beasty-visual-novel / production / building-and-platforms.md

Building and platforms

What the package needs, where it runs, and what to check before you press Build.

Requirements

  • Unity 6000.2 or newer.
  • No external packages. The save system ships inside the package, with its own JSON engine — there is no Newtonsoft dependency, and nothing to install from the Package Manager to get a working game.
  • The Addressables package is needed only if you opt into streaming.

Render pipelines

Built-in, URP (including the 2D Renderer) and HDRP all work, unchanged.

The reason is simple: the package ships no shaders and no materials. Backdrops, characters and props are sprites; the interface is uGUI. There is nothing to upgrade when you switch pipeline, and no material to go magenta. You can move a project from Built-in to URP mid-production and the visual novel does not notice.

Scripting backends

Mono and IL2CPP. Both are supported, and the save pipeline is verified against a real IL2CPP build.

Platforms

Anything with regular file IO — which is what the save system needs:

  • Windows, macOS, Linux
  • Android, iOS
  • Consoles

Warning WebGL is not supported in 1.0.0. The save pipeline is the reason: the atomic write needs File.Replace, and the async save/load variants are Task-based. A browser build provides neither. There is no partial mode — do not plan a WebGL release on this version. The full explanation is in the save system’s platforms and limits.

Before you build

A short checklist:

  1. Run the validator on each DialogueScene (Tools > Beasty VN > Maintenance > Validate Selected Project). It finds the dangling character id, the unrouted subgraph outcome and the localization key with no source text — the failures that do not throw and so do not show up in a playtest of the routes you happen to take. See Validation and ids.
  2. Check the Time Config if your game uses game time. It is assigned on the BeastyManager, and leaving it empty turns the time system off: no time variables are written and every time condition evaluates to false. A game whose routines quietly do nothing in the build usually has an empty Time Config. See Game time.
  3. Rebuild the Addressables content if you use streaming. A stale catalog means streamed art does not resolve. See Streaming.
  4. Check the localization totals: the validator reports how many translations are missing or stale.

Aspect ratio and resolution

The design resolution lives in VN settings (targetWidth and targetHeight, 1920x1080 by default).

To make sure the game is FRAMED the same on every monitor, add the Beasty Aspect Ratio Enforcer (Add Component > Beasty > Beasty Aspect Ratio Enforcer) to your camera. It forces the camera to present at a fixed aspect ratio: a wider window gets black bars left and right (pillarbox), a taller one gets bars top and bottom (letterbox). The ratio comes from the VN settings target resolution by default, and can be overridden per camera.

Note For the interface to be letterboxed with the game, the Canvas must be in Screen Space - Camera mode pointing at that camera. A Screen Space - Overlay canvas ignores the camera’s viewport entirely and keeps filling the whole monitor.

The loading screen

Add the Beasty Loading Screen (Add Component > Beasty > Beasty Loading Screen) to a panel on your canvas and the BeastyManager drives it: it comes up while the game boots and while a save loads.

It fades in and out, honours a minimum display time (1 second by default) so a fast load does not flash the panel for two frames, and can drive a progress bar (an Image fill, a Slider, or both) that stays hidden until something reports progress. All of its timing is unscaled, so it works while the game is paused. Every visual is yours: restyle the children freely.

Programmers can swap in their own implementation, and can hold the boot open until their own systems are ready. See Controllers.

See also