Joilly : a visual novel creator

[Diamon]

(I had a hard time figuring out where I should post this, so if I ever posted it in the wrong place, forgive me! ><)

 

Hello everyone! Today, I'm not here to talk to you as a representative of the Lucid9 Staff, but as a representative of Joilly.

 

 

What is Joilly?

 

Joilly is a mix of 3 different things :

 

1°) It's first of all a Visual Novel builder / engine which goal is to enable people with 0 programming knowledge to create their own Visual Novels, through the use of a very intuitive and very user-friendly interface (basically, very similar to a video editor). This engine has distinctive features :

 

- It's a javascript + html5 based engine.

 

- It's an online engine, meaning that you don't need to download any software, and that all the progress of the conception of your Visual Novel is saved online.

 

- The scene editor is where you can edit the scenes of your VN, and scroll the pages of your script. You will be able to create, edit, and test in real time your visual novel in the scenes or pages of the timeline, where you can add characters, backgrounds, CGs, music, and handle animations for your assets. (screenshot inside the spoiler)

 

- It uses a flowchart diagram system to manage the different scenes scripted, the order of the scenes and the branching (screenshot inside the spoiler).

 

 

- The Asset manager library is your dumping ground/library for all your visual novel assets, including images, sounds, and video. Inside your library, you can also create folders and subfolders to organize all your assets, whether they are characters, CGs, visual novel soundtracks, or the OP video of your visual novel.

We are limited with dropbox and amazon file storage for the moment since we don't have any money yet to get our own storage space.

 

- Once the game is completed and is ready to be played, it will automatically be displayed on the Joilly site where other people will instantly be able to play.

 

Here is a live demo that might give you a better understanding of all the stuff I listed previously :

- Scene editor : http://demo.joilly.com/editor.html

- Flowchart : http://demo.joilly.com/scenes.html

- Assets Manager : http://demo.joilly.com/assetmanager.html

Don't hesitate to play it and give us feedback!

 

 

2°) The logical step that basically comes next is that we want Joilly to become as well a distribution platform for Visual Novels, where you'd be able to play directly and online all the Joilly Visual Novels, and where would be featured all the Visual Novels created / ported on Joilly. I guess you could compare it to a steam for Visual Novels (made on Joilly), or a Youtube for Visual Novels. 

 

But not only be will it be a distribution platform, the Joilly site will also be the place where you'll be able to play the Visual Novels released in streaming. That means no downloading (only very fast loadings between scenes), and the possibility to play a VN on different supports without losing the save.

 

We already have a Joilly website ofc, but it's very far from being finished, and all our ideas, improvements and their possible implementation are still in development for the moment.

 

 

3°) Finally, we want Joilly to become a community for English Visual Novels, through the use of a forum system split between :

 

- A sub forum for the readers and the fans, where they will be able to discuss about their favorite VN on each specific thread for each VN, but also discuss about Visual Novels more generally.

- A sub forum for creators where people would try to help each other regarding the engine, it will be the place where you can ask help to the developers of Joilly for technical issues, and our goal is to gather a little community of creators (writers, musicians, artists) willing to offer their skill for the creation of VN on Joilly.

 

Our aim is basically to create an ecosystem between English Visual Novel creation, distribution and community, and hopefully make it the easiest as possible for anyone who is interested in creating a Visual Novel to make it happen! And in the long term, get an active community of fan that we draw creators, and vice versa.

 

 

For who is Joilly?

 

Joilly is for EVERYONE to use, whether it is to play VN on the site, or whether it is to create your own VN. Whether you're a total amateur wanting to try VN creation for the first time, a studio that needs an engine to release your game, whether you want to make a free or maybe commercial VN in future, everyone is welcomed!

 

- We're planning on having free access for the readers, meaning that they will be able to access Joilly without any subscription. The commercial or freeware status of the VN that will be featured on Joilly will be dependent on the will of the studio (meaning that the user will have to pay to get access to the commercial VNs, which seems kinda logical I guess^^).

