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Inspired by that other thread, especially Jake's comments. Also ties in with the "Have You Released Your Game" thread.

This questions the main theme, not the game style (i.e. regardless how many endings you have, whether you have a kinetic novel, simulator, etc.)

If your project is of multiple genres, pick the strongest theme.

If there are more non-Romance projects, then maybe it's about time to create an offshoot of Renai Archives that caters to it...so we'll have two places:

1.) Renai Archives (romance-centered ADV style games, doesn't have to be Ren'Py as long as it fits certain technical criteria)
2.) Ren'Py Archives (any theme-centered project, as long as it uses Ren'Py engine, but also fitting more or less the same technical criteria as the other one)

These two options will effectively filter out text adventures or anything that stray too far out in purpose and execution, while still keeping the core storytelling or engine execution nearby (of course it has to be freeware too). Visual News will essentially pick up the rest, such as commercial translations and demos (Kanami, etc. no doubt). The more anime-inspired / Japanophilic among us will naturally gravitate towards Renai Archives and Visual News, whereas the 'literate gamer' will gravitate towards Ren'Py Archives and maybe Visual News (for its more poetic or more action-oriented translated pieces)

Hmm... I went for Sci-Fi, 'cause at least one of the other options seemed to want to explicitly exclude it, but really that's more of a setting thing than a genre thing. You can have a classical romance story in a sci-fi setting, you can have a sci-fi detecive story, you can have a sci-fi drama, and so on. For what it's worth, 'sci-fi adventure drama' is probably closest for me...

(Fantasy is even more blurred - or rather, even less a theme of its own - from what I've seen.)

Hm, difficult to choose. Mine is action/policework on a light sci-fi background with comedy elements and a touch of romance. Oh, drama and mystery's in there, too. The only thing it doesn't have is fluorescent panties. :)

Hmmm, yeah, maybe Sci-Fi / Fantasy should have been combined like it usually is, but many people here are into those, so it made sense to expand them.

I was going to put Mystery into its own, but ran out of option lines

EDIT: put it this way...let's see how many more NON-ROMANCE choices are there? Yes?

DaFool wrote:Hmmm, yeah, maybe Sci-Fi / Fantasy should have been combined like it usually is, but many people here are into those, so it made sense to expand them.

I meant more the reverse - they shouldn't be there at all! I'm making an adventure/drama game, it just happens to have a sci-fi setting. It would be the same story with the same characters without the sci-fi, I'd just have to make the robot a eunuch or something. However, it wouldn't be the same story at all if I decided to switch the 'adventure' part to 'romance'.

Jake wrote:It would be the same story with the same characters without the sci-fi, I'd just have to make the robot a eunuch or something.

But then you'd lose the possibility to make an H game. :)
More seriously: Very good point. It probably depends on whether SF is the topic (hardcore science-based story) or just an interchangeable setting.

DaFool wrote:If there are more non-Romance projects, then maybe it's about time to create an offshoot of Renai Archives that caters to it...so we'll have two places:
1.) Renai Archives (romance-centered ADV style games, doesn't have to be Ren'Py as long as it fits certain technical criteria)
2.) Ren'Py Archives (any theme-centered project, as long as it uses Ren'Py engine, but also fitting more or less the same technical criteria as the other one)

To be honest, isn't this already solved with the new approach of RAA, that includes any visual novel?

And, this debate about getting out of ren'ai, in fact this is what's been going on for the past year or so, we discussed it once or twice, even during NaNoRenO, that new projects are sort of moving away from ren'ai.

Lots of ambitious projects are now being designed with little or no ren'ai, so I don't really see why people think it's over-ren'ai-ed. There is still a large percentage of romance-focused games, but the trend it generally towards "anything goes", and to mention it again, the RAA was being refocused because of this development.

I put down fantasy, but meant it more in the western superhero genre rather than the swords and sorcery type.

Still while the main genre isn't the romance - since people can easily reach bad endings without the romance, yet still be in that setting - I don't foresee myself using Ren'py for anything that didn't involve romance anytime soon. Romance mixed with many different things yes... but romance still. For something more action/adventure or even mystery-ish, something other than Ren'py might be more apt. Not that Ren'py can't be used for those things - its a testament to it that it can. But the engine is just more suited to ren'ai, and so that's what I'd use it for...

But Im all for people using it in unique ways

mikey wrote:To be honest, isn't this already solved with the new approach of RAA, that includes any visual novel?

And, this debate about getting out of ren'ai, in fact this is what's been going on for the past year or so, we discussed it once or twice, even during NaNoRenO, that new projects are sort of moving away from ren'ai.

Lots of ambitious projects are now being designed with little or no ren'ai, so I don't really see why people think it's over-ren'ai-ed. There is still a large percentage of romance-focused games, but the trend it generally towards "anything goes", and to mention it again, the RAA was being refocused because of this development.

