Free Visual Novel Design Engine Released 143
Ayaka Hahn writes to tell us that they have just released a free game construction kit designed to make Visual Novels easy to construct. The "Blade Engine" was based on a professional Visual Novel engine being used in Japan with the hopes that it would spark greater interest in this medium in the west. From the press release: "In the West, there is a stereotype of: "Visual Novel = Dating Sim Game = Hentai", but that is wrong. Visual Novels CAN be Dating Sim games, Ren'ai games, Bishoujo games but also can be Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adventure and Horror Fiction games, or anything that the user's creativity comes up with."
Wha? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm lost already? Does this make cartoons or something?
It is not the first open-souce visual novel engine (Score:5, Interesting)
That having said, there was a pretty famous incident that involved GPL and a Japanese AVG game makers. Apparently the company used Xvid codecs for their animation clips for their popular games (ranked top 10 ero-game in 2005) without releasing the engine source code. When someone pointed out the GPL, the company promptly released the whole engine code (without the comments unforturnately). The engine was designed with win32 API in mind, btw. But it still counts as something
Off topic: I was amazed that a Japanese hentai game maker respects the GPL more than, say, SCO, a multi-million dollar company; Then again, comparing SCO to a hentai game company would not be fair- to the game company
Like "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney"? (Score:3, Interesting)
So after a quick look, it seems like this would be the kind of thing to make a game like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney [wikipedia.org]. Is that right?
I recently managed to get my hands on a copy (they are in the Capcom online store... ORDER NOW!) and I've got to say the game is FANTASTIC. After 2 trials I would have been happy with the game, but it's got a full 5 (I just finished the fourth today). The game is an absolute blast. If you love courtroom dramas, you've got to play this game.
The characters are all great and the stories and good. The murder plots are excellent (they can be tricky). The touch screen isn't used very well in the game (which isn't surprising given it was a GBA game first, I think). You can use the touch screen just fine, it's just hardly ever needed (which is also nice, so you don't need to use it if you don't want to). They have already announced that there will be a sequel both here in the US (hooray!) and in Japan (where it will be a re-issue of a GBA game for the DS). The music is nice (which is a SERIOUS plus compared to most handheld games) and fits in very well (at the right moments in the trials, like when you present key evidence, it changes to a real pumping-up beat).
Give it a try. The game needs support.
It would be great to be able to make something like that, but I'm not creative enough. I wish this genre (and point-and-click adventure games, which I see as a bit similar in some was) wasn't dead over here. What I wouldn't give for another Lucas Arts point-and-click. Loom [wikipedia.org], Day of the Tentacle [wikipedia.org], Sam and Max [wikipedia.org], The Dig [wikipedia.org], Grim Fandango [wikipedia.org], and all four games in the Monkey Island [wikipedia.org] series.
I never got to play Full Throttle (which was supposed to be great) or the Indiana Jones games (also supposed to be great). I ought to look into those. I only played the Monkey Island games a few years ago.
It's called the Long Tail.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tools like this are what brings a medium into the position of being able to mature. Like the printing press in it's day, being able to lower the barrier of entry to zero is the fundamental key to allowing interactive content to truly become what it 'should' be in most people eyes.
Sure having inexpensive video camera technology has spawned a LOT of garbage (just spend 2 minutes on youtube to prove this), but it has also allowed people like Kevin Smith to create Clerks. There are many other examples of Indie filmmaking that ONLY became possible with the barrier of entry being lowered to the point where literally anyone could create content for the industry - in this case the film industry.
Look at it this way - we have the 'current regime' of interactive content, which requires a multi-million dollar investment by a publisher, plus thousands of man-months of time put in by people that are the equivalent of rocket scientists (programmers & 3d artists / animators). Every 2 or 3 years IF THEY ARE EXTREMELY LUCKY, they manage to spit a game onto the market, whic may or may not be good, and may or may not even be an interactive story in the context of what we're talking about here.
The new regime (and it will come, whether the industry wants it or not) will consist of something more along the lines of this: instead of 100 triple A teams working on 50 million dollar games, we'll have 100000 teams of artists & programmers working on projects that they truly believe in (as opposed to projects that they endure to get a salary from EA working on 'sequel x')
Will this result in alot of crap? Sure, but the business models will evolve as well, and in turn the publishing systems will allow people to filter the content, much like the book & movie industries today.
Amazon claims to have 'x' millions of titles on their 'shelves' - is there not alot of crap in there too? Sure, but it doesn't mean that we should all flee for the hills because of the overload in content. Ratings systems, user reviews, recommendations systems and more will all provide both users & content creators ways to find & promote new content.
Yes there will be the Triple A titles still - the almightly marketing budget will never go away - but these will simply be the lure to get people in the door - after which point you will be able to discover that there is a LOT of interesting content being produced by people that you've never heard of.
Ie the same business models as the Music, Film & Book industries today.