Vore visual novel as pred

[Buggingbug8020x]

So lets say you where planning on making a visual novel where the protagonist is primarily a predator trying to swallow delicious waifus, not that I can actually make anything like that but where would you start with that? What would be some difficulties?

[MarinLaFey]

First off, probably plan whether it's a plot that happens to have porn (Dramatical Murder) or porn trying to force a plot (Hadaka Shitsuji).

Then you need characters, writing, and all the problems that come with mixing art and prose.

It's has all the same problems that most media does. But now you just have the problems that come with mixing media.

Different people start in different places to. Like a coder would consider programs over everything else. A musician could focus everything around a soundtrack.

This isn't even considering that different people start in different places. Person A may want to start at the beginning, Person B may start at the end, and Person C may start where ever they damn please. This isn't an issue if you're working by yourself but if you work with others, it will become an issue.

[RediQ]

You'd probably want to start by picking a visual novel creation tool. A lot of people have used Renpy, and it seems solid, though I don't know much about it. Personally I use Novelty, and a big plus of that is never having had to write a single line of code to make a perfectly functional VN.

The biggest difficulties to making a VN are, I think, the fact that the main feature of the work is the writing, and then in actually scripting the logic of how interactions happen (things like the flow of a conversation, or events that need certain conditions before they happen). Obviously to make one you need to be able to write reasonably consistently well, since that's most of what carries a VN, and be able format that to fit the way that the text actually displays in-game.

The logic aspect depends on what you'd actually be trying to make.... in the case of a game where you're eating the other characters, I'd imagine it would be a bit of a design challenge to figure out how to actually make sure the game can always progress from point to point if any given character has been removed, and creating it without ending up in glitchy little moments where someone who has already been eaten still has a line of dialogue. In practice this would probably involve multiple versions of certain scenes depending on who is missing, and a lot of checks for "if charactername_eaten=1" before many dialogue lines and events.

[Seifens]

I've seen two distinct kinds of visual novel out there... The story-centric one that's like a choose your own adventure book, and the mechanic-centric one that's a bit like a time management rpg. Picking one of those to start with is probably worth while so you know what your target is.

I'd say the first is probably easier for someone unfamiliar with the engines available because you don't have to have any mechanics, just dialog branches. There are tradeoffs in implementing each though. For the first type you may need more art, since the interactions will continue to be new as you move through the story. For the second you can get away with reusing images more, but you'll have to write and balance your own mechanics. So it's a question of whether you can get art or code more easily.

For examples of each around here, compare The Apartment as a narrative art-driven story with Ryanshow's VVN with its emphasis on mechanics and character stats. Something like RediQ's Tales of Adventure is somewhere in the middle with some incidental stats but not an overt focus on them.

[Buggingbug8020x]

You'd probably want to start by picking a visual novel creation tool. A lot of people have used Renpy, and it seems solid, though I don't know much about it. Personally I use Novelty, and a big plus of that is never having had to write a single line of code to make a perfectly functional VN.

The biggest difficulties to making a VN are, I think, the fact that the main feature of the work is the writing, and then in actually scripting the logic of how interactions happen (things like the flow of a conversation, or events that need certain conditions before they happen). Obviously to make one you need to be able to write reasonably consistently well, since that's most of what carries a VN, and be able format that to fit the way that the text actually displays in-game.

The logic aspect depends on what you'd actually be trying to make.... in the case of a game where you're eating the other characters, I'd imagine it would be a bit of a design challenge to figure out how to actually make sure the game can always progress from point to point if any given character has been removed, and creating it without ending up in glitchy little moments where someone who has already been eaten still has a line of dialogue. In practice this would probably involve multiple versions of certain scenes depending on who is missing, and a lot of checks for "if charactername_eaten=1" before many dialogue lines and events.

A good way of side stepping that could be making the games similar to how Doku Doku Literature Club where they die in a specific order. A way to add variety could be by having a mechanic where you can either seduce them into your gut or put them in isolation for gulping. For unwilling you need them alone and a excuse for why they won't be around. Like them running away or forging their signature in a diary that basically says "swallow me senpai".

[TheVoreEngineer]

I mean, the hard part of any game is setting up all the logic to work. As said, the easiest solution is to have the characters either be encountered in a specific order or to have the characters be isolated from one another, but at the same time that kind of design can end up making a game with "gallery syndrome". With that aside, I'd say the hardest part comes from trying to do everything yourself. Unless you are using a program like novelty which is a more user-friendly program, to make the written assets, visual assets, most likely find audio (unless you really want to record your own) and write out all the programming and logic to make it work, it becomes a huge workload for any one person, but having two or more makes it a much less personal project, and it's hard.

[Seifens]

I'd say the hardest part comes from trying to do everything yourself.

Teams can make some things easier, but they also make a lot of things harder. Whether or not the trade off is worth it is mostly based on how good of a project manager you can find (or be), and how easily you can divide the work among multiple people. It all really comes down to scope. You can accomplish a lot as a single developer as long as you are realistic about your own capabilities and keep your scope narrow. You may not end up with a 40 hour epic story driven campaign in five acts, but you'll end up with two things that are infinitely more important: a finished product, and experience finishing a project.

[Buggingbug8020x]

Sorry to necro this but wouldn't it be much easier to make a mod for a already existing visual novel or would that be more trouble than making your own?