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In fact the time loop is not in Tsukihime, but in it's official fan disk sequel, Kagetsu Toya.

The innovation of Tsukihime is partially in the gameplay and partially in the writings, because the game progression create some what-if branches (like any usual bishoujo VN games) but it keep explaining and revealing the background of the whole story in an accurate and precise way (meaning some infos gathered in one path don't collide with others infos from others path).
At the end of the game, every path/endings can be considered as valids (even the game over and death scenes show something new) and you have a tradeoff ending (to understand everything you must "sacrifice" some main characters for others which seemed less importants).

TM's 1st commercial game Fate/Stay Night can be considered as a duplicate of Tsukihime (even his fun disk is a copy gameplay wise of Kagetsu Toya) but in a more refined way.

DaFool>> I am just questioning the point of trying to match commercial game specs - on the one hand I understand that fans of the fanmade Western ren'ai will want more exposure and respect and that you can prove yourself with "quality" titles (largely though, this means high production values) - on the other hand if someone feels that the games aren't good enough, it shouldn't always be a problem on the creator's side, it's also in the audience.

From the three games mentioned, I only played Narcissu, and production-wise (again, not to upset Narcissu fans, production-wise), it felt like driving your Rolls Royce without the paint - you're not fooling anyone, you HAVE the money to paint it, even if I can see the point of a minimalist approach. It's even more apparent in the second part of the story that has the minidemo out. It's like having AAA resources and making a B-title out of it - but B-titles should be done by B-teams to feel like B-titles.

I can see the point of FSN and Higurashi though, it's obviously for sale, but since it's not a high-budget title, that 3-character term for innovation may well apply and make sense - and that's okay, because if you want to sell it, you need to reach as many people as possible - but since you are a doujin team, you have that more freedom for innovation, at the expense of truly pro presentation that needs money/time/polish and thus needs to perform really well - and the producers are never inclined to take chances, they go for sure shots. If they are good producers, that is.

It's a simple equation, really. And it can't really be broken. The more money or professionalism, the less innovation. Some games are able to strike a good balance, in rare cases teams with the resources manage to produce an innovative title - but for true, undiluted fanworks, you need the true fan element, as much as you need true professionalism for killer moe (which, honestly, is the best). There's just no other way.

Moe is tricky to define, especially if you'd like to extend it to male characters as well.

It's odd, I just started playing the Narcissu 2nd Side demo, and I'm just not sure what to make of it yet ... I'll have to give it a little longer before deciding, though. But, the first thing that strikes me, is maybe the author is trying a little too hard with Setsumi instead of letting it flow.

mikey > Type-Moon is now a commercial company, unlike Higurashi's team which I think is still under the doujin circle label.
And don't get me wrong, but there is truly a difference of quality in term of professionalism between FSN and Higurashi for the packaging (only). You can see the whole work done when you think that FSN is 1,7 Go with zero voice acting (FHA is 2,6 Go too). TM's products are definitly not low cost budget.

Edit: after some wikidigging, I can confirm my infos :

07th Expansion (セブンスエクスパンション, Sebunsu Ekusupanshon?) is an amateur Japanese company that has been known to make doujin video games. They started out drawing for the trading card game Leaf Fight, but they are most famous for creating Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Their last release as doujin makers will be the fandisc of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni in December 2006. After that, 07th Expansion will transition from a dojin soft maker to a commercial organization.

That was in fact my point - if you want to become a commercial company, you are well advised to target a specific audience. It's okay to start small and amateurish, to start simple - but when your ambitions get higher, you go commercial, you'll need to adjust your planning and design. You can't "afford", for instance, to give a beginning artist a chance, because your sales would go down. I believe there are many doujin groups who want to go this path - start as amateurs, skill up (that's a new word... ^_^) and then sell the games just like in the TypeMoon success story.

Also, the discussion may boil down to what's doujin and what's amateur. Technically, At Summer's End and Narcissu can be called doujin, but only ASE is amateur. Maybe there's some rules as to when you're called a doujin circle (what exactly is that? - I imagine it's nothing more spectacular than your usual gamedev group) in Japan, but if you look at the actual works, you can clearly see what's what.

