VN Ren'Py Go try your hand at making visual novels

[BiggestDickest]

Many of us have ideas on how to improve a story, or want certain fetishes in a game. You, like me, have frantically searched through the entire site, but even after filtering out all the unwanted tags, but you still haven't found your dream game, or perhaps not enough of them. So why don't you make your own game? Perhaps most of you shudder at the thought of that, because you are a busy man, or maybe you don't know programming at all, or you just don't know what game development entails. Well, it's easier than you think, harder than you can imagine, because it can range from relatively simple like a visual novel, to extremely complex like an Unreal Engine or Unity game. But nothing is harder than finding the exact story or sex scenes in your mind in another game. Especially when most developers on this website have a Patreon account, their games are restricted by the rules of Patreon, so some fetishes are rarely found, and they can't use video game characters or celebrities either. But you won't be bound by such rules if you don't intend to open a Patreon account. Frankly, some games only receive a few $ per month. Are you willing to be restricted by the rules for such little money? If you are doing this as a hobby, I'd say you could get more out of yourself by making whatever you want. It's like being a porn director. Hell, you don't even need to make it to a game if you don't want to. You could just be making some renders. At its core, a visual novel is just a series of images put together with a bunch of words by some codes.

If you are still with me, let's get started on what you need to make a visual novel. First things first, you need to something to make your renders. Renders are arguably the most basic element of a visual novel, more so than the words. You could do that with Honey Select 2 or

You must be registered to see the links

. There are other render engines like Blender or Koikatsu. Daz 3D will give you the most realistic graphics, which is what most visual novels use, but I find it to be very difficult to use and very demanding on the hardware. Koikatsu gives you a bit anime looking graphics, but I think it couldn't really deliver the impression you get in anime so I don't think it's very good. So I recommend Honey Select 2 because I think it is essentially the "jack of all trades, master of none" among all the render engines.

Assuming you have chosen Honey Select 2, the first thing you'd notice is the enormous storage space it takes. The total size of the game including the mods is currently 113.8GB. But that is also pretty much all there is at the moment. You could also choose to delete some mods that you don't need to save space if you really need to. Compared to Daz3D, well, you are likely to need a lot more storage space in the realm of 10 times more. I have heard a guy claim he has over 8TB of Daz assets, which is extreme even for Daz users, but still, it's a possibility. So, storage space is a requirement. Now, either download Honey Select 2 in many different parts, or I recommend using the torrents link that allows you to download everything in one go.

Once you have finished downloading, there are a bunch of files in the Honey Select 2 folder. Open up "InitSetting", and you will see many options. Let's go through what some of them do. First, the "Update" button, that is for updating the mods and downloading mods that you don't have. You don't have to download everything if you don't want to. There are checkboxes that you can tick off. The download will be slow and will take hours if not more, so that's why there is an option "Sleep when done". "Start Game", contrary to what you might think, this is not where you make your renders. This is however where you make your own characters. "Start Studio" is where you will make your renders.

This is where you will start to see tutorials on the many features of Studio Neo (or more commonly called Honey Select Studio) on various places like youtube, or this thread. But honestly, most of the tutorials in that thread are not for beginners, and you would rarely use those features. So, I'll pick some that I think are really the basics of Studio, like

You must be registered to see the links

. The majority of the Honey Select tutorials are from this guy Lavalamp22, so you can check out his other videos as well, but those are more specific. Assuming you have finished watching the video, or at least watched enough that you could properly navigate around, set up a scene, pose the characters, it's time to render. He has another video on

You must be registered to see the links

, or in short, press F11 to capture the view you are currently looking at, and the image will be saved to UserData/cap. So now you know how to make renders or images, which is good enough even without continuing to a visual novel, like making porn with your favourite video game characters or celebrities, or whatever scene you have conjured in your mind.

The next stage is using

You must be registered to see the links

to make your visual novel. You will be prompted to download something called Atom at some point, so download it because you need it to write code. Now, there are tons of Renpy tutorials on Youtube, which once again stretch the beginner coverage to way too much. Also, note that Renpy originally planned for you to add the background image and the characters separately, or at least many tutorials seem to indicate that, but most of the visual novels here use another method instead, because the characters are already included in the "background" image. I do think that this method is far superior because the characters could receive lighting and shadows, and could be seen at any angle. Think of comics or manga panels, if you will. I actually suggest downloading and learning from the visual novels on this website instead of Youtube, because these are more relevant.

