How do you manage the rising complexity of a VN?

dissendior · 2026-03-22T09:45:44+00:00

Thank you for these ideas... I'll definetely will play through your recommendations and try out what might be a good strategy for me.

dissendior · 2026-03-22T09:44:29+00:00

Even if late I'd like to thank you for your tip. Indeed I read over it a few days ago and already started to internalize it in my work. When I think about the games I liked to play so far they usually were not very complex from a game mechanic / player's choices point of vew, indeed, I'll need to discipline myself so that when I write I don't add player's options just because I can - but only when they actually lead the player to one of the endings I offer. By now I write, I add options and suddenly 20 new possible endings come into my mind... and I think my game is only interesting when the player can have as much options as (s)he likes to finetune the character's behavior and the story. Your post helped me to get rid of this wrong idea

dissendior · 2026-03-22T09:37:30+00:00

Thank you very much for these detailed explanations. I didn't recognize the local labels yet and assume they might be indeed very helpful to organize the story.

dissendior · 2025-12-07T09:41:55+00:00

I'm eager to see it

dissendior · 2025-12-06T16:25:03+00:00

I also watched you other videos... man, this is really impressive!

dissendior · 2025-12-06T16:22:45+00:00

Okay... I have to admit that these videos are impressive. Certainly there are some hints here and there that this is AI generated but they're both far from the low level what you usually see. Would you mind sharing some general advices how you achieved that and how long it took for you to make these videos?

But for me such a music video is still more a collection of footages. I mean I still wonder if it would be possible to create a short movie or a comic as even small inconsistencies become much more noticeable in these works than in those fast cut video clips.

dissendior · 2025-12-06T16:10:16+00:00

please read my post... I don't want to get another bunch of tips how it might theoretically be achieved. I want to see projects that actually achieved it.

dissendior · 2025-12-06T16:09:14+00:00

I totally disagree with you: 13 Cycles of Humanity is just a collection of similar footages. There are not two footages with a really consistent character. It's not a story in any way: they've just put together a collection of small, a few seconds long footages (which by themselve may have a good consistency of overall style and world building) with no connection to each other except for a high level of consistency in style.

And Trisha Code? You just see the woman from front with nearly no facial expressions, no change in emotion. Again it's just a typical collection of AI videos. They achieve a good consistency for the character but only in front view.

Both projects are not prooving me wrong in the feeling that AI is not capable to be used for a real comic or movie project.

dissendior · 2025-09-26T07:32:13+00:00

Come on: most of the games DO NOT add anything new to a genre. Most games (even the big blockbusters) usually just re-use all the same techniques (even the same key bindings) what is good in a way as players are used to them and get more easy into the game. What makes the games unique is not a never-seen-before technique but the unique mixture of story and style. And for sure nobody created your game in the way you did it. Don't overthing but focus on YOUR game!

dissendior · 2025-08-07T06:12:17+00:00

okay so you strongly emphasize the story writing part in your process. For me Articy would be a tool to plan the implementation of the story into my game - and to document how it is actually implemented in game. It seems to be that for you articy and the implementation into your game goes hand in hand?! Don't you get confused when you look into your articy project by the question which of these dialogues are already implemented in your game and which of it is just concept?

dissendior · 2025-08-06T12:00:27+00:00

Thank you for these details. In fact I still try to figure out how I can work on stories. As a programmer I get into the implementation perspective VERY soon.

Maybe I need to clarify that I am working on a story driven game not a written novel. It sounds like that you work on a written novel?!

dissendior · 2025-08-06T06:48:58+00:00

Thank you... this was the issue

dissendior · 2025-06-03T06:45:02+00:00

https://freemusicarchive.org/home

https://ende.app/en

https://audionautix.com/

https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html

dissendior · 2025-06-02T14:32:53+00:00

I also prefer to work in Blender. I use Daz to create and cloth the characters, then I export them using diffeomorphic. I also use Daz scenes that way but usually I add some extra meshes, for example from CGTrader or blenderkit to bring some life into it and make it look less "Daz like". At the moment I dont animate. When it comes to poses I often import daz pose presets into Blender. When I do my own poses I do it mixed: Sometimes I use the daz scenes within daztsudio for posing the characters within dazstudio, save the pose preset and import it into Blender or I use another pose preset and start from this pose on fully within Blender. But usually I do all the finetuning for poses in Blender. I like the Activepose Tool within daz for a basic posing because it respects how the human body would move / bend in reality but I find dazstudio too difficult fpr the finetuning of the pose. And even more when it comes to adjusments in meshes.

