Metis - Cross-platform engine

[Sailerius]

I thought this might be of interest to the people here, as well as a good way to solicit feedback from fellow VN developers.

I'm currently working on my latest title, Vacant Sky: Awakening and, in order to offer it to the widest possible audience, we began work on our own engine for it. Although Ren'py runs on PC, Mac, Linux, and Android, we wanted to provide support for other platforms as well, including iOS, Ouya, Windows Metro, Windows Phone, and PS Vita. This isn't just a distant pipe dream - we just released the first game made with the Metis engine on Ouya.

Although Metis is a general 2D game engine, we're developing a plugin, Metis.NVL, which provides VN-specific functionality and makes it as easy as possible to author VNs. Since there's no other VN engine with nearly as much cross platform portability, I thought you guys might be interested in it and also be able to offer some suggestions on features. What features do you want to see in a VN engine? What do other engines do wrong that you want to see done differently? What do they do right?

And, more importantly, would anyone be interested in using it?

[netravelr]

Well, I figured I'd have to roll my own VN engine in Unity. If you're working on something like this, I would love to use it; and perhaps help with implementation depending on what you're coding it in. Can't wait to see what you're going to do with it!

[fleet]

Does it have a graphical interface (similar to Visual Novelty http://www.visualnovelty.com/ or the Alpha build of Belle http://www.nongnu.org/belle/), or does it require coding like Ren'py?
I'd be interested if it is free and doesn't require coding.

[Sailerius]

Well, I figured I'd have to roll my own VN engine in Unity. If you're working on something like this, I would love to use it; and perhaps help with implementation depending on what you're coding it in. Can't wait to see what you're going to do with it!

It runs on Mono/.NET. Metis is a library which has several plug-and-play backends (currently XNA and Monogame, hoping to maybe have a Unity backend in the future).

Does it have a graphical interface (similar to Visual Novelty http://www.visualnovelty.com/ or the Alpha build of Belle http://www.nongnu.org/belle/), or does it require coding like Ren'py?
I'd be interested if it is free and doesn't require coding.

It will not have a graphical interface out of the box because it's more work to create a GUI than it is to create the engine and the engine is the top priority. The coding is similar to Ren'py and NVList, designed to be easy enough that anyone can pick it up. That being said, it's not impossible that a plugin could be made to play Belle games, since Belle games are exported as JSON files.

[Funnyguts]

Would Ren'Py games not work on Ouya? It's already Android-based...

[SundownKid]

An engine that works on those platforms would be fantastic, if it had the same functionality, that is.

[Sailerius]

An engine that works on those platforms would be fantastic, if it had the same functionality, that is.

Ren'py is a lot more mature, so it's going to take a while to support all of the same functionality. What would you say the most important functionality is?

[netravelr]

I'd say besides being able to display graphics; dialogue, choices, and save files are the must have features. Being able to support variables would be a good next step (if statements and the like).

[AxemRed]

I like to use VNDS as a baseline of functionality.

VNDS feature list:
- Displays static backgrounds/sprites
- Simple dissolve effects when images change
- Text with configurable text speed and a simple text log
- Choices
- Music and sound effects
- Skip mode
- Simple variables/branching support (=,+,- operators on int/string)
- Variables can be used in text/choices/other commands
- Jump between scripts/labels
- Save support, including support for data shared between save files (route unlock flags, etc.)

[Sailerius]

Ah, good call about referencing VNDS. Yeah, those are all pretty essential features. I can't imagine not supporting them.