Overview
In this long guide I got a short video with an overview of the software. Other than that I’ll cover a lot of theory in order to create a game, based of what i learned at game design school and from working in the industry. It’s a lot of theory, and I did a lot of researching and notes from when i attended to school, and I’m sharing it all here.I also do research on Visual Novels, where i share my research here, and will update this guide according to my findings in this research. So take your time if you want to learn from the industry! 🙂
Introduction
I’ve been paying a little attention to the forums, and I generally are aware that a lot of people, like myself, usually ask about most stuff when they start out with a new game engine. TyranoBuilder is easy to use, and thus i made a guide on 20 minutes, where i kinda messed up for 2 – 3 minutes, but haven’t had much time to correct it as I’m traveling, which has made creating this guide a little challenge.
Aside from that, i also wish to share the tips i learned at game design school as well as what i have learned from working in the industry. I am still working on my bachelor in 3D game design, and our teachers are veterans of the industry, and through these 8 years of being a huge game development enthusaist, i have been lucky enough to work for some companies, and I’m now sharing what I’ve learned with you guys.
As a side not from that, I’m doing a little research whenever i have time now about Visual Novels as a game and genre in general. I’m sharing parts of my research, and I’m taking it one step at a time. I do it on my spare time, so it progresses slowly, but i will keep updating it and sharing it at the bottom of this guide.
Overview
This video explains the basics and is an overview, i recorded it one hour ago, though i can’t remember if i mentioend some of the usefull tips, but you can at least use “Image Button” to replace the buttons on title screen, and use image buttons rather than basic buttons.
Task Management
Trello is a website designed to work like scrum manaegement for game developers. It’s simple and easy to use. When i wrote a document for getting investors, I did a lot of research, and projects that doesn’t have a plan or task management usually fails to a 70% chance while being development. Task Managment is very important, so i recommend checking it out.
[link]I was working with a team on an amnesia custom story, and if you take a look at it (as it’s public), you will see it’s easy to understand and help to manage tasks. Remember, being a team leader isn’t just about having a dream to create your game, it is a lot of responsibility!
[link]Tasks is for tasks you have to do, while “Current Task” is for the tasks you are working on as of now. “Blocked” is for tasks you are working on as of now, but can’t be produced because it depends on one of the current tasks to be done. “Backlog” is for tasks that has been worked on, but wasn’t finished in time for said time period, as we use in game studios. However, it is not needed as you don’t have any dead lines.
I recommend checking that page out to help manage tasks in a simple and easy way. For those who wonders and would like to check out, it is called Scrum managment.
To understand what scrum is, check out this easy and entretaining explanation video:
Being the leader your Team needs
First off, I assume most people don’t have all the skills to make a game, so it’s important to recruit people, which i will mention a little later in this guide, but for now, I’m just gonna give an explanation of what the ideal leader of a project should be like.
Being the leader and obtaining a team in order to create your game is only the first step towards reaching your dream and creating a game. However, it’s a long, and often stressful process and maintaining stability and patience is always easy. But when it gets tough, and every project will have these moments, the team will look to their leader.
There are a lot of resources about leadership available, and after a talk with my tutor at first year game design bachelor degree, he mentioned a page that was worth checking out, though it doesn’t contain everything he found most important, so I’ll mention a the few i can remember, which is kinda self explaining.
Honesty, of course, why would you lie to your team in the first place? If you tell one lie, and they see through it, why would they trust you as the project leader? Even if it all goes downhill, honesty is still the most important in a team.
Communication – Your idea may be clear to you, but if your unable to communicate, you’ll get something different from what you wanted to create in the first place.
Inspirational – Every project will always be a lot of work, and people will often get tired. Mid-way through the project, do something inspirational in order to boost the spirit of the team again so that they get the motivation and enthusiasm they had at the start of the project.
Delegation – A lot of people struggle with this. Delegation is about the ability to trust people. People often fear that they will steal their ideas, or resources, which is understandable. But you need to trust your team to implement your vision and delegate the work appropriately, rather than fearing they’ll just take the idea and run off.
