VN Ren'Py Onhold The Foreign Teacher [Development Thread]

[The Rogue Trader]

Hello to all, after many years of toying with it, I decided to give a rush to my project to publish a Visual Novel, a sex comedy with a mystery to solve and some gothic undertone, with the work-title, most definitely non-definitive, of The Foreign Teacher 2 (the 2 is a leftover from its distant origin as the second in a line of sex novels I never completed).
This playable teaser has about 2/3 of the content I planned for the public demo.

You must be registered to see the links

Reaching this point, I realized that my ideas are a bit too large, requiring tons of writing (and I'm not a professional, English-native, writer) and tons of still images (my DAZ renders are just placeholders: I'm using outdated characters, my computer is slow, my lighting is tentative and it often breaks for reasons I don't understand and I'm lagging behind with the rendered backgrounds so much that for them I'm using placeholders of the placeholders!)
So I came here hoping to find help from fellow enthusiasts, but I got eventually disillusioned. The scene of amateur games has changed much from the times I remembered on forums now forgotten. Now, it's impossible to find even a proofreader; artists are better left unmentioned.

Long story short, it's obvious that this (still unnamed) game will stay in development phase for some years. Well, it's a hobby for me, but I still want to share my results with everyone that could be interested. I hope you'll enjoy it even in its current state. New, better art is coming.

Enough intro, let's go to the crunch of what this game is:

- setting: An unusual US boarding school (it includes both a small college and a high school), built inside a former middle-age monastery that was transported across the Atlantic for mysterious reasons. The novel takes entirely place during Summer Break, with only a handful of teachers and students present.
- POV character: a former security tech turned History teacher in his mid 30s. At his first job, he's very confident and competent but still easily embarrassed by the peculiar sexual openness he'll find in this school. He's from Europe, and some humour comes from the differences in culture and stereotypes.
- theme: comedy and mystery with a bit of gothic to spice up things
- story: there are 5 love interests, each will give a unique perspective to the story. The idea is that the MC is called to help the Dean quietly solve a big problem before the scandal will force her to resign. But the plot quickly deepens to the school's dark past, with alleged ghosts, alleged curses and ancient feuds that need to be resolved.
- sex: Male protagonist, Voyeur, Groupsex, Teen (students), Mature (teachers), Small tits, Anal sex, Oral sex, Lesbian, Incest (not much and not involving the POV character), Romance, Swinging/sharing. Despite the lighthearted tone of the novel, sometimes the MC will witness sex where consent is very debatable.



If you've questions, please first try looking if they're answered in the FAQ section below.

Spoiler: FAQs

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

I can be contacted by PM on this site, replying to this thread or via Discord as The Rogue Trader#1570. I check all these several times a day.

TO DO list

Events for the fourth day: renders (3/3), text (9/12) - redo the renders in the new standard (0/3)
[DONE] Convert Martha, Stephanie, Helen and Val to G8 (4/4)
Replace Projection Room with Art Room
[DONE] Close unused locations
Convert Fran, Miranda, Kat and Evelyn to G8 (3/4)
Convert Gina to G8
Convert Cherry and Janet to G8
Convert Rose to G8
Need better UI
Need a better hints system
Find the time to make character names dynamic (it's easy, I'm just lazy)
Need a title
Tone down MC's ego talk
Add more CGs of character interaction (I've done the dialogue in the library while Roberto is in the archive, with G8 characters).
Redo "Gina's initiation"'s scene
Refo the sex scene in the library.
Renders of all the rooms, of course.

 

[hiya02]

Have you made (completed) games before, or is this your first?

 

[The Rogue Trader]

Usually, I dedicate myself to writing short stories or p&p RPG campaigns in my native language (I've planned a couple of comics in English, but I never started them because 3D rendering at the time was too primitive to do it myself).
I've done some modding on HongFire and collaborated as the writer to another game that was abandoned by the dev in an early stage, but no, this is the first time that I get serious about making a VN.
Why, it shows so much? =O

 

[hiya02]

I ment that there have been many, many people telling they "have played a shit-ton of AVNs and then want to create their own". But having no prior experience of how much work it requires, a huge amount of them underestimate the task and simply get overwhelmed, lose interest and eventually quit.
I hope you can pull it off, but if you already had finished a game/s, then you'd have a much more realistic view of how much of your free time it is going to devour.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

I understand, and I saw it happen quite often.
While I never completed (nor attempted) a similar project, I've worked on this one for enough years that I'm fairly certain that I can assess quite realistically the time and effort it requires, and yes it is overwhelming. That's why I intend to call for help (and I'm not even very optimistic about finding it).
But first I want to have something to show to prove I'm serious about my effort. I expect to finish the demo (40-50000 words of dialogue, 5 sex scenes) in late January, until then I'll document my progress (and probably publish some pre-demo releases) on this thread.
What I can't assess is the reaction: it's entirely possible that the people at this forum would convince me I'm writing something that's objectively unsalvageable and I'm wasting my time. That's the only scenario I can imagine where I'd voluntarily abandon this project.

