Overall difficulty of VNs

[Voight-Kampff]

So I've been pondering all the various, little aspects of VN production: writing, scenarios, character design (both physical and personality), sprites, BGs, sound effects, music, coding, etc. And while I WAS under the impression that a VN represents a lot less work for a much bigger payoff - as far as the amount of story conveyed versus the effort expended - I have to say, it seems quite a bit more daunting than I first anticipated.

I'm particularly interested in hearing the thoughts of those who have worked on multiple formats of story telling: Just how difficult have your VN projects been in comparison to other projects? What have you found to be the most challenging aspects? Finding other artists to work with? Organizing and managing said artists? Writing? Coding?

From what I can tell, it seems like getting started really is the hardest part - since so much effort has to be expended on art resources. But once those resources are completed, it seems one can just keep going and going, reusing said resources as many times as necessary.

[LVUER]

I won't say making VN is significantly easier than making "real" games, though it's only because I'm not used to writing novels type of story (to make it worse, English or Japan is not my first language).

VN also need less money to develop (though some company invent some serious money to make one) and less people (about 4-6? compared to 30-100 of real game developer team).

Making "real" game is harder only because there is a gameplay section (and long play hours, like RPG games, means more money spent too) and could be heavily rely on graphics; means coder or 3D coder/graphic designer are needed.

Well, all in all, I think VN is easier to make than other kind of game, except if you want to add some exploration section like RPG game or make a hybrid VN.

[Wintermoon]

The thing about visual novels is that every sentence you write, the player will only encounter only once per playthrough. A ten hour visual novel requires at least ten hours worth of text. Compare that to rpgs, where the player often fights the same group of enemies a dozen times or more. Or Tetris, where there are literally no new gameplay elements introduced after the first five seconds.

It's a lot easier to write a five minute visual novel than a five minute game. It's a lot harder to turn that five minute visual novel into a forty hour epic than it is to do the same to the five minute game.

Of course, if you want AAA production values, making the game is harder and more expensive, but only because even commercial visual novels don't have AAA production values. You can just as easily blow a hundred million dollars on producing a top-class visual novel as you could producing a top-class game, it just wouldn't be as good of an investment.

[this_barb]

It is far harder to properly model, rig, and animate a 3D model than it is to draw a picture.
It is far harder to hack code and debug than it is to use Ren'py's scripting language

This is not to say that making a good VN is easy, but its difficulty is nothing in comparison to making a good video game.

[JinzouTamashii]

The hardest thing I find is writing the multi-linear storytelling. Even after it branches and comes back together, for coherency, the previous choices must be remembered.

Can anyone who writes branching stories extensively give me some good hints?

[oiseau]

Can anyone who writes branching stories extensively give me some good hints?

I haven't actually finished any branching visual novels myself, so maybe take my suggestion with a grain of salt.

Try setting up a diagram to keep track of everything. Organization is key, as you've already figured out. I once read somewhere that sticky notes could help out a lot, especially because you can look and visualize all the directions your story might branch out in...set up a big white, dry-erase board of sticky notes, so you can draw arrows to each note. And, if you don't have sticky notes, you could always just draw one out. I like sticky notes better because they can be moved around.

Of course, depending on your story, things may get a whole lot more complicated than just arrows and branches and all... It will help you remember if you can look back at your board and be like, "oh, following this path got me here. Interesting."

[Showsni]

The hardest thing I find is writing the multi-linear storytelling. Even after it branches and comes back together, for coherency, the previous choices must be remembered.

Can anyone who writes branching stories extensively give me some good hints?

You could try looking at the flowcharts for some other games. Here's the one for Fate Stay/Night, for example:

Flowchart.pdf

(226.47 KiB) Downloaded 902 times

[Voight-Kampff]

Well, one program that I'm intrigued by (but haven't used yet) is Storylines:

http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/
(that's the official webste)

http://www.brothersoft.com/storylines-106689.html
(a quick and dirty spot to download the shareware version)

Looks like you get a sort of "virtual cork board" that you can place and rearrange "3x5 note cards" with scene ideas and such. Also looks like you can assign a number attributes to each card as well - like the characters that are needed for the scene, the settings needed for the scene, etc. And you can have multiple branches going at once.

It doesn't look like it works quite like a flow charting piece of software. But I think it might prove very handy in early development as one tries to collect and organize ideas.

[x__sinister (lazy)]

I use ywriter. I really like it, and it's completely free.
You insert different characters, locations, items, etc. and create different scenes within chapters, where you can assign POV, relevence, tension, 1st/2nd/Final Draft or outline for each scene, and a whole bunch of other things. It's not too complicated, either. (:

http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter.html

[pinkmouse]

I use ywriter. I really like it, and it's completely free.
You insert different characters, locations, items, etc. and create different scenes within chapters, where you can assign POV, relevence, tension, 1st/2nd/Final Draft or outline for each scene, and a whole bunch of other things. It's not too complicated, either. (:

http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter.html

Yes, I like Y-writer too: it's very handy being able to keep all the notes together. I've recently been playing with a program called Twine. It's intended for writing full-length hyperfiction, but I find the format too restrictive. However, using it as a flowchart might be worthwhile:

http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/


or you could use a flowchart program, of course: http://www.freewarefiles.com/Diagram-De ... _8116.html

Both the programs are freeware.

HTH

PM

[dstarsboy]

I'm on a mac so I use textmate. The nifty part about it is that you can develop your own "VN" syntax bundle which will auto-complete text, expand/collapse all text associated to scenes, style words for you... so you can customize the look of your script pretty nicely the way you want. For branching you can start a project and just keep different files for each branch and stuff.

Admittedly, I probably will spend a day or two looking at other mac software for my next project. I really like Scrivener and Celtx so far.

[JinzouTamashii]

Downloading Y-Writer at the speed of light. Additionally, that would be excellent for collaboration projects, wouldn't it? I'm flying solo for right now, but only because making the game seems to be so personal.

I have tried the Labyrinth and Diagram Designer from the OELVN wiki and I didn't care for them. Text Magician is great for replace across 10 different .rpy files.