/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Too busy translating them.

>>6960426

>>6963929

Wrote out the story outline
Wrote the path outlines
Realized I can't color images
Realize I can barely draw decently and thus can't draw porn.
Realize I can't make music
Don't have anyone to help me do it
Don't want to pay anyone to do it
Don't want to share my glory with either of them anyway.

>>6963928
Then where are they? I would kill a man for a Lump of Sugar game to be translated.

>>6963940
I can make music, actually.
Mind you, I don't own any equipment - I use Reason 4. But I'm not terrible at it.

>>6963940
You can be very minimalistic with images - heck, you don't even need to have character sprites if your story is immersive enough. Also there's plenty of free music resources around the internet. In the end, the main limiting factor is still yourself and your motivation on how far you wan to take it.

I am, but I tend to stop writing because I have too little confidence in my work. Once I even completed a whole script of about 80 pages, but I couldn't get through the editing because of my insecurities.

I need to try harder.

Too much work for too little gain. Even with a team, which would be even more work in itself handling your charges. However, if someone gave me $Texas money to write VN's all day, I would.

I play DnD regularly, so I don't really feel the need to. I have my players run through stories I create all the time. On top of that, I actually write as a hobby.

The visual novel medium is cool, but a part of me just hates writing in first person present perspective. Not sure why exactly.

BECAUSE. WE HAVE. NO ARTISTS.

>>6963940
If you have good writing, decent art will do (Higurashi for example). Also people will jack off to anything, that is pretty evident from most porn out there. You can develop your art skills too, practice makes perfect.

Music is also something you can develop, but there are so many free resources you shouldn't need too.

Anywho, my problem is the story. I think of a good story in mind and on paper it looks like shit. I can write fanfiction just fine, but coming up with my own characters, plots, scenery, etc. is hard. It always looks like something is off or a bootleg of something else. However I can draw, and thus I can do the graphics with ease. My other problem is the programing, I'm just not interested in that stuff anymore.

>>6964034
>Higurashi
>decent art

I miss jpproject

>>6964032
YES WE DO!

And art is just an excuse for most, anyway. You don't need the art to complete the script, now do you? Looking for an artist when the writing is done is a lot easier since you have something concrete. They'll trust you. Most "VN writers" in the west just never complete anything but get an artist right at the beginning, so the artists make graphics for something that'll never be completed. You can understand why they're cautious about which projects they join.

>>6964046

I DID FINISH A SHITTON OF SCRIPT. IT'S JUST THAT THE ARTISTS WE GOT FOR THE PROJECT ARE LAZY JERKOFFS WHO DON'T WANT TO DO ANYTHING.

MY HARD WORK IS GOING TO WASTE. MINE. NOT THEIRS.

Well we have an artfag, an insecure writerfag, a musicfag and some other fags.
Maybe we should put something together for fun, to pass the time. Even though we all know there's like.. a 2% chance of anything ever getting done. What do you guys think?

>>6964047
Finish the entire thing and talk then. After that, you can look for decent artists. If the ones you have right now don't do their work, just tell them you can't keep on with this speed and look for new ones. And anyway, in general, you feel a lot more responsible if you're working with something that'd be complete if you did your job than if you're working something that may be completed some day, but many parts of which are not complete.

>>6964048

No, because not only will working with people on 4chan never work, but we'll never agree on anything.

>>6964024
>The visual novel medium is cool, but a part of me just hates writing in first person present perspective. Not sure why exactly.
Visual novels don't have to be in the first person perspective, even if that's the most common perspective in VNs.

>>6964034
>My other problem is the programing, I'm just not interested in that stuff anymore.
You don't need to be able to program to make a VN, scripting is enough...basically, it's no more than
LOAD SPRITE
Imouto: Sugoi monogatari, Onii-chan!
ERASE SPRITE
CHANGE BACKGROUND
PLAY MUSIC

For me as an artist its hard to draw for a story I'm not really into and would find myself much more productive working on a story I was involved in creating. However usually the writers already figured out ahead of time what they wish to do making it a hard match up.

>>6964053

I've already written enough content that could fill up an entire short VN already.

I wanted to do a demo release when I finished the first week of the game a year ago, but lolartists.

Good artists, ones that would actually be dedicated, are really, really hard to find.

