Does anyone else think animation is a complete waste of time?

[Adabelitoo]

But saying that it hinders game development? Do you have any research done into that? I don't mean either "oh, just look at the games on here." Actual research. Otherwise, it's another pointless soap box where you're trying to prop up your opinion as some noble crusade. Which y'know...it isn't. It's an opinion. There's nothing noble or criminal of it. It's not the better choice nor is it the worse choice. It's just a choice.

People demanding animations, complaining about lack of animations and/or asking how much it matters to others. If a dev wants to do animations then he doesn't have to ask about it, so yes, it does hinder it.

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You got here in 2017. If you haven't noticed the amount of comments complaining about no/bad animations and the 1 star ratings which its main and sometimes only real argument is no/bad animations then you clearly haven't been reading enough. Editing the links took me longer than actually finding them.

 

[Wankyudo]

People demanding animations, complaining about lack of animations and/or asking how much it matters to others. If a dev wants to do animations then he doesn't have to ask about it, so yes, it does hinder it.

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You got here in 2017. If you haven't noticed the amount of comments complaining about no/bad animations and the 1 star ratings which its main and sometimes only real argument is no/bad animations then you clearly haven't been reading enough. Editing the links took me longer than actually finding them.

BZZZT. First buzzer!
I have in fact seen those comments. That's not what my argument was. I argued for evidence that stated that game animations hinder game development. If yall are trying to argue that animations directly impede game development and are a waste of time as if it's some fact; then at least stay on point, mmyeah? People complaining about animations =/= Animations themselves hindering development. Developers hindering themselves to cater towards a market that they have no experience =/= Animations themselves hindering game development. That's developers doing dumb-dumb. That's arguing that

If you're going to try and be a smartass, at least try to stay on point. Also being a dick when no insults were actually thrown at you means don't be surprised if I'm patronizing or condescending back to you.

 

[Adabelitoo]

BZZZT. First buzzer!
I have in fact seen those comments. That's not what my argument was. I argued for evidence that stated that game animations hinder game development. If yall are trying to argue that animations directly impede game development and are a waste of time as if it's some fact; then at least stay on point, mmyeah? People complaining about animations =/= Animations themselves hindering development. Developers hindering themselves to cater towards a market that they have no experience =/= Animations themselves hindering game development. That's developers doing dumb-dumb. That's arguing that

If you're going to try and be a smartass, at least try to stay on point. Also being a dick when no insults were actually thrown at you means don't be surprised if I'm patronizing or condescending back to you.

Wtaf? Do you even know what "hinders" mean? People like that demanding animations make some newbie wannabe devs think that his game must have animations or it's not worthy, so yeah that hinders games. Some newbie/wannabe devs asks about how important animations are for others because they aren't convinced of doing them in the first place. They aren't doing it because they want to do it, they do it because they feel like other won't care about his game if he doesn't do them, so yes, that's hinders a game.

Some people think that animations are a must, and that's fine, it's their preference, but when people demands animations as a must in a game thread, other wannabe devs will read that and understand that animations are a barrier if they want their games to be even considered, so yes, it hinders them because that makes them feel forced to do something that they originally didn't want/don't feel confident at all, and demands a high level of skill which 99% of new devs don't have.

Once some guy told me "Show me 10 games where people heavily complaining about NTR become a thing". I gave him those 10 links to their game and the guy answered "Are you kidding me? I won't read that, tell me the specific parts when it happened" as if he was expecting me to read all those threads again and show him a specific post. If you feel like I was being a dick, then that's totally up to you because I only gave you the proofs of the "research" you asked for.

In 3 years you only commented 72 times. You don't spend a lot of time reading or interacting with people here, that's okay, nothing wrong about that, just understand that you may not know a lot of things here and that others spent more time here so they may have a better idea of the question than you do.