 

[Boogie]

I think I'm a typical F95 citizen and went straight to the character cards before reading anything, and noticed right away that you were using older generation assets for the models. But then I also thought they look pretty good (maybe it's a mixture of old and newer stuff?) and I would play something that looked like this.

Eventually read your text and I like what you have planned for the story and it's something I'd try. I've helped a couple of new developers with proofreading/testing their first releases and would be willing to help out in that capacity.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

Yes, I started this project so much time ago that V4 models and 4:3 screens were still acceptable choices. Obviously, neither can stay: the girls might look pretty good and I love them all (btw no, the only recent product I used is an advanced hair material for Helen and Val, the rest is all from the early-mid 2010s) but they bend weirdly, their textures are primitive and unpredictable and they wouldn't survive closeups.

I try to mask the problems with angling and lighting, but in the end, my renders are in line with koikatsu ones, or with very stylized hand drawings, while lacking their stylistic charm.

I definitely appreciate your offer about proofreading: that's something I marked as "totally non-optional" in my list. I passed most of my dialogues through Grammarly, but that can do very little for the style.
You can peek at the current state of my work here:

You must be registered to see the links

(The file size is larger than it should be because the images used are still the work ones, I'll compress them for the actual release.)

I'm very familiar with the process of having books and journals proofread, but the usual workflow includes PDF drafts and Indesign. I've no clue about how it works for a Renpy game: I've to extract the dialogues with the tool?

 

[Boogie]

Played through what you had and the story seems OK, it's definitely something that you can build on into a full game. I like that there are more than the usual number of options when responding, but they should all have a different affect so hopefully you have branching story lines. Some of the banter is quite fun, like when Helen tries to tell the joke but the other characters kept interrupting and taking it off the rails. More of this would be great. On the other hand, the writing style seems to be rather extravagant. If it was a supporting character who spoke in such a grandiose manner then that would be OK and would help define the character, but since it's the MC speaking and thinking this way all the time it got tedious very fast. It did seem to get better in the second half, but you may lose a lot of readers by then. On the technical side there were just a few typos and poorly structured sentences, so not bad overall.

As you have already realized, the graphics would no longer make the grade today. You have been using older DAZ assets, but have you maybe considered using something like Honey Select? With an older/slower computer it may be easier on your system. Whichever way you go, your use of composited images with character sprites and a separate static background should go in the trash. We don't don't see it much anymore because it looks cheap and doesn't convey or create emotion.

Hopefully you can find the assistance you have requested for the graphics. What you have so far is worthy of attention.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

Boogie

there are more than the usual number of options when responding

My aim is replayabilty since several events will be shared between the five incompatible main routes, so every time I look at a dialogue I yell "MORE BRANCHES! I NEED MORE BRANCHES!!"

but they should all have a different affect so hopefully you have branching story lines

It's not set hard in stone, but at the moment what I'm planning is to have different events to be available/play differently based on multiple (coherent and intuitive) past choices, more like an old school cRPG like Fallout 2 or Planescape Torment than an old school AVNs where a single dialogue option would send you on completely different paths.
I don't think that it will be evident in the demo, fortunately for my workload but unfortunately for the impression I'd like to make.

Some of the banter is quite fun, like when Helen tries to tell the joke but the other characters kept interrupting and taking it off the rails.

Definitely my favourite part of the game. Unfortunately, the following encounter of the four characters is pure crap and it'll need a lot of work to get decent.

On the other hand, the writing style seems to be rather extravagant. If it was a supporting character who spoke in such a grandiose manner then that would be OK and would help define the character, but since it's the MC speaking and thinking this way all the time it got tedious very fast.

This is an interesting opinion, and the kind of feedback I was looking for, since I see it differently and, as they say in my country "every cockroach is beautiful, in the eyes of his own mother", so I needed different eyes to look.
That characterization of the MC is a very recent addition (I rewrote his lines during the last month), with the idea of having him narrate the events with a Chandlerian "

You must be registered to see the links

" style, often clashing with the events as they're shown, for added humour.
I'll tone it down, but he whined way too much before the rewriting and those times will not come back.