Ah yes, but then there's "Of Apes and God". Which is really on the fine line here. Under the proposed "Ren'Py Archives" it will be included, as well as other wierd things such as educational tools on global warming, for example. RAA will still contain heavily-story-based things such as the newly added Dante's Wrath.

EDIT: wait a minute, the wiki already does this...

/hits self on the head.

The only thing it doesn't have is fluorescent panties.

And that's a shame, really .

Well, my projects, while impleting romance, have both been sci-fi and then fantasy. Others floating in my head are all anything but your regular contemporary setting and they don't exclusively focus on romance. Of course I'm for this kind of VNs... And as mikey says, it's already happened .
Come on people, Be Free

Sorry for porting a quote from another thread, but this one shows another purpose of this poll:

Nafai wrote:Well its true that people in the community are diverse, but it's probable - though by no means certain - that while one united concept would not be able to galvanize the whole community, the majority of the individual preferences would be categorize-able into a small number distinct concepts.

So, if there are enough volunteers, why not make more than one team? If the primary bone of contention would be a traditional VN vs an experimental one, or realistic vs fantastic, and we had the manpower volunteers-wise for both, then perhaps there could be two teams formed, etc.

Maybe a good first step then would be to see how many would want to volunteer for something like this?

Basically, list down all the possible uses for Ren'Py, acknowledge under what genre(s) ones project falls under, and discover new unexplored genres.

For example, Entertainment Documentary -- that is something I am very willing to work on. Imagine something like the History Channel...but all done Visual-Novel style. (Derik's project is venturing towards Discovery Channel so we're getting there.)

The first step was to take down the constraints of the RAA. Now that's down, then we're thinking now of new methods in this medium...and it doesn't even need to be storytelling per se.

I'm not sure which option to pick because I have so many different ideas to choose from. Personally, I really like to explore things on the fringe of common usage, so I'm always experimenting with either new storytelling techniques (Lakeside Sunset and Wedding Vows), or new genres previously untouched. I'm of the 'literary gamer' school of thought, so I feel more variety is a good thing.

I would love to see a psychological thriller written in Ren'Py. I'm not suited to writing one myself (since I really do like romance a lot), but just imagine if Stephen King or Alfred Hitchcock were to work with Ren'Py and what sort of works they would produce. I suppose if you wanted to mix in some sort of romance, you could write a story from a stalker's point of view. I mean a real stalker... one of those psychologically-imbalanced obsessive people, not just someone who thinks they're a stalker and jokes about it.

What about political or military dramas? Broken-Hearted sort of touched the fringes of it, but what if someone went full-blown into telling a story about states and empires in conflict with each other? War and Peace, in VN format. Maybe the story of a soldier in present-day Iraq? Or a fantasy setting like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Or even The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, for all that's it's been overused.

There's just so many options. Even though Ren'Py was first made to tell ren'ai stories, I don't think it's scope has to be limited to that. It's got so much more potential as a storytelling medium. After all, not every movie was about train robberies.

-Dizzy-

Well, my first several project failures taught me the important lesson that people who know nothing about romance are often not so very good at writing romance, so...uh...hurray for zombies! I mean, other genres of Ren'Py-based literature! Yeah!

And I shall take advantage of this freedom as soon as I start/make progress on a webcomic centered around a senselessly tragic set of stories that have precious, precious little to do with romance. Or maybe I will slack on that project, too.

Currently I'm working on a romance, however I plan the next game to be survival horror kind of like the Silent Hill novel game. So we'll see how that goes.

I've always thought that there is more to visual novels than just romance.

Well, I'm currently working on a sci-fi adventure which script I had bend a lot in order to fit the romantic settings of a Ren'Ai story.
It's actually a story within a story, and I fear my little prototype (note I didn't write "demo" since it didn't reflect at all the final thingy) wasn't polished enough to make the reader feel it. Actually, the pseudo main theme is something that has been used and reused again (AI that controls humankind and a plot), but it's only a fraction of it... Since the main plot describes our whole universe story.
I'm not skilled enough to write scripts like Clannad or Air, or Cross Channel, but at least I try to "document" on what I'm writing.
The most difficult task is... Writing dialogues. Maybe it reflects me because I'm not that talkative or maybe trying to create new vocabulary is tiring...

About the use of Ren'Py, sure, I don't think there is only one way to use Ren'Py, after all, it's a great tool that has many usages. I just haven't planned any experiment on new styles of stories (err I think I won't ever write anything on a stalker side story... Sounds creepy) so I can't show some "nouvelle cuisine" yet.

Writing a Ren'Ai story is a task that demands great imagination, observational skills, sensibility and some insight on future, past and present human relationships. I think it's a theme enough to provide lots of stories.
Writing on other themes is also demanding, it depends on your narrative style. I had written my story in that style before deciding I would create a Ren'Ai game.