#rpg maker mistakes

[reima-c]

Witch's Heart Inktober 2023

Day 2 - Luminance

"People's hearts... They shine radiantly."

[manyblinkinglights]

Today, I joined an instance of Project Aincrad, which has really been gathering steam since the VRC devs implemented Persistence (so player data can finally be saved). I partied up with a couple of anime people, a glassy-eyed big-clawed furry, and a floppy but intrepidly quadrupedal regular cartoon horse. We ran around jumping and batting at wasps and hogs with our blades, and met some other people (with better blades) along the way. I put three skill points into STR and one of my bosom companions (the furry) died, losing his acquired skills and experience, before I had to leave them all behind to go help my mom with something.

[lilium-snow]

The Forest of Drizzling Rain has always been one of my favourite underrated RPG-maker games, so I was excited to discover that it got a remake in 2022.

Anyways, my love for Shiori and Suga have been rekindled and now I'm going to be making it everyone else's problem (and yes I know in the remake he's referred to as Koutaro. But they referred to him as Suga in original and that's just what I'm used to).

[thedrotter]

hello dearest gamers ... today I have spent 3 hours translating the little character descriptions in the Re:Kinder page of Parun's website for the sake of me doing some wiki pages for em' characters and now i will share it with you!!! (ᵔ◡ᵔ) Here it is!! It's very likely a bit flimsy but it gets the point across (i hope).

(Oh yeah by the way the text in brackets "[ ]" is me butting in to clarify things not actual translated text)

Shunsuke

The protagonist of this story.

He holds the key to the story. [to unclasp it, or to solve it! The word used implies that, but I wasn't sure how to write it in in a way that sounded natural.]

A third grader in elementary school.

Ryou

He is Shunsuke's childhood friend!

Has a gentle and kind personality.

A third grader in elementary school.

Sayaka

A friend of Shunsuke and Ryou.

She is usually kind, but can be scary sometimes.

A third grader in elementary school.

Aya

Has a shy and quiet personality. [this sentence was a bit tricky to translate, there's a nuance to it i could not understand but this is basically what it's trying to say]

She has just recently moved into town.

A fourth grader in elementary school.

Rei

Has a strong personality that puts even that of the boys to shame. [in other words, it outshines theirs!]

She also cares about being fashionable.

A fifth grader in elementary school.

Hiroto

Oldest member of the group. [in between the kids, ignore Mami for a second Dx]

Seems older than he actually is, with a composed personality.

A sixth grader in elementary school.

Takumi

Has a weak and frightened personality. [which can also be read as timid and nervous (though it implies fear so frightened it is).]

For all the things that happen [to him] in the story, I give my condolences.

A third grader in elementary school.

Mami

Shunsuke's older sister [a sister figure, not literally his sister but wasn't sure how to write that in] next door.

She and Shunsuke are close friends!

A second year student in high school.

Yuuichi

Appears in the middle of the story.

A young boy that is a bit strange.

A second grader in elementary school.

Was it anything completely new and mindblowing no but is it fun to know what it says yes !!! 😊

[pyriety-a]

y'know. i've come to the realization that working constantly on a project ft dee does great things for raising her muse and my motivation to create things involving her, except i can't do anything about it on here when that energy goes into the pROJECT,

[insomnova]

You're the pathfinder guy to me (gender neutral) so I wanted to mention the pathfinder wrath of the righteous is on sale for $5, thats my currency might be cheaper in USD, but if any of ur followers wanted to grab it now is the chance!!

ANON YOU ARE SO CORRECT FOR THIS

>>GET THE GAME RN THIS IS NOT A DRILL<<

IF YOU LIKE DND IF YOU LIKE PARTY BASED RPGS IF YOU LIKE REPLAYABILITY IF YOU LIKE TOP DOWN ISOMETRIC TURN BASED RPGS AND IF YOU LIKE INCREDIBLE REACTIVITY IN THE NARRATIVE THIS IS THE GAME FOR YOU

behold my current playtime:

and i'll eventually play it again MAKE NO MISTAKE 💯🔥

SOME HIGHLIGHTS:

you can be evil like SOOO evil in this game (shoutout to the swarm that walks route)

YOU CAN HAVE A DRAGON MOUNT (AZATA ROUTE)

and if morality is less your bag and more adherence to the concept of order itself (lawful neutral PC makers we UP ☝️) you can play as a cosmic arbiter of order (and in some ways chaos: see act 4) called an Aeon

