A:

This question is really vague, but I will try my best. Visual novels are very easy to get into. Renpy is very popular and has many resources due to its community's size and age. Lemmasoft forums is a godsend. I'm going to be honest.

Renpy's installation also comes with "The Question" when you install it which gives you some basic Renpy stuff (some diverging maths, label jumps, etc). It gives you a lot of basic information and is how I really got started. Devil's Food was made with a lot of basic skills The Question gives you. Starting small like that can be really good.

I'll also include this a link to Feniksdev (itchio tools / website tutorials), a programmer / game developer who has many tools and resources. I look at their tutorials from time to time and want to use their tools. I plan to soon actually. Aside from Fen, you can find lots of tools and frameworks for Renpy on itchio. No reason to make things harder for yourself. Of course, remember some code may have errors if it's for older Renpy versions.

Oh lastly, I want to add that Renpy is great, and I love it very much. I'll never stop using Renpy. But for small Itchio web visual novels, I think it's worth it to try other engines. Methinks every Western VNdev should touch Renpy at some point usually, but also like, Renpy is just not suitable for some projects. I like small web projects and have been fond of them lately (ie my Squid Girl World series), but dislike Renpy for it because it has poor HTML5 builds and Renpy setup can take a long time. I used Videotome briefly and enjoyed it though ultimately moved over to Godot for greater UI flexibility (though I don't think I'd recommend most VNdevs / starter devs to use Godot if I'm being honest lol)

But yeah the answer is just start. You'll get somewhere much faster than if you don't start now.

A:

There is always so much more. There's always more. For various reasons. Stories exist to give the information to the reader you need to tell. So things must be cut, and old options must be deleted as it may not further the goals of the story even if you still consider those aspects to be true. The fat must go.

But beyond that, there is also just limitations of being an indie developer. So this will be a bit long.

