My First Video Game - RenPy VN

[Finlam]

I made my first video-game this week!

DWARF ARTE ONLINE


It's on the Play Store and PC


It's a short Visual Novel (fantsy, parody) that draws inspiration from:

• Tolkein
• Log Horizon
• Sword Art Online
• Futurama
• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
• Undertale
• My Hero Academia (Hero Academy)
• Various Memes
• The far reaches of the 9 and 62 3rds realm of madness

--Technical stuff--
Using the RenPy game engine it took about a week to complete the game. 98% of this was due to all the dialog (somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 words).

The game was designed to take very little time to play; there's no monetization of any kind built in. My object, instead, was to test out the RenPy system and implement:

• stats/inventory
• event triggers
• character expressions
• scene changes
• music
• dynamic dialog options
• smart menus that change based on events/inventory
• scrolling credits
• them music
• multiple endings
• branching storyline

and the results were *AMAZING*

The RenPy framework kicks ass!

I've used dozens of different frameworks in many languages, but the PenPy framework is the best by *far* in that it sets out to do one simple thing: help you make a visual novel game, and then it just ****ing does it. No got-ya moments, no obscure bugs, everything documented, everything simple to set up, easy to install, and quick to get started.

The dialog writing took about 95% of the time because I really, really got into it. Way into it...
...way more into that I was supposed for a short project that was just going to be a test of the RenPy framework.

But the results were GREAT! Characters with distinct personalities, vibrant and exciting dialog, references and parody to more varied sources than I even intended, all wrapped up in a whimsical hero's journey.

It came together nicely =)


Packaging it was easy too, thanks to RenPy. The only thing I had to manually install to build the APK for Android was the Java Development Kit, and it was even kind enough to link me straight to the site; everything else, every single little thing RenPy took care of for me.

It was actually more a pain to upload the app to the Play Store than it was to create the APK in the first place.


Anyway, this was such a fun project that I absolutely fell in love with RenPy and would recommend it to *anyone* at *any* level of technical knowledge who wants to make a Visual Novel style game.

To put my money where my mouth is, I'm writing a series of short tutorials describing how to implement some of the features I listed above.

If there's anyone else on the Playground interested in making a visual novel style game (art, music, or technical), or if you want to know more about RenPy or why I positively *drool* over it, I'd love to answer your questions here.

[pendell]

Congratulations! I hope I have time to look at it in detail. For the moment, congrats on your first attempt!

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Finlam]

Congratulations! I hope I have time to look at it in detail. For the moment, congrats on your first attempt!

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Thank you!

I enjoyed it and it was great learning experience.

I'm a firm believer that the only way to really learn something is to do it! I'm hoping the tutorials and sharing some experience will help inspire others to pull their games from their minds and push them into reality =D

We have a lot of creative people here on the Playground and I'd love to see what comes out of that creativity.

[Finlam]

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

So far all the reviews I've been hearing are that it takes about 10 minutes to run through and it gets some good laughs.

Which is all I was really going for.

It's a good feeling to hit the target on the first shot.

=)

[truemane]

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