Forum - View topicVisual Novel in HTML
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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I've been curious about something for a period of time now, and I hope this is the right place to ask it. Local HTML files, or even something online, seems to be an ideal solution for Visual Novel development. Every possible image for a character could be developed and placed into a directory, and the story could be followed by links and text. As long as variables were never necessary, it would work perfectly, and it would solve compatibility problems. After all, anyone with a web browser that could display text and images could play. In fact, developers of kinetic novels with no choices would probably benefit the most.
To better illustrate what I'm trying to say, pretend a game starts on an HTML page with a static image and text beneath. There is a link to continue that is tied into the next page, which displays perhaps the same image or a different one with more text. When choices come up, the player need only select a different link. In fact, an organization called Project Aon has been doing this to the Lone Wolf game books developed by Joe Dever. Has this ever been implemented? If not...why hasn't it? |
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Polycell
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The problem is that in 'pure' HTML your capabilities are very limited - not very many VNs could avoid the problem. A better route would be a Java-based VN, which would allow all the flexibility the devs could want with all the portability you could desire.
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Nagito
Posts: 13 |
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I like the idea but there is this one thing that I feel I have to point out.
A visual novel is a combination of text, pictures, sound and music. To display all of this smoothly in a HTML environment may require a fast network and this just doesn't available everywhere. I mean, you don't want to wait 5-10 minutes just to load one scene, right? Well, I'm no expert on HTML but that's what I think. |
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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HTML has nothing to do with networking.
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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Could you please explain that? I am asking because I am not very familiar with visual novels and I am wondering now if they are something different from what I thought them to be. I thought that a visual novel was primarily a series of different story paths that the reader chose by making a decision about which path to follow. That is something that HTML does very well. HTML is also good for page layout and integrating graphics and audio. When I saw the title of this thread I thought that it was a great idea because it could make visual novels more accessible to some people, including me. |
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I am assuming that the actual novel would be not just the HTML file but also any necessary binary files for audio and graphics.
Reading an HTML visual novel would be just like browsing a web site. At least that is what I am thinking. |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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I was actually considering an extremely simple choosing your own adventure like pathway. It would only need the ability to access hyperlinks and display JPEG or GIF images. I've played many visual novels without bells and whistles. Kinetic novels don't even really need much of anything. In fact, I guess a simple Kinetic novel could ship as a large archive of JPEG or GIF files with the text added right on the bottom of the images. Each of the files would have a name like 1.jpg, 2.jpg and an image viewer could be used to scroll through them. That being said, your idea of using Java would be great, especially with how rapidly support for Java platforms have grown. If I'm not mistaken, more computers are equipped with Java runtime files than with Flash plugins.
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Saffire
 Posts: 1256 Location: Iowa, USA |
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There's no reason it couldn't be done, as long as you're not looking for complicated interactions, but I can't think of any advantage it would have over compiled code either. A major issue I can think of is that the player would have direct access to all of the assets, which basically means they're not obligated to actually "play"; they can just jump to whatever they want to look at.
I don't think I can see any VNs that are actually sold using this, but it should be fine for a free to play one made for fun. |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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To my credit, I was thinking of only simple designs, and I fully realize that a player could start anywhere. However, if anyone is familiar with the designs offered by Project Aon, they could do it there as well. I was thinking the advantage could be portability. Developing Visual Novels in this manner would run equally well on many different types of machines. Embedded devices and Pocket PCs would work just well as mobile devices and desktops to play one of these.
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I like the idea of not having to run an executable file on my computer, other than my web browser. I think that the portability of HTML would be better than any compiled code.
I would see that as an advantage, for me, but I can understand that the people selling the game might not want me to to be able to make my own rules and actually change the game to suit myself. Copyright infringement would probably be a big problem.
Yeah, I think that if it is done it will probably be something more along the line of fan fiction rather than a professional commercial product. Visual novel doujinshi is an intriguing possibility. |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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The benefit of that sort of doujinshi is that it could be hosted on a very simple website. I could imagine some people developing that sort of thing, getting appropriate hosting and a domain for it, and then collecting a small amount of money on the resulting advertising revenues. It wouldn't be much, but I'm guessing in theory it would be a better profit than simply asking people for donations.
Naturally, I'm not actually trying to say that I'm going to start such a project. I'm not a manga or VN artist by any means. However, I thought it was pretty interesting as a thought experiment if nothing else. |
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jorgea
Posts: 2 |
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Html might actually limit you in what you are trying to do.
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Mad_Scientist
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 3013 |
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Bumping a slightly old thread, but this is relevant. I was recently browsing a website, http://vndb.org (the visual novel database), and I noticed that one of the listed platforms that you could search by was "website."
Now, I don't know whether any of these are pure html, or whether they all use things like flash and java, as I haven't really checked them out much. There might be some that just use html though. Please be warned, some (a lot) of the visual novels listed on that site are DEFINITELY NSFW (and potentially not even legal depending on you country), and obviously any links to web based visual novels could lead you to who knows what sort of content, so be aware of this before going there. Though by default the site seems to not display any NSFW screenshots unless you tell it to, it's possible something might slip by. Below is a link to the search for web based VNs, for your convenience. http://vndb.org/v/all?q=&fil=plat-web |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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Having given the link a quick glance, I was placed under the impression that a couple of these links were MMORPG sites that you can join. A few of these were also flash games like you had expected. It seems pretty interesting. I only got a high speed Internet connection this year since I was sort of behind the times, so all of this is really new to me. If I wanted to do anything online on dialup I had to wait for hours.
Therefore, I'm gladly going to check out the stuff here. Thank you for that link. Would you like me to let you know if there's anything particularly interesting? Naturally, I would make a note if there were anything that's clearly not safe for work. After all, these are visual novels that we're talking about. |
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