Adult games giving people carpel tunnel

[Untolddead]

Is any one else tired of many of these games splitting their dialogue into a sentence at a time. It's destroying the click count of peripherals and is rough on the wrist. I think game makers don't often play their games like a player and thus never notice this problem.

Please game makers use paragraphs! You don't need a new dialogue box for each sentence if the same person is speaking. I honestly think that you can often tell how good a game is by how many clicks you have before the first choice or action in the game. While many adult games have many game design problem the pointless/overly split dialogue is the worst. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

 

[Sphere42]

Unfortunately I believe this will only get worse the more prominent handhelds become as a platform for these games. At least Ren'Py and (modded?) RPGM have turbo skip for repeat runs, remember when you had to hold B and mash A and still took over a minute to get through a villain's monologue?

In some cases, especially animated flash games in my experience, forwarding dialogue also acts as the "next loop" trigger for the sex animation itself. Most uses are rather poor but sometimes you get dialogue relevant to the new action.

For all those other games designed as desktop-exclusive, a slew of dialogue with no intermittent sexual content and not deliberately going for pixel/retro aesthetics, at least have the decency to offer hotkeys, auto-forward, full skip and a scrollable log. I believe Ren'Py and newer RPGMs offer these functions by default anyway.

 

[Avaron1974]

Just what everyone wants, a text box that fills half the screen and covers what's going on.

No thankyou.

Do not want.

 

[Sphere42]

Just what everyone wants, a text box that fills half the screen and covers what's going on.

Well if you aren't playing on a potato the smallest dialogue boxes we already have should be able to hold at least 5, probably closer to 10 lines using the font size and layout of this forum. Then again, both in those games and online, the one-slide-per-sentence clickfest might disguise the full volume of text to those with an acute allergy to reading. (not you Avaron, just jabbing at the general laziness in chats and forums)

 

[pasunna]

Something for sure developer play their game more than player
just 1 minute of game time they play that at least 10 time to code to test to find bug
repeat to edit dialogue that not match the scene bla bla bla
so if it cut in one sentence that maybe the dev like what it is

player have opinion dev too
may be he want the flow of text and image go out that way
some will find it bad and some will not

 

[polywog]

If you have to click or hit the space bar 10 times to read a sentence... in the trash it goes.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Just what everyone wants, a text box that fills half the screen and covers what's going on.

There's place between the "one sentence at a time" that is the actual trend and the "half the screen dialog box" you talk about.
By default, the dialog box of Ren'py permit to fit four, when not five, lines of dialog at once. Like authors that are too lazy to imagines full paragraphs are also too lazy to resize the said dialog box, it would change nothing at what you effectively see of the image. If their dialogs where more than one sentence, at least it would justify that they hide so much (generally 1/10) of the screen.
They can also change the ratio of the screen to hide nothing, or stop centering the image on the bottom tier of it, which would hide less important part of the image.

 

[danteworks]

Aw man, how else am I supposed to pad out my game? Joking, joking. I use 1-2 sentences per screen and I play my own game. I do it because it doesn’t cover too much, and I have a high render per sentence ratio, which necessitates this practice. Other reasons, as if you needed more, include the pacing, flow and rhythm or the dialogue,

 

[anne O'nymous]

Other reasons, as if you needed more, include the pacing, flow and rhythm or the dialogue,

I disagree on this. It just make the characters looks like they are constantly searching what they'll say next. And anyway it's not what can add rhythm to the dialogs, since the said rhythm will stay defined by the click coming from the players.

Take a game like Halfway House, which is the best example of well handled pacing, flow and rhythm of the dialogs. It need really few one sentence dialog to achieve this. Instead it use the options offered by Ren'py to

You must be registered to see the links

, like you could do yourself since your game also use Ren'py.
And with the help of a correctly wrote

You must be registered to see the links

, like by example a {scene="name of the scene"}, it can also eliminate the need of one sentence dialogs due to a change of the screen. A scene like :

    scene whatever
    "No, I'll not blow you !"
    scene whatever1
    "And no need to look at me like this, I'll not change my mind."
    scene whatever2
    "The fuck, you're my son, not my lover !"

which need the player to click twice to see what in real life would be said without interruption, can become something like :

    scene whatever
    "No,{w=0.1} I'll not blow you !{p=0.5}{scene="whatever1"} And no need to look at me like this,{w=0.1] I'll not change my mind.{w=1.0}{scene="whatever2"} The fuck, you're {cps=20}my son{/cps}, not my lover !"

It would give the exact same scene, except that the player wouldn't have to click between each couple sentence/screen, which would obviously imply a better pacing and dynamism, since the scene would evolve while the player is reading. Dynamism enforced by the few additional waits and the slowness that will put emphasis on the "my son".

 

[danteworks]

I disagree on this. It just make the characters looks like they are constantly searching what they'll say next. And anyway it's not what can add rhythm to the dialogs, since the said rhythm will stay defined by the click coming from the players.

