Lesverhaal: a visual novel engine for use in a classroom setting

Speaker: Bas Wijnen

Type: Short talk (20 minutes)

Room: Main

Time: Nov 22 (Sun): 12:30

Duration: 0:20

Watching people discus a subject is a good way to learn about it. With this in mind, I decided that a visual novel would be a good way to get middle and high school students to learn about physics in a pleasant way. Instead of (or in addition to) answering questions about what they will do next, they can answer questions about the physics, to demonstrate that they understood it.

For writing visual novels, Ren’Py is the engine of choice. However, it has some drawbacks for this purpose. Most notably that as a teacher I want to monitor their progress. So I want to see their answers. That is not (reasonably) possible with Ren’Py. So I decided to write my own engine, which for now goes by the name “Lesverhaal”.

In this talk, I’ll explain the design of Lesverhaal, how I solved some problems and what problems are still left to solve. Spoiler: the main thing left to create is not code, but story content.