Slashdot Mirror
Free Visual Novel Design Engine Released
Ayaka Hahn writes to tell us that they have just released a free game construction kit designed to make Visual Novels easy to construct. The "Blade Engine" was based on a professional Visual Novel engine being used in Japan with the hopes that it would spark greater interest in this medium in the west. From the press release: "In the West, there is a stereotype of: "Visual Novel = Dating Sim Game = Hentai", but that is wrong. Visual Novels CAN be Dating Sim games, Ren'ai games, Bishoujo games but also can be Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adventure and Horror Fiction games, or anything that the user's creativity comes up with."
Although it's always nice to have more tools for software creation and/or building...these so called visual novels will probably be made by a bunch of idiots, and therefore will be worth less than the time it takes to read / play them...Perhaps these people's time would better be spent creating non-clonable goods instead of easily cloned, nonunique software? Only a few can create superior software products, and because software is copy-able there's no need for hordes of idiots to manufacture it...unlike traditional products, which require hordes of idiots to manufacture...
You'd be wrong. These are much simpler (think "Choose Your Own Adventure", as another poster noted).
Mainly these are about the art and characters and the story and not wandering around solving puzzles like in the SCUMM games.
My other first post is car post.
I might be missing something, but I found NO mention of the platforms this game format supports out of the box. The Buredo ("blade" in Japanese syllables) folks should mention it SOMEWHERE before people bother to download stuff.
The first sample story is a Windows EXE, but from the tutorial files I just browsed, it doesn't look like it would be particularly hard to make a Un*x/Linux/OSX version out of nothing more than perl-sdl or pygame. The story script is essentially a big text file and graphics and sound assets.
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This might be an interesting way to (user) document GUI appliactions. Take your screenshots and write your script.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Um, have you ever played NetHack, or an IF game? Roguelikes are nothing like text adventures - they're CRPGs without the graphics and with a heavy focus on tactical hack 'n slash. IF games tend to be focused on prose and/or puzzles, neither of which is a major component of NetHack(Sokoban excluded).
Making it easy for idiots to make their own won't improve things.
Your comment was going well until that point. The Blade Engine is akin to blogging software for visual storytellers. Simplifying the process of creating AVGs will give an opportunity for people with good storytelling but poor programming skills to create interesting works. Sure, there will be a huge amount of crap, just like with blogs, but overall more is better. That's the whole raison d'etre of the internet.
Elitists are free to ignore self-published graphic novels, just as I'm sure there are plenty of people who read only "established" news sources on the web and don't bother with blogs of any kind, or in the real world plenty of people would never be caught dead reading a "zine,"which themselves multiplied after the advent of cheap photocopying and (later) DTP software.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Graphic novels, Visual novels... you know, these people must actually understand the difference between their, lets say, "limited" creations and what is traditionally referred to as a 'novel'. Otherwise, it seems, they would not insist quite so ardently on calling them 'novels'.
sic transit gloria mundi
It is?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
It's not a tool for programmers, I'd imagine. It's a tool for animators/illustrators/writers who don't have the first clue about basic, but still might want to make a piece of interactive art. So no, it's probably not targetted at any of the slashdot audience. And the quote about Visual Novels not necessarily being hentai might be moronic, but if it is, it's because it's debunking a moronic attitude that's quite prevelant - that Visual Novels (and I've heard the same thing said about anime/manga) are nothing but porn.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Because without such software, you'd have really brilliant minds not doing anything because they can't use the existing technology?!
The internet allows everyone to voice his ideas (some good, lots bad), easy-to-use technology does the same. Getting "more noise" is a good thing if you end up with some "really good signals" that you wouldn't have otherwise.
No one will ever convince me that completely destroying the "signal to noise" ratio of a particular creative field is somehow a good thing. Why on earth is it "better" to have this gigantic, suffocating mass of mediocrity?
I see where you're coming from, but my feeling is that what's noise to me might be signal to others, and vice-versa. Beethoven took some of his great symphonic themes from "mediocre" musical ditties of his day. Cubism arose in part because European artists gained exposure to "mediocre" African art and took it in unforseen directions. Warhol made art from tin can logos. The important thing is being able to connect and have access to the ideas. From there, what you do with them is limited more by your own inner creative mojo than by overexposure to crap.
Insofar as noise is a problem on the internet, I find that it is due to advertising, not the fault of independent creative works, no matter how banal they may be. Of course YMMV, and I respect that.
(Now you've got me wondering if even advertising is unmitigated noise. Perhaps penis enlargement ads will one day be viewed as primitive art by some future civilization. My only consolation is that I'll be long dead by then.)
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Signals are about something, not the things itself. You can have a lot makers, pick the best one and make signals about them. In a forum about it high signal to noise is good, but there should be something to speak about :)
Please, we have enough tentacle rape hentai without Cthulu getting into this.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies