Question about how to handle routes

[eraki_nako]

Hi first off I hope this is the right place to post this question.

continuing on, I'm going to be working on a visual novel within the next coming months and I have the basic idea/concept written out. My issue I'm trying to wrap my head around is how I could pull something in this nature off I guess?

The idea is that the game would have a chapter system that goes to chapter 15, the first chapter would be a introduction to the girls of sorts to get a feel for who these characters are. Then before the next chapter begins you would have options to choose from that would help develop each girls route, this would change certain events and interactions throughout the over all main story.

A few issues with this that I can already come up with I feel would be with 12 girls and about 12+ choices to choose for each of them in whatever order this would allow for more then 100+ different routes in some form? Along with that is that the main story will host most of the time with small groups of the over all 12 girls and so it makes me think trying to pull this off would be hard to do in less it purely changes only full on one and one interactions/scenes/events with said girl?

I hope my ramblings make sense, I think partly of what is causing me to wonder how all of this would work out is slightly looking for some sort of template sheet of a visual novel that might come close to what i'm looking to pull off in order to get a visual idea of how the routes branch out or even a video explaining more in detail.

[Taleweaver]

Hi,

you already identified your main problem with your planned project:

Too many characters.

12 girls, each with her own individual story and multiple choices defining each path will quickly lead to a complexity that is almost impossible to handle for one single person. I mean, look at professional projects with that amount of complexity - 999, for example, or Dangan Ronpa - there are large teams of people working on those projects.

Honestly, before you think of organizing character paths, cut down the number of characters to a managable size. If this is your first VN ever, two characters - including the protagonist - is a perfectly managable size. If you already have some experience, tune it down to five or six characters, and then look at how Katawa Shoujo did it - give the player the opportunity to get to know all important people early on, make a few choices that define who the focus will be on, and then write these individual paths.

In order to get a visual feel, try any free flowchart creator out there. Flowcharts are how I organize my multi-path plots.

[SundownKid]

It seems like you just have too many permutations and need to tone down your idea.

You also have to consider if there is any real benefit to having such a massive amount of characters. Beyond a few, it won't increase your audience, or make the game better. So why not have a game with 3 girls and save the next 3 for a sequel instead of trying to have 12 girls at once?

[indoneko]

A game with fully elaborated 100+ endings? that's very ambitious...

I'm not sure about what you really wanted to ask; is it about how to make the visualization of your story branching (like a tree diagram or such)? or is it more about the technical implementation in renpy (like flag based vs point based branching, etc) ?

And I totally agree with Taleweaver and Sundownkid. You might want to start small, and expand it later.

[Lumenue]

Hate to just reiterate, but Taleweaver and Sundownkid are very right: it's tough to make a VN with that many characters, endings, and options. You might end up risking quality for quantity, and if it's your first project, that would be a lot to bite off. I'm trying to work with just three different possible 'routes' (girls) right now, and that's already a pretty big workload, and I'm only going for 1/4 of what you're planning!

The TLDR here is, while you shouldn't let us discourage you by any means, it is very, very difficult to manage that many characters in a VN. Consider downsizing for the time being!

On a diffferent note, there's a lot of easy-to-use flowchart creators available online. I'd drop some links, but it might be easier for you to search them and find one that works well for you!

[eraki_nako]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I came here mostly asking if there's some sort of chart or program to help keep track of routes. Along with that though I figured with 12 characters that it'd end up having plenty of issues on it's own with out even adding in choices that allow for changes to routes, etc. I'll take a look at some of these flow chart creators to figure the routes out more and see what to do about characters in terms of cutting them down.

[Zelan]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I came here mostly asking if there's some sort of chart or program to help keep track of routes. Along with that though I figured with 12 characters that it'd end up having plenty of issues on it's own with out even adding in choices that allow for changes to routes, etc. I'll take a look at some of these flow chart creators to figure the routes out more and see what to do about characters in terms of cutting them down.

If you find yourself wanting to cut down on the number of routes but are attached to some of your existing girls, consider making some of them side characters. That way, they'll still be present in the VN, but you won't have to deal with 12 separate routes. c: Although 12 characters is still a lot for your first VN, so if you can cut some of them out entirely that will make things even easier for you.

[eraki_nako]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I came here mostly asking if there's some sort of chart or program to help keep track of routes. Along with that though I figured with 12 characters that it'd end up having plenty of issues on it's own with out even adding in choices that allow for changes to routes, etc. I'll take a look at some of these flow chart creators to figure the routes out more and see what to do about characters in terms of cutting them down.

If you find yourself wanting to cut down on the number of routes but are attached to some of your existing girls, consider making some of them side characters. That way, they'll still be present in the VN, but you won't have to deal with 12 separate routes. c: Although 12 characters is still a lot for your first VN, so if you can cut some of them out entirely that will make things even easier for you.

Thanks for the advice! I'll keep that in mind and if not I'm not too worried about cutting the cast down in size.

[Parataxis]

I think everyone has said most of what I was going to say so on the topic that the OP actually has, my group uses FreePlane software to organize routes and I personally use post it notes on a wall. (Multiple colors helps but is unnecessary.)