tymmur

It's a good summary. I will compare it to this:
Yes it's technically possible, but you are not in for a good user experience and that's just one reason why people aren't actually doing it.

The problem is, I think the conclusion that it was doable was obvious to everyone here already and Kiri's or Narcosis' posts went to the problem of how and to what extent it's doable. If you present an example on how to configure a VN on a feature phone, commenting on whether it would be comfortable to play or if it would feel like playing a VN at all (I think Tymmur's actual argument was that it wouldn't read like a VN, not that it wouldn't "technically" be one) is absolutely reasonable. And Kiri was very much arguing that we're small-minded fools for not appreciating the possibility of playing VNs on an old Nokia and the headache it would very likely cause after 10+ minutes of straining your eyesight.

That's quite interesting. I wasn't aware that anybody had attempted this. It must require a disk because it needs to be able to load more text/graphics while playing or possibly creative usage of ROM. It's not intended to maximize the reading experience though. It's more like getting that retro feel and the knowledge that it is running on 1982 hardware. It could also be part of the community, which still makes demos for old hardware to see how skilled each group is in pushing limited hardware.
That's not how C64 graphics work. Hi-res mode (320x200) stores a monochrome screen where each pixel is either on or off. It divides the screen into 8x8 blocks and then it can set the on and off colors for each block. The result is 16 colors on the screen, but only two in each 8x8 block. Multi color mode prints each pixel twice (hence 4x8 blocks and 160x200 screen), but then each pixel has two bits and can select from 4 colors. This way the screen still has 16 colors, but each block can have up to 4 colors. The reason for this rather odd system is that both systems use 9 kB for the entire screen. Being allowed to use all colors everywhere would require 32 kB. All computers back then uses weird systems to reduce memory usage and the commodore approach is actually easy to understand and work with compared to some of the other systems in use back then.

If you pick a single person to verbally assault like that without warning, how is that different from bullying?
Besides you make no sense in what you are saying when compared with my actual experience working with either text length limitations or pixel limitations. You have to make compromises to get it to work and it will hurt the quality of the end product. Reading a VN (or VN like game) on such a resolution will be a poor experience judged by normal VN standards and that is before the issues of the screen size is taken into account.

If you pick a single person to verbally assault like that without warning, how is that different from bullying?
Besides you make no sense in what you are saying when compared with my actual experience working with either text length limitations or pixel limitations. You have to make compromises to get it to work and it will hurt the quality of the end product. Reading a VN (or VN like game) on such a resolution will be a poor experience judged by normal VN standards and that is before the issues of the screen size is taken into account.

I was sure I'd done an analysis post on this, but it turns out I never posted it publicly. This graph was an early draft and the data is a bit out of date, but it's still accurate. I analysed the kind of content people were reading in the VNs they rated each month, to see how the popularity of sexual content was changing over time.

While some degree of sexual content has generally always been the norm (it still accounts for over 60% of read VNs), it's generally been dropping these past couple of years, likely due to the increasing popularity of EVNs where sexual content has historically been quite rare. There might also have been a Steam effect back then, as at the time, Steam didn't allow nudity in VNs, so all-age VNs were getting a popularity boost. That's been changing recently though, Steam allows nudity, and EVNs are beginning to embrace their more hedonistic side. I'll have to do another updated chart on this sometime.

>texas has literally already addressed mosaics
Further proof that nobody actually reads things
As for avatar suggestions...

Sure. Most VNs are about ending up with a pretty bird with some nice tits. Hatoful just takes it to the next level

