08.03.06
VN Engine Evaluation
Cymbalta Without Prescription Elavil No Prescription Lotrisone For Sale Propecia Generic Buy Inderal Online Amoxil Without Prescription Prevacid No Prescription Zyban For Sale Clarinex Generic Buy Zyban OnlineAfter evaluating 3 Visual Novel engines I’m studying namely NScripter, Blade and Ren’Py, I came to a resolution that Ren’Py would be the most feasible game engine I could use for a first possible project.
One factor that made me arrive at this decision is “Technical Support”. Currently Ren’py receives alot of technical support from its original developer Py’Tom (from LemmaSoft forums). I had the chance to browse the few parts of the forums and I was very impressed by his participation on it. Blade support team is also competent, however unable to direct contact with the developers makes it less advantageous. I have tested Blade for a while and even came up with my own command syntax reference. When I was reporting the bugs I have encountered, the forum administrator seems to be only a middle man for the original developers which lags the immediate response needed. NScripter on the other hand lacks visible technical support (or maybe I’m wrong, please correct me).
Another factor is “Engine Maturity”. Both Ren’Py and NScripter are matured because they have been on the scene for a couple of years. However Blade has yet to mature itself. When I studied Ren’Py’s Tutorials, I was amazed by the advanced features it could do (and possibly for now Blade can’t). Nscripter is powerful too, however without a decent technical support it goes down the list by one level.
Finally the most important factor is “Cost”. Ren’Py and NScripter are totally free because they are Open Source so that’s +points for them. Blade is free however the advanced functionailties are only useable when you purchase the Professional version. I’m totally moneyless at the moment so will not consider Blade Engine for now (maybe I will when I have the money to do so).
I’m not saying I’ll abandon the other two engines, in fact I plan to support them all. I have yet to see the maturity of Blade and how will it cope to the level of NScripter and Ren’Py. Having knowledge of the three makes your design decisions more flexible and you could use one engine according to the needs of your project. Sometime in the future I plan to study in depth the original version of NScripter which is ONScripter and see what runs the famous visual novels such as Type-Moon’s Tsukihime and Key’s Kanon.
DiGiKerot said,
August 4, 2006 at 3:50 pm
I’ve tried messing around with NScripter before, and you are right about the lack of support. Most of what I learnt at the time was learnt by disassembling other titles and examining their source files - not exactly ideal.
I suspect there is loads of tutorial material if you are fluent in Japanese, though ^^;