My interest in game development

[DirtyDirty]

So, in short I'm a novice programmer with absolutely no artistic skill whatsoever. Though I recently began playing a lot of VN based games using 3D style renders. now animation and 3D posing I have a reasonably good grasp on due to some mod work I've done on previous games, With that in mind I've come to the conclusion of 'I have a story, I have the time, I'd like to share that story with the community.'

My plans so far are to use the Renpy engine. I have zero experience with this engine, I have no idea of where to get assets even as placeholders to begin my project, I have no idea what software to use to create my environment and renders that could easily be imported into Renpy, I cannot stress enough that at this point, there's no information that you could give that I would consider useless.
So, My question for anyone reading this is simple.

Could you please point me in the right direction? Tutorials, Software, Anything I will need to help put my vision into an experience for you guys to play and scrutinize at your leisure.
I will be combing the net for tips and tricks until I figure it out but I'd be so thankful for any help at this point, because realistically it's hard to find answers when your questions are along the lines of "Where can I find naked models for my game?"

 

[Meaning Less]

For the game itself download and check the tutorial inside the

You must be registered to see the links

.

For the 3Dcg the easy route is going for DAZ or HS/KK because those softwares already offer you naked models to download and pose around in sexual scenes to make images/videos that you can then put into your game.

 

[DirtyDirty]

For the game itself download and check the tutorial inside the

You must be registered to see the links

.

For the 3Dcg the easy route is going for DAZ or HS/KK because those softwares already offer you naked models to download and pose around in sexual scenes to make images/videos that you can then put into your game.

Thanks for the quick reply! I've been screening over the tutorial meticulously, shouldn't take me too long to know the ins and outs fairly well in theory. I've heard a good amount about Daz but I didn't realise HS was software, Always thought it was a game, never bothered with it, haha. I'll have a look now. No clue what KK is.

Huge help, Thanks!

 

[Meaning Less]

I've heard a good amount about Daz but I didn't realise HS was software, Always thought it was a game, never bothered with it, haha. I'll have a look now. No clue what KK is.

Well technically HS is a game, but it also comes with a "studio" tool which is the software used to pose characters around and build scenes to create screenshots and videos.
KK is koikatsu, also has a studio but for 2.5d or anime-like style.

I guess your choice will vary depending on what artstyle you would rather have in your game.

 

[MissFortune]

ecause those softwares already offer you naked models to download and pose around in sexual scenes to make images/videos that you can then put into your game.

You make it sound so easy lol.

 

[Meaning Less]

You make it sound so easy lol.

Well it is a lot easier than doing everything by yourself, that's for sure.

 

[OsamiWorks]

Thanks for the quick reply! I've been screening over the tutorial meticulously, shouldn't take me too long to know the ins and outs fairly well in theory. I've heard a good amount about Daz but I didn't realise HS was software, Always thought it was a game, never bothered with it, haha. I'll have a look now. No clue what KK is.

Huge help, Thanks!

If you're using renpy, you can use mspaint as a place holder for things because its funny

Spoiler: Real UI design

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Otherwise if you still want to use 3d stuff, DAZ is the best option you have with commercial permissions. Making real art is hard

 

[DirtyDirty]

If you're using renpy, you can use mspaint as a place holder for things because its funny

Spoiler: Real UI design

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Otherwise if you still want to use 3d stuff, DAZ is the best option you have with commercial permissions. Making real art is hard

Haha! That's about my full extent of artistic skill right there so I think I'll stick with trying to use the 3d assets! I hope it will be an enjoyable break from from reading the renpy tutorial over and over. I figure I'll start trying to put things into practice soon so maybe I'll use some MS paint dots as placeholders.
Hopefully I can have a playable 0.1 out within a reasonable timeframe, my aim so far is a solid 2 hours of playtime for the first proof of concept, hopefully I can churn that out within a few months but I have no idea of what to expect as a realistic rate of progress. I will get something out there, though!

 

[Losersriot]

So, in short I'm a novice programmer with absolutely no artistic skill whatsoever. Though I recently began playing a lot of VN based games using 3D style renders. now animation and 3D posing I have a reasonably good grasp on due to some mod work I've done on previous games, With that in mind I've come to the conclusion of 'I have a story, I have the time, I'd like to share that story with the community.'

