Best engine to create an episodic VN +Management game hosted completely online?

[Webalias]

Hey everyone,
I'm looking for some advice regarding engine (and hosting) a game online.
I want to create a sfw game - kind of like a dating VN with management aspects (closest examples I can think of in SFW category will be 'Long Live The Queen' and in NSFW games will be 'The princess trainer' by Akabur or even something like 'Mystwood Manor' by Faerin)
Now, since the first two of the above mentioned games are made in Ren'py and the last one in Unity so they seem to be the obvious options for the game engine.
However, the main difference is that I want to host the game entirely online with an account system so that users have to log in to play. Plus I want it to be browser based so I can keep updating it with newer episodes and in order to use the SEO elements to market the site better.

My main worries are:
1. Will that result in a huge server cost (imagine Mystwood Manor' or 'BaDik' online. I guess the costs can run up)
2. Will that result in a slow experience (will people with slow connection need to wait a lot till the next image download and kind of ruin the flow?)
3. Will there be issues in future updates (particularly regarding Save management, save incompatibility etc.)
4. I do want to monetize the game site by putting in ads while keeping the play free. But am not sure how much that may impact the gameplay UX/UI.

If you have worked on any similar project before and have any ideas for the above, or have seen a good reference point where some project has solved these problems then please let me know. If you think any of my decisions are not serving my stated purpose and an alternative decision may be better than please let me know.

Am open to work with any tech HTML5, Renpy, Unity etc. that may help with the issues above.

P.S: I'm kind of surprised that not many (or any) games here have hosted themselves completely online.

 

[Alcahest]

P.S: I'm kind of surprised that not many (or any) games here have hosted themselves completely online.

This site is not for online-only games. Unless the game has an offline version, it won't be posted here.

 

[Webalias]

This site is not for online-only games. Unless the game has an offline version, it won't be posted here.

Thanks. That makes sense.
Still, I hope that some of the devs here have worked on online-only games on their other projects and can guide me about the queries above.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Be me: an engineer
reads this

I'm kind of surprised that not many (or any) games here have hosted themselves completely online.

Me:

What you just described sounds like major engineering effort for just one person. And I don't mean coding that stuff from scratch, there's ton's of tools, programs, and solutions online to help... but no one thing covers everything you want, and most of the effort is trying to cobble together several programs/tools together to make one working solution. However, I've seen one good work around to this, reusing html game engines as the main web site.

I too would like to do this, such as with projects like

You must be registered to see the links

, which if you click on Yes, you see a very sleek main page. Now I'm not too sure what engine they are using, but I know it is very customized. It like a twine type game, and the main page you see is actually part of the game (the only way I know this is that the top bar has the forward and back arrows that remain during the rest of the game play). Now I don't know how custom it is, because I found one fan game that manages to use nearly all the same code... but its tbd how they managed to get their hand on the same code/engine. But the idea is, if you using an HTML engine such as twine (you'll need to learn javascript and CSS, neither I feel like looking into), you could repurpose it to also act as the main page and handle all the UI stuff instead of having to build a web page.

As for user accounts, you may want to look into OAuth used by many sites for user authorization. In fact, I've even tested ways of having a unity/godot game call an external program (something I make in C#) which then calls to a server (you will be required to have a server) which then talks to patreon's OAuth, and this would allow users to log into their patreon account in game, unlocking different things depending on their tier of support, while being totally secure. But it was only a basic test, I do not like messing with servers so after I learned what I could I decided it wasn't for me.

That being said, if you want users to log in, see you in 5 years after you figure out how different server and services available, after understanding what it means to manage user data, and eventually find the right service provider that will do this for you for $ but do so far more securely than you ever could coding/hosting the database yourself. Unfortunately to learn all that is beyond what they teach at college and requires at least 5 years experience in that particular profession to get familiar with the pro's and con's of the different services available and how to get them all to work together. This is actually why I tried using the patreon account idea, it has a lot of the same effect but skips all the issues of getting a system working. The only problem is I can't and data to user accounts this way, ie can't track things like play time because I'm limited to only the data that the patreon accounts are programmed to manage. But maybe there are other cites that allow you to reuse user accounts to match your needs, though again this is beyond the basics of what they taught in college, but maybe its easier now-a-days with newer services being available, idk.

 

[Alcahest]

Be me: an engineer
reads this


Me:
View attachment 2293737
What you just described sounds like major engineering effort for just one person. And I don't mean coding that stuff from scratch, there's ton's of tools, programs, and solutions online to help... but no one thing covers everything you want, and most of the effort is trying to cobble together several programs/tools together to make one working solution. However, I've seen one good work around to this, reusing html game engines as the main web site.

I too would like to do this, such as with projects like

You must be registered to see the links

, which if you click on Yes, you see a very sleek main page. Now I'm not too sure what engine they are using, but I know it is very customized. It like a twine type game, and the main page you see is actually part of the game (the only way I know this is that the top bar has the forward and back arrows that remain during the rest of the game play). Now I don't know how custom it is, because I found one fan game that manages to use nearly all the same code... but its tbd how they managed to get their hand on the same code/engine. But the idea is, if you using an HTML engine such as twine (you'll need to learn javascript and CSS, neither I feel like looking into), you could repurpose it to also act as the main page and handle all the UI stuff instead of having to build a web page.

