u/SelLillianna

Feel free to mention your own titles, if you're an indie dev. :)

I think I would; it seems like a vibe. But what do you think? I could understand people saying "it feels too loose".

(Full disclosure: I'm an indie dev who sometimes experiments with different text placements.)

A: I feel a bit mixed about side textboxes. On one hand, it makes sense to me to have a side textbox because we read from left to right, and so if you have a character portrait to the left of the text, we can observe facial expression changes and then start reading the text more naturally, from left to right. To put it another way, it's like the entire screen is the textbox of an ADV VN with side portraits.

B: On the other hand, with ADV text boxes, there's nothing like filling up the whole screen with artwork, and it looks symmetrical as well, which is attractive. (With side textboxes, it can get annoying only taking in art from one side of the screen.) Does it matter if our eyes have to move more, to go between the face and the text, in an ADV VN? I'm tempted to say no, but VNs can be long and, with many facial expression changes for us to observe, that's a whole lot of unnecessary eye movement. It could add up, I feel. You could, as said above, use side portraits in your ADV VNs, but then I feel like that encourages you to not look at the rest of the screen?

C: Once, I experimented with having subtitle-like text (with no 'text box') ADV style, but raising it more to the lower center of the screen, rather than keeping it at the bottom. This lead to less eye movement between the face and the text, while still taking advantage of the whole screen, visually, to make things feel more like you were actually there. Also, the text was comfortably spread out vertically, largely taking up the bottom half of the screen, so it wasn't a concentrated block of text floating in mid air. And because it was only taking up the bottom half of the screen, it wasn't covering anyone's faces.

D: On the other, other hand, sometimes people do NVL text. I can understand why people like it, but I don't like the idea of covering all the art or darkening / brightening everything. Although, to be honest, people using NVL text seems quite rare... so rare that I don't think I've ever played a VN which was exclusively written in it. If I were to, I could see it growing on me a lot or even becoming my preferred style.

E: I've also seen text bubbles that appear all over the screen, in different places, depending on the art being displayed. Similar to NVL, I see why people would like this, but I like knowing where my text will appear. (Also, that seems like a headache from a developer perspective! To constantly change the position of your text, for every single line!) O_O

Anyway, this is a lengthy post, but I'm curious to hear your various opinions on this sort of thing. Do you have a preference? If so, what makes you like that preference? Let me know your thoughts? :)

Personally, I might be leaning toward C or D. With C, it seemed like a reasonable place to put text and it felt quite cinematic and non-intrusive, while at the same time keeping things symmetrical and cutting down on eye travel. With D, I could really see it growing on me.

Thanks for your time. <3

Edit: is this more of a "question" or a "discussion"? I donno, but I did my best.

Hi there. As far as I know, it's considered a best practice to indent code inside of labels. The default project even starts indented, like so:

label start:
<indent> e "Here's some text!"
<indent> return

But in my limited experience, it seems that nothing is actually wrong with not indenting code inside of labels, because as soon as things go from indented to not indented, the computer continues to read from top to bottom in a cascading manner, right?

label start:
e "Here's some text!"
return

The above code seems to work fine, regardless of the fact that it isn't indented. Even if Ren'Py might, in a sense, expect there to be an indentation after a label, it seems like things work fine even if the "label box" is empty: it will just see the label, say "oh, I guess this box is empty", and continue reading the rest of the script, regardless of the fact that there isn't anything "inside" of the label box?

So... unless I'm making some sort of VN that cares about label nesting, does it matter if I simply don't indent my code in this way? Or does not indenting result in some sort of error that I'm not aware of? (Of course, I know one needs to indent when coding things like menus, but that isn't what I'm talking about.)

I know this is kind of a random question, but I've been using Ren'Py for years and have been aware that indenting is a common practice, but don't always indent my own projects, and things have been working just fine. I can't help but wonder if I'm actually doing something wrong or if I'm right not to worry about it; I thought I'd ask.

Thanks for your feedback. <3

KS had a very human development history: it took a long time, there were many rewrites, things felt scuffed at many points, people joined and left the dev team, and it was made out of love for the craft. And so, it's no wonder to me why the writing and characters in that world FEEL human to me. I read KS, enjoyed it, and would like to find something that feels similar.

A lot of other VNs, however (even ones which I have a bit of a soft spot for) feel quite tropey. IE, their characters don't feel like people I'd actually talk to, in real life: they're to busy overreacting to things, not having brains, being unsympathetic to things anyone would be sympathetic about in the name of "comedy", or just interact with people strangely - talking like aliens, if you know what I mean.

I know this is kind of hard to quantify and I also know KS had some slightly "alien-feeling" stuff (like when it came to Kenji) but you may be able to suggest something to me.

