Visual Novels and Animated Comics

General Discussions
#1

Hey JGO! I got a question with regards to the subject. I’ve been playing around with creating a Visual Novel and while looking for ways to make it a bit more animated and unique, I came across motion comics. After reading up on the differences between the two, I’d like to get some insight as to how different/difficult they could be from a programming perspective, or if there is even really that much more involved in doing motion comics.

Thanks all!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_comic Reference to the wiki! :smiley:

#2

I’m pulling things out of thin air here, but I can’t foresee they would be too difficult from a programming perspective. What would the general process be? Probably something like:

  1. Wait for user input (press mouse button or keyboard etc.).
  2. Animate next part of scene, and perhaps wait for callback(s) that the animation is done.
  3. Rinse and repeat.
    (Correct me if I’m wrong).

Perhaps the hardest thing would be resource management? I guess you’d have a lot of high resolution images to render and maintain. You’d probably also want to create a robust and simple animation system, so that you could easily add & change animations; you might want to create your own scripting system for this?

So in summary, I don’t think it would be very difficult from a programming perspective. Good luck to you if you go ahead with it.

#3

Hmm that’s my train of thought on the matter however, I’m just not sure because of all the animations going on. (Moving from frame-to-frame while triggering animations based on which frame is currently active) Just wanted to get another brain to bounce the idea off of.

Creating an animation system sounds like a really good idea too, with all that rendering going on, I can only imagine what would happen to some phones if I didn’t create/dispose properly :o .

Thanks again for the help good sir! I’ll be sure to post some super early development shots of the game! Just gotta figure out how/when I should submit it for a WIP thread ???

#4

Ooh yup. If you’re targeting phones, then memory will most likely be one of your major concerns. Particularly if you want to support older devices.

How: The same way you created this thread; it’s open to all. When: Probably when you have something to show; a download &/or screenshots are always good. Of course if you provide a demo of the program in the WIP thread, people are able to test it and give you more meaningful feedback.

#5

Ah, I didn’t realize that (nor did I go to the section and read it :stuck_out_tongue: )

It’ll be a bit before a demo is available. I want to get to a good point in the story (which I’m also the writer of :o ) and throw in some unique features to the standard VN. Thanks again nerb!

#6

I would definitely say it is possible. One of the bottlenecks to look for that wasn’t mentioned is the importance of syncing voice to video. If you work with a style that contains a background music track and use text to narrate primarily, this can work very well. You can even supplement it with a sound each page to improve the quality. Just be aware that synchronized video with sound is always a challenge with these programs. Good luck. 8)

#7

Oh! Thanks for the update! I hadn’t considered any difficulty with that. I’ve yet to reach implementing sound. Will add this to my big list of don’t screw this up!

Thanks ctomni231 ;D