Looks like I'll need to learn coding

[dmmt]

63 here and haven't written code since the days of MS Basic, COBOL and FORTRAN. I've been perusing and playing a variety of adult games for about 2 years now, and have always been tempted to try and write a game, but really didn't have a story to tell so never did.

Apparently, about 10 pm last night that changed. (It is now 2:30 pm the next afternoon where I am. So just a little over 12 hours ago.) I started writing what I intended to be an outline for a story. I am now on page 18 of book like text, and I'm only midway thru day 2 in the story itself. and is so far, flowing with surprising ease. (Hopefully, I did not just jinx the shit out of myself)

If I were to "hire" a programmer and a graphic artist to illustrate/animate the story. What sort of expenses might I be looking at? My thought is, completely write the story, in it's entirety, then get a good 14-21 days of the story coded/illustrated/animated, before any release at all. The story itself will span about a year, maybe a year and a half as one of the girls starts out slightly underage and ages into her role. Hopefully with the story completely written first and available to the coders to begin with, the coding could be structured in such a way as to preclude a lot of "down range" issues. The intent being, to release then 2 to 4 weeks game play, each 4 to 6 weeks of real time. I project probably finishing the story itself, in Feb 2021, maybe March. Pie n the sky, would be January.

Or is this something where perhaps a team could be created, the thing gets put on Patreon or some other similar platform, and any proceeds would be shared equally amongst the team members.

Obviously I don't want to give away the plot at this stage, but I have not seen any game with the scenario I am writing. Some similarities yes, and some blatant borrowing of some applications within the game. (ie heavy influence from one aspect of Headmaster for ex, and general scenario not 100% divorced from Man of the House but not exactly like either one)

one "scene"


Cut to the kitchen..

Annie “Who the hell does he think he is anyway? And mom, ...LET him spank us?

Julie, laughing, “US? YOU are the one cruising for a bruising.”

Monique, “Yeah, don't wrap us up in your problems. Just cause you have fantasies about your little brother..”

Annie, “I DO NOT fantasize about my little brother..”

Julie, “Me thinks thou dost protest too much”

Monique, “Look he was right. Mom fixes us breakfast every Sunday, cleans the kitchen and then gets groceries for the week. Our cleaning up the kitchen, with three of us, is only taking us about 15 minutes total. It took mom twice that long, just to fix us breakfast. I don't think they asked for all that much”.

Annie, Julie, “THEY?”

Monique, “Yes, they. MC suggested it and mom said yes. So OK, I don't think Mom was asking all that much”

Annie, “Probably not, but what was all that spanking nonsense, and YOUR comment Julie.”

Julie, “Oh come on. Your into light S&M and we know it. You'd probably enjoy a spanking and the taboo of it being your brother, you'd prolly cream your jeans”


Monique turns bright red at the mention of her oldest sister potentially having an orgasm, from her brothers touch. Annie fumes and Julie laughs... I'm pretty sure anyway that I'D cream mine if MC spanked me playfully. That dude is wicked smart and smart is wicked sexy.



incest? oh yes
horsecock? no
ZZZ titties? hell no
corruption? quite deliberately so
discipline? yes, with spanking and bondage
male dom and female subs? yes, and not necessarily by the subs choice.
MC's motivation? he's a selfish prick who feels imposed upon by his family

I'd be curious as to thoughts and comments. Please feel free.

 

[woody554]

sounds like a job for renpy. depending on the functionality you want it can be trivial or insanely difficult.

the script renpy uses works exactly like the first structural languages. there are no functions, no objects, no structures. instead you write blocks of code and basically use GOTO to jump around. only in renpy it's not called goto but a LABEL, and you either 'call label' or 'jump label' depending if the label ends into a 'return' or not. if not, it just falls through to whatever code is next.

so you should feel right at home with renpy.

however, renpy does also maddeningly use THREE other languages, two of which are virtually identical but confusingly work with different things, the screen language and ATL. both of course randomly documented and almost never accurately. the fourth language is the plague known as python, which in renpy really is a fallback for doing anything fancy. or normal. like having actual objects.

but everything basic like showing static images behind text is VERY easy in renpy. it's almost identical to the dialogue you wrote up there. just add "show your_rendered_image01" between the lines of dialogue, and that's it. you could make a kinetic novel with that and NOTHING more.

