Thank you for all the people who contributed questions for the Q&A. I really didn’t know if I’d get any questions at all and might have looked a little silly, but you’ve really come through for me, thank you!
From Randall1974
Q: As you have been working on the characters, have you found that you have a favourite and if so, which one?
A: Yes. There are a couple of characters who I love writing for and developing their narrative and depth. To name a few, Lily, Jane and Layla are certainly up there, but the character I’ve enjoyed writing for the most is Alice. Someone very close to me suffers from anxiety, and I’ve needed to be there for them over the years. I like developing Alice because while her symptoms may not really be ‘accurate’, and perhaps a little ‘overcooked’ at times, her inner journey is becoming more confident with herself, and to start accepting situations for what they are. I like seeing a recovery arc and that’s kind of the journey she is on to an extent. Another I’m enjoying as I mentioned before is Lily. If you play the game in a certain way, you get to see a slightly darker, ‘damaged’ (for want of a better word) side of her. I think many of us in life put up a front in public and want to be seen a certain way, and suppress unpleasant memories that might even change us in unusual ways. She’s on a journey to discover that, and try and embrace it.
From Oni
Q: I’m working on a game myself and It would be awesome to get some tips and learn from your experience.
A: Amazing that you’re making your own game! I’ll list a bunch of tips that I would suggest for new VN creators:
· Start with the story. It’s the most important part of the game, beyond any visuals. Get a clear idea of the general narrative, and plan the ending (at least roughly. It can always be tweaked later). I say that because writing with no real direction in where you want to end doesn’t work. You end up with tangents that kind of lead nowhere, or end in a forced manner that doesn’t sit well. Use a storyboarding program to really plan out the game, before you even touch the code or visuals.
· It’s expensive. Be careful when initially designing your cast, and locations because DAZ assets do start to add up very quickly. A tip for this is to Wishlist all the stuff you like, or think you might need in your game. EVERYTHING, goes on sale at some point. I generally have a massive Wishlist and check it every day. The moment something drops to $3-5 or something, I buy it, even if I don't need it YET. Then come the hidden costs you might not think about initially. Licenses (music/sound effects/editing software, website domain hosting), physical computer components, and even electricity comes into the picture (rendering does tend to suck up electricity when the graphics card is running at a high rate).
· I’m adding this one because I’ve seen it happen. Don’t start investing in your game until you KNOW it’s what you want to do, and it’s within your skillset. As above, it gets very expensive, and if you decided after a month that you don’t really like game dev, then you’ve not lost a bunch of money on assets you'll never use again. Often the idea of being a dev (or any job really) is quite attractive, but when you get into the weeds, there’s always a ton of work and expenses to the job that you may not have initially realised. Make sure it’s something you really want to pursue before you start shelling out on expensive kit/assets/licenses.
· Start simple. One of the aspects of Jury that makes it so time consuming to work is the vast cast and number of routes. You need to develop all the character narratives, their personalities, their development plus think of different scenarios for them all so it doesn't get stale. You also need to consider relationships between each other (which can be affected by variables). Those variables may lead to different tones of conversations, which then leads to additional renders. My advice would be to start out simple, potentially limit your characters, and create a more linear game, at least to start. You can always go back at a later date and add in different routes/characters and change the dialogue etc if you wish to. Jury is I think my third attempt at creating a game. The other two never saw the light of day because they became so over complicated and I got into a real muddle with all the strands or narrative.
· Be kind to yourself. You’ll never please everyone. From my perspective, as long as a developer is trying to produce something good/positive, is open to constructive feedback and communicates with the players, then they are doing a good job. I initially found it quite hard to take when I saw negative reviews, or people slating my game, but the reality is, you’ll always get those kinds of comments. Learn to read them, and remember what has been said without taking it personally. They have commented or left that review because they were unhappy. Try and understand WHY they were unhappy and if there is something you can do to change that in the future.
On the flip side, don’t just change your game because 1 person didn’t like something. It has to be something valid that you agree with yourself, or has been raised by a number of people. It’s your game at the end of the day. If you’re trying your best, not taking your fanbase for a ride, then hold your head high.
· Expect the ‘WEN RELEASE?’ I’m trying to slowly educate the players that these games take time, and for the most part, the players get it, which I’m so thankful for. The last thing you want to do is to rush your content and release something sub-par after putting in so much time and love. No one wins from that situation. If you need more time to get something done, then communicate that as early as you can, and take the time you need so that you're happy with the product. If you're happy, then there's a higher chance the players will be happy.
From Penn
Q1: How much coding/development experience did you have at the beginning, and how much did you have to learn?
A1: I have a ‘general’ background in coding, but I mean VERY general. I couldn’t code my way out of a paper bag to start with. I learnt in a few ways – Youtube tutorials (Thundorn Games I found useful (no affiliation)). I also learnt ‘on the job’ – I previously freelanced at a larger AVN for about 12 months before starting Jury. I got to see a lot of the code, how they arranged it and over time understood what it was all doing. Renpy is a very easy platform to code on, it’s based on python, but simplified solely for the purposes of Visual Novels. With relation to DAZ (the visuals), that I learned completely from scratch. It’s super simple to get started with, and there are loads of tutorials out there to learn from. The only part which I have a lot of experience in is video editing/compositing. A previous career I had, I spent 5-6 years doing visual effects for film. So that part of my skillset I already had which comes in very useful for editing still images, but also animations.
