Why Why Why ?!!!

[Jake]

I still advice that in his situation it is better to steer clear of VN's.

And I would advise that if he feels Ren'Py with a cheat-sheet is too much of a risk, then he's probably in the kind of environment where he won't be safe until he just steers clear of children. Any society which demonises its teachers doesn't deserve an educated generation following them and picking up their retirement bill.

[Aleema]

When I was a kid (those ever few years ago), we were only allowed to program in Logo, Turbo Pascal, BASIC, Visual Basic, C, C++, and other similar languages that I can't recall anymore. I don't know what kind of high school has a "Game Design" class, but I should've gone there. o_O All our computer classes were called "Problem Solving" because that's what they were building. Visual Basic is a relatively safe medium here, and it does allow a hands-on approach to how your programs will look. Our class made a bunch of games on it, so I would recommend it here.

[Jake]

Visual Basic is a relatively safe medium here, and it does allow a hands-on approach to how your programs will look. Our class made a bunch of games on it, so I would recommend it here.

As it goes, it's pretty off-topic but VB has been changed quite radically between versions 6 and 7; it's no longer really VB, just a cut-down subset of C# with funny keywords... I can't see much of a reason for anybody to program in VB any more.

But really, if you introduce a non-specialised language like BASIC, C* or Java or whatever, you're going to spend more time teaching programming than teaching game design; it would definitely be worth spending some time looking for specialised alternatives that allow for rapid prototyping without having to mess around with programming notions. Back in the day there was "Klik and Play", which was trying to be just that; IIRC the spiritual successors these days are things like Multimedia Fusion [2].

[scotty42]

I wish I had the time to reply individually to all of the excellent feedback.
First, I am VERY impressed at the very intelligent responses from this community!
I think what I will do is just remove the H references in the demo and make a cheat sheet as suggested. While I do teach scripting and coding in the club, recently I have had a huge influx of new members that are artists and writers and the VN genre is the perfect avenue to retain them.
Thank you so much!

[LVUER]

... I can't see much of a reason for anybody to program in VB any more.

Because it's still high in demand? Many companies in my country still actively searching VB.NET programmers.

[PyTom]

I think what I will do is just remove the H references in the demo and make a cheat sheet as suggested. While I do teach scripting and coding in the club, recently I have had a huge influx of new members that are artists and writers and the VN genre is the perfect avenue to retain them.
Thank you so much!

If you can, please post what you create on the Wiki. This will help out others in your position, even if I can't spare the time for it myself.

[Jake]

... I can't see much of a reason for anybody to program in VB any more.

Because it's still high in demand? Many companies in my country still actively searching VB.NET programmers.

Oh, sure - but that's a reason for an individual programmer to write in VB.NET. What I meant - sorry if I wasn't clear enough - is that I don't see any reason for a company to decide to use VB.NET for their software project.

VB.NET is more or less just a slightly-crippled version of C#, you need to know all the same programming concepts, use all the same libraries as you would for C#, but you can't so so much stuff. Normally the obvious answer would be that you have a load of programmers who know VB.NET but don't know C#, but frankly - it's scrapped a load of the old VB6 stuff and replaced it with the standard .NET object model, so your programmers are going to have to retrain anyway.

(At least, this was all the case when it was first released; I've not been paying such close attention to VB.NET developments in later versions of .NET simply because I'm a C# programmer.)

[LVUER]

My friends told me that VB.NET undergo big changes starting from 2008 version (and I only have used up to 2005 version). Don't know if it's getting better.

[Jake]

My friends told me that VB.NET undergo big changes starting from 2008 version (and I only have used up to 2005 version). Don't know if it's getting better.

All .NET languages have, though - they've introduced a load of new (pretty useful) stuff in the 2008 editions.

[JinzouTamashii]

What's VB.net?

[Jake]

What's VB.net?

VB 6 was the last version of VB which was actually derived from the original Visual Basic - after that it got replaced with VB.NET (this happened around 2001, off the top of my head), which is a language superficially similar to VB 6, but quite different structurally. It compiles to run on the same .NET platform as C# does.

[JinzouTamashii]

Oh ... I was hoping it stood for Visual Book, an alternate coding system to make visual novels in. (*≧▽≦)

English acronyms are hard if you have to guess from context ...

[Sin]

If someone is worried about the things associated with Ren'Py because kids might poke around associated sites and find stuff their parents don't want them to see, and they might lose their job, Novelty is a worse proposition; if these hypothetical kids poke around on Sin's sites the teacher's more likely to get executed!

Is that supposed to be a joke? In any case I find it is grossly offensive.
To insinuate that what my work on Novelty and my work as a freelance artist are in any way related is patently wrong. In case you didn't know there's a thing called 'professionalism'.

Novelty is a new engine but it's gaining adoption every day and I'm confident in calling it stable. So far there hasn't been many games completed with Novelty and to be honest I still don't have a policy on hentai yet. It simply hasn't ever been a problem.

Novelty is an extremely safe product to recommend to students. Jake is just being an idiot.

PS. I just released a new version, with lots of new features to help beginners as well as a more reliable engine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyGn0uZBT0I

[JinzouTamashii]

I'm sorry to keep on doing this, but what's Novelty?

I haven't lurked recently ...

[Aleema]

I'm sorry to keep on doing this, but what's Novelty?

I haven't lurked recently ...

http://www.visualnovelty.com/
It's a what-you-see-is-what-you-get visual novel editor.