Subarashi! Productions Visual Novel Demo Loader

[Guest]

ADULTS ONLY
AS SEEN ON 4CHAN, DEADFROG AND TOKYOTOSHO!

Mr. PyTom, thank you for Renpy.

As my very first torrent, I present the Subarashi! Productions Visual Novel Demo Loader as created with Renpy. It consists of information about various upcoming projects as well as demonstrating the power of the Renpy program. Please give it a try and let me know what you think of it or any problems here or at subarashi_productions@yahoo.com

Over 150 downloads in less than two days, so hopefully we'll also get some new Renpy users and some traffic to other Renpy games.

http://www.deadfrog.us/index.php?act=entry&id=6670

http://rapidshare.de/files/27522216/subarashi.rar.html

[PyTom]

First, let me point out to people reading this that this is 18+, totally not safe for work.

I have two comments...

The first is to ask that you run lint on your game before releasing it. This will find common errors, and suggest how you can fix them. Full instructions for releasing a game are at:

http://www.bishoujo.us/trac/wiki/ReleasingRenpyGames

Please read this carefully and follow it to ensure the quality of future game releases.

The second issue is that I ask that you do not use my character art in your game release. I realize I can't stop you from doing so... but it's considered polite to ask permission first.

Thanks.

[Guest]

I am honored by the attention of the creator.

"First, let me point out to people reading this that this is 18+, totally not safe for work."
"Adults only" were my first words in the post, and I do warn readers multiple times before any mature content is reached, so I hope no one is caught too unawares. Visual novels are rather known to be of the 18+ variety, and I did not notice any specific prohibition against discussing such, so I apologize if I broke any rules. Also, people probably shouldn't be reading visual novels at work, either.

"The first is to ask that you run lint on your game before releasing it. This will find common errors, and suggest how you can fix them."

Will do. I didn't know about this particular function, but I've tried it now and I appreciate how useful it is. I have run through the demo countless times, and the only big issues I've noticed are not hiding images every time that I need to. Hopefully no one has had major problems other than that.

"The second issue is that I ask that you do not use my character art in your game release. I realize I can't stop you from doing so... but it's considered polite to ask permission first."

Ah, now I'm even more sorry. I hadn't planned on releasing this at all, but with recent high traffic in visual novels on 4chan, it called out to me to be unleashed on the unsuspecting public. I apologize about not asking and even joking about your art, but it is my belief that the poor art that seems to appear in these fan-made visual novels dissuades people from being interested in them. Not to say, of course, that higher quality art is easy to make, but it seems that people put less effort in their artwork than in their writing. Simple usage of reference instead of trying to pull images from your mind in a whole can be much more effective. I hope you and all my Renpyists are not greatly offended.

As a final note, if any of you find that you are unsatisfied with the circulation of your hard work, I wholeheartedly suggest using the venues that I have used. At over 250 downloads in less than 2 days, I would think it should help. Just throw in "18+" and you should be good to go.

Sincerely,
The Big GSN5

[Guest]

I am honored by the attention of the creator.

"First, let me point out to people reading this that this is 18+, totally not safe for work."
"Adults only" were my first words in the post, and I do warn readers multiple times before any mature content is reached, so I hope no one is caught too unawares. Visual novels are rather known to be of the 18+ variety, and I did not notice any specific prohibition against discussing such, so I apologize if I broke any rules. Also, people probably shouldn't be reading visual novels at work, either.

"The first is to ask that you run lint on your game before releasing it. This will find common errors, and suggest how you can fix them."

Will do. I didn't know about this particular function, but I've tried it now and I appreciate how useful it is. I have run through the demo countless times, and the only big issues I've noticed are not hiding images every time that I need to. Hopefully no one has had major problems other than that.

"The second issue is that I ask that you do not use my character art in your game release. I realize I can't stop you from doing so... but it's considered polite to ask permission first."

Ah, now I'm even more sorry. I hadn't planned on releasing this at all, but with recent high traffic in visual novels on 4chan, it called out to me to be unleashed on the unsuspecting public. I apologize about not asking and even joking about your art, but it is my belief that the poor art that seems to appear in these fan-made visual novels dissuades people from being interested in them. Not to say, of course, that higher quality art is easy to make, but it seems that people put less effort in their artwork than in their writing. Simple usage of reference instead of trying to pull images from your mind in a whole can be much more effective. I hope you and all my Renpyists are not greatly offended.

As a final note, if any of you find that you are unsatisfied with the circulation of your hard work, I wholeheartedly suggest using the venues that I have used. At over 250 downloads in less than 2 days, I would think it should help. Just throw in "18+" and you should be good to go.

