That's great to hear, although i think now i'm gonna need to eat some crow here -- i went back in the game to try to get a screenshot of it, and then did a google search for some comparison pictures and then it turned out that placement can actually happen in RL too. So all things considered, it's probably perfectly okay the way it is, just something i haven't really seen before. :v
- Thread starter NeonGhosts
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Joshy92
Message Maven
- Mar 25, 2021
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This is still one of my favourite scenes in the entire game.
The whole scene is just so good. It's when I really fell in love with the game.
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- Mar 20, 2019
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I can definitely see your point. But, the fact remains that if I did it now, I'd probably have to half-ass it a bit, purely due to time constraints. I think it'll be better to wait until I can really devote some time to the sound design of the game, than to rush the whole process.
Joshy92
Message Maven
- Mar 25, 2021
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One thing I hope we don't see or more to the point hear is characters voiced. I have seen some games implement that and it totally kills immersion for me.
Dessolos
Board Buff
- Jul 25, 2017
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voiced characters is a iffy thing for me cause of how I grew up playing video game I do prefer voiced even bad voice acting. I even played a AVN recently that has really good voice acting which makes it feel more immersive for me almost feels like im watching a tv show. But on the other hand it's something that usually not worth the time , money and effort to do as well as you need to include a way to disable it as I think it's only a small amount of people that do like it.
Karmadive
Member
- Mar 12, 2020
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I think voice acting works best when it was integrated into it from the start of the game. I always struggle with anime to listen to the English dubs that I have watched before subtitled with Japanese voice. Not because of the quality but for the fact I have associated the one voice to the characters and it ends up not feeling like the same character without the original I heard.
I feel like same for games that don't have voices and then adding it in later on. I have a preconceived voice in my head and struggle with associating the character after that point with a new one so to speak.
I feel like same for games that don't have voices and then adding it in later on. I have a preconceived voice in my head and struggle with associating the character after that point with a new one so to speak.
Dessolos
Board Buff
- Jul 25, 2017
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yeah I hate going from english to sub on anime cause of this same reason. But thankfully im a visual person so I can't do different voices in my head so would be no problem for me but yeah I do see your point.
I have yet to find an adult game where I felt the soundtrack or voice acting really enhanced anything. Even the ones like Leap of Faith where people said, "Oh you have to turn the sound on, just give it a try" the sound went back off after about 10 minutes. It doesn't add anything for me, same with voice acting.
Personally, i find it adds a lot in games like Pale Carnations, Being a DIK or Our Red String. It largely depends on how much effort the author puts in the song selection and binds them to scenes and/or characters.
Don't know - I tried it and turned it off in Pale Carnations, but I haven't tried Our Red String at all and don't like BaDIK.
A good soundtrack while not necessary can inhance the experience. Personally though, voiceovers almost always break my immersion.
You're already using the reading imagination part of your brain with VNs. Voice acting &/or *ahem* moans tend not to live up to headcannon voices.
You're already using the reading imagination part of your brain with VNs. Voice acting &/or *ahem* moans tend not to live up to headcannon voices.
Agreed, there hasn't been a single adult game I've played where the sound didn't get muted, but I also prefer my adult games without animations
I like some good images and writing, but otherwise prefer imagination for the rest
armond
Engaged Member
- Apr 26, 2020
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I'm always playing motorhead in the background
totally the same for me. I prefer to choose my own music (if i want to) and as u said, animations prevent us to imagining our own story/fantasy (and are often of poor quality for a very long time to design...)
RC-1138 Boss
Message Maven
- Apr 26, 2017
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Agree. If you don't have the time now then it is better not to do it than doing a shoddy job.
The story, character development, renders already speak for themselves about the game's quality. No reason to taint that with some bad sound design.
Yeah, I don't know how much voice acting would cost, but me personally, I'm extremely picky with it. As loveable as all the character's writing and renders are, the wrong voice or a performance that can't do the dialogue or the situation justice ruins it for me. Obviously it'll be optional, but I wonder how many people would also see it this way? And how worth it the cost would be in the end?
