I occasionally try my hand at various crafts, because I have free time and want to find a rewarding hobby. This week/month's contender is Creating Visual Novels. I seem to gravitate towards this every summer. I know that most OELVNs ('Original English Language Visual Novel's) suck in comparison to their often much more polished productions from Japan, but I'm going to try anyways.
Well, you can't really make a game without an engine to work with. I decided to completely scrap the engine I was using last year, Novelty, because it promised a very easy to use GUI with minimal coding. Well, this is only partially true. It is heavily based on its GUI, but it doesn't really make a powerful or flexible engine and it requires quite a few 3rd party programs to do basic editing (such as creating a custom visible text box!). I'm currently using Ren'Py and I must say that so far I am satisfied with the engine. The help files are actually useful and fully localized, while the python-based programming language is high level and I am picking it up fairly quickly.
On to the next problem - media. I'm a fairly decent writer and I'm a mediocre programmer, so that isn't really an issue. However... I can't draw my way out of a paper bag and despite being a classically trained musician, I don't really know how to record myself or create music on the computer. (Besides, I don't plan on having Jazz be the main music style. (I'm a saxophonist)) Enter Royalty Free Music and Sound Effects from Partners In Rhyme. I will probably be relying rather heavily on this since its free, and more importantly, legal to use. I still haven't solved the art problem, which is rather important to a Visual Novel. Best idea I've had is to grab some pictures from DeviantArt for reference and digitally draw something based on it. Now I think I know how editors for a manga feel - I have to take many sources and make them all look like they were drawn by the same person, which is hard even when I am the only artist.
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