- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm Dragon Cobolt! You may know me from being the only person on SV to have completed a quest while also eating a gigantic sandwich. I'm regularly cited by @Hakazin as why it's actually legal to write porn on this website! And I've begun to work...on a visual novel! Using the Ren'Py engine, I've dove straight in and thought it'd be fun to have a little thread giving some updates, talking about my design ideas, and maybe get help if i ever get stuck if any of you have programmed. Also, show off some...stellar artwork!
So, first, lets talk about what visual novel I'm making!
LUST FOR BLOOD (extremely working title) was inspired by a bluesky conversation I had with the artist of a webcomic I like (Psu, artist for Casseopea Quinn) where we were both talking about how vampires are cool and hot and they were like, "Why are there no dating sims where you are a vampire?" And well, there probably are. But what if I made one?
BASIC PREMISE
Looking back on the premise, I realize I'm not sure how I came up with this. I think I started with "it's hot when vampire hunters become vampires" and then worked backwards to this. So, we have vampires. we have a "chosen slayer" (because I watched Buffy and hate/love the show even now), and then we have a scooby gang surrounding the chosen slayer. But the game begins with them having "won vampires" - they've found and killed the last Master Vampire, and that means the day is saved...right?
but you, the protagonist, Willow Sofer, the dorky trans girl of the group, found a mysterious necklace in the mansion of the last master vampire and took it home with you. First choice in the game: Put the Necklace on or Don't.
Don't means you win the game! Congratulations, GOOD END.
Putting it on infuses you with the necrotic energy of a Master Vampire, turning YOU into the last master vampire.
Now, can you control your vampireness and maybe not become a horrible monster while also turning all of your friends into vampires? Is that a contradiction? No, it's fine, it's okay to turn people into vampires if it's really hot. Is this just an excuse for writing half a dozen "turn ladies into vampires" scenes? Yes!
PRELIMINARY DESIGN
So, the first step I took was...well, to learn how to use Ren'Py! Fortunately, the tutorial is really good, and before I knew it, I was writing and drawing my own arts, including this short test using Goobs here.
Secure in my capacities and artistic skill, I moved RIGHT into making the first chapter.
THE CHARACTERS
Well, okay, first, actually, I moved right into deciding what characters I wanted. While everyone knows that the Buffy Gang has fifteen characters (Buffy, Xander, Mr. Bowtie, Willow, Victor Lazlo, Spike, Cordilla, Angel, Kenny's Dad, Anja, Oz, Tara, Jackson Geller, Giles, and the Autistic Psychic Savant), I wanted to cut things down to a more workable four. Well, five if you count MY Willow, who is legally distinct from the TV show Willow because she may be a gay lesbian goober who dabbled in witchcraft and might lose her soul in the fight between good and evil, my Willow is also trans.
So, we have our chosen slayer. After tossing around a few ideas, I went for Ronda "Ronnie" Lancer. In my mind, she's a bit of a Korra + Buffy. Thoughtless, head empty, fist first, big gay energy. Then we needed a Cordilla, which I mashed up with Rarity and a bit of Jade from the terrible, AWFUL nickelodeon sitcom Victorious (I like the "joined just to annoy someone" energy), and gave her the name of Beauregard "Bee" DuPont.
Next, we needed a Xander. Now, I don't like Xander, but no one is meaner about Xander than my girlfriend who, while I was chatting with her about BUffy, said this.
Like...
Goddamn, Lucy.
I eventually came up with Lonnie Quinn, whose nickname is "Radical" because that's the main thing she says. Think stoner girl meets skater girl meets girl version of Poochie. Characters repeatedly are annoyed by the fact she uses 90s slang despite it being, canonically, 2025.
And for the final girl, we need Giles! So, I named her the ominously titled Miss Christian and bang boom we're good to go!
CHAPTER ONE
Chapter one needs to establish several things: Everyone's character, the setting of the world, how vampires work, and introduce you to the gameplay, which is making choices that can lead to good or bad ends. It's also me learning the basic ropes. What's fun is as I continued to work, I also got to go back and add things. For example, early on, I have this transition.
And I just noticed while making this thread, it's a really jarring kind of transition! So, I went into the code, which looks like this...
And then changed it to be this!
Now, the character sprite moves into the center of the room, then moves back to the right of the room and dissolves from happy to phone holding - like some kind of MOVIE MAGIC!!!!
Something nice about Ren'Py is if I eventually get an artist and they draw me an art, I can name that "willow happy" and put it into my image docs and suddenly, my charmingly terrible artwork will be replaced by terribly charming artwork instead! Still, with this basic process down, I completed all the run up to getting the necklace out of your pocket, with some flashbacks to how Willow learned about "the Fang Squad"
As you can see, I am EXTREMELY FUNNY.
Making the first ending of the game required some fucking around with something called "NVL" which stands for, according to google...Novel! Oh, okay, that makes sense. This ending comes real early, and happens if you throw out the necklace.
