Visual Novel Engine Selection?

[Lizts]

Just curious, what factors do people consider when selecting a visual novel engine for their visual novel?
Are features more important or as long as the basics are covered it should be fine? Simplicity vs Capability? Learning Curve? Platform?

[TrickWithAKnife]

I chose the engine that I'm using because the basics were simple, it was flexible enough to allow more precise features, it is still being supported and has an active community.

[SundownKid]

As far as I know, Ren'py is the only full featured engine specifically for visual novels that offers total customizability. It's also the only one that has nigh-constant support and community. So, there isn't that much choice out there unless you are willing to learn a more advanced engine.

[Tyrantauranox]

Platforms are huge for me. A Ren'Py for Unity would destroy all.

[meiri]

I chose Ren'Py because the learning curve was simple, but it has several capabilities.
I considered Flash but the coding seemed too difficult, although the ability to make Flash games allows them to be played over the internet on nearly any platform.
Novelty seemed good as well, but I didn't like exporting to .xml (I think that was one of the options?)
C++, Javascript, and HTML were all options but were either too hard or too expensive software or I just couldn't grasp the learning curve.

Mostly, I was attracted to Ren'py by the huge amount of support available from the community.

[netravelr]

Platforms are huge for me. A Ren'Py for Unity would destroy all.

Agreed, which is why I was shocked no one responded when I showed my prototype. My current plan is that if Culina is successful I'll port it over to Unity so that I can get it over on PSVita and other consoles with minimal hassle.

RenPy to me is kinda like how Unreal is for FPS games. It's great if you're trying to make a game of the genre its created for, but the further you go away from that the less useful it becomes. That being said, there is a very large community of Ren'Py users and the fact of the matter is that most content you'd want to create for a VN is already included in Ren'Py so there really isn't a reason to not use Ren'Py unless you're trying to add additional elements that it doesn't support.

[jack_norton]

Main reason I'm doing some other games not in Renpy is speed. Currently you can't have 300 sprites on screen with real-time shadows and shaders and run at 60 FPS on Android

I am not sure what is involved in porting to PSVita, paperwork and so on. For sure the mobile revenues are so miserable compared to desktop (even excluding Steam) that other platforms aren't so essential to me now, I just do them because people want to play my games on phones/tablets.

In the end the platform where you can still make more money is PC (luckily I'd add!!)

[SundownKid]

Right now, the other platforms that Unity allows are kind of meh in terms of actual revenue. Getting the game on iOS might be cool, but it's a lot of effort for a paltry amount of revenue. And the Wii U and Vita... well, not many people have those. I'm not sure if getting a Vita to test it and spending the money to port and release the game would be worth it. Maybe that's why not many people are interested in porting their games. I would definitely be interested if Nintendo made the 3DS support Unity games, though.

[Chocopyro]

I use visual novelty to see how things look so I could get a consistent pacing for writing scenes out as I go along without having to take myself out of the writing mindset to code, but Ren'Py is probably my engine of choice in the end, as not only is it fairly easy to understand, but fully supportive of mac, which is where most of my creative work is done anyways.

[PyTom]

Main reason I'm doing some other games not in Renpy is speed. Currently you can't have 300 sprites on screen with real-time shadows and shaders and run at 60 FPS on Android

Ren'Py is a visual novel engine - which means that it trades off generality to more easily target things like visual novels and life simulation games. At some point, you're far enough outside Ren'Py's use case that other engines will be more suitable. And that's fine.That doesn't excuse me from caring about performance, but I tend to focus work on areas that affect visual novel-like games. The new version of screen language in 6.18 was originally inspired by the fairly complex interface of Dysfunctional Systems, for example. (It should also improve RPGs as well, but RPGs might need to make some changes to work well with SL2.)


For the record - and getting on-topic for this thread - Ren'Py is intended for visual novels and story-heavy simulation games. It's aimed at games of medium to long lengths - there are a lot of abstractions that Ren'Py supports and in some case requires, like defining characters and images. Those might not strictly be necessary for short games, but I think they quickly pay off as people write games of reasonable length. It includes assumptions that make its target games easier to make, even if those assumptions reduce its generality.