Sincerely,
The Big GSN5

[denzil]

Will do. I didn't know about this particular function, but I've tried it now and I appreciate how useful it is.

You should read /doc/RELASING.TXT and you also should delete everything from /game/save/ before relasing.

Not to say, of course, that higher quality art is easy to make, but it seems that people put less effort in their artwork than in their writing.

Maybe because we think that story is more important? Also not everybody can draw pro-quality artwork. I think it's better to make a game with a game with good story and bad artwork rather than taking hentai artwork from internet and writing some stupid text around it (and sorry if it offend you, but it looks that way to me).

[Guest]

"Maybe because we think that story is more important? Also not everybody can draw pro-quality artwork. I think it's better to make a game with a game with good story and bad artwork rather than taking hentai artwork from internet and writing some stupid text around it (and sorry if it offend you, but it looks that way to me)."

Pravda vítězí or "Truth Prevails" I see the Czech people stay true to this.

Well, it is a "visual novel." I'm not a pro, or anything but I know people like to think they can't draw, but in my experience as an art student, if you can just learn to see and then draw instead of guess and then draw, you'll find your ability can improve very quickly. Also, if the art were so unimportant, wouldn't you just write a "novel?"

Well, it makes me that you found the writing stupid; it's mainly just supposed to be kind of funny. You are a bit mistaken with the last part, as that art is just for the demo or as future bonus material. Actual visual novels from meinself will feature my own art. I doubt many of us have the time to draw up a bunch of art for all of our potential ideas.

Hopefully you may enjoy my future work. Thanks for taking the time to give me your opinion.

[mikey]

Visual novels are rather known to be of the 18+ variety, and I did not notice any specific prohibition against discussing such...

18+ is perfectly fine.

I apologize about not asking and even joking about your art, but it is my belief that the poor art that seems to appear in these fan-made visual novels dissuades people from being interested in them.

It's true that the community is smaller than for instance the Flash Newgrounds one.

Not to say, of course, that higher quality art is easy to make, but it seems that people put less effort in their artwork than in their writing. Simple usage of reference instead of trying to pull images from your mind in a whole can be much more effective. I hope you and all my Renpyists are not greatly offended.

Fanmade games require a lot of understanding if you want to appreciate them. Even a bad drawing says someone has had the self-respect not to simply take whatever he can find on the net and put something together. It also says that he has cared enough to make his character or art original. There are of course shortcuts and templates, but a lot of the charm comes from the knowledge that people have made the effort. The more effort you can see, the more warm the feeling from the overall project. Just taking Rei Ayanami and calling her Hitomi makes the charm go away.

Subarashi honestly feels more like a collection of images and words than something rounded, or a vision of some sort. It's not bad or wrong, but actually, there is really very little to talk about if the game is like this.

[Subarashi]

"Fanmade games require a lot of understanding if you want to appreciate them. Even a bad drawing says someone has had the self-respect not to simply take whatever he can find on the net and put something together. It also says that he has cared enough to make his character or art original. There are of course shortcuts and templates... Just taking Rei Ayanami and calling her Hitomi makes the charm go away."

I surely do agree, though you may have misunderstood what I meant by reference, which I was not using as a code word for "copying other people's art." New artists or people unfamiliar with art always seem to think that you're not supposed to look at photos or copy famous works, when, in truth, that's exactly what you do when you start in art school. I know people want to do their art in the ever-popular and horribly named "anime-style," but you need to look at actual human figures to draw human beings, whether they're stylized or not. When I see fan art, it is often readily apparent whether or not the artist bothered to do this.

Ah, if only drawing was stressed in schools. Would an English teacher put up with "I can't write"? No? Well, they shouldn't put up with I can't draw, either. In a single semester or even a single week, most anyone can go from the poor art skills that comprise most of the populace to someone who can draw something that looks something like what they were trying to draw. I've seen this in textbooks and in real life. If only people had the opportunity...

Finally, perhaps I should have called my demo my brainstorming, as that is what it is. The description says it only contains information about possible upcoming works. The point of me posting it was basically twofold-to introduce Ren'py to people who like visual novels but don't know of the creator's work and to get feedback on which ero game people might like to read the most. So far, nada on the second. I saw that dig on "original characters." These games are supposed to be doujinshi, of the erotic parody type, you know.