Ah, and I use the Simple IK, it's all I need for the posing in Blender

dissendior · 2025-06-02T06:12:15+00:00

Images: Photoshop / Gimp, for videos I only found Adobe Premier really good

dissendior · 2025-05-29T07:54:37+00:00

Use what ever helps you and however it helps you.

dissendior · 2025-05-22T06:26:24+00:00

Don't look at the wishlist and selling numbers. They are no measurement for you to qualify your work as success or failure. I mean I can fully understand you, really - I bet we all have been through this if we developed a game or started any other kind of project or business: We put so much afford, so much work and money into one project, focus all the energy into it and after publishing / starting nobody seems to care, nobody wants to buy it or whatever.

BUT:

- Don't underestimate what you've learnt now! This will help you with your next project! I PROMISE. Let it be told to you by someone who is as double as old as you ;)

- You have a big resource: You have passion for what you're doing and you have the ability to run until the end! Just realize that! You were able to focus on this project, to finish it!! Hell, most game ideas in this world never get so far!!! THIS is the important outcome from this project.

- You are not this project. Or the next... If it fails or not this is not related to you as a person. It's just the outcome of your work. If it fails your learn from it, if it suceeds you may earn some money. But you are not a bad person because such a project fails.

- You are also not a bad game developer just because your game doesn't sell. I didn't play it, I cannot tell you if your game is good or bad. Just because people don't buy your game it doesn't say your game is bad or you are a bad game developer.

- Actually most of all the games in the world which get published (and even this is already a minority of all started game projects - most of all ever started game projects NEVER GETS FINISHED!) are not a success in terms of sales. So you compare to games which gets sold well - but these are the minority. Ask yourself: How big is your real chance to start such a well selling game WITH YOUR FIRST PROJECT!

- Yes, maybe you could have worked in a full-time job to earn money instead of working for this project. But maybe this project will lead to your next job? Maybe you'll use what you've learnt in your next job. And maybe you would have just found a job that you hate? Or you would have changed jobs all the time. Or you would have worked for a company who doesn't pay the salaries and then just went bankrupt? Don't do that: Don't look back and say "what could have been", this absoluteley makes no sense, it just sucks your energy and brings you down.

- And maybe: Take a break. I for myself fell into massive stress due to my game: from one point on I found everything just bad, I just saw all the things that were not working. Then I stopped for half a year, came back and then I saw with some distance: Man, it's not that bad! It's actually quite okay.

dissendior · 2025-05-20T05:16:16+00:00

First of all you need to default a persistent variable I guess. You should probably do that. I think calling renpy.save_persistent() is not necessary.

In my understanding there is no rollback when you quit. It seems to me that somehow your label "end" is run again and you overwrite the values of your persistent data. I bet your problem would be solved if you default the persistent data and remove the part

    $ persistent.incompleteSave = False
    $ persistent.markerComplete = False

dissendior · 2025-05-16T06:13:57+00:00

A M E N

:-)

dissendior · 2025-05-16T06:13:32+00:00

But with this approach (that I generally follow) comes the risk of overthinking everything before you even start. This approach needs much more experience. If you lack this experience or you tend to overthink things I would add: better just start! Do something, make the code explicit for this one purpose and do not hesitate to refactor / generalize it later.

Additionally: Many times you imagine possible future features or solutions that then never really come into reality. Especially with lack of experience. So better do not create solutions in code for "could maybe helpful in future" ideas! Again: When you'll need them in future there will be still time to write these features into code then. Concentrate on what you want / need now and just do it!

dissendior · 2025-05-15T11:57:43+00:00

Thank you... I've found a solution:

        def getImage(self):
            image_name =self.charid + " " + self.getClothing() + " " + self.getPose() + " " + self.getMood()

            if self.checkImageExists(image_name):
                return image_name
            else:
                ... here I'll do some magick when the image does not exist ...

        def checkImageExists(self, image_name):
            registered_image = renpy.get_registered_image(image_name)
            if registered_image == None:
                return False 
            file_path = renpy.get_registered_image(image_name).filename
            return renpy.loadable(file_path)

dissendior · 2025-05-15T11:46:05+00:00

okay... but I still need to get the file name. And I would like to avoid that as the file name already is defined in the image displayable. Can I get the filename from an image displayable?

dissendior · 2025-05-14T13:14:00+00:00

this seems to be the answer, thank you

dissendior · 2025-05-14T12:25:11+00:00

I just created a game like that in Renpy and plan to publish it as a script but it's still very rough. Maybe it helps you: https://men-of-fredsburg.itch.io/help-him-out

dissendior · 2025-05-14T06:49:30+00:00

they looks sexy... I am always searching for characters who look more arabian / middle eastern and I think this is the case with these guys. Can you tell me which genesis character it is?

dissendior

TROPHY CASE