[OLPC-Games] Ren'Py and Visual Novels games

[Geoffroy Carrier]

On Sun, Feb 25, 2007 at 04:31:11PM +0100, francois schnell wrote:
>    Hello,
Hi.

>    What about visual novels ?
>    according to a wikipedia article [1]:
>    """
>    A visual novel is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static
>    graphics, usually with anime-style art. As the name might suggest,
>    they resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant stage plays. Visual
>    novels are classified as a sub-genre of adventure games, referred to
>    as AVGs in Japan. Visual novels are especially prevalent in Japan,
>    where they make up nearly 70% of PC games released.
>    """
>    This kind of game are still rare in the EU and US market but they are
>    now coming with title like "Phoenix Wright" [2] and "Hotel Dusk"  [3]
>    for the Nintendo GBA and/or DS.
>    I'm not myself a regular 'user' of these games but  they could be
>    interesting to consider in the OLPC context:
>    - they encourage reading or 'learn' to read (but in a colorful and
>    multimedia context which helps comprehension)
>    - the kid read at their own pace
>    - they are graphically static most of the time which should be good
>    for the XO (low on hardware in theory)
Yes, that's a good point. I think those games are very XO-friendly, as they
are very similar to ebooks: static, so the CPU can be stopped, and with
simple interaction, so it can be played with the screen covering the
keyboard+trackpad. Storing a lot of pictures is the biggest problem, as
performance won't be one in my very humble opinion.
Those kind of games are already possible with Scratch, even if it's not
the best tool for this.

>    - imagine  a story  to share if possible with different choices
>    - learn to draw (characters ?) or take pictures of
>    landscapes/scenes/characters or use existing contents
>    - use/create some sound/music
Won't be a problem with TamTam and an image editor (my team's working on
it).

>    - share it with other kids through the mesh network ? (a kind of
>    minimal "You Tube" of Visual Novels ?)
Let me suppose sharing a document won't be a problem ;)


Thanks a lot for your remark and your references!

-- 
Geoffroy Carrier
http://sitlib.org/