Blade Visual Novel Engine

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#46 Post by **Blue Lemma** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 3:37 pm

Here's what I don't get:

- Compatible with DirectX 9
- Max choice selection text will be 32 characters

Are those so good? It was already doing DirectX, so I can't imagine bumping compatibility up to 9 will help a whole lot... Making it compatible with Mac or Linux would be tons more useful. Also, the selection text limit is already 32 characters. Maybe that's just a typo and they meant that restriction would be removed?

@_@

I'm happy to see the flag support planned, though. They really needed it.

monele · #47 Post by **monele** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 3:49 pm

Unless they plan to add some more effects... I have no idea either (and even then, I doubt DX9 is necessary for anything simple which they don't even seem to permit ^^;...)

Side question : Narcissu 2 ??... Doko ? o_o (Edit : nevermind, I think I found it ^^;...)

mikey · #48 Post by **mikey** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:59 am

The new 2-series version is said to be released 11.11, does anyone know how much the engine will cost? I couldn't find it anywhere, I'd be rather interested.

Also, some announced features that were said to be free are now Pro only. It probably hurts the most in the customization department.

DaFool · #49 Post by **DaFool** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:09 am

What does Client header customization mean?

All I can say is big improvement, although still lack of animated layers is still unacceptable for my purposes.

Seriously, if it weren't for the lack of features I have to admit that "BU-LAYDE ENGINE" sounds better than "REN-PEE" ... um, excuse me, "REN-PIE", as if anything you make with it gets +100 coolness points automatically.

But in the end, it's not the image, its the performance that matters, something I learned in shop class where I tended to design fancy shit that don't work.

mikey · #50 Post by **mikey** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:26 am

DaFool wrote:What does Client header customization mean?

Isn't that the program name that appears as the header of the program window? It Ren'Py it's "A Ren'Py Game" as default.

To me Blade doesn't sound incredibly better than Ren'Py, in fact I think Ren'Py sounds better, although admittedly my personal favorite name of the VN game engines is Paths (used by Foxtaile). Both Paths and Ren'Py are somehow derived from the target fandom, while the connection isn't there with Blade. Not that it would be necessary. The Unreal engine's initial name was Fire IIRC.

DaFool · #51 Post by **DaFool** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 10:48 am

Hey, who deleted the link to the Blade Engine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novels

I added it along with the link to renpy.org, just to be fair.
It's still mostly free, imho.

monele · #52 Post by **monele** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 11:13 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... on=history

The history says : "Revert spam. Please justify Blade's addition on the talk page if you disgree."

Wikipedia's rules strike again ^^;

DaFool · #53 Post by **DaFool** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 11:37 am

LOL. I see the many previous futile attempts by CuriousFactory.

But I sort of get it, as I've been annoyed by the advertisement links in tomshardware and other commercial sites.

I guess if you're commercial, even if its free, then too bad

mikey · #54 Post by **mikey** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 1:07 pm

Hmmm, that campaign is new to me, I never noticed... and I don't like such plugging

Anyway, it's true, once you go commercial, you are in a completely different world. Blade need games to really prove themselves, let's see whether the new version will help with that. So far, I'm almost tempted to say that their presence has drawn more people to Ren'Py... But it's just a feeling, as several people have mentioned that they came from there. No heated discussion intended.

Haeleth · #55 Post by **Haeleth** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 4:59 pm

I see a number of things conspicuously absent from the amazing-new-version feature list... trivial features that I couldn't quite believe Blade lacked in the first place, like automatic lineation. (Forcing users to put in line breaks by hand is not my idea of "easy to use".)

I can't believe they're planning to sell this. It makes ZZT look sophisticated.

mikey · #56 Post by **mikey** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:19 pm

I had my fair share with manual line breaking in our former system, and it's a catastrophic pain, honestly, I'll just say "editing" and you can imagine what it meant. It forced us to write line breaking macros and then go through the game to correct text overflow, and it still didn't work when we used another font (that's why we retroactively made Garamond a requirement for Black Pencil). Well, I suppose you could hire a former secretary who is used to work with typewriters... but apart from that it's not funny at all. Manual line breaking is fine with smaller projects, but write something bigger and it quickly becomes annoying.

Anyway, I've searched, looked, but couldn't find the price of the engine. Maybe tomorrow?

DaFool · #57 Post by **DaFool** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:20 pm

Ah, I think it's because they didn't consider it after porting from JP version. What they needed was a reverse equivalent of Ren'Py's east_asian.rpy. The spacing issues in kanji are different from roman alphabet.

I think it's still a sellable product, provided they target large chain stores and position it next to Hirameki titles. That way, consumers will be able to pick it up along with "easy to use" commercial CD ripping software, a commercial video editing software. Even though you can find these tools for free.

In other words, its for a different visual-novel making community. Just like our community would rather be using free GPL-ware which in many instances are even easier to use despite being fully loaded ... its just that GPL/MIT-ware tend to lack the user intuitiveness, but that is recently changing (for example, the Ren'Py launcher)

mikey · #58 Post by **mikey** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:35 pm

Hmmm, for that concept to work IMO, they would need a GUI - anything text-based is simply too geeky to work as a boxed version you buy at your local gameshop.

Furthermore, I don't think that Blade's syntaxes are incredibly simpler or less frightening to the beginner - for me at least, the use of underscores and commas to show something on screen isn't all too natural. Blade do emphasize simplicity, but I'd like to see a side-by-side script of Blade and Ren'Py for some simple scenes - and see what's what. Well, tomorrow's the day, right?

NetGenSuperstar · #59 Post by **NetGenSuperstar** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 7:35 pm

Here's my question about line-breaking in the Blade engine.

Blade uses a monospace font, right? When I was developing my now-cancelled and always-outdated VN engine, I implemented a monospace line-breaking algorithm in one hour. I further enhanced it with more advanced breaking techniques, and logged a total of three hours to get it completely debugged. That's including the breaks I took in between to do some other things. I've only been programming seriously for 6 months.

Why can't they do it?

mikey · #60 Post by **mikey** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:52 pm

Well, I downloaded and tried it, and I was really angry that I had to download some directX9 file without which the game wouldn't run. Is it because the mpeg file needs it? It shouldn't. So the main improvements are probably the new features, and Blade is more capable as a result. But of course, those are standard, expected features. Basically then, not much has changed.

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