OR IF YOU JUST LIKE FUCKING W PEOPLE AND GODS: THE TRICKSTER ROUTE IS FOR YOU

or if ur more into the INDOMITABLE HUMAN(?) SPIRIT: THE LEGEND PATH

seriously you can turn into so much cool shit in this game. check out the mythic paths before you play if you want to plan out your character's growth in terms of mechanics and story. or just go in blind like i did! fuck it we ball

you have good AND evil companions so if you decide to go one way or the other you won't lose ur entire roster during the swing*

there is romance in this game and may i just say daeran's is 🔛🔝

5 ENTIRE ACTS OF NARRATIVE GOODNESS**

MORE BUILDS THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A CHARACTER SHEET AT

CUSTOMIZABLE DIFFICULTY SETTINGS FROM GENERAL STUFF DOWN TO THE NITTY GRITTY

*=uh. with one route that is the single exception but that's a special case that i will not elaborate on for spoiler reasons. LMAO

**=act 4 is kinda rough not due to the story but because of the fucking camera spinny mechanic they input. annoying as HELL AUGH

IF YOU LIKED BG3 AND PILLARS OF ETERNITY 1&2: THIS IS THE PERFECT GAME FOR YOU 😤😤😤

🗣️📢PRAISE BE TO IOMEDAE AND THE FIFTH CRUSADE 🙏

[sabermetal]

(( THE DOWNLOAD ISN’T WORKING RIGHT NOW, WE ARE CURRENTLY TRYING TO FIX!! I WILL REBLOG ONCE IT IS WORKING! ))

Hi, I just wanted to let you all know my friend and I just released a new Creepypasta game made on RPG Maker! It’s called “ The Conduit ” ( He did everything, I just co-written it. )

Take control of Tobias Roads, an assassin of The Father, sent out to hunt and kill The Hornets; a group dedicated to stopping The Tall Man and his Marked Ones at any cost. You will be traveling to Wolfpine Texas, a ghost town and former home of Toby. There, The Hornets have made their nest in the abandoned Davidson Slaughterhouse.

The game is available for free on Game Jolt! You can play on PC and Android devices.

Some things I should mention before playing:

1: THIS GAME IS FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY.

2. Despite being made with RPG Maker, we would describe this game more as a Dungeon Crawler rather than a typical RPG.

3. This game isn’t very long and it’s more of a “ practice ” game, we have bigger plans for the future of JE Universe. Like “ Jane Everlasting ”, a game set before The Conduit.

4. There are a few spelling mistakes, we unfortunately had to be quick to upload this game due to my friend’s laptop constantly crashing and we didn’t want to lose all that work.

HERE IS A LINK TO THE GAME! Please let us know your thoughts and we hope you all enjoy it!

[maleyanderecafe]

(Spoilers for Dead Plate) Would you consider Dead Plate to be a yandere vn with that one ending where Vince makes Rody eat his ex?

Dead Plate is actually pretty fun because I actually quite like the type of gameplay of the diner dash genre, and it is impressive they were able to code this into RPG Maker of all things. Unfortunately, the gameplay is still pretty glitchy and majorly difficult to do in later levels because you need to hit a certain amount of quota to get certain endings, and the gameplay is rather difficult, so I had to search up some of the endings instead of completing the game like I usually do. To answer your question... kind of? It's one of those "it depends on your interpretation" kind of things (and probably the creator's twitter).

The story starts out with Rody who is hired to be a waiter at Vince's fancy restaurant after a lot of begging. We see that Rody is kind of a himbo and Vince is very straight laced. The majority of the story comes through the dialogue they have together. We learn that Rody is taking this temporary job to get a really fancy gift for his ex, Manon so that they can get back together again. Vince on the other hand seems to be a famous chef with a specific type of interest in food and is very serious about his job as a chef, to the point of intensity. We see in one of the scenes were Rody comes to take out the trash that he is yelling at one of the cooks for making a mistake, even putting their face over the oven fire to punish them. Similarly, when Rody accidentally knocks over the trash while taking ti out, Vince slaps him. At some point, Rody asks Vince if he can take some of the leftovers after each day, seeing as he doesn't really have much to eat. Vince allows him and each day, he is given a new dish that he leaves in the fridge. In one of the days, Rody interacts with a mouse, only to be served that to him as his leftovers. Rody also periodically gets very strange dreams about being eaten or otherwise prepared for food, often with Vince in them. During one of the days, after work, Rody ends up going into Vince's office, only to find a picture of him and Manon together in a bloody locket. He doesn't seem very happy about this, but proceeds as normal. Near the end of the week, Vince invites him to his house to serve a bunch of guests, which he does begrudgingly. Here we get to know how the other members of the guest know Vince. We also get to know that Rody considers Vince's food to taste not that great and that it in fact tastes "self absorbed", and we also learned that Rody dropped out of school at some point as well. After this, Rody ends up going into Vince's room and getting the fridge key but is promptly caught by Vince. Vince thanks him (sort of) for coming over and tending to his guest.