A good example here is Hanako Games - amateur, yes. Commercial, yes. So it could be argued that Narcissu (being FREE and being done by what's called a doujin circle) is somehow more in the free project spirit - but in fact, Narcissu doesn't have the amateurish charm of HG's games (specifically Summer Schoolgirls), even though those games are for sale.

Generally though, if you want to produce a truly high-quality title you need a reliable team, you need to make them work, you need to organize the marketing and you need some basic finances - if you really want to make a pro (or even pro-ish) game, you need to have an office, working hours and if you're lucky, you'll nail the game together in one year with say a staff of 10 people. It's a wild guess, but any commercial production that's at least an A-title takes well over a year (or two, or three, or more... depends on whether you're making things from scratch) - and if you are to make detailed backgrounds to name one example (like some expensive Japanese titles), that takes time. Just like everything else.

Anyway, unless you have a team like that, chacnces are slim that you're going to be able to make it. You need to sit in the same office, you need to be a true team. Only then can you work effectively. It's a bit offtopic now, but let me just say that I believe you CAN make a pro game with an internet squad - but it will take long years. I believe (to get to the original topic), that Flight Of Twilight can be done in a very professional manner - but it will take A LOT of time.

And that's the thing as far as I go, four or so years into one project, just so I can say "look, it's possible", is not an investment for me. I tend to have a lot of ideas, so I will want to make a reasonable presentation for them and then move on. So maybe it's a different approach to making the games. But it works for me, I have fun, I'm happy when there are people who don't require anything more expensice, and so I don't worry much about popularity or sales. In the long term, it's either passion or money that will keep you here, making niche games like these. It's never going to be money for me, because it just can't be - I have a job, a life and this is what I do in my free time - and it works, so I'm not changing anything. Personally. So I'd say instead of trying to push or move on, why not let the scene develop? It's clearly inspired by the Japanese games, but it can have its own path.

OMG! a long post!

Adorya, what does Go mean? 1000K yen?

PyTom wrote:...But I'm less interested in selling free games at cons, and more interested in sponsoring the development of commercial games... well, I don't know what I want, really. Other then for there to be more good games.)

Put it this way, we already have people with the right talent on this board. It is feasible to expand ATP projects to include more people so it can produce longer games.

However, and I agree with mikey on this, sometimes we do not want to put too much effort on an idea, which after all, should be a fun endeavor. Most of us have yet to complete our own games, and you can see the diversity of ideas that are found in people wanting to write their own scenarios. Sure, we can form a doujinshi group (most probably under Lemma Soft or ATP brand), but as of now we are still ironing out the ways of working together...as most projects tend to be more of "Here's the script...I need art / I need music / I need a programmer" rather than a "This is a scenario we all came up with".

And frankly, I don't really have much time to play full-length commercial games. Thus I have even less time to make one. Its probably true that visual novels are the easiest types of games to develop for, but it's still hard work which people realize once people start to work on them...that's why there are still less than a 100 completed OELVNs to this day.

So the question is, do you already consider yourselves as a doujinshi circle? Will you consider being part of a doujinshi circle? And to reach the transition point to professional level, it is necessary to create a hit full-length game. Is anyone here thinking of doing that? I know I definitely am not prepared at this point.[/b]

edit: notice this was posted almost simultaneously as the message above. Though some ideas are now redundant, I will not edit this post anymore.

Dafool > I was pointing the size of the game (Go for Giga Octet) which is the proof that this game has a lot of content and don't rely on voice acting files to appear "big". Most dating game are 1+ Go in size but with 75% acting file and 25% game content
Lot of data in = lot of work = not low budget work (mostly)

mikey > Officially, the only difference between a doujin circle and a commercial company is the distribution network :

In Japan the term is used to refer to amateur self-published works, including but not limited to manga, novels, fan guides, art collections, music and video games. Some professional artists participate as a way to publish material outside the regular publishing industry.

You can notice that an artist can be a professional and in a doujin circle (it is hard to manage though).

Yes, most doujin circle are doing doujin products for fun, but there are some who aim for professional debut and recognition as a professional company (you can start to sell your products in publishing industry but if your products are "bad" you will still be labelled as an "amateur").
That is what the Comicket for in japan : sell well, get popular and you will be able to shine in higher ground, otherwise this will be quite difficult (I didn't see an internet only doujin circle gain commercial company recognition yet, you have to meet your fans someday).