This time I will write about my main field of expertise: programming. It's entirely different from the previous post (planning the story) and as such justifies splitting the two topics into two posts. This post assumes using Ren'Py, though it should be doable with most or all engines. I just had to make a choice if I write specific keywords.
First of all, don't be afraid of adding more files. Ideally you should use a one file, one task approach. Also name the files in a way that allows you to find them easily and use a folder layout if possible. You need to split between setup, file access, flow control, story etc.
Setup
Make a file where you list backgrounds and their filepath. Add spaces to make the paths align on top of each other. That way it will be easy to spot typos in the paths. Do the same for music, possibly in the same file.
Next up is characters. Make a list of characters (possibly in a new file) and assign names, color etc, again with spaces and an aligned layout. Add comments at the end of each line to write the color in human readable text (as in not the color value numbers). Also list the characters to set sprites for each. Possibly do it in one file for each character or in one file, but then sort them alphabetically. You should sort them in the same order as the first list, but it's a good idea to keep the names and colors as a list to get an overview.
Make a file with sound effects using the same approach.
If you do this right, you have some files, which list all the media files you use. No other text files access media files and changing the media files can be done from the setup files only. Also the setup doesn't contain much other data than shortcuts to the media files.
Story
For each scene, make one file. If done right, it's close to one file for each paper on the board, but in some cases one paper-one file is not the best option. Start with a label, name it the same as the file and name the file something fitting. End the file with a return. Write a story where it's just the story. No jumps, questions or anything like that. All the media file usage comes from the setup files and nothing is called directly.
Each file should set the scene, like setting music and background at the top and clean up as in removing all sprites at the end as well as canceling all audio and leave the screen black.
Asking questions to the player and branching accordingly contains some exceptions to those rules. More about that later.
Flow control
Make one file containing flow control logic. It exploits the difference between jump and call. Simply put, call will go to a label and when it encounters a return, it will go back to the line it called from and continue from there. Jump will not go back, meaning if you call and then jump, the return will go all the way back to the call.
Now you should add a call to each label in the order you want the labels to be called. Since each event file ends with a return, the story will return to the flow control and move on to the next line. This way the order of events is purely controlled by one file and is not mixed into the story.
Questions/branching/flags
In case a question is asked, return just before asking it. Next you ask in the flow control and branch according to the answer.
You need to make labels in flow control and when you get the answer from a question, you jump to a label in flow control and continue from there. Since you aren't going back, jump should be used and not call. Each such labels will then call an event and since the screen should not be black while the question is asked, events ending with a question and those starting with one should skip cleaning up and setting up and just continue. This is the exception to the cleanup rule.
If you want to use flags, you set the flag in flow control and you test for flag conditions when figuring out which event label to call, which is also done in flow control. This way you have all flags and actions based on flags placed in the same file.
Testing
When writing an event (story), just add call scene after start and testing it will be quick and easy. This will allow testing text, sprites etc without having to consider flow of the story. It's a huge timesaver to not have to fast forward to the scene you work on for each change you need to test. Naturally you should test the VN in the final form before publishing, but you will likely do a lot of small tests multiple times a day while working on it to catch typos and similar as early as possible.
Final words
If you follow this guide, you will end up with a layout where each file has a purpose and it's easy to tell the parts apart. It helps a lot of you want to swap the order of events as this can be done without touching the story itself. Likewise you can't break the flow control by accident by changing the events and changing which media files to use will not affect either. In other words it's a design, which heavily reduce the risk of bugs and it also reduce the need for testing after making changes.
Now put those two posts together and make sure you have at least one paper for each event file. However in some cases it might make sense to merge multiple papers into one event file. It's something to consider in each case and I can't tell you in general if it's right or wrong to do it in your specific scene. It's one of those things you have to figure out on your own.

I think the list pretty much covers all the parts needed to make a VN. However it miss out on one important issue: planning.
If you write a VN, you need to plan a storyline, design character personalities etc, just like when writing a book or a movie. I wrote more about how to do this already in another thread, where I also writes about script design from a programming point of view. It's more like a howto guide and a proposal for one approach to solve the issue, but it should give an idea of the kind of work, which this step requires.
 

I think the list pretty much covers all the parts needed to make a VN. However it miss out on one important issue: planning.
If you write a VN, you need to plan a storyline, design character personalities etc, just like when writing a book or a movie. I wrote more about how to do this already in another thread, where I also writes about script design from a programming point of view. It's more like a howto guide and a proposal for one approach to solve the issue, but it should give an idea of the kind of work, which this step requires.
 

Before people smarter than me can elaborate, I think I can pinpoint basic elements. To make a VN you typically need:
1. A game engine (most likely Ren'Py, which is free and have a lot of guides and assets available for it)
2. A graphical user interface (GUI), through which people will interact with your game - Ren'Py provides a basic structure for your GUI, but custom visuals and ability to modify the UI according to your needs is important.
3. Background graphics - static images over which character sprites and the GUI will appear. I think it's easy to find free or cheap stock VN backgrounds.
4. Character sprites - the representations of the characters involved in your story - static 2D images, usually with a few poses and face expressions to fit different situations.
5. CGs - custom, full-screen illustrations which show situations that are hard to present through sprites and text, usually used in crucial moments of the story.
6. Background music - to give your game a proper climate and make it less monotonous, underlining the switches in mood etc.
7. A script - all the dialogues and descriptions that will show in the text box (which is a part of the GUI), along with necessary "stage directions" [especially if you'll not be the one handling the programming, the person doing it must know what background, expressions etc. go with each scene].
8. (optional) Voice Acting/Voiced Narration - expensive as f***, if you want good quality, so many developers skip on it.
9. (Optional) Other sound assets - depending on the content of your story, some additional sounds could be useful, for example if you want bring the reader's attention to something, but often such additions are quite obnoxious - music can be enough.
When you have a script and all the necessary assets, you have to put them together and synchronise them properly. This part I know pretty much nothing about, as I'm not a programmer.
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20 edits later - Did I miss anything?

