Game Design: Unreasonable to expect players to have transparent GIFs?

[entomology1233]

Hello, I'm working on a game that allows the player to have sexy time with a character that uses the images/gifs provided by the player. The background is a bed and the resource would have been fitted to appear on it. If the player were to do an action such as caress it would show a cut-in on the top left/right of the breast being caressed.

Now, as I am personally going through the process of getting my own... resources, I find that making the gif/image have a transparent background is WAY too much work for what a normal person would be willing to do.

Maybe you have an easier method, but this is what I am doing.

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There's also the issue of perspective meaning the player will have a hard time not only getting transparent resources, but also resources that share a consistent point of view.

So my question is, should I just disregard the idea that the user would have transparent gifs and make the resource take up more screen real-estate? Or is there an easier way for this to be done? It's kinda disappointing that immersion will be thrown out the window in such a fashion. But I guess that is the fault of expecting the player to provide their own resources.

 

[Meaning Less]

You have to figure your way around the 3D software you are using, color keying is a last resort.

The right way would be to render those images already with a transparent background, just figure out how to achieve that with your specific software and you won't have to waste time tinkering with every single image.

 

[hakarlman]

Keep in mind, the player doesn't necessarily have to make his own gifs and images.

1. You could release initial girl packs they can download and use.
2. Other players (modders) will make packs and share them, and most users can just use those.
3. Once players see how these packs work and play the game, it may inspire them to make their own.

I'm kind of just guessing at what you're making. Hope this helps.

 

[entomology1233]

Hello, thank you for your replies.
I'll probably worry about this last, because if it can or cannot be done, it would only change the expected resolution of the resource.

 

[Droid Productions]

Hello, I'm working on a game that allows the player to have sexy time with a character that uses the images/gifs provided by the player. The background is a bed and the resource would have been fitted to appear on it. If the player were to do an action such as caress it would show a cut-in on the top left/right of the breast being caressed.

I don't think you can easily assume that players will be able to background remove for videos properly; that's deep in prosumer land, not consumer. You're also going to deal with the problem that a bed is only going to work for a certain number of camera-angles, and it's going to look increasingly broken after that. Beyond that, the lack of proper shadowing on the bed will break immersion and make things feel "ungrounded".

It's a neat idea, and I can totally see what you *want* to achieve, but I worry that the current tech-stack isn't going to just let the player grab a random video-clip off the net and shove it into your game, unless they're someone already really comfy with a bunch of player tools.

If it's just you; most browsers (and Renpy) support WebM, which supports transparency. Sadly, Renpy only supports split-frame transparency (where you take something like a .mov and split it into RGB and A in a double wide format). There's a free

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plugins that will spit that out for you, if you're on a HTML platform. If you're on Renpy it's a little more painful, but this will take a video with an Alpha channel and prep it for renpy:

ffmpeg -i %1 -vf "split [a], pad=iw*2:ih [b], [a] alphaextract, [b] overlay=w" $1~nf.webm

 

[Sphere42]

I don't think you can easily assume that players will be able to background remove for videos properly; that's deep in prosumer land, not consumer. You're also going to deal with the problem that a bed is only going to work for a certain number of camera-angles, and it's going to look increasingly broken after that. Beyond that, the lack of proper shadowing on the bed will break immersion and make things feel "ungrounded".

Thing is, that's not even a "typical" skill for budding prosumers. I mess around with PSD files for minor edits. I enable the console and scry for variables to "cheat" grind in Ren'Py games. I'll edit RPGM data if it's in something like JSON or XML. I have zero clue how to efficiently edit video backgrounds because that just doesn't come up. And if I were to look into the options I'd sooner compose my own final animation with backgrounds, cut-ins and dialogue boxes scraped together from different sources than rely on some janky discount Honey Select OP might be working on.

Basically as others have already said this would need to be a solid base game with the option to load image packs made by modders, like Minecraft texture packs or new girls in something like Slave Maker.

And for 3D styles you're competing with live rendering and "character creators" like the aforementioned Honey Select which tend to cover more options at less effort. Not sure how well HS Studio handles shadows but its backgrounds definitely are a lot more varied than "a bed" and there are thousands of character cards you can just download and drop in.

 

[Droid Productions]

And for 3D styles you're competing with live rendering and "character creators" like the aforementioned Honey Select which tend to cover more options at less effort. Not sure how well HS Studio handles shadows but its backgrounds definitely are a lot more varied than "a bed" and there are thousands of character cards you can just download and drop in.

Yeah; HS handles shadows and unified lighting just fine; it's probably a better option. I think the OP wants people to be able to take real porn and slot it into the game, at least that's my assumption.

 

[entomology1233]

I either make a post too late or too early. This was definitely one I woke up the next day saying "duh" But I at least wanted to find out if there was an easier way. You never know.