Does anyone know of a VN engine that doesn't require knowledge or experience in coding? One that is visuals-based, where you can click and choose things for a game? (Ren'py looks intimidating, and I think the learning curve for that one is too high for me.)
I came across Novelty, but is that the only one out there?
Well if you can convince the right programmer, it wouldn't be too hard to make one.
VN engines are probably the easiest kind of engine to build as they don't have to rely on any sort of optimization, at least for most, there are of course exceptions to this rule but if your going to build something that advanced, its better to just code it yourself from scratch.
I don't think that generally there are many engines that require 0 knowledge of programming though due to the fact that it would limit the use of the engine a lot.
Sorry I haven't been able to give much direct information about the topic but yeah, you'd be best off getting a coder to do the coding part for you rather than going for something pure GUI based.
The only two that I know of are Belle and Novelty. Belle is still being developed, and does not have as many features as Novelty. Support is pretty much limited to the person who is writing it. It shows great promise, since it produces VNs in HTML format, which can be played on Windows, MAC, and Linux systems.
Novelty has been around for several years. I'm not sure if the developer is still working on it, but it has a number of users and you can get lots of tips and information by searching their web forum. There are a number of folks who use it and provide support.
I use Novelty because I HATE writing code (yes, I know how to do it, and my prior job required a lot of code writing). I been able to make all of my VNs without using Novelty's scripting language. The major downside to Novelty is that VNs are playable only on Windows systems.
EDIT: Most folks here use Ren'py, so you'll see a bias toward it. PyTom is the developer.
Last edited by fleet on Mon May 12, 2014 3:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Some of my visual novels are at http://www.the-new-lagoon.com. They are NSFW
Poorly done hand-drawn art is still poorly done art. Be a Poser (or better yet, use DAZ Studio 3D) - dare to be different.
chocoberrie wrote:Does anyone know of a VN engine that doesn't require knowledge or experience in coding? One that is visuals-based, where you can click and choose things for a game? (Ren'py looks intimidating, and I think the learning curve for that one is too high for me.)
Making a visual novel always requires programming - coding - regardless of what the tool used to make it is. Some programming languages are visual, why others are textual. It turns out that 50 or so years of experience shows that textual languages are the best for medium to large programs - the world is written in textual languages, while graphical languages such as labview and scratch are oddities.
While I think not every language is perfect for everyone, I do suggest looking at the quickstart:
Good luck! I hope you have fun making a visual novel.
Some of my visual novels are at http://www.the-new-lagoon.com. They are NSFW
Poorly done hand-drawn art is still poorly done art. Be a Poser (or better yet, use DAZ Studio 3D) - dare to be different.
I just want to give my 2 cents about this debate of text-based vs graphical-based engines.
Visual novels and other similar games are heavy on writting (dialogues), so a text-based engine would be more suited for these tasks. However visual novels are also visual (like the name implies) and to manipulate visual elements easily and quickly we usually use graphical tools. We don't see people editing images with text editors, why? Because nobody is interested in that, it would be less productive. The same applies to the visual part of visual novels, it's less productive to manipulate visuals through text.
So how do we solve this dilema? In my opinion, we need something between the two, not something that's just plain text and not something that's just point and click. That's what i'm trying to achieve with Belle, by the way.
