Ren'Py [Demo Included in Comment] Ways to make a VN with a set storyline more interesting for Players?

[Caeli Astraeus]

So I have just finished writing the first chapter of my VN and wanted to know what ways I could make it more enjoyable past just reading text, having a few choices for the MC to make, then seeing the character sprite move around while talking or doing stuff.

I'm not sure if minigames or something would work but I just want to make it less boring for those readers that usually get bored with reading,.

 

[mickydoo]

I'll give you two answers Rivinex

1 - What would you find interesting. If you like mini games, put one in, if you like pictures of penguins on the wall put one up.

2 - Put in a few irrelevant choices. I mean don't do this

There's a knock at the door, what do you want to do
A - Yell come in
B - Open the door

I mean if there are two character's in the scene maybe a choice to talk to one of them first, and have varying non game related dialogue.

Or if there is one character in a room have her doing something and not looking and the choice to say hello or pinch on her the ass.

You have to walk the line of irrelevant choices and stupid ones, achieved by the outcome. Pinching her ass will not alter the story or even the chapter one bit, but make a lolz out of it, make her slap your face then feel sorry for you and kiss your cheek, things like that.

Most people are aware devs put in the illusion of choices to make it more game like, if it's done right they get it.

 

[Caeli Astraeus]

I'll give you two answers Rivinex

1 - What would you find interesting. If you like mini games, put one in, if you like pictures of penguins on the wall put one up.

2 - Put in a few irrelevant choices. I mean don't do this

There's a knock at the door, what do you want to do
A - Yell come in
B - Open the door

I mean if there are two character's in the scene maybe a choice to talk to one of them first, and have varying non game related dialogue.

Or if there is one character in a room have her doing something and not looking and the choice to say hello or pinch on her the ass.

You have to walk the line of irrelevant choices and stupid ones, achieved by the outcome. Pinching her ass will not alter the story or even the chapter one bit, but make a lolz out of it, make her slap your face then feel sorry for you and kiss your cheek, things like that.

Most people are aware devs put in the illusion of choices to make it more game like, if it's done right they get it.

That's... Very brilliant. I thought of using some kind of placebo of choice for a bit but wasn't sold on it. I understand what you mean, I'll more than likely do quite a few 'fake' choices that would just be a small alteration but not effect the overall plot.

 

[mickydoo]

That's... Very brilliant. I thought of using some kind of placebo of choice for a bit but wasn't sold on it. I understand what you mean, I'll more than likely do quite a few 'fake' choices that would just be a small alteration but not effect the overall plot.

Don't do quite a few, be subtle, just every now again to break things up.

 

[Deleted member 24136]

sex scenes.. a lot of it.

 

[The M.O.]

If we are talking about something small. In a game I played recently, the protagonist is walking around then is given the option to do something with something before him. In this case it was to open/leave closed the shutter of a window on a passenger plane. These things are are always memorable. Part of the trick of it was, the main character was on their way to do something else. Making it a grand, interesting spectacle for the player and how many times you do this is up to you.

I'm sure the elements of your story are interesting. I'm sure of that. Many players do furiously click through text to get to the smut however. One game I remember, the author put the most fantastically smutty scene he could think of, right at the start. The rest was very well done story wise. Your post actually reminded my of this game. I'll have to look it up again and see if it's updated. Another thing your post did was bring to light that this is something I actually will have do for my game!

Larger elements to put through a game, sorry I don't have those for you. I'm looking for those myself.

 

[Caeli Astraeus]

Don't do quite a few, be subtle, just every now again to break things up.

Got it, I will do a small choice like that every so often. Right now I have one in the very beginning and the second about halfway through my planned demo of the game's story.

sex scenes.. a lot of it.

I am planning on starting a patreon eventually so I am going to have 3 version of the game. 1st free one will be SFW, 2nd free one will have 8-12 sex scenes per chapter, 3rd which would be patreon exclusive would have roughly 20ish sex scenes per chapter. (Right now im at 39k characters halfway through chapter 1.)

If we are talking about something small. In a game I played recently, the protagonist is walking around then is given the option to do something with something before him. In this case it was to open/leave closed the shutter of a window on a passenger plane. These things are are always memorable. Part of the trick of it was, the main character was on their way to do something else. Making it a grand, interesting spectacle for the player and how many times you do this is up to you.

I'm sure the elements of your story are interesting. I'm sure of that. Many players do furiously click through text to get to the smut however. One game I remember, the author put the most fantastically smutty scene he could think of, right at the start. The rest was very well done story wise. Your post actually reminded my of this game. I'll have to look it up again and see if it's updated. Another thing your post did was bring to light that this is something I actually will have do for my game!

Larger elements to put through a game, sorry I don't have those for you. I'm looking for those myself.

Thank you very much for this feedback, I appreciate all of it from everyone. I will definitely include miniscule things that don't actually change anything or things that will trigger something far later on. In terms of smutty scenes, I have one close to the beginning but I don't know what really constitutes as smutty on f95 due to all of the bizarre fetishes out there but I think it's a bit out there. Thank you for the constructive feedback, I appreciate it immensely.

 

[Caeli Astraeus]

So I decided to just release the demo knowing that it's not ENTIRELY done. I have to learn how to do the GUI, redo the main menu, redo a lot of stuff actually.... None of the art is mine and I never claimed for it to be, the main release will have proper credits, I am asking for feedback and not for anyone to criticize my decision to use art that was posted online for the project. I am going to be getting custom artwork done later on.

This demo only goes up to about halfway through Scene 2. We are going off of a Scene 1-4 for each chapter with 4 chapters per 'novel'.

Fair bit of warning, this demo does not have any porn in it nor any sex scenes, it's simply so I can try to get any bit of feedback that I can in terms of player enjoyment.

