Lemma Soft Forums

I am considering make my game without backgrounds to save time since I am now planning on doing watercolor and traditional inking for characters. I was original going to ink in tone in mangastudio but my tablet needs to be reinstalled so I decide it might be better to do it to traditionally since My photo software I was using for sizing has the colors all screwed up (probably from me trying to match the broken printer colors). The game is free I am just worried it wouldn't look finished without the backgrounds.

Backgrounds do add to the finished look. If you'd rather not make them, you can always find pre-made backgrounds.

http://bassnovel.com/select_materials.p ... m&p=0&key=
http://guttari8.sakura.ne.jp/youfuu000.html
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/ ... qme_s3cTVw

These are my favorite sites for backgrounds.

In the end, your VN is up to you to make, but if you put that much time and effort into your sprites and story, I think you might as well go a bit farther to make it look more polished.

You can use some gradient or paper texture as a generic background that adds to the effect.

If you're already working in watercolors, why not just do a few washes of various colors and use those for backgrounds?

If the setting isn't very important or there isn't much you actually need the backgrounds to show, then I wouldn't mind playing a game without backgrounds--especially if you do something simple but still nice to look at, like color washes. But it may be difficult to set the scene without distinct backgrounds, and some players will probably think it looks unfinished, so give it some thought.

Actually, I would be very interested to see a VN where different colors or abstract images are used as "background images" to convey mood instead of literal backgrounds.

planktheory wrote:If you're already working in watercolors, why not just do a few washes of various colors and use those for backgrounds?

This is what I'd suggest as well.

It's not much of a visual novel, if there isn't any "visual" to look at (granted that you are working on a visual novel right now).

Actually once I get that far, I'm planning on making backgrounds for my test game with watercolors.

There are a lot of tutorials/books on how to paint landscapes/buildings etc. so, instead of just washes you could even make some nice backgrounds like that (Also, I highly recommend Kazuo Oga, if you need any inspiration )

Visual novels tell the story partly through the text and dialog, and partly through pictures, so I'd argue that a VN with no images isn't a VN, in the same way that taking all the drawings out of a comic means that it's not a comic any more, it's a script.

Having said that, perhaps you'd find this tool for writing hypertext stories a better fit for what you want to do?http://felix.plesoianu.ro/pub/ramus3.html

The instructions for using it are here: http://notimetoplay.org/2011/06/11/hype ... ment-18305

Hmm... In my opinion a game without some backgrounds that either set the mood or tell where you are, makes the game less appealing and won't attract my attention as much as one with bg. So if you want more people to play I suggest having some sort of bg's for visual appeal, even if there just a quick done up. After all just like pinkmouse said a VN without images isn't really a VN at all.