Creating your first Short VN?

[ProfKranc]

Hey guys,

I was wondering if you would have any advice for someone looking to create their first short VN.

I currently have a short story written out. It's a very simple branching paths comedy story. It's been fully written and I currently need these things to make it playable:

Art/ image recourses
Music to use (potentially)
Voices (potentially)
and the coding it all together

The only things I am able to provide myself are:

Coding
Writing
Male Voices

I was wondering if anyone could share their experiences of creating their first VN? Any problems or roadblocks I should be aware of that are likely to come up?

I don't expect my very first one to be more than 30 mins long (I'm thinking even that would be a bit ambitious), but I'm wondering where I should go from where I am.

Is it smart to start off with a branching story? Or should I maybe start even smaller with a kinetic story?
Any advice for seeking out willing artists/ coders?
What about promotion outlets and willing beta testers?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks again!

ProfKranc

[sunTARIA]

Hey guys,

I was wondering if you would have any advice for someone looking to create their first short VN.

I currently have a short story written out. It's a very simple branching paths comedy story. It's been fully written and I currently need these things to make it playable:

Art/ image recourses
Music to use (potentially)
Voices (potentially)
and the coding it all together

The only things I am able to provide myself are:

Coding
Writing
Male Voices

I was wondering if anyone could share their experiences of creating their first VN? Any problems or roadblocks I should be aware of that are likely to come up?

I don't expect my very first one to be more than 30 mins long (I'm thinking even that would be a bit ambitious), but I'm wondering where I should go from where I am.

Is it smart to start off with a branching story? Or should I maybe start even smaller with a kinetic story?
Any advice for seeking out willing artists/ coders?
What about promotion outlets and willing beta testers?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks again!

ProfKranc

im making my first one, too!
anyway, here's replies on i forum i made that helped me a lot,it might not be your genre, but it could help you if u do different styles of visual novels in the future: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =8&t=36080
contact me by private messaging if u need help!

[ProfKranc]

Hey guys,

I was wondering if you would have any advice for someone looking to create their first short VN.

I currently have a short story written out. It's a very simple branching paths comedy story. It's been fully written and I currently need these things to make it playable:

Art/ image recourses
Music to use (potentially)
Voices (potentially)
and the coding it all together

The only things I am able to provide myself are:

Coding
Writing
Male Voices

I was wondering if anyone could share their experiences of creating their first VN? Any problems or roadblocks I should be aware of that are likely to come up?

I don't expect my very first one to be more than 30 mins long (I'm thinking even that would be a bit ambitious), but I'm wondering where I should go from where I am.

Is it smart to start off with a branching story? Or should I maybe start even smaller with a kinetic story?
Any advice for seeking out willing artists/ coders?
What about promotion outlets and willing beta testers?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks again!

ProfKranc

im making my first one, too!
anyway, here's replies on i forum i made that helped me a lot,it might not be your genre, but it could help you if u do different styles of visual novels in the future: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =8&t=36080
contact me by private messaging if u need help!

Thank you so much!

[sunTARIA]

Hey guys,

I was wondering if you would have any advice for someone looking to create their first short VN.

I currently have a short story written out. It's a very simple branching paths comedy story. It's been fully written and I currently need these things to make it playable:

Art/ image recourses
Music to use (potentially)
Voices (potentially)
and the coding it all together

The only things I am able to provide myself are:

Coding
Writing
Male Voices

I was wondering if anyone could share their experiences of creating their first VN? Any problems or roadblocks I should be aware of that are likely to come up?

I don't expect my very first one to be more than 30 mins long (I'm thinking even that would be a bit ambitious), but I'm wondering where I should go from where I am.

Is it smart to start off with a branching story? Or should I maybe start even smaller with a kinetic story?
Any advice for seeking out willing artists/ coders?
What about promotion outlets and willing beta testers?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks again!

ProfKranc

im making my first one, too!
anyway, here's replies on i forum i made that helped me a lot,it might not be your genre, but it could help you if u do different styles of visual novels in the future: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =8&t=36080
contact me by private messaging if u need help!