Another exemple of doujin quality that equal and nearly surpass commercial games : Melty Blood for PC, made by Type Moon and French Bread which is still a doujin circle. Of course, the making was not made easy, even FB leader said that it was a pita to finish this game, with lot of restriction/leading from TM (for the arcade release he didn't want to work back on it but fans "forced" him to), but still at the end it was possible.

You can do a commercial game quality wise in a doujin way, but I agree with you that you have to work a bit more in order to achieve your objective (*cough* O3 *cough*).

Pytom > I read from you somewhere else that you Ren'py could have the ambition to evolve from a VN engine game to a multimedia Flash-like presentation engine (as Blade state to be or...Powerpoint? ). Are you more inclined to that or do you better consider the game publishing company view?

DaFool : Go = Gigaoctet = Gigabyte.

I think "octet" is french... or european maybe ?

Pytom> Yes "europeen" wise but it is a bad habit I need to get rid of

I think I bumped into that thread also, where PyTom thought about keeping Ren'Py as the full-featured engine developed for games in mind, while a stripped down version called "VNE" can be marketed to companies who want an alternative to Powerpoint and Flash as presentation tools. That way you just have to develop for the fans, without having to get embarrassed explaining geek terms to the mainstream.

Adorya, thanks for the explanations. Combined with mikey's definition of amateur, it all makes sense. So technically, all games here are doujinshi. I mean, no one here uses an established publisher. What games are amateur are subjective, though almost unilaterally O3 is the most professional so far.

Its almost funny, then, how the most simple of gameplays can take up the most gigs of space. I've been wondering for a while why some of the galges are the size of DVD isos, like you mentioned I also thought this was mostly due to the excessive voice acting, but apparently most of the commercial ones are epic in length, even if they're not really epic in story. That's a lot of CG. And even the text....tens, hundreds? of megabytes of text! That's insane, even my senior thesis projects didn't consume that much content.

Does anyone know of any other epic-length Japanese doujinshi visual novel games? Or is it just that what we were given by the altogether festivals are the lengths most translators are willing to work with?

I don't know if I'm now biting more than I can chew, but this has motivated me to expand my project to 80 minutes scope. The reasonings are simple:

1.) I'd have to do the character drawings, BGs, and game structure from scratch anyway, which will take up the bulk of work. The actual length can just be filled out with more writing to extend the pace. So just start with the same outline as I had before, but flesh out each section more.

2.) I'm really relying on the reusability aspect of visual novels that you can't really use on manga and which are only used on monster-of-the-day anime. So just like in animation production, preproduction and planning takes the bulk. If the production procedure is fleshed out well--i.e. using lots of reusable elements, then the actual production will move by quickly.
That means that quadrupling the length of a product doesn't mean quadrupling the development time. It's like having kids (lol). The first ones a pain, but the next, third, fourth, etc., get progressively easier.

3.) Most people nowadays expect at least more than an hour's worth of entertainment, and sadly this applies to noncommercial works as well.

4.) This may be the technical limit of a single person project, or maybe even a team project. I definitely won't want to work more than a year on this, and if I have to work that long, the product be at least movie length. Many movies are made in a year anyway.

Forgive me for ranting on and on, but this discussion is important to me because it's exploring the 'state of the industry'. I believe, like PyTom mentioned in another forum, we are now at critical mass, and we do have the power to determine which direction the OELVN will be going.

On a side note, the script in most Bishoujo games is not as big as you think, from 250 kb to 1 Mb in Notepad (the embedded script of the Visual Novel Ayame is a bit less than 1 Mb), exception of course with Tsukihime with 10Mb, that make a book of 1900+ pages, rest is coding (Lord of the ring is 1200 pages and a Pern novel is around 400 Kb in pure text).

Voice acting take the most of the space in a VN, because of the recording quality (even in ogg the total size of voiced line is quite huge for a typical Visual Novel), then the CG. You need also to take acount of the dynamic elements, like portrait and such.

Imo what take the most time is not the CGs or the coding, but it is how you want your story to progress and the numerous changes/tests in story direction.

