Could someone answer some of my questions about game building?

[eryuga]

Hello. For years I've been thinking about creating a game using DAZ + Renpy, over these years I've studied the system a lot and finally upgraded my hardware to something concrete.
My question is this: it seems to me that to this day creating a visual novel in the classic way is something rather slow. In fact, I have considered doing something like this:

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- i.e., importing models from DAZ to Unreal and thus avoiding spending weeks creating animations lasting a few seconds. In your opinion, from a standpoint of difficulty and waiting time, would I be faster using UE 5 + DAZ?

Thanks.

 

[Winterfire]

There are many ways to create a Visual Novel, and each has its own difficulties. If you've used Daz and Renpy for years and hope to get a game like Home Together put together on your first try on unreal, then you're overestimating how easy Unreal Engine is to use (You also need special licenses which cost more).

Game development is slow yes, that's why games take a long time to release an update. It's normal.
What you can do to quicken your development is to create scenes during day, and batch render everything while you sleep.

 

[eryuga]

Thank you for your response. I do not overestimate the ease of Unreal, but I simply believed that learning to use a new engine would take less time than having to render 600 photos and 100 animations, spending 7-8 months. Batch rendering is a great idea, but I literally would have liked to create something I liked too - I am not a fan of VNs.

Home together looks really amazing and well done and I was wondering what it would require to create something like this. I know the model is a Genesis from DAZ because I know it.

 

[Winterfire]

Thank you for your response. I do not overestimate the ease of Unreal, but I simply believed that learning to use a new engine would take less time than having to render 600 photos and 100 animations, spending 7-8 months.

Honestly, no. There are many challenges even once you learn it. There's no chance you'll be making the next "Home Together" or even something remotely as good as that if you are completely new to game development. Even then, it would be a hard task if you are solo, and it wouldn't be cheap since licenses to use DAZ stuff in real time are costly.

- I am not a fan of VNs.

However... If you do not like what you are doing, it is only a matter of time before you burnout and give up. You must love what you're doing.

As such, my suggestion at this point is to make a game with Unreal since it seems like it is what you really want to do, but set a much lower goal.
Keep your first projects short and easy to accomplish.

 

[exer]

I'm not sure you really understand how much work game dev is. I have a degree in game dev, and still have only scratched the surface of what it really takes to make a game using a real engine like Unreal or Unity.

To use Unreal, you're going to have to know how at least some C++. Even if you're using Unreal instead of DAZ, you're going to have to spend a lot of time animating too. You may not have to wait for render times, but a game rendering in real time is always going to look worse than one pre-rendered and things don't just magically work. They generally need to be adjusted and coded to properly play at the right times. You'll also need arguably more time in Unreal because you have to keep in mind things like how the animations will affect the frame rate and adjust. You can't always just straight port and have things work the way you want. It's almost always more complicated than that. Home Together looks great, but still not as good as a high quality DAZ or Blender animations. There's also the problem that if you're going with a game that renders in real time, you're going to severely limit your audience. Since only people with good enough hardware will be able to play your game.

It should also be mentioned that Home Together is that dev's second game. They already had a successful first game and had the funding and experience to do a lot more with their second. They are clearly a team of professionals. Even their first game shows that they already had experience in game dev. So unless you're a professional game developer already, you're not going to be able to get to the same level of quality as Home Together. Unless you have tens of thousands of dollars just lying around so that you can hire professionals to make the game for you. Even then, it would be a way better investment to make a normal game. You have a significantly larger audience and you'll make way more money that way.

I'm not saying you shouldn't make a game or anything, but you should keep your expectations more realistic. Try to really think things through before deciding what to do and keep in mind that you're just one person. The biggest adult games are teams of people.

So while you can use Unreal and put in the work to actually learn it and put out a game that renders in real time, but you should also keep in mind all of the drawbacks. The limited audience, the steep learning curve, the lower quality visuals, having to pay for a license, etc. There's a reason that there's so few games that use Unreal, and a ton use DAZ with Renpy. Renpy is very easy to use, simple to learn, and is free. There's also other easy to use game engines you can use instead of Renpy if you don't want a visual novel, like RPG Maker. Even Unity is a bigger game engine that's easier to use than Unreal. Although in school, our first game was to make a visual novel, because they're the easiest kind of game to make. Making one is very fast compared to other kinds of game development too. There's a reason that it takes teams of 30+ people 3+ years to make a game. It is incredibly complicated.
Then in terms of visuals, DAZ is very easy to learn, is generally less time consuming since you can buy literally everything, and generally looks better. Yeah, it can take a while to render out an animation in DAZ, but you can easily speed up that process by doing things like oversampling, using a render farm, or just upgrading your PC.

Also, while Home Together might use DAZ models as a base, I wouldn't be surprised if they modified them. At the very least, the animations are clearly custom. They're also very well done and were done by someone who is very clearly incredibly experienced. The facial animation alone gives that away. Facial animation is the hardest kind of animation to do. It also wouldn't surprise me if they had a motion capture setup. Unless you're already a professional animator, you're not going to be able to do anything anywhere near that quality. Even with a game dev degree with about a quarter of my classes being 3D animation focused, even I'm not anywhere near what they're doing.

