Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
(4 edits) (+1)

Hey there!

Say, the software that you use for this visual novel is really not convenient.

The loading times are damn long, there is no possibility to roll back nor to skip already seen text, the menu is fastidious, musics are broken, I know this is an alpha version but all of these problems wouldnt even happen with Ren'Py for example.

Indeed, Ren'Py is that convenient that there is not a single loading time, everything is instant, if a reader wants to rewind in order to see something again, they can rewind by scrolling the middle mouse button up, if a reader wants to read the visual novel again and try different choices in order to discover how the story changes, they can skip what they have already seen by holding Ctrl down which skips everything already seen until they reach something new that they have not seen yet, the menu is accessible with a right click anywhere on the screen and it opens directly on the save screen which is the most often used feature of the menu, this is how convenience is made.

You probably know Ren'Py as this is the software that everyone uses to create visual novels and you probably wanted to try something else to not do the same as everyone, be original, I think I undestand that much.

I don't suggest you to do the same as everyone and be unoriginal, but if a software is used by everyone because it is convenient then there is nothing wrong to use this convenience to create something original, don't you think? ;-)

So after testing your visual novel and experiencing the utter disavantadges of the software that you use, my suggestion is to switch to Ren'Py in order to benefit its convenience both for you and your readers, what do you say? :-)

Helloooo!

Thank you for your thoughts and feedback about your user experience, comparing it with Ren'py! 

@Wait times - Sorry about that! ^^V The wait times are there for a purpose, or rather, by the limitations and bugs I had encountered and fixed up from way before. :) I can look at this sometime down the road and see if there's a way to speed things up!

I had looked at Ren'py before when I was about to start working on this game and I've no doubt, it's very good software for this sort of thing! 

But it wasn't just about putting out visual novels quickly that I needed to consider there were other things. At the time I was creating the game, I wanted a mobile version of the game, but I didn't have enough experience in developing this before, just the foresight, so I didn't know what will and what won't work - the technical traps were there but I couldn't see them clearly. I didn't have much time to figure things out.

Ren'py didn't exactly work with mobile phones outright, while I *think* I know there's a way to get it on the phone, there were multiple technical barriers for me to overcome - on top of learning Python, so  I couldn't really figure it out on the get-go before.

Ren'py, coming in as a complete package was like WordPress for website development, seemed pretty easy and a great thing to get into, unfortunately, digging into Ren'py's technical stuff confused me (while I've read it's easy to get into, I didn't know how to use Python), so I decided to learn how to make something similar to learn how this stuff works - that works on the web. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me, I had to do some work that's closer to re-inventing the wheel! 

Ren'py also doesn't have the animations I wanted on the get go. While this wasn't exactly the case for what we're using now, I still had to make this work myself. I *think* I know there's a way to get those animations working in Ren'py, but unfortunately, there are again, multiple technical barriers that really prevents me from moving forward with this idea.

It's not that I don't like Ren'py, in fact, I think it's an amazing piece of software and PyTom really did a great job at making advanced Visual Novel development available for almost everyone. I just had other things to consider, on top of not knowing Python, that had me looking for other solutions.

There were a ton of bugs encountered, fixed, workarounds, and compromises to be made, and in the end, I was able to make it work :) it's not perfect, and I'm not a genius programmer myself. There are other advantages/disadvantages that I've come across, but at least this gives you an insight to what I went through. Given if I were a Python programmer, I would've picked up Ren'py without much hesitation!

I'll also give some thoughts on the Ren'py conveniences you mentioned. There are some things I may not be able to do like reverse playback, and stuff that aren't possible because of how I designed our VN engine.

To the players reading this, shout out to PyTom on Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/renpytom

Hello once more! I thought this was the Ramen no Oujisama thread! So about those long loading times - let's just say I wasn't the one who structured this and I was trying a new style of organizing scripts, so combine those two together...

(1 edit)

Agree in terms of the menu and structure layout, at the moment it feels difficult to navigate and use where there are objects/text over each other or the controls differ from other VNs like the ones that use the Ren'Py engine and even restrict the games customization and play. Just changing the volume was a puzzle at first as its more so touchscreen 'esc but not at the same time making it all so confusing. However, it is a good to play once you start and you forget about most of the stuff when your impressed in the story, but I would like if it was more user-friendly with accessible controls for PC (Browser DL version). I have not played it on the mobile version so i cant comment on its control and UI.

I do like the work and its wonderfull to play but the inconvenience is too much at times.