Hello everyone!

So recently I had a dream and it kinda got stuck in my head. For the last few weeks I've been building on this idea and it's turned into kind of a story that I feel would work well as a Renpy game. I am slowly trying to learn the system, my other project is RPG Maker based, but I thought maybe somebody who is good at using Renpy might be interested in helping out too. Or at least weighing in on if they think the idea is even worth moving forward on.

Basic plot is this:
Samus Aran is hired to transport a prisoner in secret to a deep space facility. This prisoner is half Allurian, or as people like to call them, a Siren. Allurian's are a race who supposedly can seduce anyone and anything, having multiple hypnotic like abilities. To keep the mission secret, Samus is transporting the prisoner alone. They never arrive at the facility because they are attacked and end up stranded. The main game would take place over roughly 60 days or so. You would have the option to play as Samus, or Garren the half breed. As Samus, your goal would be to resist Garren's abilities until you can complete your mission. As Garren, your goal would be to have Samus succumb to your powers and escape, preferably with her as your new thrall.

I have written out a large part of the main story, and if anyone is interested in reading it to let me know what they think and if they thinkit's something they would like to help in Renpy with, let me know and I'll send the story over.

If it doesn't sound like anything anybody would enjoy, well, I'll only have wasted writing time on it lol.

Thanks, all!

is garren female? will there be sexytimes if garren is successful? if yes to both, then i like this idea and woudl be happy to read it, but i dont know renpy at all so i coudlnt help

Does Garren have to be played as a douchebag? Because it'd be more interesting to have an MC'er actually be affable.

Who or what is going to be doing the art for the project?

You lost me at Samus Aran. Making fangames of licensed characters has never been my thing, but lets set that aside for a moment.

I've actually made a Ren'Py game. I got about 50% of it complete when the artist I had working for me got overburdened and could no longer continue. (She made some of the art. I made some of it. I had another guy doing backgrounds) Things being what they were I had to cease development. I couldn't match the art style of the artist I had been working with, and trying to make all the art needed by myself is a hell I don't wish to experience.

What I'm getting at is if you want to make a good game from your idea, it's going to be a lot of work.

Currently Garren is being written as a male. Though I see no reason why a choice can’t be made to have the character be female either. But not being proficient with Renpy, I also don’t know if that could create problems.



The way Garren is shaping up, I don’t feel like he is a douchbag lol. Actually the way the story is shaping up, the more jerkish choices I could imagine tend to cause more problems for the player than anything. As for art, I haven’t decided but I have looked at a few artists that I thought might work out well. If anyone has suggestions though, I’m open.



Yeah sorry, Samus has been one of my favorites for a very long time. I’m sure there will be a lot of work involved, and considering I’m only at the writing stage, I can’t see anything being done quickly. But I’m curious right now if it’s even worth pursuing.

Thank you everyone for responding! I posted on another site asking about this and so far have been ignored lol. It’s encouraging even just having a few people take notice.

My personal preferences aside let me answer your question with some more questions:

Ren'py is a visual novel engine. Making appealing art is essential for a Ren'py game to succeed. Can you make appealing art? If not do you have a reliable artist who can accept a big commitment?

Are you willing to spend long hours working on this? What I mean by that is it will take you hours to code and test 5 minutes of game play. Also thorough testing means going over every scene, every dialog option, with a fine toothed comb, several times.

If you can answer yes to these questions, then by all means go for it.

Care to go into detail of choices given? I'm curious.

Are you married to the idea of Ren'Py? Why not Visual Novel Maker or Tyrano Builder?

Google those, you might like them.

@Allister: I tried to learn to draw when I was younger but I sadly don’t think I had the talent or the time to put into it to be good enough. I’ll need an artist to at least make the character sprites. I’m generally a fan of The artist my avatar is from, but I’m still looking at different artists and styles.
As for coding, I spent over an hour with renpy trying to get a back ground picture to appear and failed horribly lol. I’m not good at coding at all, hence why I am hoping for help. Writing is my better forte, although I definitely need more practice with more intimant scenes. But I’m willing to learn and help wherever I can, including learning renpy’s coding, but I would need a lot of help to learn it I think.

