itch.io

(This largely pasted from a pinned message already in the VN's Discord server.)

This visual novel is largely a solo project as of 2025, with my (CaptainCaption)'s roles in being:

• The writing, although given how Ren'Py works with interwoven text, graphics, and audio, it's more accurate to say that this part is more akin to working in film in scriptwriting and directing with making many of its parts merge into a cohesive whole.
• The bulk of the coding (minus when Espeon, my producer, rescues my incompetent ass from the horrible cargo cult code I've made).
• Designing and making all of the GUI assets (minus what I can get from icon packs).
• Creating design documents, some for the story, but mostly for artists' use.
• (Largely) finding the artists to commission to make the art those design documents detail.
• Managing the vast majority of the communication with those commissioned artists.
• Editing the art we've receive for stylistic consistency and functionality within the Ren'Py game engine.
• Community management on Patreon, social media, forum posting, and Discord, which includes distributing the game every release.

I try to remember to keep this list current to give credit where credit is due, but the only parts I do not make myself are:

• The Ren'Py engine itself, but which I still modify from its stock form.
• The art I need to commission artists for, even if I often heavily edit the final delivery of the artist's final delivery.
• The royalty-free backgrounds I purchase (along a few more visual elements, such as textures, stock photos, and vector images for the icons on Zach's phone), but I have heavily edited some of these images and would argue that I outright made the GUI and Zach's phone screen.
• Making the songs and SFX, but I have edited many song to loop properly when they do not initially and edited some SFX to remove noise or provide an echoic reverb to demonstrate the large size of certain rooms.
• The fonts and certain text effects, such as an occasional wave effect.
• The core code of the admittedly shitty arcade games, with my modifications ranging from minor to a near-total overhaul.
• The core code of the in-game encyclopedia.
• The one-time use digital clock in Zach's dream.
• The tools I use to make this game. As a non-comprehensive list, that is:
  • Visual Studio Code and its extensions (although I have heavily modified the Ren'Py extension and made a customized solarized theme from an extant one).
  • Audacity and its filters.
  • Clip Studio Paint.
  • Adobe Photoshop 2024.
  • Inkscape.
  • ImageMagick.
  • XnConvert.
  • Waifu2x-Extension-GUI.
  • itch.io's upload service and various file hosting websites.
  • Bulk Rename Utility (it does exactly what it says it does for filenames).
  • Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
  • Miscellaneous Python utilities (such as an audio file converter and equalizer and word count tool).
• Vestigial leftovers from the very first release of re:Dreamer being built off Student Transfer's V4 codespace (which I asked the devs for permission to use, which I was graciously granted). To my knowledge, their only modifications from that release still left in re:Dreamer are:
  • Changes to how text displays in dialogue to use smart quotes and wait for dialogue to finish animating before giving a choice screen.
  • Building a file list from scanning folders for files of certain extensions.
  • A few custom statements like the "placeholder" end-of-content screen.
  • Some of the code for the messaging system on Zach's phone.
  • Minor parts of GUI asset, such as the "quickbar" at the bottom of the in-game textbox and the Save/Load screen's layout.