Tutorial A Beginner's guide on how to make a game.

[Faenon]

I am at the point in my VN development that I have enough quality content for a two phase release. Phase one, the simple one, is to release chapter's 1 and 2 to itch as a free (donations appreciated), release, I see that as kind of a demo. I've set everything up on Itch ready for me to finish up some final testing and then I will upload.

Chapter 3 is also ready, my plan is to release that plus a adult comic on a platform that will generate income, Patreon most likely, this is the part though I'm a little confused over.

Uncompressed my game files so far are around 4gb, I have chosen .png as my render file format, which is probably a mistake because of the size of the files but I stubbornly want to hang on to the quality here. Itch has a download limit of 1gb which is going to be OK for Chap 1 and 2, as they are uncompressed within that size anyway. But not OK for Chap 3 as the renders are much greater in that one. So releasing to Itch on their paid option, is not an option.

So if I go down the Patreon route for chap 3, does that platform support file hosting internally of 4gb plus (I could split the .zip into parts of course if the limited is on individual file size)? You mention above about using a third party file hosting company but I'm confused how you make that secure and prevent sites, like this one, lol, sharing that file to others. I do understand that a Patreon member could and a lot probably do, take your work and re-upload it to a third party hosting service anyway but I would at least like some form of protection however mild it is.

Should I just wait to do a Steam release instead and forget about Patreon altogether?

A quick note before I get any, greedy game dev remarks. My initial hope was to release this VN totally free, the VN is very niche in it's content, not heavy on the adult side of things especially in the first few chapters so I don't anticipate a huge audience. So I started building with free tools, renpy and DAZ. But "free" is not really "free", as anyone who has touched Daz will tell you. I've had to buy a RTX 4080 Super to be able to render at any acceptable speed and spent literally thousands of $$ on assets for DAZ, couple this with spending ALL my spare time over the last 9 months or so on this, means I need to recover some costs to help a little.

Any advice on how I should best release Chap 3 and beyond (looking to do a half Chap a month, through to the 10 in total) would be much appreciated.

 

[Winterfire]

I have chosen .png as my render file format, which is probably a mistake because of the size of the files but I stubbornly want to hang on to the quality here.

WebP can be lossless and it's still much smaller than PNG. Using PNG makes no sense at all, if not for some rare cases concerning compatibility, but right now, on ren'py? Go for it.
However, "quality" even up to 89% (depending on the render) will look the same on human eyes, with the size being even smaller.

Itch has a download limit of 1gb which is going to be OK for Chap 1 and 2, as they are uncompressed within that size anyway. But not OK for Chap 3 as the renders are much greater in that one. So releasing to Itch on their paid option, is not an option.

That's news to me. Everyone, including myself, downloaded way more than 1gb on Itch.io.
I think you're mixing up with the UPLOAD size, which is a maximum of 2gb, but only through the website.
If you use butler, you can upload up to 30gb. It has versioning with binary patching, so using butler is the best option either way. If command lines scare you, there's a GUI version as well:

You must be registered to see the links

You mention above about using a third party file hosting company but I'm confused how you make that secure and prevent sites, like this one, lol, sharing that file to others. I do understand that a Patreon member could and a lot probably do, take your work and re-upload it to a third party hosting service anyway but I would at least like some form of protection however mild it is.

There's no preventing sharing. If such a thing existed, everyone would be using it. Just give up and don't waste your time fighting piracy, it's not worth it at all. In fact, I have no idea who you are, nor what you're making, and you don't even have a link to your game or anything... Piracy would help you get your game out there, which is important.
Even if you made the best game ever, you won't get any support if no one is aware of it.

Should I just wait to do a Steam release instead and forget about Patreon altogether?

Normally yes, you should aim for Steam if you want to make serious money. However, the issue (as mentioned above) is that no one knows who you are, or what you're making. Once you get your page on steam, it's essential to get wishlists. Hundreds and Hundreds before you launch your game, and you'll find that very hard to do if you don't have any following.
So do get on steam, but find a way to harvest wishlists... Itch.io, and of course F95Zone. Don't prevent sharing, but embrace it and get those views/wishlists up.
Also, make sure to read Steam rules... You can't have a game linking to your patreon on Steam, but you can share a build of your game here and on itch.io containing a link to your patreon, so rather than having someone pirate your steam game and put it here for no gains, share your f95zone build here yourself with a patreon link so you'll get some support.

A quick note before I get any, greedy game dev remarks.

You're the exact opposite of greedy. You did all of that work in the background with no one aware of your game. If you wanted to make money, you did it wrong big time.

Any advice on how I should best release Chap 3 and beyond (looking to do a half Chap a month, through to the 10 in total) would be much appreciated.