[mikey]

I surely do agree, though you may have misunderstood what I meant by reference, which I was not using as a code word for "copying other people's art." New artists or people unfamiliar with art always seem to think that you're not supposed to look at photos or copy famous works, when, in truth, that's exactly what you do when you start in art school. I know people want to do their art in the ever-popular and horribly named "anime-style," but you need to look at actual human figures to draw human beings, whether they're stylized or not. When I see fan art, it is often readily apparent whether or not the artist bothered to do this.

Yes I kind of misunderstood, in fact I think it's perfectly okay to be inspired or even copy (within reason) some things or touches.

Finally, perhaps I should have called my demo my brainstorming, as that is what it is. The description says it only contains information about possible upcoming works. The point of me posting it was basically twofold-to introduce Ren'py to people who like visual novels but don't know of the creator's work and to get feedback on which ero game people might like to read the most. So far, nada on the second. I saw that dig on "original characters." These games are supposed to be doujinshi, of the erotic parody type, you know.

I also got the impression it was more like a teaser/suggestion thing. And there's nothing wrong with a hentai parody. But it's hard to do a halfway intelligent or passable one, especially if it's supposed to be funny. And this teaser isn't really funny, not for me at least. I prefer my humor to be a lot less "in-your-face"

[Jake]

Yes I kind of misunderstood, in fact I think it's perfectly okay to be inspired or even copy (within reason) some things or touches.

I think Subarashi's point is a little more 'complete' even than that - in fact, from a learning point of view, there's an awful lot of worth in making literal absolute copies of existing works, so long as you actually go through all the same steps that the original artist did to produce it. You notice all those little details that help add to the piece but aren't obvious to the untrained eye when just glancing across the finished work; where the light falls on fabrics, how the shadows are often a lot lighter than you'd expect but just have a flattened range of tones, how the curves of particular bits of the body go together, what kind of colour ranges to use for particular kinds of lighting and so on. Often even down to "what purpose do those two dabs of white paint there serve?". I've probably learned more myself from doing a series of copies and pastiches of other people's work than I ever have from self-driven sketching.
From this point of view, it is pretty frustrating to see people trying to learn to draw by ignoring all the fantastic art around them and trying to develop their sketching skill just from their imagination, citing looking at other people's stuff as 'cheating'.

Of course, the line between pastiche and plagiarism is still an important one to stay the right side of when you're distributing your own works...

Ah, if only drawing was stressed in schools. Would an English teacher put up with "I can't write"? No? Well, they shouldn't put up with I can't draw, either.

I think this is a little bit of an over-simplification, though, and unfortunately one that seems to be pretty commonplace amongst those who have what might be called a 'natural drawing talent'.

Sure, in the same way that anyone can be taught to write grammatically-correct sentences, anyone (barring major physical disability) can be taught to draw with a degree of realism. And yes, learning 'proper' figure drawing and anatomy is important before venturing into the crazy world of stylised 'manga-style' art. However, such effort only teaches the student the mechanical part of the problem - in the same way that you can't teach everyone to write emotive and powerful prose, I don't believe you can teach everyone to draw emotive and powerful characters.

Realism is fine for some purposes, but visual novels typically hinge on an emotional attachment for the player, and as such emotive art is an important component. Prehaps everyone can learn to draw recognisable realism if they push themselves for it, but I don't think it's fair to say that everyone can necessarily learn to draw art perfectly suited for visual novels, regardless of how much tuition on the subject they had at school - it's not necessarily just a sign of not trying hard enough. Decrying someone's VN work because the graphics aren't as good as they possibly could be is counter-productive in most cases, and will often serve more to put those people off trying in the future.

(I agree that there's a large segment of the 'market' that will ignore projects that don't have fantastic visual art, but... well, there's not a great deal that can be done to please such people, and often they're the ones who are missing out.)

[mikey]

Realism is fine for some purposes, but visual novels typically hinge on an emotional attachment for the player, and as such emotive art is an important component.

But for me, a lot of the emotion comes from the fact that it is imperfect.

It's similar to a low-budget, not to say amateur movie. No, I don't like them, but when I talk with my friend who loves them, I sense he likes the subpar visuals for exactly the same reason for which I like disproportioned characters. You can actually feel the person's efforts, and that alone gives the graphic emotion.

The more advanced the graphics get, the colder the game. This appeal is something you can't cheat - it's what happens when they try to make low-budget-style movie with a high budget - the whole movie is great, but it doesn't have soul, something which my friend would perhaps be better at explaining, but I think it's not hard to understand, or even feel.

[PyTom]

"First, let me point out to people reading this that this is 18+, totally not safe for work."
"Adults only" were my first words in the post, and I do warn readers multiple times before any mature content is reached, so I hope no one is caught too unawares.