To-Do list:
GUIs
Main Menu
Sound Effects
Music
Making More Choices for Player
Commissioning Custom Artwork

Here's the link to the demo if anyone is interested. This is the VERY FIRST ren'py project I have ever attempted to undertake.
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[The M.O.]

Here's the link to the demo if anyone is interested. This is the VERY FIRST ren'py project I have ever attempted to undertake.

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I get a message about it violating google's terms of service when I went to download.

 

[Caeli Astraeus]

I get a message about it violating google's terms of service when I went to download.

That's extremely odd, dunno how it would... It's literally my own ren'py game. I genuinely do not understand why it violated anything, I put it up on mega.nz.

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[The M.O.]

That's extremely odd, dunno how it would... It's literally my own ren'py game. I genuinely do not understand why it violated anything, I put it up on mega.nz.

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I was looking up about that. And apparently it's very common. Strange thing's get locked, items such as lists of names and address's. I'll give this a go. I remember another thread of yours on this that seemed to hint at interesting gameplay you were trying to harness.

 

[Caeli Astraeus]

I was looking up about that. And apparently it's very common. Strange thing's get locked, items such as lists of names and address's. I'll give this a go. I remember another thread of yours on this that seemed to hint at interesting gameplay you were trying to harness.

The gameplay bit isn't in this one yet, im still learning python so this is purely the main story and not the gameplay portion. I wanted to make the demo just so I could get more feedback on making the main story better/interesting.

 

[The M.O.]

I played it. Big blocks of writing. I have not played a lot a rpgs, I played Lords of Midnight a long time ago on the C64, I'm reminded of that with the big blocks of descriptive text. Your going for a large vista look too. Are you going to have those scenes navigable? ie. Push forward, go left .ect?

 

[Caeli Astraeus]

I played it. Big blocks of writing. I have not played a lot a rpgs, I played Lords of Midnight a long time ago on the C64, I'm reminded of that with the big blocks of descriptive text. Your going for a large vista look too. Are you going to have those scenes navigable? ie. Push forward, go left .ect?

Would you mind telling me what Vista look would mean? I'm unfamiliar with what that is.
We want to do descriptive text since we don't have the funds to pay artists for numerous sprites so we are doing what we can with theater of the mind. We've done a lot of d&d along with serious half life 2 rp on Garry's mod so we are trying to get that same effect of intricate description.

Yes I am planning to make it a full length novel and with players able to navigate in their own directions at parts. I want to finish writing the main story then go back and add branching paths that the player could go down at a point. Like for example, instead of going to the forest to where the scouts are, the player could go and investigate the house that was destroyed after juz is captured. I want to make it so the players feel more in control.

 

[The M.O.]

Would you mind telling me what Vista look would mean? I'm unfamiliar with what that is.

I should not have said you are going for a style so definitively. I just meant to say the imagery you used seemed expansive, and you might be going in the direction of wide openness in the future. As wide as a landscape vista.

I don't need to tell you your on a winner with the text. Guns about the heads of everyone to signify a battle. A great simple and obvious visual.

You had a long list of other possible gameplay on the other thread you posted. The thing I picked up on was sending people away in a dangerous environment to get supplies and such. I was never able to resolve that as a playable experience when I thought about it. It's always evocative seeing someone away all the same.

I look forward to your gameplay involving animals. That's interesting. And there is no reason why a player can not have that as a feature, and with no need for complicated/hard ways of featuring and integrating that.

For those wondering, here is a link to the other thread link that I was talking about.

 

[leorusty888]

hi rivinex, im doing the same as you atm, just starting out an little clue on things, do you know if there's a list of free sites to obtain backgrounds, stickers effects etc? theres a app that u can use to extract other peoples rnpy data and observe their scripts etc, i havnt tried it yet, tho i might soon if i cant figure it out on my own. i read somewhere a few people post rnpy gui scripts and minigames etc for pubic use. worth looking into

 

[Caeli Astraeus]

I should not have said you are going for a style so definitively. I just meant to say the imagery you used seemed expansive, and you might be going in the direction of wide openness in the future. As wide as a landscape vista.

I don't need to tell you your on a winner with the text. Guns about the heads of everyone to signify a battle. A great simple and obvious visual.

You had a long list of other possible gameplay on the other thread you posted. The thing I picked up on was sending people away in a dangerous environment to get supplies and such. I was never able to resolve that as a playable experience when I thought about it. It's always evocative seeing someone away all the same.

I look forward to your gameplay involving animals. That's interesting. And there is no reason why a player can not have that as a feature, and with no need for complicated/hard ways of featuring and integrating that.

For those wondering, here is a link to the other thread link that I was talking about.

Gotcha, I get it now, thank you for the very informative feedback. I really appreciate it.

hi rivinex, im doing the same as you atm, just starting out an little clue on things, do you know if there's a list of free sites to obtain backgrounds, stickers effects etc? theres a app that u can use to extract other peoples rnpy data and observe their scripts etc, i havnt tried it yet, tho i might soon if i cant figure it out on my own. i read somewhere a few people post rnpy gui scripts and minigames etc for pubic use. worth looking into

I started out just reading the wiki and all the documentation I could, I would recommend the same as a stepping stone. I am trying to do things bit by bit, I do a lot of graphics design so I use photoshop to do a lot of the stuff im adding in the next update to the demo. I have no idea about royalty free stuff for ren'py. Every bit of art I have in the game is placeholder, I am not sure if I will have to pay an artist or not though because my gf does art and she seems super enthusiastic about drawing for the VN.

On your point of extracting other people's work, I wouldn't recommend it, I never did it because that could be overwhelming, if you still want to do it then I would use

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