A visual novel is a type of interactive fiction game that features mostly static graphics. They are classified to be a sub-genre of adventure games. These visual novels are highly popular in Japan.
Whilst doing some research on visual novels, I came across a woman called Michelle’s blog which discusses the topic of visual novels. Her definition in her blog (http://juicedonwriting.com/441/visual-and-interactive-novels/) of a visual novel was-
‘A digital novel which consists of text accompanied by mostly static images, but can include animation and audio components also. Visual novels can also provide reader interaction via choices which determine the story path and outcome of the novel’. I suppose it could be argued that a visual novel is a ‘combination of a novel and a computer game: they’re computer games with a large text based storyline and only little interaction of the player’ (http://vndb.org/d6).
This week we had the chance to view visual novels such as ‘Inanimate Alice’ http://brad-field.info/. It is written by a woman called Kate Pullinger, and is about a girl named Alice taking us on a journey of her life from the age of eight up to her twenties. At the moment there are four different chapters in her life to choose from, and the visual novel consists of text, graphics and music to tell the story. It is a brilliantly made visual novel in my mind as it consists of different storylines in each chapter to keep the reader intrigued, whilst the music adds tension to the storyline to engage the reader’s attention. As it is released in instalments, I suppose it could be said to follow in Charles Dickens’s footsteps by creating hype for their work, as he released his novels a chapter at a time in monthly instalments in ‘The Pickwick Papers’, leaving each chapter on a cliff-hanger to keep the readers interested for the next chapter.
After viewing visual novels, I then proceeded to create my own, assisted by the ren’py software, which is possible to be downloaded from this link-
http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page
As it says on this website, ‘Ren’Py is a free and cross-platform visual novel engine that helps you use words, pictures, and sounds to tell stories with the computer. Its easy and efficient script language makes it possible for non-programmers to make visual novels’. Through the process of creating my own visual novel with this software I realised that the format of creating a visual novel is very similar to creating an interactive fiction game in the sense of the language input you put in to programme the characters and events of the game/ visual novel, for example-
# Declare images below this line, using the image statement.
#background images
image bg forrest = "forrest.jpg"
image bg city = "city.jpg"
# Declare characters used by this game.
$ c = Character('Rob', color="#c8ffc8")
$ m = Character('Cadi', color="#00ff00")
$ f = Character('Fflur', color="#00ffff")
#define character images -- Rob
image Rob stand = "rob_stand.gif"
image Rob happy= "rob_jump.gif"
# The game starts here.
label start:
scene bg forrest at truecenter
show rob stand
c "My name's rob."
"I live in the forrest."
show bg city at truecenter
hide rob
show rob happy at truecenter with dissolve
c "But I want to move to the city."
show bg forrest
If this looks quite daunting to you, and is impossible for you to understand, why not take the Ren’Py tutorial? Click here if you wish to do so-
http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/tutorials/Tutorials
Even though the input of text is very similar with interactive fictions and visual novels, the output is very different! Interactive fiction usually only consists of text, whereas a visual novel consists of colour pictures such as this-
sound, and music.
Personally I find visual novels much more stimulating to participate in compared to an interactive fiction game as you are the driving force in moving the story forward in the direction you wish to do so by answering questions, clicking on certain pictures and texts. Doing all these things can have an effect on the story. Therefore unlike interactive fiction games, there is a possibility of a different ending as you have different options instead of one set plot.
As visual novels are becoming more popular, there is a variety of different software’s emerging to cater for visual novelists such as-
• ‘Blade’- which as it says on their website http://www.bladeengine.com/BladeEngine/overview.php
‘is a free game engine and construction kit aimed at making Visual Novel easy to construct.’ It also says that ‘One of Blade Engine’s objective is to be a tool that is easy to create basic Visual Novel for creators who are not exactly a technical wizard, and for those creators who simply wants to concentrate on story and contents of visual novel rather than technical customizations’. This is an advantage to someone like me who isn’t a very technical person. I will definitely be giving this software a try when creating my next visual novel!
• ‘Novelty’- This software is ‘a tool for creating visual novels that I have worked on for years’ it says on the website http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=549117. ‘Unlike most VN engines, Novelty is a WYSIWYG and doesn’t require the user to learn a complicated scripting language’. Novelty is built upon a graphics engine that relies on an xml format. ‘This means that users can create new assets by using an xml-based design language. This gives the user a lot of flexibility’. Once you have finished creating your own visual novel with Novelty, all you have to do is export it as a stand-alone exe.
With new technologies such as the iphone now being produced, it makes it possible to view visual novels on your phone. It might look a bit different, but the content is still the same. So if you have an iphone, and are sitting on a bus or a train bored one day, why not take part in a visual novel? I’m sure it would entertain you for the duration of your trip! Think about it!
Until next week, have fun creating your own visual novels if you’re adventurous enough!
No comments:
Post a Comment