RenPy VS YarnSpinner

So many things are wrong with this article but I’ll start with Haruhi Suzumiya being a ‘light novel’ (a novel printed in large text as if for seniors with a few illustrations) as opposed to a ‘visual novel’ (something you would make with https://www.renpy.org/)

It is hard to know because financials aren’t public but it’s not clear to me that Crunchyroll has really addressed the commercial provlems anime had in western markets. In the VHS era there was a fight over subtitles vs dubs which was acute because you could not put multiple content tracks on the media, in the DVD age you could.

More fundamentally, dubs cost a lot of money in comparison with subs and were always terrible until the people who made those terrible dubs gained experience and some of them got good. At the time people though subs had a limited market but now subprime anime (and sometimes good anime) gets shoveled onto Tubi and people watch it —- today we’re in the habit of watching movies with subtitles because you can’t make out the dialog on half of the new Hollywood movies anyway.

Many great suggestions in this thread. Some that I didn't spot:

Lua isn't tough to pick up given you already know JS and Python. It's a bit of a weird hybrid of the two in its own unique ways. If show that you are learning it with you child, sometimes that can be a great experience. Löve2D can be a fun, very self-contained sandbox: https://www.love2d.org/

On the Python side, Ren'Py can be a great place to start. Visual Novels may not be half as popular outside of Japan, but Visual Novel-like conversations are everywhere in modern games and you can start with easy to script "Choose Your Own Adventure" Visual Novel conventions and expand to a wide range of genres from RPGs to "life sims" to some form of turn-based strategy games easily from there (and just about anything with more work). Ren'Py starts from its own relatively simple conversation-focused scripting language with Python-like conditions, and then allows you to expand towards custom Python code as you get familiar with it. https://www.renpy.org/

..and even more recently, I truly felt like I got a hang on something when I made my first ever visual novel with Sublime and Ren'Py!

Ren'Py - Visual Novel Engine. Python, Cython, C

Here are 2 interactive story game engines: * https://www.renpy.org/ * https://twinery.org/

###################################################### Credits label credits(): $ credits_speed = 20 scene black show text '''{b}Blabla:{/b}\n\n{i}Me{/i}\n\n\n {b}Clacla:{/b}\n\n{i}You{/i}\n\n\n {b}Dladla:{/b}\n\n {i}He{/i}\n\n\n {b}Hlahla:{/b}\n\n{i}She{/i}\n\n\n {b}Brrr:{/b}\n\n{i}Grrr{/i}\n\n\n {b}Drrr:{/b}\n\n{i}Hrrr{/i}\n\n\n\n\n Made with {a=https://www.renpy.org/}Ren'Py{/a} v[renpy.version_only]\n\n\n{b}Ren'Py License:{/b}\n[renpy.license!t]''' at Move((0.5, 1.0), (0.5, -1.0), credits_speed, xanchor=0.5, yanchor=0) with Pause(credits_speed+4) return init screen about(): tag menu add "main_menu" use game_menu(_("Credits"), scroll="viewport"): style_prefix "about" fixed: xalign 0.5 yalign 0.5 viewport id "vp": draggable True mousewheel True has vbox: spacing 3 textbutton _("whattheheeeeellll") action Jump("credits") init -1 style about_label is gui_label init -1 style about_label_text is label_text init -1 style about_text is gui_text init -1 style about_label_text: size gui.label_text_size

You can also check https://www.renpy.org/

I can't speak for in-game stuff, but I encourage anyone who wants to to try making a visual novel! It's way easier than you'd think it is. The only tools I really used were Ren'Py (the engine), CSP and Paint.net (for the art), and KKT (for the models).

Another option if you don't want to implement it yourself though is to use an already built library. I've been playing with YarnSpinner a little bit recently and I'm liking it so far. I can't give much more details than that, but it's maybe worth a look. At least for some reference.

I looked into other solutions, but haven't tested them yet: (Ink)[https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/] (Yarn)[https://yarnspinner.dev/]

I am currently working on a 3d Unity game that uses a classic visual novel interface for conversations with NPCs. I am using Yarnspinner for the VN parts. It's a very powerful and flexible middleware that allows you to write your dialogue trees in a very simple domain-specific language.

I recommend looking into Yarn

After writing several own dialogue solutions, I decided to use Yarnspinner as a dialogue scripting solution for my latest project. It's really powerful, flexible and easy to use. I see no reason why I would ever want to invent my own again. It comes with a sample dialogue UI, but the website has a guide for how to create your own.

Please have a look at Yarn or Twine :)

Find ways to tell those stories without complex mechanics. Visual novels and text adventures are a great example. If you have a budget, hire a good artist and maybe look into voice over actors. If you're short on budget, look into AI to generate images and even to do voice over. As for tools you have Twine, Ink and YarnSpinner, to name s few and, in terms of game engine, don't lose too much time picking one. Whether is Unity, Unreal, GameMaker, Phaser, Pygame or just HTML with vanilla JS, go with whatever makes you feel comfortable and requires the lowest amount of effort for you to start doing something.

Yarn spinner