>>6964059
Write your own story.
Bam. You'll be rich if your shit's any good

>>6964066
Not much fun alone.

>>6964024
>The visual novel medium is cool, but a part of me just hates writing in first person present perspective. Not sure why exactly.

I'm the opposite, I'm horrible at anything but first-person writing.

I'm also shitty at describing environments and people but I consider pausing the action just to do so to be bad writing in the first place.

>>6964066

>You'll be rich if your shit's any good

Or you can write complete vomitous shitpiss caked between two covers, ala Stephanie Meyer, and be rich.

>>6964070
Find a friend to write a story with, then.
Or a complete stranger.
Maybe pick someone else up to do absolutely nothing
I dunno
:3

>>6964066
>You'll be rich if your shit's any good
Wrong industry, pal.

>>6964045
It's still alive!

I can make music (Orchestral, mostly), and my drawing skills are alright, I suppose. As for the other skills needed for VN creating, I do not know how.

>>6964057
One, why did have to post Clover? I don't want any nightmares tonight.

Two, so I can use one of those VN engines with ease? I don't have to much figuring out?

>>6964048
I don't think it would work. Also every time I try to a project with 4chan its always something I don't really like. Thus I'm not interested in doing it anymore.

>>6964078

Ren'py is hilariously easy to use, but it's a huge resource hog.

You could try OnScripter if you want your VN to look like Umineko, though.

>>6964065
I can agree on that sentiment, though I suppose it applies to collaborators in general. There are a lot of crappy writers, musicians and programmers out there, too.

But there's one point I'd like to note about the writers who juice some graphics out of the artist only to stop writing. The situation of the artist there is, in a sense, worse than that of yours: with a script, you can always look for a new artist, but with art, it's basically project-exclusive. Unless you happened to draw something incredibly generic, having done art for a VN project left unfinished usually means that art is lost forever.

I might be something you could call a "decent artist" (I'm slow but very dedicated and I always finish what I start), but I'd be very very cautious about joining a project with an unfinished script.

>>6964078
From the /jp/ Manor script:

;GARDEN APPEARS
mp3loop flowers
speakertag
bg garden_flowers,4
;Yellow
ld r,yellow_neutral,5
`Girl in maid outfit
`"Uwaa...so pretty!"\
narration
`As we follow her, a huge, beautiful garden stretches out before us.\
speakertag
;Green
ld l,green_neutral,5
`Dark-skinned girl
`Yes...these flowers really do look quite good.\
narration
`While the other girls are admiring the flowers, my attention is at something much more impressive.\
cl a,5
bg manor_front,6
`Before me is the manor we were invited to - an amazing, beautiful castle-like structure.\

ONScripter really is that easy. You can just copypaste the difficult stuff at the start. There's great documentation at http://nscripter.insani.org/reference/ as well.

Pic related: Made in NScripter, English version in ONScripter (open-source variant of NScripter).

I'm coding away at a Touhou racing game, as I'm a programmer not a writer/artist. What ever happened to that /jp/ VN set in the 1950s or something that was talked about?

>>6964078
From a Ren'Py tutorial script:
scene bg washington
show eileen vhappy
with dissolve

play music "happy_alley.ogg"

window show

e "Hi! My name is Eileen, and I'd like to welcome you to the Ren'Py tutorial. You've come at a very interesting time."

show eileen happy

e "We're hard at work making Ren'Py 7, and that means we'll be turning the old Ren'Py demo game into the new tutorial."

e "What we have now is a bit of a mix of the two. But please check it out, to see what Ren'Py is capable of."

Because I am absolutely awful at writing. I usually have trouble even trying to find the right words to use here on 4chan, and not only because English is not my primary language.

>>6964075
>It's still alive
Did they get a new website? Old one seemed to have died a long time ago.

>>6964098
What is your primary language? Unless it's really rare so that you'd have no audience, you could write in it.

>>6964090
hows the progress of the racing game going?

>>6964108
Ah and also, you could write the VN in your native language and then translate it/get someone to translate it!

>>6964113
It's going quite well actually. This month I've set aside to make a graphical pass on the engine. I just finished bump mapping and am working to get real time shadowing in the next week and a half. This is a sample of some of the great work that my 3D artist has done.