Here's what I'd do (maybe ask other people once you get the developer badge for more diverse suggestions): Launch your Patreon page and put the first chapter there and on itch.io (make sure both pages look good), Share your game here too. Have a discord server so you can gather all those interested in your project in a single place. Chapter 2 can be a patreon reward (early access).
After a month, release chapter 2 here, on itch.io (Major Update) and Patreon, have Chapter 3 as a patreon reward (Early access), and finally do the same thing with chapter 3 after another month.
This is 3 updates in 3 big platforms, hopefully this will gain you enough visibility and support, then you can start selling your game on itch.io (Chapter 4) and keep the other 3 as a demo and start harvesting wishlists once you have a build for Steam as well.

This is similar to what this dev did:

You must be registered to see the links

But i believe his demo is 5 chapters. It really depends on how quickly you can gain supporters in order to get hundreds of wishlists. It also depends on the platforms you'll support... WebGL and Android are the biggest ones. Ideally you'd have made a development thread and gathered supports before your first chapter was even ready to release (similar to what Afterglow did, the day they launched, they already had tons of supporters).

 

[Faenon]

Wow thanks for that detailed reply. I was not aware of the butler, I will certainly look into it. This is what I was referring to with the 1GB limit:


Although I said I was stubborn for sticking with .png, I was going to look at what it would entail switching to .jpg but if .webp offers that level (or lack of) quality loss then I will look at doing that. Just I have a lot of renders and a lot of code referencing those renders to change, lol. Thanks for the tip there.

I was not really trying to make the best selling VN out there, like I said it's very niche, so make a ton of money so I can quit my day job is not the aim at all. I just want to recover some of the costs. My dream would be to be able to retire a little earlier than I had planned (8 years from now) and do this full time but I'm old enough to know that that is unrealistic. Hence why I've not marketed this a lot and probably will be too busy with life and other stuff to be that aggressive. My aim was to fill a void in the market that I saw. In all honesty though I am not expecting huge amounts of people to rush to download this, most will find it too boring as it's a pretty slow pace and light on gameplay.

In terms of piracy you are right, I know. I will definitely take this advice.

I will also look to follow your advice on the release too. I'm still in two minds on Patreon, I do have the adult comic though with a side character I have been building alongside the VN, that I would like to offer to Patreon folks as a reward for supporting and I plan to do more of this with other side characters in the game. I was wanting to launch Itch and Patreon at the same time, so that if folks liked the "demo" on itch, they could immediately support me on Patreon and download the next Chapter, they may lose interest if I stagger the release. There is really not enough content in chapter 1 for a separate release of that, it's just a background introductions to the main characters. But doing your 3 launch approach makes a lot of sense and something for me to consider for sure. Maybe I wait until I have 5 chapters complete before I begin launching.

I will look at what involves in Discord too, I just worry about the effort required here to maintain a good server.

The platforms is an interesting one, I've only tested on Windows so far. Other platforms remain untested so that was going to be a secondary step after my initial release.

Again thanks a lot, you've given me a lot of food for thought.

 

[Winterfire]

Wow thanks for that detailed reply. I was not aware of the butler, I will certainly look into it. This is what I was referring to with the 1GB limit:
View attachment 3974832

Oops, I thought it was 2GB upload limit, not 1GB. Anyway, that refers only to the upload, and with butler it's up to 30GB.
Technically you can request more than 1GB, but it's not worth it since everyone uses Butler anyway.

Although I said I was stubborn for sticking with .png, I was going to look at what it would entail switching to .jpg but if .webp offers that level (or lack of) quality loss then I will look at doing that. Just I have a lot of renders and a lot of code referencing those renders to change, lol. Thanks for the tip there.

JPG is very bad for that, WebP for images and WebM for videos is the way to go when it comes to current compatibility and best size/quality.

I was not really trying to make the best selling VN out there, like I said it's very niche, so make a ton of money so I can quit my day job is not the aim at all. I just want to recover some of the costs. My dream would be to be able to retire a little earlier than I had planned (8 years from now) and do this full time but I'm old enough to know that that is unrealistic. Hence why I've not marketed this a lot and probably will be too busy with life and other stuff to be that aggressive. My aim was to fill a void in the market that I saw. In all honesty though I am not expecting huge amounts of people to rush to download this, most will find it too boring as it's a pretty slow pace and light on gameplay.

In terms of piracy you are right, I know. I will definitely take this advice.

Let the people judge (Some do give good feedback you can use to improve yourself), and don't shy away from spreading the voice and sharing your project because people might think it's boring, there are people that'll enjoy it and you need to reach them. The sooner you start, the better.

There is really not enough content in chapter 1 for a separate release of that, it's just a background introductions to the main characters. But doing your 3 launch approach makes a lot of sense and something for me to consider for sure. Maybe I wait until I have 5 chapters complete before I begin launching.

