ive been thinking of making a game similar to monika after story but im not sure what engine or whatever other things to use for it.
for those who don’t know monika after story, its essentially a desktop companion you can talk to via randomized topics she brings up or a menu of questions you can ask her. theres other features like gifting, dressing her up and small events that id be interested in copying, and some things like an affection system that i dont really care to have since the game would not be released to other people.
since monika after story is a DDLC mod it uses renpy but iirc they are kind of pushing renpy to its limits with some of the features so i dont think using that would be very easy. but also i have basically no programming experience whatsoever so i guess i would need some kind of base still? im willing to learn to make my idea come to life but im not really aware of whats available and i wouldnt want to start on something in one engine only to realise later another one wouldve been better.
i think i have a pretty solid idea of the structure id want for the game which should help me build it more easily even if i have to learn the engine’s functionality. if explaining it would help just lmk and ill do it i just dont want the base post clogged up with irrelevant info if its not useful
ill appreciate any other programming tips you may have
That’s a visual novel, so you probably want an engine for this type of game. Ren’Py is the best known, but there are many others; you should probably ask in the Lemma Soft Forums, where you can also get specific help.
I’d second Renpy too, though take anything I say with a grain of salt as Ive only fucked around in it and have yet to complete a project lol. But I had the same thought of whether Renpy would be enough to add stuff like minigames or extra features. I was specifically interested in an Ace Attorney style inventory and some basic RPG combat and it is possible! The good thing about Renpy is there’s quite a bit of documentation and tutorials for these kind of additional features outside choice-based outcomes in a classic Renpy setup etc. I would recommend just looking for tutorials especially for specific minigames, dressing up, randomizers etc. It’s out there and Renpy can hack most of it.
I would only recommend open source and free the only other option I can think of is Godot but that seems like brutal overkill for a VN-style project.
If you have never programmed, I don’t think there’s a good reason to not use Ren’Py. It comes with a lot of Visual Novel-minded stuff built in.
I am always advocating for monogatari.js due to being web-first, which is cool for a bunch of reasons, but the interface is more for programmers who already know javascript. Ren’Py lets you get a lot done as a newbie.
Take the time to read their documentation and ask for help in their discord. Also, write a draft of your VN in a text file and what you want to happen game-wise, first. After that, you can convert your script to Ren’Py code and 100% focus on the tech side of it.
true! and if youve got a lot of choices/branching story points, Twine can help outline your text. I used it as a map for the biggest twists in my story just so I wouldnt forget where I was going with it lol…
My suggestion is to focus on what specific functionality makes this project different from other visual novels. Maybe existing tools for making visual novels already have that capability or are extensible, but a good first step would be to name those capabilities.