Commitment – If you expect a team to work hard and produce quality content, you need to lead by example. Actions speaks more than words, and if you just sit and command them what to do, you’ll end up losing your team. By working alongside them you don’t just show your commitment to the project, but also to the team, and you’ll earn respect from that. It is earned, not a right as a leader, remember that.
If you can’t draw like me, then maybe you can program, or produce music, etc. You can show your commitment in any way the project need it, even if you can’t do the same as your team can. When i did game development back in the day, we created teams to fill in each others gaps when it came to skills.
There is a few more he talked about, though i can’t really remember them all. He also told me to check out this link at the side, which i recommend you to check out as well. It covers more of what it means to be a leader.
[link]High Concept Document
What is a High Concept Document?
A high concept document is a document used in the industry to quickly represent the game you want to create. It is often on 4 – 5 pages, which is sent in to the people at the top of a company, and shows them all the details to create the game you wish to create.
Okay, so how can this help me?
Usually we write a Game Design Document when when this is approved, or if we wish to create a game in general as an Indie Developer. This will often be on 70 – 100 pages or more. If you don’t want to create a Game Design Document, or a GDD for short, you can write a high concept document to keep track of the original goal of the game.
It also helps out when a new team member joins the production, to show him the general idea of the game you wish to produce. Remember that it is originally just a document with the concept, not the actual production, though if you don’t want to write 70 pages+ i can say that i 100% understand you!
When working in the industry, and you have an idea for a game, we usually give in a High Concept Document. It’s a short document designed to capture everything you want the game to be. It can help keep the original idea, as well as hand it if youget team members under way, which makes it usefull with Trello, as it is an up to date changelog as well.
It is important to fill in on what it is you wish to create. It is a 4 – 5 page document with a description of the game and it’s aspects, helping to tell about the game in a short summuary and what system you plan to use in the game project. If you wish to investigate further in this, then here’s a link for you:
[link]Note: As for the character section of this document, I’ll come back to this later in this guide, so finish reading or jump down to characters if you intend to write a High Concept Document now 🙂
Game Design Document (GDD)
As for the actual project, it’s nice with a game design document. This describes everything in details, and it is used in all game productions done by studios and indie developers. It doesn’t only help them keep track of it, but they it’s also handy to give to new employees or group members to fill them in rather than explaning everything to them.
These documents can be from 70 – 100 pages depending on what you make of it, an avrage is on 50 – 70 pages, though for a visual novel it is more about art, characters and music. Eventually achievements, gallery and all that. For a visual novel i will personally judge a Game Design Document to be around 20 – 30 pages, though it can probably be a little shorter, but this is by roughly estimating it. I haven’t seen one, or done one myself, but description and details is the key to success in this.
If you wish to check out a game design document, then here’s a link / template for you (not related to visual novels though):
[link]You can write one if you’d like to, and it’s a great tool in the development process, but it’s entirely up to you if you chose to use this or a High Concept Document, though a Game Design document helps shape the game and fill in new team members.
Change Log
Whenever you work on a project, remember to write a Change Log. I would say this is the most important thing to do in a production.
If you checked out trello, it has a form of a Change Log by being able to hook off if you’ve done something.
It is important, as if you don’t keep track of what has been done at the current task, you’ll end up recruiting new team members, and they look at your Game Design Document or High Concept Document and start working.
A story from the industry is that a new team member joined a company, and they didn’t have a change log. For HALF A YEAR he worked on things that had already been made, just because the company didn’t provide a change log. Thats how important it is. If you don’t have a change log, you just have to sit and remember what has been done and talk with the team members what they’ve done each day, and it’ll just end up in a big mess.
So for everyones sake, keep a change log. Thats how important it is.
Story Management
It’s important to plan the story ahead when planning to make a visual novel. A lot of people i worked with in the past, usually start with the ending, though this is entierly up to each person. I personally start writing and things just pop up underway, in a nice tune.
It is nice to plan the end first, as you know what the story will look like at the end, and it will help you along the road with writing the story to reach the end you want. Again, it’s optional, and I myself don’t do it too often.
Another good way to use this, is to plan out the story is write the general story you want to create in a short summuary. Then write the amount of people you want to include. If you wish to create a game about finding love, with several girls to go between, set the amount of girls to a number, etc. 7.