Whichever way you go, your use of composited images with character sprites and a separate static background should go in the trash.

It's a hard decision, the one you're pointing at, and one that I'm getting more and more afraid that it will fall on my shoulders instead of those of a competent artist that very likely will never arrive.
I noticed that the trend nowadays is for complete scene renders, usually with headshots to convey emotion... But one problem is that it would require hundreds of renders, even more than it happens in the most popular, commercial AVNs here, that are structured a bit differently.
The other problem is that I don't like headshots: in my opinion, there's nothing like body language to convey character. But one of those prolonged dialogues between multiple characters would get unmanageable very fast when I have them change mood every 2-3 lines.
Sigh.
For the moment I'm not remaking the pictures, but when the time will come, I'll see what I can do.
For sure I'll increase the full CGs over the sprites, with time, but first I need to set up all the rooms/places I need, and that will take quite a lot.

have you maybe considered using something like Honey Select?

Last Illusion game I played is Artificial Girl 3.
It's the engine used for this game?[*]
https://f95zone.to/threads/last-year-in-solitude-v0-1-vantablack.103985/#post-7259675
It looks... a bit limiting.

[*] That game sounds awesome and one I surely would've loved to make before starting this project.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

Yesterday I mostly toyed with the UI. I started with grandiose projects (mostly inspired by the ancient gothic/horror AVN DiviDead), but in the end I made only a few changes and yet now I like it: even those stupid orange highlights blend well. I must be getting senile U_U

Today I did absolutely no progress on the game: back from work I started playing with DAZ Studio, but I got annoyed because the lighting wasn't doing what I was telling it to do and my model (Stephanie) was having shadows on her face even when all the lights were coming from the front.
So I got curious, I installed G8 and spent the rest of the evening browsing the clothing available on pirate sites.
Apparently, I and today's asset creators disagree a lot about what's needed for renders. I mean, how many beach bikinis one is supposed to need? And how many naughty schoolgirl uniforms? Cyborg latex outfits? Latex nun costumes? Come on, where are you hiding all the streetwear?
In the end, I stole downloaded a random texture, applied it to a G8 figure, managed to glue Stephanie's clothes to her, just to not have her naked, put an old hair over her head and rendered her to see how long it would take. To my surprise, it took not much more than my old models. That's damn interesting.

Anyway, I had to stop playing with renders because my monitor is telling me in no uncertain terms that it's going to die for good. Soon. Very soon.
I'll do better ordering a new one before it'll leave me in the dark.

Tomorrow I swear I'll return working on the game events.

 

[Boogie]

That game link you posted looks like Honey Select 1. It looks like it also uses mostly composite shots but there is a greater variety of poses as well as some closer shots and that helps make the scenes look better.

Your G8 version of Stephanie looks pretty good. Did you do that with 3Delight or Iray? Getting some new backgrounds and using G8 would be a huge step up. If you also want to keep using the composite technique then you could replace all your backgrounds with actual HDRIs or even just high quality photos, both of which could be found free on the net.

I'm usually on the side that tells others that you should be buying your assets if you intend to make any money but since you do not intend to start up a Patreon or make any money with it, go ahead and download all you want. We are all a bunch of pirates here after all!

 

[osanaiko]

I'm very familiar with the process of having books and journals proofread, but the usual workflow includes PDF drafts and Indesign. I've no clue about how it works for a Renpy game: I've to extract the dialogues with the tool?

I do proofreading for F95 several game developers. Renpy is actually very easy to work with, much easier to than Unity. This is simply because the game script file can be edited directly and the changes reviewed immediately.

So my suggestion is to provide your proofreader/editor with a non-RPA-archived (

You must be registered to see the links

) copy of your entire pre-release game folder. Then they can see the dialogue and make changes and playtest the changes immediately. It's even easier if you enable "developer" mode (

You must be registered to see the links

), because the game script can be reloaded with a single keypress without needing to quit and restart the game.

The only other hint is to make sure you use a clear versioning/naming scheme for your pre-releases: it's easy to get wires crossed when there are potentially different release candidates flying back and forth.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

osanaiko
I did read with interest the documentation that you linked. I added the developer mode, that's a very useful option.
I'm wrong or that archives at the first link exist only as a security measure to hide the game files from too curious eyes?
Since I'm currently leaving the source files in the open (secrecy is a non-issue here) shouldn't it be even better than non-rpa archives?

Yup, when proofreading, versions can get very confusing very easily if you aren't rigorous with clearly numbering them.

