u/Draw-Flesh-Games

by Draw Flesh Games

My opinion: The movie sucks.
Argumentation: I have recently finally read the novel by Philip K. Dick 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', which is seriously awesome. Then I watched Blade Runner again....and the movie failed for me. The only part worth it, are the Hauer lines, both at the Eye-manufacturer and at the end scene 'Tears in rain'. Hannah's frantic behavior is also pretty decent, but the movie lost all connection with the actual meaning of the story and was 'Hollywoodized'.

I am currently working on several projects, but I am wondering what others do. Do you have a cool VN you are creating (writing, drawing, developing) or a tool to do so? Let us know!

Well, I'm not in Spain, but Counting Crows and Blof, once made a song together called Holiday in Spain. The strength of the song isn't so much the content of the text, but the fact that it feels like both languages (English and Dutch) sing about the same thing...eventhough their 'artistic' poetry doesn't match.

Why does this matter in Visual Novel Creation? Because sometimes you might find yourself in a predicament. You are creating a storyline, but somewhere you got the urge to add something totally different. Don't automatically dump it on a shelf. See if it might fit as a 'background activity' to the current game you are writing.

Why? Because it can give you an opening to get your player base to later also play the game that you might create afterwards, where the 'background' is the foreground, but it might also just deepen the game feel itself.

While being creative, it can be hard to keep to a 'red line' or a main thread in your story or play. While it can be helpful to 'branch' out, especially for Visual Novels that have choices, it is also important to keep in mind that you are trying to lead a player/reader in a certain direction. So, while your mindset should be open and wandering, you should check in with the navigator from time to time, to see if you are still on the right path...so somewhat of a set mind.

My biggest project that I must finish is A Shard's Tale (https://drawfleshgames.itch.io/a-shards-tale)

https://preview.redd.it/d9a8tlhckxhh1.png?width=1542&format=png&auto=webp&s=843f18481e1ce03ef99c2a69f32dddeb40420c0f

What is your current project?

Many people download, or play a Visual Novel in a browser and say: Wow, nice, I can make this....

But can you?

What is the core ingredient in a Visual Novel, and is it always the same?

Let's go the most easy way possible, in terms of WHAT a Visual Novel is.

Visual, means there is graphics

Novel, means there is a story

Because Visual in this case is and adjective, it means: A novel where visuals are added.

So, the novel is the main part. A novel is simply: A story. Though to the player of a VN, it is often about the graphics, they aren't where you start with a VN.

A Visual Novel with grandeur graphics, can still fall flat, simply because the story is ass, while you might be able to drag on through a lesser graphical game, when the story is okay to good.

Now, there is another part that is easily overlooked when creating a visual novel: Functionality.

Many people seem to think that if a visual novel has a menu, that is something that comes out of the box, same as save and load functionality for progress and the ability to click on the screen or to make choices in the game. This is definitely not. There is a whole code base behind it.

Yeah, so?

Well, not understanding that making a Visual Novel will likely require you to do actual programming, will create the biggest hurdle you can imagine.

Now, can you create a Visual Novel with zero experience? No. Understanding that writing requires improvement by actually doing, you might understand that writing without experience doesn't automatically makes you able to create a visual novel. The same goes for lack of understanding either drawing, rendering or what color and perspective do to the impact of a visual image, will not get you to a point where you can create a visual still, but it won't add to any story, it would rather be a stick figure drawing added to a 'how was your day at school?' story.

So, make sure your story is having a body. Make sure that the visuals add to the story.

This is NOT to say: Don't make visual novels until you have a Stephen King style storyline and Rembrandt like visuals. Just know that your initial VNs will not be 'great'. Don't delude yourself. Be honest and improve yourself.

View Poll

View Poll

Been here some time and recently was very proud of my new tool, which some of the people here felt automatically had to be some AI slop. The sheer ignorant, pathetic and disrespectful behavior besides, it is seriously showing the toxicity of some of the 'high commenters' here.

I bet NONE of you use Windows/macOS/Xserver on your computer, Android/iOS on your phone?

You are simply hypocritical. There are people out there, building tools that replace the cumbersome writing in code and making mistakes that will only get out weeks after releasing a game to public. Will a visual tool fix that? Not always, but in many situations it does make it easier.

And, about AI slop. I have been building games and tools way before most of you were born (literally, as I coded back in Assembly and MS Basic in the 1980's). I don't see the reason to act all high and mighty about something by calling it AI slop, without you knowing the first thing about coding principles (no, 'coding' in Ren'Py is NOT SOLID and neither is knowing your way around Python automatically).

I would give some of you the advice to look into the mirror hard and long and wonder where you went all dark and toxic, because for you the only way someone could make something of a usable tool would be by using AI and feel entitled to be disrespectful to devs who can.