My plans so far are to use the Renpy engine. I have zero experience with this engine, I have no idea of where to get assets even as placeholders to begin my project, I have no idea what software to use to create my environment and renders that could easily be imported into Renpy, I cannot stress enough that at this point, there's no information that you could give that I would consider useless.
So, My question for anyone reading this is simple.

Could you please point me in the right direction? Tutorials, Software, Anything I will need to help put my vision into an experience for you guys to play and scrutinize at your leisure.
I will be combing the net for tips and tricks until I figure it out but I'd be so thankful for any help at this point, because realistically it's hard to find answers when your questions are along the lines of "Where can I find naked models for my game?"

RenPy is NOT engine, is some kinda microsoft picture manager lol. You are programmer ? Forget any troubles. You NEED: UNITY + RENPY.
UNITY for pictures and video production, and RENPY for final game

 

[MissFortune]

Hopefully I can have a playable 0.1 out within a reasonable timeframe, my aim so far is a solid 2 hours of playtime for the first proof of concept, hopefully I can churn that out within a few months but I have no idea of what to expect as a realistic rate of progress.

There's so much variance from person to person and system to system that it'd be nigh impossible to accurately gauge how long 2 hours of playtime would take. Work hours, where you place your priorities with a work-life balance + making a game/vn, is your PC capable of rendering at a moderate speed, what type of game you're making, and so forth.

But for 2 hours of playtime, in a non-sandbox game, you're looking at around a 1,000 or so renders (probably closer to 1,500, but hard to say). That's going to take 6+ months on a decent rig, likely much quicker if you're rocking a 3090 or two.

 

[Losersriot]

But for 2 hours of playtime, in a non-sandbox game, you're looking at around a 1,000 or so renders (probably closer to 1,500, but hard to say). That's going to take 6+ months on a decent rig, likely much quicker if you're rocking a 3090 or two.

You mean ugly facepalmed DAZ crap ? Yeah, 10000 renders in 10 years.

 

[Losersriot]

If you're using renpy, you can use mspaint as a place holder for things because its funny

Spoiler: Real UI design

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Otherwise if you still want to use 3d stuff, DAZ is the best option you have with commercial permissions. Making real art is hard

Dude ! YYour render are... magnificent! What is it ? A girl and a piano. Early morning. A clock with a pendulum. This is already a whole mysterious story !

 

[DirtyDirty]

But for 2 hours of playtime, in a non-sandbox game, you're looking at around a 1,000 or so renders (probably closer to 1,500, but hard to say). That's going to take 6+ months on a decent rig, likely much quicker if you're rocking a 3090 or two.

Not dual 3090's but I'm running a 3070 with a 12700k for my personal PC, Hoping that will be enough for a start. 6 months seems like a reasonable timeframe. I can realistically dedicate six hours or so to the project each day without burning myself out and without imposing too heavily on my personal life. I'm not drastically concerned about model quality to begin with, if people enjoy the story I'd happily dedicate some funding for better assets, The novel side of things will drastically outweigh the visual side of things with importance to me initially.

Fiddling with all the software now and it feels relatively simple, once it becomes a bit more second nature I hope that I can start to churn content out at a steady pace, or at least keep up with hardware limitations.

As for the type of game I'm making, I'd like to dip my toe with a more linear approach to VN's to begin with, nothing too elaborate, No enormous branching paths. Optional extra scenes and dialogue variations, My main focus will be giving the illusion of choice, rather than full branching story arches that are going to drastically slow the development time. My main focus is not to bite off more than I can chew.

 

[Ambir]

So, in short I'm a novice programmer with absolutely no artistic skill whatsoever. Though I recently began playing a lot of VN based games using 3D style renders. now animation and 3D posing I have a reasonably good grasp on due to some mod work I've done on previous games, With that in mind I've come to the conclusion of 'I have a story, I have the time, I'd like to share that story with the community.'

