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Re: Can you make a Visual Novel with LOVE?

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 9:30 am
by coffee
Echo wrote: and we want to call it inside the print statement but also have a string of text printed as well:

Code: Select all

print("Hello my name is" name)
This results in an error? Should I just use a lot of variables or have one for the text? the thing is that in
visual novels their is a hell-lot of text and you cant store this in one variable.
LOVE have it's own print to output to screen.
https://love2d.org/wiki/love.graphics.print

Also in plain Lua you need to print("Hello my name is".. name). It's called string concatenation.

Re: Can you make a Visual Novel with LOVE?

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 2:51 pm
by josefnpat
coffee wrote:
Echo wrote: and we want to call it inside the print statement but also have a string of text printed as well:

Code: Select all

print("Hello my name is" name)
This results in an error? Should I just use a lot of variables or have one for the text? the thing is that in
visual novels their is a hell-lot of text and you cant store this in one variable.
LOVE have it's own print to output to screen.
https://love2d.org/wiki/love.graphics.print

Also in plain Lua you need to print("Hello my name is".. name). It's called string concatenation.
Coffee is correct. See this page, heading Concatenation for more details.

Re: Can you make a Visual Novel with LOVE?

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 10:30 pm
by Echo
thanks for the quick help.

I now have something that's begging to shape-up quite well. I think I can take it from here for now until I have something worth showing.

Re: Can you make a Visual Novel with LOVE?

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2012 12:00 am
by josefnpat
I did a little more research, specifically through the http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/, and in order to get something to really even compete, I see three possibly:
  1. Rebuild most of the functionality, pretty much duplicating Ren'Py. I don't really see any advantage here, as Ren'Py is already cross platform.
  2. Write a super simplistic stylized Visual Novel Engine that either uses a custom scripting language easier than Ren'Py (which might be really hard) or write some sort of GUI interface that is well suited for the feature set.
  3. Write a library that allows both Lua proficient developers and advanced Lua Developers a way to produce a Visual novel, but allow for heavy modding and alteration (which would be an advantage over Ren'Py)
Makes me wonder, Echo, do you have a story in mind, or just want to make a visual novel engine?

In many ways, Pen'Py is the key, esp with all the features.

Re: Can you make a Visual Novel with LOVE?

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2012 9:39 am
by Robin
As much as I love LÖVE, my friend with the trunk is right.

A visual novel is not a game, so it doesn't make sense to make one in a game engine/framework/platform when a specialised engine is available.

Re: Can you make a Visual Novel with LOVE?

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2012 9:49 am
by coffee
Robin wrote:A visual novel is not a game,
Those wikipedia bastards, they really allow everything!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel
Gimme me a minute, I gonna fix it! Don't worry! :)

EDITED: Even that some engines specially for that exist I don't see why not LOVE isn't suitable for Interactive Fiction/Visual Novels. IMHO is no good that LOVE end be stereotyped as most suitable for more action/realtime style games. A Visual Novel engine made for LOVE is well possible. I think LOVE diversification in game styles very good.

Re: Can you make a Visual Novel with LOVE?

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2012 4:22 pm
by josefnpat
Robin wrote:As much as I love LÖVE, my friend with the trunk is right.

A visual novel is not a game, so it doesn't make sense to make one in a game engine/framework/platform when a specialised engine is available.
Well, I wouldn't go so far to say a visual novel isn't a game. On wikipedia there's a lot more than one can imagine when it comes to visual novels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel wrote:In Japanese terminology, a distinction is often made between visual novels proper (abbreviated NVL), which consist predominantly of narration and have very few interactive elements, and adventure games (abbreviated AVG or ADV), which may incorporate problem-solving and other types of gameplay. This distinction is normally lost outside Japan, where both NVLs and ADVs are commonly referred to as "visual novels" by international fans.
But all in all, if someone wants to make a visual novel, they should do it in Ren'Py.

But if someone wants to make a visual novel in love, I don't think anyone should stop or dissuade them. To me, it sounds educational. Competition is always important if you ask me, even in open source. Ought to call it Ren'Love :)

Re: Can you make a Visual Novel with LOVE?

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2012 4:41 pm
by Puzzlem00n
Great, now we're all going to go off on one of those philosophical "what is a game" conversations... :roll:
I agree with the above two, though, I'm as much an indie game junkie as I am a programmer (perhaps more so) and I've played plenty of really fun games that describe themselves as visual novels. I personally think love would work great for making one, by the way. Other than the physics engine, there isn't anything in it that has it geared towards any type of game over the other. I prefer to build as much as I can from the ground up as well.

Re: Can you make a Visual Novel with LOVE?

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2012 7:19 pm
by Robin
josefnpat wrote:Well, I wouldn't go so far to say a visual novel isn't a game.
My earlier statement was not very nuanced and only true for some (rather strict) definitions of "game". I don't know how to put it in a more nuanced way without losing the message, unfortunately.