But with this essential format set up, I was able to then throw together the scenes where you slowly and sexily transform, and that included meeting "Urge" - an ominous voice representing the Vrykotheois!
What's that?
well, for ages, I've always thought that the "vampire intelligence" from Rifts is really cool. Too cool to be in Rifts! So, I stole it.
So, the VK makes a master vampire in our dimension, then that master vampire makes thrall vampires, and those thrall vampires create a conduit back into the otherworld, drawing in not just the VK, but also other assorted demons and Halloween monsters. As the last master vampire, the VK has a lot of reason to encourage Willow to make more vampires...however, the BIG note, is that the person infected by the VK's essence are still themselves until they kill someone - which then destroys their soul and makes them pure evil.
That way, we have a big clear, obvious "do not do this" switch to avoid.
The rest of chapter one is going on your first hunt, leading to the first hunt menu, which has options to go to the local nightclub (the Silver, get it?), the park, and then any of your Fang Squad's house. each Fang Squad house option here leads to a bit where Willow arrives at their house and goes, "Gee, wait, all my friends are expert vampire hunters, IS this a good idea???" and if you go through with it, you get your bad ends.
(I figure it's a good idea to at least warn people.)
The only exception is Miss Christian. It still gets you a bad end, but that's because our dangerous MILF uses magic to make you her sex pet. So, whether this is a bad ending or not, that's kind of up to you. But it is an end!
The Silver and the Park will lead into what I think of as "inconsequential" hunts - hunts that won't really change the game, meaning they can both be different for different vibes, cause they exist to teach you how decisions usually will go. I've currently only constructed one of the two, and that only partially.
You get to the silver, meet the hot mom of your bully (I, if nothing, know the prospective audience
) and then can seduce her. If you go for goofy dialog choices or serious dialog, either way it reveals that vampires are kind of effortlessly good at sex and seduction, but you can also just choose hypnosis too. This teaches the player that there's not really a wrong way to do stuff, so long as you're not doing something OBVIOUSLY STUPID.
Which then leads to feeding: You get asked if you want to keep feeding multiple times, and if you just keep pushing, you will eventually drain her dry (this is true in either hunt scenarios.) That's another bad end: Willow loses her soul, becomes a true master vampire, and takes over the world.
If you manage to NOT drain either potential victim dry, the Urge drops the alarming news that, basically, you need to avoid killing people your whole very, very, very long unlife - it only needs you to slip up once, which puts in the basic concerns.
My plan for Chapter 2 is to try and introduce the "survive a normal day" bit with dialog choices increasing or decreasing suspicion. But to do that, I'd need to learn how to have something more than just "true/false" but rather give a trust number in numeric senses. But that's a problem for FUTURE DRAGON.
For now, my current workgoals are
1) Finish the goofy, honest and hypnosis routes for the bully's mom
2) Finish the goofy, honest, serious and hypnosis routes for the park lady, who I am thinking "Velma from Scooby Doo with her name changed, arrived in town to "debunk" the fact vampires exist."
And that's about as far as I've gotten!
So, first, lets talk about what visual novel I'm making!
LUST FOR BLOOD (extremely working title) was inspired by a bluesky conversation I had with the artist of a webcomic I like (Psu, artist for Casseopea Quinn) where we were both talking about how vampires are cool and hot and they were like, "Why are there no dating sims where you are a vampire?" And well, there probably are. But what if I made one?
BASIC PREMISE
Looking back on the premise, I realize I'm not sure how I came up with this. I think I started with "it's hot when vampire hunters become vampires" and then worked backwards to this. So, we have vampires. we have a "chosen slayer" (because I watched Buffy and hate/love the show even now), and then we have a scooby gang surrounding the chosen slayer. But the game begins with them having "won vampires" - they've found and killed the last Master Vampire, and that means the day is saved...right?
but you, the protagonist, Willow Sofer, the dorky trans girl of the group, found a mysterious necklace in the mansion of the last master vampire and took it home with you. First choice in the game: Put the Necklace on or Don't.
Don't means you win the game! Congratulations, GOOD END.
Putting it on infuses you with the necrotic energy of a Master Vampire, turning YOU into the last master vampire.
Now, can you control your vampireness and maybe not become a horrible monster while also turning all of your friends into vampires? Is that a contradiction? No, it's fine, it's okay to turn people into vampires if it's really hot. Is this just an excuse for writing half a dozen "turn ladies into vampires" scenes? Yes!
PRELIMINARY DESIGN
So, the first step I took was...well, to learn how to use Ren'Py! Fortunately, the tutorial is really good, and before I knew it, I was writing and drawing my own arts, including this short test using Goobs here.
Secure in my capacities and artistic skill, I moved RIGHT into making the first chapter.