- Creators will have free access as well. However, if Joilly ever gain in popularity, we might put a one time "pay-wall" for a symbolic sum of money (let's say 5 dollars for example?) in order to discourage trolls / unmotivated people / not serious enough people. That's the only payment we will implement for the creators, meaning that once this little sum is paid, they will be granted unlimited use of the engine to create their VN.

 

 

What is our current state?

 

For the moment, Joilly is still on alpha phase. What is available is :

- The scene editor is nearly completely functional and needs beta testers.

- The flowchart system is being worked on atm and should be finished soon.

- Our developer is also working on the UI maker (that will enable the creators to customize their VN GUI)

- Flag system is in the works

 

So, what do we need?

1°) We need creators that would act as beta-tester.

2°) We need a php programmer and a website designer (if possible one same person) for our site and our forums.

 

 

FAQ

 

1°) I want to help / participate in Joilly, what can I do?

If you're a creator, you can try to help us by trying to create a Visual Novel on Joilly. We'd want (in order of priority)

- A team that is lacking a programmer or isn't set on an engine to use.

- A writer and artist that have art assets and a script.

- A writer willing to write a short VN with the default available assets we can provide.

 

We would prioritize people that have assets already ready to be ported on the the engine.

Those people would basically be testers for us so that we can find bugs, and also the testers is a way for us to get feedback for engine improvements.

If you're ever interested in participating, just message me, and we'll discuss about it!

 

If you're a programmer and you know php, we're looking for a programmer to take care of the site and the forums.

We want to work someone we can trust and form a partnership eventually, so if you're interested, same as before, just message me!

 

 

2°) Are you doing all of this for free? Do you plan to not get money at all?

We haven't settled on an economical model yet, so we can't tell you for the moment. We will probably need some money at some point, if only to get our own servers and storage, so we will probably try to get money in some way (whether it is with ads, donation, ...). We will try to do this in a way where it won't restrict any creator in creating their VN, and where it wouldn't change anything for readers that wants to read VN on Joilly.

 

 

3°) What kind of Visual Novels will Joilly be supporting?

- Joilly's primary goal is to support games focused on storytelling.

- For content : any content is allowed, whether it is Otome-game, Bishoujo-game... as long as it respects our Terms of Service. (that means for example no heinous encouragement of any sort). H content is permitted as long as it's not the main goal of the VN (understand here : no nukige).

- I would like to say that we want to encourage as well VN with gameplay elements, but honestly, the engine is not made for complex gameplay elements. The best you could do would probably be make a simple dating sim. Stats raising are not possible for example (so no RPG VN).

 

 

4°) Will Joilly ever become commercial?

Well, I guess I'd need to go into the details to answer properly. First, you need to consider that we'd like to get our own storage space and servers, and that we need money for this. Also, even though we want to encourage people to become creators even if they don't have any funds, we do feel that it's fair for us to gain some sort of commission if ever someone wants to create a commercial VN with our engine. Also :

- We don't plan on making the readers pay to access Joilly. Ever.

- There will be most likely a payment system for creators that want to get some more features on the site (get a save slot, get some exposure on the site through our home page...). Those features will be accessible for the VN that manages to reach a certain number a view (some sort of milestones system)

- We do plan on getting some money with "clean" advertisement on the site.

 

 

5°) So what are the possibilities I will have if I ever want to create and release a VN on Joilly?

There are basically 3 possibilities : 

- You want to make a free VN without wanting to get any income? Sure, no problems! We won't put any ads on your VN page.

- You want to make a free VN and still get incomes? Sure, we will help you with advertisement on your VN page, and we'll get a little percentage of what you earned.

- You want to make a commercial VN and get income? Sure, we will force the user to pay once if he ever wants to play your VN on Joilly, and we'll take a little percentage (probably through the use of Paypal).

 

This will also be the order of implementation, meaning that at the moment, we can only handle and publish free VN that won't get you any income. Later on, when we implement our clean advertisement system, we will be able to propose the second option to creators. And lastly, we will try to implement a system with paypal where the user has to unlock the content of the VN by paying with paypal, and where we'll take a little percentage.