Open Renpy up. Press "+Create New Project". Select your new project. Click "script.rpy". Now this is where you start writing code. But don't worry, like I said, a visual novel is essentially just a series of images with words on top of them. If you don't need any special effects, then the only code you need to know is transitioning from one sentence to another, and from one image to another.

When you created the new project, you were prompted to choose a file location. Now, for the visual novel to display the images you want, the images must be in the project folder. So, copy the images you made, paste them into <YourProjectName>/game/images. Back to the script. Assuming your images are named like "image 1", under "label: start", write "scene image 1". To display a sentence with the image, write ""<whatever you want to write>"" under it. The quotation marks are needed. To show the next image, write "show image 2". And honestly, that is already a visual novel. You don't need to watch hours and hours of Renpy tutorial unless you want to learn the special effects, which certainly do add flavours to the visual novel, but are not necessary.

The best way to learn writing code for the kind of visual novels you like is from reading the scripts of the visual novels themselves. Renpy is designed for a variety of visual novels, and I do think that the ones we commonly see here are not what it was originally intended for. So some of the Youtube tutorials are not useful in this situation. But many visual novels have encrypted their scripts and other files. You will need things like

You must be registered to see the links

or UnRen to extract the files to read them. Sometimes they are further encrypted into rpyc, in which case you need

You must be registered to see the links

.

But just start out small. Many people like straightforward visual novels, with a little bit of choices. A lot of games are criticised for buggy or messy or too dragged out. If you look at the scripts of those games, their scripts are nothing short of impressive, considering what they managed to do with how limited Renpy is. But complexity is not equal to quality. Quite often, they are even opposite to each other. Anyone who has written codes before know they tend to get messy once you start to build up a bit of it. As a job, you'd have other people monitoring your work, and you would be forced to fix anything you messed up. But here, no matter how successful your game is in terms of patrons, you are your own boss, you are unlikely to go back and clean up your code because it's such a boring task, and the result will just be much worse than what you intend the game to be.

 

[anne O'nymous]

[...] Well, it's easier than you think, harder than you can imagine, because it can range from relatively simple like a visual novel, to extremely complex like an Unreal Engine or Unity game.

And way harder than you believe it.

One of the most important thing, whatever if you want to make a visual novel, or a more advanced game, and whatever if you want to use Honey Select or Daz Studio, or even draw the CG yourself, is the attention you'll give to the details.
Like by example not writing a whole "hey making a game is not too difficult" in the general section, when there's a whole part of the site dedicated to the programing, development and art in games.

Renders are arguably the most basic element of a visual novel, more so than the words. You could do that with Honey Select 2 or

You must be registered to see the links

. There are other render engines like Blender or Koikatsu.

Hmm, isn't calling Honey Select (one or two) and Koikatsu "render engines", a bit too far ? They lack all the functionalities that make Daz Studio, or Blender, being one, and that probably also make it very difficult for you to use, and demanding in terms of hardware.

You will be prompted to download something called Atom at some point, so download it because you need it to write code.

No. Any text editing software will do it, even Windows' Notepad. Of course, some of them will be easier to use for this, but Atom is the actual favorite of Ren'Py author, not a "need to have".

Now, there are tons of Renpy tutorials on Youtube, which once again stretch the beginner coverage to way too much.

And, because many among them are too old, they also will not teach you what you effectively need to know. This simply because it's functionalities that didn't existed at this time.

I actually suggest downloading and learning from the visual novels on this website instead of Youtube, because these are more relevant.

You suggest that, instead of Youtube tutorials, where someone try, with more or less success, to explain what's going on, people that starts with no knowledge, use raw none commented codes that they'll not understand ?
Really ?

But don't worry, like I said, a visual novel is essentially just a series of images with words on top of them. If you don't need any special effects, then the only code you need to know is transitioning from one sentence to another, and from one image to another.

Hmm, even if it's a pure kinetic novel, no.
You need at least to know how to create a new character and make it looks like you want it to be. Then you'll need to know how to personalize the style of the default screens. And, if you want your visual novel to not feel too blank even before it starts, how to customize a bit the main screen.

To display a sentence with the image, write ""<whatever you want to write>"" under it. The quotation marks are needed. To show the next image, write "show image 2". And honestly, that is already a visual novel.