THE CHARACTERS
Well, okay, first, actually, I moved right into deciding what characters I wanted. While everyone knows that the Buffy Gang has fifteen characters (Buffy, Xander, Mr. Bowtie, Willow, Victor Lazlo, Spike, Cordilla, Angel, Kenny's Dad, Anja, Oz, Tara, Jackson Geller, Giles, and the Autistic Psychic Savant), I wanted to cut things down to a more workable four. Well, five if you count MY Willow, who is legally distinct from the TV show Willow because she may be a gay lesbian goober who dabbled in witchcraft and might lose her soul in the fight between good and evil, my Willow is also trans.
So, we have our chosen slayer. After tossing around a few ideas, I went for Ronda "Ronnie" Lancer. In my mind, she's a bit of a Korra + Buffy. Thoughtless, head empty, fist first, big gay energy. Then we needed a Cordilla, which I mashed up with Rarity and a bit of Jade from the terrible, AWFUL nickelodeon sitcom Victorious (I like the "joined just to annoy someone" energy), and gave her the name of Beauregard "Bee" DuPont.
Next, we needed a Xander. Now, I don't like Xander, but no one is meaner about Xander than my girlfriend who, while I was chatting with her about BUffy, said this.
Like...
Goddamn, Lucy.
And for the final girl, we need Giles! So, I named her the ominously titled Miss Christian and bang boom we're good to go!
CHAPTER ONE
Chapter one needs to establish several things: Everyone's character, the setting of the world, how vampires work, and introduce you to the gameplay, which is making choices that can lead to good or bad ends. It's also me learning the basic ropes. What's fun is as I continued to work, I also got to go back and add things. For example, early on, I have this transition.
My Jank Ass Code said:
And then changed it to be this!
My Jank Ass Code said:
Now, the character sprite moves into the center of the room, then moves back to the right of the room and dissolves from happy to phone holding - like some kind of MOVIE MAGIC!!!!
Something nice about Ren'Py is if I eventually get an artist and they draw me an art, I can name that "willow happy" and put it into my image docs and suddenly, my charmingly terrible artwork will be replaced by terribly charming artwork instead! Still, with this basic process down, I completed all the run up to getting the necklace out of your pocket, with some flashbacks to how Willow learned about "the Fang Squad"
Making the first ending of the game required some fucking around with something called "NVL" which stands for, according to google...Novel! Oh, okay, that makes sense. This ending comes real early, and happens if you throw out the necklace.
What's that?
well, for ages, I've always thought that the "vampire intelligence" from Rifts is really cool. Too cool to be in Rifts! So, I stole it.
That way, we have a big clear, obvious "do not do this" switch to avoid.
The rest of chapter one is going on your first hunt, leading to the first hunt menu, which has options to go to the local nightclub (the Silver, get it?), the park, and then any of your Fang Squad's house. each Fang Squad house option here leads to a bit where Willow arrives at their house and goes, "Gee, wait, all my friends are expert vampire hunters, IS this a good idea???" and if you go through with it, you get your bad ends.
(I figure it's a good idea to at least warn people.)
The only exception is Miss Christian. It still gets you a bad end, but that's because our dangerous MILF uses magic to make you her sex pet. So, whether this is a bad ending or not, that's kind of up to you. But it is an end!
The Silver and the Park will lead into what I think of as "inconsequential" hunts - hunts that won't really change the game, meaning they can both be different for different vibes, cause they exist to teach you how decisions usually will go. I've currently only constructed one of the two, and that only partially.
You get to the silver, meet the hot mom of your bully (I, if nothing, know the prospective audience
) and then can seduce her. If you go for goofy dialog choices or serious dialog, either way it reveals that vampires are kind of effortlessly good at sex and seduction, but you can also just choose hypnosis too. This teaches the player that there's not really a wrong way to do stuff, so long as you're not doing something OBVIOUSLY STUPID. Which then leads to feeding: You get asked if you want to keep feeding multiple times, and if you just keep pushing, you will eventually drain her dry (this is true in either hunt scenarios.) That's another bad end: Willow loses her soul, becomes a true master vampire, and takes over the world.
If you manage to NOT drain either potential victim dry, the Urge drops the alarming news that, basically, you need to avoid killing people your whole very, very, very long unlife - it only needs you to slip up once, which puts in the basic concerns.
My plan for Chapter 2 is to try and introduce the "survive a normal day" bit with dialog choices increasing or decreasing suspicion. But to do that, I'd need to learn how to have something more than just "true/false" but rather give a trust number in numeric senses. But that's a problem for FUTURE DRAGON.
For now, my current workgoals are
1) Finish the goofy, honest and hypnosis routes for the bully's mom
2) Finish the goofy, honest, serious and hypnosis routes for the park lady, who I am thinking "Velma from Scooby Doo with her name changed, arrived in town to "debunk" the fact vampires exist."
And that's about as far as I've gotten!
Last edited:
