>>79512899I wouldn't say I'm good at coding. Renpy isn't that coding intensive. If anything, it's complexity is in it's stage design and having many different tasks to take care of.
The complexity is multifaceted based on the different things you have to do.
>writingProbably the part you have to be the 'smartest' at. Art brings people in, but writing keeps them there. Will take a long portion of your dev time, but kinda the easiest task? It's just words in a textbox, you know?
>artCan be disregarded. If you have special art skills or a theme you want to convey through visuals, by all means do it yourself.
But if you don't, just steal. Especially if you're a beginner. Nobody actually cares, because you're too irrelevant to care about.
>uiWith my new photorealism style that I've adopted with the Ninisanni Scenarios, UI is pretty easy. Just find the textures, and adapt them to fitting backgrounds/UI elements.
Even if you're after a different style, I mean you can make a squere box in photoshop and then make it fuzzy or slap a filter over it or some highlights or something.
>BGsFuck handrawn BGs. So much effort, not even the artists you pay want to do them, they just wanna make the pretty girls with the big boobs. So use photo. Slap a filter over them like in Katawa Shojo. Or if you favor the vectorized style, or perhaps a pixelated art, we've now got AI to better filters to do that.
Unsplash is a godsend, because a lot of their photographers are straight up pros. Just beautiful photos, all copyright free.
>codingRenpy makes the coding part easy with its already established structures, unless you're doing weird stuff like me. But even then, you can operate within understandable frameworks to make something like a jukebox or hub area or a dress-up game. After four games though, I still haven't found a way to make the environmental sound channel an option in the game menu without linking it to the sound channel.
>musicLike with art, if it fits your theme or you want to demonstrate your musical talent, then make your own music. If not, the copyright free tracks are really, really good. No stress here.
>asset gatheringEither a pain in the butt, or really easy. You would not believe how long it took me to find a checkout desk for the Claire's store. After at least an hour of searching, I finally found a shutterstock image and had to erase all the watermarks in Photoshop. Still would have been easier than drawing it up myself though.
For the art elements, I'd say you need a familiarity in photoshop, a good eye, and attention to detail. It's mundane, but kinda chill, since you can watch TV in the background.
>staging and scriptingThis could be easy if you're just adopting the simple VN strategy of slapping two characters on the side of the screen and changing their expressions every couple of lines.
But if you're after my animation focused style, the journey will be ballcrushing indeed. You will do battle with the developer of Renpy (may god curse his name). It's basically like a lot of repetition and refreshing your VN to make sure your sprites are in the right place (they will always be in the wrong place, even though they should be in the right place). It's """easy""" but poorly designed, if you know what I mean. The complexity is in the frustration.
It's time consuming. I finished the script back in January, spent what, five months just scripting and staging and gathering assets?
And the jukebox, dress-up section, mallwalk extras, main menu, FAQ, credits etc.? Took me from mid-May to mid-June. That's the rawest coding I've done and it took me less than a month.
For comparison, it took me a week straight to script and stage sFightClub alone. Even though staging took less smartitude, it still is harder because it wears on you, you know?
Um, that's basically it. I guess I ended up making it sound hard, but at the beginning levels, it's way easier than I'm making it out to be. I just face these problems because I like challenging myself.
So like, I feel that VNs are moreso based on your level of creativity and adaptiveness rather than raw talent in any of these categories.
Not to be a dick, but
>>79514662 speaks truth.
Finishing a project is important, even if it's not how it looked in your wildest imaginations.
It gives you that sense of accomplishment that shows you what you dreamed up is actually possible. It also gives your players a chance to critique, which makes your next product better and more attuned. If I had to choose between one big project or three games, I would choose the latter. The product gets out in a quicker timeframe.You can make the next better than the last.
So make a first VN and realize how fun it really is, and then make more than I can read!
