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Art & Code: How it's made - and what goes wrong :)
🕑 Added 2021-04-10 15:49:05 +0000 UTC(!There's a spoiler at the very bottom!)
Hey everyone!
I know I usually share my art in these posts, but a big part of what I do actually happens in code. So today I’d like to give you a little peek behind the scenes & show you how that looks.
Adding dialog
So, below you see one of many scripts that the game has. I organize my scripts in stories per character. And here you see the latest dialog I wrote for the junkers. Now if you take a closer look, you might notice that this bit of code, basically consists out of two parts; spoken scentences & references to pose-pictures.
(Maybe you need to open the image above, to read it?)
Now every scentence that you see in the game “is written like this” in code. And the letter in front of each sentence here, determines who says the text, so ‘k’ is Keen.
And sometimes I use special bits of code like this, {b} which make the text bold {/b}. I usually do that to highlight items or characters. But beware! Type one letter wrong and then this is what you get…
Does that happen a lot? Well, now I know this screen probably better than my mom :)
Adding characters
Now to every scentence belongs a certain expression. And I add these manually between the lines of dialog. This process is pretty easy... but it does take a bit of time to do it right.
Here you see for example the images I I can choose from, for when keen stands in the dark.
Now picking the right expressions is one thing, but you also need to position the characters on screen. Now in my first pass, I usually ignore this, so I can focus on the expressions first. But then when you start the game, things often look like this :)
Here I made a typo as well, and then the game-engine thinks there is an image missing -so then this anime girl pops up. ...Somehow she always makes me laugh :)
The End
Well, and that’s in short how I put together the dialog-scenes for Space Rescue. The other part of the job is of course creating interactive rooms, animated scenes and placing dozens of triggers to knit everything nicely together. But I won't bore you with that :)
However if you're interested; the Ren’py game-engine is pretty easy to use, and once you get the hang of it, it's quite enjoyable as well. So if you ever wanted to make a visual novel, this might be the tool for you!
Well, I'll get back to coding soon & then I hope to release another update in the next two weeks or so :)
Have a great weekend & all the best!
-Robin
PS. here's the spoiler!
...
I liked how this scene came together... but it's unrelated to the rest of this post :)
Comments
Scarecrow-76
I love the behind the scenes post like these.
The Backlog Odyssey
I really like the simplicity of it, and the ability to export to different platforms is a great feature. It might be perfect for a small project I have in mind. 😁
Robin
Oh, haha thanks :) I quite like Ren'py and if you're planning to make a visual novel, then I definetly recommend it :) Not sure if I mentioned it above already, but it's also really easy to export your game to different game-platforms.
The Backlog Odyssey
What a fun read! I'm a software developer by day and it's always fun to see what tools devs use to make their games. I'll have to check out Ren'py for myself!
Robin
Thank you Sappig! Ren'py is definitly worth trying. I hope you have fun with it :)
Sappig
oooh this was a nice read, makes me excited to give it a go as well :3
Plipoot
Please make it Sandy. She's so hot and yet so cold, she needs to let go a little bit. :D
Adam
https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?t=49064
Robin
I'm glad you like it :) It's really not my best skill, but I do enjoy organizing the code, so it stays logical & readable. By now I have over 25.000 lines of code, so I guess it's also a bit of a requirement actually :)
Robin
Hey Adam, I'm happy to hear that. I was actually a bit unsure if this would be interesting enough to share. And I haven't considered that to be honest. I was still a bit struggeling with the basics until now :) But in the past someone did do a fan-translation, and it seems the ren'py engine is actually capable of handeling that (although I don't know how it was done). But I'll look into it a bit more. Thanks for the suggestion!
Robin
Next time I'll change the color :D
Robin
Haha!
Robin
Well, Mindy & Sandy will both have their own end scene, but only one of then will go all the way this time :) However, they were not part of the actual vote. The vote was between, Rosa, Lorza & the Junkers; and the junkers won this time :)
Anon
I was just wondering if the next update will include Mindy and Sandy's ending or just what was voted for? Very excited to see the end of their stories.
Arboris
I know, I feel cheated 😜
BadSpider
o0
Zelmra
I always love looking at other peoples' code. So many different ways to tell computers to do things, and even in the same language there are a multitude of different ways to make the same result! It's so much fun!
boobsgames
Wait, why the code isn't pink? :D
Adam
Very interesting to see some of your actual coding. I was wondering if you've considered moving dialogue out of the actual code and into something like CSV or XML that can can then be called into your controller as an array and called line by line in the code? This would open up the option to conscript mugs like me to do some proof reading, not to mention making localisation to other languages easier.
SYH
Spoiler! w00t! :D
