Ren'Py I'm creating my first visual novel, advices ?

[Parsion]

I don't want to tell you some about the content, because I want to release it on patreon.

Just a little presentation : I'm an art student in France, in 3rd year and half (two years and half to go yeaaah).

The first game I'm planning is based on linear story with basic choices.

It will be like you have two or three choices about an action, only one is true, and if you choose wrong, it's game over.

I want to learn so I don't take risks about something to much ambitious. Try to undestand that okay.

About the art : fully digital drawn by me. Currently now, I'm writing the raw script with dialogues and I'm drawing my storyboard. It will not be 3D art, but more like Summer Time Saga, fully drawn.

I'm planning to draw background of each rooms and places and draw each characters on .png files, to drag them on every background possible.

But I'm also planed to draw complete drawing for the sex scenes, no animations, but more like a sequential cut scene, like if you are reading a manga. I know animation sex scenes are better but like I said I don't want to be too much more ambitious. I'm doing this on my free time, I have 40 hours of art courses in my art school and I have between 10 and 15 hours of part time job EACH WEEK.

But soon, I will be in a company intership, that's mean no homeworks and much more free time, because I have only 5 hours of working in this company ahaha

So, I need advices about the story and art, I want to avoid the most hated clichés we saw in sex visual novels, I plan realistic body, with no huge boobies, more "natural" bodies for the characters, I don't know if you see what I mean.

About the gameplay, I already programmed the doodle to let the player choose his name, and I wrote the introduction, but with no images yet.

here is a 3-pages comic book I did for the school, I did it 6 months ago but it represents good enough how is my art style :
Anyway, I will publish my progress here and some questions about programming, but currently, I'm finding all my answers about the scripts, so I prefer advices about story and character designs, to avoid chlichés !

Thank you so much guys, and be the love of Visual Novels be strong with you.

 

[Alexander Krisnov]

First of all welcome to f95zone
I am not an expert on the subject of visual novel so feel free to ignore if u want
Well if u dont want any clichés then avoid incest completely ... we got a lot of those . About the art ... if u have seen summertime saga then u know why its popular ....... i agree u should keep the characters more "Natural" but dont be afraid to show their "assets" also if see if u can make more comic book or manga like .... well thats what i can say at this point if i knew about it more than i would be able to help u more ..... anyways feel free to ask for help from the staff and uploaders such as me tho most of us are lazy bastards (including me )and god luck on ur project hope to see more from u :eazyHype:
*PS* Before uploading on patreon u should look to garner attention for it maybe make an demo and put it here or in other forums so that the no of peoples playing it increases :FeelsGoodMan:... also might want to reconsider this

It will be like you have two or three choices about an action, only one is true, and if you choose wrong, it's game over.

just saying

 

[anne O'nymous]

It will be like you have two or three choices about an action, only one is true, and if you choose wrong, it's game over.

First advice, don't do this. Only two things can come from this. Either the good choice is easy to make, and the lack of challenge is frustrating, or it's less easy to find the right option, and that's the instant "game over" which become frustrating. Whatever you try to tell us a story, or give us some easy fap, "game over" must be the exception, not happen too fast and not happen each time the player don't make the right choice.
If you tell us a story, it'll harm the said story. Firstly because the player will tend to focus more on the fact that he must save before each decision, than on the story itself. Secondly because of the many round-trips ; "oops, it wasn't the right choice, so, where was I ?". And it it's just an easy fap, well a "game over" screen isn't really the best way to do it.
You can have "game over", but the player must have the right to fail and choose the wrong option. So, define an error's counter, or something like that, to not let the game over happen too fast. Also, let the characters be forgiving ; if the player haven't made an error since enough time, forget about the previous errors he can have make.

Second advice, do as it please you and don't listen too much people giving you advice, me included. It's your first game, so take pleasure to create it, use it to learn how to do it, and be happy.

 

[Parsion]

First advice, don't do this. Only two things can come from this. Either the good choice is easy to make, and the lack of challenge is frustrating, or it's less easy to find the right option, and that's the instant "game over" which become frustrating. Whatever you try to tell us a story, or give us some easy fap, "game over" must be the exception, not happen too fast and not happen each time the player don't make the right choice.
If you tell us a story, it'll harm the said story. Firstly because the player will tend to focus more on the fact that he must save before each decision, than on the story itself. Secondly because of the many round-trips ; "oops, it wasn't the right choice, so, where was I ?". And it it's just an easy fap, well a "game over" screen isn't really the best way to do it.
You can have "game over", but the player must have the right to fail and choose the wrong option. So, define an error's counter, or something like that, to not let the game over happen too fast. Also, let the characters be forgiving ; if the player haven't made an error since enough time, forget about the previous errors he can have make.