So, no dialog, just a pure 100% narrative kinetic visual novel ? I guess that all those who already don't like interactive visual novel will be happy.

Renpy is designed for a variety of visual novels, and I do think that the ones we commonly see here are not what it was originally intended for.

Then why do Ren'Py have menus, conditions, text interpolation, definitive (jump) or temporary (call) branching, the possibility to provide parameters to screens, that can be show for an undetermined amount of time, or wait until the player interact with them, and so on ? 95% of Ren'Py games here rely almost exclusively on those functionalities, that are native and, for most of them, exist since the start of the engine history.

Anyone who has written codes before know they tend to get messy once you start to build up a bit of it. As a job, you'd have other people monitoring your work, and you would be forced to fix anything you messed up.

Er..., no and no ?
Your code is messy only if you're messy yourself and don't know what you do, nor planed it. And even if you're at the bottom of the chain, there's no one who monitor your works, just peoples that will launch the software, see that it don't works, and yell at you. But this isn't monitoring, this is expecting that you do your job correctly.

[...] and the result will just be much worse than what you intend the game to be.

To the eyes of a grumpy someone who have an insomnia and his neck that hurt, it summarize relatively well what you wrote.

I mean, you could have wrote, "to make a VN, use either Honey Select ([download link], [how to install link], [some how to use links]) or Daz Studio ([download link]), then download Ren'Py ([download link]) and look at how other games are made". The reader would have had near to the same knowledge at the end, than after reading your long post.

 

[BiggestDickest]

I mean, you could have wrote, "to make a VN, use either Honey Select ([download link], [how to install link], [some how to use links]) or Daz Studio ([download link]), then download Ren'Py ([download link]) and look at how other games are made". The reader would have had near to the same knowledge at the end, than after reading your long post.

Well, looks like you summarised it better than I did. I admit I have overreached in my tone in some parts of the post, but honestly all this post is about is to ask people who have never touched game development to try making a visual novel, a bare minimum at that, or a kinetic novel. They don't even need to succeed in the end. I don't expect anyone who has any experience in making a visual novel to gain anything from reading my post. Like you said, there is already a dedicated section on this forum, and Youtube, for tutorials. All I am doing is pointing people to places.

Let me put it this way. What I said is like saying drawing is easier than you think because even drawing a stickman counts as one. Perhaps to most artists, that cannot be considered a drawing. But I think that is a starting point. There is still a gap between having no knowledge of visual novels development at all and knowing the basic tools to make one. I know, because I started off that way. I didn't know what game development involved as a gamer. I thought a game engine was all you need, and I didn't even know what exactly a game engine was, until I downloaded Unity, and then I realised you needed other softwares like Blender to make models, Photoshop to make textures, Audacity or other softwares to process or make sounds. It's the same with visual novels. When I first saw some 3D porn, I was curious about how they were made. I don't even remember how I stumbled onto this website. Before that I didn't even know such visual novels existed. All the visual novels I had seen up until that point, or the visual novel as I knew it, were Japanese ones, and not porn either, and those clearly are in the traditional style that are not what you'd find here. And that's why I felt it was important to make that distinction because those are still being made in the Japanese market, so they haven't been replaced like black-and-white TVs.

I could go on further about my discoveries along the way, but I don't think you are interested in that. I hope my thread can be helpful, if at all, to some total beginners to the community, by pointing them to the softwares commonly used, and the bare minimum tutorials to get started. If not, then it is one of the many threads without a purpose.

 

[anne O'nymous]

[...] but honestly all this post is about is to ask people who have never touched game development to try making a visual novel, a bare minimum at that, or a kinetic novel.

Look at the number of new games that appear each week, the number of "[WIP] I'm making a game" threads, and so on. They don't need to be encouraged, they are already doing it. What is lacking is more a "how to do it so you'll not abandon your project after six months".
Yet, in fact even this thread exist in one way ; it suffice to look the many "why so many abandoned games" and learn from what is said in them.

There is still a gap between having no knowledge of visual novels development at all and knowing the basic tools to make one.

I know the basic tools needed to redo all the electric circuits in my home. Due to my scholar times I even have the knowledge needed for that. Yet, if one day this have to happen, I'll still hire someone who have been taught to do it.

