Does anyone play visual novels?

Visual novels aren't very popular, but since this is an anime forum, I think that some people may play them. I'm currently playing Clannad from key. Fun game =D

Oh man, someone totally beat me to the topic, I swear to got I was going to make this topic but didn't know were to put it. xD

I've played my own mass amount, including Clannad. xD (read meh all-time favorite anime in my side description. xD) So far I've played:

Clannad
Kanon
Yume Miru Kusuri
Narricusu
Da Capo
~Wind~ A Beath of Heart
ONE ~To The Radiant Season~
Tsukihime (and the plus disk)
Tears to Tiara
Snow Sakura
Kagetsu Tohya
Figures of Happiness
Ever 17
Kana: Little Sister
Red Shift
Fate/Stay Night
Planetarian

I swear I'm missing a few something. :S Anyways, I'm absolutely huge on visual novels, I've always wanted to aim towards a life in writing, but somewhere along the way I decided when the time was right, was going to get into the visual novel buisness one way or another. Games such as Da Capo were relicensed and subbed under offical America redistributers, so even saying that there isn't any such position for someone in the US, that is actually not true. Of course, that isn't what I'd be wanting to aim for really. xD Someone needs to spring the popularity into this country, why not me? Actually, I've even begun writing a visual novel under Ren'py and Python coding. Ack, man, if only I was the maker of this topic, I would have felt more ambishious to spill my life goals all over this thread, but now it feels so ironic that I feel I should just shut up now. xD

Lol. Sorry about taking your thread. Actually I'm not that big of a fan of visual novels, but I have played a few and liked them. Clannad has so many different scenarios compared to the ones I've played before. Even though the endings may be the same, there's so many different ways to approach it.

I'm surprised that you want to be in the visual novel business. It must be difficult making the game go smoothly when you have all those different choices.

lol, no need to be sorry, I was just being somewhat silly after all too. xD

Clannad is one of the most diverse VNs ever, there's so much to it that it's insane yet brilliant, you probably don't even know how long it truelly is. xD To the whole game there is more then ten full out routes to characters, and as soon as you get every single route you unlock three "After Story" routes. When Clannad came out, it was declared the longest visual novel to date, and I don't know how many has beat it yet. xD Even some of the more drug out bad endings feel a little rewarding to me, because it did it in a way that made me feel more involved then just losing a game, considering I've played a share of VNs that pulled a "And life went on... Game Over D:" scene when you got a bad ending.

Actually, if you like Clannad, and like or know anything about Key, Kanon is very good as well, even though it's a older work. Though, the only side effect is that the translation patch isn't fully done (assuming you don't know Japanese... something I want to learn eventually too. XD), it plays through all the story until it starts getting route specific, only one route is really finished, but if you do ever finish Clannad, the beta they have out so far was a well spent 15 or so hours for me and the full patch should be coming out soon. http://radicalr.pestermom.com/vn.html is the site cordenating the english patch. xD

It is somewhat difficult to make visual novels just because of that, but that's also what makes it even funnier then just writing a book. Your never writing one story for a visual novel, your writing a multitude of them and bringing them together, which actually is kind of difficult, but it's also fun while you make it. xD The writing part isn't what annoys me, it's my lack of knowledge in Python coding, lmao. Not that I don't get though, it just sucks when you make a mistake and your whole computer crashes when you test run the game and you have to go back and debug the whole blasted thing. XD Guess that comes with the idea of writing visual novels, unless you have a team on your side, your not just writing, your drawing as well as manipulating drawings and photos on a computer, and programming. And I'm a crappy drawer. ^^;;

Man, my fingers are tired, and after clicking preview post... yeah... xDDDD

Yeah you are right. Clannad is one of the most diverse games I have ever played. I'm still trying to get the 8 orbs to unlock the afterstory. I think I have 5 or 6 right now. Anyways, it's fun how they make the bad endings last so long =D

One of the reasons why I decided to go with playing a Key game is because I watched Air (TV) by Key and it was pretty enjoyable. I believe that the visual novel is better than watching it, because I'm enjoying Clannad a lot more than watching Air. I'm playing a patched version of Clannad with english words and japanese voices, which I heard came out only recently.

I can understand how you're having a such a hard time making a VN. It's pretty neat how they tie characters together, but to code that seems extremely difficult. I don't know much about Python coding, but it's unbelievable that you're attempting to do this all by yourself without someone helping you on the non-writing parts. Kudos to you for doing that. The pictures, music, and voices also play a big part in it, so if you plan to go serious, you should find other people to help you.