• Devil's Food: Originally Devil's Food was a dating sim with more characters, but it ended up being focused on Angel Charlotte with the dating sim aspects gone. I still like dating sim mechanics though making one is not on my radar right now due to me being entertained by dating sims that require a lot of resources (like Mystic Messenger is my favorite one smiles). I have an idea for a project that in my writings is called Devil's Food: Kill All Your Friends that still is the Devil's Food gameplay but with more characters and an underlying story. it answers questions I've gotten about the connections between Devil's Food and Ommatophilia, clears some stuff up, and is also intended to be fun as hell for me to make. Unfortunately I don't know how long that project will take to make. I have to plan and I've avoided it for a bit.
• Meat Girl: Meat Girl went according to plan, but it had an ending that could be happier than the others perhaps?
  • Maya Lives Ending: There's an ending where Maya and Vivian leave the meat hell and get on the bus together while Sera ends up being consumed by the mycellium. Didn't feel it made much sense, and also, I like the other endings more.
  • Scrapped CG: Also, well, the ending with Sera waiting at the bus stop didn't have her waiting for the bus. There's this loosely sketched thing in my journal with a cg of her flying over the forest. Prefer her waiting for the bus though now. I like all the endings in Meat Girl though. I wouldn't do any other way. I sometimes wish the Mycellium section was larger, but to be honest, I think the mycelium is not meant to be accessible from every entrance and also changes depending on the situation.
• RehAIbilitation: RehAIbilitation embarrasses me. The early concepts. I like its final form, but originally it was a bloodier less gentle story. Still lolita heavy but with a focus on guro-lolita. It had two bloody forms, one involving Eleanor and self harm and another involving killing your dad. I am happy it's gentle yuri. I still do draw Eleanor in guro lolita. I like her as weird girl who dresses up in bloody dresses more than anything else.
• What Is It Like to Taste: What Is It Like to Taste is almost perfect to me. Perhaps I could polish it more if I had more time or energy, but the story itself plays out in a way I like. But I do have some scrapped things.
  • Adelaide and Evangeline: Adelaide and Eva had a higher presence. I still think Adelaide plays a huge role in WIILTT and so does Eva, but it is just different now. Less in person meetings, less focus on the two of them overaul in main story. Eva also appeared in the call CGs. They were to be drawn out things, but I ended up not really caring that much about it. I always felt with the CGs I'd draw them if I felt that I wanted to see a CG there when I would do my rereads, and I always felt that Adelaide's call portrait is just cute.
  • Small Town: I ended up doing this more with vibes, and when I write something with vibes, I'm always surprised when people catch it. People did in fact catch the town dynamics in WIILTT. A few commenters and friends also caught that it's explicitly based on Southern towns. At first, I locked it to that town, but I included college town bits to show there's more beyond everything, and Adelaide ended up going back home in the end despite her having friends she left behind and not really showing much fondness for her current location.
  • Other Characters: Well, WIILTT's been out for a while now, so I'm going to spoil it now. Calliope's appearance in WIILTT was always planned, BUT the original draft had Eleanor too. Maybe AMA but the AMA bits were soo brief I deleted them immdiately. I just didn't want all those characters in there lol. It felt like too much and it was messy, and I just felt like Calliope was the main one who needed to appear anyways. I think people haven't read RehAI understand why Calliope is there and also she's a lesbian I love inclusion of random lesbians in yuri while people who did read RehAI get to see an update on the two's lives. People who read Meat Girl errmmm lmao I don't know LOL. I try not to make my old works obligatory to read or play because they are Old, but also I love it.
• Squid Girl World: Oh god. I. Squid Girl World is cut content hell. It's gone over in the zine, but Squid Girl has been a comic, the pilot ep is just cut content central, and even the recent episodes originally had a small glossary of terms, but I cut them. I think I'll include it in future episodes maybe, but I actually found myself never really wanting to use it, which bothers me, but it is something I guess I haven't written with so I'd have to incorporate it into my workflow, and nowadays I sort of lean into just a person reading a word and not knowing what it means if they don't want to know. I try to use obvious words like Reaper and Angel while the more obtuse words have definitions, but you only to keep track of them if you care about documenting every bit of lore (or if you just general mythological knowledge). 
  • While the lore is there and I do love it so much, I don't want to establish it in every story because that irritates me. It more acts as a vehicle for stories to be told. I like Fallout a lot. It does this well and I take of inspo from it. 
  • To go more into, Meat Girl has lore, but it's not in Meat Girl, it's in Ommatophilia and other games because Meat Girl is not about lore, it's about Vivian and Maya. 
  • My favorite aspect of the Fallout Series is all the mini stories that build into your understanding of the world itself, but you can still like the Fallout games and spin offs as their seperate things. It's why I still play modern Fallout games even though Bethesda keeps fucking up everything. I can have fun with them.
  • But Squid Girl is actually weird because Squid Girl is about Aseroe and Sepia but it also exists to get out random bits of lore like the existence of the Void and the Reapers and the like. So, it's a careful balancing act that I'm still not sure I'm doing well..
• Ommatophilia: cut content hell.
  • Misc Systems: Wardrobes, NPC interactions, gift system, Blue diary entries scattered about, more collectibles, more interactable items. All cut.
  • Dreams: Dreams played out differently. I like their final forms. Angel had more dreams about Charlotte in early days too but you know, i cut down the dreams to just being about her friends to keep the game nice and clean
  • Charlotte Epilogue: Charlotte originally had a playable epilogue. You see what she's up to while Angel is out with her friends. This is the most painful of the cut content. When/If I remaster Omma, this will be the hardest to make AND the most important to me
  • Day Three: Day Three had several variants. Day Three is made wiht lots of love, but I struggled to get there. Originally, you hung out at restaurant, but I didn't like that. You went to a place like the church and school with the night portion, but I  didn't like that either. In the end, you go to Black's house. I am happy with this. Um, Black Nightshade is a character who is special to me, so going to his house is nice. 
  • All the Houses: Originally, Ommatophilia had you visit all your friend's houses because reasons. In the end you only visit Black's. I still kind of wish you could see Mercy or Blue's house. I think seeing their different lives would be interesting, but alas, no.
  • Other Things: Ommatophilia was my first RPG Maker game so it took me to figure things out. Mall was bigger but empty. I like it as a tiny outlet now. Maps were planned to be larger with more rooms. Ommatophilia was going to get a custom commissioned track, but to be honest, i sort of... Blargh.
  • Remaster Someday: I want remaster or remake Ommatophilia eventually. Add some of the cut content but not all of it because Omma's final version is the way that it is. I need more time away from it. EPILOGUE SOMEDAY SURELY. Charlotte ends up being the most difficult to understand character which I like, but I want some clarity for her. 
    • But my rule is I only remaster it when I have a livable income and a less nebulous housing situation due to its size and scope and time required. I don't have luxury of prioritizing that sort of thing right no

