I have a cunning plan....

[Ozzice13]

Well no, not really but I do have some ideas for some games and I'd like to spitball some thoughts I've been having of actually trying to make something out of them.

-Engine.

What game engine to use has been my biggest question, I only have experience (not counting learning BASIC decades ago) with RPG maker, but I don't want to use that unless I'll make an actual JRPG style game which I wasn't going to.

Renpy seems to be a popular choice but I don't know if it can do the thing I want it too.
I want the player to be able to choose out of 4 protagonist at the start of the game, 2 female 2 male. Then based on which sex they choose they chose between two "true self" forms. So another 4 in total.
After that you choose 1 of 4 jobs types, and possibly choosing between 2 or more places to live.
(Essentially the player will play as a demon in human form with the true form being their real demon persona.)
-Can Renpy do such a thing or should I start looking at Unity?

The game will be a type of sandbox game, moving around town will be similar to other games in the genre. Some of my inspiration comes from Hentai Highschool but I don't know if I want system like that or one with "hotspots" on a map i.e. Man of the House, Superpowered etc.

How easy is it to get into Renpy Vs Unity? Are there any hidden costs involved or would it be possible to get all the tools free?


-Art.

I'm not to worried bout the art, I'm a pretty decent artist and I've worked with 3d rendering in the past (Poser, Vue d'esprit).
The style I'm likely to go for is a cell shaded/comic book effect, similar to Good Girl Gone Bad, except I'll be tracing renders instead of pictures. And of course use my own art work as a supplemental, I don't think there are a lot of Cthulhu type tentacle monster 3d models out there to use...

Regardless I'd need to buy a tablet, what are some good ones that don't break the bank?
How easy is Daz3D Studio to get into for someone who worked with Poser circa 2002-2005?

Well that's it for now, looking forward to some feedback and tossing some ideas back and forth.
Lastly, I'm not looking to make a quick buck on Patreon, if I go through with this everything will be 100% free, this is a hobby for me, not a cash grab.

 

[NandabaCanti]

Sounds pretty ambitious for a first project, I'm going to say it may be better to shelve that idea for now and come up with something way less complicated that you will be far more likely to see through to completion first. 2-3 characters tops with a very well confined setting will be soooo much easier to manage and probably tend to do a lot better. For instance, take a look at

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, there are 3 characters, it all takes place in and around the MC's home and is pretty short and to the point (or at least it was when it was released, haven't checked any of the updates since to see how it's progressed).

You don't have to go with the same sort of theme or setting, but that basic idea of picking a fairly confined location and the minimal amount of characters possible with a concise story someone could enjoy within an hour or two would make for a much better first project. You'll learn a lot about the engine in the process regarding its strengths and weaknesses. Plus people will love that you are offering them a fairly complete experience right out of the gate.

As far as tablets go, Huion and rebranded UC-Logics (such as those from Monoprice) tend to offer the best bang for your buck. I've been using a Monoprice tablet for years now and love it. I tend to think a medium size tablet is about the best, size wise. The small ones are too cramped and the large/XL ones tend to take up too much desk real estate and unless you draw from the shoulder, you'll never use all that space and your arm will tend to get tired from having to move around so much, heh. Mine has a 10"x6.25" drawing area which works really well for me.

One thing to note, make sure the tablet you pick has the same ratio as the screen you plan to use it with, otherwise you'll have to do some calibration that renders part of the drawing area unused to make them match. My tablet is 16:9, but not long after I got it my brother-in-law gave me a nice big 4:3 screen his work was getting rid of, so for a couple of years there I had to disable an inch or so strip down the left hand edge of the tablet to get the two to match up, but now that I'm using a widescreen tv for my screen now I get to use the full tablet drawing area again.

As to costs, Unity's free version has a number of annoying points, a big one is that your games will always have analytics turned on for all of your users. I don't think Unity's really worth it. If you need a more full featured engine than Ren'Py that's fairly comparable to Unity but entirely free, give

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a look. Daz will have a number of expenses as well, unless you plan to pirate the assets. If you want to go with a cell shaded look, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to look into

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and it's

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rendering. There is a

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dedicated to NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) and they have a pretty active

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.

 

[NandabaCanti]

If by chance you were interested in using Blender, but don't want to model characters from scratch, there are at least 3 options available that are worth looking into. If you like Daz's models you can actually export them for Blender using this:

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If you'd rather something free (without pirating) there are 2 options I know of. The better one IMO is

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. It's a Blender add-on, so you generate the characters directly in Blender without messing with exports/imports. It is a bit overwhelming at first, as there are so many things you can tweak, but it gives pretty nice results and can even generate materials for both of Blender's renderers and some fairly basic textures.

Then finally there is always

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, which is a bit of a poor man's Daz. I personally don't care for it much, as the parameter selection always felt a bit odd to me and the results pretty much never look as good as you'd get from one of the above solutions. But a lot of people really like it and it still tends to give better models than most could make on their own and it has some clothing options that can be customized and fit to your characters which is a nice touch. It's a stand alone program, so you will have to export the models from it and import them to Blender.

 

[Ozzice13]

Thanks for the replies and links, I'll be sure to check them out and learn more about the various options you've provided.

Yes it will be a big project, likely would take a couple of years to pull of. I was planing on doing something simpler first to learn whatever engine I'll end up using, been toying with the idea of doing a bootleg remake of Goblinboy's School Dreams series combining al 3 games in one.

I use to have a platinum account at Daz back in the day, also still have a lot of stuff from elsewhere like Poserworld. Most of that is Vicky 2 & Mike 2 based but that doesn't matter much if they are only going to be a base for the artwork.

Guess I have some research to do...

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Ive tried Importing to / from Blender/Daz but have not had much success. I will give this a try for sure. Thx

If by chance you were interested in using Blender, but don't want to model characters from scratch, there are at least 3 options available that are worth looking into. If you like Daz's models you can actually export them for Blender using this:

You must be registered to see the links

If you'd rather something free (without pirating) there are 2 options I know of. The better one IMO is

You must be registered to see the links

. It's a Blender add-on, so you generate the characters directly in Blender without messing with exports/imports. It is a bit overwhelming at first, as there are so many things you can tweak, but it gives pretty nice results and can even generate materials for both of Blender's renderers and some fairly basic textures.

Then finally there is always

You must be registered to see the links

, which is a bit of a poor man's Daz. I personally don't care for it much, as the parameter selection always felt a bit odd to me and the results pretty much never look as good as you'd get from one of the above solutions. But a lot of people really like it and it still tends to give better models than most could make on their own and it has some clothing options that can be customized and fit to your characters which is a nice touch. It's a stand alone program, so you will have to export the models from it and import them to Blender.