Thank you so much!

np, i know how hard renpy is lol
i hope some things in the forum we were talking about helped you

[RotGtIE]

When it comes to a collaboration of this sort, the order of operations is pretty important. If you've written your story and haven't had it edited yet, you're off to an excellent start, because that's exactly the first step that needs to get done with a VN. After that, you should get your script edited to polish it up to acceptable standards. Unless you have the credentials to be your own editor, I strongly recommend you get someone with the formal education and experience to do the job properly.

After that, your next step should be the planning phase. Take your script and turn it into a quasi-screenplay, complete with "stage directions" detailed enough to allow your programmer (even if that programmer is you) to understand what your intent is for every scene, every visual, every sound, and every bit of text to be displayed. Get all of your directions out in plain and consistent language so that you and everyone else knows exactly what to work toward. And you're not done planning yet - while you're building that screenplay, keep track of every visual and audio asset your plan calls for, and keep them in a tracker (preferably a spreadsheet) so you can have a quick and complete reference document telling you exactly what you need for every part of your VN. Every sprite, background, CG, sound effect, music - everything should be accounted for.

Once you're done with all that, you can start actually building your VN in whatever engine you're planning to use. If you can program it, great. If you can't, get someone who can. You don't need to actually have any of your assets built yet - you can and should push forward with production by using placeholders where your assets will be, which you will be able to do if you planned everything correctly beforehand. You shouldn't actually need any illustrations, music, or anything in order to get your whole game built with placeholders.

You can wait until you're done building the VN before starting asset production, but you don't have to. Assets, especially visuals, will take a long time to create. Audio assets such as music and voice acting tend to get done very rapidly compared to the writing and illustrations. As long as you planned everything you needed ahead of time, it should be smooth sailing. Remember, you'll have much better luck collaborating if you can pay the people you plan to be working with. That may seem rough if this is just your hobby and you're only trying to produce a free project, but I would very strongly recommend commissioning the work you need done, as it incentivizes people who can bring a lot of quality to the project and greatly speeds up the rate of asset production when you can get contracts (even informal ones) with people to perform their tasks on some kind of a schedule with clear terms for both parties. If you have a source of income, I suggest going on a peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich diet and lifestyle in order to cut your usual costs and store up enough money to be able to pay for what you need out of pocket. It's very much worth all the trouble.

This more or less is how DMB is progressing, though I haven't kept very strictly to the order and have been overlapping the steps quite a bit, but this is how I would recommend anyone handle the independent production of their own VN, including myself for future projects.

[Yomuchan]

First renpy VN, huh?
Notepad++ was a lifesaver. That and JEdit.

Before I discovered those, I had to make do with *GASP* MSNOTEPAD.

[qirien]

Hey guys,
I currently have a short story written out. It's a very simple branching paths comedy story. It's been fully written and I currently need these things to make it playable:

Art/ image recourses
Music to use (potentially)
Voices (potentially)
and the coding it all together
ProfKranc

If the writing's done, you're off to a great start! The next thing I would focus on would be the coding. This way you can have a playable demo to 1) prove you can do it and 2) show to potential partners. I would even go so far as to get some placeholder art so that you can have all the image showing and transitions coded in, and then only thing missing is just dropping in completed sprites and backgrounds and music. Like RotGtIE said, think of it as a play and add in enters and exits and expressions, like this:

Code: Select all

scene bg icecreamshop with fade
show girl at midright with dissolve
show boy at midleft with moveinleft
girl annoyed "I've been waiting for ten weeks for you to show up with your new visual novel! Is it really that hard?!"
boy blushing "Umm, yeah, it is, especially since I can't draw!"
girl surprised "You need an artist?"
boy excited "Yeah, if I can just get the sprites I need, I'll be totally finished!"
hide girl with moveoutright
boy surprised "Where'd she go?"
show girl at midright with moveinright
girl excited "Here! I just happen to have this great collection of sprites you can use!"
boy excited "Awesome!!!"
scene black with fade

I would not worry about voices for your first VN unless that is something you are really interested in.

It sounds like this is probably a free project? If you can't find an artist to collaborate with you, you can always use free art, either from these forums or other sources of public domain/creative commons art on the internet. Or, just do it yourself. You don't have to have spectacular cel-shaded art to have a great visual novel (See Beretta Mondatta!)

Good luck!

[LadyNafiael]

I've been testing a practicing for a while and now i'm going to make my first one.