Anyways, cutting content is good to me. You have to making writing tighter and cut out of the slops of fat, but it's nice to look back on. Maybe make some weird AUs out of it or something or just draw them. Ommatophilia obviously hurts me lol, but at the same time, I'm proud of myself for making the decision to cut it and not ending up in dev hell for 10 years.

This is just all on my mind because Deltarune's existence lol. It has a lot of things in it- silly things I think are important for the charm of it. If I had more money or made a living on my work, I'd have a go at making another multi-year project indie game haha! Deltarune is just everything to me. It's relaly a gliimpse into a better future, and it reminds me to not forget my old goals (though I'm still having fun making lots of short games right now).

A: hi! your favorites are very dear to me, RehAI and WIILTT. Since WIILT has be deindexed and RehAI is a bit old, it often feels like my girls are forgotten. it makes me happy to see that they aren't :D

Regarding process, it's become a bit streamlined.... perhaps post Meat Girl things have gotten easier. i write down the plan in a journal and then begin writing the story in Gdocs.Sometimes friends read it while I write. Sometimes not.

I like to port to engine usually after writing though I find myself doing it in the middle of it sometimes because I get irritated not being able to see as I write. I don't recommend doing that though I'm kind of stupid.

I talked about it in another ask but I like directing as I write and I often have ideas for sprite movement or in WIILT's case, the smaller panels, so I'd want to see them, but editing back and forth between the VSC and Google Docs causes me Problems.

Regarding motivation, I've talked about it before. I've been writing since I was a very young child. I started typing on the old computer because I wanted to write stories. I read lots of books back then, and it made me want to write books too. Over time it's just became my main thing. OC creation, storytelling, etc. It's sort of all I have I guess- all I know how to do well lol, and I'm sure some people would disagree with me saying I do it well, but shrug emojis.

I'd be really sad if I couldn't write anymore. It's hard to identify motivation for writing because writing is my motivation to continue living. Everything in life just sort of feels like an obstacle in my way of storytelling, or something I need to experience to be a more whole person (in order to be a better writer)

Also I like when mentally ill people relate to my work. It makes me happy. It's lonely and really bad here, so it's nice to connect to others via writing, especially since I'm so bad at socializing. I also love everyone, but everytime I see another black girl especially who likes my work and expresses a pleasant emotion, it feels so good.

A: i'd like to! many vn jams happen in summer a lot of the time while jams that i'd use RPG Maker for tend to fall at weird times. i was able to make Meat Girl because of some particular circumstances that gave me extra time!

A: Hi Devils! If I do not tell stories, then I have no reason to live. And if these stories are never told, I'll die with no one ever knowing what I had to say.

That is to say- I love game development, but what I really love is telling stories- game dev is just the medium that works best for me. If I could not make stories, I would no reason to live. And then I might has well die. This answer is scary, but it is how I operate in life. I don't know if I'll be a game dev forever, but I know I'll be telling stories until I am in the grave.

A: I'm kind of an insane person who has been writing and devving for a very long time, and as a result, I have a feeling the way I work would not be optimal for most people. Still, I will share because it's fun but it'll probably be all over!!

I tend to come up with a concept over a long period of time and sometimes I expand on old concepts. Like for Meat Girl, I was interested in meat and played lots of meat games and read meat stories. So I knew I wanted to tell a story about meat, but well, I wasn't sure what I wanted to make so I made random drawings of a red haired lolita with meat everywhere and eventually I began to formulate.. Maya and Sera were older characters I drew for a zine called S1M, but people Really like Sera so I wanted to expand upon her story. That series of drawings was focused on radio towers and a lot of denpa concepts, so I extrapolated from that.

