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Go go go monele!

Mystery mysteryy~ ^_^. It's hard to keep it to myself, though XD...

http://monele.eviscerate.net/MagBou2.avi (~3mb test video)

I'd like to know if this looks fine or not. Is it a problem to have faces all up there with the text down there? Is the small "bump" when a character speaks helpful to keep up? Did you even notice it?

monele wrote:I'd like to know if this looks fine or not. Is it a problem to have faces all up there with the text down there? Is the small "bump" when a character speaks helpful to keep up? Did you even notice it?

The portrait thing in general, yes. The bump... well, I was looking for it, so I don't know if I can give a totally honest opinion on whether I'd have noticed it otherwise, but I'd suggest trying it a bit more pronounced, I think...

Looks good. Make the bump more pronounced.

Although, during mid-conversation, it becomes harder to tell who is speaking.

Mmmm... I'm really hesitating now... I'm particularly thinking about the Utsukushii Planet system with faces right next to the text. Did that work better? (for those who played it).
What about other games with full screen characters? Is it easy to follow conversations? Are there tricks they use to help? (colors, ... voices? ^^;...)

So we've gone from magic potions to magic flowers?

Seriously, I've done some thinking about this. The portrait or full screen characters work depending on your background. In the case of the movie, the portrait system works because you see the flowers rather than a flower shop. Both are sort of abstract in a way and go well together.

Full scale portraits work well when they scale well to the background. That is, they actually look like they are standing there. There is nothing weirder than when both don't fit. I remember a screenshot from another VN where it was a picture of the kitchen. The background was a close shot of the table. It made the characters look like they were super short!

I think you loose something when you use the portrait system. You can't see people in different costumes. On the other hand, if you don't plan to have characters in other outfits, then portrait is definitely better suited.

The other advantage with portraits is that you can have more people in a conversation than you can with full scale models.

As for the 'bump', I think it is fine. Maybe a zoom would be better or maybe more of an enlargement when someone talks. The movement of portraits, as seen in the video, is fine, as well.

This is not completely MB2 related but it's a test of the same system I plan to use for it.

It's very basic, doesn't really have a proper intro and things might not fully make sense. To sum up the basic story : you, a young college student, were on your way to school when you suddenly find yourself in front of this hot springs inn. You try to go back but... you can't. You just can't move away from this inn. Inside the inn, you find a broad man in his forties and a beautiful woman who appears to be about thirty. They say they own the inn and you're to be the new staff manager. Uhh... what?

Anyway... the story might be silly but I'm mostly interested in the game system here. Tell me what you think : does it bring something more than a regular VN or does it actually hinder your enjoyment? Of course, try to imagine this with more to explore and more to do ^^;...

Also, it's open source, and I'm interested in the opinions of those who made similar systems (worse, better, tips?).

Oh, and all the content is placeholders >.>...

(the files are not standalone, you need to put them in a RenPy 3.6.0 folder!)

I have added a few features such as multiple names for locations (using a "name,label" tuple) and multiple-screens descriptions.
There is a choice for the setting at the beginning now : either Warp or Magical Boutique 2. MB2 is rather empty though, but you can explore the surroundings of the shop if you feel like it.

(the updated file is in the previous post)

EDIT : oh, as I said, the code is open source, so feel free to make a game out of this structure. The pictures are *not* free to use though (especially since some of them are just placeholders on which I hold no rights...)

I only see a screenshot.

Sorry, the file was longer to upload than I thought ^^;... (it now includes multiple pictures). I'll only post script updates from now on I think.

Ahem.

SWEET!!!!

(Since I forgot to comment the other day after I greedily grabbed it to use.)

Seriously, people, if anyone is contemplating making a game and thinking, "I'd like to do a game more like Divi-Dead or Three Sisters than the standard CYOA-style Ren'Ai, but I'm kind of afraid of coding...", you have got try this!

I'm wondering if it makes sense to put together a page on the Ren'Py site for frameworks and libraries... tools like this that people can use to make games.

@PyTom: IT TOTALLY DOES.

Oh, wait, you want an opinion from someone who's finished a game...

Actually, I think an opinion from someone who wants to finish one is just as valid... If such a framework helps finish a game which would otherwise end up under dust because "it's too hard to code that"... well... yay .

The only things is that I'm not sure I can (in other words I'm sure I can't >.>...) ensure any sort of support for this. Of course I'd reply to questions, but apart from commenting the code as I build it, I'm not going to make tutorials and stuff... at least not in a consistent fashion ^^;...

I've considered taking monele's source code for MB1 and investigating making a framework out of it. Of course, it will only work if you want to make an MB like game. At least, I think it will help those understand what is going on inside a game. I know many people asked 'how does it work?', so this should help.

I think it would help people to see how an actual game works. The basic ones with Ren'Py are okay, but something more substantial would be great. I recall many people asking how they did a certain thing in a game, so even a Ren'Py Cookbook for these snippets would help.

I might even take MB framework one step further and see if I can separate parts of the game such as quest logic from the game logic. Poor monele had to use a massive "if elsif" statement for the quests. I'm not even sure yet how to do this separation. I don't think I want to write quests in XML...