Not that only professionals should make games. After all, the scene is made at 90% (if not more) by amateurs, and some have proved to be really good at what they are doing. It's just that there's a big difference between having the desire to do it, and having the capacity to do it.
You said that even stick men count as drawing, and it's true. One can be really successful, last really long, and become a reference, while sticking to this kind of drawing, like Randall Munroe with

You must be registered to see the links

by example. But he's successful not because he can draw stick men. He is successful because he know what to do with them and how to do it right.
And it's where the problem lie. It's not a question of knowledge, everyone can learn how to use Ren'Py, Unity, Daz Studio, Blender or Honey Select. It's how to use them right, how to make something good out of them, that is needed. And it's something that can't really be taught ; either you have it, or you don't.

I know, because I started off that way. I didn't know what game development involved as a gamer.

And apparently you still don't really know. Else you would have also talked about the most important point, the fact that it need dedication and will radically change your life. Not because you'll do something new, but because it will eat all your free time, then start to overflow on your social life.

If not, then it is one of the many threads without a purpose.

It's not that it's yet another threads without purpose, and more that it's yet another thread saying the exact same thing that many others. And it being too dense and confuse, it can't even serve as reference for the "I want to make a game, what do I need to know" thread of the month.

 

[BiggestDickest]

Alright, I understand your perspective, but I do not see the problem of abandoned games being attributed to threads like this. I still think the more people try out game development, the more likely we will see dedicated developers. No one can predict the future, not even with dedication. Zack Snyder quit directing Justice League midway because of real life problems too, and that's a blockbuster movie. There are loads of factors that in determining whether a person can afford to continue doing anything, which is why I stressed people could approach this as a hobby. If you planned your life around this as a profession, then of course it's a problem. Hell, even the most successful developers are earning like $3-4k here if I'm not mistaken. That's a rather average income in a first world country. You could earn roughly the same from working as a waiter. And the least successful, which comprise of the majority of the developers, receive like a few USD a month. If I were them, I'd just give up on Patreon and be free from the pressure or restrictions.

The moment you tie anything to money, you would realise its value, which in this case is not much. It's like playing video games or any other hobbies. Why do we play video games? We don't get paid to do it, unless you are a streamer. We even pay to do it, in addition to the huge amount of time spent playing the games. But as soon as you are a Youtuber or a streamer, relying on people to watch you play games for income, you would think about playing which games is the most lucrative, or what you could do to earn more subscribers/donations.

If instead people were making games purely as a hobby, which honestly almost no one does here, because almost every developer has a Patreon, thus restricting themselves to its rule and the unlikely potential to earn a decent income, they would not suffer from the pressure of having to develop the game at a steady pace, or that they don't earn enough to justify the time investment, because the expectation would never have been there. They could spend 10 minutes today on it, or none at all, take a break till next week, whatever they want at their own pace.

But to address the problem of abandoned games, I do not think making a more complex game is the solution. I actually believe it is the opposite. The complex the development process is, the more time and efforts it requires. I believe that is partly what drives developers away when they couldn't keep up with it, nor could they drastically lower the quality of the game compared to the earlier content they already made.

I think most people when creating a story, have certain images in our mind, that we then re-create in whatever softwares we use. I am just telling people how to get from the first imaginary stage to the final stage in the most direct way. If they could continue to add in special effects, or some other gameplay elements, that's great. But if they don't, at least they could materialise the story/scenes they have in mind. That is the main reason I'm asking people to try out making visual novels. Forget about artistic skills. Forget about programming skills. Forget about writing skills. There are people out there that are good enough to do these as professions. Beginners aren't suddenly going to be able to compete with them. Most likely the beginners will never be able to. Make the story or sex scenes you like. There are so many people looking for certain types of games, myself included, and so many developers that have to dodge the Patreon rules. You could see that because some developers resorted to "unofficial" patches after the first release for their darker content.

Personally, I do not know how long I will stay interested with VNs either. To be honest, I enjoy making renders and writing stories separately, which is why I said making renders alone for your own entertainment is good enough. I don't expect to earn anything from this, just as I don't expect to earn anything from playing games.

 

[anne O'nymous]

If instead people were making games purely as a hobby, which honestly almost no one does here, because almost every developer has a Patreon, thus restricting themselves to its rule and the unlikely potential to earn a decent income, they would not suffer from the pressure of having to develop the game at a steady pace, or that they don't earn enough to justify the time investment, because the expectation would never have been there.

You know, without this I would almost agreed with you. But there's this part...