 

 

6°) And what if I don't want to play to my VN online?

We are planning to make it possible to download an executable to install the Joilly's VN on your computer, but it's not a priority for the moment. It will eventually get done.

We want it to be a standalone executable, and not simply you being able to play it on your browser even when not connected.

 

 

 

7°) I don't trust cloud storage!  I think / heard that it's not safe!

It's true that cloud storage is not totally safe, especially for small cloud storage companies. But, you have to consider two things :

- The global progression of the creation of the VN on Joilly will be saved on the cloud, but also locally on the user's computer, and finally we do regular backups of the data.

- The assets (sprites, music, CGs, BGs) have to be uploaded by the user on cloud storage (dropbox or amazon storage both works with Joilly). We are planning to implement as well a system of auxiliary cloud storage links in case that the first cloud storage link provided for the asset manager fails (so basically, you can upload your assets on both dropbox and amazon, and if the dropbox link ever fails, the asset manager will check the amazon link).

We do want to get our own storage space and our own servers at some point, but that will be when we manage to get some money with Joilly.

 

 

8°) I feel it is really restrictive to be only able to work on Joilly if i'm connected to the Internet. Are you really not going to make it accessible offline?

Okay, so far, it's clear that not being able to work on your VN offline is somehow a hindrance. I guess I'm talking from my own experience as a user of the engine for my own project, but I really believe there are both pro and con :

 

Pros :

- It's accessible on any device that can connect to internet, so if ever you're on another computer than your principal one, or even on your touchpad, or your smartphone, you can still work on your VN. (It's not optimized yet for smartphones though, but hopefully it will one day be)

- If ever you have a hard drive failure, you won't lose any of your work.

- If you ever need / want to split the work (I agree with you that this is more useful for bigger projects where there is a lot of script), it's totally possible to share the workload, granted that all the people working on this follow a detailed enough script concerning animations and such. And the simplicity of the engine make it so that anyone can actually work on the engine without any specific knowledge required about programming.

- It's way easier to submit to every other member some preview of what you created on the engine to see if they are happy with it.

 

Cons :

- You cannot access your work if you don't have access to the internet. I can't argue with that, but we have some reasons for actually preferring this for the moment over offline access to the engine.

 

Of course, all of this is still debatable, and in the end it still comes down to the sensibility of the user and about what he values the most when doing a project like this.

But coming back as to why it's really preferable for us to have a solely online accessible engine (for the moment), this is mostly because we don't want Joilly to be only an engine (as, let's say, ren'py). As I explained previously, we want Joilly to be 3 things : an engine easy of use for creators, a catalog of VN directly playable on the site, and a community for English Visual Novels. If we offer the possibility for the user to work on the engine offline, we have no way to control if the creator will release his VN on Joilly, (and at the beginning, most creators won't actually have any interest to release their work on Joilly) which will prevent us from getting a consequent catalog of VN, and which will prevent us from getting a community.

 

 

9°) So there are actually restrictions for the use of Joilly's engine?

So, yeah, we are offering our engine for free for the creators. But we do want to get something out of it, and the only restriction we have is that you need to publish your VN on Joilly in order to help it grow. We cannot control this if we offer the possibility for the creators to work offline on it. However, that doesn't mean we will never consider it, we do realize that it's both safer and more pratical for the user to be able to work offline AND online. But it would have to be when Joilly is already popular and attractive enough so that creators will want to publish their VN on Joilly in order to get exposure (so basically when we have a sufficient enough community).

 

 

So that's all for the moment! Don't hesitate to play the demo, and to give us any feedback on it by posting on this thread!

 

And thanks for your time reading this!

 

 

 

[OriginalRen]

I wish you the best of luck with this! If you don't mind me asking, why did you choose the name Joilly? Any story behind that?

[kratoscar2008]

Good luck with that although im a little iffy to trust online storage as its pretty easy to lose information that way, will we be able to save our progress on our PCs?

[canarycharm]

I wish you the best of luck with this! If you don't mind me asking, why did you choose the name Joilly? Any story behind that?