if you want choices leading to different paths, it's almost as easy. you use the 'menu' thing renpy script has, and just like 'show image' you write the 'menu' right between your dialogue. these are the 'choises in boxes' you see in every VN.

it's VERY easy if you just restrict yourself to showing images with text over them, and have simple 'menu' choises to jump into the relevant block of dialogue. that's literally it.

the problems start if you want to add stuff to click on (like doors) or any simple functionality you'd code in 5 minutes without renpy. you can still do all that, but because of mixing 4 languages and GOTO jumping it gets messy quick. and to survive that you need to be a real programmer with battle-hardened good programming habits.

that leaves graphics. which is of course a huge undertaking unless you're already a pro at that. again, totally doable, but there are no shortcuts with the graphics.

 

[HandofVecna]

Offer a profit share with an artist. There is a forum thread here to find people to team with. If you don't want to code you can find a person there too to help code. Everyone will want a cut. Dev teams tend to last longer than single individuals on here but if you really want to go it alone the visuals can make or break you and learning those can be a steep climb.

That said, nothing you can't overcome. Push ahead.

Good luck!

 

[FeropsisFenarue]

Even with rudimentary knowledge of Basic/Cobol you could pretty easily write and code your own branching VN. I'd just make sure to keep a flowchart handy if you want to branches to turn into a tree. You could also add in a small amount of variable tracking with little problem (say if you wanted branches to converge, but only allow for certain events to happen with the right amount of 'points' in a certain variable).

As stated above, once you start getting into sandboxes, you'll absolutely want a developer who knows their shit, as it can get messy fast.

Art will probably be the hardest part, unless you want to 'reuse' other people's art, which you can find a decent amount of Japanese VN art on ehentai/exhentai, but finding a good match for your game might be hard as they tend to have things like girls with purple hair and so on. Or you could try your hand at Koikatsu or Honey Select (1/2), which are fairly large pains in the ass and have steep learning curves if you aren't just stealing the built in animations (which kinda suck).

Go grab Renpy from the official website. There's a tutorial in it, you shouldn't have much issue getting a the hang of it.

 

[dmmt]

Sounds like Renpy for the coding and profit sharing for the artwork. I am NOT, an artist, by any stretched definition known to man. The LABEL command the waay you refer to it, sounds like it can sub for the BASIC GOSUB/RETURN command. I always hated GOTO. I'd build a trunk or looping shell for the main program, and then nest various GOSUBs as needed or as called by the user. Sounds like you can sort of follow that same process with RENPY. Once I get the txt written, that will be my next step. (48 pages now, still in week 1. I'm gonna have some editing to do, if I intend this game to span 18 or so months of in-game time. lol)

 

[mickydoo]

incest? oh yes

Patreon oh no

Dont want to burst any bubble, but no one else has pointed that out

 

[I'm Not Thea Lundgren!]

Sounds like Renpy for the coding and profit sharing for the artwork. I am NOT, an artist, by any stretched definition known to man. The LABEL command the waay you refer to it, sounds like it can sub for the BASIC GOSUB/RETURN command. I always hated GOTO. I'd build a trunk or looping shell for the main program, and then nest various GOSUBs as needed or as called by the user. Sounds like you can sort of follow that same process with RENPY. Once I get the txt written, that will be my next step. (48 pages now, still in week 1. I'm gonna have some editing to do, if I intend this game to span 18 or so months of in-game time. lol)

Good luck with your game, from the little I read it looks interesting.

If you want to look at getting some help with the art try here -
https://f95zone.to/forums/recruitment-services.117/

 

[Cokane0]

My renpy code is public and is free to steal, if you can understand it. If your looking at DAZ modeling for artwork the learning curve is extremely steep.
Your a boomer so If you got that sweet boomer cashflow then you could put together a competent team. Money talks.
Just be careful who you bring on board, choosing the right people yadda yadda why would I try to explain this to you, your 63 you've been around the block.

Goodluck m8, DM me if you have any questions.

 

[anne O'nymous]

My renpy code is public and is free to steal, if you can understand it.

I don't want to be rude, but OMG...