Contrarily to what you say, most authors are doing this just out of passion, and there's nothing saying that when you spend thousands in your hobby (what they are doing), you can't try to have a small financial compensation. Because it's small. Most of them know that they'll more surely be part of the 75%+ earning at most US$ 200/months than among the 5%- earning more than US$ 10,000/month.
It's not rare nowadays to see a game thread appear without Patreon/Subscribestar/Itch.io or even buymeacoffee(-like) link. The author open the account after, when he discover, probably with surprise, that there's people interested by what he's doing and some possibly wiling to spare a buck or two.

Anyway what about all the others peoples who have a Patreon accounts ? There's less than 5,000 adult game creators among the more than 200,000 creators who have a Patreon page. And what about all those who don't have a Patreon account, yet have a tip jar on their web site ? Suddenly, because they earn few bucks, they are denied the right to just be hobbyist who follow their passion ? No !
I remember when I was young and going to scale models exhibitions, in the late 70's and 80's. They were filled by amateur clubs sharing their passion, and most of them had a tip jar for people to help them continue to exist. Accordingly to your definition, they weren't hobbyists because of that. But no, there's no rule saying that to be a real hobbyist you need to fund your passion, including for those ones the travel cost, hosting cost and exhibition place, just with your money.
Same for any comics/geek/anime/whatever convention, where a part of the exhibition is dedicated for amateurs, and where you'll find them trying to sell some of their creations. They are still hobbyists, it's still just a part of their life that exist on their free time. They aren't there to sell, but to share their passion with the public. And like it's a passion that have a cost, especially when you go as far as sharing it as exhbitor in conventions, yes, they try to earn back a part of their expenses.
Hell, what about this forum ? F95z and Sam would surely be surprised to learn that they fall more on the professional side, than on the "hey, why not help people share their kinks" one, simply because there's advertisement on the site, so there's money earned (and immediately spent to pay the bills).

As for Patreon rules, I have nothing against people who put incest, bestiality, loli/shota, and/or none consensual sex in their games, but it's the only rules there's to follow. Presenting them as a constraint is ridicule. You can perfectly write great and interesting stories without that, most authors achieve to do it. Be noted that, since the rules only apply for Patreon, you're implying that authors who have a Subscribestar account are more hobbyists than those who have a Patreon one.

And same goes for the steady pace... Funny to say this at a time where most authors are accused to milk their patrons, precisely because there's less and less who stick to a steady pace. Most of them dropped the pressure and now just take the time they need.
It still take most of their free time, it's still a passion that occupy most of their life. But they learned from those who started before them, and they now also know how to take a day off because they need it, even if this mean delaying the release date for the next update.

 

[Meaning Less]

Suddenly, because they earn few bucks, they are denied the right to just be hobbyist who follow their passion ?

I believe it is less about the act of having a patron but more on "why" you have it.

Anyone that created a patreon as a hobbyist won't be affect by all the negative sides of it, they won't feel pressured to deliver stuff because they probably never promised anything in the first place, so people that are already supporting won't feel scammed.

But those that created a patreon with the intent of "creating a business", promising faster updates and more content if they get paid more are the ones that will put themselves for failure and also might turn their hobby into a grindy job instead.

Because in the end patreon is a support tool, most actual devs know that the real money is made actually selling completed games in the right platforms. That can give you not only bigger payouts but also a passive income later since your games keep being sold for years to come even if you stop working.

 

[BiggestDickest]

You know, without this I would almost agreed with you. But there's this part...

That's fine. We don't have to agree on everything, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. Now let me explain my position. You may still not agree with it, but I think you have misunderstood me.

I'm not blaming developers for opening a Patreon account. They are doing exactly what Patreon was created for: financial support for content creators. However, regardless of the reasons they decided to open a Patreon, they are still bound by the same rules, and possibly pressure too from supporters and fans. Some developers handle that pressure well. Some, not so much, and ended up giving up on this whole thing. I have written lewd stories before too on fanfiction.net without any pay at all. I was writing it for my own fun. But many of the comments were calling me insane or other names, to the point I actually questioned if I am actually any of those things. I stopped writing the stories because I felt guilty about that. Later on, I realised there are far more people that are into the fetish I have, which is rape porn. There is a huge market for them. Hell, I'd argue there are more Japanese rape porn than romantic ones, and there are Russian ones and American ones too. I can only imagine how much more pressure you would have if you are paid for your work. You could argue that even under pay, the developers should be entirely free to make their games, and I would agree. But there are lots of disrespectful people in the world, myself being one of them unknowingly sometimes.