But /jp/ has often come up with a lot of project attempts. So far the only real success I can think of was Dandelion Girl though, which wasn't bad and actually got finished unlike shitty KS.

>>6964090
You mean this one, or one of the others?

i'm planning to but i'm to lazy and i lack ideas.
i have all the characters and setting all planed and designed, i just can't think up the storyline for individual character routes, especially that i'm aiming for E17 level plot twists (of course it'd probably be shittier but that's my ideal), i just can't plan the whole shit to the point i could start actually writing. and instead of thinking i draw characters sprites which i may not ever use considering how it's going.

i also wanted to make a short VN with a friend but we couldn't agree on who makes what.

>>6964188
Lucky you
I've been poking around with my friends to see if any of them would be remotely interested in making a VN
No such luck. None of them have even played any VNs.
Feels bad man.

>>6964185
One of the others. But that looks pretty cool. Did it ever go anywhere?

>>6964188
Ever17 LEVEL plot twists? That's aiming way too high, but if you mean Ever17 style plot twists: Think up some kind of twist, then work backwards from there. How can you steer player's expectations in such a way that they won't expect it at all even when you give a lot of hints?

>>6964198
>Think up some kind of twist, then work backwards from there
but that's not what a well-written story should be. Point in case, as soon as someone is spoiled on that one twist, the game becomes unplayable.

>>6964198
Not that guy but ever17's twists weren't anything special.

>>6964198
i know it's way too high, that's why i'm afraid i'll never finish this. but i always wanted to write something that'll just make readers shit bricks, it feels pointless for me to write if it doesn't.

>>6964194
Do they ever really go anywhere?

I'm making a free VN, huge number of branching paths+long playtime. I do art music story everything and a lazy coder friend helps me with C++ and takes none of the credit. Feels good man

>>6964172
Which project was this picture from? I'm liking the designs.

>>6964218
You are underestimating the potential of your reader's imagination and experience. If you write like that then you're narrowing your target audience to the few that aren't clever enough to get an inclination of where things could go.

It's that or you write something with a sudden and abrupt "twist" that is more hurr durr lolsorandum than satisfying.

Your goal should be to write something that you enjoy, or at the very least something that others can enjoy. Plot twists are just seasoning on the cake.

>>6964237
It was from the Warehouse Project from last year. We had about ten threads of it before people lost interest.

>>6964249

It's possible to write a story that will be enjoyable to read on its own, while simultaneously building that story up to a twist / brickshitting ending. Some authors are capable of foreshadowing twists with subtly enough that few if any people see them coming, while still having the twists make sense and spring organically from the tale.

Of course this is very hard to do. It's probably something an author with lots of experience could pull off, but not something for beginners to try and pull off unless they want to fail. Better to master writing simple, straightforward stories, before tackling convoluted plots with bizarre twists and turns.

>>6964255
Thanks. Shame it got dropped, looks like it would have been an interesting VN to read.

Don't be discouraged by the failures, /jp/. A low success rate is only natural, but if you try many times, you will inevitably have another success!

>>6964108
>>6964114
Brazilian Portuguese, euheuehueheuhue.
It doesn't really matter though, since I suck pretty hard even in that language - and, hell, I don't think I really enjoy writing. My creativity sucks, too. I'm simply not cut for being a writer, and probably never will be unless something happens and I decide to put some effort into it.

>>6964206
Isn't that how mysteries work? You need to decide on the solution before deciding on any other specifics. You can decide on setting and characters, but you need the solution before you can do anything about the actual plot.

>>6964300
Yeah, but not all mysteries rely completely on the twist. What I'm saying is, writing a whole game just on the hopes that one revelation is going to make you go "woah" is risky, and even then cheap.

>>6964288
Yeah, it went downhill when the tripfags from other boards decided they needed to help /jp/ manage everything.

It happens often enough. People come for LOL EPIC RAID and stick around because there is actually something interesting going on that their shitty boards can't produce.

They like it and want to get involved, but they don't understand the board's culture and drive off the regulars. Without /jp/ working on a /jp/ project it dies, but the newfriends stick around for a while afterwards to shitpost.

They never understand that if they like something they're not involved with the best they can do is stay out of it.

>>6964322
Unfortunately after every "raid" we seem to be bogged down with horrible shit. When we start to recover (it is still shitty don't get me wrong), another raid and more idiots.

