NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

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Caveat Lector
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NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#1 Post by Caveat Lector »

To those of you who have participated in NaNoRenO in the past, do you have any tips or advice for those who are considering dipping their toes into the event for the first time?
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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#2 Post by Hijiri »

Most important tip: Keep. Your. Game. Small.
The idea you want should become concrete once you start. No adding features, no extra routes. Just do beginning to end. The goal is to finish making a game in a month. You can always come back and improve or expand what you've done.

Second most important: Make the work manageable.
Give yourself time to do what needs to be done. If you have a team, make sure that the assets that take the most time are finished first. If you are going this alone, take the most time for the job that is hardest. If it happens to be coding, then code and write.

Lastly, don't stress out about the deadline. There isn't a prize for finishing except for your own self-fulfillment. If you make it, great! If you don't, well then keep going and try to finish either way. You're already neck-deep, so may as well finish what you start
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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#3 Post by Deji »

WHAT HIJIRI SAID.
Make sure you have a clear idea of how long things are going to take you and you have the time each day (or each week) to get a certain amount of that done. Don't over-estimate yourself, give yourself some breathing room in case you get behind schedule because life shenanigans and in case things take longer than you expected (both things are very likely to happen!)

Also a good management practice is to keep a list of tasks. Especially art and "features" tasks.
After you write down the list the list (I usually do this in an excel document or other spreadsheet document), classify those tasks in 3 categories:
  • 1. Absolutely essential for the project.
    These are the tasks you *must* finish in order for the project to be a standalone thing that works, even as a short Kinetic Novel version of your initial idea.
    Writing the main route of the game, programming it and collecting the basic art assets (sprites and BGs, even if from open sources) should be in this category.
    These tasks should be done BEFORE ANY OTHER TASK.
  • 2. Important for the project.
    These are the tasks you want to get done for the game in order to make it what you have envisioned it to be.
    Writing the other main routes of the game go here, also getting the minimum sprites for the main cast done and some really important CGs go here. Getting the bare basics of the backgrounds done also may go here in case you're getting BGs done.
    These tasks are to be done right after the absolutely essential tasks. You can sort them by priority as well, in case you don't get the time to get them all done.
  • 3. Would like to have on the project (but my project will work just fine without them).
    These are the "would like to have"s. These are all the extra gameplay features, extra poses for the sprites, extra routes, extra locations, extra bonus scenes, extra CGs, chibi cutscenes, animated openings and ALL those things that you would *love* to have in your game! But if they're not there, things still work.
    These tasks are THE LAST TO BE DONE and ONLY IF YOU HAVE THE TIME.
    If you get one of these tasks done in the middle of the project before finishing the other priority ones, you risk not having enough time to complete the important ones! Sure, usually tasks in this category are super fun to do, but your main goal is to FINISH a project, so focus your work and your resources (like time!) on more important things than these.
This setting avoids the dreaded "feature creep" a lot of the time, since every new cool thing you'd like to get in the project goes to category #3, and by definition that category is to be done "only if you have the time" and unless you're delaying your project until every single task on your list gets done (hint: you shouldn't do this), you should be fine :)

Hope that helps and good luck with your project!
(Our own last year's NaNo was delayed *only* because I didn't have the time to get the basic CGs done in time, and it was totally my fault :') So don't be like me!)
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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#4 Post by Kitten the Cat »

I'm going to second what Hijiri and Deji said, keep your game small. This is where we failed the last time.

Don't try to program complex games like dating sims, especially if this is your first game.

The more paths/branches your story has, the more you have to write. The more characters you have, the more complicated the story gets (and you'd need to have more sprites)

As for the story, maybe focus on an interesting small scenario instead of an epic. That way you can also limit the backgrounds/locations needed.

If you're doing everything by yourself, make sure you have a schedule.

Make use of free, premade assets around - just make sure you have permission to use them.

If you're itching to add more features to your game... Only do it when you have time left over!

That's all I can think of for now!
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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#5 Post by rakada »

yea i agree with the above post and think that there nothing wrong with making a kn that have no choices/paths but still have a enjoyable story if that what you are confident in being able to do with in 1 month. Just because so people can do more or make a better game in that time frame doesn't mean you have to push your self to try to make a game at that lvl if you are not experience enough to do that

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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#6 Post by Taleweaver »

Let me add my wisdom as a two-time NaNoRenO-er to this thread. I'd like to give you a practical example of one of my NaNoRenO projects, Daemonophilia, a romantic comedy VN.

To stay within the one month timeline, I cut the story down to

- 2 main and 2 supporting characters
- 50k words of text
- five locations

I had DaFool to work with as my artist and co-programmer, and for sound and music, we stuck to free resources - a Jamendo album as our soundtrack and some generic "audience laughter" to give the game a sitcom feel. Essentially, we wrote and coded the entire thing within 25 days, and as there was still a little time left, we added

- an image gallery
- a soundtrack jukebox and
- unlockable achievements

to the whole thing within the last three days. (Or rather, the last two days, as we were even able to release the entire thing early.)

So how was it received? Well - just google for "Daemonophilia", and chances are you will find it among the top hits. Without any sort of SEO. I suppose we got VERY lucky with the title...
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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#7 Post by Caveat Lector »

I find all of your tips very helpful, thank you very much. :) However, if the project you plan to go with might be a little bit bigger than expected, would it be more realistic to create a specific goal to finish a certain section by the end of the month? Or what about a certain smaller project...?
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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#8 Post by Cidz »

Work small. You'd be suprised how fast a month can go. Personally, i think it's best to think of a project that you know you can finish in a few weeks. It's good to finish with extra time, gives you a chance to go over the work, and allows for any misteps that may delay the project. So try to think of a project that will take you 2-3 weeks.

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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#9 Post by Yuzu-kun ^-^ »

Just always Type and type and type!!! XD

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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#10 Post by mugenjohncel »

People above stated already the obvious ones like keep your project realistically short, simple or within your comfortable bounds and so forth so I'll just give the BEST NaNoRenO advice ever... To compensate for procrastination, Start 6 months in advance. :wink:

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Re: NaNoRenO Tips for Beginners?

#11 Post by Hijiri »

mugenjohncel wrote:To compensate for procrastination, Start 6 months in advance. :wink:

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Bad Mugen, that's cheating :T
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