There are a couple of endings depending on certain criteria but we will go over them best we can.

The first ending happens when you are able to get enough money after doing all the shifts and quits the job from Vince telling him he no longer needs it. Rody, finally having enough money attempts to call Manon so that they can get dinner together, but the line is disconnected. He tries a couple of times, getting more desperate as he calls, even stating that he just wants to hear her voice, but no matter what, the call never connects.

The second ending happens when going into the freezer during the last day. Rody is caught and then promptly tied up by Vince. He is unable to escape, but Vince allows him to attempt to escape. He fails, no matter what and Vince kills him.

The third ending is probably the one that has the most information on the rest of the story, and is likely the most "cannon" ending for this game. It's similar to the second ending where he is tied up in the freezer, but this time he has brought matches to help him escape. He is able to escape the freezer, but finds a plate of meat on the counter. He is then promptly caught by Vince and has to avoid his attack. Missing this will cause Vince to kill Rody and drag him into the freezer. However, not missing will cause Vince to instead tear off Rody's ear and eat it, much to Rody's fear. We learn that the dish is actually Manon served up that Vince prepared specifically for him. We learn through Vince catching Rody a couple of times that Vince actually didn't care too much about his relationship with Manon, but rather the fact that Rody cared about her so much was what intrigued him. In fact, the reason why Vince ended up serving Rody Manon like this was because his critiques always talked about how his food was lack in love but due to Vince's lack of being able to taste, was never able to understand (this is foreshadowed when Rody calls his food bland and "self absorbed"). Because Rody constantly went on and on about Manon, he though that if he served him the thing he loved (Manon), that he would be able to make something that actually had that taste in "love" again (this is why Vince ends up serving the mouse he interacts with in one of the days, as he showed it "love"). Vince also reveals that this isn't something he normally does, as even the chef that he harassed earlier, he only fired and that he would never serve something like that to his customers, only seemingly doing this so he can revive his sense of "taste". Eventually, Rody ends up going into Vince's office and taking a broken bottle, stabbing Vince in the neck. He then ends up spreading oil all over the kitchen and promptly burning the entire building down, as Vince is still alive in it.

Finally, we get a flashback to when Rody and Manon broke up. It seems that Manon was mostly doing it because Rody would end up self sacrificing to provide for Manon, seeing as not only does he live in a shoddy apartment, but barely has enough money or interest in anything else but Manon. Manon seemed to have really loved Rody, but didn't want him to suffer by constantly catering to her, so she left him.

So now for the question of if I consider it a yandere vn, which is... it's hard to say? I don't think that this game was primarily made for a yandere to be one of the main characters (which is what I would more associate with a "yandere vn") but the two characters do exhibit some sort of yandere trait in one way or another.

Vince for instance has a very interesting take on love in terms of love in his food. You can for sure see him as just a person who is very obsessed over how his food taste, but it is also obvious that he has some sort of favoritism towards Rody, whether romantic in nature or not (it seems probably considering that Vince is gay), as all of the dishes that Rody takes home were made by Vince, and that he seems geuinely a bit sad when Rody quits on the first ending, as well as specifically making a dish made of Manon to serve to Rody. This seems to mostly be interpreted as a way for Vince to not only gain his sense of taste back but also to serve someone food with "love", but I can for sure see it as a way for him to make him shut up about Manon since he seems pretty annoyed when she's brought up. Still, he does end up killing him in like two of the endings, one where he is stuck bound up by rope in the freezer and one where he fails to defend himself. The second one can probably be chalked up to anger that Rody didn't eat the meal that Vince prepared him, but I'm not so sure about the other one. I guess it could be a way for him to eat his love like a lot of cannibal yanderes are like.

