Recommend a VN engine for producing iPad products?

[Gnostrum]

[NB: I have seen bunny.jessican's thread here: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 43&t=26495
However, this does not seem to have a link to the engine - I get the impression it is a personal/private piece of software?]

Hi,

I am a (mostly) non-programmer, interested in creating a visual novel.

It seems that there are now several visual novels available in the iTunes store. But is there a visual novel creator that allows products to be submitted to iTunes? Ren'Py does not have an iPad output, I believe. Sylph might have done, but seems to have disappeared from the internet.

Or would it be best to try to create an iPad visual novel from inside Xcode or - ulp - Objective C? Personally, I would prefer something without a steep learning curve!

[netravelr]

Invisible Apartment was coded in Cocos2dx in C++, but as of now it's and the engine created for it is closed-source.

Flash or Unity may be a good starting point for you since it can export to iOS and Android fairly easily. You may check some of the threads posted in the Other Visual Novel Engines to see what resources people have talked about here previously.

However, if you are dead set on iOS and iOS only, then I see no reason why not doing it all in Objective-C/X-Code or implementing it in Swift when it's out.

Good luck!

[Sonya]

If you're interested in making a visual novel with no code, and works across mobile devices(ipad, iphone, android, etc), you should check out Joilly.com.

It uses a flowchart builder tool so you can click and drag scenes together to build visual novels. You need Adobe Flash (the creative software, NOT the player) to draw and create your visual novel, but everything is drawn and animated by hand, so it's MUCH easier than learning how to code.

Here's a live demo on the ipad (that's me ) -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPt4KEvNw-c

[2dt]

The visual novel engine I'm developing, EVEN (look at my signature), is still in development, but will have iOS (iPad/iPhone) output when completed.

It will require coding, but I don't think it'll be hard to grasp, and I intend to make lots of "cookbook" examples to make it easy for the non-programmers.

[Gnostrum]

Hello everyone. Thank you for your replies. I have had a look at some of the solutions you mention - a quick look, in most cases, for personal reasons.

1) Joilly.com -
I registered fairly easily with this (although it does ask you to explain why you want to join).
When you have registered and logged in, you have the option to “create” a new novel. You can name it, enter a description and create an icon for it. There is also the option to load something called a JS file (what’s that?) and some visual and sound files. Not sure what difference that will make, so I left them alone for my first (silly) project. Then I tried to create the new novel, but it wouldn’t let me without a JS file.
So, back to the drawing board.
A JS file is apparently a Javascript file. In this context, I suspect that they are Flash created.
I went back and looked at the tutorials (which I probably should have done to start with!), at which point it became clear that Joilly needs Flash.
Flash is only available as part of the “creative cloud” on a £20/month+ subscription or Flash CS6, which costs £398 for the full version. The latter is a bit above my price range, and I'm wary of being sucked into a long running subscription.
That’s a shame, as the online interface for Joilly is nicely laid out and designed, and the tutorials seem good. If I did have Flash CS6, this would probably be the way to go.

2) Unity - I downloaded a free version of this. Clearly it is a very powerful program. You can also get a free version of the visual novel toolkit (http://u3d.as/content/sol-tribe/visual- ... t-free/53G). My concern here is that it seems I would need code to shift between scenes. If I have to write code for that, wouldn't it be easier to use Ren'Py (which is extremely simple) and then worry about porting the result to iOS later?
However, the manual that came with the free download of the Visual Novel toolkit promised it can be used to “Create a visual novel with no programming!” Well, maybe. But the manual, I’m afraid to say, is very badly written. It doesn't make it clear at all what you need to do to construct a story - everything has weird labels. It is also working with an interface I find baffling. At least to me (as someone with no experience of Unity) the idea of creating a visual novel using this very large and complex problem seems impossibly daunting.

So… I'm still at a loss. Possibly just writing something in Ren'Py would be better.

[Sonya]

Gnostrum, if getting Flash is your problem, I suggest you don't worry about it for now. Please familiarize yourself with Joilly.com, and disregard the Flash tutorials. There will be a less pricey solution for uploading novels onto Joilly.

[Gnostrum]

I'd be happy to go back and have another look, but unless I've misunderstood something, I can't even start creating a novel without a .js file - or did I misunderstand? It didn't seem to let me go any further without one.

[Sonya]

Yes it won't. Joilly accepts visual novels made in javascript files, and the only way right now is to make them from Flash.

But an alternative to Flash might be coming soon, and it will be much less pricey, maybe even free.

Until then, if you don't have Flash, you won't be able to upload visual novels onto Joilly for now. Of course you can always use other VN creation methods for the meantime, but learning a whole new language, especially if you're not familiar with programming beforehand, is a real pain.