Page 1 of 1

Pain points of current VN engines? What makes an engine attractive to artists?

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 3:13 pm
by IamJay
Hi,

I'm a programmer who is developing a custom engine that I plan to use to run my upcoming VN and/or dating sim projects.
I'm mostly new to VNs and the VN community.

Although I have my own vision of which features I would like to see implemented, I'm also curious what features/characteristics in my engine would allow me to attract artists to collaborate with me on creating games with this technology.

Are there any pain points that artists and creators in general face with current available platforms?
Would love to learn more about this subject.

Re: Pain points of current VN engines? What makes an engine attractive to artists?

Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 5:18 am
by Elsa Kisiel
Is that question aiming at game's programmer? Or at writer/visual artist/sound artist?

Re: Pain points of current VN engines? What makes an engine attractive to artists?

Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 2:12 pm
by IamJay
Could be for anyone, but the focus is what makes an engine good or bad regarding visuals/graphics.

Re: Pain points of current VN engines? What makes an engine attractive to artists?

Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:36 pm
by fleet
I think I understand what you're asking. Your engine should be able to accommodate multiple video formats (for example wmv, mp4, avi,ogg).

Re: Pain points of current VN engines? What makes an engine attractive to artists?

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2019 2:57 am
by puppetbomb
I don't think artists are motivated to work with someone based on the engine they use.

(Though I have refused to work with a client when they asked me to work in GIMP.)

Re: Pain points of current VN engines? What makes an engine attractive to artists?

Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 5:45 pm
by GNVE
Idk if this is what you want to know but what drew me to the Renpy platform was that is was very easy to use and to create simple (or even moderately complex) visual novels. This includes that it is based on Python. I tried and failed quite a number of times to learn a programming language. Python is the first I'm able to stick to because it's tutorials are great. The language itself is easy read and write (no fluff I'd almost say it's wysiwyg) without giving up any power in what you can create.
Renpy is also quite feature complete so you can have the most basic novel with all features you'd want knocked out in an evening if you'd have to. As a noob in programming that is just awesome.

As a player I like Renpy because of easy controls, quick saving (RMB), skipping dialogue and the ability go back to an earlier point in the game with the scroll-wheel. Generally other oft-used (visual novel) engines lack one or more features. A game made for instance in RPG maker I'll generally skip because (i think) the controls are awful (for a VN or otherwise).
(But tbh I think a lot of Renpy games would be better if they railroaded the player a little more rather than trying to create an open world and ending up with a lifeless world and a player who can't progress without a walkthrough half the time.)
And Unity works well but it takes a lot of work (seen on WIPs I've tried) to get it up to a level where Renpy starts.
What I'm trying to say here is don't forget about the player if you want someone to play your VN as well.

Re: Pain points of current VN engines? What makes an engine attractive to artists?

Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2020 4:56 pm
by briarbun
I like renpy because there's a wealth of support and a wealth of cookbooks for mini games and making your game more complicated.

I like tyranobuilder/tyranoscript because it can handle live2D.

I started out with tyranobuilder because of it's "so easy a monkey could do it" layout. It let me dip my feet into game making when I was starting at zero. When I felt I had grown too big for it, I switched to renpy, because good support and cookbooks are something I value. Now I'm considering going back to tyranoscript (probably not tyranobuilder though because it's very slow to build in as a trade off for ease-of-understanding) because it can handle live2d, which is something I value.

So I guess the biggest thing to think about in a brand new engine would be: why would someone pick your engine? What does it bring to the table? File types? Ease of language? Speed? Built in mini game options? Export options? What makes it special?

Re: Pain points of current VN engines? What makes an engine attractive to artists?

Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2020 12:39 pm
by uyjulian
It just depends on how much you want to outsource. There are commercial companies that will do the engine and porting work for you.