Ren'Py is a programming language. It's my position that it is definitionally impossible to make a visual novel without programming - a visual novel is a computer program, and anything a person does to make a computer program is programming. Ren'Py attempts to make programming accessible to visual novel creators by providing a series of domain specific languages that let creators program in a vocabulary they can easily understand, while at the same time benefiting from 60 years or so of accumulated programming language experience.

Lastly, Ren'Py treats visual novels as important artifacts. That's why it produces downloadable games - downloadable games won't disappear when the server hosting them goes down, or the people hosting them pivot to something else. I realize that some creators invest multiple years into making their games, and I do what I can to ensure Ren'Py will exist years from now. Ren'Py being open source means that even if something happens to me, others could take Ren'Py and keep improving it - or at least, keep it alive for long enough for people to finish their projects. The open source nature also means that you don't need to ask anyone's permission to create things with Ren'Py - which I hope helps enable people to create what they want.

So that's kind of where I think Ren'Py stands, compared to other tools.

[jack_norton]

Yes, you know well what I think of the engine (the best I've ever tried), sorry if I seemed to criticize it, of course wasn't my intention.
(also for the record the slowness I had on my game map was because of my map coding system, now I speeded up and is playable on Android too).
Is just that I secretly wish that I could do ANY kind of game with it while of course I know that it's focus is on specific kind of games

[PyTom]

Yes, you know well what I think of the engine (the best I've ever tried), sorry if I seemed to criticize it, of course wasn't my intention.
...
Is just that I secretly wish that I could do ANY kind of game with it while of course I know that it's focus is on specific kind of games

You know, the thing is, when I say "that's fine", I actually mean it.

I've come to the realization that Ren'Py won't be good for every game, or every creator. And while I try to make it work as much as possible, at some point, people are better off using other engines.

And I'm fine with that.

[Holland]

I chose Ren'Py for the sake of simplicity. Writing a basic game on it is incredibly easy, and it's also quite fast as far as rendering images and sounds go. But, Python... is far from my cup of tea; web development is our real specialty, so I'd really prefer to make the final copy function on the actual website. I'll have complete control over all its features in languages I know well that way. I'm one to believe that creating something from scratch and controlling every element from its base is better than using an engine.

That said, Ren'Py is just so easy to jump on board and use that I couldn't resist using it to organize our first game.

As for what I believe is the most important in an engine in general, I'd say:

1) If it's for anything professional or commercial, then it should focus on options over simplicity.
2) If it's for hobbyists or quick work, it should embrace simplicity over complexity.

It seems like Ren'Py is an interesting cross between the two. It's simple enough for starters and has enough options for those looking to make commercial games. It's not quite as interactive as it could be for a low level hobbyist. It's also not quite as advanced as the top of the line commercial projects. However, it functions well enough on both ends of the spectrum to be taken seriously.

[Kokoro Hane]

I chose Ren'Py as my engine of choice because it is not too easy but not too hard. It has helped introduce me into scripting without chasing me away. I have always wanted to be a game dev, and Ren'Py has helped me make the first steps into game developement. I have always wanted to code, but other languages are a bit too complex and advanced for me at this level. Ren'Py has an easy to understand script, and is highly customizeable! Plus, once I learn some Python, I can even make better VNs with more gameplay. I know you cannot make things like FPS, but you could make a game that is heavily story based, with voice acting and some RPG elements if you know what you're doing. It's actually amazing how using the basic, basic script of Ren'Py, you could do a lot of crazy things if you know what you're doing. Your imagination is the limit. That is what I like about Ren'Py~

[jack_norton]

I've come to the realization that Ren'Py won't be good for every game, or every creator. And while I try to make it work as much as possible, at some point, people are better off using other engines.

Cool BTW with the new beta update you just made I already noticed a speed increase. Good job