Visual Novels, not entirely specific to Daz, obviously...

JD_Mortal

I saw a Visual-Novel in the Daz store the other day, and there are a growing number now on "Steam"... (That is actually what I do, making art for visual-novels, and writing, and programming for them. Though nothing I make is special, it is just for others to develop off of.)

I was curious if there was an interest for this "style" of artwork display, with the present crowd of Dazers.

Keeping in mind that "Visual-Novels" are not always just comics, and dating-games, and novels... But the key being that they are visual, and can be used to simply tell a story. Living portfolios, for some.

I ask this, because I am, have been, developing a variation of Visual-Novel creator, for myself. This was just to speed-up production and provide some more logical order to the chaos that the other creators all have. (They try to crush too much glitter and glow, and end-up just making it more difficult and less fun to create in the process.) Me, I would rather see what I am making, as it would look on the screen, as I am writing it.

However, due to my limits, my little creation toy only works on Windows, but the files it creates work on anything that displays HTML web-pages. (No it is not that basic of a display, but it uses HTML as the universal "display format". The goal, at one point, was to have it depend on remote-hosts for the content delivery. But I ended-up making it, with some novel-tricks, to use static content that wasn't "readily unprotected". That appeased the few people with concerns about content-theft, related to recycled artwork.)

Do you think that this, once finally created, (the creation program), may potentially sell if added to the Daz store? I would like to add Daz-specific function to it, though not 3D game-play, but other components of the creation-process, related to your 3D scenes/renderings/assets, for greater organization and faster production. (Instead of having to figure-out what saved files you used to render a scene. It would know which file you used, so you could edit it and reload it, without having to hunt in folders and deal with code-junk. As an example.)

I like code, but it is a love/hate relationship. I know most others hate or fear it... Those who don't, would still rather not touch it, which is why they program toys like this, so they can stop touching it. xD

This would sort-of be a WYSIWYG style editor/creator... But because the final output is HTML, it is open to ALL headaches that programmers may want to self-inflict on themselves. (I am undecided if I want to do the whole PHP server-side component, but that may be a future prospect, for those who know how to do that stuff or wish to host a novel-distribution medium or service.)

The focus, because of the projects I have on my desk, are also "game related", in that they have game-like elements and flow, more than the novel-component. The novel portion is there too, but it is not a binding limit as a true visual-novel tends to lock you into. It is sort of a mixture of "Final fantasy" (old-school), meets "Kings-Quest", meets "Myst", meets "Visual-Novels", meets "Escape" games... Without the micro-managing and script programming. Certain things do certain things and the option to use them, or not, is always there, if needed.

I did see some crazy cool 3D stuff, with the new HTML5 canvas, and WebGL... but both had limits, within them and me. Would be nice to see those play with Daz models, nice lowLOD drop-ins. However, that is a pipe-dream at the moment. I still prefer the still-image and animated-image versions of 3D components, for this style. Beyond that, it gets into "game programming", and goes back to making things complex, requiring "teams". My ultimate goal is to make this so easy that one person can fathom the whole creation process and actually produce a complex work, without the overhead complexity. In the name of creation.