>>6964300
>>6964316
A plot twist is just a gimmick. Writing a story around a plot twist is like selling a product based solely on a gimmick.

Gimmick based games and stories are okay but usually only when they're short because they lose their luster once the gimmick gets old. The rest just tends to be filler.

I'm still sitting on an idea or two but don't have the time or skills necessary for bringing them to life ;_;

>>6964316
I'm not saying you should rely solely on the twist. I'm saying you should use the twist as starting point.

You have the general idea and the final solution, how can you make it more interesting? What methods can you use to make the player interested in the twist yet keep him distracted enough to not pay too much attention to it? Are there any possibilities for further twists?

Remember that Ever17 did not only have a plot twist at the end and nothing in the rest of the VN. The impending death of the entire cast kept the plot moving forward and kept it interesting, and during that story tons of hints are dropped. The structure of the entire thing also made it a lot more interesting, as it allowed it to give contradictory information, raising the player's interest in the eventual solution. There were many subtwists: You's mother being a LeMU researcher, Kid not recognizing himself in the mirror, et cetera. There were even some extra twists that weren't even required for the main plot Sora being a hologram (revealed early in the game), Sara being a Leiblich guinea pig, et cetera.

The big twist isn't the only thing in the game, but it is the starting point for deciding on the plot and where your story should be heading towards. Otherwise you'd get something like Chaos;Head (which I also liked, but didn't have a mindfuck ending), where the entire story is interesting and is building up, but the climax is unsatisfying for people who expected the buildup to actually go anywhere. (Yes, there was a plot twist at the end, but it didn't feel like 'the big twist' at all because not enough was done with it during the story.)

>>6964339
I have countless ideas that still have yet to be realized. Everybody has ideas. However, an idea is worthless unless something actually gets done with it.

You're not lacking time and skill, you're lacking motivation. 'Time' is never an excuse, you just don't want to waste the free time you have on a project. Skills can be learned, but again, it takes motivation.

You can do it, if you just manage to bring up the motivation to start doing it.

What I can't create is conflict/drama for stories. I can make characters and write just fine, but when I can't make conflict, I just stop writing at some point.

I kind of miss Uncle Mugen keeping the dream of selling ink and making shitty visual novels alive.

>>6964249
of course i don't plan to rely on plot twists alone, it's just one of the things i love in novels (and general media). also planing to include more than one major twist.
if i did i'd get 'the sixth sense' type of story which isn't any good IMO.

I was going through my head how I mainly need to learn how to draw and take some classes in writing decently in order to meet the qualification to do it on my own without having to call on a bunch of lazy people form /jp/. But then I realized that just learning one of those skills would hardly be worth it, considering how little attention you can expect as a Western VN developer. I mean, thousand of hours of effort just so a few /jp/ers will go "shit, someone actually went through with it? And it's not terrible either! Good job, anon", I just can't say it justifies it.

>>6964456
>making VNs for the attention

>>6964456
If it's good enough and not /jp/-specific (unlike a certain Manor), it's possible to reach a much wider audience.

>>6964460
But if it doesn't get any attention, no one will read it, and it will be a pointless effort. I have nothing against crediting the whole thing to Anonymous.

>>6964460
Do motives really matter if the resulting product is solid?

cause i am working on a seinfeld L4Dead mod

>>6964469
Then it's your fault for creating a bad game.
If it's good and fun, people will play it.

>>6964471
Yes. Not that guy but I can't fathom why people have so little appreciation in things that are not physical.

>>6964469
>>6964471
>>6964476
>>6964478

I think I remember reading a few years ago that something like 95% of commercially produced games never get released.

Think for a moment. Those are guys with the motivation to study and work in the industry. Those are companies with the resources to fund and develop a product. Yet they fail, and that isn't even considering the vast amount of released games that suck and are complete flops.

It has always struck me as odd when mostly unskilled people think they can succesfully pull off a large project on just a cool idea or for attention, or something. No you wont, you are bound to fail or lose interest like that.

If that is ever pointed out they usually come up with some excuse about how they are different, special, or some variation thereof. When nothing significant materializes it's obvious that they were wrong, but by then they're gone and have lost interest.

