I Am Tired Of "Walking Scene Player" Games

[Deleted member 4534656]

These games that I'm mentioning are the games that have a galery and/or a galery mod. What's the point of playing a game like that if I can just look at a galery or open game files and look at the media myself?

Games should offer more than that and something else, not just scenes but a way of interaction and stimulation which galery or scene play wont achieve.

Like randomization, simulation and more interactivity. A more responsive world and/or an ai of sorts that would react to you.

 

[PrinceOfShades]

Rather than type a 5 paragraph essay, I'll just give you the quick version:
Too much effort for small developers.

Also, you ask what's the point of playing a game with a gallery. For the story, of course. That's the point of a Visual Novel.

 

[Crell]

That's just, like, your opinion, man!

If you want interactivity, randomization and simulation, play Koikatsu or Honey Select. That's what those engines are for. I want actual stories. There's a reason most well received games have a decent plot line.

It's also one of the draws of incest games. Wiritng a romance between siblings requires you to write out feelings and desires, as opposed to most generic harem stuff where the MC just bangs everyone without a second thought.

To be frank, it doesn't sound like the world of Visual Novels is for you. Because they're all about the stories they tell.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Games should offer more than that and something else, not just scenes but a way of interaction and stimulation which galery or scene play wont achieve.

Well, most games offer more than that, a story. This thing that link the scenes together and create a whole from all those separate pieces. And, by the way, there's nothing else that a game can offer that wouldn't be in a replay feature ; it's kind of the meaning of "replay", to play again a scene like it is in the game.

Like randomization, simulation and more interactivity.

When they do, people complain, not necessarily without reason. If you want a full game behind your lewd, play a modded Fallout or The Elder Scroll, but mostly peoples play games available here because they don't feel, at this moment, to play a more challenging or "gaming" game.
And, again by the way, one of the most liked feature of my two main mods is... that they remove the randomization. Randomization in adult games are generally annoying. Whatever if you play for the lewd or for the story, in both case it force you to repeat, again and again, the same part of the game until you're finally lucky and have what you want (the lewd, or the story that finally advance).

A more responsive world and/or an ai of sorts that would react to you.

Well, put US$ 500,000 on the table, for the developer salary, and you'll get a game like this. If games on the scene tend to stay, relatively speaking, basic, it's not just because they are made by amateurs. It's also because the budget isn't at all the same than for an AAA studio.
It's not impossible to have such game, but it would need way more time, and so money, than what is generally possible on the scene. There's among the devs on the scene some that could do this kind of game. But, and I understand them, they don't want to pass years totally working for free, especially since they don't have the guaranty that it would pay off in the end.
The most you can get on the scene is basic adaptation, like in Super Powered by example, that's all. And, globally speaking, that's also all the community expect. Not that we wouldn't like more, but we know that there's things that can't be done, even by the few professional studio on the scene.

 

[CardinalRed]

Like randomization, simulation and more interactivity. A more responsive world and/or an ai of sorts that would react to you.

I wonder how easy to make people think these "simple" games we play here are.

 

[Cryswar]

I wonder how easy to make people think these "simple" games we play here are.

I'll freely admit that before I started making games, even as a fairly prolific modder, I had little idea what making even a game of mediocre complexity could entail. So I can't blame people really.

Was not enthusiastic to discover the sheer amount of shit you need to learn/do, and the time-consuming parts of the process, especially as a solo dev, can be insane even before considering the amount of code that anything more complex like a battle system or open-world can take.

But yeah, it does get a little discouraging to see comments like that.

 

[MissFortune]

I wonder how easy to make people think these "simple" games we play here are.

Unfortunately, in a quickly saturating market like this, you get entitled users like OP who say ignorant shit without knowing half of what goes into some of the games on here. The fact that they're wanting (mostly) amateur developers to toss an AI into a game engine like it's some easy feat for most is telling enough.

 

[fidless]

I'll freely admit that before I started making games, even as a fairly prolific modder, I had little idea what making even a game of mediocre complexity could entail. So I can't blame people really.

Was not enthusiastic to discover the sheer amount of shit you need to learn/do, and the time-consuming parts of the process, especially as a solo dev, can be insane even before considering the amount of code that anything more complex like a battle system or open-world can take.

But yeah, it does get a little discouraging to see comments like that.

As someone who tries to make more than just a text game, I have to agree.

You open yourself to be scrutinized and invite the highest critics of the world who otherwise would rate high simpler games because there are fewer mistakes/work and complexity to make them. I would discourage anyone who just starting to learn his way from taking such a challenge as people will take turns to disparage you and will expect the same amount of content as simpler games ignoring that dev has additional challenges making these type of games.
This is why only a few devs are making something more complex. It requires a lot more time, more skillset and does not necessarily result in more success.
You really need to be motivated and want to dig much deeper into it.

I, myself can't see making any other games as I wouldn't enjoy the process without working on gameplay and mechanics to make a somewhat more interactive game.

One piece of advice I can give, start simple and then see where it'll go. You'll make a lot of mistakes on the way before you set some kind of codding/work formula to make your games. It'll take a lot of practice, but it should be OK as long as you enjoy the process.

