All games should have animations

[bigguy4u]

It's a game, not a comic. I need moving pictures and preferably sound as well. Don't bother making a game without adding animations.

 

[Penfold Mole]

It's a game, not a comic. I need moving pictures and preferably sound as well. Don't bother making a game without adding animations.

You need, so all game devs should make the games the way you want?

Have you ever tried to create a single 3D CG image? A 3D CG image with a single human in it? A 3D CG animation? The same with a moving human? Have you tried to find or create sounds that would match the scenes you've created? The kind that are not copyrighted or have bought licences to those that are?

Hey, all devs! You heard the guy! Drop every game you're currently making if you aren't creating any animations for it and have no skill or resources to make them! Just drop everything, don't make anything any more! Doesn't matter how good your game is or how many fans you already have.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

It's a game, not a comic. I need moving pictures and preferably sound as well. Don't bother making a game without adding animations.

It's not that devs don't want to add animations, it's how difficult and time-consuming they are to produce. Especially in 2D games. Skilled animators are not cheap. And if you're making a 2D game you need not just an animator but also an additional color artist to fill in the frames. Granted 3D is a bit easier since those games have textured models, but it's still very difficult to produce good-looking animation work. If it was easy everyone would be doing it.

Hey, all dev's! You heard the guy! Drop every game you're currently making if you aren't creating any animations for it and have no skill or resources to make them! Just drop everything, don't make anything any more! Doesn't matter how good your game is or how many fans you already have.

I know you're joking, but that's almost what it would take for a team to crank out quality animations - drastically cutting down on development for all other aspects of their game. It's actually funny this topic was posted, because the team I'm part of recently had a long discussion about animations for our game (people keep asking us to add them), and I wrote a Patreon post on the topic. The TL;DR is that it takes forever to do even simple animation loops, and that it's simply not doable for most developers.

To give anyone reading this some perspective, below is a 'simple' animation test our lead artist put together recently. Now imagine trying to do this for every single sex scene, over the span of an entire game. It's a colossal amount of work.

 

[Digital Hedonist Games]

Granted 3D is a bit easier since those games have textured models

If you got your character models fully rigged and either went to a brothel for some juicy MoCap sessions or have a talented keyframe animator, yes. In most use cases (pre rendered animations), there's only a few Daz Poser animations out there which could be considered 'good' to be honest.

Realtime 3D does benefit of more recent advances in the department of runtime IK though, not gonna lie that shit is pure magic.

 

[Beaute]

It's not that devs don't want to add animations, it's how difficult and time-consuming they are to produce. Especially in 2D games. Skilled animators are not cheap. And if you're making a 2D game you need not just an animator but also an additional color artist to fill in the frames. Granted 3D is a bit easier since those games have textured models, but it's still very difficult to produce good-looking animation work. If it was easy everyone would be doing it.


I know you're joking, but that's almost what it would take for a team to crank out quality animations - drastically cutting down on development for all other aspects of their game. It's actually funny this topic was posted, because the team I'm part of recently had a long discussion about animations for our game (people keep asking us to add them), and I wrote a Patreon post on the topic. The TL;DR is that it takes forever to do even simple animation loops, and that it's simply not doable for most developers.

To give anyone reading this some perspective, below is a 'simple' animation test our lead artist put together recently. Now imagine trying to do this for every single sex scene, over the span of an entire game. It's a colossal amount of work.

View attachment 1427039

Have you ever thought about animating an image in After Effects, for example?
Of course, it doesn't compare to the quality of a drawn animation, but it might satisfy those who ask you to add animation.

 

[Digital Hedonist Games]

Have you ever thought about animating an image in After Effects, for example?
Of course, it doesn't compare to the quality of a drawn animation, but it might satisfy those who ask you to add animation.

There are also AI algorithms that changed Lego Stop Motion videos in a big way interpolating frames with low fps sources. Might be something worthwhile.