Actually, background moans seem like a happy middleground imo. I've never looked, but I'd bet there's a catalogue of choice out there for whatever a dev's looking for. Either that, or hire a voice actress to record her own which is probably less demanding on acting talent than the dialogue I'd think. And cheaper. Darker scenes might be another story though
Whatever it is you're going to do, just keep doing what you've been doing my man...POV: You've hired an artist to babysit your date's kid for the night.
View attachment 4389625
(Just a little scene brainstorming while I'm still on vacation.
Guy's model is liiiiike 90% the same as the original. I think I did some stuff to soften his face a bit. But, it's honestly nuts how much changing a character's hairstyle, absent any other alterations, can make them look totally different. There's also x-factors like lighting choices changing how a character looks, and how people handle things like expressions and poses. I think even my Guy has changed a lot over the chapters, just because I got better at dialing in his facial expressions. Ditto for Madison, actually. For whatever reason, I struggled to get her facial expressions to look very natural, in Chapter 2.
I will say this: one character whose face did actually change was Nicki. I think it was in Chapter 4. Her old model had a small problem where her eyelids didn't line up and allow her eyes to close, because she was using a few too many face model sliders. So, I stripped some stuff out of her model and tweaked things until I had a more functional model. I've got a before/after somewhere, that I posted on my blogs.
Hah! I honestly plan to make animations a thing that I pursue after Season 1 is done. And it'll most likely be something I hire someone to do, while I work on Season 2. I've long been of the mind that they don't really add much to any game I've played. They're basically just there to depict repetitive sex acts (i.e. thrusting, bobbing up and down during a BJ, etc.) and while I understand they look better than my janky 2-3 frame animations, I really don't think they matter much from a gameplay perspective. I'd rather give people a dozen different images depicting a scene, rather than 48 depicting the same scene, looping for two seconds. Plus, I come from a background of reading hentai and such, where animation wasn't necessary to give me a rich story (or a boner).
I feel like I'd be more inclined to do animations if I was doing something like the old Sogna Viper games, where 90% of the game is static sprites on a background. Then during sex scenes you get a handful of dope-ass hentai animations. Or if I was doing something like a touching/stripping game, ala the classic Super Deepthroat or Kasumi: Rebirth.
Allll that said, I understand that consumers see things like animation, voice acting, and music as an added value. So, it's something I want to pursue. Just not right now.
- Oct 24, 2018
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Its not even about the cost, although starting devs probably can't afford it, its the nature of these projects lasting years of dev time, you can't find people willing to commit for multiple years to return each episode. And if there is one thing worse than bad voice acting for me, is changing the voice actor in the middle of the project, shoutout toYeah, I don't know how much voice acting would cost, but me personally, I'm extremely picky with it. As loveable as all the character's writing and renders are, the wrong voice or a performance that can't do the dialogue or the situation justice ruins it for me. Obviously it'll be optional, but I wonder how many people would also see it this way? And how worth it the cost would be in the end?
Actually, background moans seem like a happy middleground imo. I've never looked, but I'd bet there's a catalogue of choice out there for whatever a dev's looking for. Either that, or hire a voice actress to record her own which is probably less demanding on acting talent than the dialogue I'd think. And cheaper. Darker scenes might be another story though
side note, I was a moaning hater, but I kinda turned around on it, I kinda like it now, as long as is optional, hopefully on separate sliders than the rest of the sound effects. It might have been ORS as well for me, that changed my mind
NeonGhosts, my main point was just trying to not have you write it off entirely, for sure if you can only half ass the soundtrack now, its better to postpone it for end of the game remaster, or next game, just offering my perspective to imo a quintessential element of cinematography and extremely underrated aspect in AVNs.
- Oct 24, 2018
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Hey hey, friends! After my month away, I’m officially back! Hope everyone had a great holiday season! My little vacation was fairly uneventful. I did some just-for-fun art over on the Discord, got a little writing done, and mostly just vegetated. I'd hoped to get more done, but I was put out of commission for a week due to some weird stomach bug/exhaustion thing, and then the holidays rolled around, and then.. The month was over!
