Devs working on their own, what's your creative process when making games?

[Daruko01]

I'm currently in the process of making a game on Ren'Py, and it's fun to explore my creativity through writing. My process is pretty much writing the whole script for the first chapter of my game (which I'm 12k words in), and then start working on the renders, animation, and finally implement it in Ren'Py. Just the script writing is taking a lot of time, so I'd love to know your process, and I'm open to any recommendation for streamlining/shortening the writing process.

EDIT: To those wondering, I'm using Honey Select 2 for the renders.

 

[Carrera]

My process for creating anything is I normally get a wild hair or inspiration from some random something so I put the general idea down first, then I start expanding it with a storyboard, then I sit and brood on it for days, weeks, months, then I come back and scrap half of it and replace that half with more shit that makes sense, and then ask my BFF for help and he completes it in ways that didn't occur to me, I put it into production and take all the credit cause I'm that good.

So, storyboard, storyboard, think and brood, bring in some other opinions, LISTEN to those opinions, storyboard some more, then produce it.

 

[Agent HK47]

I am just working on my game as a personal hobby, so don't know if it counts. I usually just sit down when the inspiration takes me and I get some great ideas. Then I get distracted, forget half of the the ideas and then get so annoyed, that I stop working in utter frustration, start doing something else to get my mind off what a failure I am as a wannabe developer. Then the next wave of inspiration hits me and the cycle starts over

 

[WhitePhantom]

I'd recommend always be rendering. Always, always rendering.

You can write a script whilst you render, so if your script is done and you haven't rendered, think how many extra images you could have made whilst you were writing it?

If you spend say 5-6 hours setting up the scenes, you could have (depending on your machine) potentially days worth of queued up renders and then you can work on the script whilst you just chug away.

If you're going to write first, I'd recommend:

Write Scene 1.
Queue up the renders for part of/all of Scene 1.
Start the Render Queue.

Write Scene 2.

Repeat.

That's if your render time takes longer than your pose/setup time.

If your game is instantly rendered like HoneySelect/The Sims etc, this won't apply.
But if your using Daz/Blender you'll probably find your biggest restriction is render time.

In terms of shortening your writing times. I'd strongly recommend writing the script in Ren'Py, or in whatever program you like but using the Ren'Py Language format:

Label Scene 1:
# put markers for images
A "This is my first line!"
B "And now this is my line!"
# image marker 2

Otherwise if you're writing the script in Word/Etc and not in that style. You're going to be doing Label, Character Prefix, Copy, Paste, Next Line and it is going to take you a ton of time because you're going to need to be copy and pasting every single individual spoken line you've wrote for the update.

Hopefully that is useful and helps

 

[Jofur]

So far I've only made non-adult games, but my main process is making sure everything is actually doable by writing down a simple design document, what types of models I might need, what I need to program, how much level design is needed and stuff like that. I've jumped into far to many games where I've had some fun idea but had to abandon it a few months later because I didn't realize how huge the task was or how hard programming a certain mechanic might be.

Then while I work on stuff like mechanics, tools, design and programming I constantly work on the story in my head and write down ideas. Getting to know the world and characters in my head. I'm not great at planning out a story to every detail before hand. It kind of kills it for me. I write the best and enjoy myself the most when I have a few key-scenes I want to get to and make up the rest as I go along.

One big help is having someone to talk about ideas with, be it a real life person or to people in a dev thread. Sometimes I think I come up with a really cool mechanic or scene in my head before talking about it to my dev partner, and he basically just says a single sentence and makes me realize how stupid it is or how it overlooked something. Saving me weeks from working on something that doesn't work.

As for writing, I think a good help would be to only write what you need. Write according to a storyboard rather than doing everything to fit the current writing. Right now you could be spending hours writing a script where large chunks are stuff that you don't need or can't use. Can you make renders for everything you have written? Will the writing work well for the format? Are you writing down obvious visual cues that the renders clearly already show? Can you find all the 3D models you need to achieve everything? What parts could be better spend being visual only or more story heavy. Would the player really enjoy sitting through X amount of story and text after watching this scene or do you need better pacing?

 

[Droid Productions]

I imagine it'll be different for everyone. Here's mine.