Okay, some responses. (And perhaps I will eventually move some of this over to GMC or Ren'Py, since it's getting off-topic.)

Apart from making the "official" name of Ren'Py "The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine", I'm not currently doing much with the vne idea. I might do it if someone expressed interest, however. And I'd be happy to work with people who are interested in applying Ren'Py to non-traditional domains, like education, training, and other things.

I can see many applications in multimedia, and the like... but at the same time, the fact that Ren'Py games are programs rather than documents will probably limit their acceptance in a corporate setting. I can deal with that, my goal is to make Ren'Py as good as it can be.

I'm sort of sitting back and seeing how people use Ren'Py. I just make the paintbrushes. I've decided that I will not sell the Ren'Py engine, ever, and that I don't mind if people make money with it, even without sharing any with me. I'm not in Ren'Py for the money, I'm in it because it's my hobby, and it's a very rewarding hobby at that. And as the number of contributors to Ren'Py grows, I don't want the issue of money to drop a wedge between me and the community. I'm planning on taking down the paypal link on the website when I update it next. (It's not like anyone's ever used it.)

I reserve the right to make money consulting on projects, or by sponsoring the development of games, and selling them. In the latter case, I think it's a net win to the community... as a game that otherwise wouldn't get made, gets made.

I have accepted a donation in my name in lieu of payment for consulting on an upcoming game. That being said, I'll usually (always) help with advice and debugging for free, since I want games to be good. But I probably wouldn't integrate a game that is totally uninteresting to me, like BL games. (However, I probably would have worked on the upcoming game for free.)

===============

In the other issue, octet is a precise word for byte, as there are some (archaic, thankfully) platforms in which bytes are not 8 bits. (Or at least, words are not 8 bits, and there's no sub-word addressing.) I've never seen Go instead of GB, but GiB is somewhat popular, as it makes the fact that it's 2^30 rather then 10^9 clear.

Thanks for the insights on the doujinshi.

Adorya wrote:That is what the Comicket for in japan : sell well, get popular and you will be able to shine in higher ground, otherwise this will be quite difficult (I didn't see an internet only doujin circle gain commercial company recognition yet, you have to meet your fans someday).

Hmmm, but that's the problem - Comiket is Japan. I'd be perfectly happy to simply meet some of my former/current team members sometimes. But they are scattered all around the world... the US is huge, not to mention it's overseas, Europe is relatively big and has no real central anime event, let alone anything resembling Comiket... there's just no tradition. That's why such an approach would be very difficult - organizers usually have trouble filling anime conventions, having to bundle them with sci-fi and fantasy things. And it's extremely difficult to find people who are even remotely interested in visual novels, let alone doujin ones, let alone fanmade, let alone in making one. There's a handful per country, if even that.

DaFool wrote: That's insane, even my senior thesis projects didn't consume that much content.

Adorya wrote:On a side note, the script in most Bishoujo games is not as big as you think, from 250 kb to 1 Mb in Notepad (the embedded script of the Visual Novel Ayame is a bit less than 1 Mb), exception of course with Tsukihime with 10Mb, that make a book of 1900+ pages, rest is coding (Lord of the ring is 1200 pages and a Pern novel is around 400 Kb in pure text).

Well, I often wonder why people say ah, the game has "only" 8 hours of play... I think that's a very reasonable for a VN. Sure big novels take longer to read through, but big novels are usually on paper, and often they NEED the extra length to make up for the lack of visuals - a movie can draw you in with all the scenery and music in a matter of seconds - a book needs time and more time. It's not bad, it's a characteristic of the book as a medium - that's why I think it's rather pointless trying to match the length of a VN to that of a fully-featured novel - in an example, a VN could tell the story of Lord Of The Rings in a shorter time than the book.

DaFool wrote:Does anyone know of any other epic-length Japanese doujinshi visual novel games? Or is it just that what we were given by the altogether festivals are the lengths most translators are willing to work with?

Well, I've become quite fond of this "one hour or less" format. There are 40-minute anime OAVs, so there must be a place for a game of such length.

DaFool wrote:2.) I'm really relying on the reusability aspect of visual novels that you can't really use on manga and which are only used on monster-of-the-day anime. So just like in animation production, preproduction and planning takes the bulk. If the production procedure is fleshed out well--i.e. using lots of reusable elements, then the actual production will move by quickly.

