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## Before You Begin

There are only two requirements to get started with this tutorial:

### Download Ren'Py

1. You have to download Ren'Py from the Official Download Page and install it.

### Think about the story

2. You have to have some idea what the story that you want to tell is. You don't need to have a complete outline, or know all of the characters, though that might be a good idea as a story telling practice (many, though not all, people believe that you should know your entire story at least at a high level before you start to write any of it down). But at a minimum you just need to have a basic idea of at least two characters, a setting, and some idea of where your plot is starting.

#### Planning

You can, of course, jump straight into a mega project, but experience shows that one of the main reasons for projects not being completed is that it was just too huge and ambitious.

It's a good idea to consciously aim to keep your first project small and simple.

As a guide, 5000 words of story-text is usually about 15 minutes of playing time. 30-45 minutes of playing time is a realistic target.

Producing art takes a lot of time. While you don't want to let it dictate the story, it's sensible to limit the number of locations (and therefore backgrounds) where you can. Likewise having a large cast will increase the artist's workload dramatically - unless you're happy for the characters to have only one pose and one expression.

Just to give you an idea, below are the "profiles" of some completed first-time projects:

    Project 1
    Creative team: 2 (1 writer, 1 artist)
    Development time: 1 month (NaNoReNo)
    playing time: 30-45 minutes
    Story length: 17466 words
    Cast: 3 characters, 38 sprite images
    Story world: 15 backgrounds (filtered photos)
    Music: none.

    Project 2
    Creative team: 1 person
    Development time:
    Playing time: 30 minutes (but had shoot-em-up elements)
    Story length: 8000 words
    Cast: 3 characters, 45 sprite images + 3 minor characters
    Story world: 12 backgrounds, plus rendered spaceships
    Music: from the web.

    Project 3
    Creative team: 1 person
    Development time: 2 months
    Story length: 1507 words,
    Only one ending (kinetic).
    Cast: 3 characters. Everyone has only one pose.
    Main character has 7 expressions, while the others have 4 and 1.
    Story world: CG and 4 painted backgrounds
    Music: 3 tracks from the web.

And a major project just for comparison:

    Project 4
    Creative team: 2 people (artist/writer, musician)
    Development time: 2 YEARS
    Story length: 51756 words,
    6 main endings plus a couple of "you die" dead ends.
    Cast: 9 characters, 65 sprite images
    Story world: 86 backgrounds (50% filtered photos)
    Music: 8 tracks, composed for this work

So you see, projects can be as big or as small as you like.

### Start making your game

That's it. You're now ready to get started.

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