#development guide

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I. Abstraction

I start off with abstraction as a reminder that visual novels are a combination of visual and novel (amongst other aspects)

Abstraction

Abstraction is a strong tool for bringing focus to the writing, highlighting ambiguity and setting the mood with colors.

Examples I mentioned in my talk include:

Black screen

Solid colored screen

Sky BG

Of Components

The mood-setting power of abstraction also extends to scenes with characters, especially CGs.

As again, abstraction draws focus to what you choose to emphasize: the characters.

(FLOWERS -Le volume sur ete-)

They are gay. Thank you for coming to my VNConf talk.

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You can similarly abstract characters.

(Lachesis or Atropos)

Consider representing irrelevant characters (e.g., NPCs) as silhouettes. The reader can fill in the details within the shapes themselves.

Silhouettes are especially great for crowd scenes where you want to draw focus to the main characters.

This will be a recurring theme:

What do you really need to draw?

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II. Cut-ins

One common not-quite full screen piece of art you'll see in many visual novels is the cut-in.

The cut-in typically consists of the:

Item/focus

Frame

And is often for topics such as objects or small animals, which may exist in the scene but may not be within the same frame of reference as the background and sprites.

The separate framing informs the players that the item is "separately framed."

(Who is the Red Queen?)

For example, this small bird is not huge and would not be the size of a character's head even had a sprite been on screen.

The Foreground-Backdrop Heuristic

Cut-ins make strong use of what I refer to as the "foreground-backdrop heuristic."

(Shikkoku no Sharnoth)

A general backdrop informs the reader of a broad location or scene (especially if characters are present). Then a more specific foreground (the cut-in) informs the reader of the specifics.

As the foreground cut-in is in a different frame, the pairing of the two helps create a mental model of the space in the reader's mind.

Cut-ins can be used for:

Backgrounds (mix and match foregrounds with a backdrop)

Reduced CGs

Presenting existing assets in a different frame of reference

CG variants

Try tackling your visual presentation in a layered, comic book-esque fashion with cut-ins!

Just be careful about clutter.

Whether you want to go for the layered cut-in style, the 3d stage cinematic style, or a combination of the two, make sure you have a vision before you jump in.

SD CGs

I had to make an obligatory mention of SD "super deformed" CGs in this talk, so here it is in the write up as well.

(Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Vol. 1)

SD, chibi. However you call these, they're great for playful scenes that might require more art than your classic sprite-background combination.

What SD CGs do best is that they:

Fulfill the role of a CG

Are easier to draw than fully rendered non-chibi art

Can be distributed to different artists to reduce artist workloads due to style difference

Just keep in mind that a simplified CG is still a CG and thus may lack reusability.

Consider what scenes really need a CG.

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III. Reduce

Now, consider asking yourself: "Does what a player does not see need to exist?" (mostly applicable for games with opaque UI)

Yet, what you need to draw is what you need to draw. How can you reduce the work in what you need to draw?

One option is:

Palette Limitation

You've heard of gray scale games, but don't forget about other ways of limiting your palette to reduce workload.

Dramatic, mood setting color power

Less rendering work

(Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows)

A similar idea can be applied to NPCs for a more detailed take on silhouettes.

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IV. Reuse

Lastly, please remember to be economical and reuse assets as necessary. One of the great joys of cut-in BGs, for example, is reusability.

I had to give an obligatory mention to CG variants in my talk, such as:

(Fatal Twelve)

However, overall, you never know when you'll want to use various components of your art elsewhere such as intermixing CG and sprite art.

Please keep your working layers if possible.

Other reuse examples:

UI (especially in episodic games)

Gameplay (e.g., Kogado's rhythm game)

Consider asking your programmer to work on a framework to reuse, reducing repeated code work.

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Conclusions

All in all, you can make your game.

And it doesn't need to be hellish on your budget or timeline.

If you take anything away from this talk, let it be to:

Prioritize reusable assets

Maintain aesthetic; avoid clutter

Display important scenes

Do not scope up; aim for a set goal

A scene can be presented in many stylish ways, some of which will suit your workflow better than others.

So, go on. Make your game!

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VNConf 2023 Talk Write-up:

To create a polished visual novel is to deliver your game with both style and usability.

This talk focused on the aspect of usability and accessibility in your visual novel. How can you give your players a better user experience in terms of the following?

Core Visual Novel Experience

Accessibility

Extra QoL Features

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I. Core Visual Novel Experience

You want your player to be able to read your narrative as conveniently for them as possible. Interactive components in your game application should mostly be there to enhance the player experience whether it is part of your narrative or there to give players more control.

I briefly touched on some common components/screens found in just about every visual novel.

Quick Menu

Be easy to click and inobtrusive

Be easy to understand

Convince your players that it actually works by providing feedback to button clicks

Text based quick menus are easy to understand, but take up lots of space. Icon based quick menus can be very abstract (what do the icons mean even if seemingly "obvious?")

You may want to consider a combination of both, but if using icon based quick menus, be sure to clarify the icons such as via tooltips.

Provide feedback when the quick menu items are clicked. Most actions just bring up a screen (obvious feedback). Skip will cause rapid movement of text on screen (easy). Auto is more subtle.

What can you do?

Change the auto button to an active state vs. idle state on press

Hide the CTC and/or quick menu on auto

Change the CTC to an "auto-mode activated" CTC

Etc.

History

Provide long enough history to backread

Provide utilities (e.g., if voice acting in game, allow voice replay)

Remember that rollback and history are two different things

Save/Load

Provide context of when and where

Provide sufficient slots for all choices without requiring player overwrite (visual novel players SAVE EVERY CHOICE)

Consider feature to indicate newest save, file deletion button, save file locking

To provide context, have a visual and timestamp, but also try providing chapter names or scene descriptions.

