Lemma Soft Forums

As part of the whole "going to Fanime and promoting Bliss Stage" thing, my game studio Perpetual Motion is hosting a panel on How (Not) To Make Your Game In Ren'py, with examples from our own work.

We'll be hosting the panel on Sunday the 27th, from 1pm-2pm in SJCC Room C.

I hope to see you there, and was also wondering: What do you want discussed? What are the hardest parts of getting started for you guys, or common mistakes for new Ren'Py programmers that you'd like addressed? I'd like to know so i can improve the panel and hold something truly informative and entertaining.

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She's sun and rain: She's fire and ice. A little crazy, but it's nice.
Bliss Stage: Love is your weapon! A sci-fi visual novel about child soldiers coming of age. Kickstarter prerelease here. WIP thread here. Fan thread here. Beta demo here.

Some nice points to adress:
1) Don't try and get a group together until you have something to show for.
Nobody is going to work for you if all you have is an idea. Show us that you truly are working on your game.

2) Always explore new concepts; don't always go for what sounds easier or appears to be more popular.
More personal than aything. People really can get tired of playing the same thing over and over again. You'll also have a harder time trying to stand out as well.

3) Make sure you are investing your time in something you will definately finish.
It's depressing to see so many abandoned projects.

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MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

Oh wow! This sounds like it would be a great panel and I'm sad I won't be able to see it. Perhaps you could talk about avoiding over used cliches/stereotypes/that sort of thing, or at least trying to find a way to breathe new life into them? That might be something worth mentioning, at least in passing.

Let us know if you want us to demo any of the fancier coding stuff. We're terrible introverts and will need warning to prepare anything more meaningful than "er yes, you can make RPGs too *runs away*"

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Hanako Games

Another is "Execution Matters"

It takes more than a "good" idea to make something "good." There have been instances of unoriginal or "boring" ideas that have been successful because of the execution. Quality of work is incredibly important. (I think of it as the most important thing, personally.)

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Not really checking the forums any more due to time constraints, so if you want to contact me, PM. I'll get a notification and log in.
Also, I've been hit and run posting, which means I don't see many replies. If you want to respond to something I've said, also feel free to PM me.

Will look forward to reports on how the panel goes.

(I say this because I'm already planning to attend Anime Central in my hometown, and I can only afford so many cons per year...)

If you're going to be in the area, absolutely. Shoot me a PM.

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She's sun and rain: She's fire and ice. A little crazy, but it's nice.
Bliss Stage: Love is your weapon! A sci-fi visual novel about child soldiers coming of age. Kickstarter prerelease here. WIP thread here. Fan thread here. Beta demo here.

I think it's a better idea to drop the (Not). Highlight the positive sides and how to DO make a Visual Novel in contrast to highlighting the mistakes and pitfalls. I think it's far more valuable to know what you can do right and how to do it, than to be told how you can do wrong and to not do that.

How about planning? First-timers don't have any idea how much time it takes to make a simple, 30-minute visual novel.

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Keep your script in your Dropbox folder.
It allows you to share files with your team, keeps backups of previous versions, and is ridiculously easy to use.

Why not have a little bit of both? Spend most of the time showing how not to do things, and then at the end show some ways to do it right. You learn more from your mistakes than you do your successes, and this could be somewhat of a substitution for that for new vn makers? Showing off bad examples sounds like it would be a more interesting panel to attend anyway (at least to me!).

One of my favorite books on how to write fiction is 78 reasons why your book may never be published & 14 reasons why it just might.

So having both is interesting. But even learning how not to do something can help you to skip flaws.

Like for example (taking tips from the book mentioned above):

Number 6: You assume writing (or coding! or doing art!) is easy.
Number 19: You do not know grammar.
Number 23: You have a tin ear for dialogue.
Number 25: You do not trust your audience.

Etc.

Hopefully someone will record the panel and share with us folks who can't be there? (hint, hint!)

Ooh yes! If it is possible it would be awesome to have someone record it.

I third this (that sounds ridiculous, but someone already seconded this)!

There's a high chance I will be going to Fanime. I don't know what days yet, but I would be interested in helping out with this if I can.

To clarify: the (not) part is to inject a little humor into the subject. With all the mistakes I made, I'm frankly astounded that BSVN and Transformation Sequence are anywhere near done, let alone polished, and I figured a good way to get people interested is to tell them about my more colorful fuck-ups.



I'll definitely see what I can do to get this recorded and YouTube it.

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She's sun and rain: She's fire and ice. A little crazy, but it's nice.
Bliss Stage: Love is your weapon! A sci-fi visual novel about child soldiers coming of age. Kickstarter prerelease here. WIP thread here. Fan thread here. Beta demo here.