Thank you so much for the incredible support and the generous donation! Reading your enthusiasm completely made my day. Your adult RPG / dating sim / card battle hybrid sounds like an epic adventure, and it’s exactly the kind of ambitious project I’d love to see brought to life in Capsule! I must admit I've played a considerable number of hybrid visual novels for adults. The card game style (for battles, for example, or for creating conditioning builds) is a fairly niche type of game, and it's not the easiest to make. I wish you the best in your game creation!
Naninovel is an excellent choice for those who are proficient in Unity. Capsule doesn't have Unity's technical power and never will, remaining a monolithic engine. And besides, I'm not trying to compete with engines like Naninovel, which is based on Unity, or DiaLogic, which is based on Godot; they're not targeting the same audience at all. Capsule isn't limited to games; it can be used for interactive lessons, presentations, and more.
As a narrative/RPG engine, Capsule already surpasses well-established engines like TyranoBuilder, Visual Novel Maker, Twine, Narrat, and others. Ren'py remains technically more powerful with its Python code, which unlocks almost unlimited capabilities, but it doesn't measure up in terms of portability, ease of use, security, project management, native features, and even longevity (since an HTML game created with Capsule will still work in 2050). Not to mention that the CapsuleScript DSL is currently the only one that allows for the automated creation of game architectures via simple LLMs.
And this is just version 1.9.0; version 2.0 will add an incredible array of features while increasing stability and power, always keeping in mind the need to make game creation accessible to both beginners and professionals.
You'll be happy to know that several of the features you listed are already in your inventory:
- Animations: The engine features a built-in Sprite-Sheet Animation system that natively supports variable FPS, looping, and different playback states. (And yes, optimized formats like WebP work perfectly!). It's also easy to use animations created in Spine or Inochi2D. Instead of exporting Spine's native JSON/binary format, for example, you export the animation as a PNG image sequence. You then use a third-party tool (like TexturePacker or Free Texture Packer) to group this sequence into a single grid of images.
- Custom UI / Stats: The HUD Variables Display system allows you to dynamically show custom variables (like Money, HP, Mana, Stamina) directly on-screen with different visual styles and icons. I plan to make it even more customizable for even more personalized placements or the import of your own background images to customize this interface.
- SFX & Music: BGM and SFX run on separate channels, and the engine manages overlapping sound effects smoothly.
Regarding your audio requests: currently, the engine operates on two primary audio tracks (Music and SFX) with their own volume sliders in the options, alongside the TTS features (in V2, not released yet). Expanding this into a dedicated 4-channel mixer (BGM, Looping Ambient, Voice, and One-off SFX) with independent on-the-fly volume sliders is a fantastic idea. I am definitely adding this to the roadmap to fully support proper voice-acted VNs!
I would absolutely love to have you onboard as a beta-tester! Feedback from developers pushing the boundaries of traditional visual novels is exactly what I need to make Capsule a true game-changer. Let's keep in touch!