@Contorted:
Beyond the main choice of choosing character:
If playing as Samus: your goal is to repair the ship, defend it from attacks, and avoid falling under Garren’s control. But you also have to work together with him to survive, so she can’t just keep him locked up. Also, other ships are looking to catch you or kill you. So he needs to be autonomous enough to help in his more specialized field, but not be free to just waltz in and control Samus’ mind. An example would be, another ship has infected the ship Samus and Garren are on with a virus meant to erase Samus’ mind and have her kill Garren herself. Garden is the only one who can safely stop it. How much control of the computer system should Samus give him? It’s also worth noting that at this point Samus’ suit is connected physically to the ship to keep the power going. So too much access and he might be able to sabotage her suit as well. Too little access, and he won’t be able to stop the virus and Samus will eventually be caught by it and turned into a threat.
For Garren’s choices: he obviously wants to escape, so that’s his primary goal. But Samus is special with her Chozo training and can resist most of his powers if he isn’t subtle enough. So first he has to build trust. Most of his abilities are locked at present also, but he does have some mental abilities to begin the process. He has to be careful how far he pushes Samus so she doesn’t notice, but also make sure not to tire himself out prematurely. For the virus scenario, if he does a good job planning out how to catch it, maybe he can contain it instead and rewrite it to subtly work for him. Or hack into Samus’ armor to have it work subliminally on her whenever she is wearing it. The more her corrupts Samus, and the more trust he builds, opportunities will appear for him to use his other abilities, after figuring out how to subvert Samus’ restraints on said abilities.

Such abilities are, as mentioned, telepathic powers or persuasion. Allurians also can exude pheromones to put their targets more at ease. Their voice is incredibly hypnotic, as are their eyes. To protects against this, Garren has a collar that restricts the vocal range of his voice, nano fiber contacts to block the hypnotic effect of his eyes, and a body suit that keeps his pheromones from getting out. The hood of which also blocks the majority of his psychic abilities. But not all of it, which is his ace in the hole, so to speak.

Does that give a better idea?

@LiliyTank:

Oh good idea. Thanks I’ll look into those especially if they are easier than renpy

I'll let you in on a little secret: I don't really know how to code either.

However a BIG point in Ren'Py's favor is both extensive documentation on how to make code work, and a forum that can flat out walk you through how to make code work for you.

The code in Ren'Py's tutorial game is enough to make a basic visual novel.

Of course for me I added an animated rotating spiral, visual transitions, etc when I was making my game.

In fact I wonder if there's interest in a game that features hypnosis and lesbian bondage? Because those are big parts of the game I was making.

I was actually using the tutorial, trying so hard to get the picture to appear! Lol, I'm really that bad at it. I'll probably sit down and try to work it out next opportunity I get, because I'm kinda let down in myself that I couldn't even get a simple back ground image to load.

At the top of the script file:

# Declare images below this line, using the image statement.
image BACKGROUND= "images/BG.jpg"

BG.jpg needs to be in the directory you're pointing to. Typically the images folder

To insert it into a scene:

scene BACKGROUND

That will display the background. If not check to make sure the image is in the directory that the code thinks it's in.

Also as this board's formatting does not perserve multiple spaces, make sure "scene BACKGROUND" is indented properly.

Wow, that was a bit more extensive than what I was expecting! But not a bad thing. You've really have given this a lot of thought than most would have for a fan game and I admire that.

I’ll have to try again when I get the chance and see what I can do to make it work. Ten tries and failing on something as basic as that was not encouraging lol.



Well working on another project with rpg maker has helped also. I figure there could also be several different endings for both characters as well.

Like?