Visual Novel Engines

I meant to point these out a while ago to all you aspiring programmers and game designers, but I never got around to it. Keep in mind I have never used either of these, but I do have a lot of experience PLAYING visual novels and would love to see more created in English. Hopefully someone who has used them can make some insightful comments.


After doing some research a while ago I came across these two engines for making visual novels in English, the Blade Engine and Ren'Py. Supposedly they both make it really easy to create these types of games (visual novels and dating sims). Ren'Py appears to be completely free and has sample games available for download, while Blade has a professional version and a free version.

Worth checking out for anyone interested, and if this leads to someone actually working on something let me know! I'd like to hear about it.

sweet :D

the blade one seems more interesting, i'm so gonna test it

Good shit man, tempted to make one now.

nice, I'll try the Blade first, seeing Ren'py's sample games are not good enough.

Thanks for the info.

I am quite interested, while I suck in programing and related stuff making my own games would be good, as soon I have free HD space I will be downloading them and see if I can use one of them.
If anyone is interested in trying out I can make the plot if someone else do the drawing and programing the game we can try making one and releasing here.

I've always wanted to try making a dating sim...maybe I'll download one of these and try them out too.

From what I understand, Renpy is Linux and Blade is OS X.

Wow this is a pretty awesome update even if I might be too lazy to do anything with it. Well if anyone needs any help with stories or whatnot I'd be happy to help.

Alright, I've used both these engines. Ren'py is far more customizable, and far for complicated to script in. all in all with my basic programming background it took me about...6 hours of learning to get it down. ren'py is basically python language.

Blade on the other hand, is super easy to code but with quite a few limitations. you cant really customize much, even with the professional version. On the flip side however, i did learn the coding during a 40 minute meeting and started to make our novel.

that's pretty much the skinny on these 2 engines

also, I'm looking for artists. =p

Very interesting ...

Visual Novels? But it comes with images or what? o.O Did anyone create games on these? I'm curious to see it, but don't wish to download.

I just played around with the Ren`py Tool, im not quite sure how long creating this little Demo Version took. I used the basic commands to create this little show. I still have to read more, there are so many more Features i want to try.....

I proudly Present:

FAKKU Site Guide

http://www.megaupload.com/de/?d=QXW5JN2D

You have to download Ren`py and unzip the Fakku Site Guide Folder into the Main Folder of Ren`py. Then after you started Ren`py, click on "Select Project" --> "Fakku Guide"--> Launch.

PS: Out of the "Main", "Manga", "Register".... Buttons only "About" is working, then click on Jacob. :wink:
PPS: Please ignore the Gramma.... i know i suck v..v

Edit:
Character Design by tsuina
http://tomoko.denpa.org/

I signed up just to say something.
Ren'py is awesome.

I've used it myself before and it's absolutely fantastic, I find it to be very easy to use (just like python itself). Of course this might be different depending on the person.
They have steady releases with improvements every time, which is delightful for a free product.

I'll stop marketing now :P
Just download it and try it out, it can't hurt.

Cheers!

Just to clarify, Ren'Py games run on Windows (currently 98+, but I plan to require 2000+ in the not too distant future), Mac OS X 10.4+, and Linux x86.

@Lord_Helmchen: your demo sorta game got me laughing my head off. nice one! nice character design too. :)

Personally, I feel that this news couldn't have come at a worst time... my exams... noooo! T.T

That aside, I'll play around with this thingy (ren'py) once the explosion settles.

~gar..

[color=#000066]the blade engine looks awesome..[/color]

Ren'Py is the real thing whereas Blade is just some easy to use, limited program designed to get people to sign up for it because they feel like an ace programmer after using it for about half an hour. If you want to make anime girls appear on screen in sequence while text appears, Blade can do that and it's easy. If you want to make something that's actually original, interesting and will get peoples' attention, you should use Ren'Py. Seriously, trying to make a good game in Blade would be like if Square Enix made their next RPG in RPG Maker 2k. Actually, that's not fair; RPG Maker is very customisable if you know what you're doing. Anyway, you could achieve similar results to Blade by merely using a .doc file with images embedded and internal links to take you between the various choices.

Well, the programs aren't really the problem. There's tons of scripter engines already for this kind of stuff (I'm led to understand that Tsukihime and Fate were made using existing engines as well), and (to put it politely) it's not really all that difficult to use them. I'm sure I could learn one in less than a day if I cared.

The PROBLEM is getting decent content to put in your visual novel and sticking to the project long enough to actually finish it. Artists don't come out of nowhere, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a writer who will churn out the enormous amounts of text necessary for free in less than five years - the entire Tsukihime script was said by Mirror-Moon to be longer than Lord of the Rings (and look at how long it took them just to get that TRANSLATED). A free project, with several writers each working in their spare time whenever they feel like it, will take YEARS.

Of course, if it's a paid project to create a visual novel that we will sell for money, sign me up as soon as you've got a basic premise. I'm a competent writer and I've got a friend who's even better.