Take a game like Halfway House, which is the best example of well handled pacing, flow and rhythm of the dialogs. It need really few one sentence dialog to achieve this. Instead it use the options offered by Ren'py to

You must be registered to see the links

, like you could do yourself since your game also use Ren'py.
And with the help of a correctly wrote

You must be registered to see the links

, like by example a {scene="name of the scene"}, it can also eliminate the need of one sentence dialogs due to a change of the screen. A scene like :

    scene whatever
    "No, I'll not blow you !"
    scene whatever1
    "And no need to look at me like this, I'll not change my mind."
    scene whatever2
    "The fuck, you're my son, not my lover !"

which need the player to click twice to see what in real life would be said without interruption, can become something like :

    scene whatever
    "No,{w=0.1} I'll not blow you !{p=0.5}{scene="whatever1"} And no need to look at me like this,{w=0.1] I'll not change my mind.{w=1.0}{scene="whatever2"} The fuck, you're {cps=20}my son{/cps}, not my lover !"

It would give the exact same scene, except that the player wouldn't have to click between each couple sentence/screen, which would obviously imply a better pacing and dynamism, since the scene would evolve while the player is reading. Dynamism enforced by the few additional waits and the slowness that will put emphasis on the "my son".

Let me add another reason: time efficiency.

 

[Sphere42]

It would give the exact same scene, except that the player wouldn't have to click between each couple sentence/screen, which would obviously imply a better pacing and dynamism, since the scene would evolve while the player is reading. Dynamism enforced by the few additional waits and the slowness that will put emphasis on the "my son".

Forced auto-forward where text is removed from the screen without player input does tend to attract complaints. And if a game uses some kind of animated or letter-by-letter text reveal the option to disable auto-forwarding definitely needs to be separate from the speed setting for that animation.

 

[Dyatlov]

Hey are you Max from 'big brother' ?

 

[Hones]

So what you want all adult games to be in NVL mode? There is a reason most games are in ADV style.
Ugh this would put so many players off
Can you imagine the lewd scenes, a screen full of ooos, ahhhs, yeah right there....
and hiding behind the wall of smut text is the pretty pictures you can barely see

 

[TomberryDude]

Clicking through VN can get tiresome. I recommend using the keyboard or a controller if that's really a problem.

 

[Sphere42]

So what you want all adult games to be in NVL mode? There is a reason most games are in ADV style.
Ugh this would put so many players off
Can you imagine the lewd scenes, a screen full of ooos, ahhhs, yeah right there....
and hiding behind the wall of smut text is the pretty pictures you can barely see

That image is 640x480

Scale that up to 1440x1080 then open a text editor window of 480x1080 next to it and see how much text you can fit in there at font size 12.

 

[Hones]

That image is 640x480

Scale that up to 1440x1080 then open a text editor window of 480x1080 next to it and see how much text you can fit in there at font size 12.

That image was just used as a quick example of the style, NVL is the style where the dialogue is shown multiple lines at a time the dialogue window takes up the entire screen no matter the resolution. ADV which is the commonly preferred style is where the dialogue is typically presented in the small box at the bottom one sentence at a time.

 

[Sphere42]

That image was just used as a quick example of the style, NVL is the style where the dialogue is shown multiple lines at a time the dialogue window takes up the entire screen no matter the resolution. ADV which is the commonly preferred style is where the dialogue is typically presented in the small box at the bottom one sentence at a time.

Err, did you actually read my post? Or my previous posts in this thread? You can have a nice unobstructed 4:3 aspect ratio animation and still fit around 50 lines+menus to the side based on a quick test with Notepad++. That should allow around 20 complex sentences without needing to clear the box.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Forced auto-forward where text is removed from the screen without player input does tend to attract complaints.

Because really few authors do it correctly. They use {nw} alone, which force an immediate withdraw of the text once it's displayed. While they should use {w=X}{nw}, that will wait X seconds before withdrawing the text ; with X being defined according of the average time needed to read the text.
You can look at the thread of Halfway house[/icode], which use a lot of effects implying the text display speed and automatic withdrawing of the dialog. You'll see really few, if not none, complain on this subject.

 

[Hones]

Err, did you actually read my post? Or my previous posts in this thread? You can have a nice unobstructed 4:3 aspect ratio animation and still fit around 50 lines+menus to the side based on a quick test with Notepad++. That should allow around 20 complex sentences without needing to clear the box.

No I didn't read any of your prior post except the reply to me, my initial post was solely directed at the OP and their post about devs having paragraphs on screen instead of lines.

 

[shark_inna_hat]

This post is Meta, and this paragraph is too short.

There's a sweet spot when it comes to the amount of text that is easily 'consumed'. Some may think it's determined by the number of sentences, thoughts or bits of significant information, but it's simpler - it's about 3 lines of text (probably like this paragraph).

Doing a google search should give you some articles about text justification in print and the perfect font size and element layout for web pages that should optimize retention and readability - people have written a lot of smart words about it, but it comes down to the fact that readers don't like to skip to the next line of text, especially when there are many long lines of text. Newspaper know this, that's why there are many columns of short lines with clear paragraphs and headlines in print. Google knows this, that's why search results look as they do. I know this, that's why I'm gritting my teeth trying to make this paragraph needlessly long, but if I've done it right - You should clearly see by now that a wall of text can be far worse then having to click a few more times. But maybe not as bad as the typewriter effect, y'know, when letters appear one at a time. Seriously, stop that.