And I'll up you one: Nearly EVERYONE uses AI without 'realizing' it, which basically means your life is AI slop as soon as you open Reddit, Word or your navigation app (and that is a mere top of the iceberg).

I have coded my application and I did so over the length of about one and a half year (most of the code has been converted from systems I built before that other 2 to 3 years, in Unity and Python). Building it in React now, made some things harder, but most easier. And yes, I have auto-complete active in VSCode, just like most of you and it is a drag most of the time, but it is AI in the background still. I don't have Copilot active, because I don't think MS needs to butt in in more than autocomplete where it already messes up.

I am lucky though, as I now have someone I know well and who can code in some of the more 'modern' frameworks, faster. That means we deliver updates faster (a bit too fast to my liking, but Rick, is in his 'flow' so I let him). That doesn't mean AI, but I also can't say that nowhere in the process (ffs even Adobe Photoshop uses AI in many of its tools in the background now) it might be active, but we don't use chat or Claude or Gemini or whatnot to code it for us (Though I have asked Claude once to verify all IPC endpoints because of a weird error, which was a halfbaked result eventually).

I can write Ren'Py code, but I rather have the setup follow my mental model. That is why I created the tool. Much like many others (and yes, some of them ARE AI created).

Do with it what you will, downvote, feel better about yourself, but foremost try to be a mensch for once and stop thinking the world revolves around you and think that your opinion is law.

Hi,

Our application is going live this month. I was able to set it to 'Coming soon' yesterday and today I received a message in my inbox:

>Hello, developer. I’m a Steam Curator, and I’m very interested in this software. I’ve been looking forward to its release—would it be possible for me to try it out before it’s officially released? I’d really love to give it a try, so I hope you can send me a Steam Curator key. Thank you.

Now, would my application be something that was online for a couple of days, I might have thought...okay. But when I went to the curator profile, the red flags began to pop up.

1. The different applications he had curated, were all over the place (not a biggy).

2. The reviews he gave were the first line of the description of the application itself mostly verbatum.

3. qq mail-account.

Of course flag 2 was enough, but please be careful. I don't know what 'Chinese curators' need a free key for, of something they aren't really going to curate.

Putting it out there for new game/software publishers that are, like me eager to get their creation known....still be aware of the dangers.

Regards,

Mark

We recently rebranded our tool to InViNode (previously named Ren'Py Visual Editor).

https://preview.redd.it/vjp7v28g8kbh1.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=c90bbd049a8d447cbfe049fb6ad42942c459d575

The tool aims at starting devs, who know a bit of coding, but want to get their story up and running.

Create simple and complext flows (with collapsable Label nodes)

I started the tool (for the third time or so) to make life easier for myself, but when it was working like I wanted and my workflow was really working with it, I put it on Itch.

https://preview.redd.it/eqv6zxxl9kbh1.png?width=1274&format=png&auto=webp&s=4eb2344181f0973bf9807cbcb2e5ccda91f48b80

Since then a friend of mine, who is very good in coding React and some related frameworks, joined me. This gave the development a flight. I really hope he will keep helping me. The only problem is, that he has different ideas on things. The rebranding is one. And the waiting backlog is another. As a different kind of developer, he sees different things as added value.

Collapsed Label node.

Now, what does the application do?

Since version 2, the tool is becoming pretty mature.

You can create your Ren'Py project directly from here.

Switch to another Ren'Py project or create a new one from InViNode

You can edit your Ren'Py project's Options and GUI basic parts (this will be extended soon).

Edit Options and GUI config

You can create your flows, but you can also import existing project files, either Ren'Py, Twine or a Mermaid chart.

https://preview.redd.it/4k8wswga8kbh1.png?width=220&format=png&auto=webp&s=475d0db117b946d5fa0226673d43e8a3806540aa

Check it out at https://drawfleshgames.itch.io/invinode

Want to see how it works? I created a video (old version)

Oh, and we made a sub on Reddit: r/InViNode

Let us know what you think!

(This might be deleted, due to 'excessive self-promotion', but I don't agree it is, as all the previous have been deleted, this is only the second, while I have been pretty busy on this channel without referring to the tool)

We have rebranded our tool to InViNode with our Version 2 release.

Our new logo

We think this tool will help a lot in creating Ren'Py games. You don't need to go through the Ren'Py Launcher anymore, btw. We created the option to create a new project FROM InViNode and also be played from it.

Different line types

We are still extending the edit functionality to the Options and GUI settings. NVL is not included yet (you could build it by using custom Python code blocks) nor is Screen edition (again, you could do it with python blocks, but that means you could do without our tool).

Collapsable label nodes

Check it out if you think it might help you build. It does for me and Rick.

https://drawfleshgames.itch.io/invinode