I will look at what involves in Discord too, I just worry about the effort required here to maintain a good server.

The platforms is an interesting one, I've only tested on Windows so far. Other platforms remain untested so that was going to be a secondary step after my initial release.

Again thanks a lot, you've given me a lot of food for thought.

3 launches are few already, but if chapter 1 is too small it would be harmful. I'd say the first release should be around 30 minutes of gameplay long.
Waiting longer sounds like a bad idea as well... However, you shouldn't rush if you're not ready either. If you really want to wait on it, at the very least make a development thread here: https://thef95zone.info/forums/programming-development-art.73/ you can see some examples in that category, this way you can get people interested in your project and start gaining a following before you release.
Again, it's very important that you gain supporters/followers as soon as possible, as long as your game sits quietly in your computer alone, it may as well not exist.

Discord takes a little of effort to set it up right, but most of the time it'll be very quiet (with the occasional bot you need to ban), it's worth it because you can have all those interested in the project in a single place.

Windows is fairly popular, but at the very least Ren'Py can easily build for Mac and Linux without any testing required, so you may as well go for those as well.
Android/WebGL are the most popular, but you might have a hard time building for those since 2GB is the limit for android, and there's a minimum of 1000 files for WebGL. You can give it a shot, or ask other people for help since I don't have any experience on that.

 

[Zulsmashing@ss]

Hai. I'm new here. I already have some idea story to make Avn game using Honey Select 2 model. But i need some guide for studio and renpy plugin because i don't really understand about that. Another problem i need to improve my PC spec. Can someone recommend me what PC spec should i find or upgrade? And lastly guide me to create Avn

 

[Winterfire]

Hai. I'm new here. I already have some idea story to make Avn game using Honey Select 2 model. But i need some guide for studio and renpy plugin because i don't really understand about that. Another problem i need to improve my PC spec. Can someone recommend me what PC spec should i find or upgrade? And lastly guide me to create Avn

Just use youtube:

You must be registered to see the links

For renpy I suggest this one:

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despite being old, but if you want more, once again, use youtube:

You must be registered to see the links

You need to improve your GPU if Honey Select 2 runs slow. You also need a proper CPU to pair to avoid bottlenecking.
32gb ram is pretty much the default nowdays, and I would get a SSD too.

 

[Zulsmashing@ss]

Just use youtube:

You must be registered to see the links

For renpy I suggest this one:

You must be registered to see the links

despite being old, but if you want more, once again, use youtube:

You must be registered to see the links

You need to improve your GPU if Honey Select 2 runs slow. You also need a proper CPU to pair to avoid bottlenecking.
32gb ram is pretty much the default nowdays, and I would get a SSD too.

So i need more than 32gb ram right? Btw thanks for share

 

[Winterfire]

So i need more than 32gb ram right? Btw thanks for share

No, 32gb is enough unless you ever plan to move past Honey Select 2 (to DAZ or other forms of rendering). However, if you only want to use your pc for gaming, daily use and HS2, 32gb is more than enough.

 

[Zulsmashing@ss]

No, 32gb is enough unless you ever plan to move past Honey Select 2 (to DAZ or other forms of rendering). However, if you only want to use your pc for gaming, daily use and HS2, 32gb is more than enough.

Last question. I see at youtube about Honey Select2 and Ai shoujo ? Did Ai Shoujo just mod or kind of another game?

 

[Winterfire]

Last question. I see at youtube about Honey Select2 and Ai shoujo ? Did Ai Shoujo just mod or kind of another game?

Honey Select 2 is the one you want to use

 

[Zulsmashing@ss]

Honey Select 2 is the one you want to use

Yes. I want to use Honey Select 2 only

 

[Lady Alexa]

Hello Winterfire,

your tutorial is a great read. I also read the one in the april fool thread. About the choice of engine, there is one that is regularly used but you don't write a word about it : Twine + Sugarcube. You surely have an opinion about it and I would gladly read it.

I see that Sugarcube is mainly used for games with photos, and also quite recently with AI generated images. The language for coding is Sugarcube script (mixed with javascript for more complicated things). This might be more complicated than the Ren'py language (but I am primary a coder, I am not at all afraid of that).

And on another point, you have the Game Developer tag, but I can't find any of your games. Didn't you experiment by writing one, even a small one? I would be glad to take a look at it.

 

[Winterfire]

Hello Winterfire,

your tutorial is a great read. I also read the one in the april fool thread. About the choice of engine, there is one that is regularly used but you don't write a word about it : Twine + Sugarcube. You surely have an opinion about it and I would gladly read it.

