Description: Belle is cross-platform and easy-to-use visual novel maker that deploys games for the web.
Requirements (Editor): - Qt 4.6 or newer. - Belle Engine (to test/run the game).
Requirements (Engine): -A browser that supports the HTML5, which should be any browser in its latest version. -A game file that contains the description of the game. (generated by the editor)
Compiling (Editor): -Open a terminal in this directory and type the following commands: qmake belle.pro make ./belle
Running (Engine): -You should use the Belle Editor to run your game.
### [General] - Added append option to Dialogue actions. - Improved Menu object.
#### [Editor] - Set fade type correctly. - Fixed action not loading target object in some cases. - Improved target object selection in action's editor. - Improved Resource and clones synchronization. - Minor improvements on simple http server. - Fixed object combobox in ChangeColor editor. - Fixed crash when adding new option to menu. - Other minor fixes.
#### [Engine] - Fixed empty lines not being rendered in TextBox. - Init game variable properly. - Fixed initialization of Character states. - Stop any mouse move actions when a mouse leave event occurs. - Fixed audio preloading. - Fixed and improved some actions. - Added ActionGroup. - Fixed some hovering issues. - Improved event handling in objects. - Improved management of executed actions in GameModel. - Overall improvements.
## Belle 0.5a | 13/02/2015
#### [Editor] - Added "New Project" option. - Added synchronization between resources and cloned objects on scene(s). (not active by default) - Assets are now exported to a separate file (assets.js). - Improved usability of condition's text edit. - Implemented character state in Show action. - Fixed ChangeState action not loading correctly. - Set proper detection of animated images. - Fixed images not showing in add character dialog. - Fixed issues in Show Action. - Improved editing of Slide action. - Fixed object z-order when importing project. - Fixed opacity in ObjectGroup objects. - Fixed crash when switching character states. - Fixed crash when switching to a ChangeBackground action. - Improved ObjectGroup editing. - Fixed many (other) bugs.
#### [Engine] - Major redesign and rewrite. - Improved pause screen. - Improved load screen. - Added support for animated images in canvas. - Fixed strange behaviour with text baseline due to floating point coordinates. - Removed stroke when drawing the object's background. - Fixed drawing bug when hovering a button. - Added meta tag to force IE to use the correct document mode. - Improved overall event detection. - Improved Slide animation. - Fixed many (other) bugs.
Hi, I got the new build. Here are my impressions so far. Its overal much better than 0.2- now I can run the game!
1. firefox runs the game flawlessly from local hd, while chrome gets stuck on the loading bar.
2. One can select a browser in the settings window, but there is no command in the menus to run test in browser
3. It's hard to save progress, wheres ctrl+s? :(
Instead one has to reexport on every save.
4. After installing it from deb, I still need to point out where the engine path is in the settings window before being able to save. Some new users might find this intimidating.Would be nice to have a default path that points to where it's installed by default.
You might already know about these things. Let me know if you like me to submit to a bug tracker- I wanna help in any way I can as this is a really promissing project!!
Hi, I got the new build. Here are my impressions so far. Its overal much better than 0.2- now I can run the game!
Great. Yes i fixed many bugs/crashes and improved many things. :)
Quote:
1. firefox runs the game flawlessly from local hd, while chrome gets stuck on the loading bar.
Are you double-clicking the HTML file? If so, that will never work with Chrome, unfortunately. Chrome limits its functionality for security reasons when opening local HTML pages, so the game won't even run.
Please read the part of offline distribution here: http://www.nongnu.org/belle/docs/distribution.htmlQuote:
2. One can select a browser in the settings window, but there is no command in the menus to run test in browser
There's a run button on the toolbar. But yes, i should add an option to a menu.
Quote:
3. It's hard to save progress, wheres ctrl+s? :(
Instead one has to reexport on every save.
You're absolutely right. I'm going to add it in 0.4.
Quote:
4. After installing it from deb, I still need to point out where the engine path is in the settings window before being able to save. Some new users might find this intimidating.Would be nice to have a default path that points to where it's installed by default.
Yes, i'm aware of that. The engine files are actually already in your system, the problem is, in the code, i need to point to a particular directory when using a gnu/linux system. Since i made the debs after releasing 0.3, i didn't bother to change the code. I thought of postponing that change to 0.4.
Quote:
You might already know about these things. Let me know if you like me to submit to a bug tracker- I wanna help in any way I can as this is a really promissing project!!
yeah, any sort of way to incorporate animation. :)
If I have to suggest a key feature that I am mostly missing on ANY visual novel engine- that would be the ability to use animated images (gifs) or import animation sequences.
