How fast can you build a visual novel with VS that takes 2 hours to play?

Hi Everyone,

Last year was a game contest. I remember it takes three months. Look at the winners which are on the download site and look what's possible. I think some months are necessary because of graphic, sound, dialogs and game logic. For absolut beginners I think more than three months. But it depends on your team, your goals, your time you have. 

Really depends on what you are making & how complicated the features are that you want to implement. If you are creating one of those typical visual novels that are mostly close-up talking with dialog choices & minimal character & environment animations, then it shouldn't really take you all that long to put together - most time would probably be spent on creating your artwork rather than development.

You should also be able to create it without having to use Lua script by using the built in dialog system & condition/value based if queries for determining dialog choices & general choices the player has made while playing your game.

If you already have all the asset files you need to create a scene handy, you can probably build a finished scene in less than a day. Anything from a couple hours up depending on how complex it is, but this time doesn't include sorting out all the actions/events or debugging. I'd say 2 or 3 days is needed per scene development wise - providing you have all the asset files already available.

@Machtnix: I don't think it took all the people that entered 3 months. We gave x time for them to take their time & submit something that was fairly polished. They were all third person games with multiple rooms as far as I can recall.

@AFRLme: there was a pdf which contains all participants and the rules but I don't find it. Some games are amazing, I can't believe they are made in this short time. And you are right: testing takes more time than you (won't?) believe. Really!! In every case there is a stupid tiny bug you will search for weeks The contest games are mostly well debugged, I think the developers must worked day and night 24/7...

I know how long debugging takes. It's one of the the most time consuming parts of game development. I was talking about how long it takes to put a game together. Create the scene, add the objects, some actions etc. That sort of stuff doesn't take long...

Debugging on the other hand is a whole other kettle of fish because fixing something often leads to breaking something else & it ends up being similiar to those whack'a'mole arcade games.

I think a visual novel should be somewhat easier to create in VS than a third person point & click adventure game as they tend to use fairly static scenes & limited character animations rather than fluid animations, so they are shaving a lot of time off by not having to deal with creating walking & interaction animations for their characters.

Only person I know that's creating Visual Novels with VS is this developer: https://www.patreon.com/kexboy - you could try asking them how long it takes on average to create a visual novel. I think they are working on a few at the same time. Not sure if they are all being developed with VS or other engines too.

P.S: I'm curious as to what you mean by 2 hours. Do you mean 2 hours worth of content or 2 hours approx. playtime?

Thanks for the replies!

Cheers. Ok, so I think Machtnix is probably about right with his estimation. If you hussle with the graphics & animations & other asset files, then I think it should take you approx 1-3 months, though likely 3 months if you are learing Visionaire Studio as you go. Once you've nailed down a workflow though, you should be able to create any additional episodes much faster, though again, this all depends on how complicated you make things, like the story branches for example as you have to deal with those & if they affect things later on in the game, then you have to deal with those too.

If you aren't already using some kind of mind mapping application for your story branches then I recommend looking into yEd or mind maple lite. Both are free & you can create flow diagrams with them, which you can easily use to make maps of your story-line branches & what each decision does, where it leads to & what it affects.

Anyway, welcome to the VS community & good luck with your game.

P.S: please feel free to join our Discord server if you like. Invite link can be found in the news article at the top of the forum topic board.