Ren'Py Small Code Demo And Idea.

[NSF-95]

Hey there I have been hard at work with learning how to get Ren'py working and I pretty much got the base down and I think from there I can do more with the game but here is the thing, this is a game test that uses assets that are NOT mine these are assets from the games below:
Summer Time Saga: https://f95zone.to/threads/summertime-saga-v0-18-6-kompas-productions.276/
Visiting Aunt Sara: https://f95zone.to/threads/visiting-aunt-sara-nlt-media.2789/

- The idea: You spend the summer with your mom after coming back from a full year as a freshman in college, you find that your dad has a business summer deal to take care of, while your other family members(Sisters and Aunt in the future maybe?) are on a small trip and will come back at a later date.

I wanted to get some opinions on the idea of the game and the things that should be in the game and make it fun and exciting, and most importantly the game I'm working on is inspired by Visiting Aunt Sara that is mentioned above which delivers a fun and exciting gameplay experience for the player, so the code for the game is open if you want to take a look at it and give me some pointers on how to better do things! thanks again for your time!

PS : I know it's necessary for the game to have my own personal assets but at the time being my rig(PC) that I am using is absolutely incapable of rendering the assets for my upcoming game so I am waiting for it to arrive so I can get an actual demo of the game that I want to make, out for testing which is going to be in a few weeks time due to the wait for the arrival of my new PC.

Note: Changed the name of the post to give a better idea of what we have here.

Small Demo:
Win And Linux -

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Mac -

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Thanks again sorry for not uploading with my own assets, My PC sucks...

 

[RogueKnightUK]

Well, this is a topic certainly within the scope of my day-job - Marketing - how to bring a product of some kind to a market. What you've outlined there is what is known as an MVP - Minimum Viable Product typical of modern bootstrapping or 'lean startup' philosophy. Work out the most basic version of a product you can put on the market and hope to improve it as you go based on growth and hopefully some backing.

The problem is that you really have to worry about the V in an MVP - What exactly makes a product viable? Well, for an MVP to work it either needs to have no competition, or at the very least to undercut all the competition. If other producers can supply a rival product or service of superior quality for not much higher a price, and they already have a market - customers, feedback, an audience and a 'brand' - then yours is sunk before it starts.

You're here, posing this question on F95zone, so you already know that there are games with original artwork of their own, original ideas and stories right here for the grand price of FREE. Thus to all real intents and purposes, your product while minimal, would not really be viable. You have nothing to 'trade' against what you are cutting out in your product against what the hundreds of other available products can offer.

You've got an automatic 'Catch 22' situation where the only niche market you have a specific connection with - other fans of Visiting Aunt Sara - are also the exact people who will have already seen the images in their original context, and thus find no real novelty, nothing they haven't seen. That would put an incredible pressure on you to have to beat the original for both story and gameplay, by far, to have anything worth making them go through the same images they've already seen.

It is possible ... but it is a longshot even compared to the fact that the vast majority of even completely original games just get abandoned, even though those developers were obviously even further committed into not just being able to put together the Ren'Py files, but also source or produce the art.

I'm not saying any of this to rain on your parade. I'm just trying to let you know that parades do get rained on, and you need to think about rainproofing right at the start if you don't want to have to cancel. It ain't just a jungle out there, it's a fucking rain forest.

So, dial it back a few steps. We know the 'how' of what you were trying to do - launch a game despite not having the hardware or skills to render DAZ3D stuff. There are other ways to launch a game without renders. There are text-only games, there are games with hand-drawn art, and some of those are made by people literally tracing the outlines of regular porn images to create something of their own. Even a 20yr old PC can work with a printer and a scanner.

What you need to ask yourself is the 'why'. Why do you want to produce a game? Once you know the why, it will help guide you towards a how. Because if the important thing is to simply give yourself a project to learn from then the smaller audience for text-only shouldn't matter. Or if the 'why' was to start making some money, well, you'd know that to have a chance at that now, in today's market, you honestly need to have great renders, and an original story, and the 'MVP' for that objective is a game that rivals the best currently available for the same price of FREE here, or a $1-$5 subscription on Patreon. (Although I will say there is room for more explicit content than Patreon allows if you find another way to process payments).

