Visual Novel in RPG MAKER

[ocimpean]

Greetings

I am looking to decide what software to invest money and time (learning) for a future project (VN with RPG elements).
Idealy he software should support: importing and displaying animated backgrounds, transparent layers, multiple characters on and off screen, music, transitions, text, different ways to display it on screen. Also ability to display video files would be nice.
I have used Ren'Py, and I like it, Unity with LDC plugin looks very, very interesting, and it seems Construct and Game Maker have some possibilities. How about RPGMaker?

[Kio Kurashi]

the backgrounds being animated and transparent parts: no not really. everything else: yes.

[GaryCXJk]

RPG Maker VX Ace uses Ogg Theora as their supported video format.

[Marmalade Chainsaw]

Well, for animated backgrounds/transparency, depending on what you're doing with it, you could use events or overlay pictures on top of the maps, off the top of my head.

[ocimpean]

Thank you, so how Ogg video can be used as intro or as backgrounds, or overlays, like rain?

[Archeia]

It's unfortunately impossible to do movies as overlays like in renpy. Nor can you skip movie cutscenes while it's playing for some reason. I'm not sure if there's a script for that just yet, but I'll ask around.

It's possible to make a visual novel tho! I made one with my friend if you are interested to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8YeC6V2KOs

[ocimpean]

@Archeia: Thank you for posting the video, it is impressive work and I would like to congratulate you.
Regarding the scenes, you have a background then you overlayed a png for the text box and the characters come on separate layers, that you animate in and out, yes? And you put eveything together in RPGMaker? Nice. Will you inegrate also some turn based action with it?

[mongoose018]

well there's a program called novelty to make visual novel

[ocimpean]

Novelty is outputing just for the web if I am correct?

Also, the main idea is to have an easier integration with the RPG engine, so you can have TB fights and nice screens with dialog and info inbetween. Also multiple exports would be nice. Novelty is point and click but a little bit more limited then Ren'Py. This is why I was trying to see if RPG maker would alow me to import some custom graphics, animations nd sound and do my project. It is an investment in time and energy that is going into learning a new program.

[Archeia]

Originally posted by ocimpean:

@Archeia: Thank you for posting the video, it is impressive work and I would like to congratulate you.
Regarding the scenes, you have a background then you overlayed a png for the text box and the characters come on separate layers, that you animate in and out, yes? And you put eveything together in RPGMaker? Nice. Will you inegrate also some turn based action with it?

I set the background as a parallax (much easier that way). The Text Box is a picture. Though you can have a script that does that automatically in VXAce (this was vx and purely evented). And yes they're all separate layers in a sense and I just move picture them around. You do all of this in RPG Maker. I used to do them like this:
http://puu.sh/4cOyN/c1ade6aaa4.png
http://puu.sh/4cOzv/261444067f.png
http://puu.sh/4cOAf/7a0a00b716.png
http://puu.sh/4cOAF/65f273ec8a.png

You can do them a lot more efficiently now with VXAce and this is just my old method back in VX. But honestly, once you get it, it's easy. The battle system is easy to integrate on stuff like that. I had this as a battle system: http://puu.sh/4cOCh/334ff0e682.jpg

The cursor there is a mouse. But yeah, mouse is your only major problem as a whole in terms of applying since, well, mouse systems had always been a pain.

Your biggest problem tho is the mouse wouldn't react if there are other heavy programs running, eg. photoshop.

[ocimpean]

@Archeia: So you use Show pictures, Move pictures and Erase picture, if I managed to understand corectly.
After reading through your examples I went on the RPGMaker site and I checked on the forums, there are indeed some battle engines that were made available by the cummunity that I would like to try, but I did not see nothing for Visual Novels :) so I guess in the end you have to hack your way in, so to speak.
Thank you for taking time to write and post the examples.
ocimpean