Near to 2000 boolean named "[something]_[a number]".
How do you expect to remember what emi_place_talk42 mean, let's say two months after having finally used it ? Of course, you can always comment them, like you did for the few placeholder_variable_[XY] that you already use, but having to go back and forth to the top of the file, in order to verify, will fast become annoying.
And I don't talk about the annoyance that should have been their declaration, when a list would have had the same effect while needing only one line in place of each declaration blocks.

You should really add your variables only when you effectively need them, and give them a name that you could easily remember. By example default placeholder_variable_1 = False #Used# For if you fucked Vita should simply be default fuckedVita = False.
While this :

default placeholder_variable_11 = False #Used# for if you licked Proser at Eieffel
default placeholder_variable_12 = False #Used# for if you did not lick Proser at Eieffel

is one variable too many. If one is True, the other will obviously be False.

default lickedProserEieffel = False #Used# True if you did it, False else

would be enough, more understandable, and would works exactly the same. Just set it at True if the player choose to lick Proser at Eieffel, and let it as it's default state else.
And if you need a state showing that the event haven't happened yet, then the None value is your friend. Use it as default value, then set the variable at True or False depending of what the player will choose when the moment will come.
This way, if lickedProserEieffel is None mean that the scene haven't happened, if lickedProserEieffel is True that the player choose to lick Proser, and if lickedProserEieffel is False that he choose to not lick Proser.




You also totally mess your use of movies :

Spoiler: example

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I understand if you don't want to use scene movieName, because it tend to mess with the display ; yet the

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parameter should solve this issue. But at least:

• Take advantage of the variable you use to handle the followed path, in order to remove only the shown movie.
• Hide the previous movie right after showing the new one, not time later. And especially not after having started yet another movie. Players don't need to have two movies constantly playing, and those who have an old computer would thanks you.
• Pay more attention to what you're doing. Without the magic of scene, at the end of the game as it is actually, players would have had many movies still playing on the background.

You don't correctly handle your navigation screens. There's

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dedicated for this kind of situation.

Spoiler: example

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You also easily forget about the indentation, what works, but only as side effect of the way Ren'py handle its

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.

And there's probably some others that I haven't seen. Your game isn't bad, but you should really dedicate some time to learn the basis of Ren'py and improve your code.
This said, it's the proof that Ren'py is robust and that, whatever how rusty he is, with his background OP can perfectly make a game using it.

 

[Cokane0]

Omg my worst fear.
You're in my dev notes. I knew this day would come.
I'm not reading any of this and I'm going to go hide in a hole until tomorrow.

 

[dmmt]

incest? oh yes

Patreon oh no

Dont want to burst any bubble, but no one else has pointed that out

yeah....I didnt catch myself with that one. I know Patreon disallows that subject matter and yes I knw, I could make it "landlady" and "tenants" then release a patch to restore it but...I think Patreon would also kill it cause 1 of the sisters starts out under age. Before she is "involved", she'll BE of age but....

and purely a matter of personal taste, but the 4 women in the family (mom and 3 sisters), are all petite. Ranging from 4'10" 85 lbs at 16 at stories start, to 5'3" 110 lbs and 20 for the eldest sister. Mom is 5'0' 115 lbs at 36. (Had her eldest daughter as a HS Soph). (from memory, not rechecking my notes atm)

 

[anne O'nymous]

I'm not reading any of this [...]

Your right.

 

[Cokane0]

Your right.

Bls no bully you legitimately scare me with your big brain, I read like tons of your posts when I was starting to learn how to code.
I watch you as a ugly water buffalo watches a noble gazelle across the Serengeti. Senpai finally noticing me has put me into a state of shock but I need to press on as I'm dropping my next update in like a day or two so I gotta focus.

I'll respond as best I can later. Apologies to the OP.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Senpai finally noticing me has put me into a state of shock but I need to press on as I'm dropping my next update in like a day or two so I gotta focus.

You have the time. My last answer was short because I was in a hurry. But it wasn't a reproach. It was the sort for "I say what I have to say, trying to help, but no one is forced to listen to what I say".
I mean, there's default and some issues, but none is a breaking one. Therefore, so far I just present an alternate and easier, way to do, nothing more. And in fact, even if they were breaking bugs, you still wouldn't have the obligation to listen what I say.

Apologies to the OP.