I started with the characters. No, actually... that's a lie. I started with the Combat Mechanic, because I wanted to play with the idea of magical combat, and while I had some rough story moments planned, mostly I wanted to make a VN with a decent deck-building combat game.

Then I started writing the characters. I render and 'discover' their personalities more or less in parallel; I know what *role* they fit ("Gorgeous Heroine", "Tomboy Best Friend", etc) and I know the over-arching story-beats, but as I render them, and see their expressions, and play with who they are they come into focus. Some 'snap' quickly picking up their identity, others take forever. Of the three Chosen, Molly was totally planned from day one, Akane's personality took me forever to tease out, and Bella ambushed me and stole my wallet (and my heart). She was actually not planned as a main story-line character, but once I started writing her I fell in love.

For individual scenes, I worry at it until it comes into focus; most of the time I have some goal in mind ("Emily must come to grips with this being a harem game"), but I sometimes struggle to find a way to reach that goal without the characters telling me 'no'. Once I have something that feels 'right', I'll do half a dozen renders to try to set the mood and the tone (and check I can find the assets I need) for what I want to do. Then I write it, and go back to add any additional renders that writing the detailed breakdown revealed.

It's a very iterative process, and probably not the most efficient (batching things tends to be a lot more efficient). And most writers probably don't have characters who tell them to pound sand if they disagree with your plan. So there's that.

 

[arcaos]

You didn’t mention anything about your pre-production process so that is where you want to start. Where is your art coming from, if you plan to have art. What assets can and can’t you create? No ice cream shop model? Better rewrite that scene where they eat at an ice cream shop. What game mechanics? Is there a dating mechanic, better start prepping some small talk. Heck, jot down 5 hobbies each datable character has. That’s gonna be important any time you write that character. Are you going to provide choices in game? You might have just doubled your render budget, start planning for that.

Don’t treat this like you’re writing a story. It’s more like you’re doing preproduction for a movie. Figure out “actors”, budgets, locations, props while you finalize the script.

 

[Daruko01]

In terms of shortening your writing times. I'd strongly recommend writing the script in Ren'Py, or in whatever program you like but using the Ren'Py Language format:

Label Scene 1:
# put markers for images
A "This is my first line!"
B "And now this is my line!"
# image marker 2

Otherwise if you're writing the script in Word/Etc and not in that style. You're going to be doing Label, Character Prefix, Copy, Paste, Next Line and it is going to take you a ton of time because you're going to need to be copy and pasting every single individual spoken line you've wrote for the update.

Hopefully that is useful and helps

I'm using Honey Select 2 for my renders so rendering time shouldn't be much of an issue.
And writing directly into Ren'Py is really smart, I really should have thought of doing this since the beginning, it would have saved me so much time, thanks for that, it's really gonna be helpful!

You didn’t mention anything about your pre-production process so that is where you want to start. Where is your art coming from, if you plan to have art. What assets can and can’t you create? No ice cream shop model? Better rewrite that scene where they eat at an ice cream shop. What game mechanics? Is there a dating mechanic, better start prepping some small talk. Heck, jot down 5 hobbies each datable character has. That’s gonna be important any time you write that character. Are you going to provide choices in game? You might have just doubled your render budget, start planning for that.

Don’t treat this like you’re writing a story. It’s more like you’re doing preproduction for a movie. Figure out “actors”, budgets, locations, props while you finalize the script.

I'm using Honey Select 2 for my renders. And that's a great point, I have some basics down with StudioNeo2 but I didn't explore to see if I'll have all the assets I need for what I'm writing. And what I'm writing is a Visual Novel.

 

[Agent HK47]

Then I started writing the characters. I render and 'discover' their personalities more or less in parallel; I know what *role* they fit ("Gorgeous Heroine", "Tomboy Best Friend", etc) and I know the over-arching story-beats, but as I render them, and see their expressions, and play with who they are they come into focus. Some 'snap' quickly picking up their identity, others take forever. Of the three Chosen, Molly was totally planned from day one, Akane's personality took me forever to tease out, and Bella ambushed me and stole my wallet (and my heart). She was actually not planned as a main story-line character, but once I started writing her I fell in love.