I have the utmost respect for game developers. The more I try game development, the harder I find it to be. And looking at the codes some developers wrote, plus how cinematic their renders look, I can only be impressed. They deserve to be compensated, but things are never so simple when people "donate" to you. Look at the attitude of some people on this website. They feel like they are your boss when they are only giving you a dollar or so. We can even see these people in real life. How many bossy customers have you seen in real life that come with unreasonable demands? I have seen a lot.

As for Patreon rules, I have nothing against people who put incest, bestiality, loli/shota, and/or none consensual sex in their games, but it's the only rules there's to follow. Presenting them as a constraint is ridicule. You can perfectly write great and interesting stories without that, most authors achieve to do it. Be noted that, since the rules only apply for Patreon, you're implying that authors who have a Subscribestar account are more hobbyists than those who have a Patreon one.

Well, you could say the same about real porn. You could make high quality romantic or normal porn without any weird fetishes, and I would totally agree they are high quality. So the fetishes are not a barrier to making high quality porn or stories. But people look for fetish porn for a reason. I could argue visual novel itself is a fetish, because you could just watch real porn, and I do. But we are here. I do think Subscriberstar offers more freedom than Patreon, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if Subscriberstar has any restrictions on the content creators.

I'll be blunt. The reason I asked people to try out game development, especially without being bound by income or rules, is that I don't see enough games that offer my fetishes, which I'll say it out loud, rape, pregnancy, lactation. I hope to see more developers, and thus a higher chance of seeing games I like. I have seen games where the developers would release "unofficial" patches that are actually the darker content, like Banking on Bella, or Friends in need, or that the developers would tone down the dark themes in their games once their supporters get growing because they don't want to lose their Patreon account.

I don't want developers to be burnt out on making their games, but of course I have no control over that. What you said is worrying for me, that game development would take up most of their time, affect their social lives and so on. If it is expected that game development has such a cost, then I think most people cannot afford to do it for a long time. But I think it is only expected this way exactly because of the expectation of the players. If the players expect the game to have a monthly update, then the developer would be expected to spend enough time in a month to meet that expectation. Sometimes I think developers even work way more than they are expected to, and I don't see how they find that fun. You see people complaining about sandbox, and I'm not a fan of that either, and developers would go on to make the sandbox element even more time-consuming.

 

[Douve]

Well this is all about technical part wich is just 50% of the game and it's (imo) the easiest to learn. Now you have to learn how to write, how to give a personnality to your characters, how not to get lost through all your ideas, how to plan your story, how not to be too ambitious and finally give up on the game or end up doing shit. Also you have to keep your motivation for a long time on a single project.

Basically you're saying it's not that hard so don't be afraid of trying, and I agree but only for the technical part. I've been using Daz for only one month and I can already do some nice scenes, exept when too many characters + environment because it's getting to heavy (so one more probleme the capacity of your computer). But still I hardly write good stuff.

 

[Meaning Less]

exept when too many characters + environment because it's getting to heavy (so one more probleme the capacity of your computer).

Render them individually, and then put everything together in renpy.

You will not only save render time but also could reuse the environment or characters later without having to re-render everything for each image...

There is always a more efficient way to solve most problems.

 

[Douve]

Render them individually, and then put everything together in renpy.

You will not only save render time but also could reuse the environment or characters later without having to re-render everything for each image...

There is always a more efficient way to solve most problems.

Yeah but doesn't it create a shadow issue then ?

 

[BiggestDickest]

Well this is all about technical part wich is just 50% of the game and it's (imo) the easiest to learn. Now you have to learn how to write, how to give a personnality to your characters, how not to get lost through all your ideas, how to plan your story, how not to be too ambitious and finally give up on the game or end up doing shit. Also you have to keep your motivation for a long time on a single project.

Basically you're saying it's not that hard so don't be afraid of trying, and I agree but only for the technical part. I've been using Daz for only one month and I can already do some nice scenes, exept when too many characters + environment because it's getting to heavy (so one more probleme the capacity of your computer). But still I hardly write good stuff.

Yeah, essentially it's meant to be an encouraging thread. Well, different people have different talents or rate of picking up new skills. Perhaps you are a natural at using Daz. I find it very hard to pose in Daz, among other things like trying to fit a scene within your VRAM. There are lots of things to learn even within just Daz.