 

[ARB582]

For me animated scenes are like a cherry on top. If the base game is good then thats all that matters to me.
I have never played a game just bcoz of animations and have never stoppped playing a game bcoz it has got bad animations.
I will take a well written story, good renders/models and fleshed out characters over animations anyday

 

[cold_arctus]

That stuff ^^^^^^ up there.
That's where I'm seeing a lot of the anger and dissatisfaction regarding animations going.
Some of you just seem to be under this misguided belief or idea that there is a specific way a game needs to be played or enjoyed. And when someone comes along with a different opinion you seem to be getting defensive, offended, and behaving line you want to lash out for whatever reason.
You go from being two people talking about how you like a game to this, to one person stating their opinion and another person doing this:

Mate, you read too much into my post and came up with a total wrong assumption missing the point that I was exaggerating. Obviously.

Just to let you know: I'm a Dev working together with a professional artist who is one of the pioneers for 3DCG porn, going all the way back to the old days when people just started doing comics. He produces one of the best renders you can find in adult games, you may or may have not played our game.

As a dev, of course I want players to play my game as I want it to be played otherwise it wouldn't be my game. The reasons behind that I don't need to explain to you.

And yes, our game features animation. Why? Because animations are what people demand these days otherwise you won't survive among all the devs that pop up. Also, the focus of players shifted over the past few years. First it was better render quality, then more renders, then animations, and now more quality animations.

The major problem here is that players got spoiled by AAA games, cartoons, anime, hentai etc. and assume that producing such content don't take long, don't cost much and can be made by a single person or a handful of people without knowing shit.

Do animation hinder developers? Well, the answer is: Yes and No.

Yes, because animations take extra time to produce and therefore limit the numbers of scenes you can produce per update when aiming for a set release date.

No, because animations are a nice to have and help players to immerse further into MC.

The biggest disadvantage of animations are their size! Quality animations require frames rendered in 1080p or 4K which need to be downscaled further for not bloating up the game size in total, because you have to keep in mind that not every supporter has a Premium MEGA account, unlimited data and/or good download speed. So you will have to look into optimization and lower the quality of your animation further. In the end all the extra work is pointless, because as soon as the game gets leaked here someone will compress it and crunch your animation making them look like shit.

Animations can support a nice scene and make it better, but it requires a good buildup with teasing which you only can achieve with static renders and not with animations. Many sex scenes in many games are soulless because the major work went into making animation than buildup and teasing.

Therefore, in my opinion animations should be added after the game/project is done and going to be released on Steam & Co. as animated, definitive or special edition. The revenue from there is the compensation for the extra work devs put into making animations which should cover maintaining and upgrading cost for their rigs.

 

[dexter111]

I totally agree with the OP but it's actually complicated. I love good animations. But aside from taking too much time to make them they also take too much space. I don't want to see a 5GB game where most of the content are generic HS sex animations.
Probably the direction I want to see a little more is some "casual" animations - idle for example. Undressing animations are nice too (I'll probably change my opinion on it later but for now I think they are). I hope there will be more games where the focus is shifted on erotic stills. They are easier to make (you need to have a good eye for them though), nice to look at and take less space. Damn, instead of making some bad animations a potentinal game could have more events, more clothes, more interactions.

 

[JohnJacobs]

I disagree with the OP entirely. People shouldn't pressure noobs into animating, that's a given. Shitty people will be shitty people.

But saying that it hinders game development? Do you have any research done into that? I don't mean either "oh, just look at the games on here." Actual research. Otherwise, it's another pointless soap box where you're trying to prop up your opinion as some noble crusade. Which y'know...it isn't. It's an opinion. There's nothing noble or criminal of it. It's not the better choice nor is it the worse choice. It's just a choice.

Not to mention people don't get better at animating without shoveling shit out first. That's the nature of work, you're bad at it until you're not. If the people are genuinely wanting to get better at it and OP's stance is "you're hindering game development because you could do several still images in that time frame," you're in the same boat of shittiness as pressuring developers to do what you want.