Combine that with buttons and motion paths and you can create a sort of an interesting adventure game type effect.
Thebest part of belle is the ability to export to html5 though. What I miss is the ability to easily test my game- there is no "compline and run" button anywhere. There is no preference option to select my browser and the engine is not using the default browser. I could play with it for a while, but it was impossible to get a game to run in the browser
Hi,
Thanks for your feedback.
About the animated images, i'm working on that now. ;)
Buttons are already available and what exactly are motion paths?
Actually there is a run button (http://picpaste.com/run-button-qnKA1GEA.png), how exactly did you test your game? and why was it impossible to run the game in the browser?
And about you not being able to change the browser that's somewhat true, i'll add an option for that in the next version, however, in the meantime, you can always set your favorite browser as the default application that opens HTML pages. If you have any question let me know. By the way, which OS are you using?
Just as a final note, i understand your fustration and i hope you keep interested in this project, however, i just wanted to say that it is very hard for Belle to reach the maturity level of the engines out there within a couple of months, while all the other engines have years of development behind them.
Hi thanks for the ongoing efforts put into the engine. My interest will stay with it and will surely follow its development!
I believe that this engine can be big due to its html5 export nature. Very few engines, especially open source ones support that.
On running games, I tried that button and instead of running my game, what the button does is it prompts me to open a directory on my file system.I give it the directory where the engine is. That then opens my browser (chromium), but instead of the game's start screen, i get a black screen with a "star (OK)" pop up dialog window. Nothing happens.
On motion paths:
A motion path is a predefined vector path(made out of nodes) that an object can travel on from point A to point B. Such a path can be useful if you want to move a sprite on the screen, but its definitely a bit of an extra to have.
Ideally, to keep the exported games smaller, it would be quite nice if belle supported svg animation, but that technology is currently too young and not very useable in open source software- not as useable as flash anyway :(
Hi again,
Thanks for your support. I think HTML5 is really the way to go for visual novels, since it can quite easily handle this type of game, plus it gives an unbeatable portability. Btw, which visual novel engines do you know that work with HTML5?
About running the game, the problem is probably with the game file generated by the editor. Can you tell me what you tried to do or can you provide me that game file so i can check?
There's also another alternative, in chrome you can also right click anywhere on a page and select "Inspect element" or something similar. This option opens a mini-window at the bottom where you can check the properties of the page you're currently viewing. So open that tool before running your game and switch to the Console section. Error messages (they should be red) and other messages should appear on that tool. If you could then just copy those messages and paste them somewhere where i can see them it would be great.
About motion paths, they don't seem very difficult to implement, although i think there are more important features to implement for now. Anyway there is already a Slide action that lets you move from point A to point B. I know it's not the same thing, but at least already gives some moving animation. :)
Svg animation seems like a good feature for the future, but now, like with the motion path, i think there are more important stuff to implement.
Btw, i already implemented support for gif files in the editor, now i need to implement in the engine. Do you think animated backgrounds is worth doing?
Hi, I will try to find out what the problem is.
Btw, check this out
http://motionartist.smithmicro.com/index.html
it lets you add motion to sprites in order to create a more involving story. A feature like that combined with interactivity really doesnt exist out there.
The only other engine that does animation that I know of is Novelty. Its free, but not open source and runs on linux with wine.
It cant export to html5 in my knowledge
Ratings & Comments
12 Comments
What file does the save data go to? Every time I close my browser, I do not see any save file when I choose load state.
Hi, I got the new build. Here are my impressions so far. Its overal much better than 0.2- now I can run the game! 1. firefox runs the game flawlessly from local hd, while chrome gets stuck on the loading bar. 2. One can select a browser in the settings window, but there is no command in the menus to run test in browser 3. It's hard to save progress, wheres ctrl+s? :( Instead one has to reexport on every save. 4. After installing it from deb, I still need to point out where the engine path is in the settings window before being able to save. Some new users might find this intimidating.Would be nice to have a default path that points to where it's installed by default. You might already know about these things. Let me know if you like me to submit to a bug tracker- I wanna help in any way I can as this is a really promissing project!!
animated gifs work!!! wooooooohoo :DD
Quote:Hi, I got the new build. Here are my impressions so far. Its overal much better than 0.2- now I can run the game!
Great. Yes i fixed many bugs/crashes and improved many things. :)
Quote: 1. firefox runs the game flawlessly from local hd, while chrome gets stuck on the loading bar.
Are you double-clicking the HTML file? If so, that will never work with Chrome, unfortunately. Chrome limits its functionality for security reasons when opening local HTML pages, so the game won't even run.