As I implied in my initial answer, I wrote it here because I see it as a good proof of concept. You're an amateur starting with few knowledge, yet despite the default of your code, you used Ren'py to write a game that works. What answer, by the example, to OP implicit question ; yes, he can make a game, anyone can make a game with Ren'py.

It need knowledge to do advanced things, but some times reading the big lines of the documentation, and anyone can do the basis.

 

[dmmt]

FTR, any thread I begin, you are free to pass your gained experience/wisdom/expertise/knowledge, to any/all who participate in that thread. When I was learning MS BASIC, I started out abusing the hell out of GOTO. My COBOL Professor, showe dme how much more efficient GOSUB was. Had he not, I'd have continued writing sloppy code that made it very difficult for someone else to follow. I took advantage of that expertise, I'm damn sure not gonna squelch it for someone else.

 

[Guntag]

incest? oh yes
horsecock? no
ZZZ titties? hell no
corruption? quite deliberately so
discipline? yes, with spanking and bondage
male dom and female subs? yes, and not necessarily by the subs choice.
MC's motivation? he's a selfish prick who feels imposed upon by his family

All this sounds very good, BUT... ZZ titties then, just for the mom, please ?

I like the scene you wrote, it's important to show NPCs having a life of their own. I don't really like it when the characters just stand there and only wait for the MC to do something, especially in the late stage of the game when the relationships between the MC and the girls are progressing. That being said, you should remember that the MC is the MC and he should be the center of most of the game.
A little fetish of mine is also stealing girls from their husband/boyfriend, I wonder if it will be in your game.
About the art, have you considered real porn ?

 

[dmmt]

You won't see great huge titties in any game I have anything to do with. You may see a distribution, not far off base from reality...mostly B-C cups, a few D, a few A, a rare DD, and anything beyond that? Prolly not happening. My tastes, definitively run toward the smaller. petite women and on a 5'0" 105 lb frame, C cups are quite noticeable, B cups tend toward proportional.

NTR will never appear in anything I write. I hate that stuff. It's why I can't get thru Big Brother.

Longterm, the game is going to have an interesting twist. 64 pages of story at this point. Going to do a bit of a rewrite next week. Trim some of the page count and extend the time. I'm 7 days in at 64 pages. That aint gonna work, unless I'm going to try and code a 12 volume set of novellas, which given that at this very moment, I could not write 3 lines of Renpy code...

 

[Winterfire]

I did not read the whole thing, but if you have any experience with other languages, that is more than most people.

Assuming you are going to use Ren'Py, you will only need to watch a few tutorials and then you'll be set.
Do not waste your money on hiring a programmer, especially if it is going to be a pure VN and therefore there'll be almost no real programming involved.

 

[dmmt]

the artwork is going to be key and I can't draw a circle with a dratsman quality compass. The little sister (Monique), I mentally picture like Ada from Parental Love. Annie, the older sister, I picture the girl from The Personal Assistant but with Veronica from MOH's sass and Julie, the fraternal twin, the 1st girl in Room for Rent. As for mom? The gamer girl from Sylphine, but aged to be 36 at the stories beginning.

Where I may need help/advice in the coding, will be the spanking/discipline/reward mechanic that I will need to implement, and the variables/triggers for the progression of events/H scenes.

The 1st hour, maybe 2 of the game, will be pretty set in stone. That is to say, the mothers storyline, will pretty much be a read thru. Something of an in depth tutorial, laying the framework and backstory. Illustrating the "how" MC does what he does.

I found it intriquing, when I played Headmasterthe 1st time. I never even new I HAD a spanking fetish, until that game. lol The nr of games centered, or built upon that foundation....is extremely limited.

 

[dmmt]

OK, progressing with the story and getting to the point where I would like some feedback.

DISCLAIMERS:

(A) This is currently formatted more like a book/short-story than anything else. It is in fact, an OPEN OFFICE doc, intended to present the story and from which the coding would take guidance.
(B) No, I have not even begun coding yet.
(C) I have raised the age of the younger sister by 1 year. The reasons will become self evident at the end of it's current state.

Anyway, what I have here is in story book form, where the story stands as of 2/13/2001. If I could impose upon you to please feel free to read and critique. (I am NOT a professional writer and grammar/punctuation are not my fortes. Feel free to politely, suggest edits.)

The link, is to Google OneDrive

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