Engines for a Low-Res VN

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basil
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Engines for a Low-Res VN

#1 Post by basil »

Hey everyone!

I recently found the LowRezJam for 2021 on itch.io, which is based around making a game with 64x64 resolution. I was immediately interested making an otome entry for it, and even if I don't join this particular jam, I like the idea of making a low res (think 64-256px) visual novel in the future! That being said, I don't know what kind of engine would be best for a game like this.

For any other VN I would probably use Ren'py, but I'm worried I might have to fight with it to get it to work correctly at such a small size. Pico-8 and GB studio are specialized for low res and have some cool limitations to play around with, but aren't specifically designed for VN's so I might have to do some digging for vn specific tools and resources. I'm sure Godot and Unity and other common game dev softwares would also be able to do this, but might have a much higher learning curve. For the record, I've taken some intro to programming courses before but am very much a beginner, and haven't tackled the coding aspect of making a game before (just contributed art).

So, I guess I just wanted to hear people's thoughts on this! Have you made a low res visual novel before, and if you did what program did you use to make it? Does anyone know some good resources for making VN's in Pico-8 or GB studio? Are there any other factors to consider in a program when trying to do low res work?

Thanks!

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shin.e.d
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Re: Engines for a Low-Res VN

#2 Post by shin.e.d »

If you have your heart set on using a particular engine then maybe you should go for it with whichever one you'd like to use. Game dev should be fun. :)

I've prototyped pixel art games in Ren'py so maybe I can give some critique on using this engine. Though I don't have any experience with Pico-8 or GB Studio.

1. Some of Ren'py's developer tools have text too big for tiny resolutions...
The biggest issue is Ren'py's exception handler and other stuff sometimes has huge text in tiny games making it unreadable. So if you make a mistake in the code, you might not be able to read what the computer said the mistake was. Though one workaround for that is to read the traceback.txt in the game folder instead.


2. Ren'py needs to be set up for pixel art
Pixel art in Ren'py looks blurry by default. That's because its default filter is meant for non-pixel art images which look good with a slight blur called anti-aliasing.

Luckily there is a feature in Ren'py to switch to nearest-neighbor filtering. It makes pixel art look a lot better! Nearest-neighbor filtering is set by putting this line below in to the game code.

Code: Select all

## This code enables nearest-neighbor filtering (Upscales pixel art better)
define config.nearest_neighbor = True
3. Ren'py's GUI
The GUI template that new Ren'py games have at start might not work well at very low res so it might have to be made from scratch. But that's the same for most engines that don't make the GUI for you, Ren'py is kind of unique in that it gives every game a working GUI at start so devs don't have to make one.


4. Making the text style match the art style
Ren'py's text looks very smooth and sharp at any res which is normally a good thing, but it clashes with any low res art in non-pixel art games.

For pixel art games, changing Ren'py's text to a pixel art style is kind of tricky. You'd first have to find a pixel font that looks good at 64x64, then copy/paste it in, and adjust it's styling in the game code. How to code it differs depending on how the game is set-up.

Here's a link to a test game that's 64x64. -Link- Most of the code is just copy-pasted from my pixel art game prototypes I had lying around gathering dust. It might be a good starting point to maybe make a game with it. :D (It can be edited directly with the Ren'py launcher.)

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