Hope that's something to be thinking about that will help you find your way to a 'how' for your particular 'why'.

 

[NSF-95]

Well, this is a topic certainly within the scope of my day-job - Marketing - how to bring a product of some kind to a market. What you've outlined there is what is known as an MVP - Minimum Viable Product typical of modern bootstrapping or 'lean startup' philosophy. Work out the most basic version of a product you can put on the market and hope to improve it as you go based on growth and hopefully some backing.

The problem is that you really have to worry about the V in an MVP - What exactly makes a product viable? Well, for an MVP to work it either needs to have no competition, or at the very least to undercut all the competition. If other producers can supply a rival product or service of superior quality for not much higher a price, and they already have a market - customers, feedback, an audience and a 'brand' - then yours is sunk before it starts.

You're here, posing this question on F95zone, so you already know that there are games with original artwork of their own, original ideas and stories right here for the grand price of FREE. Thus to all real intents and purposes, your product while minimal, would not really be viable. You have nothing to 'trade' against what you are cutting out in your product against what the hundreds of other available products can offer.

You've got an automatic 'Catch 22' situation where the only niche market you have a specific connection with - other fans of Visiting Aunt Sara - are also the exact people who will have already seen the images in their original context, and thus find no real novelty, nothing they haven't seen. That would put an incredible pressure on you to have to beat the original for both story and gameplay, by far, to have anything worth making them go through the same images they've already seen.

It is possible ... but it is a longshot even compared to the fact that the vast majority of even completely original games just get abandoned, even though those developers were obviously even further committed into not just being able to put together the Ren'Py files, but also source or produce the art.

I'm not saying any of this to rain on your parade. I'm just trying to let you know that parades do get rained on, and you need to think about rainproofing right at the start if you don't want to have to cancel. It ain't just a jungle out there, it's a fucking rain forest.

So, dial it back a few steps. We know the 'how' of what you were trying to do - launch a game despite not having the hardware or skills to render DAZ3D stuff. There are other ways to launch a game without renders. There are text-only games, there are games with hand-drawn art, and some of those are made by people literally tracing the outlines of regular porn images to create something of their own. Even a 20yr old PC can work with a printer and a scanner.

What you need to ask yourself is the 'why'. Why do you want to produce a game? Once you know the why, it will help guide you towards a how. Because if the important thing is to simply give yourself a project to learn from then the smaller audience for text-only shouldn't matter. Or if the 'why' was to start making some money, well, you'd know that to have a chance at that now, in today's market, you honestly need to have great renders, and an original story, and the 'MVP' for that objective is a game that rivals the best currently available for the same price of FREE here, or a $1-$5 subscription on Patreon. (Although I will say there is room for more explicit content than Patreon allows if you find another way to process payments).

Hope that's something to be thinking about that will help you find your way to a 'how' for your particular 'why'.

Thank you for taking the time to give a very detailed description of marketing and some advice along the way, but as said above this was but a little test, a very small progress demo to show some coding progress while also asking some questions on the kind of game people would like to see and again I'm very new to being a Game Dev and with only having programming as a skill, I have a very long way to go in terms of knowing 'how' to do it but I also know 'why' I'm doing it, and as for the market and target audience you mentioned. This is NOT what the game will look like. I simply used assets from another game to just show coding progress and the 'concept' idea that I want to work on for the actual main project that I would like to achieve and that the people would like to see.
again as I said I only did this because I needed to get some opinions on the kind of game I'm going to make. Thanks again for taking the time to give some advice!

 

[Songie]

How long did you take to learn ren'py? :O

 

[NSF-95]

How long did you take to learn ren'py? :O

Honestly, I have some programming experience so Ren'py was pretty easy to pick up, the only thing that is challenging is how sometimes the info is a bit scattered around but you find anything you need on Lemma Soft.