I would prefer to write 7 endings for each of them, then look at the summuary you have written for your story. Do a brainstorming session of which choices to include in your game.
I feel like for a visual novel, it’s easier to start with the ending depending on what type you want to make. Then shape choices and situations where you have to make a choice. Each of these events or choices are called Plot Points. That generally means that the story will change depending on the choice you make, and it usually needs to have a lot of focus around it, and it needs clever writing.
I more or less ended up on writing the ending first, though it’s the best to do for a visual novel, as the story is shaped to reach the ending, which is the players goal. It’s not traditional story writing.
Some other facts about traditional writing of visual novels and manga is that when i studied it (on my spare time some years ago), I believe they start planning the story half a year ahead of the production start.
Another fact mentioned by Jay_Rab on the forums here on TyranoBuilder is that the bigger visual novels contains over 500.000 words each route. I want to say 500.000 – 800.000 but i can’t remember the number for sure. Don’t get discouraged by this. Most of the words are used in every route, but depending on which route you take, some words may vary. Remember that the story always starts off the same, and it usually ends on the same track, and then a new choice comes and spins it off again.
Writing a Visual Novel isn’t easy work, it’s probably one of the hardest processes as everything about it has to be almost perfect for it to be good, unlike other games today, where it doesn’t matter too much if something is off (this according to the majority, I’m very picky myself).
Get the right tools to write the story and outcome. The tools i find best for this specific task might be StoryBlue due to it’s layout and different tabs as well as the ability to sort out the different chapters, and so on.
If you chose to use notepad or word (i myself would use this if i didn’t have anything else to use), you will have to manage the chapters by document name, and maybe have folders for the different girls, and sort it after choices. It makes it a little messy, but it still gets the job done, and thats what i did when i started out.
Character Development
Now, most of you won’t use voices in your visual novel, but none the less, design the characters as if they have a voice actor voicing them. When i studied character development at school, i pretty much nailed that class because I’ve always been an enthusiast about character development and creating lore.
As much as I’d like to write about the character development, I’m using the same form that I was given from my tutor on that course, so there isn’t much point in me repeating the exact same form here, when you can check out the link on what we go about when creating a character in the industry. Of course, there are different ways to go about it, but this is the way I have found most efficient when it comes to developing a character.
[link]That was how we were supposed to make characters, just by description and on paper, no image, and no drawing, just his characteristics, and so on. I can’t recommend it enough when it comes to development of characters.
Though I say we didn’t do anything else than characteristics, this is papers we would give the concept artist to create a drawing of the character. This is especially important to a Visual Novel.
A important side note i learned from doing research on Visual Novels is that usually Hair Color actually does have a meaning. All visual novels I’ve played and done survey on have had hair colors matching the page linked below. They got at least one of the traits listed there, so consider this when you make your character. It is not necessary to do, but it looks like the traditional way according to my research.
[link]Research Journal
As i mentioned I spend a little of my spare time doing research on visual novels. I will continue to update this guide, and add the research i find. It may progress slowly, but there will come more.
So far I’ve only completed my research on hair colors, and I am moving over to names next. Afterwards I’ll have to dig deeper into what else to research, but as for now, that is the most obvious to look into.
If you have anything you’d be interested in me checking out when it comes to my research and analyse of visual novels, then feel free to give me suggestions.
Note From Author
If you read through the entire guide, the please give me feedback, as it will help me out in the future as well as to improve this current guide. It helps me help you and others, and i really appreciate that you took your time to read through my guide. Especially considering i spent around 2 – 3 hours writing this for your sake 🙂
If you wish to talk to me, feel free to add me, or leave a comment here. If your adding me though, it would be nice if you left a comment here regarding it, considering i usually ignore all unknown friend requests.
Thanks for your time
-Sincerely, Walker
Change Log
27.07.17
Fixing a broken link.
23.06.15
Guide created, will be updated based on research and feedback from the community.
I will also add pictures to help with explanations and improve the thumbnail once i get home to my computer which has all the editing tools, as my laptop doesn’t have any of my tools of trade 🙁