Tutorial Winterfire's talentless guide on how to make a game

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Winterfire

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Sep 27, 2018
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Have you ever dreamt of making a game like Being a Dick or Miffy City?
Then stop kidding yourself and be realistic for once, that will never happen because you are talentless.

Lower your standards and dream of making a game like Sexymon Adventures or other low effort games, never heard of it? It is okay, I had to search because I had forgotten the title myself, even though I am the developer of that game. That is exactly what this guide is going to teach you today.

STEP I - The idea guy
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You are the idea guy, and that is about it. Everyone has ideas, except me, that is why I make parody games.
So, how do you turn your revolutionary idea into something concrete that you can eventually use? Create a Game Design Document.

A Game Design Document (GDD) is the soul of your game and it describes all of its mechanics and how it works. It gives a whole overview of your game, and it connects all your ideas into something concrete, giving you the possibility to spot any mistake (aside from deciding to create a game to begin with) and correct them before you begin the actual development of the game.

There are many ways to write a GDD, there is no correct way nor a standard length, it can be even a page long. So, how do you write one?
Let's assume you have a folder of txt files full of incoherent ideas, this is the "brainstorming" part, and you will have to try and make sense of it. Good luck with that.
Not all the ideas will make it, some will have to be cut or edited, you will realize this while writing the document itself. Here is a simple and generic template:

-Concept/Synopsis: It is a coincise description of your game, akin to what you would find in the Games category of this website. The same way as that synopsis gives you an idea of what a game is about and whether it's worth downloading or not, having this at the start of your GDD avoids you from starting the game trapped in an island and ending up in a nudist school the next update.


-Technical Details: Is this game a visual novel? Is it a kinetic one? does it have stick figures? are you aiming for mobile? All your hopes and dreams go here.
Example: This game is a pure Visual Novel with no choices cos I couldn't be assed to have branching plots, it has stick figures made on paint because i can't draw and i'll build just for windows because other people will probably make an android version of my game, and if they have any issue, i can just send them off by saying "sorry i didnt make that, ask the dude who ported it."
When making a different genre (ex. RPG), it should contain all the other features, such as: Inventory System, Status, Skills, (...) but without going too deep with them as they will have a separate category in your GDD. This should just be a list which you will be altering a lot as you cut/edit stuff. No point in going too deep with a feature that you may decide to cut later on.


-World Building: This is where all the story goes. Split as your writer's spirit desires. It should contain the complete story of your game* (From start to end), alongside other notes that the players might never learn, this is useful to keep consistency in your game and avoid plotholes and/or disconnected stories.
For example, if your amazing story about Timmy the Harem King takes place in the region of Hairyland, you should have a good idea of where each town is and how distant they are, and what there is inbetween. Who is the governor? Is it a theocracy or the king is a cuck who promotes NTR and would be a danger to your harem?
You can't make that stuff up as you go if you want to keep things coherent in your game. The more indepth you go, the better.
*It is okay if your story (not the world) is not fully complete as long as you have a solid start and a solid ending, as long as the rest is well planned, the journey inbetween can be as long as you desire, as long as you can keep things interesting.


-Characters: Now that you have your world and story ready, you need to fill it with the characters. They can range from minor ones (A prostitute you meet once in the street to give some quick and cheap sex scenes to the player in the first minutes of the game to convince them to not uninstall) to important ones, such as the main heroines that will make Timmy's harem.
I would suggest against adding too many important characters, you do not really want your game to end up with 50 duck heroines with one scene each, with 100 more to be added. Quality and diversifed personality is better than quantity and it gives players the possibility to pick their favourite heroine(s) and have more than a handful of scenes with them.

Each character (including minor ones) should have a complete profile with at least these categories: General (Name, Age, Race, ...), Relationships (Parents, friends, enemies, and of course it shouldn't contain partners otherwise you are making a NTR game and you should feel ashamed of yourself), Mental characteristics (addictions, phobias, temperament, likes/dislikes, ...), Speech (The way the character laughs, voice type such as rough, their grammar quality such as an orc speaking in a very simple and basic english or someone with a speech impediment writing a novel about vampires), Physical Characteristics (Scars, odor, tattoes, beard/hair styles, accessories, or description of atypical body parts, such as an elf with short ears, and ofc B/W/H which is the most important part), Background (Childhood till now, experiences, failures, goals, desires, popularity, hobbies, lifestyle, profession, ...), World/Story integration (Role in the story, where they live, where they have lived, where and why they have travelled, factions, current location, ...). Of course you can add more, or remove what you believe to be unnecessary.

At this point you may be wondering... Why the hell should I think about all that crap and not just make a character with giant tits and call it a day?
That is because during the story that character will speak, and the way she speaks and what she says should always be coherent. A 30 minutes release will take you a month or more to make, and... Well, 30 minutes for the player to play. During that month you might forget the character said "I hate alcohol because my drunk father beat me up", and make a scene where they enjoy getting wasted with everything the tavern has to offer. That would be quite the unintended development in just 30 minutes of gameplay.
Of course you could make the fair point that everyone will skip the story anyway, and you'd be right.