Configs

Provide reasonable default settings (e.g., audio at 70%)

Avoid overwhelming users by categorizing options and providing reasonable support (e.g., slider vs radio)

Provide previews

Single pagers and multi-pagers are both good. Make it easy for the player to get in, change the settings to their preferred values, and get back to the game.

Additional recommendations:

CTC icons

System sound

Splash screens (especially first time setting initializations)

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II. Accessibility

Stating the obvious: start with good design :)

Make accessibility features easily accessed and support them:

Put it into your configs screen even if it's built in if you want to support it

Test and check that it works correctly (e.g., self voicing pronunciation, text size overflow)

Provide a reasonable number of options per feature. Whatever options you explicitly provide, you should actually be supporting them.

No one’s coming after you if the built in Ren’Py accessibility toggles overflow your textbox, but it sure will be a problem if the font sizes you’re explicitly providing are broken because that’s just a bug.

Recommended accessibility features: (italics talked about in presentation explicitly)

Self voicing

Image descriptions

Text options

Photosensitivity

Screenshake

Audio captions

Graphic images filter

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III. Extra QoL Features

Not all features are great for all games, but some quality of life features can be very useful depending on your game. Therefore, you should know your game to know how to make the player experience better.

What's the genre?

How long is it?

What's the branching structure (if any) like?

Gameplay?

In this section, I briefly tackled exploring Aoishiro (highly recommend this game, by the way) and how some of its quality of life features are useful due to the type of game it is.

Genre?

occult fantasy, Japanese mythology

Having a glossary (with "new" indicator and alphabetization to make it usable) is very useful in game genres with lots of terms!

Length?

30+ hours (according to vndb. I took way longer, so pretty long)

Fourth item down in the first box is a togglable alarm for when skip ends! (Vibration mode, sound mode, both, or silent) Longer visual novels with large trunk portions of shared text that might get new unlocked text often need lots of skipping.

Branching?

56 endings, route unlocking mechanics

Aoishiro provides a spoiler option that lets you "mark unread content as read," unlocking content that you may not have actually been able to play through, whether it's due to difficulty or just laziness.

(This is also useful for remasters or sequels that contain previous game content but are not backward compatible save file wise.)

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Conclusions

Make life more convenient for your players by keeping in mind UX heuristics such as:

Providing feedback & status

Error prevention & control

Recognition over recall

Consistency & standards

To polish your release, you want to make its features usable, accessible, and useful for your players!

Make baseline features with usability and accessibility.

Add additional QoL features depending on your game.

In the talk, I discussed 3 main topics:

How to Game Jam

Lessons Learned

Should you participate in game jams?

How to Game Jam

The game jam timeline typically consists of four components:

Planning

Recruitment

Development

Release

There may be some overlap between the first three, but let's go in order.

Planning

Identify your premise

Identify your scope

Create references (outline, visual references)

Before you can bring a game to life with your team (or solo), you have to put the idea on the table.

Visual references are especially important if you're working with other artists. They reduce:

Communication difficulties (does the character look like this or that?)

Schedule delays (how can they draw if they don't know what to?)

Future issues (how do you draw this again...?)

Recruitment

Have your idea set before you recruit. When making your recruitment pitch, you'll want to address most if not all of the following:

Who are you? What are you doing?

Premise of the game

Scope of the game

Requested roles

Proof of concept

Here's an example I gave in my presentation:

You might not always have everything, but people won't get recruited if they don't know you're recruiting their role.

Once you've assembled the team, be sure you verify how they want to be attributed in the credits.

If you can't find a role, remember that CC assets exist!

Organizing Your Team

I recommend having a home base such as a Discord server (communication), shared Google Drive folder (assets), and GitHub repo (code version control).

Make sure folks know project information that isn't in your recruitment pitch such as:

File types (.ogg for music?)

Engine (Ren'Py?)

Asset specs (1080p?)

Compensation (if any)

Deadlines

Communication is key in avoiding delays. Start communication before the jam.

Development

Ideally, your planning has prepared you for the development process, and you don't need to do anything but make the game during the jam.

Ideal is rare, issues popping up here and there. Some common ones include:

Q. What if a teammate falls through?

Don't panic! If you're the teammate, remember that your team lead will appreciate upfront communication.

If you're the team lead, there's a number of options to take. Cut scope in that teammate's component, take on the task yourself, try to recruit a new teammate, and or grab some asset packs.

Q. What if we can't finish on time?

A jam is a jam. Remember the trusty old scope knife. In order to avoid having to cut scope from your game, do your planning well.

Release

Jams will give you a visibility boost, but remember to market regardless.

Plan to submit a few days before the jam ends. This gives your team leeway in case delays occur.

I believe in you!

Lessons from 8 Jams

There are 3 types of roles (a bit of a simplification) you can take on in a production regardless of your creative specialization:

Team lead

Solo developer

Contributor

Each comes with pros and cons. Jams are a great way to figure out what you like to do, and what your preferred team dynamic is.

Here's some questions that might help you:

How much creative control do you want?

How do you like to communicate?

Thus with these tips for jamming in mind, we ask and answer the key question:

Should you participate in game jams?

Yes, conditionally.

There are pros and cons to game jams.

But overall, jams are a great way to dip your feet into making visual novels. Make great friends and great games.

If you're aiming for a larger production, especially one with money involved, remember that you don't need to join every jam. Why not focus on your ongoing project first?

_:(´ཀ`」 ∠):_ That's advice I need to take myself...

After note

If you're interested in learning more via case studies, please feel free to check out the following:

Postmortem for NaNoRenO 2021