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I'm happy to announce that Otakon has accepted a 3-hour tutorial on Making Visual Novel and Dating Sims with Ren'Py for Otakon 2008. Basically, this is the longest block available for a tutorial, and I plan to use it to first give a history of dating sims/visual novels, then to teach people Ren'Py, then to give people time to try to make their own game with stock art we provide.

Anyhow, if game-maker (defined as someone who has released a game) will be attending Otakon and wants to help out with the tutorial, please let me know. I don't think I have the ability to get passes comped, but it should be a lot of fun.

(Ditto for anyone who wants to carpool from NY to Baltimore, to save gas.)

asfdg

PyTom wrote:(Ditto for anyone who wants to carpool from NY to Baltimore, to save gas.)

Argh! I really want to go, but it's impossible! It's in US right?!

PyTom wrote:then to give people time to try to make their own game with stock art we provide.

the assets on the community wiki?

Who knows, there might be a better game made to rival 'The Question'.

Here's hoping you can sked within the vicinity of J-list zaibatsu and Manga-gamer. I hear their panels were well-attended this past week at AX. Surely we don't want a repeat of the cricket chirping last time there was a Ren'Py presentation.

Good luck everyone who's going. :3 Awww... I would love to go to an anime convention and get taught how to use renpy by Pytom-sensei. Too bad Baltimore's nowhere near where I live... >_>;;

I suspect that most people here would be bored by the tutorial, as the goal will be to get new people into the community, rather than to improve the skills of people who already use Ren'Py. Right now, my idea is to divide the talk into three parts:

1) Generic Visual Novel Stuff - This is where we'd talk about all visual novels in general. Everything from the history of visual novels in the US to things like advice about storywriting, art, etc. I'd love to have a writer and artist join me there, as I'm not sure I retain credibility in either area.

2) Ren'Py Section - Where I walk people through the nitty-gritty of getting things working in Ren'Py. Basically, this will be the talk version of the quickstart manual.

3) Free Time - Where people can play around with Ren'Py, while I walk around helping out.

PyTom wrote:Everything from the history of visual novels in the US to things like advice about storywriting, art, etc. I'd love to have a writer and artist join me there, as I'm not sure I retain credibility in either area.

Just a crazy idea, if they have internet in there and the necessary gear, why not have an artist & writer join via skype? Well, the artist needs the visuals, but maybe there are some programs that can transfer pictures of the artist's desktop as well - like an online conference or something.

Mikan wrote:Do update this post with the exact room location and time when you get the info!

I concur, I'd have to see if I could make time out of my schedule and encourage some friends to visit as a group. Baltimore is definitely within driving distance from where I live.

Pytom wrote:I suspect that most people here would be bored by the tutorial, as the goal will be to get new people into the community, rather than to improve the skills of people who already use Ren'Py.

I think frankly people would be interested in going just to meet some of the other developers on this forums in real life (I certainly am), regardless of whether or not they'd be interested in the actual event, tutorial, and such...
Well sadly I haven't actually made anything yet so there goes any chance of me being possibly useful xD.

mikey wrote:Just a crazy idea, if they have internet in there and the necessary gear, why not have an artist & writer join via skype? Well, the artist needs the visuals, but maybe there are some programs that can transfer pictures of the artist's desktop as well - like an online conference or something.

This actually works better than one would imagine, particularly if you could actually get a video-camera up an running. If not, just use an imagesharing site (or FTP, even faster) toss about URLs over AIM.

zanaikin wrote: This actually works better than one would imagine, particularly if you could actually get a video-camera up an running. If not, just use an imagesharing site (or FTP, even faster) toss about URLs over AIM.

I'd have said almost the exact opposite, actually - that it's a bad idea to rely on something like this.

When everything comes together, sure, it's great. But in my experience something goes wrong - the remote user's computer or 'net connection goes down, the local networking goes down, there isn't enough bandwidth available, etc., etc. too often to want to make it an integral part of a presentation.

Not to mention, it's probably considered somewhat rude to the audience, unless the person teleconferencing in is of such magnitude (or in such ill health) that they won't care.

PyTom wrote:Not to mention, it's probably considered somewhat rude to the audience, unless the person teleconferencing in is of such magnitude (or in such ill health) that they won't care.

Well, not that I'm really advocating the use of Skype, just telling you that it does perform well when you NEED it ( and feed it the resources ), just an idea to use if the other options doesn't end up working out.
Nothing ever works as well as "in person", after all =P

I hope you consider doing this panel for New York Anime Festival in September Tom.
Sadly I'm not going to Otakon this year.
I'm still working on my game but I'm close to finishing.
Only stuff like sounds/music and general menu decorations are what's left on my to do list.

Hinano wrote:I hope you consider doing this panel for New York Anime Festival in September Tom.
Sadly I'm not going to Otakon this year.
I'm still working on my game but I'm close to finishing.
Only stuff like sounds/music and general menu decorations are what's left on my to do list.

I'll consider it. I submitted to NYAF last year, but the panel was rejected. So we'll see what happens next time. Frankly, the Otakon tutorial will be better, because they have a full computer lab.

Good to hear that your game is almost done!


I have until July 31 to get a computer load together for Otakon. I know we can get buy with free character art, backgrounds, music, etc. I'm not sure what we can do story-wise, however... I'm not sure it makes sense to demand attendees come up with a story on the spot. Maybe it makes sense to give them a story or two in non-VN form, and ask them to turn it into a Ren'Py game?

Suggestions appreciated.

I think you might want to provide some story outlines, but tell people to feel free to vary from them if you want. Personally, I might be inclined to provide a few different scenes at different levels of specificity. Something like:

(A) Write a scene for a date at the funfair.

(B) Write a scene for a date at the beach. Misaki and the protagonist chat briefly, then Kyoko appears, and Misaki gets angry with the protagonist for flirting with Kyoko.

(C) Write a menu where Kyoko asks the protagonist what you want for lunch. Provide options "sandwich", "bento", "steak". If the player selects "steak", Kyoko hits the protagonist.

I'd also be inclined to provide template script files, with the init: blocks pre-written, defining images and so on. That way the attendees can get straight into writing script.

One thing is, I'd expect at least some fraction of the attendees to be people who can't write at a moment's notice. So if we could have some canned scripts (like in paragraph form, but written in first person and easy to turn into a game), then that would be nice.