Rody himself is has a lot of the traits of light yanderes towards Manon, seeing that he basically seems to dedicate everything to her. Manon describes him as not ready for a relationship considering he keeps on trying to give up everything for her and calls his love exhausting, probably referring to how much he talks about her to Vince or to anyone. Even in his apartment, it's obvious that he doesn't really take good care of himself, with everything being very messy, with him burning his food and him sleeping on the couch. He doesn't seem very happy when seeing Manon and Vince together and seems to believe that money is the way that he can get back together with Manon, ignoring the actual reason, which is that when they are together, Rody ends up neglecting himself and just caring for Manon. On the twitter page, it's also confirmed that he would hide a body for Manon if that ever did happen.

Overall, very fun game. Love the aesthetic of the time incorporated into the game and the general character's attitudes. Whether or not Vince or even Rody is a yandere seems to be a pretty hotly debated topic amongst the fandom it's in, so I think it's for sure up to interpretation or until word of god says that they are.

[morn-yvri-winters]

Fun CogDis Fact [+ Some Theory Crafting & Regards to Lore itself] (STORY SPOILERS... for a 15 year old fan-game)

So i was doing some data mining (as in looking inside of the game files for fun to see how the game ticks and works, and boy howdy let me tell you, RPG Maker 2003's UI scares me, props to Otherhand for navigating through these... many variables, numbers, & symbols going on, because it honestly overwhelms me) I had learned that:

Cerue appears in the Maria & George Magicant Flashback as one of the background Gieegs behind the windows. While this most likely is just a matter of reusing sprites, it should also be noted that not all Gieegs in the "allthegoogs" sprite sheet actually get used. Like, i want to say around 3/4ths of them actually ever get used (there are a total of 4 Gieegs in "allthegoogs".

(UPDATE 1: She's actually present for one more scene, i think? For whatever reason, her event handler has two pages but she appears for both pages, from what i can guess, she is meant to be the Gieeg that appears during the sequence where Maria & George are walking down the hallway [i think i want to say when George wants to show off the mental amps to Maria, since they share similar variables "0049: maction", which is meant to be the activation of an event via some number inputted by some handler)

(UPDATE 2: Yep, she is present for the scene when George & Maria head to the giant vault door to then breach using the Mental Amplifier Device, yet she doesnt seem to look, which could mean Otherhand forgor to make her turn or she wasnt meant to be there)

Another fun fact, the two Gieegs (referred to as goog 1 & goog 2 internally) that appear when Giegue has his overstimulation moment by Maria's Melody are actually using Giegue's Sprite Sheet (referred to as "Newgiegue")

(a part of me wanted to say its probably due to Giegue being the only "stock-standard" looking gieeg to have a moving sprite, but that isnt even remotely true since the gieegs from "allthegoogs" ALSO have walk sprites as well)

...the fact that the misc googs dont get used here either really feels like there was some manner of implication there by the dev. Personally i feel like its meant to imply that this is Giegue's actual parents but that would be a MONSTROUS conclusion to jump to, especially when there is ZERO mention about the BG Gieegs other than them appearing in scenes and the "(They're watching)" interaction.

Actually, the only real plausible theory to make here would be that Cerue was around for the Human Caretaker Experiment/Goog's Arrival to the Solar System. I mean, the fact that she knows about Giegue and refers to him as an anomaly, seems to imply she knows a LOT more about Giegue (as in a majority of his history/biography) than what the player already knows (who he is, what he is, what he becomes, etc.), in addition, she has a Starman in a chamber and seems to know about their origin/capabilities, even calling their transformation into Starmen a mistake yet compliments the design itself.

Which reminds me of something else, the timeline of events in CogDis which are awfully questionable in terms of order (at least for 1 to 4):

"QUESTIONABLE" TIME OF EVENTS

(190X) - The Gieegs arrive to the Solar System and successfully neutralize the Martian's Space Station's Inhabitants to ensure they have the element of Surprise on their hand.

(190X) - The Gieegs arrive to Mars and engage in war against the Martians. They are successful in doing so and assimilate the Martians into their Army/Empire as the "Starmen" (?).

(190X) - Maria & George find Giegue out in the wild, they are then kidnapped and Maria is supposedly in a mini coma for over a week??? Regardless, George & Maria take care of Googie (also George works out some arrangements with the Gieegs to make sure that everything is comfortable to their liking).

(190X) - 2 or so years later, the event occurs, Maria gets Magicant'd and George runs away with the Mental Amplifiers.

(190X -> 198X) - Mother 1's Back Story involving George's Return to Earth occurs and eventually leads to the events of Mother 1 itself (also apparently PSI spreads out across Earth itself?).