What is worse is when they force themselves to continue and keep on pushing, or when they reinvent the project and start over. They are wasting time chasing for the unattainable, they need to aim lower, low enough that they are actually know they will succeed in a short time frame. For larger projects this means spreading the work out to where you can actually make strides and achieve something every week or even every day.

The recent /jp/manor VN mockup is a good example of something small and attainable. Most of the resources are taken from other stuff and it doesn't try to get too complicated.

But then you might ask yourselves: "But who will care? What is the point? Will anybody even play it anyway?"

If you're thinking that then the answer is simple. You are delusional, you have a delusion of grandeur. The point is that you have something to show for your efforts. You just surpassed over 95% of the other chumps with cheap pipe dreams.

>>6964516
Some people just worry too damn much.

>>6964516
You are wrong. There are several small games and one-man-projects which had great success and fame. Commercial and Non-Commercial ones.
Many Indie games on Steam are one-man-projects.
Games like Touhouvania, Marisa Land, ...... were popular as well.
If you really want to create something unique and are willing to learn the abilities you need to accomplish it, you will somewhen be successful.
If your first project fail, you analyze why it failed and make it better next time.

>>6964522
No, you missed the point. Those guys achieved what they did because they could. That is the difference between them and the countless many that fail.

You name several games that had multiple iterations. The first games were far more simple than their later ones, they aimed for what they could achieve at the time.

Most likely all of those people have worked on other stuff previously whether for school, doujinsoft, or just private amusement. You don't get anywhere on a little skill and burning passion. That's bullshit fairytale nonsense that kills hopeful projects as soon as they have groggy day.

I think it's always worth to repeat it:

To everyone who's interested on starting his project, or joining an existing one, we have an IRC channel just for that. Musicians who may be interested in eventual collabs, Drawfriends who want to share/discuss techniques and whoever the fuck wants to make original content in general is welcome. Just try not to be a jackass and let's get along, alright?

We are waiting for you at #jp-devel@irc.rizon.net.

>>6964535
As if there are only people here with little knowledge

>>6964516
Ambitious goals aren't as unattainable as poorly planned goals. The problem is that ambitious goals are harder to plan. If you're good at managing your shit and know exactly what needs to be done, you will eventually achieve it as long as you continue working on it (protip: motivation comes much more easily when you know what you're supposed to do every day). But if you put up a bunch of stupid and unspecific goals like "this is going to be an unique experience like no one has ever tried making before", you're setting yourself up for failure from the beginning.

Also, remember that the majority of the video game industry is not particularly professional or high budget. If you just think about the GOTY material, you're thinking about the minority of the market, and not about all those little shits you hardly hear about or care about, like people making cellphone games, flash games for commercial sites, or obligatory game adaptions of every new kids movie that comes out. Even the shittiest indie/doujin developer could easily be described as more passionate and hard-working than the people making those games.

Because OELVNs are shit.
And it's impossible for them to not be shit. It's like one of the core concepts making up the concept of "OELVN" is shit.

>>6964516
I think your 95%-statistic is bullshit. What I have heard, though, is that somewhere between 80% and 90% of commercially released games are not profitable. They do get sold, but they don't sell well enough to pay for development costs.

I'm sure people here can create something larger than /jp/ Manor ch1; the entire thing was made in less than a week, and it's not like I was working on it full-time either.

The reason this doesn't happen, though, is because it's difficult to motivate /jp/ anons (and that includes me) to keep going. The only reason I was able to make /jp/ Manor ch1 was because I forced a strict deadline on myself (I'd either release on February 14th or not release at all), and was willing to sacrifice quality to make up for it. (It was a bit of an experiment to see if I would get more productive and whether the results would still be any good if I did it like that.) I've found that it's difficult to set deadlines in projects involving /jp/ anons, and that /jp/ anons aren't productive enough without deadlines or some other thing driving them to actually finish shit in time.

That is why /jp/ projects fail. If you somehow manage to keep enough interest to keep the team productive, you can make something big. Katawa Shoujo also managed to produce a lot of content, I'm sure other people can do it too.

obligatory music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-h5Zc_jaNo

I've considered trying it. However, my writing sucks, I can't code worth shit, and I don't really know music. My drawing skills are also pretty bad.

