Thanks for the advice guys!
Keep the first one short. Build up to something longer. It's more important to have a finished product. You're going to run in to a lot of issues you never expected, so it's better if your first finish line is clearly in sight. Once you have mad one, it will also be a much easier path to the second, and so on and so forth.
Yeah we were thinking of just making a ten minute game to start off with and then taking that and expanding it to a full-fledged one. Set some milestones and have our friends play through them while recording them and putting it up on YouTube.
I spent the money on Tyranobuuilder last winter during the last steam sale. Please take my word for it when I say you'd better far better off taking the time to learn Ren'Py as the go-to VN engine. It's not as immediately user-friendly, but the python-based coding will do you a lot better than TyranoBuilder's limited toolbox.
I'm sure Ren'Py has more customization (I looked into that one too) but I'm not sure if we'll need anything fancy for what we're considering. I'll look into it a bit more and see what kind of projects have been done with it and how fancy they are. It is free so it's not like it would be a pain to switch over at any time.
Ultimately, you may be better off commissioning an artist rather than relying on charity. Just getting 2 or 3 characters with a range of facial expressions could set you back a hundred bucks or so (before backgrounds and CG's), but you'll be able to make a much better (short) first project. Spending money also helps to get you motivated into justifying yourself into finishing a project.
I do have some money laying around but I was thinking that I should probably figure out how many characters we would need before asking for commissions. But that is good to know: $100 for a full set of expression for two or three characters is not that bad. Here I was thinking it would be a lot more...
I did look into a lot of royalty free backgrounds and such and I found a dA group that offers the use of these kinds of things if only you get permission, commercial or otherwise. CGs will be the hardest thing to get, I'm sure.
Make small sample VNs which allude to a bigger story. If you get good reception for the sample, then you can likely find artists that would make the time investment.
Didn't even consider that. Although as stated before a smaller game was the intention to begin with.
Anyway I just wanted to see if anyone here was up for it. My friend and I are both in the business of getting some passive revenue streams so I don't think finishing will be a problem. But this is past me saying this. Future me might not see it the same way.