Hi there @StudioWren,
A Visual Novel is Text-based Interactive Fiction (IF) with Graphics. I hope your intention is to produce one in 3D (maybe even VR as its limited movement schemes are perfect for Visual Novels in my opinion). Have you ever written and completed a text-based branching IF? IF not, I recommend doing so before even jumping into the UE4 engine. This will help you figure out how you want to handle branching narrative and dialog, data storage (datatables) and even the game mechanics.
I’m using IF approach to developed the narrative/dialog for ExORION FTPS. From my perspective, its logical to use a IF for 3D game with branching narrative. I was introduced to a text-based IF scripting language from ChoiceOfGames.com a few years back. I wrote my first Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) (which is the bases for ExORION). As a Solo Game Developer, I actively seek user mediate and procedural generative (AI) content creation systems I can implement in my design and workflow. There are a few Proc IF Generators out there like Versu.
Novels, Narratives, Dialogues are all about Text (or vocalized Text) from my perspective. I love books and audiobooks, so even though my game is real-time action, I incorporate a means in my game design to translate input/output and events from the gameplay into text. and text can be converted in audio vocals. This is actually very easy to do, for text output, think of it as simply printout a function call to a log, for input using a input prompt to feed into string *switch *construct to parse word commands to fire specific events.
I’m very interested in a Blueprints-based Conversation Interactive Story System. Do you have any plans to develop those? BTW, what bb codes did you use to link your image in the signature? I’ve been struggling to get images to link on my post.