Thank you for your advice. I undestand that but this game will be very linear, just to undestand how ren'py works lol

But I should plan a route with a lot of choices. And I plan to create non easy choices. Anyway, there will be a walktrough even if I do a lot of choices or endings ahaha I can create a linear story at the beginning and then modify this story to include "wrong" choices in the story. I need to learn by doing a good linear fap game lol and then, making a more ambitious one.

 

[baneini]

You make a game over that requires multiple bad choices that are somewhat obvious, then give unique achievement/art as a reward for getting a specific game end.

 

[Parsion]

You make a game over that requires multiple bad choices that are somewhat obvious, then give unique achievement/art as a reward for getting a specific game end.

Great idea, taking notes !

 

[Eoin]

Make your story somewhat unique:
Don't go for the cliche incest route, i.e: Son/Brother hits 18 and inexplicably decides to want to fuck his family. It's way overdone.

Art style is rather unique. I, personally, like to see something different.

But in the end, you're making it. It's your story. Make a game/novel that you'd like to play/read.

 

[lovefox]

You can compensate length of the story, with the possibilities of history - you can describe a separate story well and invest a lot of new things, like Romance - to understand the possibility of the engine, a bad end can be just a rupture of relations and friendship.

 

[Parsion]

But in the end, you're making it. It's your story. Make a game/novel that you'd like to play/read.

That's exaclty the spirit.

 

[Parsion]

You can compensate length of the story, with the possibilities of history - you can describe a separate story well and invest a lot of new things, like Romance - to understand the possibility of the engine, a bad end can be just a rupture of relations and friendship.

I didn't plan a spin off, but this is not a bad idea. What about a visual novel shared universe ? ahaha

 

[robbinrobbie]

Please please please don't make the "You chose wrong, game over" model. Those are extremely frustrating to gameplayers. All it does is make players save the game before every single choice and takes them out of the story.

Another tip is to not get frustrated if your game doesn't make you a fortune after a couple updates. It takes time to build up a following. Make sure you are doing this because you enjoy doing it and not to make a quick buck. If your story and game are good, the money will come eventually.

 

[Finsit]

Please please please don't make the "You chose wrong, game over" model. Those are extremely frustrating to gameplayers. All it does is make players save the game before every single choice and takes them out of the story.

Not really with a Ren'Py game.
If you can roll back there is no issue there.

For that Ren'Py is pretty good for completionists since they can test every possible outcomes easily.

 

[Parsion]

Not really with a Ren'Py game.
If you can roll back there is no issue there.

For that Ren'Py is pretty good for completionists since they can test every possible outcomes easily.

I saw a lot of different gameplay on this game, and I can ask famous developpers on twitter (dark cookies answers me one month ago on twitter)

 

[Parsion]

Hey guys, I programmed the first three scenes, the 4th will have the first choice, so I decide to do the art right to this choice. Here the design of the player character.

Spoiler

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I have a question about the script. There is a scene when a female character enters the room, but she is half naked. I want to write in the script that the dialogue box disapears, like you know, an awkward scene for the characters. This is the part of the script :

j"Hey Arthur did you see my pho…?"

[THE PART OF THE SCENE WHEN THE CHARACTERS SEE EACH OTHERS, and the player has to click or press enter/space to continue the dialogues, like a pause, I dont know if you undestand what i mean]

j"HOLY SHIT ARTHUR I TOLD YOU TO TELL ME IF YOU INVITE A FRIEND OF YOU"

d"(What the fuck is this family ?! the mother is a freaking MILF and his sister is walking half naked !)"

a"Yeah, sorry, but you shoundn't walk like this, sister"

j"Screw you Arthur !"

[another scene without dialogues, when she leaves the scene, i already undestand how to use -with dissolve- script images, but after this dialogue, she's leaving with dissolve, and we see the player and Arthur alone, but with no dialogue box you undestand ?]

END OF SCRIPT

Can you help me please ? I did some researches about the script.rpy on google but found nothing about how to do this.

 

[Hentami]

My current focus is adding something to do more then just "click" next to continue the story. A million RenPys out there. That's why coding a custom engine was first for me.

 

[Parsion]

My current focus is adding something to do more then just "click" next to continue the story. A million RenPys out there. That's why coding a custom engine was first for me.

Yes, me too, but I still dont know how to let the player explore the house when the story takes place. You want to go upstairs ? just click on the stairs area ! You know what I mean ?

Kind of gameplay like Summertime saga.

 

[Hentami]

I have the same concerns and often end go back to the "story on rails" as I have yet to nail that perfect idea yet.

