⛓don't look at me like i am a monster⛓

Defeated, I concede and move closer. I may find comfort here, I may find peace within the emptiness. How pitiful.

🔞 18+. MDNI. NSFW. 🔞

Screamo. 26. Bi. Cis. Artist and writer and friend! My heart is full of joy and my head is full of ick. I feel like a jackal, a coyote, and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

A list of cozy links I've found across the web!

My Kofi

I AM ONLY A BEGINNER WHO KNOWS BASIC THINGS, but the cool thing about visual novels is: you only need to know the basics! I use Renpy, so that's what I'll be talking abt....

1- Honestly the best thing I can recommend for just-starting-out is NOT relying on this bastard.

This (at least in my case) is one of the worst tutorials for anything I've ever tried to work with. It goes into unnecessary details, but words it like they're important, so you end up holding onto stuff you DON'T NEED and fucking up your whole thing. It's why I dropped Renpy twice in the past before I remembered Google existed. It also assumes you're already experienced in one way or another, so it doesn't actually explain things to you like you're a beginner. This is extremely hard to follow and lacks actual meat and bones for making anything competent. That isn't to say there's NOTHING of substance in the in-app tutorial, I just wouldn't use it as a tutorial as much as I'd use it as a directory. Go in, find what you need, and then take that to the internet to ACTUALLY find it.

---

2- Leading off that note, never settle for one opinion!!! Go to Youtube, go to Reddit, go to the official forums, visit loads of places and take so many notes your brain explodes!!! Finding coding you can just copy-and-paste is relatively easy if you're willing to (and know how to) modify it.

---

3- Leading off THAT note and into the coding... your game starts when you add "label start:". It can't start without this, so it's often the first label added to the game. I'm here to disillusion you to this, because adding a label for organization first makes things SO MUCH EASIER.

Like this!!! You can condense your project SO MUCH easier than without a "beginning" or "chapter1" label. Here's an example below U U Much cleaner and simpler to navigate your chapters.

---

4- By using "#", you can leave notes behind for yourself for later work. Use these a LOT. Use them as much as you can, especially before doing any actual outside-Renpy work. It might make your code look incomplete, but that's because it is. Your project doesn't have to be good the moment it's brought into existence, it just has to exist. This is especially important when considering things that could be subject to change. You don't wanna make an entire background and sprite for a scene that no longer works, even if it's just draft sketches. You can work on it when that bridge gets crossed, but coding in dialogue or whatever else is the skeleton of your game- the most important part. Can't have flesh without bone!

---

5- Play test your game REGULARLY. Add save files for areas you're currently working on so you don't have to traverse the entire game just to make it back there. Getting too far ahead of yourself is so easy, but once you play-test and realize there's a problem, it's SO HARD to comb through everything just to find the issue. AND LET ME TELL YOU.... It can be the smallest fucking thing. Like a word that's capitalized when it's not supposed to be, or a simple typo in a jump-command.

---

6- Open multiple projects for testing experimental code. This not only lets you figure out what you're doing without fucking up your game, but it also gives you a good copy-paste location!

---

7- oh my god don't worry about the menus or the UI during coding sessions. It's such an attention-eater. It doesn't matter if the games icon or font or text box could be prettier, worry about that when you have time to worry about that. The minute you set foot in those files, you will never leave. You'll blink and it's tomorrow and you have very little actually finished.

---

8- Lowkey mentioned earlier, but I wouldn't work on final products until you're sure it's final. It saves a lot of time, and for people who commission instead of draw, it can save a lot of money.

These are OBVIOUSLY not the final products for my game, but it's what it looks like right now because this is all I need it to look like right now. As long as it's coherent to you, that's all that matters.

---

sub's been waiting all day for dom to come home. they haven't been able to sit still, haven't been able to concentrate, haven't been able to keep those thighs from rubbing together. then the door clicks, puppy's on their knees waiting for their owner to hang up their coat and let sub take off their shoes- but there's a halt.

they look exhausted.

rolling their neck, offering only a silent smile as greeting, kicking their shoes off with laziness. while the heat between sub's legs is aggravating, it has suddenly become much less important than before.