My plans so far are to use the Renpy engine. I have zero experience with this engine, I have no idea of where to get assets even as placeholders to begin my project, I have no idea what software to use to create my environment and renders that could easily be imported into Renpy, I cannot stress enough that at this point, there's no information that you could give that I would consider useless.
So, My question for anyone reading this is simple.

Could you please point me in the right direction? Tutorials, Software, Anything I will need to help put my vision into an experience for you guys to play and scrutinize at your leisure.
I will be combing the net for tips and tricks until I figure it out but I'd be so thankful for any help at this point, because realistically it's hard to find answers when your questions are along the lines of "Where can I find naked models for my game?"

1. There are tools to get somewhat easy access to environmental and character assets.
The ones that are primarily used are Koikatsu, Honey Select 2 and

You must be registered to see the links

.

Koikatsu and Honey Select 2 are the propriety of Illusion, a japanese company, so you dont really have the intelectual propriety of whatever you make using their software, but many people use their character editor to make games and Illusion hasn't taken any action against them. In addition, their character editors are pretty good and have a decent amount of resources.

Daz3d, on the other hand, is a commercial software. If you buy models, you can use them comercially in your games without any fear of reprecussions. Daz is harder to use and takes a decent amount of processor resources to render things, but it can lead to very pretty graphics.

2. For ren'py, I recommend checking out

You must be registered to see the links

,

You must be registered to see the links

, and

You must be registered to see the links

.
Those three channels, in addition to the

You must be registered to see the links

and the official renpy discord

You must be registered to see the links

will have you largely covered if you're looking to learn how to use ren'py.

3. Very important advice. Whichever tool you pick, be prepared for this to be challenging. Koikatsu and Honey Select might look good from the get go, but you will most likely struggle to find the right assets for your game. And you might have to make your own environments or your own models, and there are a metric ton of options to improve your renders, light your scenes, shade the models better, etc that could make your game go from average to top tier.
Same for Daz. It's easy to pick a default model put it in a building and give it a pregenerated pose, but if you want to truly make something that stands out, there is quite the learning curve if you want to learn how to pose your models, light your scenes and make your own game environments.

There is no easy path to making a game, so if you're looking for something quick and easy, I suggest that you revise your expectations, because you will be disappointed.

4. Now, this is personal advice from me. I was where you are right now several years ago. I thought pretty much the same as you, that I had no artistic talent, that I needed some tool or some person to make it easier to make art, or simply to make the art for me. I can now confirm that this is the wrong way to approach things. You say you are a junior programmer and that you have time. My most honest recommendation is that you pick up blender or digital drawing and that you start practicing. It doesn't matter how 'bad' you currently are. If you spend the next couple of months or years practicing, you will eventually get to a point where you will have mastered your craft enough to stand on your own, without needing anyone else to make art. You'll have the freedom to do what you want, the way you want it to be, instead of relying on premade assets or someone else's imagination to make your game come true.

If you're serious about game development, I would also highly recommend that you start learning how to use unity. Ren'py is a wonderful creation that has made making visual novels very easy. However it has clear limitations and there is a lot that you have to build from scratch as soon as you want to make more than the purest of visual novels. Unity might not be as suited for visual novels from the get go, but it is undeniably more powerful, and if you want to make games, you will eventually come to a point where ren'py will feel somewhat limited. Having spent the time to learn how to use a true game engine will be useful if you get to that point.

Edit: Depending on what you decide to do, I might have more links for you. Let me know if you decide on a particular route. I'll try to give you as many resources as I can.

 

[DirtyDirty]

1. There are tools to get somewhat easy access to environmental and character assets.
The ones that are primarily used are Koikatsu, Honey Select 2 and

You must be registered to see the links

.

Koikatsu and Honey Select 2 are the propriety of Illusion, a japanese company, so you dont really have the intelectual propriety of whatever you make using their software, but many people use their character editor to make games and Illusion hasn't taken any action against them. In addition, their character editors are pretty good and have a decent amount of resources.

Daz3d, on the other hand, is a commercial software. If you buy models, you can use them comercially in your games without any fear of reprecussions. Daz is harder to use and takes a decent amount of processor resources to render things, but it can lead to very pretty graphics.

