Hi it's Tecsie. So I wanted to make a little video about that I made a visual novel this summer. It was my last little project for school Although it was like my personal project, but we had the possibility of like Getting study credits of our personal projects if they like If they fit into what we are studying. So yeah I Wanted to do this as like one last thing since I actually graduated last week So I am free of school now yay! But yeah, this visual novel is called Define Melanie and it's about this Girl, who wakes up in a random dirty alley and she Realizes that she doesn't remember anything. She doesn't know how she got there And she has a robot arm. She has been turned into a cyborg basically. And She just like goes wandering in the city and tries to figure out What the heck happened to her? Because all she actually remembers is that her name is Melanie and she's not even sure if that's actually her name. But it feels right so she goes with it And I only made the first chapter As like a school project, but I do plan on continuing this after I have recovered from the actual school thing a little bit because this This, this year has been rough So yeah I just wanted to make this little video mostly because first of all I have had a couple of people ask me what it was like working with the Visual novel engine that I chose which is RenPy and just like as maybe to be a little encouraging if any of you want to make visual novels because It's actually pretty easy. Like I have no programming experience at all And I managed to make this I can like show on the video like what the Mess of a code that working with RenPy is like actually, like what it looks like It might look a little bit scary because it's literally just one long text file where you Put like the dialogue and whatever images you want to show in whatever scene and all that stuff. And if you want to get more complicated you can also add choices which I did But they don't have that big of an impact in the chapter one because I mostly just wanted to add them there to give something to do. With RenPy you basically Work with their I guess it's The correct term is like their Python library or something I don't know. Anyway, it's kind of like Python but they have made it super easy And if you know Python you can also use that to make a lot more complex things than With just the basic stuff RenPy allows you to do. So you can basically make anything. I have heard people have made Doom with RenPy. Which is great. Making a very basic visual novel is really simple, you basically just Define the character names and You just have to make the images you want to use. So like characters Possible different expressions for them And then the backgrounds. And then you just basically type in the dialogue and sometimes go like "show Melanie smile" or something like that and then It just works. And RenPy has really good tutorials if you're at all unsure what to do. The Actual engine comes with a tutorial game that you can, you can like practice the actual coding with that And also like RenPy just has really good documentation in general. You can pretty much google anything like "RenPy audio how to do", something like that And you'll have your answer And I have been told the forums are really friendly too, but I have never actually used those myself. But that's also good to know if you have like questions To people who actually know what they're doing. I can link the RenPy quick start guide in the description because that's pretty much what I used For the whole thing because it had like all the answers to all the basic things From like how to start a project to how to build the final project that you want to publish So it's really easy. It may look scary but I promise you it's really easy. So I would really recommend RenPy if you Want to try making visual novels and have never coded and just want to give it a go You don't even have to like have art ready to go. You can just For a little test game just for yourself You can just pick up images from Google and just put them together and see what happens. But obviously if you make a Game you want to publish then you have to make the graphics yourself too. But yeah I don't know, the whole point of this video is just that if I, a complete newbie idiot, can make something like this then anyone can I feel like i'm being all spazzy because I haven't filmed anything in a few weeks again But yeah, putting a visual novel together isn't that scary Only thing I had issues with was putting music and sound effects in and I have no idea why I had issues with that and that was like the one thing where the documentation kind of failed me too because like the quick start guide and the actual like Audio Page had a little different information and I just got kind of confused what I was supposed to do and Nothing worked. It was really frustrating because I was almost done. I was like putting the final sound effects in and then they just wouldn't play And sometimes the game would just break completely because I did something wrong with the code And I was just like why and my fiance couldn't figure it out either And then the next day I tried the exact same thing I had been trying before and it just worked. And I don't know what I did right, but it worked. So that was interesting. I tried to ask on Twitter if anyone had any specific questions about the whole process of making a visual novel and all I got was my fiance asking if I liked programming and The only answer I have really is that I don't know Because I don't think RenPy The simple RenPy coding really counts, especially because I don't really have to think that much And I would Probably lose my mind if I tried to learn more fancy stuff. I know I'm gonna lose my mind once I start actually putting in dialogue choices that actually affect the game long term in some way That's gonna be so messy I'm scared. But I'll figure it out. Maybe. I hope. And also, Eedla asked me if I would do anything differently if I made another visual novel and I'm not planning on making a complete new one obviously, but I plan on continuing Melanie And the main thing I would do differently is probably that I would Put a little more effort into the art since I will not be on a strict deadline like I was this time Like I had two months to put this whole thing together while I was also doing a painting class that required making eight paintings over the summer and I just I procrastinated too much and I was almost kind of screwed I did like the final three paintings in a week So don't be like me and procrastinate your life. I will, I think I will redo some of the art in the first chapter too before I continue On to the second chapter because I want the backgrounds to be a little better. I'm okay with like the characters But I feel like my backgrounds look really lazy because I'm just, I'm not that good at them and I want to improve So I might At least add a little more detail to them if nothing else I don't think I want to completely redraw them because especially the city background It took quite a while. Even though it's Probably pretty simple to most actual background people. Yeah. Just want to make it a little better And I think I want to also customize the UI a bit more because It's pretty much just the default RenPy UI at this point. I just changed the font and the colors a tiny bit. But I realized that actually like Changing the UI elements is not that hard You just switch some images around and That's really it. And editing the fonts wasn't that hard either and the colors. It's really just a matter of spending some more time on it In the future. Since I don't have a deadline with this I can spend as much time with it as I want And I think I want it to actually be good because this is kind of a passion project Because I originally started Define Melanie as a comic Like the year I started uni Like a few months before I got accepted and Because of uni, I kind of dropped the whole comic thing because I didn't have time for it anymore. And I have kind of realized that visual novel is a lot easier because I can actually tell the story a lot faster and I'm impatient and this is a long story So I'd rather have a bit more faster Way to make it and like I don't have to I don't have to draw the same characters over and over in every single panel because I can actually like reuse the same faces. in scenes which saves a lot of time So I hope I have the motivation to make the whole thing It will take time but I hope I manage. I think that's all I really wanted to ramble on about this I don't know if this was in any way helpful or anything. Probably not. If you want to try Define Melanie It's available for free, well the first chapter On itch.io and it's available for both Windows and Mac And I think the PC version also works in Linux. At least someone has confirmed- confirmed it to me If you have a computer, you can play it. So do check it out! And I also have a Twitter for my game projects So if you want to get updates, I recommend following that That's where I spam all my game dev stuff. I do usually retweet them to my own like main twitter too because I'm annoying but like the Game dev twitter TecsielityGames is like the main one for my game stuff I hope you liked this little very rambly video. Now that I'm free of school I want to make videos more often Like for real and not just say that and then maybe two weeks later make another video Because that's what has happened. Many times. If there's anything else you would like me to make about like making games My fiance makes games too so I can get him in on this whole thing and actually make like videos about making something other than visual novels if you're interested in that. But uh yeah. I hope you liked this video and I hope I made a little sense. Bye!