As for user accounts, you may want to look into OAuth used by many sites for user authorization. In fact, I've even tested ways of having a unity/godot game call an external program (something I make in C#) which then calls to a server (you will be required to have a server) which then talks to patreon's OAuth, and this would allow users to log into their patreon account in game, unlocking different things depending on their tier of support, while being totally secure. But it was only a basic test, I do not like messing with servers so after I learned what I could I decided it wasn't for me.

That being said, if you want users to log in, see you in 5 years after you figure out how different server and services available, after understanding what it means to manage user data, and eventually find the right service provider that will do this for you for $ but do so far more securely than you ever could coding/hosting the database yourself. Unfortunately to learn all that is beyond what they teach at college and requires at least 5 years experience in that particular profession to get familiar with the pro's and con's of the different services available and how to get them all to work together. This is actually why I tried using the patreon account idea, it has a lot of the same effect but skips all the issues of getting a system working. The only problem is I can't and data to user accounts this way, ie can't track things like play time because I'm limited to only the data that the patreon accounts are programmed to manage. But maybe there are other cites that allow you to reuse user accounts to match your needs, though again this is beyond the basics of what they taught in college, but maybe its easier now-a-days with newer services being available, idk.

Female Agent is Twine (Tweego) and SugarCube(2) like most html games here. It's just customized to look different.

No need to repurpose anything. Html is html. You just need a host and you run the index.html as a website/webpage. Many html games have their own websites.

Here is how my game looks hosted on itch:

You must be registered to see the links

From the look, you can't tell it's a twine/sugarcube game until you get past the start menu.

 

[Webalias]

Be me: an engineer
reads this


Me:
View attachment 2293737
What you just described sounds like major engineering effort for just one person. And I don't mean coding that stuff from scratch, there's ton's of tools, programs, and solutions online to help... but no one thing covers everything you want, and most of the effort is trying to cobble together several programs/tools together to make one working solution. However, I've seen one good work around to this, reusing html game engines as the main web site.

I too would like to do this, such as with projects like

You must be registered to see the links

, which if you click on Yes, you see a very sleek main page. Now I'm not too sure what engine they are using, but I know it is very customized. It like a twine type game, and the main page you see is actually part of the game (the only way I know this is that the top bar has the forward and back arrows that remain during the rest of the game play). Now I don't know how custom it is, because I found one fan game that manages to use nearly all the same code... but its tbd how they managed to get their hand on the same code/engine. But the idea is, if you using an HTML engine such as twine (you'll need to learn javascript and CSS, neither I feel like looking into), you could repurpose it to also act as the main page and handle all the UI stuff instead of having to build a web page.

As for user accounts, you may want to look into OAuth used by many sites for user authorization. In fact, I've even tested ways of having a unity/godot game call an external program (something I make in C#) which then calls to a server (you will be required to have a server) which then talks to patreon's OAuth, and this would allow users to log into their patreon account in game, unlocking different things depending on their tier of support, while being totally secure. But it was only a basic test, I do not like messing with servers so after I learned what I could I decided it wasn't for me.

That being said, if you want users to log in, see you in 5 years after you figure out how different server and services available, after understanding what it means to manage user data, and eventually find the right service provider that will do this for you for $ but do so far more securely than you ever could coding/hosting the database yourself. Unfortunately to learn all that is beyond what they teach at college and requires at least 5 years experience in that particular profession to get familiar with the pro's and con's of the different services available and how to get them all to work together. This is actually why I tried using the patreon account idea, it has a lot of the same effect but skips all the issues of getting a system working. The only problem is I can't and data to user accounts this way, ie can't track things like play time because I'm limited to only the data that the patreon accounts are programmed to manage. But maybe there are other cites that allow you to reuse user accounts to match your needs, though again this is beyond the basics of what they taught in college, but maybe its easier now-a-days with newer services being available, idk.

First of all, thanks a lot for your detailed reply. It really helps to discuss a problem back and forth and see new angles to it.

Didn't know about Female agent, so that's a very good reference!

I checked the source code of Female agent and it's in deed Sugarcube engine.

But, of course, the problem with not having a proper login system means that one can easily mess with it to get the supposedly paid features:
https://f95zone.to/threads/female-agent-v1-17-crushstation.5103/post-6669886

Also used the 'builtwith' to check the other components of it. Pretty standard stuff, I guess:

You must be registered to see the links

-Logging in with Patreon is a great idea. Will look deeper into it. Thanks!


As you said, it's basically about arranging certain existing stuff together to build that, and that may take some time and experimentation. But conversations like these help a lot to figure things out.

Next, will try to play around with web Renpy and try to upload a bare minimal renpy demo game and see if I can do a simple login system

I'm still pretty concerned about the file size, loading time, and server costs for a full scale game though. Anyway, moving step by step.