From experience, I can say this is true. Good planning is the key, don't mind spending a week or more just thinking about it - thinking is easy and a good preparation will save you a lot of trial-error work, especially in the design aspect.

DaFool wrote:That means that quadrupling the length of a product doesn't mean quadrupling the development time.

If the product is linear. If you quadruple the number of romanceable characters, the number of interactions grows... what's the word... quadratically?

DaFool wrote:It's like having kids (lol). The first ones a pain, but the next, third, fourth, etc., get progressively easier.

You mean making them, or raising them? ^_^

DaFool wrote:3.) Most people nowadays expect at least more than an hour's worth of entertainment, and sadly this applies to noncommercial works as well.

Well, look at denzil's project, Adagio, etc... it's not always the length. As far as I go, I am happy with 20+ minutes. That's perfectly acceptable as a full-featured production. Everything under that I classify as short production.

PyTom wrote:(And perhaps I will eventually move some of this over to GMC or Ren'Py, since it's getting off-topic.)

It is

PyTom wrote:I have accepted a donation in my name in lieu of payment for consulting on an upcoming game. That being said, I'll usually (always) help with advice and debugging for free, since I want games to be good. But I probably wouldn't integrate a game that is totally uninteresting to me, like BL games. (However, I probably would have worked on the upcoming game for free.)

With the new community-based direction, the wiki manual and all, it should become easier to find the basic info yourself - less consulting/support work for you as the ultimate authority - on the other hand, we should keep the general friendliness of the forum, no matter how basic the question is. Now there are more and more people who can answer basic questions. But of course, there are others, such as myself, who let *others* convenietly do the programming ^_^. Oh well.

And I hope no one has made a new post when I hit the preview button, I had to edit this over and over.

The team meeting problem is a big one indeed, I know by experience in MMORPG that those kind of meeting can only happen once a year, through just causual IRL meeting to company fest, it is like a planning holidays and it cost a lot if you want to meet your friends from far.

Well, for the LOTR novels, the movies couldn't describe half of the books if I remember them well, there were a lot of "feature" that got cut in the process.
I still think you can fit a novel in a VN game, after all, the 1st VNs were book with causual images from time to time (I read in a magazine I lost that the very first one was a police story one in the 80s).

Imo, the big help for newbie would be plenty of examples for every function and the demo is not enough. Maybe we could start a "tips & trick thread" and post what we use or found.

Guess we are now waaaaayyyyy off topic XD

People have been talking a bit about size vs. length. In novels/stories publishing, the count is not bytes but words. So, a short-short story is less than 1200 words. A short story ranges around 3-12,000 words. A novella is anything between 12,000 and about 60,000; after that it becomes a (slim) novel. Big fantasy epics like George R.R. Martin's "Clash of Kings" or Tom Clancy books run around 2-500,000 words per book.

Generally, novellas don't sell (won't fit in magazines, too small to stand alone) but are easiest to write (an idea that's too complicated for a short story but too fluffy for a novel; either that or a poorly-edited short story). Short stories look easy but are actually very tricky to do well. Novels are like marriage---you're with one for 1-3 years, on average.

Movie scripts are counted instead in pages. Most screenplays aim to be about 120 pages. This means about a page a minute (mostly-double-spaced Courier 12), and, as weird as it sounds, that rule of thumb is amazingly accurate. Most studios are looking for 100-120 page screenplays for submission.

There are economic/physical reasons for these lengths. Movies are bordered by the bathroom limit on one end (2.5 hours is as long as you can expect an audience to go without peeing) and the $9 admission cost on the other, they have to be about 2 hours. Books need to be long enought to sell individually and short enough to fit on binding (George R.R. Martin tried to submit a 1200 page manuscript and was surprised to discover they just can't bind that with a regular press). Short stories have to fit in a magazine alongside other articles/stories.

VNs seem to be counted either in length-to-ending or length-to-seeing-all-endings (or at least I'm-done). I'd imagine "lines" being a pretty straightforward calculation---10-15 seconds per line. Then you find your longest path, add some rule of thumb (say, 25-50% of that per major branch in your story) and you've got some idea of length.