-Remember the technical details? This category of the GDD should go indepth with all the systems, if any. Of course write this only once you know for a fact that you need an inventory, otherwise you will just waste your time. If your character has levels, this category should contain all the math regarding how much experience you get, when/how he levels up, what each stat does, and so on. In short, make all that ugly mess have a format easy to follow so programming it all will be less of a nightmare (but do not worry, that won't prevent bugs).


-Target Audience: What are the planned fetishes? Is your game ass and you want, rightfully so, only have anal scenes? Do you want to experience High School-level of bullism once again and add NTR in your game? All games have their own audience, so have a clear idea in this category.
Just keep in mind that if you do not understand a fetish, you will hardly be able to write anything good. No point in writing gore if you have to keep puking in and out of your bucket on each sentence.


-Development timeline: This is the most important part for you, and the one you will be updating and changing frequently as the development of your game progresses. Your initial goals won't be the same as the ones mid-development, or towards the end. This category (with some experience) will allow you to plan release dates with little room for mistakes.
The development of a game is divided into tasks, and these tasks depend on the genre of game you are developing.

Let's assume you are fucking insane and decided to develop a game on Unity, one where the player has to walk around to get somewhere (as if walking simulators in RPGM weren't enough), the tasks for this would be the following: Coding and testing input (with all of its devices), coding the player movement and finetuning it, creating the character, animating the character.
If you are sane and you are developing a scenario for a Visual Novel, the tasks would be divided as such: Writing the scripts (Commenting where each character/CG goes, and how), create/pose the characters, create/animate cgs, replace the comments with the assets, test.
This is by no means the correct order, or the only way. Everyone has their own way to do things, some prefer to create the assets first.
The important thing to keep in mind is that a "task" should be small, "Creating day 1 of my visual novel" is not a task, but a goal. Tasks are all the small elements that compose your goal.

Once you know how to decompose your goals into tasks, you will also realize the scope of your project.
"Creating day 1 of my visual novel" sounds really simple, until you write down all the tasks it takes to realize that.
There is no shame in realizing and admitting that the tasks of your dream game are too many, just simplify it until you are confident that you can manage your project without the risk of burning out.


STEP II - Ren'py is the only way.
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Did your Game Design Document include some cool RPG mechanics, or a deep world full of lore where you get to explore countless locations?
Do you think RPGM would be a great choice? Well, screw you.

Ren'Py is the only way, so scrap your walking simulator dreams and use Ren'Py like normal people.

.

.

Just use Ren'Py and do not waste your time with other Game Engines.
You can do everything with Ren'Py, seriously, just use Ren'Py.
Ren'Py is great because if you know what you are doing, it is very powerful yet it is simple enough for everyone to begin using, you could make your game while being drunk and it would still run, do you really want to make a porn game while sober?

and let me explain how to use it.

first of all you put the folder somewhere anywhere is good probably the desktop is the best so everytme you turn on your pc you are reminded you should make your game and stop millking your patrons why are you doin gnaything else but making your game?
open renpy (double click) and click create new projectpress continue enter the name of your project be creative and pick something unique that will tell what your game is about like milfy harem or virgin mommies because incest is ok but if not everyone is virgin then your game is ntr so make sure to pick a good name and press continue.
choose a resolution renpy suggests 1280x720 but we're in 2023 so at least pick 1920x1080 dont pick some weird resolutions and regret it later on and make 10000 tech updates to switch to 16:9 be normal from the start and continue.
pick your favcourite color and continue.
wait until renpy is done creating your project and then on edit file pick "open project" it has many directories so here is a brief dexcription of each thing there is game which is the root audio is where you put all the music like avril lavigin and other music people wold love to listen while playing your game and also sound effects lik aaah ohhhh eeeee to spam while playing sex scenes to add extra realism women during sex scream all the time irl i saw that in a porn then there is gui which is where you put all the user interfaces but youre not going to add anything unique i hope so you'll just access it to edit existing interface like message box so you can turn it from black to pink which is a nicer color or you an google a better messagebox or something then there is images where you can put all your renders and characters please use webp and webm because png is too heavy and i dont wan tto download 1000gb updates my connection is slow and i want to fap now make it as small as possible but people will still compress your game down to oblivion just pray it still works afterwards else you will get hundreds of reports saying your game is crashing but it wasnt even your fault to begin with then theres tl but that's useless on gui.rpy you can edit all the colors fonts and alignment of the ui options.rpy you can change the game title version make sure it is 0.00001 at first so people know you just started and put false on has voice because voice actors cost too much you can also change tittle music and put avril lavigin you put on music earlier you can do a lot of thing s on options so read it thoughtly it is pretty useful scren.rpy is too comple just leave it as it is and lets skip straight to script.rpy where the game starts the new project has already an example of how a scene works which is pretty cool try adding something new yourself press saavve and launch the project inr enpy to test your changes out

This is pretty much it.