Basics I play with:

Story on rails: clicking just auto takes you direction
a compass: clicking takes you to room that direction
arrow keys/wasd: same as compass really
areas/doorways: clicking on a spot takes you that room
arrows on sides of screen when can go that direction

 

[User_17502]

My best advice is make sure that your art assets look good before anything else. People click because they see good art (and sometimes even bad art) but if your art sucks then most people will just ignore it. Everything has to look good. You cant just have one really good looking character (artistically speaking) and all of the other characters and backgrounds look like crap. Dark Cookie started small but with superb art assets hes become one of the biggest developers to date. He didnt use preset images or any honey select stuff and now makes nearly 20k a month. (he also has an amazing team he splits the money with but that just makes sense.)

After that your focus should be on the nature/goal of your game. Do you want to make it hard or easy for the player to get what they want. The best example of this is Big Brother. The game teases you for so long with your MC not getting in on the action however it allows the player to see scenes without the MC. This causes the player to keep playing because they are getting a taste of what they want but at the same time not able to do anything because they haven't progressed enough. If you do something like summertime saga then you will be constantly teasing the player with the women around the MC but he never gets any sex for awhile. Maybe he can see scenes of sex or he can see the women naked but he doesn't get to do anything in the beginning.

Finally make sure that your game is your own. Do what you want and not what the patrons want. Everyone cries "do it this way, I don't want that, I'm not paying for this anymore" but in the end whatever your fetish is people will pay for it so long as you deliver on promises and work hard on your game. If you have a schedule for everyone to see and you stick to it consistently people will keep coming back over and over because they trust that they are getting their money's worth.

DO NOT
Release a shitty demo of the game with bad art - release a super small day one with good art but not much to do and people will be hooked.
Don't become a person that misses deadlines. if you need to change a date then do it but don't make it a regular thing. Excuses can only get you so far before people start ignoring them.

Finally
Enjoy yourself. If you dont like what you are doing then dont do it. People can tell if the Dev hates his game or if the Dev loves it. It shows in the long run.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Yes, me too, but I still dont know how to let the player explore the house when the story takes place. You want to go upstairs ? just click on the stairs area ! You know what I mean ?

Kind of gameplay like Summertime saga.

Take a look at

You must be registered to see the links

code. I'm not fan of the code, but it's the only game here with code which is both advanced, easy to use/manage and efficient. It use a lot of tricks, especially dynamic calls of label, which are really useful for the kind of game you've in mind.

 

[Parsion]

My best advice is make sure that your art assets look good before anything else. People click because they see good art (and sometimes even bad art) but if your art sucks then most people will just ignore it. Everything has to look good. You cant just have one really good looking character (artistically speaking) and all of the other characters and backgrounds look like crap. Dark Cookie started small but with superb art assets hes become one of the biggest developers to date. He didnt use preset images or any honey select stuff and now makes nearly 20k a month. (he also has an amazing team he splits the money with but that just makes sense.)

After that your focus should be on the nature/goal of your game. Do you want to make it hard or easy for the player to get what they want. The best example of this is Big Brother. The game teases you for so long with your MC not getting in on the action however it allows the player to see scenes without the MC. This causes the player to keep playing because they are getting a taste of what they want but at the same time not able to do anything because they haven't progressed enough. If you do something like summertime saga then you will be constantly teasing the player with the women around the MC but he never gets any sex for awhile. Maybe he can see scenes of sex or he can see the women naked but he doesn't get to do anything in the beginning.

Finally make sure that your game is your own. Do what you want and not what the patrons want. Everyone cries "do it this way, I don't want that, I'm not paying for this anymore" but in the end whatever your fetish is people will pay for it so long as you deliver on promises and work hard on your game. If you have a schedule for everyone to see and you stick to it consistently people will keep coming back over and over because they trust that they are getting their money's worth.

DO NOT
Release a shitty demo of the game with bad art - release a super small day one with good art but not much to do and people will be hooked.
Don't become a person that misses deadlines. if you need to change a date then do it but don't make it a regular thing. Excuses can only get you so far before people start ignoring them.

Finally
Enjoy yourself. If you dont like what you are doing then dont do it. People can tell if the Dev hates his game or if the Dev loves it. It shows in the long run.

Thanks you for your advices, I'm doing a game I like now, I'm still planning the story, and I'm currently drawing all the background of the house before continuing the story. I have a part time job and I plan to remplace it by doing games on patreon.

Take a look at

You must be registered to see the links

code. I'm not fan of the code, but it's the only game here with code which is both advanced, easy to use/manage and efficient. It use a lot of tricks, especially dynamic calls of label, which are really useful for the kind of game you've in mind.

Thanks you, but I found the way how to do it finally 4 days ago, but thanks to say that to me, I will check my self the code of Powered.