There exist too many game engines to mention them all, especially text based games are quite easy to make in pretty much any engine, but Twine makes it easier and it's surely more common. Many good games have been made with it such as:
https://thef95zone.info/threads/confined-and-horny-v0-17-tukann.126300/ or https://thef95zone.info/threads/love-and-corruption-v0-3-17-airell.86091/

And on another point, you have the Game Developer tag, but I can't find any of your games. Didn't you experiment by writing one, even a small one? I would be glad to take a look at it.

I have a bunch of games, two are linked in my signature, the rest is here: https://thef95zone.info/sam/latest_alpha/#/cat=games/page=1/creator=Winterfire
("Dark Land Chronicle" is not by me, it's just another dev who wanted to call himself winterfire too).

 

[Lady Alexa]

There exist too many game engines to mention them all, especially text based games are quite easy to make in pretty much any engine, but Twine makes it easier and it's surely more common.

I understand now: you seem to make a difference between text based engines, like Sugarcube, and image based engines, like Ren'py. And your tutorial is more about image based engines. But Twine + Sugarcube is so much used that I thought it might warrant a mention.

And congratulations for making your games!

 

[ItsAvoidableYes]

Great read thanks for the help. Have you used rpgmaker before?

 

[Winterfire]

Great read thanks for the help. Have you used rpgmaker before?

Only RPG Maker XP many years ago when it was still new. Played around with it a lot and learnt many new things, but that's about it. Hardly remember anything about it now.

 

[guiga1112]

Hello, thank you very much for this guide, it was fantastic. I wanted to know if you could answer a question for me if possible. I don't intend to create a game, but I would like to create animations for games that don't have any or change characters in some animations. Do you have any recommendations for programs or tips for this? I'm a total newbie when it comes to this. I hope it's not as difficult or complicated to animate or change animations that already have scenes created as it is to create and animate from scratch. sorry for the bad english was using the translator

 

[osanaiko]

Hello, thank you very much for this guide, it was fantastic. I wanted to know if you could answer a question for me if possible. I don't intend to create a game, but I would like to create animations for games that don't have any or change characters in some animations. Do you have any recommendations for programs or tips for this? I'm a total newbie when it comes to this. I hope it's not as difficult or complicated to animate or change animations that already have scenes created as it is to create and animate from scratch. sorry for the bad english was using the translator

Adding Animation of characters into an existing game?

First you would need to be able to (reasonably) accurately recreate the character / clothing / background. The difficulty of this would depend on the art process - is it Daz3d? is it HoneySelect/Koikatsu? is it hand drawn art of unique characters? is it art of well known anime/game characters? Then you also need the skills to create the animations - do you have existing art-drawing experience (for 2d art), or 3D animation experience (for daz/blender?)

If you are just talking about some of the standard Daz games - For some games there is a lot of information about what DAZ assets and morphs were used (see some of the game specific fan-art threads in here: https://thef95zone.info/forums/artwork.112/). But for others there is no information available, you would have to discover it / work out how to do the re-creation yourself - and this could be difficult!

Assuming you overcame all those difficulties: if you had some nice juicy movies ready to do, then you need to substitute it into the game. For Renpy, this could be done by creating a patch file that overwrites the existing relevant Labels and adds the movie display in place of the previous static image display. Unfortunately you would need to constantly update (or at least review for breakage) this patch each time there is a new release. For other game engines, i don't know how hard it would be to patch them.

 

[Haptales]

Thank you for this guide, really.
I wish I could have read this a few months ago, it would have saved me a lot of time trying to understand stuff.

I only have these last few months of experience to speak of, but one thing I've quickly realized is the importance of breaking down all of these tasks into a manageable schedule.
It may seem obvious when I say it like that, but when one get out of the brainstorming phase, only to realize the amount and variety of work that has to be done, it can quickly get overwhelming. Especially when, like me, you only have a few hours a week to work on it.

 

[osanaiko]

One thing that very few new devs understand is the sheer size of the workload to make a game.

I do proofreading/playtesting/script editing for some games. The "Nothing is Forever" dev releases half-yearly updates with several 100s of new images, up to a dozen animations, and 10K-18K lines of scripted dialogue. Just proofreading and editing that new dialogue takes me the equivalent of multiple days of full time work. I normally average about 80-120 lines of script per hour - which means a few weeks of evenings and some long blocks on weekends to finish - and that is not even creating, it is just editing!!!

Imagine writing all that new content. And then add on top of that the image and animation work... it's literally a heavy-workload fulltime job for him.

The caveat is that level of effort is to achieve a very high quality game with a heap of content. It is of course possible to put in far less care and attention, and output something game-like but shitty.

It is also the reason that so many games are abandonded after one or two updates - once the initial burning interest is gone, the sheer volume of work is daunting and hard to get motivated to continue. It takes a special kind of person to keep working hard on these hobby-ist projects.