Edit: In case anyone is interested, there's the free and open source "Depth-Aware Video Frame Interpolation"

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[Crimson Delight Games]

Have you ever thought about animating an image in After Effects, for example?
Of course, it doesn't compare to the quality of a drawn animation, but it might satisfy those who ask you to add animation.

That's just the thing, our art lead doesn't want to half-ass it. It's either fully hand-drawn and top quality, or nada. I'm just the writer so I defer to her on these things, but I get why she feels the way she does. There's also the issue that our game's static CGs have a lot of gradient coloring in them, which is difficult to reproduce in motion and takes even more time to paint during animated transitions. It could probably be done with the help of software, but not without looking cheap and janky. The way it was explained to me is that there's a reason most 2D cartoons have flat coloring schemes which use a minimal number of colors on moving characters, while the static backgrounds get fancy stuff like gradient work.

 

[RossoX]

It's a game, not a comic. I need moving pictures and preferably sound as well. Don't bother making a game without adding animations.

OP might have worded it poorly, but I do understand his sentiment on some level... so I'll try to play devil's advocate for him.

The age of "create random renpy porn, earn easy bank" is long over; we now live in a world with literal hundreds and hundreds of games competing and vying for attention.

So let me ask you developers: what does your game do to set itself apart from the rest?

Does it have some superb writing? Unique and intriguing story? Funny or interesting characters that are a joy to see? Or perhaps some professional level renders? Does it use cool and fitting music for ambience? Are there voice or sounds during the sex scenes? What about animations?

When I'm looking for games to play and I see "renpy VN copy-paste #1212" it needs to have some sort of hook to make me interested, and animations are definitely one of those things that if done well will make me want to at least try the game due to that fact alone.

So perhaps this is what OP tried to say but failed; if a developer goes the extra mile to add quality stuff to their game like animations or sounds, to me at least it makes me want to try games that I would have otherwise ignored due to the huge amount of games competing for my attention, and also that's some positive signals of a developer worthy of my support.

 

[MissFortune]

What a clown.

Beyond being exceedingly time consuming, even in 3D, some people just don't have the systems necessary to put out animations in an efficient or timely manner. Sometimes it's just better for them to have more still renders than it is to spend hours on a single animation. The animated tag exists for a reason, so stop whining and use it. All this aside from you acting like an entitled five year-old who didn't get what she wanted.

Adding to what sassy_mendigo said, you're demanding things that cost money. Moans, sexual sounds, dirty talk? You'd most likely have to hire someone and pay them for reading your script for each scene you use them in, and then hope they don't ask for any future/royalty payments afterwards. Those costs add up, would you be willing to offer the dev financial help for them? If not, then keep quiet with your demands. A good dev will always know what's best for their own game/vn, and even more importantly, know to ignore people like you. Put out a VN with animations and copyright-free sound before you call out other developers on it.

 

[desmosome]

All retards should be banned form the forums, but we don't always get our way, do we?

 

[redharvest1]

It's a game, not a comic. I need moving pictures and preferably sound as well. Don't bother making a game without adding animations.

Instead of demanding that others cater to your whims when making a product for you to enjoy for free perhaps get off your podium, use some of that energy you're wasting complaining and moaning and make one yourself?

Absolutely nothing stopping you just as there's no one forcing you to play what others spent their time and effort creating.....

 

[imelman]

Hmph. I may criticize others for laziness, poor understanding of systems or whatever issues they might have, but this has to be the biggest self-entitlement I have ever seen. Demanding everything without paying in the first place, no advice/argument in return, immediate assumption that everything is cheap and easy, and whatever mess I don't want to paraphrase. Especially when people are downloading/sharing/pirating and you still feel entitled to everything.

If you think they are doing wrong and want to change that, do it yourself. I might have saw things that are wrong and doing what I think is right, but not of this level of selfishness where you dismiss their problems and efforts while pretending to be the better one.

Animation isn't easy of course, and there's also pre-rendered 3D software, and even then, not everyone can master it. Yet thinking everyone must do it must be very, very ignorant of actual issues they can have, like poor UI, complicated features and so on.