>>6964566
Well, you can always encourage potential developers. That's an important aspect too, it keeps the morale going and lack of morale is the greatest reason /jp/ constantly fails to get its shit together and make a VN. Flockdraw and OC threads alone are proof that quite a few artists of sufficient quality are present, /jp/ can beat say, proto/early KEY at least. Heavens, ONE was a freakshow. Nagamori and the ferret bitch had routes that were almost painful to read, and Kanon wasn't much better in route department either.

>>6964566
Even if you can't code or have aritistic skills. You could always help testing/create content using a map editor, particle editor, .../keep the morale up/help designing/criticise/make suggestions/...

>>6964578
>/jp/ can beat say, proto/early KEY at least
No. Just no.

>>6964589
>>6964578
Despite my lack of skills, I still think that making a VN with fellow /jp/ anons would be fun!

>>6964553
I think whether it's 80% or 95% is besides the point. Substitute development costs (investor interests?) with anon's motivation, or whatever deciding factor. The fact remains that the vast majority fail. Reality proves this fact, even on /jp/ the only completed projected out of countless failures I can think of is Dandelion Girl, which as a kinetic novel based on a classic short story had a far more modest goal.

You claim good planning is key, and that is entirely true. But it doesn't have to be strict planning either what I'm claiming is not that it is impossible, but that you need to aim lower.

Imagine how successful the Umineko and Higurashi series would have been had all the chapters been released at once instead of incrementally. Most likely, it would have never been released.

One of the most reliable production models in recent years seems to be setting a lot of attainable short term goals. The achievement of attaining those goals in a short time fuels developer motivation.

So what I'm saying is... Where the trend of /jp/ projects tends to be "Lets have ten characters, and about 15 branching routes!". I think we would get a lot more done if people commit to a smaller scope with a handful cast and single route. If that's done, after we can think about additional heroines, or branching routes.

It saddens me that every original project thinks itself above including sex.

I did :V I kinda gave up after trying to come up with a storyline etc.

Whatever happened to that /jp/ VN about a hikki, who I believe was thrown out of his home? That would have been interesting to read.

>>6964608
My VNs are sure to include brutal anal sex.

>>6964608
I think it's the other way around. It's pretty awkward to write sex scenes if you have absolutely no experience with it.

>>6964616
Wasn't that the Warehouse project?
Or do you mean the homeless vn before it?

>>6964578
>and Kanon wasn't much better in route department either.
I haven't read much of this thread but I can tell you that writing stuff that would beat works like kanon would be difficult in itself.
I also stringly disagree about kanon being bad.

Is there any currently dead /jp/ project that anyone would like to revive?

>>6966751
Air translation is still in translation limbo, if you're up to that.

I have about...2 pages of a script done, so far. It's been like that for a couple months now, though.

>my face when I can actually draw well, but can't write for shit

>>6964595
>Despite my lack of skills, I still think that making a VN with fellow /jp/ anons would be fun!
I thought this too. I was really really wrong. I hope you never do such a thing and keep on believing that.

I'd like to write a story one day soonish. It will be inspired by gensokyo, tea parties, and maids. I'll keep /jp/ updated on my progress through the years.

I'd rather make a fast paced action game. But I can't make one of those either.

>>6966809
I've been meaning to write a story based on my dreams and that feeling of impending insanity but I've been too lazy to do much of anything lately.

The one person I consider a friend is partway through a course in animation. I'm partway through a course in games programming.

What do you think keeps me from porting to gensokyo? Once we make it big I'll save you /jp/.

>>6966781
Damn, I'm the opposite.

>>6966822
I used to get great material and inspiration from dreams, but now that I'm off anti depressants I haven't really remembered any. It's almost reason enough to get back on them.

I've always wanted to do the art for a VN, but I'm too socially fearful to try to find anyone to make one with.

>>6966852
Hey, I've got a full script currently being edited and an engine in progress. Everything but an illustrator actually. If you (anyone's) interested, get in touch.
vn.recruit.junk@gmail.com

I have.

Don't most VNs have something like 5-10 times the wordcount as a book that takes an equivalent time to go through? Seems like for a small, independent project meant to be consumed by other people there are more efficient things to put your effort into.

>>6966930
Just means you've got to be ready to promote it when you're done. Also, that's the length of a commercial VN. I'd guess hobby ones are a lot smaller, or less routes or whatever.

