Super Videotome
Super Videotome is a small narrative engine for making web based visual novels, based on its predecessors Videotome and Videotome:ADV.
It overhauls the 3-text system for one that closer resembles what "Visual Novel" looks like in your head, albeit a simple one.
DETAILS
Feature set:
- layered canvas for background images, 2-frame animated foreground images, and text
- music + sfx
- non-blocking choices! pick one or let the story continue!
- keyboard control (spacebar + numbers), dialogue autoplay
- variables & branching checks
- movable backgrounds
- message history
Not implemented:
- Conditional dialogue; branching is on the chapter level, not line
- More complex animations or non-manually-defined animation frames
- Movable sprites (unless you draw them to the background layer)
- Literally anything fancier than the above
FAQ
I am a total beginner, is this engine for me?
Maybe. The syntax is fairly simple, but there is minimal error handling, and single character errors may cause it to break. I recommend at least passing knowledge of how html/js works, if only to be able to debug your own games.
Why (make/use) this?
This engine was a hobby project. It is also designed to have a syntax that is fast to write and does not require things like wrapping dialogue in speech marks or special characters for every line. It offers a (relatively) constrained feature set and visual display, unless you have the ability and desire to expand upon it.
It doesn't work for me, can you help?
Maybe. I have a day job so I am not offering guaranteed support for this free hobby project. Before commenting with any issues, please check:
- You are running the game after uploading to itchio / another site, or else via a server you run yourself. Just opening the index.html will not work.
- You have included ALL files in the zip of your project and have not changed the location of any of them within the file structure.
- You have followed the syntax and layout of the demo project.
- You have checked the developer console (press f12 in browser) and had a quick attempt to decode any error messages in the console.
- You have checked the readme.txt
Further Reading: Long post on the Videotome family of engines.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Super Videotome 0.6 - Message HistoryAug 05, 2023
- Super Videotome 0.5.1Jul 24, 2023
- Super Videotome 0.5Jul 21, 2023
- Super Videotome v0.4Dec 18, 2022
Comments
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Hello, I have a question about the license for this engine. Does the CC BY-NC-ND refer to the engine, itself(any changes or tweaks in code, etc) or to any games made with the engine? I'm a little confused on that point.
Hi, apologies for the unclear licence. I find CC licenses a bit clunky, so will clarify below.
The engine is under a BY-NC-ND licence. It is free to use, but only noncommercially, with attribution, and no derivatives may be reshared; if you make modifications to the engine for your own private purposes, that is fine. This basically translates to "no publicly released forks".
For games made with the engine, you may use it for free, noncommercially, and you may modify the engine as you see fit, just leave attribution.
If you wish to use the engine commercially, please message me via the contact form on my website to discuss. I do not consider itchio's default free-with-optional-donations to be "commercial" in this case, that's fine.
Gotcha, that makes perfect sense. Thank you for the clarification.
I'm not sure why, none of the Videotome engines work for me. If I open index.html in Videotome or Videotome Adv, I get a mostly blank screen that says press Enter or Space but then it doesn't respond to my doing so. I've tried different browsers and I've tried clicking on the screen. With Super Videotome I get a black screen with two white boxes.
Not the dev(of course), but I wonder if your issue might have to do with needing to run the engine on a local server for offline testing/playing. There's a bit about that in the Read Me included w/ the downloads, and the FAQ up top. If you've already done that, then never mind, plz ignore me.
Thank you MeiZi for the reply; this does sound like the cause of your problem.
Like several web based engines, Videotome requires running from a server, not directly from your local filesystem; this can be either a local one you spin up yourself, or something like itchio. It will not work without, for browser safety reasons.
Example instructions for running a local server are provided in the README.txt file. zipping up your project folder and uploading to itchio should also suffice, if you are unable to run a local server for any reason.
Thank you! I was originally thinking I just needed to be online--but yes, this makes sense. Thanks again.
Thank you!
Okay, now that I've spent enough time/made a game with Super, I can confidently say that, as much as I love ADV, this Videotome's my favorite.
Thank you so much for sharing it. Super's a treat to use.
hell yeah, great to hear you like it :)
Do you have a tutorial?
id love to use it but I'm really confused lol.
Tthere is a readme doc included in the download with instructions for all commands.
saw it
Hello,
I've been playing around with Super a bit, and quite like it, but I've run into a bit of a thing.
I still haven't ruled out user error 100% but I've noticed that the REMOVE function seems a bit borked. It kind of glitches out, necessitating hitting the spacebar/enter multiple times to continue, and whatver text is on the same line as the REMOVE gets eaten/doesn't show up on screen.
I've tried it without brackets around the choice text to be removed, as per the ReadMe doc, with brackets like in ADV, and with one bracket(by accident); the same thing happens, regardless.
I've been faking the effect REMOVE has to the choice options with GOTO to sort of simulate non-blocking choices to the player since GOTO clears the choice box, and while it's not quite the same, it's close enough for a quick jam game.
The other option I've played with is putting extraneous text on the line that gets eaten (an ellipsis or something) so it looks a bit like it's supposed to, narratively-speaking, but the multiple-press-to-continue thing is still jarring, so I'll probably limit that.
Either way, I'm planning to make it work because I want to/am a stubborn weirdo, but I thought you should know for any future updates to Super.
Cheers :)
This bug has now been fixed. Each choice was being assigned an ID of the text it was displaying, not the numerical ID of itself.
You should now be able to use the command REMOVE:1 to remove the choice you setup with CHOICE1:[text]:destination, and REMOVE:2 for CHOICE2, etc.
Please note that this id is not 1:1 with the visually displayed choice number if, for some reason, you create them out of order.
Oh, nice one. Thanks for letting me know :)
OOOOOOOOOOO this...this looks very fun :3
we've been looking at Videotome:ADV for a minute now, made a story outline and even some early backgrounds and sprites for a later project we wanted to create with that...but now we're...very tempted to build it in Super instead :3 this looks really exciting. TYSM for releasing this!
Oh, you mad genius; I'm in.