While thinking away in my lonely little secluded corner of the digital realm, I was thinking that with all of these visual novels that are ported, why not just make a visual novel ourselves (and not like a certain homemade visual novel some time back...something about a forest or the suchlike if memory serves). Maybe something more along the lines of a collaborative visual novel by the VNDS community.
The way I was imagining it, everyone would come together to create a couple of distinct characters, each with their own quirks (and a main character that everyone agrees on).
Then a couple people just choose a character that they want to make their "arc" of the story on (like 3-5 .scr files long) and then we all just piece together all of the little parts for the fun of it.
On paper, of course, it sounds like a great idea. But porting an already existing visual novel takes up alot of time, not to mention that it can be quite tricky to make sure all the commands etc are filled in properly.
But to make up a whole new story/plot, cast of characters, graphics/images and maybe even music, that really takes a damn lot of time.
Seeing that the interest in VNDS and especially the porting, is very minimal, I doubt anything like this could work.
Thus again, it's a nice idea, but not very realistic.
haha, I seem to remember a similar Idea coming up a long while ago.
On the surface, it sounds like an awesome Idea. After all, who better to create a visual novel then those who are so dedicated the work on porting them to a hand-held!
But, unfortunately, creating a VN is more then just being awesome.
Just because we know what we like, in terms of Characters, Plot, Music, Art, etc, doesn't mean we can create these ourselves. I for one can't draw a straight line, let alone a stick figure. And I'm essentially tone deaf, on account of being essentially deaf ^^. And all my characters would end up being quiet-yet-psychotic yanderes who try kill you in the first chapter ^^
However, I do like this small-knit community. We may not be as big or 'connected' as other Jap/VN-related groups, but we're still a bunch of hard working individuals, who quietly go about their business of making something we enjoy available to more people.
looks like the Visual Novel industry is being underestimated...
>>4
And the work of doujin circles such as Type-Moon, too.
The Katawa Shoujo demo was quite a miracle already, and that one was just a DEMO.
>>5
I wonder why Americans can't get anything decent finished without some REALLY big budget and lots of manpower. Just look at all these horrible "indie-games" on the console networks these days, these are abominations so clearly that developers have to call it "art" to get any respect. And all the potentially nice freeware projects are vaporware and never get beyond alpha-stage.
Hogan's port of "The Best Eroge Ever" gave me a different idea. What if we tried copying the idea of having a contest every so often (every other month o.0?) of 5 minute visual novels made with VNDS? Then maybe the best one is continued or something (don't really have any idea for a prize)?
haha, you know, I'd be down for this.
Donno exactally who would 'judge', but we could always put them all together and release them as a 'colaboration of short sotries'.
Limit each one to 5-10 minutes, and have a size limit (depending on how many people are interested). We could even, for example, decide on a general theme or place/time, and see what ideas people come up with.
Lol Hogan, you posted right when I deleted my post for editing
I'm currently agonizing over making a Visual Novel (Not specifically for DS, just in general).
Story? Got it down. (Very similar to Higurashi)
Character Art? Okay, definitely unprofessional and choppy though. (The foreground poses are from Type-Moon works though)
Backgrounds? None.
Music/Sound? None.
Voice Acting? I do want, but not realistic, plus it's English.
Scripting? I have no clue how to do it.
Okay, let's knock out the ones that aren't realistic, so basically:
Story, Background, Music/Sound and Scripting. That's all that's needed to create a visual novel. All of which The Best Eroge Game Ever has. And take 5-10 minutes to complete, probably no branching paths. This idea is definitely more plausible than the first.
Btw, anyone know a good music synthesizer?
haha, Then fixed for consistency (and bad spelling):
Sweet, so can we say at least three people are interested in this so far? Rai, one of the many Anons, and myself(Hogan)?
We can scour some forums, etc to see if we can find more people, and perhaps we can do this before the end of the year (a while away I know but covering all bases)
Oh, and if your looking to create music, I've heard Mixcraft is pretty good (although its for loops ala garage band, not a music synthesiser). Newgrounds' music portal also has some really great background music as well, which is surprising considering the rest of the site. Also, music in TBEE is from RPGmaker, I think...
I'm up for a small VN contest of sorts. I have lots of small short stories that could be (and have been in one case) converted into a VN.
Of course, I haven't used VNDS to make the one I did a while back, but I think I could piece together something. The only thing I would really have trouble with is art....
Story - covered
Music - royalty-free music is easy to come by
Art - big problem, free stuff exists but hard to fit into story, and I can't draw worth squat
Scripting - I can learn. Surely it's not harder than C++, Java, or Python?
>>13
Scripting is very easy. The wiki has a sort of useful tutorial...although its missing the color command.
I like the royalty-free music website, its really easy to find songs that match the mood (thank you "search by feeling" option)
.
As for artwork, we probably don't need actual character sprites (if we do, we can always borrow them from another VN temporarily).
Regarding backgrounds though, I happen to have a pack of backgrounds from various visual novels (ok didn't happen to have, I collected all of them xD). Its decently big and can probably cover most of the stuff we need.
http://www.mediafire.com/?mvydmzyxzfn
(Whoops forgot a couple xD)
http://www.mediafire.com/?emnzyjmrihm
And here are some se files since I'm putting up the backgrounds anyways.
http://www.mediafire.com/?vd1nyz03yyz
Unfortunately, all of the pictures need to be resized, and all of the sounds need to be converted (probably even the ogg ones). All of these were taken from visual novels I happen to have on my computer at the moment (though not all of them).Since its really needed, maybe can organize the sound folder and reupload it (the sound folder is a total mess, probably tons of duplicate files too).
you could also do what CAD does:
-take a picture (either your own/google)
-open it in GIMP/Photoshop
-Add heavy amounts of gauss blur or something similar, and if its 'evil time' in the novel, invert colours.
OK: still hypothetical, but what about these as guidelines:
I'd be down for spending some time at the end sticking them all together and putting them up.
That's a pretty nice set of guidelines. I think everyone can stick to those and have a good small VN.
I did the "take a picture, blur" thing for my VN I made a couple of years ago. It works fairly well, actually, as long as you have a good camera (mine sucked badly). I probably should have just looked up some to download online, but I had the perfect scene for my story right near me.
Stumbling around in a field at twilight is dangerous though.
Higurashi and Umineko are also good examples of taking a picture, blurring, then using.
That's kinda what I was thinking about when I was on my way to school.
Though randomly walking around with a camera is weird XD.
That takes care of background and music for me. Scripting is learnable.
Optional sprites are my only problem. I'm kinda devoted to making them even with my crappy art talents. The lines look ragged though... And I'm using Manga Studio to draw, so I don't know what tool to use.
The final submission date's fine with me, if Narcissu was only 30 mb, I'm sure a few more sprites wouldn't take much space.
I'll probably make it an alternative story to the one I'm making.
Ok everyone, created a thread for this colaboration. Lets us know what you think:
http://digital-haze.net/ch/vnds/kareha.pl/1257420059/l50