Others Where do I start?

[Noheat]

Good morning,

I don't know anything about programming or 2D/3D modeling.
I'd like to get started, I don't intend to reinvent the wheel or release a game within the next month. I've been playing games for several months now and I would like to create my own, more out of passion than out of financial necessity.

I have searched for many of the Renpy training courses but the content is very poor or almost non-existent, there are only meager youtube videos or the Renpy site itself.

Recently Udemy was doing promotions on their sites, I took several big web developer trainings as well as a very big training on Unity, Daz and Python.

My questions are the following:

- is it possible to make a quality 2D game with Unity?
- Is it better that I take more time to learn with Unity or should I choose Renpy?
- Is it better to learn Daz or use Honey Select?

 

[Kinderalpha]

Is it possible to make a quality 2D game with Unity?

Absolutely. There are plenty of main stream examples of this, and adult game examples. Im not gonna find them because I'm on mobile but it wouldn't be a hard search. Albiet, 2D is a wide genre. Unclear if you mean visual novel, platformer, or what. Still, unity is a great general purpose tool for indie games.

Is it better that I take more time to learn with Unity or should I choose RenPy

I always encourage people to scope their idea and make the decision based on that. The first and really only question I have is: Are you making a visual novel? If the answer contains Yes then absolutely use RenPy. Do not reinvent what RenPy already provides in an engine you're not familiar with. RenPy was made to be easily accessible by writers who don't have a lot of knowledge of programming.

Is it better to learn Daz or use Honey Select?

This is pretty subjective on your preference. Honey Select is going to limit your creative possibility while providing a quick workflow and ease of use. Daz is going to have a wide range of possibility with assets scattered across the interest, but is more of a handful to manage and learn. Keep in mind, that time invested in a program is not useless. It may take longer to get good at Daz but it would take twice as long to learn honey select then learn Daz. If you are wanting to use Daz but are intimidated by it. I would suggest using it. Because that means you prefer Daz and you're letting your lack of experience get in the way (which you shouldn't do).

Most of all it really just depends. If you're wanna aim to do a visual novel with RenPy and Daz then it's very doable and you just kinda need to jump in. If you're wanting to actually learn game development as a whole and possibly Branch out from the visual novel format of adult games then I'd highly encourage taking the time to learn programming, and unity. It's worth the investment of time in the long run. It won't be easy, but worth it. Just depends on what your goal is.

 

[Noheat]

Thank you very much for the prompt and comprehensive response.

When I meant 2D I meant Visual Novel.

I'm going to use Renpy, it's mostly the lack of access to training that bothers me about Renpy.
I have also seen that Renpy uses Python, knowing that I have paid for training on Python it can be useful for me.

I'm actually a bit more scared to learn DAZ than Honey Select but like you said it's certainly better to learn DAZ in the long run.

My goal is to do a Visual Novel in the years to come, I'm patient and it's mostly learning new things that I like.

Thanks again for the answer.

 

[khumak]

Daz is pretty easy to learn but it does take some practice to get good at it. I found posing to be quite difficult until I had some practice at it. Lighting was even harder for me but both of them have gotten MUCH easier with practice. Animations I really haven't figured out yet unless I use one of the preset posing plugins for them. RenPy is easy to learn as well and I have no programming background.

Depending on what hardware you have, render times could be an issue as well. I would suggest an NVDIA card with at least 8GB of VRAM. Mine has 4GB and I find I have to jump through a lot of hoops trying to tweak the scene to fit within the VRAM my card has so it doesn't render with the CPU instead. If I had a 2GB card I would probably just give up and render with the CPU. I haven't tried Unity.

 

[Kinderalpha]

It's just not all in one place. You're gonna find that a lot when it comes to learning anything game related because it's not a "One rule applies to all" situation. Likewise with Daz, you're not gonna find all the resources you need in one spot. Unity has the benefit of being so widely used that it's better at this, but even still it's not perfect like what you'd find for "How to write a game in __".

It's good that you know your goals and realize RenPy fits your needs.

 

[Noheat]

Daz is pretty easy to learn but it does take some practice to get good at it. I found posing to be quite difficult until I had some practice at it. Lighting was even harder for me but both of them have gotten MUCH easier with practice. Animations I really haven't figured out yet unless I use one of the preset posing plugins for them. RenPy is easy to learn as well and I have no programming background.

Anyway I think the hardest part is the first step, however your answers make me feel a little relieved about the difficulty of using DAZ.

Concerning Renpy, I have seen some videos and it seems "affordable" and not too complicated.

Depending on what hardware you have, render times could be an issue as well. I would suggest an NVDIA card with at least 8GB of VRAM. Mine has 4GB and I find I have to jump through a lot of hoops trying to tweak the scene to fit within the VRAM my card has so it doesn't render with the CPU instead. If I had a 2GB card I would probably just give up and render with the CPU. I haven't tried Unity.

I have a 1070 Gtx 8GB, so it should be enough.

It's just not all in one place. You're gonna find that a lot when it comes to learning anything game related because it's not a "One rule applies to all" situation. Likewise with Daz, you're not gonna find all the resources you need in one spot. Unity has the benefit of being so widely used that it's better at this, but even still it's not perfect like what you'd find for "How to write a game in __".

It's good that you know your goals and realize RenPy fits your needs.

Okay, thank you. It's much clearer for me now.

 

[Karamazovich]

Interesting thread. Thank you all for the info. I'm an 2D artist myself (Karamazov) so I'm interested in getting into GameDev eventually ( 2D visual novels).
I've seen that some people use Unity as their engine of choice but since I'm quite inexperienced I think I'll go for Renp'y, I'm also learning Python so that seems like the best option.

 

[SerokMinmas]

I think that one of the most important things is to actually start doing it, experiment, go nuts. You will end up going in over your head at some points but thats fine, its part of the process, dont be discouraged, and keep going.