Katawa Shoujo Forums

hi four leaf team, i just wanna start off by sayin that i loved katawa shoujo as the story was brilliantly made.
the reason ive made this thread is to ask, and to ask other on this forum, where would be a great place to start when it comes to programming and
creating a graphic novel like KS? ive always wanted to be a gmae designer, and playin katawa shoujo showed me that you can make more then just a game,
i would never have though about going through a graphic novel until i played K.S and it has inspired me to work towards actualy fufilling my dream.

so really all i wanna know is were sohuld i start out on prder to learn the basics of programming and so forth.

p.s, i hope that you all one day make another instalment of katawa shoujo or even another graphic novel

Katawa Shoujo made use of a customized version of the renpy VN engine: http://renpy.org/.

Therefore, I can imagine that there wasn't a whole lot of programming by the dev team involved.

As a side not, if you do want to start out programming, I recommend trying python (what the renpy engine is written with). It's easy to get the hang of but powerful and will introduce you to concepts found in higher level languages like C.

Guest wrote:Katawa Shoujo made use of a customized version of the renpy VN engine: http://renpy.org/.

Therefore, I can imagine that there wasn't a whole lot of programming by the dev team involved.

As a side not, if you do want to start out programming, I recommend trying python (what the renpy engine is written with). It's easy to get the hang of but powerful and will introduce you to concepts found in higher level languages like C.

If you're looking to make VN's I second this motion.

Honestly if you ask a hundred different programmers what the best starting language is and what the best way to learn is you'll get a hundred different answers as there are plenty of approaches. It's a matter of finding what one works for you.

Guest wrote:Therefore, I can imagine that there wasn't a whole lot of programming by the dev team involved.

Oh, there was. Delta was not exactly the most idle member of the dev team. It's been said repeatedly that doing anything beyond the basics with Ren'Py is frustratingly difficult (i.e. it gets in your way).

As a side not, if you do want to start out programming, I recommend trying python (what the renpy engine is written with). It's easy to get the hang of but powerful and will introduce you to concepts found in higher level languages like C.

By the normal interpretation of the terms, Python is the "high" level language and C the "low" level one. Python won't teach you much about what you need to know to do really low-level programming, but 99% (and rising) of the time you don't need to any more.

Zahlman wrote:

Guest wrote:Therefore, I can imagine that there wasn't a whole lot of programming by the dev team involved.

Oh, there was. Delta was not exactly the most idle member of the dev team. It's been said repeatedly that doing anything beyond the basics with Ren'Py is frustratingly difficult (i.e. it gets in your way).

As a side not, if you do want to start out programming, I recommend trying python (what the renpy engine is written with). It's easy to get the hang of but powerful and will introduce you to concepts found in higher level languages like C.

By the normal interpretation of the terms, Python is the "high" level language and C the "low" level one. Python won't teach you much about what you need to know to do really low-level programming, but 99% (and rising) of the time you don't need to any more.

I'll admit I'm unfamiliar with the VN development world at large. Is there a desire for a new engine within the development community, or is renpy just kind of what everyone got used to?

Zahlman wrote:Python won't teach you much about what you need to know to do really low-level programming, but 99% (and rising) of the time you don't need to any more.

I would still strongly recommend starting with any other major language if you plan to have a lot of actual... "game" (I have no better way to summarize needing to constantly store and shuffle around a lot of game state and do stuff based on that game state). Python does a great job of abstracting a lot of stuff for you, but what actually goes on can become really obfuscated and you're left wondering why stuff's not doing what you expect. Like, I feel Python does a poor job of teaching what's going on at the algorithmic level because you have so many tools designed specifically to hide that from you so you don't need to worry. Once you actually know what's going on, it's fine to migrate to Python (and really easy, too, Python's gotta be the easiest language to pick up as a second one).

Oh, and don't start with C++. Just... don't start with C++.

If you're just doing a straight up VN though, renpy is fine.

Guest wrote:

Zahlman wrote:Python won't teach you much about what you need to know to do really low-level programming, but 99% (and rising) of the time you don't need to any more.

I would still strongly recommend starting with any other major language if you plan to have a lot of actual... "game" (I have no better way to summarize needing to constantly store and shuffle around a lot of game state and do stuff based on that game state). Python does a great job of abstracting a lot of stuff for you, but what actually goes on can become really obfuscated and you're left wondering why stuff's not doing what you expect. Like, I feel Python does a poor job of teaching what's going on at the algorithmic level because you have so many tools designed specifically to hide that from you so you don't need to worry. Once you actually know what's going on, it's fine to migrate to Python (and really easy, too, Python's gotta be the easiest language to pick up as a second one).

Oh, and don't start with C++. Just... don't start with C++.

If you're just doing a straight up VN though, renpy is fine.

Lol, I started with BASIC when I was 12 then went on to C then to C++.
It's certainly the slow track, but I learned one heck of a lot.

If I had to recommend a starting language I'd pick Java or C#. They're complicated enough to do things you want, but fluffy enough to not segfault every other complication.

thanks for all the posts people. ive done a little bit on c# before when a proffesor form the academy of interactive entertainment came to my school. but very very little (as in 80 mins of messing around with it. so i tihnk i might start at c# again and go onto python then c++. but before that i shal try ren'py. thanks for telling me about it otherwise i would never have heard about it.

also, can anyone tell me some other VN's to try, ive been looking for some but i just dont know where to start.

p.s i just realised i wrote "graphic novel" instead of "visual novel"... my bad.