The answer is simple. You can't post on a dead forum

The tags are not giving you an accurate picture. While there is certainly dark content, there is specifically no "girls raped by zombies" content, for one thing. The game is certainly very H-heavy, and I won't really try to defend it on that front; it is what it is. But at the same time, the game takes itself very seriously as a zombie survival story, and that's what I ended up finding interesting about it (in between editing pages and pages of H).
I will say, I've recently realized that every single time I've tried to figure out whether I'll like a VN based on people's descriptions, I've found the experience of actually playing the game to be utterly different from my expectations, to the point that I almost think it isn't worth seeing what people are saying about a game, beyond the basics of who liked it and who didn't. It's also entirely possible that I just don't know my own preferences very well, or that they're always evolving, though. Not really sure where I'm going with this, except maybe "don't judge a book by its cover"? And that probably goes double for me saying positive things about it, heh, since I obviously have a vested interest in it!

Hi, folks.
I used to be a bg artist for an anime outsource company, now I just want to do some freelance jobs 
I would like to draw bg on some VN's projects.
Here's my old stuff I did in for the company : https://www.flickr.com/gp/75976495@N06/0Zm21g
Correct me if I'm wrong, honestly I do not know where to post this. 
PRICING
Depend on the resolution, complex and detailed.

- Normal Backgrounds (1920x1080) : $60 - $80 usd
- Detailed Backgrounds (1920x1080) : $100 - $120 usd

This price is only for Visual novel background.

PAYMENT
I currently only accept Paypal payments. And please, you'll pay the Paypal fee.

My process is :
- Normally, you can give me some reference image like sketchs, real pictures, some info about the color style you want, the more details the shorter time 'til work done.
- When I finish , I'll send you a small sample for you check. If everything is ok, I'll send you full pic(png,jpg...) upon you payment for me.



CONDITION
I reserve the right to use it for my portfolio or post it on social media.

If you are interested my artwork, contact me through: 
- Email [email protected]. 
- Discord : Shiki#3061

Looking forward working with you guy.

The Nobel Prize in Literature is primarily a political prize, like a lesser version of the Peace Prize.  Any VN that received the award would, without doubt, be a total piece of crap.  Looking at the inside workings of the committee that are coming out due to the sex, gambling, bribery, and undue influence scandals that past year... Yeah, no.
It would also, almost certainly, be a western language original, because it looks like no one on the committee can read Eastern languages, and translations are frequently looked down on.
 
Winning a Nebula, on the otherhand is possible.  Winning a Dragon Award - or at least, being nominated - is actually pretty likely, in the not-too-distant future.

https://denpasoft.com/blogs/news/announcing-a-new-upcoming-title
https://vndb.org/v16802
 
I edited it, so I'd be pretty stoked regardless, but it's a cool game and pretty far off the beaten path in terms of themes and execution, for the VN medium. I'm looking forward to you all getting to play it, and I hope I get to work on the sequels and the prequel!

My name was originaly supposed to mean Euro(beat)cat(girl) but seems like alot of people see it as europe, so rip me right 

A number of people are willing to skip a VN if it contains poor English. When writing in public, particularly when it's about the VN, people will read your writing as the level of English in the VN. Because of this, I will recommend you review what you have written prior to actually posting. I know I'm nitpicking (particularly the last one), but if you want to sell as best as possible, don't overlook this issue. I wouldn't call your English skills poor and most of the issues are in the realm of typos, but it's still the first impression and a bad one if you want to convince people to pay for a VN.
Don't sell untested ports, but I see no reason why you shouldn't sell for as many platforms as possible if you are able to test them prior to release. You care about sales and less about which platform people use. Particularly mac and linux ports seems to be just adding executable files (for ren'py), in which case it's a very cost efficient way to include non-windows users as your target customers.

Heya dudes, I'm Eurocat, I recently really started loving visual novels so I thought it'd be good for my general vn knowledge to join this place so yeah, henlo guys 
I play osu!taiko quite a bit, I don't really watch alot of anime but when I do it's always comedy and I unironically enjoyed eromanga sensei 
Feel free to hmu on discord anytime at Eurocat#1209 
 

Creative corner is about your own creations while VN Talk is about VNs made by other people (read you have no involvement at all), at least that's how I understand it. Marketing is not a clear match for the description in any of of those, but since it's marketing of your creation, it would likely fit best in Creative corner.

Typos. Ruining your math skill reputation since 3018

It could be worse. I realized I forgot to make an introduction after being active for 2.5 years
Musumaker
Majo Koi Nikki
As for VNs, where the English translation have actually been released, the first, which comes to mind is Kamidori and then the Rance series. Sexy Demon Transformation is hilarious and fun to read despite being a nukige.

"Filthy gaijin", "weird type", "interest in VN creation, but don't know enough to do it without help". Seems like a fairly common description of Fuwa users.
 
Welcome mr new guy, who fits right in here.
You have come to the right place if your goal is to learn about how to create your own visual novel. A number of people know quite a bit about it and combined we most likely know everything you need to know. You didn't ask for anything specific, but I will still point to a thread, which would be a good start.