Question About Novel Software

[Leo_Otaku]

I wanted to try and make a small kinetic novel for one of my artprojects for school. Can any of the visual novel software make a kinetic? As well can you add clips that are mov or avi from adobe video software? Not sure how to go about doing this.

[jyuichi]

Originally Posted by Leo_Otaku

I wanted to try and make a small kinetic novel for one of my artprojects for school. Can any of the visual novel software make a kinetic? As well can you add clips that are mov or avi from adobe video software? Not sure how to go about doing this.

If you mean kinetic as in linear, yes

I suggest Ren'Py which is fairly easy to use and supports MPEG-2 video clips. (Free conversion software can be found)

http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page <--everything you need to know

[Moogy]

ren'py is a shitty engine in general and will cause your game to be associated with the utter shit that people have put out using it.

ONScripter is a good choice, since you can simply look at the 0.txt from an insani game and figure out everything yourself.

If you've got a decent handle on Javascript and don't mind dealing with all-Japanese documentation, Kirikiri is the best choice, though. Very flexible engine and a lot more modern than ONScripter.

[Asceai]

ren'py is not a shitty engine at all. Yes, it does take a bit of customisation. It would not be difficult at all to completely disguise the fact that your title is a ren'py game at all, so there would be no 'association'. Just because existing ren'py games look as they do doesn't mean yours has to.

Kirikiri is all-round awesome, though. It's well documented, easy to code in and there's heaps of example source code and plenty of plugins, as well as being open-source. The source code is also well documented.

No flaming, Moogy, at least until you've read Elven Relations or Ren'ai Blogger. (Until there's an Understanding Comics for visual novel fans, those are the commendable examples I'll use.)

[Asceai]

My favourite OELVN that I've played is mikey's Gakuen Redux.

[jyuichi]

Originally Posted by Moogy

ren'py is a shitty engine in general and will cause your game to be associated with the utter shit that people have put out using it.

ONScripter is a good choice, since you can simply look at the 0.txt from an insani game and figure out everything yourself.

If you've got a decent handle on Javascript and don't mind dealing with all-Japanese documentation, Kirikiri is the best choice, though. Very flexible engine and a lot more modern than ONScripter.

Japanese is a bit of a barrier for KiriKiri though, considering this is an english board I figured an engine with english documentation would be more appropriate.

Moreover, Ren'Py is multi-platform. KiriKiri is not.

[DaFool]

Originally Posted by Leo_Otaku

I wanted to try and make a small kinetic novel for one of my artprojects for school. Can any of the visual novel software make a kinetic? As well can you add clips that are mov or avi from adobe video software? Not sure how to go about doing this.

Since this is a school project, you want something that's easy to use for a English-speaking non-programmer from the very beginning.
onscripter easy to use? Uh...
Kirikiri? Er... (but it is an awesome engine nevertheless)

downside with Ren'Py is it only supports mpegs at the moment.

[Enerccio]

I vote for kirikiri as it supports even flash video (with right plugin).

[Starchanchan]

If you go with ONScripter, if you're doing something with relatively simple coding, there should be enough documentation and examples to get you through it with some trial and error. If you've never used it before, though, and you're looking to do more advanced things, then I'd say try something else... it can get pretty confusing pretty quickly. Having never used any other engine, I can't speak for others, but from what I've heard, Ren'Py sounds the most user-friendly.

[PyTom]

As a clarification, Ren'Py supports MPEG-1 video, not MPEG-2. Adding support for more video formats is something I've been considering for a while, but that for various reason I haven't made a priority. The existing video support has been used very rarely, and I'd rather spend time making it easier to do such things in-engine.

I'd be interested in hearing suggestions from KiriKiri experts as to things that might be implemented in Ren'Py. I know that I took several ideas from the translation of the ONScripter documentation. That being said, I don't consider ONScripter to be a particularly good language, as it has a relatively opaque syntax, with a lot of meaning assigned to punctuation characters. I believe KiriKiri is better in this regard.

[jyuichi]

Originally Posted by PyTom

As a clarification, Ren'Py supports MPEG-1 video, not MPEG-2. Adding support for more video formats is something I've been considering for a while, but that for various reason I haven't made a priority. The existing video support has been used very rarely, and I'd rather spend time making it easier to do such things in-engine.

I'd be interested in hearing suggestions from KiriKiri experts as to things that might be implemented in Ren'Py. I know that I took several ideas from the translation of the ONScripter documentation. That being said, I don't consider ONScripter to be a particularly good language, as it has a relatively opaque syntax, with a lot of meaning assigned to punctuation characters. I believe KiriKiri is better in this regard.

Ah sorry, I just remember spending a long time trying to convery my .swf OP animation to make Ren'Py play it ^^; MPEG-1 makes more sense.

ONScripter looks like a bundle of hassle to me.

[Shii]

Originally Posted by Moogy

ren'py is a shitty engine in general and will cause your game to be associated with the utter shit that people have put out using it.

Surprisingly, when you write an engine that isn't insanely difficult to understand, amateurs tend to choose that one over a reverse-engineered Japanese engine. ;)