Interactive visual novels

[haeeshoo]

Hello all,

While surfing the net I came across an amazing system for creating interactive visual novels ( to be found at http://www.renpy.org )

I was wondering if we could transform one of our stories into such a visual novel (perhaps even make it a bit interactive).

I would like to propose the following experiment:

1. someone writes a (short) story (consider providing some alternative endings/paths through the story)

2. someone illustrates the key moments of the story (this would be my main weakness - i cannot even draw stick figures...)

3. someone provides a sound track to be used as background music (i can make/look up something royaltee free myself if needed)

4. someone gives permission to use their wavs as sound effects

5. someone combines all the material into a visual novel/simple computer game using renpy

Would anyone be volunteering for any of the above steps?

The result would of course be a community thing - i.e. all source code and image/sound/music clips would be available,

and the final result would be available for everyone for free. Moreover some credits screen should appear

to mention the (nick)names of all people who contributed to it.

I'm very much volunteering for step 5, and if needed I can do steps 1 and 3 too

(and I can ask people for permission about step 4 too if needed).

But I'm completely helpless when it comes to step 2.

Anyone interested in contributing?

You can see some demos of games created with renpy at http://games.renpy.org

(at the time of writing the site is temporarily unavailable),

or you can search youtube for "renpy" and see some screencasts of what people have made with it

(don't expect this system to take over the world, it just looks like a fun thing to experiment with ).

You can of course also download the renpy system yourself (it's open source and free) and experiment with it on your own computer.

Best regards,

Haeeshoo.

[Poppy]

I am

[Blah!?]

I could probably write the story, depending on what sort of narrative you're going for. I'm actually sitting on an unfinished one that might be perfect for this.

[obsessed]

I could write, but I have no artistic ability.

[LeapYearKisses]

This sounds like so much fun... I'd love to do some of the art for it, but I don't have the time. Plus, I still live with my family and if any of them saw me, it'd be... weird, if not bad.

But I wish you luck creating a team.

[haeeshoo]

Hello everyone, it's nice to see some interest growing.

Currently I understand the volunteering as follows (please correct me if I'm wrong):

Merodii can help with graphics -> this will be great once we have a story. If anyone has not yet

seen Merodii's digital videos on youtube - they are awesome stuff!

Both Obsessed and Blah-San volunteer to help with writing.

I have no preference in this - are you willing to post your stories so we can have a poll about which story

the people would like to see? Please note that it may be needed to adapt the story a bit to make it more suitable

for a visual novel (i.e. not too long sentences and so on). This of course will be done in cooperation with the story author.

There's no reason why we should limit ourselves to one story/game -

but since this is the first attempt, we should try not to make it over-complicated, so

that we can get some results and feedback quickly. If the story can have multiple endings/different paths

that would be nice, since that's something that sets interactive novels apart from regular stories.

I'm currently starting to learn the renpy system (I study better and faster if I have a purpose in mind )

Please post your story here if you'd like to cooperate, and in a week[1] we can set up a poll.

[1] yes a week is short, but waiting too long we risk that nothing happens at all, which is something I'd rather avoid

[High on Lullabies]

Obviously it depends on the gender of sneezer(s) you were after but I'd be happy to provide any male-flavoured sound effects you wanted . Either cutting them out of my existing recordings on Bondi's page, or making new ones especially for the task.

[Blah!?]

I'll see what I can do. The story I already have that I thought about using is too long, but I think I can crank something out that would be more suitable. I'll get to work on that right away and post it as soon as it's ready.

Also, should the story be something written in first person, or will the story not be told from the point of view of a character? The reason I ask is that visual novels tend to be in first person with a main character narrating.

[Silent Sophie]

Obviously it depends on the gender of sneezer(s) you were after but I'd be happy to provide any male-flavoured sound effects you wanted .

Same here. Just, obviously, female.

[haeeshoo]

Great! Thanks for all the response so far.

I think that together we can make this something nice

Oh and did I mention already that the novel will be (ahm...well... should be) able to run on linux, mac and windows computers ?

So everyone is invited to this party !

Best regards,

Haeeshoo.

Also, should the story be something written in first person, or will the story not be told from the point of view of a character? The reason I ask is that visual novels tend to be in first person with a main character narrating.

Hello Blah-San - since we are the directors, we can choose everything ourselves

But perhaps first person makes it easier to identify with the story, no?

Mod Note: Merged posts ~Mute

[obsessed]

I'm up for writing if you tell me what to do.

[tma]

Sounds interesting... not sure whether or not I can completely conceptualize it. I will most definately check out the finished product.

I'm glad that you have writer volunteers as I know that multiple endings just isn't the way that I write.

