LVNAuth Tutorials - Structuring a visual novel
In LVNAuth, visual novels are arranged using 3 types of scripts.
The top of the hierarchy are chapters. Below chapters are scenes. Scenes are part of chapters.
Reusable scripts don't belong to chapters or scenes. They are standalone scripts made by the author of the visual novel (ie: you) to help simplify repetitive tasks in your visual novel.
Reusable scripts can be called from chapters and scenes.
Let's say you want to do the following in your visual novel:
The script would look something like this:
<character_show: theo_happy>
<play_sound: excited_sound>
Let's go!
But now let's say you want to do this 20 times in your visual novel. You would need to copy/paste the 3 lines above 20 times throughout your visual novel.
That's where a reusable script comes in. You can create a reusable script called 'happy mood' that contains these 3 lines:
Resuable script: happy mood
<character_show: theo_happy>
<play_sound: excited_sound>
Let's go!
Now you can call that reusable script using one command:
<call: happy mood>
And that's it! Now you can use the single command above multiple times in your visual novel.
When you're developing a visual novel, you'll generally want to focus on one scene at a time. It's generally not a good idea to make scenes overly long. What I mean by this is: let's say you have a scene that shows a character talking, and the character's speech takes 10 minutes to get to the end. Then at the end of the 10 minute talk, an error occurs in the visual novel and you need to find out what the issue is.
While you're trying to find out what's causing something not to work, you'll end up playing the scene over and over again. Since the error occurs 10 minutes into the scene, you'll need to wait a long time to test if your solution worked or not. So how do we prevent waiting 10 minutes just to test? The solution is to break up a scene into smaller chunks - or more specifically - into multiple hidden scenes.
Continuing with our example above, instead of putting 10 minutes of dialogue text into one scene, put about 1 minute of each dialogue into a separate hidden scene, so you'll end up with 1 visible scene and 9 hidden scenes.
A scene that has a name starting with a period is a hidden scene.
For example:
.At work
The scene name (.At work) starts with a period, so that means it is a hidden scene. To unhide the scene, just remove the period from the name by renaming it.
Hidden scenes will not appear as a scene option on the visual novel launch window. That means that your viewers will not have the option to start viewing your visual novel at a hidden scene, because hidden scene names won't be presented to your viewers.
However, you - the visual novel author, will be able to start your visual novel at any scene, including hidden scenes. This is especially useful for skipping parts of your visual novel that you're happy with so you can focus on fixing and focusing on specific parts of your visual novel without having to watch the same scenes over and over again.
Last updated: Thu 17 October 2024