Beginner Friendly Tutorials - Gameplay, Programming, Scripting, and Storywriting

TyranoBuilder is a very simple, easy, and user-friendly engine for anyone looking to create visual novels, but for those without much experience with scripting, bug tests, and the game industry in general, creating your first game can be daunting!

This tutorial aims to be an expansive collection of tutorials that will go over different aspects of the TyranoBuilder engine as well as the concepts and theory behind a Visual Novel. This will, eventually, include tutorials on:
-TB's innovative TyranoScript
-The Javascript capabilities
-The tags for TB's scripting language
-Creating example games to display gameplay mechanics in a working state
-Theory on writing story and gameplay for Visual Novels
-Storybuilding exercises
-Simple design concepts
-Basic gameplay tutorials for minigames, interractive stories, and ensuring your game remains a game...

...as well as any other tutorial videos I can think of. As well, you can always ask me for help or assistance on something- if you're having difficutlies, you can bet that someone else is as well.

ABOUT ME

If you're wondering if I've got the know-how for tutorials on creating games, I can give you a brief resume. I'm currently, as of April 2016, in my last quarter at school majoring in Visual and Game Programming, a Bacherlor's in Computer Science if I'm correct. I've worked in teams to relicate real-world developer teams to make complicated and difficult levels, and I've even lead the Programming team on a project to create (from scratch) an Alien Isolation level in 11 weeks. I currently hold a position as Software Engineer for a small sporting goods company, and while I've yet to publish any games (mostly due to being entirely a programmer and not really having the patience for pursue art), I've definitely got enough projects in my figurative portfolio, finished or no.

06/29/2019 Update

This is an update to explain what's going on with the TyranoBuilder guide- I lost quite a few of the videos while moving tutorials over to a dedicated tutorial channel. Most of them were old and quite pixelated, and no longer relevant to the most up to date version of TyranoBuilder. Moving forward, I'm going to post the more up to date versions of my tutorials, plus some remakes. Hope this was helpful, and I apologize for the lateness in fixing this guide!

Updated Beginner Tutorials: Setting Up A Project v1.8

This was initially recorded in 2018, a full year from this post, but it doesn't appear that any major details have changed enough to make this video no longer relevant. If that's not the case, let me know and I'll upload a video talking about any new changes to the Story node section!

Updated Beginner Tutorials: Text vs Text (Old) v1.8

(Recorded in 2018)

In this video, we're going over the difference between Text and Text(old). Seemingly minimal differences, but a very good explanation also of why you pretty much should just use Text. If you're planning on using markup to change stuff around, honestly I'd suggest using the TyranoText or iScript nodes, or at least setting your text node to Do Nothing.

Updated Beginner Tutorials: Page Break v1.8

A tutorial explaining the very basic use of Page Break. This is a pretty short tutorial honestly, and may get some addendums as we go along. It's a very simple node to use pretty much.

Updated Beginner Tutorials: Branch, Label, Jump, Stop v1.8

(Recorded in 2018)

In this video, we break down the nodes Branch, Label, Jump, and Stop in as basic a format as possible. These nodes are very often used in tandem and with each other.

Updated Beginner Tutorials: Call and Return v1.8

(Recorded in 2018)

In this tutorial, we'll be going over the Call and Return nodes. These nodes are my particular favorite because of how much time they can save, and how clean they can make your project. Be aware of how clean I keep everything, going so far as to create brand new scenes for the functions I'm creating to be used by the Call/Return functions. I apologize if I'm going to0 fast, by the way, I'm a quick learner myself and like to make fast tutorials!

Mini Tutorial: Adding Character Faces to the Text Box

Someone asked me a question involving images, and it got me thinking about how one might do this- placing a character's face by a text box. Similar to how RPG Maker handles it. I'll post an image of what I was going off of below:


As you can see, there's an image of the character to the left of the text with changing facial expressions. The issue I faced was that right now, I'm uncertain how to make character images or other foreground images either display on top of the message layer or underneath the message layer; it seems that, for now, that's uneditable.

What I did instead, though it may be a little complicated to have to deal with, is cheated the system. Right now, Image Buttons will ALWAYS appear above the message layer; it's uncertain if this will remain so in the future, but if you make a character into an image button- reupload all of their faceplates and whatnot into a new folder within the image button folder- these will display above the message box. It will look like this:


Obviously I didn't edit this image to just be the character, and I created a custom message box in order to go along with this new setting. This involved moving text around so that the name text was in the correct spot and that the normal text didn't go outside of the window.