Man, these type of coy debating styles are so exhausting. Look, I'm not gonna argue you with you about what the definition of 'is' is if that's what you're hoping for. Animations are massively more laborious to create than stills. This is not something that's up for debate, it's not some opinion that I need go and cite a study to support, it's a fact, whether you're talking about rig requirements, render time requirements or anything else, it all measurably, objectively, goes way up versus still images aside from in a handful of niche engines. My goodness, even the types in this very thread that like them and say games can't do without them concede they take more work than still images. That being the case, there's a limited amount of time in the day devs have to create, there's a limited amount of- you know what, I don't even want to talk about this it's such a stupid semantic detour for you to try and lure people on. You know it and I know it. The debate we're having in this thread isn't "are they more work", everybody already knows they're more work, the debate is "are they worth it" and I submit that they aren't. Be advised I'm not going to diginify your obtuseness with any further argument than this, it genuinely bothers me that you'd try to waste anyone's time like this instead of arguing honestly.

Yes, poor use of resources hinders game development, that's the entire issue here with the rise of animation and its effect on erotic game development. In the time it takes to create one animation you could create five decent still images which would be far more meaningful.

 

[fidless]

I agree when it comes to DAZ, though the same logic doesn't apply to Honey Select and other engines that come with premade animations and don't require rendering.

Depends. HS has similar tool for animating "timeline" as daz, so it's not neccessery that much easier if devs decides to make their own animations.

 

[Dratura]

Movies and books.
Y'all arguing and bitching about an art style.

If you prefer games with still images, then play or create them. If you prefer games with animations, then go for them. This thread is super useless and filled with a lot of bs arguments.

 

[Dratura]

In the time it takes to create one animation you could create five decent still images which would be far more meaningful.

I also think that, e.g. James Cameron should quit making movies and draw pictures instead. Much superior.

 

[Daeeron]

I think animations are very important. Let's face it, most of the games the writing is mediocre at best. If i'm looking through the latest updates page and a game doesn't have animations i generally pass it by. If a game has very good renders i might check it out regardless.

 

[JohnJacobs]

I also think that, e.g. James Cameron should quit making movies and draw pictures instead. Much superior.

Whatever, dude. Anyone that prefers a dev desperately reaching to try and capture the full act of sex in a three second loop and the epochal slow updates lean on scenes to accomodate them instead of a series of artfully composed still images that actually provide something you can savor and at a decent clip has abysmal taste. It's no exaggeration to say this shit is destroying erotic games. Nowadays updates take forever compared to before, don't add a meaningful amount of content and on top of that most of the animations are bad. It sucks, period, and all this to amuse a bunch of people that probably don't read for pleasure and in fact even pictures that don't move are apparently too much for them.

 

[jamdan]

I've talked about this in other threads, but the only real answer is "It depends".

I think good animations make games better...but at what cost? A 30FPS animation is equal to 30 regular renders...for 1 second of animation. Is 1 second of animation worth it? I don't think so. So, how many seconds of animation is worth it? 2 seconds? 3 seconds? We're getting into 100+ renders territory for a few seconds of animation. Not to mention most sex scenes would require multiple animations to be decent.

So, how many animations for a sex scene? Let's go with 2. Is that enough? Probably not, but let's keep is simple. 2 30FPS animations that run for 3 seconds each. 30 X 3 = 90 renders for each animation. 180 renders for the scene overall, not including any standard renders.

You can probably guess where I'm going with this. But 180renders, for a few seconds of content, is...not ideal. You can probably make a dozen scenes with 180 renders.

For animations to be worth it, you need a lot of PC power, a lot of time and a lot of skill. Quite frankly, most animations in these games (even the good games) aren't very good. Go look at the animations posted in the animations section of this site. Some of them are borderline Pixar quality. The average "Good" Animation in the games however are probably slightly above average.

Devs who rely on animation over making more renders to make their games good are poor writers (not all of them obviously, just being general). It's not that they can't make good art, if you can make animations you should be able to make still renders, they just can't think of what to say in the dialog or narration. Animations are usually waste of time, but also, ironically, easier than writing properly detailed and erotic scenes with still renders. Most sex scenes, animations or not, are over in a few seconds with dialog roughly resembling someone having a stroke.

 

[Adabelitoo]

If you prefer games with still images, then play or create them. If you prefer games with animations, then go for them. This thread is super useless and filled with a lot of bs arguments.

