a fresh character.

Plan is for game to allow players to import packages from other developers who have created their own renders but don't want to create a full game.

I am 'Mr Editor' which is why I use the film role in preview pictures I will be writer and artist, but coding is done by other person. I know how to do basics in Renpy, menu, display images etc, but not how to create system to allow many short stories like I want this game to be.

Still early days. I am writing out the stories I intended to start with and creating the renders. Posting previews when I'm happy with results. I have given ideas to programmer who will create the framework I can use going forward.

I know this is very start, but I created

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page as I don't have website.

 

[Mr Editor]

Victoria's Secret

It has taken some time, but I feel I have learned enough to give you a first look at my game.

The technical aspects are mostly in place, allowing work to progress on the story content.

This release contains one short story involving Victoria and Mr Hudson.

Victoria didn't have a good family life growing up and spent as much time as possible at her best friend Amanda's house (the Hudson's). Now in their mid-twenties, Amanda has moved to the big city to pursue her own career, and Victoria is renting Amanda's old bedroom. Well, sort of. Mr Hudson would never take any money off her.
It has been almost a year since the passing of Amanda's mother, Mrs Hudson. Unfortunately, Mr Hudson isn't handling it very well, leading to a breakdown in his relationship with his daughter, Amanda.
Victoria promised Amanda that she would look after him and do anything she could to help him overcome it.

There will be some more to this story, mainly involving the aftermath of what happens and a flashback scene.

I hope you enjoy what I have for you so far, and I welcome your feedback.

Game download

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Small update, optional

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[Mr Editor]

Here are some screenshots of Victoria

Spoiler: spoiler

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[Mr Editor]

I know some might question the time taken to release a short story considering my initial post was many years ago.

Back when I first posted, it was just an idea. I didn't know how to use renpy and I will admit my daz skills were not good. Like many would-be-developers, I thought it was quick and simple. I was wrong. The programmer who was going to create the game with my renders and ideas didn't follow through.

I decided to take the advice of others and take my time to learn and of course life always has a way of surprising you. I didn't stop writing stories and learning what I could.

Recently, with time now available in life to revisit this, I created some renders and reached out to established developers in the hope of making the framework needed to accomplish my idea. I was lucky that one of the developers I contacted liked the renders I had created and was willing to put a bare-bones framework together for me. I won't mention them at the moment as people might complain about them not spending time on their own game; but I was impressed with how quickly they met my vision. There will still be tweaks based on feedback, but I am very happy with what I have to work with.

 

[Mr Editor]

Version 2 is a complete rewrite of the game. Any save files from the previous version will not work.

What's changed?
My original idea was to give players short stories to play through, essentially a series of short kinetic novels. Rather than release these linearly, and for the same characters, these stories could follow different groups of characters, and we could jump back and forth through these characters' lives.

That idea is still intact, but the features of how that works have greatly expanded.

Players can now edit the short stories, creating their own stories for the characters involved. Players can add short stories as chapters into a bigger story and, eventually, share that with other players.

In version 2, I have added two short scenes before and after Victoria's encounter with Mr Hudson. These are added as separate stories to showcase the story creation process in the game.

Feedback is welcome to help shape the game. It may seem complex at first but think of it as a video editing suite of sorts. Which I think blends nicely with the name 'Cutting Room Floor.'

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showing how to create and edit a video

 

[Mr Editor]

Just to mention, I expect some things to change a bit in the next version when we implement importing and exporting. If you do create a story, please consider version 2 as a test version. The next version will be more stable in terms of variables but with importing/exporting you will be able to export a story and import into future versions should anything major change.

 

[Spin256]

I am the other developer involved on this project. Although I'm mostly doing coding.