VN Ren'Py A Shot in the Dark [Ch.4] [ViM Studios]

[tanstaafl]

regarding emotions and their presentations in 2d/3d, i would say that mostly depends on devs (artistic) mastery.
while i do agree that by default 3d generic art isnt that expressive, if the devs pay attention and know how to do it, it could be even more expressive than drawn 2d art.

one thing is for sure, and it will stay that for the time being i would say - both 2d drawn and 3d daz arts are by far superior to ai crapcg.

Speaking to the highlighted part, I don't think it is necessarily a skill issue. I think it's an effort issue. Larger Daz games can have thousands and thousands of images and every face would have to be sculpted individually. Even if they use face emotion presets that would become noticeable if they didn't have literally hundreds of presets. Whereas the drawn art games are just...drawn that way. I think the overall effort for a drawn art game is probably higher than a Daz game overall until you get down to the nitty gritty of the finer details in which case it suddenly ramps up to exponentially more effort to do than drawn.

 

[Maviarab]

Speaking to the highlighted part, I don't think it is necessarily a skill issue. I think it's an effort issue. Larger Daz games can have thousands and thousands of images and every face would have to be sculpted individually. Even if they use face emotion presets that would become noticeable if they didn't have literally hundreds of presets. Whereas the drawn art games are just...drawn that way. I think the overall effort for a drawn art game is probably higher than a Daz game overall until you get down to the nitty gritty of the finer details in which case it suddenly ramps up to exponentially more effort to do than drawn.

It is a skill issue (and time), simple as that. You need to try more VN's of high quality (and/or actually look at renders from people who truly know what they are doing) and then see if you still want to try and die on your hill. Daz, pre-made assets and creating your own character models, is/are only as good as the person using the program.

And the vast majority, are average at best.

 

[tanstaafl]

It is a skill issue (and time), simple as that. You need to try more VN's of high quality (and/or actually look at renders from people who truly know what they are doing) and then see if you still want to try and die on your hill. Daz, pre-made assets and creating your own character models, is/are only as good as the person using the program.

And the vast majority, are average at best.

Assumptions are faulty here. Name a game as an example...I've probably played it and will still say the drawn art has better emotion. It's a subjective argument, accept that part and we'll be copacetic.

Edit: Should be mentioned that the art has to be drawn well...which is almost as rare as a Daz artist good enough to convey emotion well.

 

[Abhai]

Assumptions are faulty here. Name a game as an example...I've probably played it and will still say the drawn art has better emotion. It's a subjective argument, accept that part and we'll be copacetic.

Edit: Should be mentioned that the art has to be drawn well...which is almost as rare as a Daz artist good enough to convey emotion well.

ofc, bottom line would be that we all can agree here that true artists, regardless in drawn 2d or daz 3d department, are quite scarce.
moreover as most of our opinions/estimations are quite highly dependent upon our own personal artistic sense/sensibility, it is unlikely that we can find a common ground with others regarding delicate things such artistic emotions/expressions are.
so better to stop here before we enter (infamous) ot lands...

 

[ラMr Shadow悪]

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Mai was the winner of our latest special "fan request" render set for 2024! The results of that poll have been added to the original post:

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Now we want to hear your suggestions for what that render will be. Let us know your suggestions for themes, costumes, or cosplay Characters you'd like to see for
Mai!

Leave your suggestions in the comments, send us a DM, or

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!

 

[n00bi]

damn... give the story teller some weed or something for inspiration/creativity.
I was hoping this would be a good game, but now i have serious doubts about it.
when a game-dev needs his community to come up with ideas. i know two things.

1* its for milking most out of the supporters
2* there isnt really a full story planned, and stuff just get made up as the game development progresses.
i dont mind nr1.. but nr2 usually results in shitty stories.

 

[Jericho85]

damn... give the story teller some weed or something for inspiration/creativity.
I was hoping this would be a good game, but now i have serious doubts about it.
when a game-dev needs his community to come up with ideas. i know two things.

1* its for milking most out of the supporters
2* there isnt really a full story planned, and stuff just get made up as the game development progresses.
i dont mind nr1.. but nr2 usually results in shitty stories.

Tell me you haven't played the game without telling me you haven't played the game.

 

[DougDimmadope]

anyone else frustrated this is the only daz game without cumshots/creampie? like cmon 'shot' is in the title

 

[n00bi]

Tell me you haven't played the game without telling me you haven't played the game.

Lol what ?
Tell me what you see without telling me what you see.

 

[Jericho85]

Lol what ?
Tell me what you see without telling me what you see.
View attachment 3770299

If you read the dev post you can clearly see that it's referring to a fan request render set, not the actual game. The dev has already storyboarded the entire story so the dev doesn't "need the community to come up with ideas"... something you would know if you actually followed this game. So your shitposting was completely baseless.

 

[n00bi]

Jericho85 while i may have read&misunderstood the post in its entirely.
Learn to distinguish between criticism & shit posting.
Ididnt trash the game per say. i stated my concerns about what you can see some games do.
And yea the story in most of them isnt good, usually shit. there are exceptions ofc.
And no i dont follow this game, i played it once i saw it here back in march and moved on to other games.

Having that said, i still dont see the point in having a fan requests, voting polls etc.
Unless intentions is nr1 as stated in my prev post. "dev wants $ which is understandable"
but to me it looks like its:
"lets make nice renders, not game renders just stupid wallpapers etc, oh and perhaps the suckers want 4k too if we have the time,
yea lets spend time on this instead of doing next scene renders, do coding, bugfixes etc."

