Hi, everyone! Just wanted to start up a little post to track progress. I'm trying to make a visual novel with all relief-printed sprites, BGs and CGs. This is my first time making any kind of visual novel, so I know I'm gonna have to try not to bite off more than I can chew ;o; But today I started writing my script. I'm trying to get through my prologue today. What are everyone else's first day goals?
Our team of four are relatively new to visual novels, so it's hard to know the workload from the get go. I suppose it depends on your story. We settled on a plot and the basics of the gameplay (we wanted some variation to break from just typical visual novel dialogue), then the structure and characters come next. One month goes by quicker than you think, so being efficient isn't necessarily bad - but solo devs should be careful to avoid creative burnout. If you don't have a team to bounce ideas off of, get some feedback from friends and/or family. Projects can change during the development cycle, but it's super important to start off with a solid idea.
Oh excellent! Yeah, I'm trying to keep in mind how doing it all myself could lead to burnout. Thankfully I do have friends and family already happy to bounce ideas with me. I am also recognizing that even though my goal is to finish the game in one month, I may just end up with a demo, and that's okay.
Good luck to you! Definitely a good idea to start small (and expand later if you have time), especially if it's your first VN! ^ ㅡ^ It sounds like you've got a great plan ahead~! Looking forward to playing yours. :3
As for my first day. . . I've been busy moving (moved out Feb. 28, moved in March 1 at 3am ㅠ ㅡㅠ;;) haha... I still don't have internet or gas yet! A bit hectic so far >ㅡ < but hopefully I can start to work on things really soon!
Decided to take a whack at this since I'm going to be stuck inside anyway. I've only written a little here or there and drawn some things, but I really want to complete something. Already got five rough ideas chasing around in the back of my head though. First goal: pick the one idea to go with or find out if I can do an anthology.
Yeah, two things that I'll need to grab at free resources for will be sound and music. Good luck with you as well!
I did settle on one idea so I've jotting down the idea in more detail. It is simple to start with but I loved fairytales as a kid like the Snow Queen, Godfather Death, and Vasilisa the Beautiful more than Snow White and Rose Red, Little Mermaid (with and without the "be good kids for she will suffer disproportionately more" shoehorned moral), or The Twelve Brothers... to say nothing of The Juniper Tree (one of the most wicked stepmothers I remember reading ever).
It didn't even take five seconds for it to explode into something more complex just in the intro alone because the number of siblings would affect the story in different ways thanks to the frequent motif of "youngest child wins by being cunning af".
A little update, if anyone is interested in sharing how things are going for them. I've been writing for about two hours each day before work, although yesterday and today I have the day off, so I can probably do more- just finding it hard to focus for more than two hours at a time. I was hoping to have the script done by the end of this week, but I may have to adjust. Having a morning writing routine has been really good for me, though! I'm just worried about how long the sprites and CGs will take me, since I'm really trying to finish the story before I go into those. And programming is a whole other hurdle that I'll just have to worry about when I get there. Hope you all are steadily progressing!