I've heard very high praise for White Album 2, but I understand that a large part of that story revolves around cheating. As far as I understand, it's done in a very human way, but that still isn't not what I'm looking for. As such, please don't recommend it.

Thanks for any other recs. <3

Let's say my opponent attacks with a 5/5 with trample and doublestrike. I block it with a 1/1 bander and a 1/1 vanilla. What would end up happening?

My impression is that I could assign the first strike damage (all of it, including the excess) to the 1/1 vanilla, and that I could assign all of the normal damage (all of it, including the excess) to the 1/1 with banding, resulting in me losing both of my creatures but taking no trample damage. However, I could see things working differently: I could see myself only losing the 1/1 vanilla, not the bander, and still taking no trample damage. Could you clear this up for me?

Thanks. :) I realize banding is a bit of a meme, but it seems like an interesting mechanic and so, as someone who's been playing the game for quite a number of years, I'm finally wanting to understand it and introduce it to the table. To do this, I need to thoroughly understand how it works, myself, as I'm sure people will ask questions about it.

Have a nice day. <3

https://preview.redd.it/syt0l8uc4k8h1.png?width=920&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e049b3dc6ededb77a44ea7f2ae207fc26c2cbd3

Hi everyone! Submerged Lights is now available, on Steam! It isn't perfect: I'm still learning when it comes to art, writing, music, and coding, but I hope much that you'll enjoy this title! <3

It's a 21,000-word VN (and no, I don't use AI.) Perhaps you'd be interested if you enjoy shorter reads? Sometimes gargantuan VNs can be difficult to finish.

Thank you for your interest and support! <3

"After traveling to a country town to move into the house he inherited, Andrew finds the town flooded. While wondering what to do, he spots a dim light coming from the flooded library, in the middle of the night. Investigating, he finds that it belongs to a small fairy, trapped inside of a lantern..."

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2982550/Submerged_Lights/

https://vndb.org/v66184

Hey there. In my limited experience, visual novels with choices seem to have obvious choices, blind choices / effectively blind ones, because you can't read the author's mind, or choices which make you stop and think, thoughtfully. The thoughtful choices are ones which you understand when you're faced with them, so they aren't blind or guessing choices, but they aren't what you would call 'obvious', either.

I tend to see the first two more often. This isn't simply because they're the two which are the easiest to write, though that's part of it, but it's also because a lot of visual novels are romantic, and choosing the good partner choices are often something which we all know how to do, deep down.

Which VNs come to your mind with choices that make you stop and think, for a bit? For example, maybe a VN is romantic but the love interest you're interested in pursuing has baggage, so you shouldn't constantly spend time around her every chance you get, as doing so could creep her out. Similarly, maybe there's a choice which seems like the obvious, correct one, but, because of other elements in the story, it isn't actually the right call - for example, maybe she wants to come with you but you know you've only packed so much drinking water... things like that.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I'm a dev and I like seeing what other devs are up to. While I'm aware of things like the DevTalk Discord server, I haven't found many YouTube channels where people semi-regularly post their VN devlogs. I thought I'd ask if you know any channels, like that. Whether they're indie devs or more professional devs doesn't matter, to me. When it comes to indies, however, I'll occasionally see one starting to post videos like those I've described, but for one reason or another, they simply stop uploading content. Probably because A: They were putting way too much effort into making their videos flashy, instead of letting them be simple logs, so maintaining that video quality was too burdensome. B: Because they were only ever toying with the idea of making VNs, in the first place, and lost interest. Or C: They started uploading in high school or college, and then life started getting really busy for them, so they stopped.
Of course, on the more professional side of things, it seems quite uncommon for people to even think of uploading regular devlogs, at all. Not to mention the language barrier can be an issue, since I don't understand Japanese.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised since VNs are quite niche, especially outside of Japan, but I'd like to have a few channels / creators I could follow, on YouTube.
If anything comes to mind, feel free to let me know?
Thanks, and I apologize if this is a somewhat strange question.
Edit: By the way, I'm fine with reading English subtitles. :)

Hi there, I'm planning on writing a visual novel in the future where fantasy races (plant people, bat people, et cetera) are collectively referred to as demihumans, but I'm not sure if I should call them "demi-humans", "demihumans", or even "demi humans". Rules about this seem to be vague, from my limited understanding. I see the word "demigod" right next to the word "semi-truck", right next to the word "hemisphere"... is there some type of rule to help me figure out whether things should be hyphenated, not hyphenated, or two separate words? Or is this the type of thing where it comes down to personal preference?
Thanks.

Hi there. 😄

Popular titles can be popular for good reason, but I want to hear about titles which I've literally never heard of, before.

Could you tell me about titles which you've enjoyed reading, which you don't hear people talking about, on this subreddit?

Thank you for any recommendations. 😄