Choices for artwork and backgrounds

[Dark_Sytze]

Hi everyone,
I have made a few attempts at creating games, but always get stuck at a certain point due to various reasons. As such this time I figured I should entirely work out a general plan on how to approach making my game. For this I would like to know some preferences from people.

The first one is about backgrounds in a renpy game. When a conversation is happening, do people prefer a static background, with the characters in front (renpy tutorial style) or have the actual characters as part of the background in a render.

The second is about sex scenes. Do people prefer to have the scene happen in the actual location (e.g. scene in forest shows characters on forest floor). Or do people prefer a scene with a more neutral background (think studio lights, monocolour background). There are advantages and disadvantages to both in my opinion, the first option is ofcourse more immersive, but a hell of a lot more work and time to render. Due to having less control over light and such the quality may also suffer. The second option is less immersive, and could be considered boring, but would result in my case in much higher quality renders, more focus on the actual characters, better light and so on.

Finally the number of renders. Do people like having a change of render for events that occur etc. (e.g. detailed renders for each act in a sex scene, detailed render if the character walks through a forest etc). Or do people think having few renders is fine, as long as the dialogue/narrative is detailed enough (such as a number of japanese games do such as Kamidori, Rance etc.)

Thanks for your input.

 

[mickydoo]

The first one is about backgrounds in a renpy game

That is a style you have to choose and depends how you want to make your game. You can always do both. If the characters a sitting down talking, put them in a 3d environment, if the are standing in a room use a static image behind them. There is no rule. The only thing is, using static images are easier so your characters and story has to compensate for that, if you make shit renders in a proper 3d environment people are more forgiving as long as you are doing your best.

The second is about sex scenes

Pick your battles when it comes to sex scenes. If the characters are in a forest leading up to sex scene plan to have the sex at another location. Don't use a neutral scene, pick a location from the onset. Put a cabin in the forest and fuck in there or something like that.

Finally the number of renders

This gets asked a lot and the answer is subjective. I like off roading when I get the time, there is a saying for when you are driving over rough terrain, as slow as possible, as fast as necessary. I take a similar thing with renders, as few as possible, as many as necessary.

 

[Jofur]

1. Floating portraits I think work best when the game is less serious and more comedic(especially if you add cute expressions or animations here and there to liven things up). It often looks weird in 3D since the lighting is so different. If the game relies on atmosphere they definitely need to be rendered in-scene IMO. However, you run the risk of characters never showing any facial expressions which is also pretty disappointing and kind of kills the mood and story.

2. I prefer it to be as immersive as possible, while still remaining artistically pleasing. I don't want two people floating in a void or something, nor do I want a tasteless shot that looks like your dad's home video, it's alright to play with lighting and depth to frame a scene. Even if it's not 100% realistic. I'd rather have an unexplainable light source instead a badly lit scene.

3. I think renders should represent the actions on the screen. Show don't tell and all that. A comic is a good inspiration I think. Every image should further the story and evoke something, but it must also pace the story. It's rather off-putting reading a long text about someone walking out of a room and going down a set of stairs while the image is still of a character sitting down in a chair. If you must do that and can't render it at least fade out the screen. I think it's best to avoid as much narration of actions as possible. If it's not dialog or thoughts, try and show it instead.
For sex-scenes the more renders the better. It's always disappointing when there's like a single image of an entire sex-act, you want to show the motion, almost like key-frames of an animation.

 

[Dark_Sytze]

Thanks for the feedback. It seems I might need to do more rendering compared to how much I now use text to describe. Which is both good and bad, since I'm not a great writer, but doing renders takes a really long time to get them perfect.

 

[Ker_]

I think you can not get the right answer to your first two questions, because for this you need a lot of statistics on the target audience, and here you will get answers from a few people and only those who have experience developing and their views may differ from the average player.
About the third question, my answer will also be subjective, but I think you can build a certain logic from it.
Since we are doing VN and not writing a book of course descriptions should be replaced by renderers if possible. However, I think that if there is a very interesting dialogue, at this point, the player's attention is not much focused on the pictures. He reads and you can save time by making fewer renders for these moments. And vice versa, when nothing particularly interesting happens, it is better to increase the number and quality of renders to keep the attention of the audience.
Well, as said above in the sex scene renders should be as much as possible. But this again ties into the overall logic as there is often no interesting text.