Q2: What tools did you use to learn to develop your coding/development/animation skills?
A2: Coding, I use Renpy with VisualCode. It’s the standard for AVN’s, and is a very simple language to pick up and learn. Youtube is your friend there, and their discord community is very healthy and helpful. As long as you're trying yourself, and not just asking questions for every single thing, there are people in there who are incredibly friendly and are happy to help.
Visual development is all done in DAZ, self-taught. In terms of 3d programs, it’s probably the most user friendly on the market to get decent visuals out of without any deep learning. Again, Youtube is your friend here. Regarding animations, I’ve had a background in visual media since University. As previously mentioned, I went on to work in VFX for films for a number of years before I realised that the industry had crazy working hours and I wouldn’t be able to maintain those in my late career as I got older and wanted to potentially have a better family life.
I use Fusion for the animations (adding liquids and that kind of thing), then adobe premiere pro for looping the anims, adding sound and converting to .webm. It’s really useful to have some knowledge in a photo or video editing package. Much of what comes out of DAZ has to be corrected (clipping, some backgrounds changed etc) so having skills in photoshop or similar is pretty useful.
Q3: How much writing experience did you have, and did you study anything to improve?
A3: I didn’t have any experience in writing before Jury, other than learning to write stories when I was at school (many years ago). I also used to be a teacher, so have taught the very basics of story writing. I do read in my spare time, so that’s really all the experience I have (Huge Harry Potter fan, and I love all the Lee Child books!). To improve further, I actually ended up watching a bunch of random ‘teen’ series while I was working. The content itself doesn’t have to be particularly ‘interesting’ but I now pay attention to the character development and interactions a lot more than I used to. I think you only get to be a better writer by experience and learning from other people and getting feedback. I made some pretty terrible errors when I released Episode 1, but saw the feedback on it, agreed with the comments and made the changes.
The other tip I have here, is when you get an idea for any kind of scenario, WRITE IT DOWN! I make notes on my planning board for the story, then when I need to think of a new piece of content to slip in, I look at that list and see if any of those scenarios fit the narrative and don't feel forced.
Q4: What is your process for creating compelling and attractive character models?
A4: You’ve likely seen characters like Lily in a whole bunch of VN’s. You almost have to think of them as actresses playing different roles. DAZ offers hundreds of base character models, most of the good ones will have already been selected for other VN's. You can get morphs to make them look a little different, and obviously you can change their body shapes, hair models, eye colour, etc etc.
When it came to actually creating the characters physical appearances, my take was to try and get a ‘bit of everything’:
- Dark/blonde/red/long/short hair
- Large/medium/small breasts
- Tall/short/skinny/curvy figures.
I wanted to create a game where there was ‘something for everyone’. I tried to do that with their personalities too (Nervous, outgoing, reserved, sad, happy, chill etc). To make them all a little different brings interest in my opinion and also reflects reality a bit more. Everyone’s different, and that's something that makes the world interesting and exciting. Let’s embrace that!
Q5: I heard that DAZ can be constricting in certain ways. Did you ever consider using an alternative?
A5: DAZ can be constricting, you’re quite right. The animation editor in there is awful. It’s clunky, unintuitive, and at times does the most random things! In terms of general rendering, I never considered using something else. DAZ has pretty much been made for visual novels. It looks good, there’s a ton of assets available, and generally it’s not too difficult to customize things if you have a little experience with photoshop/blender or similar. However, I would like to start looking further into using a more professional program for animations. The issue with that is you have to export the scenes/textures etc from DAZ into Maya, or Blender etc, which is a bit finnicky and daunting. I’ve spoken to some seriously good animators in the field, and they wouldn’t touch DAZ with a barge pole for animations.
From Rioden
Q: Are you rendering on a single machine, or do you have a multi-machine farm set up?
A: I’ll answer this in a few parts...
For Episode 1, I only had access to my local machine, which was a Ryzen 3900x I think, with a 3080ti and 32gb RAM. The entire episode was rendered on that machine locally.
For Episode 2, I had some cash injection from the sales of Episode 1, so I ended up upgrading my card to a 4090, and getting 64GB ram. I also used the revenue to start hiring a renderfarm which is a machine with 3x3090’s running inside it.
Following the release of Episode 2, I then bought a new full machine as I was running out of storage space, my CPU was about to die etc. I got myself an i9 14900KS, 96GB DDR5 RAM, 4090, MSI MEG motherboard, and a bunch of M.2 storage.
Here's a picture of my current set up (I've obfuscated the BG just for privacy reasons (pictures on the wall etc. I've also had to black out the 3D printed models 'parts') 😊
The CPU cooler is pretty awesome. I switch between the Jury Logo, some of the animated avatars from Steam, and videos of my cats! :D
So that's the questions asked and answered for the moment. I'll do another Q&A after a few more months if anyone has any further questions.
I hope you're all having a great final quarter so far, and I'll check in with you all soon!
Nickle3DArt