I refer to this as being "questionable" as I am highly unsure as to whether or not the Gieegs were the only ones present on the Mothership OR if the Gieegs had done Mars dirty, assimilated the Martians into their Army as the Starmen and then went to Earth.

Personally a part of me wants to believe its potentially the former, as them getting pissed off at Humanity and taking it out on the Martians seems fitting in terms of MOTHER/Earthbound Logic (problem is that this wouldnt really align too well with the Mars' Data Log).

However it might actually be the latter considering that the Gieegs come from outside the Solar System, and by this time the Martians are the only one with a Space Station/Satellite, them getting neutralized by the Gieegs feels fitting, as the Gieegs themselves REALLY dont like it when another race has PSI (or at least, if they do, they dont like them being a potential threat to their goals, whatever THAT may be).

[tl;dr version of this paragraph, either they got super pissy and took out their hate on Mars or they are the equivalent to the Viltrumite Empire from INVINCIBLE and neutralized Mars so nobody would know and potentially warn others who about their arrival]

(now im thinking of the "THINK MARK! THINK!" meme in my head but with Giegue & [insert fitting character role here])

(Also if you're wondering why i've come to such a strong assumption about the Gieegs, it mainly has to do with a friend of mine bringing up a really good point when i was discussing lore stuff about my sona's world (aka the one in my pfp and which i have a ref sheet to), that being "Why would a race that seems peaceful, need weapons of mass destruction to defend themselves? That would imply that they aren't peaceful in the slightest or have blood on their hands." and it sorta stuck with me. Like, the best example I can currently think of is: An alien race comes down to Earth and says "we come in peace" and then pulled out a nuke and vaporized an entire forest after one deer spooked them; thats sorta what the Gieegs feel like to me whenever i think about them now, CogDis obviously doesnt make them peaceful and afr kind of 'shifty' but Official Mother (Game) Lore never actually quite describes what their intentions even were in the first place, only that they were afraid of Humanity having access to PSI and that Giegue needed to stop them)

Actually, i find it even more weird as to what could have possibly had occurred to the other Gieegs. So if we were to go by the theory of "Cerue being around", then there was probably at least... Three to Four unique Gieegs total?

(Hell, maybe there could of been even more aboard the Mothership for all we know, considering that when Maria is running through the halls, she mentions that the aliens on board all sorta just looked at them without stopping them, never brings up if they were just other Gieegs or what, just that they were being observed)

We know Cerue could have potentially disembarked at some random point (maybe potentially after the Human Caretaker Experiment OR after the Mars Invasion, depending upon which happens first) and goes into hiding on Mercury, basically collecting various creatures from around the Solar System (some either being alive or dead).

We do not know what happens to the other 2 to 3 Gieegs except that they were present for the Human Caretaker Experiment & The Invasion of Mars, as they were most likely responsible for the majority of opposition & were described as being all-powerful by the Mars Super Computer's City Records, so I imagine only a few were needed to take over.

Giegue is the only one around on the Mothership (excluding Niiue) but doesn't know where Cerue went.

(...potentially, Niiue's dialogue about him knowing that she doesn't want to meet him could imply that he's referring to his true identity as Giegue & knows that Cerue possibly sensed him but as Giegue and not his own unique being, which is why she said she only trusted the Applechasers [the main 4] and doesnt try to erase their memory).

(WARNING LINKS LEAD TO FANDOM WIKI, CARRY A BLOCKER) Oddly enough, the fandom wiki for Earthbound has a really interesting tidbit of a theory regarding as to what Giegue's Race even was or what may have happened to them (since after Mother 1, Giegue's People gets ZERO mention), mentioning that after he returned to the ship, he may have ended up killing his people in a fit of distress & deterioration before eventually transforming into Giygas, but its fandom wiki so take it with a tablespoon of salt.

(if youre wondering "why not use WikiBound?", it mainly tends to be game information rather than like, external media information..? Idk, i personally feel like i found more substance to Giegue's Fandom Page than compared to his WikiBound Page)

something i will mention however, is that the fandom wiki uses a lot of information from the novel for Mother 1 (apparently?) as a means to sorta fill in information regarding events that occur between the games. Also its the only wiki with a page regarding Giegue's Race, also this really cool illustration of the Mothership:

Anyhoot, I'm done rambling now, i just sorta wanted to share this because it was on my mind. Gonna stop now before my brain overheats and combusts from thinking too much, also i am hungry, its lunch.