But, well, RehAIbilitation was done in a similar way but all the characters were completely new and so was the setting (sort of), but it's still based on things interesting me at the time. RehAIbilitation was made/developed around the birth of things like characterAI and it explored my thoughts on it a bit. Eleanor was drawn a few times before I made the game, but AMA and Calliope were drawn for the game specifically, along with the bunnies. RehAIbilitation was planned super carefully because I was studying abroad during a large chunk of it, and I wanted to provide the backgrounds to Zed as early as possible. I wanted to have fun abroad and jamming. I did have struggles though.Originally, RehAI had a different ending, and Calliope did not appear at all outside of flashbacks.

For What Is It Like to Taste, I.. had a lot of it my head.The vision for that VN was very clear to methough things did develop as I wrote too.Originally, there was no sidestory, but I fell in love with Eva and Adelaide. Eva and Adelaide were designed prior to the VN existing, but the story I made for them just wasn't working. So now they're in To Taste and I love how they exist. Emma and Aiyana were designed while concepting.. I knew their personalities and the vibes I wanted.

My character design process.. I usually have a shape of the OC in my mind. Like, I knew vaguely what I wanted Emma to look like.. Curvy anime catgirl inspired by 2000s anime aesthetics. And for Aiyana, I struggled a bit.I wanted to make hera lolita, but I just kept thinking she'd wear clothes that went downwards.. Her design to me.. It's like a tear drop almost.. But it didn't take long when I finally gaveup my lolita ideals lol


I do design random characters though just off cuff. Maya from Meat Girl.. She was drawn in her meat form for the first time as a sprite/portrait lol.And in Ommatophilia, Mercy was designed off cuff too and some other characters. It's just easier to me because my vision is clearest in the early days, and if I draw a perfect concept, then it might as well just be the sprite.

Also, lastly, I mentioned briefly my idea book. I have a golden journal that I write everything in. I buy this journal from the same brand every time, and I love them. I fill them with concepts which is important for longer term games or concepts I know I won't immediately work on. A lot of old Omma and RehAI concepts are in there. I even have RPG Maker map designs sketched in it.

And the strat is. I... immediately put things in engine. I hate editing. I used to love it, but I despise it now because I get migraines.Like I'll write in GDOCs in a while for VNs but then immediately go in engine to seee everything. So I make sprites at the beginning of devprocess or I try to (which imageparts help a lot because I can just add things I want over time). Putting things in engine after everything is written just doesn't workfor me because I'm not just writng- I'm also directing if that makes sense. And I like to direct and write at the same time. For To Taste, I added music as I went, I added SEs as I went, etc etc. I didn't always do this but I had a sneaking suspicion To Taste would be terrible to edit (and it WAS because 20K words is a LOT especially for a GAME JAM). I stil had a lot of editing to do. Sound effects that wen tontoo long, music to change, and the latter half was written without a lot of in engine testing until after it was written because I had entered Pure Flow State.

Sorry this is soo all over. It's hard. Writing feels really organic and bendy to me, game dev generally. I attack everything at once too and build on old works a lot which makes it even harder JAJA. And my writing and game dev process changes as I figure out what works and what doesn't. Meat Girl and To Taste is what I consider to be almost optimal performance though.

A: i'd like to join many game jams that are currently taking place but unfortunately i am currently in a war against God and the mental health industrial complex, and i am losing. it is still within the realm of possibility though.

A: I'm really happy you loved Ommatophilia. It means a lot to me that you'd share this with me. It's a struggle to choose my favorite moment- a lot of moments I really loved became exhausting to me over time as I was forced to playtest over and over and constantly bug fix...

But.. Some parts I still look at with fondness. When Angel and Blue sit outside together because Blue is overstimulated and they talk with the periods of silence.. I'm really fond of that. I also really enjoy going through the Nightshade computer. It's a moment that I still remember working on, and it's probably has some of my favorite bits of writing in the game. Thank you so much for asking!