Question About Best Approach to Character Creation

[raynetempura]

Hello! I am new to Ren'py and making visual novels, but I am trying to learn. I am making a psychological horror/suspense sci-fi visual novel about a crew of Responders who stumble upon what appears to be a derelict alien ship and investigate it.

I really want to be able to give the player as much character customization as possible, but my biggest questions concern what is feasible so I know what instructions to give my artist. I am quite sure I am probably overreaching for my first project, but I got very excited and am really striving for quality, so I was wondering what was the best approach to a character creator. I've been reading through as much information as I can, but some of it is very confusing.

From what I can tell, I need to create a LiveComposite of all the parts to convey the various poses and expressions for all the various characters, but how does one do this with a character creator to make the base composite from which other composites will be built off of?

Also, the method I found to organize the folder structure and the code to build a composite was to have, for example, skintone1 and then a plethora of subfolders of all the various poses, expressions, eye colors, etc inside. And then skintone2, and again have subfolders of all the options. But I'm wondering if there is a better way to organize. If I wanted, say, 6 skin tones, do I need to have 6 skintone folders with 6 copies of all the subfolders for each?

In this way, LiveComposite seems like it would also work for CGs when it comes to having variations, although I suppose I'm a little confused as to how to finagle it, to be honest.

Anyway, any information you could impart or point me in the direction of, I would greatly appreciate it. I already know I'm in way over my head, so if that's the case, feel free to tell me that simplicity is key.

[namastaii]

I actually just barely released a code (I was going to use this sprite and layers for my own project but I decided to go a different route) so you can use this code as an example to look off of. Also you can take a look at the folder structure. You shouldn't need to have that many subfolders. My example is pretty simple.

viewtopic.php?f=52&t=56853

(you're not overreaching even for your first project. I haven't actually finished my first project because I keep redesigning the game but I went all out for my first project and some people can handle that. Just do you )

[raynetempura]

Thank you so much, Namastaii! That looks amazing and will absolutely be so helpful! I appreciate you providing that for the me and the community! And for your encouragement. I really hope it goes well and I wish you all the luck on your own project as well!!