However, because this is no longer a character but an image button, there are a few things you'll have to deal with. It will change the mouse cursor so players think they can click on it, even if you make it lead nowhere- I have tested it and this will not reload the scene, thankfully- and you can't simply change the expression of the image. You'll need to remove it completely and place another image on top of it, possibly removing other image buttons or images in the scene, which would potentially be a really big problem. You can always layer images on top of each other, but then your scene begins to get cluttered and you've got a LOT of images on top of each other. Make sure also that your characters and images are all the same height and width so that when you place them, you can put them all the same location and not need a whole lot of debugging.

This is probably a temporary tutorial, until something gets added to make this different or the message layer for image buttons is changed. If you've any questions or suggestions, please feel free to ask below, I promise I don't bite!

Basic Traversible Overworld / Character Stat Events v1.8.2

This is the most up to date tutorial I've done in TyranoBuilder as of 06/29/2019. In this tutorial, I'll be showing you guys how to put together a relative overworld concept that is traversible within TyranoBuilder's vanilla, built in abilities. This will allow your players to select areas, worlds, locations, and travel around based on what you're allowing them to do. As well, I go over a possible action you can use alongside this mechanic that will give your games some pizzazz in the stats and strategy department.

One thing to note is that by habit, I declared my variables at the top of the screen outside of TyranoBuilder's built in variable interface and node system. While my method works fine, the following two images will give you a basic idea of what it would look like to translate my variable process into TB's built in system. I can always do an additional video showcasing this if necessary!

[Luposian]

I'm working on a "Revisit" to an old Apple II graphic/text adventure. In the intro, the king gives you and your companion each a bag of gold coins. Let's assume 100 coins each. How would you store that value in the game? As I'm not a programmer, using Javascript/Tyranoscript/whatever is a bit over my head, especially, if it requires creating separate files and whatnot. However, I was able to incorporate a function "[r]" within the text field (not as shown in examples I looked up, but I figured out how to make it work), so I'm wondering if other functions (say, a variable) can also be executed within the text field or other command.

[Clapstain]

Thanks for this guide. Do you know if there is a way to make video loop until you click to advance to next screen?

[TheMusicalBoy93]

@Darkivika Are you still continuing your tutorials? I've been watching the videos you have so far, and I'm hoping to continue working on a project I've started recently. One thing I'm dying to learn how to do is how to add a minigame into a visual novel

[Taco El Gato Comics]

@Darkivika Thank you for being so quick to respond! I'm sorry it took this long for me.

Yes, well, I have a branching story with 3 separate characters so the game is pretty big. It's got about 30 scenes right now and there is about 20 sound effect and music. I don't know how to remove scenes though. I would like to. maybe even combine some because I have scenes what are very short. Where do I find the size of the game?

Thank you very much!

[Darkovika]

@Taco El Gato Comics hopefully this reaches you, trying to respond directly as best I can! That's an interesting problem. Out of curiosity, so I can get a clear idea of how big your game is, how many scenes do you have? How many images approximately a re you using? Sound files will also take up a TON of space. There may be some issues with needing to clear the stack. About how long would you say the game is? If you're able to see the size of the project, do you know how big it is?

[Taco El Gato Comics]

@Darkovika Hi! I've watched all your videos on YouTube and I just found you on here! Awesome! You are super helpful! Thank you!

I do have a direct question for you...so I am trying to export my demo and I am having trouble with it. The browser export worked but it is very slow when it is being played too. For the windows and mac export, it never stops exporting. I kept it running all night long even! Ha ha! I tried to get rid of images I don't need and replaced it with smaller images. I tired doing the tyrano node and tyranoscript...I honestly don't know what I am doing, I'm not a programmer. I also can't get rid of scenes or files i'd like to delete from tyranobuilder for the game that might be a problem but I can't find a way. Do you have any solutions?

Thank you! Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Sekhmet_]

Thank you so much!

[Darkovika]

@Sekhmet_ I think I know what you mean! Okay, so you could do this with a variable or even a boolean. Technically if you do this with booleans you risk having to create boolean values for every single dialogue option, which isn't very optimized design. If you're looking for a simple solution, booleans will do it.

Basically, you create a simple, temporary boolean variable. Let's say you have a dialogue option in the scene for "Are you hungry?" You make a boolean variable called "scene1_areYouHungry" or you know, something that CLEARLY means the variable is for that question in that scene. Set the value to false. When the player clicks the button a first time, set the boolean to true. When they click it a second time, have an if statement that checks if the boolean is true, and if it is, display the second response. I hope this made sense!!

[Sekhmet_]

Okay I guess I am really too stupid but do you maybe know how I can like if I click at the same dialogue option a second time the the answer will be different then from the first one?

[アキ君]

Is there a way to fade imagine buttons in on the title screen? I am a total beginner when it comes to tyranoscript and I have zero talent when it comes to coding. The explanations on the official site feel like they are written in a language I don't understand and they lack examples of how the tags are implemented. Despair.