But, I’m honestly glad to be back to the dev grind. For the first few days of December I actually felt kind of pouty and depressed. "Listless" would be a good word for it. Over the last couple years, I’ve gotten used to having my life organized around a schedule, with dev work being a significant chunk of my free time. With that block of time no longer occupied, I mostly just took a lot of walks and listened to audiobooks, rather than be productive. But, I’m told that’s the point of a vacation. >_>
I'd fully intended to put out a little mini-sode for Christmas, but after getting sick, and then caught up in the holiday rush, my plans fell by the wayside. But, I'd workshopped and partially written several ideas, in more-or-less this order.
- Sapphire's Christmas Webcam Show: Short and sweet! This was to put the player in the role of an observer during Spicy Sapphire's holiday-themed Christmas cam show. But, it just didn't really feel like a meaty enough idea, and it's something we'd already seen quite a bit of, within the game.
- Brittani's Christmas Photoshoot: In the photoset I put up last Christmas, I showed how several of the love interests spent the Christmas prior to our story beginning. Brittani's was spent working on a photoshoot, with Isabella barking orders at her. I thought that could be kind of fun, putting the player in the role of the unnamed photographer, forced to work around Isabella's interference. But, it ultimately didn't seem like it'd add much, besides giving players another glimpse at Brittani and Isabella's contentious relationship. I spun my wheels on the script for a while, but ultimately didn't get anywhere.
- The Student Loan - Winter Break: Some of you might have played my mini-game, The Student Loan, wherein a college student becomes an escort, only to find her professor as her first client. This would've built on that initial premise, with the two spending their winter break together. But, I'd actually like to do more with this concept, which would require more time than I had available to me. So, I scrapped it, with a mind to return later.
- A Young Guy: A flashback to Guy's early days, this would've seen him keep his landlady company, after coming to her hat-in-hand on Christmas Eve, looking for an extension on his rent. I kind of liked the idea of seeing Guy after he'd just moved to the big city, young and full of optimism. Seeing Young Guy in a flashback could still be fun, but I'd need a better reason to do it than this.
- Christmas with the Chens: This would've seen Guy visiting Chen's Convenience on Christmas Eve, looking for a frozen pizza. Taking note of the attractive owner, he'd have worked out a deal to buy into the place, with the option for a little romance. I still like this idea, but I can do it at any time, so I back-burnered it for later. We'll see if I get to it before next Christmas..
- Brazilian Christmas: A more recent flashback, we'd find Guy in Brazil, with his friends Oliver and Marina (referenced during Brittani's photoshoot in Chapter 4), enjoying a balmy, tropical Christmas. There'd be a little sexy action here, which would inform present-day interactions with these characters. Like the stuff with Mrs. Chen, I still want to do this, buuuut it doesn't really need to be tied to Christmas, and I think it deserves a little more time than I had to devote to it.
- Lost and Found: You're vacationing at your remote cabin, when a young woman arrives at your door, dressed like an elf. Wait, she is just dressed like an elf, right..?
- You're My Present: At this point I started to get a little loopy, and thought about doing an homage to the classic coffee commercial, with a guy returning from a trip abroad, and having a cup of coffee with a friend, followed by a splash of.. Cream. I wrote a good portion of this, and it would've had a tenuous connection to our main story, in that he was working for a charity organization that had been given a grant by Guy. I'm going to finish writing this and put it out next year, just because I think it's a sweet little story, and kind of funny.
Speaking of Chapter 1's remake, I’ve got the first 1/3 of it written, and I’ll be spending the next couple weeks knocking out the rest. My goal is to get the script finished, before I get deep into the rendering. But, until then I can still set up some scenes and do test renders, as you see up above. It's the return of unflattering haircut Guy!
Huzzah!Finally, I was able to do one useful thing over my vacation, and build up a small buffer of Wanton Weekends material. My plan is to transition that to a weekly feature, with a new name, in the first quarter of this year.
That's it for me, today! Thanks for sticking with me while I paused updates and took a little time to relax and recuperate! Be sure to check back this weekend for an all-new mini-sode, but until then: take care of yourselves, and thank you for your support!
Happy New Year!