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Hiya nice too meet you all! I stumbled upon this forum a couple of weeks ago and decided to finally make an account. So about me: I'm Red Twintails a Concept artist and Game developer currently working on my VN project. I'm looking for friends to connect with that also are into VN game development! I have a degree in 3D games design & Concept art, and want to use this to create an awesome VN. On my free time (when I have any) I love to play JRPG's, VN's etc (Just bought Atlier Ryza and loving it ♥) and also watch anime ~

Heyy! You can call me Ruvik or Ru, I love vns a little too much lol. She/her pronouns. I especially love Dangan Ronpa, Zero Escape and Ace Attorney series! It's not that I care much about gameplay though. I could try any vn if I find the story interesting. I also love Otomes a lot. (Btw I'm super into mbti too if you want to type characters I'm all about it heheh) I hope to get along with everyone, nice to meet you all!!

Since my first post doesn't allow me to continue on it anymore because it's too lengthy, I'll add the FAQ here. I'll also add another guide from a fellow OELVN developer that is very interesting and that I advice reading as well! http://blog.cyanide-tea.net/2014/09/17/what-i-learnt-while-working-on-visual-novels/ 7°) FAQ a°) Should I start on a small or a big project? It’s probably the first question you should ask yourself. It is common sense and common belief that it's better to start to work on a smaller project in order to get experience, and once you feel more at ease, to take on a bigger project. While I can’t deny that it’s wiser to do this way, I can at the same time totally understand that some people might not satisfy themselves with a small project, and that they don't have the patience/time to take such a long detour. It’s definitely doable to attack a large scale project as your first project, but only to the condition that the person leading is someone that has very good common sense, and that is very organized. Hopefully, this guide should have given you the good foundations for handling and managing even big projects. It also depends on the time available to work on this project of each member of course. It is also an option to not set this in stone, and to go “We’ll see how much it will end up to be.” Take care though, don’t be too ambitious. Don’t try to aim for a game that will have 7 heroines and 100+ CG… (unless you genuinely believe that you have the team to do that). b°) How many member do I need? What is the ideal team to have? It really depends on the scale of your project. But you should at least have one person that can fill each role that I listed above. It is technically doable to create a Visual Novel with a 3 men team (a writer that can program, one artist that can draw everything, and a composer), even though I’d only recommend this for small scale projects. Else, my ideal team would be : One leader in charge of management in the team and PR (it can be a writer, but preferably if you have several writers working on your project). At least one writer (can also be the programmer if he has coding knowledge or if you don’t have a dedicated programmer) One sprites / CGs artist. One BG artist One composer One editor One programmer that can also create GUI assets. Depending on the size of your project, you might want to increase : The number of artists (sprites / CG / BG) The number of writers The number of composers. c°) I’m missing an *insert role* for my project, and I can’t seem to find one… It’s definitely annoying and an issue, but there always are possibilities to do without, at least most of the time. First, make sure that you searched enough. It’s necessary to be patient when recruiting, so don’t lose hope after merely one week of unfruitful recruitment. I don’t have a BG artist : I already stated different solutions above. I can’t find a composer : You can try to use free royalties track that are free of usage by everyone. Make sure to read the condition of utilisation first! (some tracks are not allowed to be used for commercial purposes, for example) I can’t find a programmer : Either learn to use ren’py yourself, or try to use alternative engines that requires fewer programming knowledge (there are a few out there, but development for them is often stalled) I can’t find a GUI artist : I’m not sure I can do anything to help you. Your best bet is to keep searching, and continue developing your project in the meanwhile. After all, GUI is not something vital for the development of your VN, and it can be done at any time. I can’t find a writer / artist : Sorry, but you are screwed^^ ...more seriously, make sure that the problem isn’t coming from your recruitment messages / your VN concept that are not appealing enough. d°) My project is stalling! No progress is being made! HEEEEEELP MEEEEE! This issue can come from two different things : either your organization is not good enough, or either your members lack motivation. It might not seem very obvious at first glance but the purpose of organization is to spare doing additional efforts for all the people working on the project. Make it easier to get started on work, and to share it with other people. Writers are not writing? Maybe you should help them to plan out the content that they are supposed to write. Artists are not drawing? Maybe because they don’t know where to find the references for this character they are supposed to draw. Make the information easily accessible (thanks to Trello, Google Drive, and Skype pms), and you will see that people will be much more active!