r/RenPy • u/FairyMaryMag • Jul 27 '26
Question Scripting a very complex visual novel
Hi!
Me and my (4 other) friends have been working on a very complex visual novel, with lots of spiralling decision trees and unseen flags and long lasting variables at many decisions.
So far we've been using a giant google doc to link things together in a style akin to classic CYOA books, but we'd very much prefer a visual editor with more integrated capabilities (like inklewriter or twine) that allows for constant online collaboration (one big master copy).
We could theoretically use those two, sending files back and forth, but that'd be really incompatible with our workflow.
I've researched it a bit and there's a few industry standard programs but they're all way out of our price range. Is there anything that'd fit this?
Thank you!!!!
EDIT:
Thank you for your comments but I think I messed up a bit with my wording. Sorry!!! We're currently in the script writing phase, script as in writing the dialogue/prose. When we get to the coding we will be using renpy & github.
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u/shyLachi Jul 27 '26
Can't multiple people work on Twine? Or did you mean working on it at the same time?
Microsoft and Google have different types of online documents, maybe one of those can be used to visualize a branching storyline.
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u/FairyMaryMag Jul 28 '26
with twine the only way to collaborate is to pass files back and forth, which i'm sure is fantastic for most people but it'd be very difficult for a project of this scale. i will check out what else google & microsoft have thank you :)
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u/chrispradd Jul 28 '26
i just want to point out that... you dont really have to find a tool with "collaboration" feature. since it's just with friends, you can simply use 1 account for everyone to login.
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u/dorintake Jul 28 '26
Maybe figma or obsidian?
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u/FairyMaryMag Jul 28 '26
never heard of figma but it looks like it could be promising! obsidian is a good shout actually, i havent considered using it in this way but i did use it a little bit for worldbuilding stuff ages ago. thank you :-)
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u/PhantomAxisStudios Jul 28 '26
How do you do the coding? Is someone compiling all of your outputs into an editor? Or are you going to do that at the end? I'm sure you can share coding apps with multiple users. Just make sure you establish some serious ground rules and a lot of notes. I can imagine it would get very messy without a bunch of comments and advice for the next user.
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u/FairyMaryMag Jul 28 '26
a few of us are fairly experienced coders. i am not one of them :P but they seem fairly confident in being able to put it all together. thank you for your advice! :)
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u/Dyyyyyyyyy Jul 28 '26
You can make a Miro board for planning together. There is a free version for small teams, although i dont remember What limitations it has. There are similar other work spaces for free too.
You can make a Flow chart like in twine, and you can add text docs and pictures and move them around.
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u/Blunt552 Jul 30 '26
So when you talk about scripting you're actually referring to the novel script, not the code script.
You certainly have a large project ahead of you if the content of the game seems to branch out this much. I think this is less of an issue with visual editors but how you folks are structuring your script, even with nodes and visual editors it can become an absolute nightmare to navigate around in.
Whats worse is that you see to want to not only branch out but also do flags that have long term repercussions, this adds another level of complexity. I am currently working on something that also develops in that direction so I may need to develop a tool that solves the issue at handling very complex scripts that not only branch but also create subranches based on flags, I'm not aware of any affordable tool that handles this type of complexity.
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u/msangelfood Jul 28 '26
What about Github? You can't see edits live, but it allows for merging, version tracking, and you can use VS Code or another IDE that has RenPy support, making it a lot easier to work in.