Is it better to make placeholders or just write text?

[Froggo32]

Hello,
I have an idea for a visual novel. Unfortunately I cant draw well and currently am not willing to spend money on assets. Anyways, I thought that maybe I could just write text and make some basic mechanics [like mini-games if there'll be any]. I wouldnt make any placeholders and just put all the sprites and backgrounds/cutscenes into my game after I draw them. Is it a good idea or is making placeholders better?

 

[KazukiT]

Hello,
I have an idea for a visual novel. Unfortunately I cant draw well and currently am not willing to spend money on assets. Anyways, I thought that maybe I could just write text and make some basic mechanics [like mini-games if there'll be any]. I wouldnt make any placeholders and just put all the sprites and backgrounds/cutscenes into my game after I draw them. Is it a good idea or is making placeholders better?

The sprites will be fine unless it's like a traditional visual novel where things like sprites are visible. If that is the case having placeholders is a good idea just in case you get in a better financial position where you could commission someone to do the art. Then you know what emotions you need for your scenes.

 

[SGHarlekin]

You can use placeholders. They are useful later when you try to add your actual assets. Instead of having to actually place them in, you can set everything up correctly from the get go and just replace the corresponding file later.

 

[Andar]

or you can go the route of text adventures.

text adventures are almost forgotten today, but they were big thirty years ago, when the computers couldn't handle much more and when the kids were still willing to read instead of running in panic as soon as something has more than three words in it.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

or you can go the route of text adventures.

text adventures are almost forgotten today, but they were big thirty years ago, when the computers couldn't handle much more and when the kids were still willing to read instead of running in panic as soon as something has more than three words in it.

Text adventures are cool, and indeed were popular in the 90's, but not because computers couldn't handle much more... Games like Warcraft, GTA, The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Prince of Persia, they all had their roots in the same time period as the text adventure.
And those were even PC games, not console games, which looked even much, much better. (Note: This was way, way WAAAY before the CD-rom. Those games were just a few MB!!!)

Look how crazy beautiful those 30 year old games were!

Spoiler: Wolfenstein 3d, 1992

Spoiler: The Elder Scrolls: Arena, 1994

Computers were a lot more advanced back then than you might think. Sure, the graphics were low... And the gameplay & controls were still in an experimental fase back then, but they were capable of a lot more than just text.

 

[Andar]

@JohnDoeNews I miscalculated, I should have written 40 years.
in the 90' the text adventures were already on the downslide.

@Froggo32 reading my first post again it might be mistaken for sarcasm, but that was NOT my intention.
I seriously think that a text adventure would be a way to handle a visual novel, because it has a lot of similarities, and if you get beyond that reading problem you can find interested players, especially if you manage to write atmospheric text to describe the situation.

as said above there were a lot of very successfull games done that way in the early computer age (especially before the PC even became a valid machine, who still remembers the C64?)

 

[Froggo32]

I like text adventures, although they wont fit my current idea. I tried writing CYOAs on textadventures.uk tho, but stopped. Probably because there were too many fetish stories on that site lol.

 

[KelIy]

Using placeholders is a common practice in game development. I say go for them! The actual stories are the meat and bones of most VNs, so I say focus on that. You can always practice your art later.