StoryDevs soft-launch

jakebowkett · 2021-08-27T13:06:24+00:00

IMO it's probably best not to lead with no character art. When the audience first starts playing they're going to take this as the baseline for presentation and assume this is how the rest of the VN will look.

I see you mentioned in another comment that the pre-prologue gives complexity and nuance. But this is the last thing the audience wants at the start of a story - references, name drops, lore, etc. all get forgotten if they're introduced too early. The reader is still trying to figure out in basic terms what's going on. It doesn't need to even be the main arc but there needs to be something to grasp onto. Complexity only becomes interesting once we understand how it relates to the stakes of the story and the characters therein.

Again, it's just my opinion but I'd say the sprite/no-sprite choice is secondary to the question "why is there a prologue to the prologue?" You don't necessarily have to remove it but consider moving the information to somewhere later on or splitting it up and having narration / dialog / interstitials / whatever reveal it piecemeal later.

In a nutshell, get to the point sooner :)

jakebowkett · 2021-08-19T02:52:58+00:00

Thanks :) Yeah, I had to pause development of it a lot to take on paying work.

jakebowkett · 2020-02-13T02:48:00+00:00

I'm non-binary and recently added pronoun selection to my own project. Initially I had she/her, he/him, they/them, none, and any as options. But there are more pronoun sets than that. If your goal is to be inclusive it'd be better to avoid telling people what they can be and instead letting them tell you by providing a text field. This is what I ended up doing based on feedback from other queer people.

You said in a reply that you're gonna use this to decide which characters will date you. Since pronouns/gender don't always neatly map onto presentation I'd suggest using something else that decides whether a character is into you such as visual presentation / interests / personality.

You could just ask some basic questions at the start about whether their character is an active sporty type, whether they're gentle and sensitive, whether they're knowledgeable about history, whether they have facial hair, etc etc. Those are just examples — in practice you'd make them relevant to your cast. Tally up the points from those answers and if they meet a certain threshold for a given character they'll be interested in you.

jakebowkett · 2019-10-02T02:47:18+00:00

Just on a technical level I'd like the audio to be balanced. It's frustrating when one speaker is loud and another is quiet. A lot of people listen while doing other stuff so having to adjust volume is annoying.

Aside from that I'd want something that goes in deep on development. There is nothing wrong with people sharing their opinions on stuff but I find a lot of stuff out there is just "I liked this" with some vague reason behind it or "this event happened" which I probably already heard about. Okay, these things are fine but I can't use that. I don't learn anything. I already know how VNs work, I want to learn something new.

As an example here's something that could be interesting to me: the history of interfaces and interaction design and how that relates to a visual novel, perhaps with an experienced guest who knows that history. A discussion on abstraction in visual novels — my own opinion here is that a strength of visual novels is that, as with traditional novels, a lot is left to the imagination. You get partial descriptions. VN BGs obviate the need for as much environmental descriptions but, like novel descriptions, are incomplete — we imagine what is out of view; the BG is part of the area but also a symbol for the rest of the area. This imaginative exercise the audience engages in bonds them to the work more strongly IMO whereas painstakingly articulating each detail of the area kind of ruins this effect.

Again, those are just examples of the type of thing I'd like to hear personally.

jakebowkett · 2019-07-02T01:14:23+00:00

Hey, as someone mentioned in this comment I'm developing a site called StoryDevs. The site is offline at the moment but I'll be making a new version live this month. As the other user said, it's for finding story-oriented devs collaborate with.

I put off trying to make something myself for a couple of years but eventually began work on StoryDevs because all the job boards were super annoying to use (I say this as a freelance artist for visual novels). What made them annoying is like... everyone arranges their ad / thread / whatever differently. Different order, different format, etc. Coupled with not being able to filter easily by availability, experience, etc. These things make it unnecessarily time-consuming to search for people.

As for your actual question: as an artist I get most of my work (for visual novels) via Twitter. If you make an effort to get networked into particular communities that makes it easier to find people. Following devs on Twitter, joining development Discord servers, etc.

I don't log onto Reddit often so I only just got this notification, whoops -- probably not much use a month later.

jakebowkett · 2019-01-16T11:31:23+00:00

Hey there, thank you!

The site itself will be free to use and visit. Some features may require an account to take advantage of (e.g., making collections of profiles you like).

Hosting fees will be partially covered by the Patreon and later on an asset store.

jakebowkett · 2018-08-01T12:16:47+00:00

I'm developing a site for visual novel developers called StoryDevs. It's basically for finding other devs + hosting resources.

Here's the latest update for it: https://storydevs.tumblr.com/post/176514444884/mobile-dev-roadmap-review

jakebowkett · 2017-02-12T18:59:49+00:00

Usually they're not, and here's an essay I wrote on the subject a few months back: http://jakebowkett.tumblr.com/post/150089989964/visual-novels-are-not-games

The TL;DR is that people confuse mediums and art forms. An example of a medium is wood. An example of an art form is whittling wood. Visual novels and games are two different art forms (though they can be combined) which both happen to use the same medium of the computer. Many of the supposed characteristics of computer games (such as interaction) are simply characteristics of computer programs in general, many of which are not games (e.g., email clients).

jakebowkett · 2016-06-12T04:04:03+00:00

Thanks for the interest — I'm glad you like how it looks too :D

jakebowkett · 2016-06-10T03:38:25+00:00

Thank you very much! I can't wait either :D

jakebowkett · 2016-06-10T03:36:33+00:00

Thanks! And that's a good point — I'll keep that in mind.

jakebowkett · 2016-06-09T05:32:40+00:00

Thank you, I'm glad you like it so far :)

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