All the best with this!

[RaisingKane]

If you want, I could see if the artist who does C&S would draw it?

[haeeshoo]

I have prepared a very (VERY!) small demo to give some ideas about what can be done with my current knowledge of the system.

As soon as I have permission from everyone involved ( amongst other things, it features sound effects ;-) )

I will post links where you can download and test it.

It's supposed to work as a teaser for the bigger project that we are trying to set up here.

WINDOWS COMPUTERS (if you are not sure what you have, you probably have this):

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For windows users I have prepared a setup.exe file, which makes it easy to install: just run setup.exe and you have it.

It would be great if someone could try it out, since I have no windows computer available.

(So it took some tricks to make that executable )

MAC AND LINUX COMPUTERS

----------------------------------------

There's also a version for linux (which works for me) and a version for mac computers

(which I cannot test myself, but I have some confidence it 'll work )

On these systems you will need to manually unzip a file before you can run the application.

Again reports about success or failure on these operating systems would be interesting!

[Sneezles]

Feel free to use my wavs too

[haeeshoo]

Feel free to use my wavs too

Yay!

Update:

It is important to know that I would like to make all the content we created available under a creative commons license (I've selected the by-nc-sa 3.0 license),

which guarantees that the complete novel remains free for all to use forever. Read about this specific license here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

In particular, it will require that all content creators explicitly agree to release their work under this license.

People are eager to contribute to this project which is a good thing!

I know that Blah-San is already working hard on finishing a story, and some other people have

shown interest in writing something too. It takes some time to write a story, there's no point in pushing people needlessly.

As proposed before, we will see what is available on 22 april - if more than one story is submitted we can vote

which one we will work on as first project... (I don't want to make people angry because their story isn't selected on the

other hand we can only work on one thing at the time)

Once we have our story, it will have to be reworked into some sort of play/storyboard with descriptions of what

graphics/sounds are needed. I would like to reserve another week for this activity: my own deadline is set to 27 april.

(Deadlines are the only way to make me finish something )

From that moment on the coding, background/character creation/selection and music/sound effects creation/selection in principle can proceed in parallel.

To smiles2us: if you want to ask the C&S creator to draw the graphics, I'm fine with that, but please explain him/her about the license.

We also have had other people who wanted to contribute graphics (I'm thinking of Merodii) - I'm not sure if the work can be divided easily since

the styles can be quite different. One way I thought it would be possible was to embed short digital video fragments in the novel, like to illustrate the transition between two chapters,

or the final closing scene of the story (if we will have chapters in this first story).

Best regards,

Haeeshoo.

[haeeshoo]

Wow this sounds fascinating! I've only posted a few artworks on this board but I would be willing to help if I'm needed. Also, I have Adobe Flash so if animations are useful, also let me know. Regardless, I'm eagerly awaiting the finished product!!! Male or female based...I don't care!

Hello spoider,

I have seen some of your work posted here on the forum - impressive stuff!

I'd be delighted if you decided to help us out with artwork.

Would you still be interested?

If yes, within one and a half week (at the latest) I should be able to provide you with an initial list of things the

story that was selected needs.

Best regards,

Haeeshoo.

[haeeshoo]

Ok, so today was the deadline for story submission.

I have received a high-quality story from Blah-San (yay!), which will be used as basis for our first visual novel.

I'm now going through the story to generate a list of resources that needs to be created,

in addition to sharpening my game coding skills (this project remains a challenge in many ways ;-) )

Thanks in advance for your further cooperation.

people who cannot pm me on the forum yet can mail me at haeeshoo@gmail.com

[haeeshoo]

Hello all,

Today was the deadline for the list of required resources.

The VN is progressing steadily.

The story has been converted to code (i.e. just displaying the text )

I am at the point where I can really start to use some sounds and graphics.

I have already received some graphics from spoider (eagerly awaiting other ones ),

and some impressive sneeze collections from High On Lullabies and SilentSophie.

We still have some other needs:

* The story calls for a second male sneezer (who's not too shy to pull off a "pretty convincing fake" one too)

* and also would like to know if Merodii is still interested in contributing? In case she's not, is anyone interested in creating scene background images?

(Either drawing them, or finding pictures that more or less match the descriptions in the story and which are available under a creative commons license).

Also if anyone has ideas about file hosting other than things like mediafire please let me know too.

The free web space i have been looking at all had per-file size-limits which make it impossible to upload

the stuff there.

Thanks!

Haeeshoo

(From technical point of view, it should be possible to have something ready for beta testing by the contributors

approximately two weeks after all graphics and sounds have been received.)

Once the thing goes live for the general public, it will be freely available for everyone.