- Jul 6, 2017
- 104
- 132
Is this a 3D Game (real-time rendering) or 3DCG? The screenshots make me think it's 3DCG.
After writing that, I downloaded it and... this is weird. Imagine a RenPy game where you can move the camera around the scene and see everything at various angles. That's what you have here. The camera is not attached in any way to the MC other than being centered on the MC when the scene is rendered. Absolutely nothing moves, except the trees being blown around winds outside. The movement from one pose to another by the NPCs is exactly the same as what you get in RenPy VNs - snap from one to another. Also just like 2DCG/3DCG VNs, the scene doesn't change just because you clicked the mouse - the NPCs will sit in that pose, not even moving their chests indicating breathing.. until they're snapped into the next pose. The trees are more alive than any of the humanoids you're interacting with. It doesn't feel like a 3d game at all. It almost feels as if using the definition of "3D Game" used here, you could call any game with a parallax a "3d game" -- congrats RPGMaker games, you're now "3d Games" ! RPGmaker games are also -technically- rendering the assets with every frame also.
In my opinion, this cheapens the idea of 3D Games. Yes, it is -technically- rendering assets with every frame... but without movement of some kind, what's the point other than to waste CPU/GPU cycles? Feels like using a sword when a scalpel is what is required. There is literally nothing special about this that I have seen which couldn't be done in something far less resource intensive and have the same feel - specifically, RenPy. At the very least, this game requires a VN tag.
Further, the extreme delay launching the game worries me. To be clear before I state this, I am NOT accusing the author of this game of anything. However, if I wanted to include something like a miner in a way that would go unsuspected, I'd put it in a closed-source 3d rendered game where high CPU and/or GPU usage would not be seen as abnormal. Again, I'm not accusing the author of that. I have no evidence of that... but the extremely long black screen at the start was long enough for me to to go "wtf is it doing?" - and others have mentioned that long black screen in these comments as well.
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I wrote the above last night, and after being away for a while I wanted to amend my statement. The game is probably fine; I didn't get far enough into it to be able to tell. The specific issue I had, which frustrates me often on this website, is that the tag does not match the content. If you're searching for a "3D Game", you're not likely interested in a glorified VN that would be far better (resource wise) in another engine.. but that's essentially what you have here. Further, not everyone can afford to sit around and download a 5GB game just to find out that what was declared .. isn't exactly what you're getting. This issue is not specific to this game, and I don't mean to disparage this game's design as, again, I did not play enough of it to get a good feel for the game itself. What I did see seemed fine, if I were interested in a VN. I'd say outlining the text area to better clue the user in as to where to click to advance the text would be a nice idea (if there was such a thing already, I couldn't see it). The black screen issue at the start should be a top priority to fix - put a loading screen or something.
After writing that, I downloaded it and... this is weird. Imagine a RenPy game where you can move the camera around the scene and see everything at various angles. That's what you have here. The camera is not attached in any way to the MC other than being centered on the MC when the scene is rendered. Absolutely nothing moves, except the trees being blown around winds outside. The movement from one pose to another by the NPCs is exactly the same as what you get in RenPy VNs - snap from one to another. Also just like 2DCG/3DCG VNs, the scene doesn't change just because you clicked the mouse - the NPCs will sit in that pose, not even moving their chests indicating breathing.. until they're snapped into the next pose. The trees are more alive than any of the humanoids you're interacting with. It doesn't feel like a 3d game at all. It almost feels as if using the definition of "3D Game" used here, you could call any game with a parallax a "3d game" -- congrats RPGMaker games, you're now "3d Games" ! RPGmaker games are also -technically- rendering the assets with every frame also.
In my opinion, this cheapens the idea of 3D Games. Yes, it is -technically- rendering assets with every frame... but without movement of some kind, what's the point other than to waste CPU/GPU cycles? Feels like using a sword when a scalpel is what is required. There is literally nothing special about this that I have seen which couldn't be done in something far less resource intensive and have the same feel - specifically, RenPy. At the very least, this game requires a VN tag.
Further, the extreme delay launching the game worries me. To be clear before I state this, I am NOT accusing the author of this game of anything. However, if I wanted to include something like a miner in a way that would go unsuspected, I'd put it in a closed-source 3d rendered game where high CPU and/or GPU usage would not be seen as abnormal. Again, I'm not accusing the author of that. I have no evidence of that... but the extremely long black screen at the start was long enough for me to to go "wtf is it doing?" - and others have mentioned that long black screen in these comments as well.
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I wrote the above last night, and after being away for a while I wanted to amend my statement. The game is probably fine; I didn't get far enough into it to be able to tell. The specific issue I had, which frustrates me often on this website, is that the tag does not match the content. If you're searching for a "3D Game", you're not likely interested in a glorified VN that would be far better (resource wise) in another engine.. but that's essentially what you have here. Further, not everyone can afford to sit around and download a 5GB game just to find out that what was declared .. isn't exactly what you're getting. This issue is not specific to this game, and I don't mean to disparage this game's design as, again, I did not play enough of it to get a good feel for the game itself. What I did see seemed fine, if I were interested in a VN. I'd say outlining the text area to better clue the user in as to where to click to advance the text would be a nice idea (if there was such a thing already, I couldn't see it). The black screen issue at the start should be a top priority to fix - put a loading screen or something.
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