The hardest part about making a visual novel...

It's the story. Coding is easy, especially if you study your vn making tool well enough. Scripting is great if you know how it works. Graphics can be added on later or at the same time. But to create a good story that holds your audiences attention and managing all those dialogue trees takes a bit of work. Even worse... it's hard to write a story that doesn't make yours feel like a "me too" VN... er... a lot of them have the same story, and reading the same story with different dressings too much can get boring.

What do you think?

Dah!The story is almost everything in a VN.Its just like reading a book if the story sux throw the book!

I guess it depends on people, for someone who is creative and has thought of an "idea" of the whole story, then he writes it in VN format, the VN making process is the most tedious part, since he might just want to get the story thru but all the work is hard.

I cant really imagine coding/scripting to be "easy", but thats just me being a computer idiot.

For someone who just wants to make a VN, he might be well versed in the VN making process, but he thinks of a story after he decides to make a VN. Which probabbly is his hard part.

I'd be very surprised if artwork didn't consume the majority of manhours on a VN.

I'd say Coding or artworks the hardest part in a VN...

Though Coding can vary Depending on What language your using it's still hard...

EVERYTHING is hard if you're working on it alone.
and there's no such thing about a person who can do it all.

I have never heard a guy successfully made one. Seriously, even professional companies never makes it alone with just one guy.

I guess it's the ost and the story.

This is why I admire programmers like ZUN. I think the guy who did Cave Story also counts. These two programmers didn't make VNs (well, that I know of), but they made their games by themselves and somehow those games have turned into some kind of pop cult thing spawning stuff like drawings, doujin games and youtube videos.

I guess it takes a special kind of creativity to be able to pull it off by yourself...

I would say the hardest thing would be the art and the story. The art because if the game has bad art it can become distracting and I imagine its pretty hard to find good artist who will work on eroge games sate side. The story because for eroge and visual novels the story is every thing, and making a good story is hard, especially when it has multiple endings.

You are forgetting the 'visual' part of the visual novel. Thats the hardes part.

Tell me about it. I'm working on the story right now for my own VN (well, a small group project), and I barely have 4 scenes done. I can't keep the story moving at a comfortable pace, while contunuing to advance the plot. It sucks. :|

Well it's maybe not about VN but i know there's that guy who made an anime all on his own (1 episode long)
Animation, art, story and music... He managed everything alone.
Unfortunately i can't recall the name of his work but if i do i'll make sure to let you know.

As for what's the hardest between making this or a VN...


EDIT: The guy i'm talking about is Makoto Shinkai.

Wow, most interesting. If you don't mind me asking, whats the plot?

I dunno. I find storyline relatively easy to do (Barring writer's block and such), especially versus working out problems in the code, or simply dealing with the code period. That, and the fact that I can't draw, nor do I have the proper equipment or knowhow to compose music makes that kind of thing much harder, since I can't do it.

If you need help with Story for a VN i can help you =]