 

[osanaiko]

I did read with interest the documentation that you linked. I added the developer mode, that's a very useful option.
I'm wrong or that archives at the first link exist only as a security measure to hide the game files from too curious eyes?
Since I'm currently leaving the source files in the open (secrecy is a non-issue here) shouldn't it be even better than non-rpa archives?

Yup, when proofreading, versions can get very confusing very easily if you aren't rigorous with clearly numbering them.

Glad you found the info useful.

You are correct about the "RPA" archives, they are just to prevent the files from being accessible to a casual browser. There are tools to extract RPA files (unrpa being the most often updated). This normally leaves all the original rpy (And other assets like images) in the original folder stucture.

However, some devs go further and remove the ".rpy" files from the archives and only leave the ".rpyc" files (which are the cached output of the game engine after the source code is compiled and encrypted). This makes it very hard to investigate/modify anything. There is apparently a working decompiler but i've not been able to get it running.

Anyway, if you are shipping the un-archived game contents to at least your proofreaders/editors/playtesters then they should have no problem fixing any issues they find. This is how I work with all my Renpy-using Devs, i just edit the relevant .rpy files directly and send them back to the dev to review and incorporate my suggestions into their release versions as they see fit.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

Did you do that with 3Delight or Iray?

Iray. When I migrated from Poser I started using Iray and never looked at 3Delight once. One rendering engine to learn is more than enough for my limited understanding XD

Getting some new backgrounds and using G8 would be a huge step up. If you also want to keep using the composite technique then you could replace all your backgrounds with actual HDRIs or even just high quality photos, both of which could be found free on the net.

Well, even as placeholders, the backgrounds have always been supposed to be rendered. It's just that they require a lot of work and have lower priority than writing and foreground pictures, so I'm using the smudged photos as placeholders for the rendered placeholders. But every time I have to make a CG or a sex scene I need to build its environment, so at some point, I'll end up with all the rendered backgrounds anyway.

I've to disagree on availability on the net: my setting is very peculiar and I've had many difficulties in finding exactly what I wanted for my backgrounds, and when eventually I find something that gives me the right feel, I can't be too picky about quality. There have been times when all I had were just black texts saying "Cloister" "Cafeteria" etc.
I'm living this nightmare just now: I noticed that the projection room makes no sense in my plan and I need to replace it with an art room, and nope, I can't find absolutely anything that would fit at St. Louise.

Of course that problem is multiplied tenfold for HDRIs, so I'm using them only for outdoor CGs. But all my outdoor scenes are supposed to happen under a dark, overcast sky, when it's not actually raining, and they're very difficult to find too. That's quite unsurprising, but they are even rarer than expected: I found only 3 and they don't even work very well.

I'm usually on the side that tells others that you should be buying your assets if you intend to make any money but since you do not intend to start up a Patreon or make any money with it, go ahead and download all you want. We are all a bunch of pirates here after all!

I agree on everything.
Most of my assets have been paid, at the times when I could justify the expense before the firm.
I started pirating more often lately, specifically for this project, since these are leaner times and anyway the models were old and I'm sure the creators already got whatever revenue they could from them, while I feel bad downloading recent assets (I need them for the backgrounds/rooms, btw) and I try to avoid it or at least tell myself I'm just "trying before buying".
But, frankly, I'm not going to spend money for doing some test about rendering speed

 

[The Rogue Trader]

This is how I work with all my Renpy-using Devs, i just edit the relevant .rpy files directly and send them back to the dev to review and incorporate my suggestions into their release versions as they see fit.

And I guess that to know what your suggestion are they use DIFF tools, right? That was what eluded me.

 

[osanaiko]

And I guess that to know what your suggestion are they use DIFF tools, right? That was what eluded me.

Oh yes, I did skip over that detail. Yes, for the Renpy script files, I recommend that the devs use a Diff tool (winmerge on windows is my preferred option) to compare my suggested edits against their latest version, and manually merge so as to prevent breaking any other changes they've made in the meantime.

I do have one dev who is tech-savvy enough that we both work in a shared Github repo which is great, but the downside there is that the game is Unity so I need to have a full environment setup locally to build updates to test any changes I make.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

I wasted all the evening doing these two stupid CGs. Renders were about 15 minutes each, the problem (aside from finding some objects that more or less could fit the description) was getting the lights right. I either lost the shadows of the objects or the hawk looked made out of chestnut cream. Now, I've nothing against chestnut cream, I'd pick it over polished bronze every time, but that wasn't the effect I needed.
So I ended cutting corners and the second image requires some suspension of disbelief since in the reflection on the metal one whole wall is missing.
In the meantime I finished writing the corresponding quest, that's long, boring, linear and goes nowhere since the repaired statuette has no use in the demo.
I'm so proud of myself.