STEP III - It doesn't work
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If your game doesn't work, do not waste your time googling or looking for a solution yourself, just make a thread and anne O'nymous will be summoned and promptly fix your game for you, just copy/paste the code he gives you without second thought and continue until you encounter the next problem and repeat the process, eventually you will have your game ready to be released.


STEP IV - Porn
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Great, you have a game you can run with a lot of text that everyone will skip, but where is the porn?

As a talentless individual, drawing is too hard, so give up on the dream of having 2DCG unless you want your game to have stick figures.
You are to poor to hire artists, and the free ones will ghost you and you cant have some abstract game with each scene looking different from the other, and do not even think of AI, everyone will hate you if you touch AI.
You might be tempted to download DAZ like all the other devs before you, but your pc sucks and can barely turn on, so what do you do?
DOWNLOAD KOIKATSU

Yes it is a game, and yes you will use it to make your own game.
Don't question it.

Open CharaStudio, create your scene, press F11 to take a screenshot render, go on UserData/cap to retrieve your screenshot, rename it to something simple and then move it to your game's root/images.
Now your game can have images, even if you lack talent and your pc is a potato.

If you want to take the extra step and have animations instead, once you have completd your scene, press CTRL+E to open the video exporter, it should look like this:
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Pick VP8 or if you do not care about compatibility just go for VP9.
Edit the size from Screenshot Manager (F1) if you find it too slow, otherwise that is a good resolution to resize down to 1920x1080 (for AA).
Once everything looks ok, start recoding. You will find the animation in: UserData/VideoExport. Frames contain the frames if you want to make the WebM yourself, and the output contains the WebM file ready for use. It is a good idea to use first.

Go on your game's folder, create a folder called "Movies", drop your WebM file inside, then use the following line to define it:
image animatedPorn = Movie(play="Movies/tittyporn.webm")
Then use it as you would with a normal image.
The end result should look like this:

Python:
define e = Character("Eileen")
image animatedPorn = Movie(play="Movies/tittyporn.webm")

label start:
    scene animatedPorn

    e "Ahhh!"

    e "Ahh! Ahhh! Ahhh!"

    e "Ahhh... Is this over yet?"

    e "It took me like 5 minutes to create that scene, let me type Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahh! a few more times... Ahhh!"

    e "A little more... The player should watch this scene as much as possible after all the effort i put into this!"

    e "Ahhh... Ahhh!"

    e "I wonder if this is enough..."

    e "A few more to make sure, otherwise this update might seem way too short..."

    return

Now your game is ready for distribution!
Go back on Ren'py, press "Build Distribution" select the platforms you want to build for, then build!
Your 0.00001 is ready to bless these forums, !
 

tropicalstorm

Newbie
Feb 20, 2019
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I'm sure this wasn't on purpose but you didn't touch on the balance of what tasks are best accomplished with the powerful pre-nut drive(character design?) and what is best left for post nut clarity(scoping decisions?). :unsure:

In all seriousness though, thanks for post! The GDD in particular helped me really put me get past the "i want to make a game but where to start" phase and break it down into accomplishable tasks.
 

ade4u

Newbie
Mar 27, 2024
18
172
many years ago i tryed do something with renpy, but then i came exactly to this point "STEP III - It doesn't work" and "realizing that the tasks of your dream game are too many"...
Thank you for this post, may be my mistake was that i didnt make clear structure about what would i actually like to do.. and just follow the tasks step by step..
so, may be.. your post gives me some more motivation to start again ;)
 

Winterfire

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Sep 27, 2018
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many years ago i tryed do something with renpy, but then i came exactly to this point "STEP III - It doesn't work" and "realizing that the tasks of your dream game are too many"...
Thank you for this post, may be my mistake was that i didnt make clear structure about what would i actually like to do.. and just follow the tasks step by step..
so, may be.. your post gives me some more motivation to start again ;)
This is (mostly) an april fool's thread, but I made a serious guide for beginners here: https://f95zone.to/threads/a-beginners-guide-on-how-to-make-a-game.200327/ it might be of more help if you ever decide to start again.
 

anne O'nymous

I'm not grumpy, I'm just coded that way.
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many years ago i tryed do something with renpy, but then i came exactly to this point "STEP III - It doesn't work" and "realizing that the tasks of your dream game are too many"...
Well, now you're a member here, so you've a way to pass over that step.
 

geriatre

Member
Aug 22, 2016
496
665
Great guide!

It's nice to see advice on all aspects of game making, tailored to the talentless individual who doesn't know anything, can't draw or spend $5000 on a rendering machine.
 
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