When it comes to the story, although I didn't give suggestions in my OP, and my suggestions probably wouldn't be very applicable for the majority of the developers here. One thing I noticed is that a lot of developers approached it like a novel, like they tried to plan everything from start to finish. People may think of course, it's called a visual novel, it even has the word novel in its name. The problem with that is, writing can be very continuous, and is relatively easy to produce. I mean, we have been writing tons of words even now. But renders are not as easy to produce, or drawings, or any images, so there has to be a compromise on what is shown.

Growing up with manga and anime, which I think is far more similar to visual novels than traditional novels, I think those provide a pretty good idea on how a scene should be. And there are a great deal of mangas that obviously didn't plan their story out from the beginning, because the later story has almost nothing to do with the lore established early on, but they ended up being very popular. Now, of course, we are making porn here, not Dragon Ballz, not Bleach, not Superman, not Batman, so I understand there is a difference, but still, there are a great deal of things you can learn from manga like the camera angles, or poses, or expressions. In general, particularly because you don't get to show the story in a continuous way, things tend to be more exaggerated in stills.

 

[BiggestDickest]

Yeah but doesn't it create a shadow issue then ?

It does, but in traditional visual novels, you have character sprites that are separated from the background, and they take up most of the screen, so it's kinda accepted. Most VNs here are not in the traditional style though.

 

[Meaning Less]

Yeah but doesn't it create a shadow issue then ?

Depends on how you render things, you could have the shadow also rendered as another transparent overlay, or together with the character if you don't plan to reuse it for different scenes.

It is all a balance of how much detail you want vs how much effort is worth putting into it.

 

[BiggestDickest]

Depends on how you render things, you could have the shadow also rendered as another transparent overlay, or together with the character if you don't plan to reuse it for different scenes.

It is all a balance of how much detail you want vs how much effort is worth putting into it.

Wait, is that a thing in Daz? I know in Blender, you could render in different passes, but I didn't see such options in Daz.

 

[Meaning Less]

Wait, is that a thing in Daz?

With anything really, it's just a matter of rendering the shadow cutting it out and displaying as is or making it solid black and adding transparency to it in the final image so it can be used more generally.

But again, depends on how much effort you are going to put into it, in most cases I would just not use shadows unless necessary. And I bet they aren't that important for most porn games.

 

[coffeeaddicted]

Wait, is that a thing in Daz? I know in Blender, you could render in different passes, but I didn't see such options in Daz.

I downloaded the handbook for Blender. I think it seem great to all kind of things. Are there any developers that use Blender instead of DAZ?
p.s. i am a noob at the moment. So i need to learn.

 

[Meaning Less]

Are there any developers that use Blender instead of DAZ?

Blender is more of a 3D modelling tool, not a rendering one.

Usually you create characters and objects in blender and then export them to daz or any other rendering tool.

If you wanted to create a more complex game then instead you would export those files directly to unity or another 3D engine where then you can render that stuff realtime instead.

 

[Douve]

One thing I noticed is that a lot of developers approached it like a novel, like they tried to plan everything from start to finish

Maybe I got the wrong impression but I think most of games that are abandonned are people who didn't know where the were going with their story and characters. So I think it's quite important to plan your story, but not necessarily everything that happens. Imo the best is to have at least the headlines of your story and then fill the blanks update per update.

And there are a great deal of mangas that obviously didn't plan their story out from the beginning

True but they're also professionnal not amateurs like here.

the later story has almost nothing to do with the lore established early on

Yep, you can of course improvise and it can works well it depends of the author some are better at planifying and some at improvisation.

but they ended up being very popular

I'm making myself ennemies here but... It doesn't mean they're good. But this is off-topic and subjective.
I do like manga aswell but i'm more into "author"'s manga, underground stuff wich are most of time pretty short if not one shot.

there are a great deal of things you can learn from manga like the camera angles, or poses, or expressions.

True as for cinema aswell.

 

[coffeeaddicted]

Blender is a 3D modelling tool, not a rendering one.

You create characters and objects in blender and then export them to daz or any other rendering tool.

If you wanted to create a more complex game then instead you would export those files directly to unity or another 3D engine where then you can render that stuff realtime instead.

I wonder if there is something for opensource. I think i seen a VN on my Ubuntu game list. Have to check. I started a while back with Blender for some animations for Sims 4. Never finished though.
Ok, so thats a dead end then.