>>6966930
Those are just long scenario-ges.

What tense are most VNs written in? (Does Japanese even have tenses?)

Right now I'm writing something in Third Person Limited, present tense, but I'm wondering if I should change it to past tense since I think a lot of books are done that way.

>>6966960
First person, present.
VNs are immersive in that the MC narrates everything from his PoV in the present.

>>6966938
>>6966941
But like, even if there are only a couple paths, if you want to have more relevance to choices than left door: bad end good door: continue story, you're going to have to write way more words to per hour of reading than if you just straight up wrote a short story and put some pictures in the word document.

I wrote a story once, but it seemed like a copy of Sharin no Kuni. So I stopped writing.

>>6966964
Alright, so I guess present tense is fine.

I suck at First Person, and I'm not writing anything like a normal VN protagonist, so I suppose that should work out too.

>>6966964
F/S Night and I think most others have an unnamed narrator and use third person present. But present tense is definitely more common than past. Saya no Uta I know is also third person, but it's pretty short and more a story with different ends than most VNs.

>>6966965
Unless you're writing Fate/stay night durr. But no, what gives choices relevance is largely the dialogue. For instance, most amount to talk to A or talk to B, or else talk about A/B and the player gets the info on whatever's more interested to them. Also potentially scoring points/moving the story in a direction.

Japanese verbs don't conjugate differently for different people, so it's kind of ambiguous if it's first, third, or even second person unless pronouns are used.

>>6966987
how can the story move in different ways if it doesn't branch and split off from time to time??

>>6967013
Well wouldn't that be another route...? (also just man up and write more stuff)

>>6966968
I was listening to a radio show the other day where some game developers were talking about how much they get held back. In fact, the game they basically live on now got started because one of them got fed up and made up his mind to output something after one week of work on it and bam.

/jp/ probably won't care, but the example is about the Kingdom of Loathing creators.

>>6967121
held back by that train of thought*

I am.

Fuck didn't want to post in trip, but too late now. Here is a picture of the MC from WAAAYYY back in 09. Originally, he had insomnia from a childhood trauma and I wanted it to play a part in the rest of the game. The idea is still there, I just don't know how to apply it well.

I'm a drawfag, but I don't read VNs despite browsing /jp/ and I have no particular interest in making them.

>>6966960
Most VNs are written in first person, present tense, but past tense and third person are also used.
Present tense makes the reader more involved with the story; in past tense you are looking at it, but in present tense it feels like you are participating in it. The difference between first and third person is similar: In the third person, you watch the protagonist doing all kinds of stuff, but in the first person, YOU are the protagonist.
Which one is best depends on what your story is like. A story like Chaos;Head couldn't possibly be written in anything but first person present tense, while 999 worked perfectly fine in the third person past tense. You can also have it mostly in first person present tense, with short third person past tense bits when you're viewing things from a different character's point of view.

Also, I still need to write a second person future tense story someday.

Already did, bro.

I tried making a touhou visual novel once

I couldn't get past the brainstorming stage since i found it impossible to find a personality that wasn't total ass for the characters I planned on using.

Too many half-baked ideas.

I can't make music or draw, and I don't trust anybody enough to do that for me.

Also, even if I got a good visual novel out there, nobody would give a fuck.

>>6968118
Okay, I laughed.

>>6963924
Because by the time it would be done /jp/ would hate it.

>>6968150

>Too many half-baked ideas.
>half-baked
>baked

heh.

>>6968349
every day

I have a voice for Narration and evil fellows, but no VNs I know need voices. 'Tis a sad time.

The hell, I'd even provide a sample if you fed me a couple of lines.

ill write the script, just can't find a friend to do everything else... pic related its my heroine

>>6968400

Haha, that reminds me years ago of spending many many days trying to train my (already deep) voice to sound kind of like Norio Wakamoto. I think I hit a bit closer to Jouji Nakata though, and I'm not complaining because Nakata's fucking awesome as well.

>>6968457

Ha! No kidding! I tryied to emulate Wakamoto as well.

In fact, that's why I was tempted to learn Japanese a while ago. Not out of some weeaboo desire to join soe asian coalition or sommat, but because I wanted that bastard's voice so fucking bad.

I have.

>>6968511
Get out!

Bump.