2. For ren'py, I recommend checking out

You must be registered to see the links

,

You must be registered to see the links

, and

You must be registered to see the links

.
Those three channels, in addition to the

You must be registered to see the links

and the official renpy discord

You must be registered to see the links

will have you largely covered if you're looking to learn how to use ren'py.

3. Very important advice. Whichever tool you pick, be prepared for this to be challenging. Koikatsu and Honey Select might look good from the get go, but you will most likely struggle to find the right assets for your game. And you might have to make your own environments or your own models, and there are a metric ton of options to improve your renders, light your scenes, shade the models better, etc that could make your game go from average to top tier.
Same for Daz. It's easy to pick a default model put it in a building and give it a pregenerated pose, but if you want to truly make something that stands out, there is quite the learning curve if you want to learn how to pose your models, light your scenes and make your own game environments.

There is no easy path to making a game, so if you're looking for something quick and easy, I suggest that you revise your expectations, because you will be disappointed.

4. Now, this is personal advice from me. I was where you are right now several years ago. I thought pretty much the same as you, that I had no artistic talent, that I needed some tool or some person to make it easier to make art, or simply to make the art for me. I can now confirm that this is the wrong way to approach things. You say you are a junior programmer and that you have time. My most honest recommendation is that you pick up blender or digital drawing and that you start practicing. It doesn't matter how 'bad' you currently are. If you spend the next couple of months or years practicing, you will eventually get to a point where you will have mastered your craft enough to stand on your own, without needing anyone else to make art. You'll have the freedom to do what you want, the way you want it to be, instead of relying on premade assets or someone else's imagination to make your game come true.

If you're serious about game development, I would also highly recommend that you start learning how to use unity. Ren'py is a wonderful creation that has made making visual novels very easy. However it has clear limitations and there is a lot that you have to build from scratch as soon as you want to make more than the purest of visual novels. Unity might not be as suited for visual novels from the get go, but it is undeniably more powerful, and if you want to make games, you will eventually come to a point where ren'py will feel somewhat limited. Having spent the time to learn how to use a true game engine will be useful if you get to that point.

Edit: Depending on what you decide to do, I might have more links for you. Let me know if you decide on a particular route. I'll try to give you as many resources as I can.

Thanks for taking the time to write all this information out!


So far I'm leaning towards using Daz, it seems to have a significantly larger pool of assets available and I don't want to run into limitations due to not having the right pieces to match my story.

initially I was planning to use a 3rd party framework for UE4 as all of my prior experience in 3D environments have been Blender to UE, But I admittedly was a little nervous of the concept. solely based on my inexperience working on anything solo. I looked over popular games here and majority of them were made with Renpy or the comment section consisted of people complaining that it wasn't made with Renpy, hence how I landed on my decision. I'll look into Unity though.

I really can't stress how much I lack any skill artistically with images, I'm not unwilling to learn or to try, I just genuinely am at a toddlers level of skill to begin with and I want people to be able to engage with my story without the art being a negative impact to the experience.

I don't want to give off the idea that I'm coming at this with huge expectations. I expect the development process will be long, difficult and frustrating at the best of times and I have nothing but respect for the developers who have made so many fantastic works. I hope to deliver at best a mediocre experience with (hopefully) a good enough story to keep people engaged while I learn and develop my skillset. I'm setting my own expectations low, while making sure that I keep my effort high. hopefully that can result in something enjoyable for everyone else.

I'll begin studying your references and links now, along with fiddling with daz some more. I'm actually starting to feel a little excited rather than a bag of nerves about the concept so hopefully that's a good thing.

Feel free to ask me anything about my project, I don't know what kind of specifics you'd need to determine what information to share, haha.

Again, thanks for taking the time out to reply here! I was a little worried people would brush the topic off, trying to be as open as I can without discrediting my dedication to creating something.

 

[OsamiWorks]

Every skill is difficult to learn and takes time, for example maybe you just started programming but are you able to think about making sure the code you write is modular or optimized. What about art, and details you want to add in post processing? Its a lot to sink into so just try too have fun with the process and take it in pieces for now, skills transfer into eachother