(UPDATE, 12/23/202X, I've realized Cerue's Sprite has different opacities, which might mean that she's been sticking around quite a bit when George makes his discoveries & when the two escape)

[toskarin]

im starting to slowly get the appeal of OOMSEStep NC (henceforth: omake) over plus but why do u prefer it to plus? i love the new omake guilds and also the fact that south tyris isnt walled off like it is in plus makes the game feel so much more alive to me like im not forced to immediately grind lesimas to be able to breathe

the new gods are cool too

but enough of my opinions im want tk hear Urs

so to get the simple stuff out of the way: I really like slow-burn rpgs where your character develops into something unique through interactions with the sandbox, which is what OO excels at

more contextually, I think OO is really interesting in the ways it preserves Elona's original core, which is one strongly informed by the state of western rpg otaku (which is to say japanese players of western rpgs) subculture in the 2000s

Elona+ is a lot of fun, but it's a very 2010s type of rpg, showing an approach to sandbox design that ends up a lot less punishing, but sacrifices more complex customisation in pursuit of that [unrelated image of todd howard]

this makes Elona+ excellent for learning on top of being very satisfying to play. I've seen people dismissively refer to it as having "mmo progression" and I don't really disagree, but I don't consider that a bad thing. Elona+ has a very defined meta that you are constantly nudged towards, with challenges tuned to meet you on that curve

OO's strength is in allowing you to make mistakes and make them for a long time before realising you've done it, which would turn a lot of people away even if there were readily accessible english documentation on the game (which there isn't, I will add)

at the end of the day, they're both Elona, but Elona+ is charming for being a modern skilling rpg built around Elona, while OO is charming for being an expansion of Elona that focuses in on its synthesis of rpg maker games and roguelike sandboxing

or at least that's my takeaway!

[stormoftara]

I'm going to have to redo all the art for my game ive already done with a higher dpi and with anti-aliasing off so it looks crisper. Which is a pain but I knew going into this I would make mistakes and that it would take a long time. The main problem is that the resolution on rpg maker is so small. I can make the resolution bigger but that would mean upscaling everything and redrawing it anyway. So I'm going the path of least resistance here lol

I want the game to look good first and foremost. I know the story will be fun and hopefully the combat will be enjoyable too, but no one will play it if it looks blurry.

[flamingteddyproductions]

So I made a small rpg maker mz project with some different events inside for the expressed purpose of letting folks look inside to learn how to do a few things. Sure, there are tutorials, but sometimes having a hands-on aid helps a lot more. Inside it are how to:

-Have items be used manually or automatically from the inventory.

-Have footstep sounds

-Slowing player movement based on terrain 

-Push objects and have them stay in their place

-Hiding Mechanics

-Chase Mechanics

-And evented lighting

Note:

Something important to remember is for some of the events, is that they're set up for how I'd use them. You may need to edit them to suit your needs if they aren't a complete 1 to 1.

Please let me know if any mistakes are found.

[skaruresonic]

Hey! I just read your post about creating visual novels (this one: https://www.tumblr.com/tartrazeen/759072677603524608?source=share)

I'm trying to make one right now. I'm not too sure which tool I should use - I was thinking RPG Maker so I could use the little sprites - but I figured I could do stick people or something as placeholders for actual artwork.

No matter what tools I use, how exactly did you go about "writing" it? Did you script your story out first and then learn how to program it after, or did you need to know how the program worked to tailor your story to that?

I learned to code in tandem with writing the story. It's moreso the case that the writing evolved in the process of learning how to code, began to mold itself to the medium, if that makes sense. Personally, if I had to do it over again, I would take the time to acquaint myself with RenPy's particular scripting language, as it might have made the process a lot faster and less... growing pains-y. I would recommend learning to code first, but again, it doesn't make much sense to make a test VN without a story to support it, so maybe make something small for your first test project where you get to grind for XP commit mistakes in a space where your art isn't riding on it. People make silly test VNs that never see the light of day for the specific purpose of teaching themselves coding, so don't feel afraid to do that. Writing VNs differs from writing other stories in a way that's difficult for me to explain. You have extra tools in which to deliver the story, and it takes time to learn those tools - telling stories not just with words, but with timing, animation, audio, and images as well. You'll find that it isn't enough to simply have images pop up onscreen; you'll want to make them appear with a flourish, and those flourishes also tell a story. The UI tells a story. How you make elements appear and disappear contribute to the overall story. When you think of everything as a potential contributor to the story, that opens up a lot of possibilities and gets you thinking with portals creatively. In that vein, I'd say depending on your angle (because some VNs are just straight-up text, which is valid too), VNs can function somewhat more like movies. They can benefit greatly from an understanding of cinematography.

