[Edu-sig] Ren'Py and Visual Novels games

[francois schnell]

Hello,

What about visual novels ?

according to a Wikipedia article [1]:

"""
A visual novel is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static
graphics, usually with anime-style art. As the name might suggest, they
resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant stage plays. Visual novels are
classified as a sub-genre of adventure games, referred to as AVGs in Japan.
Visual novels are especially prevalent in Japan, where they make up nearly
70% of PC games released.
"""
This kind of game are still rare in the EU and US market but they are now
coming with title like "Phoenix Wright" [2] and "Hotel Dusk"  [3]  for the
Nintendo GBA and/or DS.

I'm not myself a regular 'user' of these games but  they could be
interesting to consider :

- they encourage reading (but in a colorful and multimedia context which
helps comprehension)
- the kid read at their own pace
- it's also often possible to integrate minigames in the Visual Novel itself
- user interaction is usually required with different endings

Obviously  for kids the best educational and fun part is to actual make
their own Visual Novel (possibly in a collaborative way):

- imagine  a story  to share if possible with different choices
- learn to draw (characters ?) or take pictures of
landscapes/scenes/characters or use existing contents
- use/create some sound/music
- share it with other kids


Few hours ago while browsing pygame.org  I stumble on Ren'Py framework that
I didn't noticed before (they've released a new  version -  0.6 - few days
ago). See www.renpy.org.  I've tested the Demo novel (which explain how it
works in a Visual Novel itself) and looked at the website,

I like:

- very neat end result and nice UI to select, load or edit the script of a
Visual Novel
- Open Source and Multiplateforme and Python/Pygame based
- possibility to include directly some Python code in the easy to learn
Ren'Py scripts (a '$' prefix for a single line or 'python:' for a block of
code)
- possibility to integrate pygame minigames in the novel (there's a Pong
game in the Demo novel)
- good documentation, cookbook, etc
- distribution tool of the visual novels
- lively community on their forum

I've also noticed someone in the forum 'remaking' a chapter of the original
"Phoenix Wright" (with Ren'Py and some Python extras) : it looks to me very
near to the quality of the original Nintendo version (with items and people
management tool also nicely integrated).[4]

So far I like what I've seen :)

francois


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novels
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Wright
[3] http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72702-0.html?tw=wn_columns_6
[4]
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1767&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=wright&start=0
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