Hi, I can answer that! I'm Sonya, and I'm part of the Joilly staff. The name originated from a visual novel centered around the theme of French Brasserie. Since the french word for video game, jeux de video, and french word for fun 'joie' both started with J, we wanted a fun sounding word that started with J. So together with 'joie' and 'jolly' a fun English word, we deemed the name Joilly.

[Funyarinpa]

This looks very interesting! I'd recommend you also offer an install version though, some people (like me) would rather have that, if possible. Good luck with this project ^^

[Diamon]

 

This looks very interesting! I'd recommend you also offer an install version though, some people (like me) would rather have that, if possible. Good luck with this project ^^

 

If you're talking about the VN creation, I can totally understand that some people would prefer to create their VNs on a software located on their computer, but  an install version version wouldn't be possible for various reasons, and it's unfortunately not in our plan to make one...^^'

However if you're talking about downloadable VN instead of playing on browsers, this is a possibility we want to offer for our readers (but probably in the distant future, since it's not one of our priority for the moment).

[InvertMouse]

Good luck with this! Hopefully this will encourage people to try their hands at being creators .

[Diamon]

Good luck with this! Hopefully this will encourage people to try their hands at being creators .

 

Thanks! That's exactly what we're aiming to do : have more people to try to become creators!

[Helvetica Standard]

- It's an online engine, meaning that you don't need to download any software, and that all the progress of the conception of your Visual Novel is saved online.

 

So.. browser VN...

Hmmm..I really don't know what to say.

 

...I don't trust cloud storage..and creators won't welcome a cloud based browser visual novel. Plus, if you have no connection you're basically screwed.

I'm sorry but this is just my opinion. It's still a very good option for those who lack the programming knowledge, though...so.. Best of luck!

[Diamon]

 

 

 

So.. browser VN...

Hmmm..I really don't know what to say.

 

...I don't trust cloud storage..and creators won't welcome a cloud based browser visual novel. Plus, if you have no connection you're basically screwed.

I'm sorry but this is just my opinion. It's still a very good option for those who lack the programming knowledge, though...so.. Best of luck!

We are also planning to have local storage for the save of the progress on the editor. Basically, the save data will be stored locally as well on your computer. This coupled with cloud storage (I guess the engine would use directly the most recent save when loading between the cloud one and the local one if ever the dates are different).

 

It's true that one of the inconvenient is that you can't work on your VN offline. But does someone that has very unstable internet would even be interested in trying to create a VN in this day and age (I'm assuming that most people playing VN are very connected people here though)? Also, if you have someone you can trust, you can just ask him to import and create the VN for you when you can't, it's really not that much work given how simple it is.

 

As for cloud storage more generally, we do want to switch into Amazon storage when we get enough money, so this way cloud storage with a big company would actually become safer than local storage (you have several hard drives instead of only yours after all), and in the meanwhile, we're doing daily backups just in case (and again, we do want to include local storage as well).

 

If you're talking about readers however, we do plan to have an option to play offline with an executable at some point.

 

And anyway, thanks for your support!

[Helvetica Standard]

If you're talking about readers however, we do plan to have an option to play offline with an executable at some point.

 

This changes everything. XD

I think the biggest problem would be having to boot browser everytime just to play, not to mention the internet connection.

Also now that you clarified that assets will be on drive side then I like the idea. You have all my support.

 

Kind regards and good luck with your demo release too!

[Diamon]

 

 

 

This changes everything. XD

I think the biggest problem would be having to boot browser everytime just to play, not to mention the internet connection.

Also now that you clarified that assets will be on drive side then I like the idea. You have all my support.

 

Kind regards and good luck with your demo release too!

