Tips for a Beginner Creating a Dating Sim?

[Obscura]

Hi! Very excited to be a member of this forum! I was wondering if you had any tips for someone making their first game. I'll be using ren'py on my mac, and doing all the writing, coding, and art myself. I have a slight bit of programming knowledge, and I figure I'll be able to ask questions about issues as they come up.

Specific questions I have for now:

1. Should the dating sim be written in first person or second person? For some reason I'm not totally comfortable with the narrator saying "I did this, I did that", but that might be because I grew up on Western text adventure games that tell you, "You are in a cave. It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue, etc." But it seems most dating sims are written in first person. Do you have a preference and why? Would you find it preferable or too jarring to have a 2nd person perspective?

2. It seems intimidating to write out my entire plot and dialogue right into Ren Py code right away. Is there a preferred application people use to write out their story? I would think an outlining programing is the most useful, since it adds a level of organization to choices and dialogue trees, but I could be wrong. How do you recommend I write out my story?

Thanks for any advice. I appreciate it!

[papillon]

tips for a beginner - write a visual novel, not a dating sim, dating sims are complicated!

I tend to go into second-person mode when doing RPG-styled gameplay. I have an existing project (release stalled due to misfortune on the behalf of many team members) in which the text is all second-person. It works fine in this case, IMO, because the style is much closer to an old choose-your-own-adventure... the text segments are quite short and the branching extremely heavy. Many visual novels are slower and more introspective about the protagonist's memories and emotions, and in that case it could feel awkward and heavy-handed to put the narration in second-person.

Basically, if your story is almost entirely focused on what the character is seeing and doing at this exact moment, and player interaction is frequent, second person is fine. If the main character has a history and a personality and is going to have long passages telling the reader about how the character feels, first person is more appropriate. IMO.

[Obscura]

Thanks very much for the input, papillon. I guess I actually am doing a visual novel (I had to look up on the exact differences between the two), and I guess what I have is a very "Choose Your Own Adventure" type thing, without all the stats and other bells and whistles of an actual dating sim. So, whew, I guess? :0)

[gekiganwing]

Welcome to the forums, Obscura.

Want to stay organized? Some people use index cards in order to plan out the structure of their story or game. There's a recent thread on the forums talking about Twine, a Windows/Mac program which can help you organize text files and link them together.

It's easy to get confused over terms that fans use. There's a glossary of fan terminology in this thread. Though to be honest, I don't think you ever need to use more than a few of the terms in the long list. I use the following phrases:

"visual novel" for a story told through text and occasional pictures, which works on an electronic device
"__ simulation game" for complex games with simulation gameplay
"romance game" for any game/story featuring relationships between fictional characters
"__ harem game" for any game/story with more than two possible love interests
"adult game" if there is explicit content

On this forum, we tend to talk about pairings with the point of view character followed by the romance interest(s). For instance, if your main character is a girl, and she can form a relationship with one or more boys, then the term would be GxB (girl x boy).

[kaleidofish]

I was going to suggest Twine, but gekiganwing beat me to the punch. I haven't gotten a chance to use it, though, but it's exactly the type of program that I've wanted for a long time. Since I'm not using it yet, I use a combination of WordPad and Microsoft Paint for outlining my notes, and then I write everything right into Ren'Py. I think of it like writing a play.

There's a really good beginner's guide here. It describes how to make an otome (GxB) game, but everything that the tutorial says can be applied to any other type of game.

[saguaro]

In the same vein as index cards... if you've got the wall space, consider post-it notes.

I normally don't like to write anything longhand but I've found that's the best way to do flowchart-type outlines.

[Obscura]

Thanks much everyone! This forum is so supportive.

I'm trying a little bit of everything right now, and am currently just writing straight into the program because I found it a little easier than I anticipated (though the quotation marks really throw me off.) This may change if the plot gets more complicated, however.

This is so much fun making my first game. I've always been a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none type person (with just bare-to-adequate amounts of basic programming, writing, and drawing experience) so I'm really amazed about the opportunity to use these skills in a single project.

Incidentally I'm attempting a BxB choose your adventure type romance.

[ffs_jay]

The most important thing for your first game, in my opinion - keep it short, keep it simple. Just get it done and out the door. Your first effort won't be a masterpiece, but you'll learn a massive amount of useful stuff to use in future and get a taste of the process of actually finishing and releasing something. It's much the same idea as more general game programmers recommending your first game be match-3 or tetris. Learning to finish (or better yet, finish to a deadline) is probably the most useful skill you can have. I suck at it personally, but I'm getting better.

[Obscura]

The most important thing for your first game, in my opinion - keep it short, keep it simple. Just get it done and out the door. Your first effort won't be a masterpiece, but you'll learn a massive amount of useful stuff to use in future and get a taste of the process of actually finishing and releasing something. It's much the same idea as more general game programmers recommending your first game be match-3 or tetris. Learning to finish (or better yet, finish to a deadline) is probably the most useful skill you can have. I suck at it personally, but I'm getting better.

Thank you for this invaluable tip! A deadline is a good idea, given that I'm going to try and keep learning as I go and working on GIMP indefinitely if I don't give myself a cut off date. I guess one month for one relationship? It will be pretty short, but longer if I have the time. It's the artwork that is the most time consuming right now...arms and legs are hard to draw for me! (Maybe I could just make them all tentacles, call this a tentacle sim, and call it a day.)

[genesiswriter]

I would also like to know.
I need to create a shortish-length dating sim for my maid cafe, and I've written a short VN before,
which didn't have much character interaction. I have experience with crap-HTML choose-your-own-adventure games, and I'd like very much to get started on this vn.
I just want to get the coding down, I couldn't give a crap about storyline or character designs right now, mostly I want dating sim practice so I can make a longer one later.
I don't know how to even begin the process, the point system, the interface design or anything. I've been trying to find some sort of tutorial but I can't seem to come across one. Can you help me out?..

[SusanTheCat]

@genesiswriter: Are you planning one using some sort of framework, or are you coding this from scratch?

Ren'py has a Dating Simulation Engine: http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Frameworks that can handle some of the basic coding.

Susan

[Blane Doyle]

This was the first thing I could think of to help you: http://www.otome-games.com/index.php/ma ... imitstart=

It is for otome games, but it is written very well and I believe it would be very simple or easy for you to use this as a reference point.

Unfortunately the guide ISN'T finished, but it's been helping me a bit with my practice games. If nothing else it is something nice to have on hand.