No matter what, your first game is not going to be very good. That's just how life works. The first time you do something, you're not going to automatically be an expert. That's why I'd suggest starting small. Don't try to make another Home Together. You'll just get overwhelmed. Try something smaller. If you want to use Unreal, try making a game similar to something like House Chores. Except in Unreal with free movement. Limit yourself to one smaller area, only a few characters at most, and only a couple of scenes per character. If you make it through the smaller project, then make something bigger. But trying to make a large game while learning how to code, learning to use one of the hardest to use game engines out there, and learning how to animate, isn't a good idea. It's going to end in disaster.

I don't mean to be discouraging, I just want you to have a real idea about what you're getting into. It's really easy to want to jump into something like adult game dev, but it's a lot of work. It is effectively a job that you'll have to work at, and most of the time, you'll have to work for free. If that's not something you're prepared for, then that's totally okay. There's plenty of games out there you can enjoy.

 

[eryuga]

I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for such a comment. Your experience and wisdom shines through perfectly in everything you say and I did not feel discouraged at all, on the contrary. I really appreciated all your advice and words and you are right about everything. I have already worked for video game industries, from Epic Games to the smaller Supergiant, Intrepid, Amplitude, Mobius, Devolver. I know exactly how much work it takes to make something even relatively small and that's exactly why I decided to take this path. Three years ago I started studying DAZ, morphing, and most of all I tried to mix my ability to create pleasant and sexually attractive women to the maximum because the idea of creating an adult VN has always interested me. To date, I only have about a thousand renderings done and never published and nothing else. I know C# at a pretty high level and have already worked as a coder using GML and Unity over the years, but we are talking about something else entirely here. I know that the work I am projecting is essentially different from what I would like to do and I probably underestimated the difficulties. I think I will stay sticked to DAZ, and although I don't like the idea of a static VN at all, I think this is my only solution. Mind you, the main problem is really the static nature of Renpy. I also considered Godot as an engine, just to make it more dynamic and not a mere point-and-click.

The idea of creating a VN has always appealed to me because I have always loved writing, and even though I won't earn a dime, the idea of having completed something like this excites me. Something that is mine and that is as creative as I imagine it to be. I know that probably, like you said, the first attempt will be disastrous and I know I'm not even 1 percent of what I need to learn but I think it's worth it.

 

[eryuga]

Thank you for your response. Yes, I hate VNs because I basically hate anything static. The idea of starting with Unreal was precisely because of that. I would have preferred something more than just point-and-click with scrolling images. Anyway, you are right, I will scale back my plans and even if I fail, still I think it is worth a try. This is not my first try and this is not my first experience, I pretty know how much difficult the whole thing can be.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Even if you're using Unreal instead of DAZ, you're going to have to spend a lot of time animating too. You may not have to wait for render times, but a game rendering in real time is always going to look worse than one pre-rendered and things don't just magically work.

Animating for Unreal is 20 times more complicated than animating for Daz Studio or whatever rendering engine, this precisely because it's done in real time.
You have to ensure that the animation isn't too complex, in order to stay smooth even on low end computers (there's a lot of 10yo or more computers on the adult gaming scene). You also have to ensure that the animation looks good whatever the camera angle, whatever the ground level (parts of the body shouldn't goes under the ground), whatever the location in the map (parts of the body shouldn't collide with objects), and that it don't trigger clipping issues whatever the body model and clothes.

They are clearly a team of professionals.

The keyword here is not "professionals", but "team". Amateurs can make a real time 3D game, even with Unreal, Unity or Godot, but they can't do this alone.

Daz Studio is made for amateurs and full of helpers, pre-made lights, poses, animation and even render setting. Engines like Ren'Py, Visual Novel Maker, RPG Maker, and all, are designed for amateurs and take care of everything behind the hood. You can starts with absolutely no knowledge and still achieve something good enough.
But the level of skills needed for real time 3D is too high to be found in a single person, while the amount of works is too high to fit into a single person life.
A single dev can still make a 3D real time game, there's few on the scene. Abandoned: a tale of forgotten lives (Unity), is the first that cross my mind. But it needed near to 4 years to be done, plus the 2 years between the completion of the game and the release of the very final version. It also looks relatively cheap, is relatively empty in terms of game play. There's also a tons of clipping issues, as well as bones that goes crazy, and there's place in the map where you can stay stuck forever.
Else you can goes for the The Twist (Unity) solution. Everything is in real time 3D, but half the game have a frozen camera, while you instantly jump from a location to another, and, while you can choose what clothes some of the girls wear, the animations are all scripted and most of the time they'll wear the clothes decided by the dev.

There's also other easy to use game engines you can use instead of Renpy if you don't want a visual novel,

Or you can not do a Visual Novel while still using Ren'Py. There's example of that too, like Sakura Dungeon or Lust Hunter by example. And of course the, long time abandoned, RPG Maker emulator made in Ren'Py.

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And now with the model based feature, it's possible to do way more in terms of visual immersion feeling, while still being relatively easy and doable by anyone.