To be honest, it was fairly late when I read this post, and it was after a wedding reception. I think I just missed the "ADULTS ONLY" line the second time around. It wasn't meant to imply we can't discuss AO games here, if that's what we want.

I apologize about not asking and even joking about your art, but it is my belief that the poor art that seems to appear in these fan-made visual novels dissuades people from being interested in them.

I think you might have a valid point about the art, but the way you made it seemed a bit inappropriate. I mean, we have a perfectly good discussion board here, and that sort of thing would have been a great topic for a thread. Making a game and releasing it in public doesn't seem like the right way to make that point.

Making your own demo is fine, and I even support that as a way to grow the user base, and I guess when in Rome, you need to do as the romans do... but I don't think you had to mock the original demo as part of your own.

I think the general approach around here is "If you build it, they will come". By creating games as best we can, we both improve our skills, and attract new creators. This strategy is working, at least in the two projects I'm involved with. (Just wait.)

Even a bad drawing says someone has had the self-respect not to simply take whatever he can find on the net and put something together. It also says that he has cared enough to make his character or art original.

And I think I concur with this. I'll be going to Otakon in a few days, and while I'm there I'll probably hit the artist's alley. If I saw a book with, say, a photocopy of art of the Hulk fighting Wolverine on the cover, I would immediately ignore it. On the other hand, I routinely buy books where the art isn't great, but where it's clear to me that the doujin artist put passion into their story.

That's the problem with the SDVNL... there's no passion there. It's a disjointed collection of ideas, mixed together with copied images...

Now, I hope that you stick with it and make original games. And I hope when you do, you consider using original art or recruting and artist, and making an original story, rather than just completely mindless porn. Creating a game, rather than merely assembling one, is much more rewarding.

[Watercolorheart]

Ummm, as an artist, it's easy for me to say, it's not that hard to do good art, provided the person really tries. But, then, that would mean I'd be forgetting the years I spent practicing and posting to merciless hentai forums who'd really rip into anyone whose art was less than Satoshi Urushihara or other idealized artists.

In fact, that's where I honed most of my skills as an artist, and I can confidently say that a human or an animal is the one thing I can draw accurately. If it has life, I can draw it. (It's not that I suck at backgrounds, but I prefer to generate them in 3d and then draw over them .... a good background takes me almost 6-8 hours ...)

I'm sorry, I haven't played this game. But I already judged it for its creator taking Pytom's art, poking fun at it, and all without permission. Yes, the thought crossed my mind that she wasn't really polished when I played Moonlight Walks and the demo. But you know what?

After a couple months here, it all wore off. Now when I play a game, I play it for the writing. At least now I know where to turn my efforts for a game, if I know that whatever art I make, it will be okay - I need to focus on storyline and writing.

That's the one that will pull people in, or - at least - the people you'll really want to play your game. Even humor accomplishes something, done correctly. Look at how popular Douglas Adams is!

In a nutshell, I feel like substance is to be valued over "pretty" art. Metropolitan Blues by Mikey was the only game I picked up to play again 5 times until I finally beat it. Any other game I would have given up on. It wasn't the art. It was the fact I knew there was a way to get the "good" ending, I just didn't know how.

[mikey]

Ummm, as an artist, it's easy for me to say, it's not that hard to do good art, provided the person really tries. But, then, that would mean I'd be forgetting the years I spent practicing and posting to merciless hentai forums who'd really rip into anyone whose art was less than Satoshi Urushihara or other idealized artists.

That's exactly it, when you began, there was passion, otherwise it wouldn't make sense. And it's the point. Sure you're an excellent sprite artist now, but you said yourself that there are many more challenges in other departments, like BGs or animation. And when someone makes such an animation where you can actually feel the sweat and blood, that's when you realize all the efforts that have been put into it.

And of course, a lot of the philosophy is that people are doing it for free and for others.

Metropolitan Blues by Mikey...

This game was written by Taleweaver.

But it's good to see that there are now SO many fanmade games that it's possible to lose track ^_^

But there's one more thing, maybe. I don't really want to say I play the games for the stories, because I actually play them for the overall feeling. Sometimes the graphics will be better, and sometimes the writing will play a bigger part. In any way, when a game can get you involved emotionally, I think that's the defining point.

[monele]

So you're turning Ren'Py into Hent'Py hey?... *shakes head*. All this is pretty much what I wanted Ren'Py never to be used for. I guess I can stop hoping and just mourn.
(I don't dislike hentai, mind you, but this had no interesting value of any sort for me)