Please read the part of offline distribution here: http://www.nongnu.org/belle/docs/distribution.html
Quote:2. One can select a browser in the settings window, but there is no command in the menus to run test in browser
There's a run button on the toolbar. But yes, i should add an option to a menu.
Quote:3. It's hard to save progress, wheres ctrl+s? :(
Instead one has to reexport on every save.
You're absolutely right. I'm going to add it in 0.4.
Quote:4. After installing it from deb, I still need to point out where the engine path is in the settings window before being able to save. Some new users might find this intimidating.Would be nice to have a default path that points to where it's installed by default.
Yes, i'm aware of that. The engine files are actually already in your system, the problem is, in the code, i need to point to a particular directory when using a gnu/linux system. Since i made the debs after releasing 0.3, i didn't bother to change the code. I thought of postponing that change to 0.4.
Quote: You might already know about these things. Let me know if you like me to submit to a bug tracker- I wanna help in any way I can as this is a really promissing project!!
You can submit bugs/features, if you want, here: https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=belle&func=additem (no registration required)
Would be great if you add support for animated sequences through gif files, sequence of pngs or a single image
Thanks. About your question, you mean animated images?
yeah, any sort of way to incorporate animation. :) If I have to suggest a key feature that I am mostly missing on ANY visual novel engine- that would be the ability to use animated images (gifs) or import animation sequences. Combine that with buttons and motion paths and you can create a sort of an interesting adventure game type effect. Thebest part of belle is the ability to export to html5 though. What I miss is the ability to easily test my game- there is no "compline and run" button anywhere. There is no preference option to select my browser and the engine is not using the default browser. I could play with it for a while, but it was impossible to get a game to run in the browser
Actualy novelty engine on windows has the animations feature, but novelty cannot export to anything that runs in a web browser :(
Hi, Thanks for your feedback. About the animated images, i'm working on that now. ;) Buttons are already available and what exactly are motion paths? Actually there is a run button (http://picpaste.com/run-button-qnKA1GEA.png), how exactly did you test your game? and why was it impossible to run the game in the browser? And about you not being able to change the browser that's somewhat true, i'll add an option for that in the next version, however, in the meantime, you can always set your favorite browser as the default application that opens HTML pages. If you have any question let me know. By the way, which OS are you using? Just as a final note, i understand your fustration and i hope you keep interested in this project, however, i just wanted to say that it is very hard for Belle to reach the maturity level of the engines out there within a couple of months, while all the other engines have years of development behind them.
Hi thanks for the ongoing efforts put into the engine. My interest will stay with it and will surely follow its development! I believe that this engine can be big due to its html5 export nature. Very few engines, especially open source ones support that. On running games, I tried that button and instead of running my game, what the button does is it prompts me to open a directory on my file system.I give it the directory where the engine is. That then opens my browser (chromium), but instead of the game's start screen, i get a black screen with a "star (OK)" pop up dialog window. Nothing happens. On motion paths: A motion path is a predefined vector path(made out of nodes) that an object can travel on from point A to point B. Such a path can be useful if you want to move a sprite on the screen, but its definitely a bit of an extra to have. Ideally, to keep the exported games smaller, it would be quite nice if belle supported svg animation, but that technology is currently too young and not very useable in open source software- not as useable as flash anyway :(
Hi again, Thanks for your support. I think HTML5 is really the way to go for visual novels, since it can quite easily handle this type of game, plus it gives an unbeatable portability. Btw, which visual novel engines do you know that work with HTML5? About running the game, the problem is probably with the game file generated by the editor. Can you tell me what you tried to do or can you provide me that game file so i can check? There's also another alternative, in chrome you can also right click anywhere on a page and select "Inspect element" or something similar. This option opens a mini-window at the bottom where you can check the properties of the page you're currently viewing. So open that tool before running your game and switch to the Console section. Error messages (they should be red) and other messages should appear on that tool. If you could then just copy those messages and paste them somewhere where i can see them it would be great. About motion paths, they don't seem very difficult to implement, although i think there are more important features to implement for now. Anyway there is already a Slide action that lets you move from point A to point B. I know it's not the same thing, but at least already gives some moving animation. :) Svg animation seems like a good feature for the future, but now, like with the motion path, i think there are more important stuff to implement. Btw, i already implemented support for gif files in the editor, now i need to implement in the engine. Do you think animated backgrounds is worth doing?
Hi, I will try to find out what the problem is. Btw, check this out http://motionartist.smithmicro.com/index.html it lets you add motion to sprites in order to create a more involving story. A feature like that combined with interactivity really doesnt exist out there. The only other engine that does animation that I know of is Novelty. Its free, but not open source and runs on linux with wine. It cant export to html5 in my knowledge