This might sound weird, given how we naturally tend to think of writing as the most important element - and it is important, just maybe not the only important element - but I think one of the most important things you need to establish right away, even before setting down any words, is a strong aesthetic. As one half of the medium, the visual part of a visual novel cannot be neglected.

What angle are you shooting for? Romance anime? Comic book? Gritty film noir? What are your visual motifs? In addition to helping you decide how to market your VN, the aesthetics will inform your storytelling, give you some concrete image or symbol to latch on, and can serve to subtly reinforce both theme and narrative. For Doki Doki Literature Club, it was the heart and a pen. You'll notice its motif of writing is reflected in the way in which the title resembles a scrapbook:

You and Me and Her has a cell phone as its main McGuffin and so technology becomes one of its motifs. Its textbox resembles a cloud; the text also moves rather slowly, to make you stop and soak in its story. The dreamlike interface later changes into something that resembles an old-school computer UI when a character decides to manipulate your route, reflecting the artifice of the game:

Worldend Syndrome had the pinwheel as a recurring symbol for narrative purposes and is color-coded to represent each of its characters. In addition, it bears a feel-good early summer vibe that I absolutely adore.

The novel I've been reading sporadically on and off over the past year, Hashihime of the Old Book Town, reflects a 1930s Japanese aesthetic, blending traditional Japanese art and literature with Western influences. Note the juxtaposition of traditional and modern elements, like the film reel beside an ink drawing of a koi fish:

It's also brilliant imagery because the game's plot centers around the MC's frequent breaks from reality; the film reel represents exaggerated realities, while the fish reflects how he "jumps" through various parallel worlds through puddles of water.

Everything sort of "trickles down" from there. It doesn't make sense to have a UI befitting a Resident Evil game if you're writing a cutesy otome game, for instance, unless you're aiming for cognitive dissonance.

For OaS I decided early on that, because it was going to be a slapstick comedy in places, the sprites should be more cutesy and cartoonish than the subdued way Sonic characters are usually drawn:

The goofy exaggeration only served to heighten the story's comedy. A "bounce" animation I found and later tweaked served as the basis for a running gag where Sonic gets hurt and "boings" like a rubber ball.

I also liked the Advance series' checkered tiles and wanted to go for a watercolor manga-cover-esque flavor... which, in turn, fed the ridiculousness of the story:

That's a far cry from this current project's aesthetic, which is slower, moodier, more somber, and more, I guess, "erudite," as it's based on Welsh literature and a little on history. So the aesthetic has to match.

Not to say aesthetics should be the only thing going for your story, of course, but because this is a visual medium, it is significant enough to warrant my huge wall of text about it lol. If you're just starting out, I'd recommend grabbing placeholder sprites and backgrounds until you can procure ones of your own. It's perfectly fine to use stick figures, although eventually you will have to start working with finalized pieces since the individual dimensions of your pieces will impact how your code functions.

If it wasn't clear already lol, I work with RenPy. Despite my frequent moaning and complaining, it's probably the easiest program to learn for coding, as it uses its own framework built atop Python. Once you go through the process of learning the syntax, you can pretty much do anything you want with it, as it's infinitely customizable.

Some auxiliary programs I use are FireAlpaca (a free art program that works just as well as MediBang or Photoshop, and even supports animation), Audacity (free audio mixing; can also convert mp3 files to OGG, which is a must since RenPy only recognizes OGG file format) and Notepad for coding.

Btw, all of this stuff you can do for free. Anybody who tells you that you need to pay for fancy programs is trying to sell you something. Don't fall for it lol. As for actually making the thing... My creative process is messy and probably shouldn't be emulated. For lack of a better term, I call it the "dumping everything out on the table" method. First (and note that this step isn't always "completed", it's an ongoing process) I gather all the "raw materials," and then sift through them and play with them until the final product becomes something coherent. The material-gathering includes art, music, and sound effects, which will take some time. I count writing as a "raw material" as well since it can be edited.

From there, the writing and the coding sort of feed into each other. I have to be able to experience the story as the player will experience it, as it's a different experience than when you're staring at a word processor. What will the player feel at this juncture? Does it Hit Different(tm) when I use different wording, or change the song that's playing in the background, or employ a different sprite, or tweak the timing, or use a different animation?

