Hi everyone. 
Small background - I'm an intermediate Python programmer and I also like to write stories on the side (just for me)
When I played a VN recently called "Acting Lessons" , I was inspired to create an adult VN that's story/music driven.
I noticed the asset library here is HUGE and I got a bunch of them to play around with.
I'm currently still in the phase of finishing my story. RenPy isn't too hard for me since it's familiar territory thanks to Python.
I might just focus on the story first and then RenPy it up and THEN get the pictures and animations ready.
Whenever i'm done, I want to release it for free since i'm not aiming to make money out of this.
That being said, HYPOTHETICALLY let's assume some people do like my game enough for me to get something out of it (not my priority at all)
What I want to ask is what's the process an indie VN dev goes through?
Since most of my assets are from the very generous library here :
- I'm guessing I can't expect to get even a dollar out of it until I buy the license for EACH asset I use?
If that's the case then I'll be dropping at least 500$ if not more on the assets alone (give or take)
Music :
- I've found some tracks I can see working with the mood my VN will have. The most expensive music licenses I found so far are like 30-50$ each. Some good ones are like 5-10$ too.
Since i'm aiming to have a fairly large VN because I want it to be story based with a good bit of humor, That should be at least another 500$ (give or take)
(There's some really great music choices in Being a Dik and I checked those soundtracks just out of curiosity and even though some of their youtube links say 'no copyright', Some sites do charge money for a license for the same 'no copyright' song on youtube. What do you do as a Dev in this case?)
Release stages:
- Once I'm done with say 20% of the VN, would people be open to test it and give me input? Is that a paid privilege?
To summarize, once a dev is done testing the assets out and is ready to release his/her game, does he/she have to actually spend that much? or am I over/under calculating the cost.
I'm not going to stop if it's a high cost of course. That just means a more delayed release date.
Sorry for the long post
Small background - I'm an intermediate Python programmer and I also like to write stories on the side (just for me)
When I played a VN recently called "Acting Lessons" , I was inspired to create an adult VN that's story/music driven.
I noticed the asset library here is HUGE and I got a bunch of them to play around with.
I'm currently still in the phase of finishing my story. RenPy isn't too hard for me since it's familiar territory thanks to Python.
I might just focus on the story first and then RenPy it up and THEN get the pictures and animations ready.
Whenever i'm done, I want to release it for free since i'm not aiming to make money out of this.
That being said, HYPOTHETICALLY let's assume some people do like my game enough for me to get something out of it (not my priority at all)
What I want to ask is what's the process an indie VN dev goes through?
Since most of my assets are from the very generous library here :
- I'm guessing I can't expect to get even a dollar out of it until I buy the license for EACH asset I use?
If that's the case then I'll be dropping at least 500$ if not more on the assets alone (give or take)
Music :
- I've found some tracks I can see working with the mood my VN will have. The most expensive music licenses I found so far are like 30-50$ each. Some good ones are like 5-10$ too.
Since i'm aiming to have a fairly large VN because I want it to be story based with a good bit of humor, That should be at least another 500$ (give or take)
(There's some really great music choices in Being a Dik and I checked those soundtracks just out of curiosity and even though some of their youtube links say 'no copyright', Some sites do charge money for a license for the same 'no copyright' song on youtube. What do you do as a Dev in this case?)
Release stages:
- Once I'm done with say 20% of the VN, would people be open to test it and give me input? Is that a paid privilege?
To summarize, once a dev is done testing the assets out and is ready to release his/her game, does he/she have to actually spend that much? or am I over/under calculating the cost.
I'm not going to stop if it's a high cost of course. That just means a more delayed release date.
Sorry for the long post
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