 

[Deleted member 4534656]

Hello to all, after many years of toying with it, I decided to give a rush to my project to publish a Visual Novel, a sex comedy with a mystery to solve and some gothic undertone, with the work-title, most definitely non-definitive, of The Foreign Teacher 2 (the 2 is a leftover from its distant origin as the second in a line of sex novels I never completed).
Unfortunately, I realized that I'm simply not going to be able to complete the game by myself. My ideas are a bit too large, requiring tons of writing (and I'm not a professional, English-native, writer) and tons of still images (my DAZ renders are just placeholders: I'm using outdated characters, my computer is slow, my lighting is tentative and it often breaks for reasons I don't understand and I'm lagging behind making the rendered backgrounds so much that for them I'm using placeholders of the placeholders!)

So, I decided I need to assemble a team of superheroes: ideally, someone that can take care of the art and the UI and a couple of co-writers/editors/proofreaders. Here lies a whole community of skilled people that has no bias against sexual content: surely among these hundreds of players there are some that can take charge of some areas of development as co-authors with equal rights as I have in deciding policies, game features and the story (incidentally, this means that everything I say here could be overruled later).
So far reaperentertainment has offered to help with profiling my characters and WekSpeak/Fry with playtesting. But still, there's a lot of room for everyone that thinks they can help, maybe even just with frank feedback.
This game with no name (yet) is intended to be totally free to play, and I don't intend to open a Patreon/Subscribestar page for it. It's a hobby for me, and this means I won't be able to reward people that want to help outside publicly praising their work and billing them in the credits. But I guess someone with an easy-to-identify role like, say, a composer or an artist could have their own Patreon advertised directly on the game, if everyone else on the team will be OK with it.

Enough intro, let's go to the crunch of what this game is:

- setting: An unusual US boarding school (it includes both a small college and a high school), built inside a former middle-age monastery that was transported across the Atlantic for mysterious reasons. The novel takes entirely place during Summer Break, with only a handful of teachers and students present.
- POV character: a former security tech turned History teacher in his mid 30s. At his first job, he's very confident and competent but still easily embarrassed by the peculiar sexual openness he'll find in this school. He's from Europe, and some humour comes from the differences in culture and stereotypes.
- theme: comedy and mystery with a bit of gothic to spice up things
- story: there are 5 love interests, each will give a unique perspective to the story. The idea is that the MC is called to help the Dean quietly solve a big problem before the scandal will force her to resign. But the plot quickly deepens to the school's dark past, with alleged ghosts, alleged curses and ancient feuds that need to be resolved.
- sex: Male protagonist, Voyeur, Groupsex, Teen (students), Mature (teachers), Small tits, Anal sex, Oral sex, Lesbian, Incest (not much and not involving the POV character), Romance, Swinging/sharing. Despite the lighthearted tone of the novel, sometimes the MC will witness sex where consent is very debatable.

View attachment 1568921 View attachment 1568925 View attachment 1568926 View attachment 1568928 View attachment 1568930 View attachment 1568933

If you've questions, please first try looking if they're answered in the FAQ section below.
Anyway, in a few days, I'll post a first playable teaser with about 2/3 of the content I planned for the public demo.

Spoiler: FAQs

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

If you are still interested and want to help, you can contact me by PM on this site, replying to this thread or via Discord as The Rogue Trader#1570 (but I don't use Discord often).

TO DO list

> Events for the fourth day: renders (0/3), text (6/12)

Replace Projection Room with Art Room
Close unused locations
Need better UI
Need a better hints system
Find the time to make character names dynamic (it's easy, I'm just lazy)
Need a title
Tone down MC's ego talk
Add more CGs of character interaction.
Renders of all the rooms, of course.

I will try it this afternoon after work, yesterday got a sufden change in plans.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

OK, another day wasted not writing the scene of the MC interrogating the main witness.
I was so excited about a beautiful wall that I found that I wanted to try it on an optional sex scene among non-cast characters.

This scene is too long and too optional, I don't think I'll put it in the demo: rather I should concentrate on the four non-optional scenes. But It's rendering too well (and unbelievably fast: on average 10 minutes on my home computer while the re-renderings of the scene in the library needed more than one hour each) and the result is very nice in my eyes.
I think G2 has still some juice left.