^^ If your members lack motivation, it’s another problem altogether. First, did you follow the advices above? Yes? It doesn’t seem to have been very efficient? Well, once again, don’t underestimate the importance of bonding and creating bonds with your fellow teammates. The next thing that can help is : is your project interesting enough? Do the members see potential in what they are creating? If they do, they’ll be definitely more motivated to work on it. If they don’t, it’s your job to propose new ideas to improve the quality of your project and get your members more hyped than ever. If your project is a commercial one, things are different since the people that you hire have the duty to furnish enough progress, they are paid after all. Creating something through the internet is a problem in a way that you can’t create and make people sign real contracts. So no one has any legal obligation toward you. But as a project leader, you are the one managing the funds and the money, so you are on your right to not give money until enough progress has been made. d°) I have a member that only brings troubles to the others… What should I do? Well sometimes it happen that you made an error of judgement, and recruited someone that revealed himself to be a troublemaker. It’s the job of the project leader to blow the whistle and to ask politely, but firmly that you don’t like the recent behavior of this member, and that if it were to continue, you’d have to kick him out. If that person doesn’t try to change his behavior, it’s your duty to kick that person, no matter how important he might be among the team (even if it’s your main writer) e°) One of the member is not good enough / not putting enough effort into the project… It’s very similar to what I said previously. If it happens that not enough effort are made : calmly explain the situation in a message to the person concerned. Never try to guilt trip the member, and don’t attack him personally. Listen to what he has to say and explain clearly what you’re expecting from him. Warn him in a friendly tone. If it doesn’t improve, warn him more firmly and give an ultimatum. If nothing has changed after some time again, it means it’s time to demote/kick that person. If the person is just not good enough, first you need to blame yourself because that’s probably the result of you recruiting someone without testing that person enough. Now, there’s no real rule about how to handle this, it mainly depends on what are your values. Do you think it’s okay to be unfair to someone and kick that person if that means a higher overall quality for the project? There’s no real answer that is right or wrong imo. f°) I’m suffering from writer’s block! First, did you make sufficient planning? One of the possible cause of writer’s block is having only vague ideas or concept, and trying to write a real script from those right away. The most planning (in the details!) you do, the easier it will be for you to write. Don’t hesitate to ask help with people to brainstorm ideas as well. Secondly, sometimes writer’s block might just be you being a perfectionist. Like, you’re refusing to write bad or “meh” writing, and want to create something great on your first try. It’s not exactly the best way to go when writing, sometimes you must compromise and accept to write lesser quality stuff / fillers, and come back to it later. Because when you’re blocked on something, sometimes the best thing to do is just to write another scene and come back to this one later. Here is a nice article from one of our Fuwa fellow that might help you! https://forums.fuwanovel.net/index.php?/topic/8258-writers-block-combating-it/#entry220082 g°) Some members are arguing badly about something, and I’m not sure how to intervene… It is something that is meant to happen at some point, arguments, more or less serious, will always happen. You have to know how to deal with them as a project leader : Tell people to stay respectful and polite. It’s fine to not agree on something, or to be pissed at someone (we’re all human beings), but people have to stay respectful with each other, all the time. Try to make sure there is no misunderstanding between the two members. You’d surprised to see how many arguments happen because people misunderstand each other. Have them state clearly what the problem is, on each side. Try to compromise. Try to find a solution that both party will find acceptable, and that everyone will agree with. And finally, when everything is solved, no ill feelings! h°) Will money guarantee me to reach completion of my VN safely? Is a kickstarter a better approach overall? To be honest, no. Keep in mind that having a project where you're ready to pay people only facilitate the recruitment : it allows you to choose among a larger number of possibilities. Of course, if you pay the people working on your VN more or less regularly, it will be a motivating factor for some of them. But it won't prevent drop of interest for the project, boredom, mistakes, conflicts (if anything, involving money might bring more conflicts on the table). Money cannot replace passion. It's a tad different if you're hiring someone full time to work on your VN and that they depend on your money to make a living. If that's the case, you can expect the person to work with more professionalism on the project, since that person really needs the money. But again, you probably don't have any signed contract between each other (even if you had, if