Its just my opinion.
opinions are like asses, you dont have to agree but if you say you dont have one, i know youre full of shit.

 

[Maviarab]

And no i dont follow this game, i played it once i saw it here back in march and moved on to other games.

Yet here you still are....

 

[Jericho85]

Having that said, i still dont see the point in having a fan requests, voting polls etc.

Literally not uncommon at all. A lot of devs do things like this for their patrons. So even if you think what you posted was valid criticism for this VN (which it wasn't) with your talk of "milking", lack of planning, and "shitty vns", it was actually just another completely baseless drive-by shitpost because you don't know this dev or the VN.

 

[flaviopaganini]

This is one of the few games that has a writer dedicated solely to the plot. You can find out more about her here:

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Asking for suggestions from users is just a way to give advantages to those who subscribe to Patreon.

 

[PickerLewd]

This is one of the few games that has a writer dedicated solely to the plot. You can find out more about her here:

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The blog seems to have been abandoned since 2014 and his Amazon page says 0 books for sale .
Anyway, I like the plot of this game and the way it's handled, although reading some of the comments here I discovered some secrets that I didn't know myself.

 

[DevinHesi]

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A lot of work has been happening on Chapter 5 since the last dev log, but unfortunately a lot of it is not really well-captured by the progress percentages. Whereas we have "regular" development cycles basically down to a science now, we are doing many "new" things this update and that has made it hard to estimate how long things will take and what exactly is left to be done.

The novelty of working on something new and a little unpredictable has been really refreshing, which is exactly why we wanted to do the Murder Mystery Game this chapter. We've definitely learned after doing this for many years that keeping things fresh and fun is key to maintaining the longterm stamina required to finished a multi-year project, even if it isn't always the most efficient way to do things.

Most of the render work over the past few weeks has been making sprites, specifically for Ashley, Sara, Andre, Jazmin, and Kevon. Two sets of sprites (Sara and Kevon) had to be redone completely because of technical issues so some time was lost there. The good news is, of course, things continue to get faster as we learn from past mistakes and how to prevent them. Right now we have 1,380 new renders for the update, including all the sprite variations.

Josselyn also did quite a bit of work setting up environments for later scenes which doesn't really get captured in the progress percentages, but it will save time later when it's time to actually make the renders.

Another time suck these past few weeks has been fleshing out the second half of the Murder Mystery Game. As we mentioned in previous dev logs, the Murder Mystery Game is integral to the main plot of the game, and Chapter 5 is particularly important as far as story goes. It's important to us to get this right, since we know players have invested a lot of time and energy into the story so far and we don't want to let them down!

Multiple days have been spent moving boxes around in Figma to make sure we have a good grasp of how the Murder Mystery Game will conclude and how it ties into the main plot of the game. Here's an example of what we've been working on:



More of the Murder Mystery Game itself is taking shape in terms of code, as well. Keep in mind we are still mostly using placeholders for the GUI, so it will look a lot more polished as time goes on and we add in custom GUI.



Lastly, here are examples of the sprites that have been made since last dev log!

 

[matissewan11]

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View attachment 3790087

A lot of work has been happening on Chapter 5 since the last dev log, but unfortunately a lot of it is not really well-captured by the progress percentages. Whereas we have "regular" development cycles basically down to a science now, we are doing many "new" things this update and that has made it hard to estimate how long things will take and what exactly is left to be done.

The novelty of working on something new and a little unpredictable has been really refreshing, which is exactly why we wanted to do the Murder Mystery Game this chapter. We've definitely learned after doing this for many years that keeping things fresh and fun is key to maintaining the longterm stamina required to finished a multi-year project, even if it isn't always the most efficient way to do things.

Most of the render work over the past few weeks has been making sprites, specifically for Ashley, Sara, Andre, Jazmin, and Kevon. Two sets of sprites (Sara and Kevon) had to be redone completely because of technical issues so some time was lost there. The good news is, of course, things continue to get faster as we learn from past mistakes and how to prevent them. Right now we have 1,380 new renders for the update, including all the sprite variations.

Josselyn also did quite a bit of work setting up environments for later scenes which doesn't really get captured in the progress percentages, but it will save time later when it's time to actually make the renders.

Another time suck these past few weeks has been fleshing out the second half of the Murder Mystery Game. As we mentioned in previous dev logs, the Murder Mystery Game is integral to the main plot of the game, and Chapter 5 is particularly important as far as story goes. It's important to us to get this right, since we know players have invested a lot of time and energy into the story so far and we don't want to let them down!

Multiple days have been spent moving boxes around in Figma to make sure we have a good grasp of how the Murder Mystery Game will conclude and how it ties into the main plot of the game. Here's an example of what we've been working on:

View attachment 3790088

More of the Murder Mystery Game itself is taking shape in terms of code, as well. Keep in mind we are still mostly using placeholders for the GUI, so it will look a lot more polished as time goes on and we add in custom GUI.

View attachment 3790090 View attachment 3790091 View attachment 3790092 View attachment 3790093

Lastly, here are examples of the sprites that have been made since last dev log!

View attachment 3790094 View attachment 3790095 View attachment 3790096 View attachment 3790097 View attachment 3790098

A game in a game, combining two of my favorite game genre, murder mystery games are not easy to pull off but from the sprites and preview, we are in for a great time