This executable would be something different than just booting your browser to play, it would be a standalone thing^^

For the assets, I'm not sure I was really clear... ^^'

Basically, what I'm saying is that the progress of the VN elaboration will be saved both on cloud and solid drives (so that includes scripts, and every animations of the assets, and flags / conditionals). Basically, the structure of the VN will be saved. As for the assets (sprites, music, CG, BG) storage, we cannot offer that for the moment by ourselves, since it would require money (we plan to do it at some point though). So what we are doing at the moment is that the engine is retrieving and loading the assets to play the VN directly from a file that you will have uploaded on cloud storage. If you're ever scared of having a problem with the file you stored, we are planning on putting some auxiliary links you will provide for the assets (so basically a second upload of the same asset on a different cloud storage in case the first one failed). So basically, the availability / loss of the assets are the responsibility of the user (until we get our own storage system that is).

 

I don't know if you played the demo I linked, but the assets manager part I linked should hopefully help you understand what I tried to explain!

 

Sorry if all of this is a bit confusing! T.T

[Darklord Rooke]

It's true that one of the inconvenient is that you can't work on your VN offline. But does someone that has very unstable internet would even be interested in trying to create a VN in this day and age

 

Of course. Why would the lack of a stable internet connection prevent people from making a visual novel?

 

My thoughts are this - unless you have a big team (which isn't required for VN development) cloud technology would just be a hindrance. But that's just my opinion.

[Diamon]

Of course. Why would the lack of a stable internet connection prevent people from making a visual novel?

 

My thoughts are this - unless you have a big team (which isn't required for VN development) cloud technology would just be a hindrance. But that's just my opinion.

 

Okay, so far, it's clear that not being able to work on your VN offline is somehow a hindrance. I guess I'm talking from my own experience as a user of the engine for my own project, but I really believe there are both pro and con :

 

Pros :

- It's accessible on any device that can connect to internet, so if ever you're on another computer than your principal one, or even on your touchpad, or your smartphone, you can still work on your VN. (It's not optimized yet for smartphones though, but hopefully it will one day be)

- If ever you have a hard drive failure, you won't lose any of your work.

- If you ever need / want to split the work (I agree with you that this is more useful for bigger projects where there is a lot of script), it's totally possible to share the workload, granted that all the people working on this follow a detailed enough script concerning animations and such. And the simplicity of the engine make it so that anyone can actually work on the engine without any specific knowledge required about programming.

- It's way easier to submit to every other member some preview of what you created on the engine to see if they are happy with it.

 

Cons :

- You cannot access your work if you don't have access to the internet. I can't argue with that, but we have some reasons for actually preferring this for the moment over offline access to the engine.

- Assets storage (so music, sprites, etc...) is cloud storage : as I already explained, we have no choice for the moment but having the user to upload himself his assets onto cloud storage. We want to make it as safe as possible by offering the possibility to furnish auxiliary cloud storage links for the upload, just in case of failure of the first links. And eventually, we do want to switch for our own storage on our own servers, but this require money.

- Progression of your work is cloud storage : saying that this is unsafe is actually wrong, since we do plan to have a security in 3 points : local storage, cloud storage  and regular backups. Considering all of this, there's actually much more risk for the user if the progress was saved only on his own hard drive.

 

Of course, all of this is still debatable, and in the end it still comes down to the sensibility of the user and about what he values the most when doing a project like this.

But coming back as to why it's really preferable for us to have a solely online accessible engine (for the moment), this is mostly because we don't want Joilly to be only an engine (as, let's say, ren'py). As I explained on my first post, we want Joilly to be 3 things : an engine easy of use for creators, a catalog of VN directly playable on the site, and a community for English Visual Novels. If we offer the possibility for the user to work on the engine offline, we have no way to control if the creator will release his VN on Joilly, (and at the beginning, most creators won't actually have any interest to release their work on Joilly) which will prevent you from getting a consequent catalog of VN, and which will prevent us from getting a community.

 

So, yeah, we are offering our engine for free for the creators. But we do want to get something out of it, and the only restriction we have is that you need to publish your VN on Joilly in order to help it grow. We cannot control this if we offer the possibility for the creators to work offline on it. However, that doesn't mean we will never consider it. But it would have to be when Joilly is already popular and attractive enough so that creators will want to publish their VN on Joilly in order to get exposure (so basically when we have a sufficient enough community).