doesn't hold much value), so you have probably no way to do anything if someone decides to retire himself for the project for whatever reason. Now about kickstarters, keep in mind that it's a double edged sword. You might want to take a look at this blog article about the failure of the second kickstarter of Dysfunctional Systems, I encourage every people that want to start a Kickstarter to read it : https://dischan.co/blog/2015/01/dysfunctional-systems-what-went-wrong/ (and additionaly an more in-depth analysis of the failure of Dysfunctional Systems : http://traumendes-madchen.com/blog/?p=1142) Here is basically the moral of the story : People will have paid for your promises, and you will have to keep your commitments : you are not allowed to lie to the people that backed you and betray them. Managing money requires a lot of work : a lot of planning, a lot of common sense, and most of all to be very careful. It's not something meant to make the development of your game easier, it can be as beneficial as it can be toxic for your project. If you don't have a good sense of how to value money, it's very easy to get overly ambitious because you're seeing a nice amount of money under your eyes. When starting a kickstarter, you're basically engaging yourself to release a product in the end, whether you want it or not. Meaning that if ever you feel that the project becomes a burden to you because you don't have enough motivation, or if real life stuff happens (it sucks, but it can happen to anyone). If ever despite of that, you decide that the VN cannot reach completion, be ready to give back the money to your backers, or face eternal shame and discredit on yourself. Most of the time, you won't have any money from the kickstarter left, so be prepared to refund people on your personal savings. Now, more generally, I'll have to add that commercial projects and free projects tend to have different mindsets when it comes to creation of a Visual Novel. When you're dealing with a commercial VN, the developers will always be to some extent worried about the sales of the game. That might influence how they create their stories (trying to appeal to a bigger audience), or how they react to other's people reviews / complain /criticism. They also have additional pressure in the form that they have to prove that what they created is worth the price for the reader. They have to deal with frustration and expectations from the people that bought their VN. It's definitely not the case for free VN. They have much more freedom, in a sense, since they are not tied by any expectations of any form, at least morally speaking. If the reader is not happy with the VN created, it's much harder for him to complain as the only thing he will have lost will be time (Time might still be very valuable for some people though). Don't misunderstand though, I'm not saying people shouldn't complain about reading something that is free because they didn't have to pay for it. I'm just saying that the creators have no moral obligation to change anything or do anything about it. i°) WE MADE IT! OUR PROJECT IS READY FOR RELEASE! ...but where can I distribute my VN in order to share it with the world? Steam : always a good place, especially if you want to sell your VN. Lemmasoft : it’s at least a good place to advertise it Fuwanovel : A good place to advertise it as well Mangagamer is a good bet as well, although I’m not sure if they are interested in distributing OELVN. You can try also to get your game distributed in various site that promote indie games, such as http://gamejolt.com/ , http://itch.io/ , http://www.indiedb.com/ (the links are a courtesy from firecat) If you have any question, or need any guidance for creating your own Visual Novel, don't hesitate to pm me, I'll be glad to help!

G-Senjou no Maou - The Devil on G-String Rated 18+ You play the role of Azai Kyousuke, the son of a legendary gangster infamous in the underworld. You spend your time listening to Bach, playing God at school and covertly working for your stepfather, a ruthless financial heavyweight. This idyllic existence is broken when two individuals appear in the city - a beautiful girl named Usami Haru with hair you could get lost in for days, and a powerful international gangster known only as "Maou". Almost without delay, the two begin a deadly cat-and-mouse game, bringing you and your friends into the crossfire. Plotting, political intrigue and layer upon layer of interlocking traps are the weapons in this epic battle of wits. Kyousuke can meet and fall in love with one of the four main girls of the game: Tsubaki, Kanon, Mizuha, and Haru. ENDING GUIDE This game was a thrill to play. G-Senjou no Maou offers you the chance to be with one of the four heroines in the game, with Haru's Route being that of the "True Route." At some point in the game, the choices will offer you the possibility to branch off the 'main story' (True Route) into one of the other three heroine's own route, leading the player to that heroine's Good and Bad endings. The main story doesn't go on after that. That's why it is the author's suggestion to play Haru's Route last. WALKTHROUGH GUIDE http://i.imgur.com/HK9r6X0.jpg Tsubaki Miwa's Route Good End Bad End Kanon Azai's Route Good End Bad End Mizuha Shiratori's Route Good End Bad End http://i.imgur.com/KYPLSTq.jpg Haru Usami's Route Source: This walkthrough was prepared and submitted by Skeith Editted guide posted by 273342 from GameFAQs.com With the helpful corrections and suggestions given by Admin Tay and Down