Yeah, that's a for sure, I'm no musician nor artist by any means. ^^; Believe it or not though, I somewhat have a musican helping me, and I have a artist helping me, although I couldn't honestly say that they're going to be sticking around after this paticullar project, just having them help me out making me realize I couldn't complete anything fully without them. xD Maybe when I get a good chunk of the one I'm working on done I can package it, upload it somewhere and post it here for people to try, just cause I have very few opinons on it. ^^;

I unlocked the afterstory in Clannad!!! It's amazing how much time I spent getting it though. I just started it yesterday, but I'm enjoying it a lot so far.

I hope I can see your visual novel when you finish =D And it's true that you can't really do much when you don't have an artist or musician, but the story is also very important. By the way, what genre are you writing about?

Hopefully I got me an artist (a friend who is an amazing drawer) and someone who produces amazing music to help me. xD Hopefully I can get somewhere with this, it's moving so slow along it's rediculious, procrastination will be the end of me one day.

It kind of hard to fit it under one genre, it has a lot of supernatural scifi aspects to it, but it does make touch with the romance genre and it also has some of the best comical relief I've ever written imo. xD There are a few routes and themes that make it feel like a typical visual novel, the "go get the girl" aspect, but to give a small chunk of the basic story about how it has a super natual aspect to it. The main character pocesses the power to transfer any matter into anything else, water into wine, birds into apples, people into dust, anything at all, as long as the mass required to make the output is met (something I would like to add, people say this concept is pretty close to the idea behind Full Metal Alchemist to some extent, which is something I never watched and it was mentioned way after I started making the story. T_T ) The one catch to this is, there needs to be a breaking force for this to happen, so in order to make this "change" he must give a very small portion of his existance. So yeah, I've always been bad at labeling things via genre, but I hope this paints a picture.

I beat Clannad! but I finished it a while ago. It was super long, but it I loved the story. How long the afterstory lasted was a surprise to me =P Great visual novel.

I watched the anime Full Metal Alchemist and you're right that the idea is similar, but it seems pretty interesting because of the giving a portion of his existance part. It's a lot more supernatural rather than scifi though. Even though I like the "go get the girl" part of the visual novel, I wonder why almost all of them has to have it. I'm curious to see the comic relief you have in store =P

Yeah, Clannad is amazingly long, I love it. xD Best visual novel evar.

I NEED TO GET MOTIVATED AND DO EET.

At this rate it'll take me the rest of my life to finish the thing, lol. On the bright side I found the most awesome artist anyone in the world can ask for, a person I've been friends with for a long time but havent seen her drawings until recently and homg... her crap is like... commercial quality good, you have no clue. xD I'll see if I can't get something of hers here to give an example or something, but it's insanely amazing, as you can tell I'm still spazzing about it. xD

Heh, it's hard to work and get motivated for such large project all by yourself, but it's nice that you found a really good artist. I know a girl who was in my class that was an amazing artist too and she even writes her own manga! She is a bit weird though. Anyways, hope you get some progress on that =D

Truthfully you don't have to have a musician, because there are some places where you can get free music like http://freeplaymusic.com/ My brother used a site similar to this one for his school project a while ago. As long as you don't make a profit from it and you give credit to them, you can use their music freely.


I was just looking through the web and I found a website that allows you to create your own visual novel without the hassle of making your own code! http://www.bladeengine.com/ or http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page Truthfully after finding out about this, I'm considering making my own just for fun =P It looks kinda complicated, but it's definitely easier than writing your own code. I'll tell you what I think about it after I play around with it.

Oh man, I know those two engines very well, espically of the recent. Ren'py is beautiful, honestly, that's what I switched to using for a million reasons. Though, you do need to learn their "Ren'py" language, and if you wanna make anything complex you need to have a handle on Python, it really makes it a lot easier on the head (No more C++'s bullshit... no srsly, C++ can go die, lol) Imo, Blade Engine isn't worth touching at all, it's... dunno, I just have a hard time cooperating with it. xD

Ironic that I know freeplaymusic too. xD I've been looking at royalty free music too, been wondering if I should, but I'm trying really hard to stray away from the idea. Dunno, guess its that obsession with coming out with something large, cool and original, something I can be more proud of when its finished then disappointed that I wasted so much motivation on something I created that I wasn't fully satisfied with. But I got to tell you... its tempting... xD

Yeah I agree ren'py is beautiful. I tried both of them out the last few days and ren'py is very easy to use (unless you want to get complicated and make your own code). Plus there are so many different effects that they have premade in their libraries. Blade Engine is surprising difficult to understand and complicated to use...

It is tempting, isn't it? And a lot of music they have are really good too that can match visual novels well. It's going to be a challenge making something completely original, but I think it's great that you're going to try to not use freeplaymusic or other sites for music/art. But don't be too obsessed with making it into something large, because I'm sure that you'll be proud even if it's not as grand was you want it.

I must say that writing a visual novel story feels just like writing a script. It's neat. The hardest part, I feel, is making the choices, because after you start going through different paths, there so much to write xD