People who like animations play games with no animation/bad animations and will complain about it instead of ignoring the game, in the exact same way that you thought that "This thread is super useless" and yet you decided to comment and complain instead of ignoring the thread.

You literally just did the thing that you say others overreacted.

 

[jamdan]

I don't agree at all with some people saying animations are required for devs to be successful. It may increase the ceiling, but is certainly not required by any stretch.

Sisterly Lust wasn't animated, it was very popular.
DeLuca family isn't animated much, it is very popular.
A Wife & Mother isn't animated, it is very popular. Controversial too, but not because it lacks animations.
Parental Love isn't animated, it was very popular.
Freeloading Family wasn't animated, it was very popular.
Single Again isn't animated much, and it is very popular.
Hillside isn't animated, and it is very popular.

And a lot of other very popular games have few or mediocre at best animations. People don't play those games for animations. So, what do all those games have in common? Good/interesting stories and characters. People play **VN** games for that, not animation. If they want animations, they'll download animation videos or watch it on a porn site. If they do "play" games for animations, they don't play the game. They'll just rip the files.

People who hound devs into making animations are like the vocal NTR/Anti-NTR fans. A small minority with outsized impact because they nag all the time and are entitled.

 

[Adabelitoo]

I don't agree at all with some people saying animations are required for devs to be successful. It may increase the ceiling, but is certainly not required by any stretch.

I don't think most people here is saying that animations are a requirement for a successful game. The "problem" here is that animations makes new devs think that a game without animations won't succes so they feel forced to include them, regardless of if they want them or not. In a different but kinda similar way, it's like saying that a woman doesn't need to be extremely thin to be a succesful model, but the bussines is full of extremely thin women so they'll feel forced to be that way.

Dreams of Desire was an extremely popular game created in 2017 when animations weren't a thing as we know them today, and it never had animations until this year when a DE was done for Steam. I joined F95 only to download that game in 2018 so I've been following that thread for a while now and I can tell you that the the main complains always was 2-3 frames loop animations. People these days were complaining about no/bad animations in a 2017 game.

But of course, that dev's game is experienced enough to understand what people wants and what is just an annoying vocal minority, but now imagine all those wannabe devs who played 2-3 games and don't know shit but they feel like they can already try with their own games. Those wannabe devs will find a good amount of comments saying "shitty game, no animations" but almost no one comments "a game doesn't need animations to be good".

That's the problem with vocal minorities. They "influence" people because they are loud and they are loud because they are "negative" about something while in the other hand those who are "positive" about that something don't make any noise because they don't feel the need to express themselves.

 

[morphnet]

I'll just leave this here

 

[Dratura]

People who like animations play games with no animation/bad animations and will complain about it instead of ignoring the game, in the exact same way that you thought that "This thread is super useless" and yet you decided to comment and complain instead of ignoring the thread.

You literally just did the thing that you say others overreacted.

Thank you for pointing out the troll. I was afraid no one would see it.

Edit: You obviously just saw it; not having understand it so far yet. And please, don't put wrong words in people's mouth. I never said anyone overreacted. You meant the stating of bs arguments, right? Many arguments here do not make any sense, but are still sold as the 'truth'. Therefore I consider them bs.

 

[Domiek]

Depending on hardware, there comes a point where setting up a single render takes significantly more time than actually rendering it. That's why many games have a lot of renders but with slight variations i.e facial expression change, slight change in pose, different camera angles of the same scene, etc

With practice and good hardware, a short animation loop can take less time to setup than doing multiple still renders. It's generally not a big deal since we can render overnight.

If a dev is on low end hardware where it takes 20+ mins to render, then animations may indeed significantly slow down progress. I've also seen some devs rendering in 60fps, effectively doubling the render count for little gain.

At the end of the day, "it depends" seems like the right answer.

 

[Sshar22]

Video Game is a word that contains too many subgenres for its good and is a medium that is developing at lightning speed. Personally, I think that authors and devs should take a hard look at what they can offer and do in a reasonable amount of time and money and not pander to requests that are not in their skillset.

Cheers