Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

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gekiganwing
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Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#1 Post by gekiganwing »

I learned about this recent interactive fiction and visual novel tool from browsing the r/vndevs sub-Reddit. Here is what I currently know about Fungus:

* It's a plugin for the latest free version of Unity 3D, You will need that program and a web browser that supports the Unity Web Player plugin.
* The stories and games that you create with it will work with Windows and Mac computers, as well as Android and iOS devices.
* It's been in development for several months, and is currently up to a beta version of Fungus 2.0.
* It's distributed under a permissive Open Source license.

If you're interested, start reading about the newest release, and then read more of the resource pages. Fungus Games also has a dedicated forum.

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#2 Post by KuroOneHalf »

Also learned of this today. Looks super interesting! Though I'd like to hear from someone who has more experience messing with engines if this is worth looking into as opposed to the other standard picks, and why.

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#3 Post by netravelr »

Well, it's open source and free to use; so definitely worth taking a look at. I'll give it a shot once I get the RenPy version of Culina finished, and report back with my experiences.
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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#4 Post by laiktail »

Original poster on the subreddit here! As mentioned on the topic in the subreddit, I stumbled across Fungus while looking for a free cross-platform VN engine (since Ren'Py didn't support iOS).

I'll also report back here when I do make something with it. It looks really, really promising. I should mention here also that Chris is one of the devs working on it and he's really responsive to suggestions for improvements.

Since it's in Unity, theoretically you'd be able to use it for 3D animations too. It'd probably take a little programming work. Perhaps it could even work with Live2D (which I think is free for indies now?).

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#5 Post by Hazel-Bun »

Will be looking into this for sure! Thanks for giving the heads up :)
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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#6 Post by Morhighan »

So I've been using this and it seems to work very well! I might just stick with it. :D

As for Live2D compatibility, I got this response from someone on the fungus forum.
Hi Morgana!

I downloaded Live2D SDK and played around with their samples to see what would be involved. If you follow their instructions and samples you should be able to get a scene setup with a Live2DModelUnity object in it. To control the animation on that object it looks like you call methods like setParamFloat() to set parameters for the animation.

This is from SimpleModel.cs in their example code
live2DModel.setParamFloat( "PARAM_ANGLE_X" , dragMgr.getX()*30 ) ;

To use Fungus Script to control a Live2D model you would need to write some simple custom Fungus Script commands to wrap the setParamFloat(), etc. calls. These would be very similar to the animation commands we currently provide to control Mecanim animations. e.g. Fungus/Animation/Commands/SetAnimFloat.cs

I would create a new command (e.g. SetL2DParamFloat.cs) modelled on on SetAnimFloat.cs, and have it expose a Live2DModelUnity public variable instead of an Animator, and call Live2DModelUnity.setParamFloat() instead of Animator.SetFloat().

That should give you the ability to set Live2D parameters from Fungus. The process would be similar to expose other ways of controlling a Live2D model.

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#7 Post by laiktail »

Oh! That's Chris, right? He sure does respond fast. Can't wait to use Fungus, how have you found it? :)

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#8 Post by ArachneJericho »

I'm curious. I tried the trial version of the VN Toolkit and wasn't impressed with it compared to Ren'py. Perhaps Fungus will do better.

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#9 Post by vnplayer »

Any maker of games can create an VN. Gam maker, Rpg maker, etc. No too hard to create.
Hard part: Story (good story) and graphics.

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#10 Post by demanrisu »

Hi, I made a 20-25 minute long VN using Fungus. I heartily recommend it for anyone who's new to VN development; it's got really great visual scripting and all of the basic features you'll need apart from save/load. I assume you're meant to handle that with Unity. :) If they can implement that - and a few more sound features - it could become a serious rival to Ren'Py.

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#11 Post by curry nochi rice »

Trying Fungus now for the 2nd day.

Was able to make a five minute test VN after hours of trying to understand how things work. The views feature just make things easier.

It might be a bit hard to create a dating-sim on it though, considering the amount of operations involved.
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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#12 Post by anticulturist »

I got to Fungus at the suggestion of netravelr on Unity thread.
Found it easy to use. Like it a lot actually. Did 2 test projects with.
They have a list of improvements (related to VNs) to come in future versions and requests somewhere at www.fungusgames.com
if you want to check it out.

@netravelr: What custom work you did to extend Fugus functionality, if I may ask, for your project?
I suspect a save/load system, was the first thing.

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#13 Post by netravelr »

anticulturist wrote:I got to Fungus at the suggestion of netravelr on Unity thread.
Found it easy to use. Like it a lot actually. Did 2 test projects with.
They have a list of improvements (related to VNs) to come in future versions and requests somewhere at http://www.fungusgames.com
if you want to check it out.

@netravelr: What custom work you did to extend Fugus functionality, if I may ask, for your project?
I suspect a save/load system, was the first thing.
A number of things, some visual and some not so visual. The specifics allude me now as I've kind of taken it and made it my own. :wink: Save/Load is still on the todo list, but will be done before the game is completed.
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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#14 Post by anticulturist »

netravelr wrote:
anticulturist wrote:I got to Fungus at the suggestion of netravelr on Unity thread.
Found it easy to use. Like it a lot actually. Did 2 test projects with.
They have a list of improvements (related to VNs) to come in future versions and requests somewhere at http://www.fungusgames.com
if you want to check it out.

@netravelr: What custom work you did to extend Fugus functionality, if I may ask, for your project?
I suspect a save/load system, was the first thing.
A number of things, some visual and some not so visual. The specifics allude me now as I've kind of taken it and made it my own. :wink: Save/Load is still on the todo list, but will be done before the game is completed.
Nice, let us know how it goes. Any chance some of the customizations going to find their way to Fungus developers to help Fungus grow, later on? ;)

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Re: Fungus (open source IF / VN program)

#15 Post by SundownKid »

It looks interesting, but I consider myself a "non programmer" and this whole visual scripting thing ironically looks way more complicated than Ren'py script. Do you really have to enter each line of dialogue in a separate container or am I just missing something?

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