Happy 2026! Here’s my first painting of the year: location visdev for my personal gamedev project, The Wishing Stone! This is Dalterra, the main setting for the story. 🐉
I’ve been keeping a lot of my TWS work under wraps but I need to update my visdev portfolio with non-NDA work, of which I have a LOT (animation and game studios…please hire me? Cough 😅)
I also need to design a few things for this project of mine, so expect to see a few more TWS posts over the coming weeks.
My main goal for this piece was to work out the design elements of the city, as well as the colors and general location. I also had fun working out shape language for the trees and rocks. I’ll use this as inspiration later for the game’s pixel art.
can i ask about your vn process? like what are you using to make it (or coding from scratch?) and how are you structuring the process of making the script and sprites? i'm planning to make my own vn for my ocs but i'm not sure where to start
Oh gosh, this will probably be a long post, but I will start by giving the short answer and give the longer answer on a read more:
Short Answer: I did mock-ups, then wrote the entire script, did a test build on Ren'Py to figure out if it all works out, and now im slowly drawing all the final assets while implementing the full story onto Ren'Py. (Right now I have about 1/4 of the story already in the program!)
Long Answer / General Tips and Advice
First off, a bit of background: I'm a multimedia major, a designer, and have worked as a game dev for half a year. I have even done a postgrad in creative programming, so I have a lot more experience with these types of tools than most.
General starting tips:
- Learn to use GitHub, I have used it in the industry and in classes, everytime you change something in a game, you want to back it up, on the github server so when things break (which they will) you can return to an older version
- Play games on the engine you want to use; that is the best way to know exactly what that engine is capable of and what's likely available as tutorials somewhere.
- You can use things other than Ren'Py, a friend of mine is using Tyrano Builder for her projects due to being scared of Python. Or you can even use RPG Maker, which I've used in the past and is quite fun.
- There's no shame in a small 1k word test before committing to a long game you can use what you learn for later (but do try to be insane about it otherwise you will procrastinate, the reason I haven't made a game for my OCs but am doing one for Shuake is because... well, I'm insane about Shuake.) Also it's playing games in the engine you want to use that will inspire you to the type of things you can include in your game.
-If you do commit to working on Ren'py, write your script in this format:
c "dialogue"
(c=character initial) It will save you a lot of time since you can just copy paste this whole thing into ren'py script and then just need to write changing emotions / scenes (there's an example further down)
Now, onto the actual process thus far, you can see most of it if you scroll through my blog.
These were my first mockups, but that doesn't mean you need to commit to them either; in fact, this is what the final battle screen looks like:
Don't be scared of changing your mind as you work on the game; things will come naturally, and changing things because you have a better idea is usually a good thing. But a base idea is always good to fall back on.
After I was set on this idea, I immediately decided to write the entire script (20k words) I don't know if I can advise this if it's your first project, especially if it's long or if you have very, very complex ideas, because if you want to do something unique with the gameplay, you should test your code first to know if you can commit to that idea and not have to rewrite it later.
This is what my script looked like once I was done: Color coding can be useful to guide yourself but it's personal taste
Then I moved onto reading the script aloud by myself/with friends to check for janky dialogue (which I'm still fixing) while also working on the code, you can see all my code working here, with just sample text. It's also important to use sketches when you are just testing; don't spend hours on an asset you don't know if you will get the chance to use.
Ren'py isn't hard to learn; in fact, one of the only programming languages I never learned was Python (what Ren'py uses) and I have had not much difficulty adjusting to it since it's quite a simple one; for example, once you have most things set up, it's as simple as this:
The only things I've had to code/change from a default ren'py project are adjusting textboxes to be images instead, the position of the characters on the screen, and unique menus for choices.
You can also change fonts and colors, but all that code is already built into the default. Honestly, try it out, poke around, and you will get the hang of it. You can find a tutorial for anything you want to change somewhere on forums/reddit/other communities. There's even a Ren'py manual that taught me about how Callbacks work, and it's how I got my characters to make little bleep noises when they speak.
So yeah, I'm at the point where now I'm just slowly finishing all the artwork (since there will be a lot of it) and copying all the text onto ren'py. And considering I've only been working on it for a month and had to take a break for 1.5 weeks, I would say it's been a pretty smooth process and less scary than one might imagine!
Anyway, I hope this helps! I'm no Ren'Py expert, of course, but I know my way around organizing my work at the very least.
As to where you should start: Have an idea, draw some mockups, play games in the engine you want to use, mess around in the engine long enough to know you can use it successfully, write the script, and so on.
Good luck, and if you have any other questions, feel free to reach out! <3
they call her 007
0 aura
0 hype moments
7 breakdowns about how much she wants to kiss her maid
in other news i've almost finished coding my cute comedy yuri vn the demon queen's dire dilemma, you can wishlist it on steam here!
This is the result of a sprite anatomy study for my horse herd game WildHerds!
Dev Snippet:
The initial horse sketch leaned heavily into a stylized, leggy form that felt expressive but didn’t quite align with the grounded realism I wanted. The body shape, leg length, and face eyes need to be reworked. After sharing the sketch with other artists and receiving some thoughtful feedback, I took a step back and reworked the base using a more structured approach.
This time, I focused on blocking out key shapes: head, barrel, legs, neck, tail using basic color blocks and wireframe lines. This allowed me to adjust proportions without losing the anatomical flow that makes a horse feel alive. Once I was happy, I created a full turnaround sketch to establish body consistency and to see how it looked!
The October vibes are HITTIN, so I'm going to try daily posting my gamedev shenanigans again. Let's see if I can keep it up for the rest of the year. Please bear with me this first week as I finish making my programming language. 😅
So the programming language I'm working on is named "SillyScript". It's intended for scripting scenes in my games by generating JSON that the game interprets. It's technically more of a markup-language disguised as a traditional coding language.
You define common JSON structures using "def" that can then be repeated. Each scope represents either an array or dictionary based on whether the entries are labeled. So "lines of code" equate to array entries.
Also making a whole interactable demo for the documentation cause why not. The compiler is written in Haxe allowing me to export it as a JavaScript library that runs entirely on the frontend, making it just a liiiiiittle easier.
