Novelty progress update (VN maker)

[Sin]

No I'll sue you ..I mean, yes.

[Enerccio]

sin, you might want to check this out for ideas and comparison:
http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~tinyan/nyanlib/index.htm

if you manage to make same effect and transitions as they made, your engine then will rock!

[Sin]

Like I said before I already have 20~30-ish different transitions but in all fairness many of them are just slight variations on the same effect. (fade left, fade right, etc..)
On my side they're quite easy to program and I intend to make a lot more. I also plan on adding HLSL support, meaning if you're a programmer yourself and know a little bit about pixel shaders you'll be able to create your own transitions and effects. If not, I'm sure someone will be able to write and share them with the community.

Currently there's only support for fullscreen effects but I'm pretty sure there's room for doing the same with individual objects in the scene. Having a polygonal graphics system is very powerful but it does come with some limitations.. like that you can't ever draw outside the polygon. This makes it really hard to say, have an object explode into a million pieces unless you split it up to multiple polygons. For that stuff to work I'd have to hardcode it into the engine.

[Enerccio forget to log in and will not to, sorry]

try that nya nnn editor, it has some nice features (like rains, clouds, water reflections, etc)

[yummy]

How is your VN maker going?
I just can't wait to test it, it looks like fun when you make sumomo bumping around...

[Sin]

It's going great. I've been hard at work and I just finished one of the bigger features; the ability to save the VN as a stand-alone application.
I have a long list of features that I still need to implement, but only three of them are considered top-priority. Once those are done, Novelty still won't be finished, but it will be good enough for people (like you) to toy around with.

Even without all the bells and whistles I want to get some feedback on the usability of the program and the interface, as well as ideas for improvements and new features.

PS. Have (yet) another screenshot =o

[mikey]

I would also like to try this program, only recently I started to think once again how it was coming along, so if there is a test version soon, that would be very interesting for me.
Is a customizable interface possible?

[Sin]

Is a customizable interface possible?

Yes. I'm not sure if you meant the editor or in the VN but both are highly customizable.

[mikey]

Basically it would be my usual needs - customizing the layout of the buttons, the save slots and configuration sliders and options - maybe have them all in one column, or having one button in each corner, that kind of thing.

Also, textbox placement (middle, left, right, bottom), with the option of changing its placement within a game, so for example narrative occurs in a kind of NVL mode, and dialogues in a classic smaller textbox at the bottom (ADV).

Panning, perhaps, in addition to the usual transitions would be nice. "Punch" effects, too.
And, multiple layers of images on one screen, but I think this should defniitely possible.

What would be the dependencies of Novelty? Meaning some .dll files, or needing to have Flash installed, or something like that.

Ah, sorry, I'm not in a rush with this, but, I've been just going through engine options It's good to see the project is active.

[sake-bento]

This looks really nice. The progress you've made so far is impressive.

[Sin]

Basically it would be my usual needs - customizing the layout of the buttons, the save slots and configuration sliders and options - maybe have them all in one column, or having one button in each corner, that kind of thing.

Also, textbox placement (middle, left, right, bottom), with the option of changing its placement within a game, so for example narrative occurs in a kind of NVL mode, and dialogues in a classic smaller textbox at the bottom (ADV).

Novelty doesn't make any assumptions that your visual novel will look in a certain way, or that it's even a visual novel. You have full control over the objects look, placement, orientation and behaviour. There's a seperate tool for creating your own objects and modding existing ones (described in an earlier post). Once an object has been created it can be reused over and over and shared with other Novelty users.

Currently there is no support for graphical interfaces for loading and saving games. It's on my list and will be added after the alpha release.

Panning, perhaps, in addition to the usual transitions would be nice. "Punch" effects, too.

Noted.

What would be the dependencies of Novelty? Meaning some .dll files, or needing to have Flash installed, or something like that.

It's a DirectX engine so the only dependency is the latest version of DX9. Possibly one dll for FMOD (sound) but I still haven't decided whether or not I will use it.
When you save your VN as a stand-alone, Novelty will compile all of the assets (images, sounds, etc) to a single file to make it easier to distribute.

[mikey]

Thanks for the info!

When you save your VN as a stand-alone, Novelty will compile all of the assets (images, sounds, etc) to a single file to make it easier to distribute.

Could an OST (ogg format) be excluded from the single file? So that it can be left in its own folder so that people can use the OST for separate hearing.

[Sin]

Could an OST (ogg format) be excluded from the single file? So that it can be left in its own folder so that people can use the OST for separate hearing.

Yes.

[Deji]

.... just letting you know I'm really looking forward to the alpha release to play around with it =3

[Sin]

Today I added a couple of asset import wizards (as requested by you people). One for textures and one for audio.

The texture importer turned out pretty good. You can do batch imports of any number of images and it will produce all the necessary XML and thumbnails and if needed; put it all in a single content package for easy distribution. Large file formats like BMP are automatically converted to PNG and it can also convert animated GIFs into a format that Novelty can use.