The general rule I try to abide by in this regard is that if it isn't working for me, it probably won't work for the player, either. Put yourself in their shoes, because they're the ones going to be playing it.

Even something as simple as the way you present choices to the player conveys information. Should I offer a choice during this particular scene, or let the moment play out linearly? How many choices should I offer? Do I stick them in a false choice? An infinite loop? Do I hide choices, making the player feel clever for finding them or powerless to stop the narrative? Do I assign variables to choices? Do I disable rollback for choices so the player has to stick with their decisions? If I do have rollback enabled, will I do something with that? What are the consequences of making choice A first, then choice B, if at all? Many things to consider. Sometimes the sheer volume of work can overwhelm you as a solo dev and make it difficult to maintain motivation. Especially since you can't really show off a buggy game the way you would a story excerpt or a rough sketch. Making to-do lists, especially towards the end of the development process when it seems like a million things are screaming for attention, helped me stay on task and break them down into smaller, more manageable chunks. I might not be able to bang out a 20,000-word route in a week, but I can certainly fix a bug that duplicates a character sprite. This is a medium where you have a lot to keep track of, and small details do add up in the end. Crossing tasks off your to-do list provides small wins that add up over time. That's why I decide that certain days are dedicated to specific kinds of work. Some days are for writing, others coding, etc. (Also, RenPy comes built in with its own list function called TODO, although I haven't personally played around with it yet.)

Although OaS technically features choices, thus making it not a kinetic novel in the strictest sense, it's still a very linear novel with only one branching path. There weren't any persistent variables other than the flag which determined your route placement, and it functioned much like an on/off switch. Which is why I have no idea how Random managed to bypass it. xP

This new project, on the other hand, is much less binary in its structure. It tracks seven variables for three different characters and calculates ending eligibility based on the accumulation of those variables. Which, just in terms of sheer coding, is A Lot(tm) to keep track of. I struggle to scale back the scope creep out of fears that a more standard visual novel experience will bore the player. It's likely that if you're playing a visual novel, you're not expecting a hack-and-slash, but ofc that won't prevent the monkey brain from clapping its hands at you like "Your game NEEDS more interactivity or you're gonna lose them!" That's the devil talking. Ignore him.

So then you're gonna be weeks into implementing a QTE, only to realize that the version of RenPy you downloaded bears a glitch that forces repeat interactions at inconvenient times and you might have to scrap that and do something else entirely.

Based on a true story. xP

[8acenwww]

Hiiii, I want to share to you sum of the sprites for my new rpg maker gamm!! I ask you to show me my possible mistakes in these sprites and to rate them, to those to whom I am not without distinction. Thank uu 💘💘

[unbeknownsttomen]

i have been playing the cute RPG maker game CHANGED which is, at least on paper, extremely my niche of thing that i love. its ofc course a furry fetish game, which generally it would be watever. but on top of that is *furry forced TF by way of goo absorption* which presses basically all of my buttons. on top of that there are of course elements of vore, mind control, forced impregnation, oviposition, belly stuffing and possibly even hand holding. so yeah, i was 100% in. i was ready to play this and have both my mind and my pants blown. i even paid 3 dollars to actually have it on steam!

but there were a couple of problems with it. i played mainly the original game instead of the remastered version, so the art was very rough, the game elements were extremely clunky, there were a lot of very amateur game designer mistakes and quality of life problems with it and on top of all that, the fundamental conceit of the game was a bit dissapointing.

when i saw a youtube short talking about the game i got the impression that the TF sequences were like power ups or different phases or tools that your character would be "forced" to use in order to progress through the game. instead it turns out that the objective is to *avoid* being transformed, which sucks a lot of the fun from the idea. now you can only enjoy the tantalizing moments for a few seconds after getting a kill screen and you cant really properly enjoy it because you are frustrated that you lost.

the point of the game is to die a lot and get to enjoy the tf sequences over and over, which is a known game model in the past. games where the diying animation is kind of the point of the game.

but honestly, the game gets so hard at times, its challenges so mindnumbingly frustrating, that it almost feels like covert conversion therapy. it creates this incredibly strong association in your head between seeing furry porn and being incredibly annoyed and frustrated. which again, was made all the worse by the fact that i didnt catch on this being the early clunkier version and that there was a cooler, better made, more slick remake.

by the point i realized i was too far along to want to replay the whole game again, this time with a few tiny improvements.

all the same, the concept is still solid and it did give me an excuse to draw these sketches so im glad for that.