 

[InCompleteController]

I wonder how much money OP has spent on games with animations. Any you could recommend buying?

 

[Jash83]

I agree with you 100%, OP, all games SHOULD have animations.

Well, come on then, get on with it. Chop chop. There are approximately, oh, 10,000 game developers waiting for you to make the animations for their games that you insist they have to have, so you've got a lot of work to do.

Oh of course they won't be PAYING you, OP, you're the one insisting the animations have to be there, so you should be happy to do it. Just hurry up and get to work already. Oh, and make it good. You're the one making a big deal out of it, you wouldn't want to half-ass it.

 

[shark_inna_hat]

Yeah, OP is right. Games should have animations, and good ui, and run smooth on my 10 year old pc, have no bugs, and have voice over, and come out complete not some v0.0.01. They should all be in 3D realtime and run in VR... and come with a free VR set, and be free anyway. In fact, no, not VR, I want all games to have real actors, I want a LARP experience at home, but no, not actors real anime goth girls with big tits and I should get IRL money for doing in-game work. Also all games should be Half-Life 3, because I want HL3, but with blackjack and hookers. Don't bother making games if it's not Half-Life 3 with blackjack and hookers.

 

[anne O'nymous]

If you got your character models fully rigged and either went to a brothel for some juicy MoCap sessions or have a talented keyframe animator, yes. In most use cases (pre rendered animations), there's only a few Daz Poser animations out there which could be considered 'good' to be honest.

Without counting the time needed to render them. Lets say that the computer is fast and the scene not too complex, what lead to a frame being rendered in 5 minutes, you still need 2 hours just to render 1 second at 25 fps. Most animations being at 60 fps, it's near to 5 hours that you'll need to render an 1 second animation.
And, contrarily to 2D animations, where you can redraw a frame, if few of your 3D frames have a problem, it's generally the whole animation that you have to render again. Same if you stupidly made a mistake (missing something on the background, not using the right piece of clothe, or anything like that), what can happen to everyone. With 2D animations you can edit each frames, while with 3D frames you can't. Unless the frames really need a lot of times to be rendered, it would be faster to render them again, than to spot render the part that changed, then put it on each frame.

 

[Rinbael]

It amazes me just how ignorant some people are about how much time and effort it takes to render a basic animation in DAZ.

It takes a long time to set up model collisions and make sure there isn't any clipping and then there is D force which is completely hit or miss most times and then there is also the fact that most premade DAZ animations look really bad and robotic.

Unless you do what Domiek did with Personal Trainer and take a massive amount of time to learn Blender to make animations, which is far more difficult than DAZ or are making DrPinkcake level money so you can afford a second high end PC solely to render animations, even then a few of his animations look quite robotic and odd. It's just not viable for most developers to be able to render animations because of how difficult and time consuming it is.

 

[PrinceOfShades]

I personally don't touch games without good animation because it's one of my biggest preferences, although I do understand that they're not easy to do because I'm currently working on a game myself.
I'm sure every developer is aware that their game would be better off with animations. It's pretty common knowledge. It's not like they're ignorant or they refuse to do it in bad faith. There's a reason why every game without animations is like that - be it money, hardware, time or expertise. It's not that they don't want to add them. It's a matter of being able to or affording them. And that's also why I never complain if a game doesn't have animation. I don't play the game, but I know it's not necessarily the developer's fault. So I just skip over it and look for another game. If others enjoy games with no animation, let them have fun. I have nothing against that.

 

[Deleted member 1536527]

Until we find a good real-time solution, animations are always going to be a luxury. Actually, even then they're still going to be a luxury, just to a lesser degree. Even if we don't consider the rendering, the absolute sheer amount of effort that goes into creating an animation is mind boggling, to the point where its idiotic to expect all or even most amateur devs to be able to do them.

 

[おい！]

It's a game, not a comic. I need moving pictures and preferably sound as well. Don't bother making a game without adding animations.

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