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."
You read slashdot... You notice that the most recent article is about a choose your own adventure virtual book engine. What do you do now? (Make fun of hentai at the risk of being modded troll)(Give to the community a clever take on games in Japan) ...
You start to articulate how gay it is to play games that are dating sims, and poke fun at the pathetic losers who do it...
You take it, I don't want it...
I will try to ignore the whole "visual novel == hentai with tentacles" arguement. I play/read visual novels (or AVG as they are properly called) so I will be biased.
:) .
That having said, there was a pretty famous incident that involved GPL and a Japanese AVG game makers. Apparently the company used Xvid codecs for their animation clips for their popular games (ranked top 10 ero-game in 2005) without releasing the engine source code. When someone pointed out the GPL, the company promptly released the whole engine code (without the comments unforturnately). The engine was designed with win32 API in mind, btw. But it still counts as something
Off topic: I was amazed that a Japanese hentai game maker respects the GPL more than, say, SCO, a multi-million dollar company; Then again, comparing SCO to a hentai game company would not be fair- to the game company
Free Visual Novel Design Engine Released
You are in a Slashdot discussion about a dating sim engine. There is a summary and a link to TFA here.
> EXAMINE SELF
You are an average Slashdotter. Your karma is Normal.
> READ SUMMARY
"This program lets you design visual novels. Even though most people think that all visual novels are dating sims, that is not entirely correct."
> READ TFA
Really?
> NO
Thought so.
> WRITE POST
About what do you want to write?
> TEXT ADVENTURES
You write a funny little piece about text adventures that is just barely connected to the thread.
> POST
Unfortunatly for you the moderators are on some particularly bad crack today and your post ends up with a score of -5, Funny. Maybe you should have posted anonymously.
Your karma has been reduced to below zero. As people around you sense your negative karma they shun you, leaving all future posts unread. You are dead, as far as this community's concerned.
Your final score is 5. You must be new here.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I couldn't figure out what this "visual novel engine" was from the summary so I thought I would RTFA for a change. After doing that I still wasn't clear about what kind of thing you could make with it. I downloaded one of the samples to see what they were talking about. For those of you like me who are out of the loop on this state of the art technology I offer you this 5 word summary: Zork with stills and sound.
How long did it take to make an "engine" to do this anyway? A whole day? two maybe? Lets see, a database with music samples, stills, and text, throw in some trivial branching, done. It seems to me that the only work in the first place was making the creative content, which, with this wonderful technology, is still the only work.
Also, once you know what they are talking about, saying this bit: "Visual Novels CAN be Dating Sim games, Ren'ai games, Bishoujo games but also can be Sci-Fi Blah Blah Blah..." is really moronic. It's like saying, "Did you know that when you buy magazines, they don't all have to be porn! There are also magazines about cars and computers, and hobbies like painting! Did you know that you can actually make a magazine about anything you want!?"
Is the whole point of this Blade engine just to establish some sort of standard? Because the problem it seems to be trying to solve just isn't that tough. I wouldn't pay money for it. Am I off the mark here? What am I not getting?
Unline ONScripter (a freeware implementation of the engine that was used to create Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, among other things), there doesn't seem to be a Linux port of this yet.
*cheerful, bland MIDI music starts playing*
;)
Noriko: *fades in* Brother! Brooootheeeer!
Noriko: *makes angry face* You are reading Slashdot again, aren't you?
Noriko: You spend too much time on the internet!
[Yes] [No] [Stick it in]
You: Hey, eight hours a day is not that much!
Noriko: Yes it is!
Noriko: *takes cheerful pose* I can't let you sit in front of the computer all day.
Noriko: Today we're going to do something together, no discussion.
Noriko: Do you have anything you want to do?
[Play a dating sim together] [Kill her] [Stick it in]
You: Your life is -5, Overrated!
Noriko: *makes scared face* What are you doing with that knife?
Noriko: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
*screen fades out*
GAME OVER
PS: I'm not trying to undermine my potential +5, Funny, but I don't want to write yet another post. When Wikipediaing for dating sim companies I noticed that according to the 'Pedia Leaf had to release the source code to some of their games under the GPL. Maybe that could be used for a free alternative to the program the TFA talks about? I gTranslated the corresponding page on Leaf's website (http://leaf dot aquaplus dot co dot jp/product/xvid.html - please spare their server if you don't intend to read the text) and it says something about how they distribute the source by email and/or CD. Maybe someone who speaks Japanese might want to get in touch with them...
(And don't tell my that the FOSS community has no need for this. We do things because we can, not because we need them
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)