I can very much releate to this part. I never imagined others felt this way about creating characters as well, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Some of my characters just snapped into place with ease, while others took ages to get just right. Tweaking a character ever so slightly can set of an avalanche of changes, which I often never intended to, but it almost seems as if the character itself has taken the reigns and is guiding me, to whatever end result is ahead.
The biggest thing I have learned from this, if something is bugging you, change it. It might be a pain, and maybe you think you will be able to ignore it, but it will always be there and it will slowly drive you insane.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

I can only talk about the writing in our game, since that's my part.

Here's what usually happens when I sit down to write:

1) consult our shared design doc, and pick the next piece of content that has to be implemented
2) think up an amazingly vivid scene/dialogue/event that meshes perfectly with it
3) "Yeah, I got this... it's gonna be so cool! Everyone's gonna love it, and their praise will fill the void in my soul!"
4) start to write... get frustrated how poorly it's going... bang head against the wall, repeatedly
5) try to write some more, all why understanding why most writers end up alone, destitute, and suicidal
6) *scribble pentagrams and goat-heads while offering Satan my soul in exchange for some inspiration*
7) get up, start pacing around... curse the gods, Fate, and Dostoevsky for laughing at me
8) get some coffee, play with my cats... get bitten and scratched by said cats... buy their love with some catnip
9) sit down again... more head-banging, this time against the desk! (*desperation noises intensify*)
?) start invoking Cthulhu
?) ??? ??? ??? :: R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn :: ??? ??? ???
?) finally squeeze out something that's half-way decent and isn't reminiscent of a dumpster fire!
?) save the rough draft, and send it to the rest of the team for critique/review/implementation
?) bask in the warm afterglow... when asked how it turned out so good, reply with "Talent."

And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, no one should ever aspire to become a writer!

 

[Winterfire]

First of all, I plan where to end the story for the next update, so I have a goal in mind and can more or less figure out how long I will need to finish said update based on my past experiences.

Once I have that figured out, I write all the script, with comments describing the music to add, the characters, the background, and CGs.

With the script ready and playable, I start making the CGs and putting them in the script.

Test everything up, and if no errors show up, build and release.

 

[Daruko01]

I can only talk about the writing in our game, since that's my part.

Here's what usually happens when I sit down to write:

1) consult our shared design doc, and pick the next piece of content that has to be implemented
2) think up an amazingly vivid scene/dialogue/event that meshes perfectly with it
3) "Yeah, I got this... it's gonna be so cool! Everyone's gonna love it, and their praise will fill the void in my soul!"
4) start to write... get frustrated how poorly it's going... bang head against the wall, repeatedly
5) try to write some more, all why understanding why most writers end up alone, destitute, and suicidal
6) *scribble pentagrams and goat-heads while offering Satan my soul in exchange for some inspiration*
7) get up, start pacing around... curse the gods, Fate, and Dostoevsky for laughing at me
8) get some coffee, play with my cats... get bitten and scratched by said cats... buy their love with some catnip
9) sit down again... more head-banging, this time against the desk! (*desperation noises intensify*)
?) start invoking Cthulhu
?) ??? ??? ??? :: R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn :: ??? ??? ???
?) finally squeeze out something that's half-way decent and isn't reminiscent of a dumpster fire!
?) save the rough draft, and send it to the rest of the team for critique/review/implementation
?) bask in the warm afterglow... when asked how it turned out so good, reply with "Talent."

And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, no one should ever aspire to become a writer!

Lemao best fucking comment, extremely relatable, especially points 3, 4, 5, the last one. I love writing but omfg do I hate it.

First of all, I plan where to end the story for the next update, so I have a goal in mind and can more or less figure out how long I will need to finish said update based on my past experiences.

Once I have that figured out, I write all the script, with comments describing the music to add, the characters, the background, and CGs.

With the script ready and playable, I start making the CGs and putting them in the script.

Test everything up, and if no errors show up, build and release.

This seems like pretty much my process right now. You're working on Ren'Py, right? Do you write the script directly into Ren'Py? Or on a word file first?

 

[Winterfire]

This seems like pretty much my process right now. You're working on Ren'Py, right? Do you write the script directly into Ren'Py? Or on a word file first?

Not Ren'Py atm, but in both Ren'Py and Unity I write the script in separate file(s), usually backups of the same script in case I change or edit something out and regret it later on.
It is easier to have it separate because it goes through many processes of editing before I am happy with it, then I can just copy/paste the clean and complete version to my project.