 

[Meaning Less]

These games that I'm mentioning are the games that have a galery and/or a galery mod. What's the point of playing a game like that if I can just look at a galery or open game files and look at the media myself?

Games you are reffering to are called VNs for a reason, visual novels aren't technically games they are stories with images, the reason for playing them instead of just browsing the gallery is to read the story, simple as that.

Now when you dwelve into actual games, they just are more complex in every aspect and people won't be making those by simply "following the renpy tutorial" which is why there are less of those.
To create things dynamically, simulated and on demand effectively you have to leave the prerendered realm and start making your renders in realtime. While nowadays this is more accessible than ever with the help of engines like unity, unreal, and others it still isn't nearly as simple as creating a game with prerendered images like most are.

 

[MissFortune]

Games you are reffering to are called VNs for a reason, visual novels aren't technically games they are stories with images, the reason for playing them instead of just browsing the gallery is to read the story, simple as that.

Now when you dwelve into actual games, they just are more complex in every aspect and people won't be making those by simply "following the renpy tutorial" which is why there are less of those.
To create things dynamically, simulated and on demand effectively you have to leave the prerendered realm and start making your renders in realtime. While nowadays this is more accessible than ever with the help of engines like unity, unreal, and others it still isn't nearly as simple as creating a game with prerendered images like most are.

Even with your usual Daz + Ren'py VNs, it's more than just being 'pre-rendered'. You're still setting up the scene, adding new shaders to make it look different from others who use the same asset/adding your own props/furniture/etc., adding characters/figures and posing them, then there's lighting (which can take a while to get right for a scene) and framing. Then there's waiting for the render (or renders if batch rendering), then postwork for any errors. Then there's the coding (even if it is relatively simple code for KN/VNs) and dialogue, and that's with leaving out animations in Daz. Is it faster than Unreal stuff? Sure. That's why lone devs opt for Daz/Renpy to tell their story.

The reason you don't see a lot of huge, interactive adult games is a matter of resources. Not every person can sink their free time into learning C#/C++/[insert language] and may not even have the system to run/develop in Unreal. A lot of the big, open world-ish games around have big teams. Hell, even Summertime Saga has like 8 or 9 people working on it. Look at Real Life Sunbay, for example. It's an Unreal project being developed by one person and it's barely moved since its creation. Wild Life uses an outsourcing pipeline for a fair portion of their work. It's unrealistic for single developers to pursue projects on that scale.

 

[Meaning Less]

it's more than just being 'pre-rendered'.

Just means means that the image was already rendered and the game is only displaying it. It is still considered prerendered even if you have extra layers of complexity before displaying the image, even most rpgm games have all assets prerendered.

The reason prerendered content is limited is that you have to literally render every possible frame beforehand, it's simple to move the camera around on a rendered game (on an abstract level), but to replicate the same effect on a prerendered game you would clog your game with tons of "all possible images", in other words very innefective.

It's unrealistic for single developers to pursue projects on that scale.

Depends on the scale we are talking about, there are plenty of simpler examples of rendered game both 2D and 3D that were developed solo and depending on what your goal is it actually can be easier to invest some extra time learning how to use more complex engines early on and then you will save a lot of time later by just replicating/modifying/generating assets dynamically instead of having to keep rendering scenes frame by frame until the end.

Not every person can sink their free time into learning C#/C++/[insert language]

I would argue that learning a new language is pretty simple if you know the basics of programming, the hardest part actually is learning about computer graphics (geometry, rastering, matrix transformations and so on) but still more accessible than ever with all the resource we can find for free online.
And that was my point, even if you can do a lot with prerendered content the gap from there to rendered content is a big one and this jump becomes a limiting factor of how dynamic games can be.

 

[CardinalRed]

Games you are reffering to are called VNs for a reason, visual novels aren't technically games they are stories with images, the reason for playing them instead of just browsing the gallery is to read the story, simple as that.

Wrong. VNs are, even technically, games.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Also, you ask what's the point of playing a game with a gallery. For the story, of course. That's the point of a Visual Novel.

The point of a visual novel, is that there is no point in a visual novel.
Can just go buy a book and get a far better deal for the price than getting your bank account constantly sucked by patreon in the hopes that what is being made here will actually turn out to be worth it.
Most of the time VN's aren't even close to what i'd call 'a game', most of the time they're just shittier versions of electronic books that also cost much more money to make.

 

[Ophanim]

The point of galleries is so that you don't have to play through the entire game again just to replay a particular scene, or drop save files all over the place to fulfil the same role, particularly in the case of games that aren't VNs, where a boss fight (or enemy fights in general) might not be repeatable (Edit: to be clear regarding what people are saying below, I consider recollection rooms/galleries/areas where you can spawn whatever enemies you want/etc to all be functionally the same thing in this regard)

Like randomization, simulation and more interactivity. A more responsive world and/or an ai of sorts that would react to you.

Have you looked into the field of AI 'games'? Things like NovelAI, HoloAI, etc? They're not really AI, more like superpowered autocorrect algorithms, but if you take some time to learn how to configure them (like any piece of software), you can get them to output passable-to-good, occasionally amazing, fetish porn stories of your choosing, and 'interact' with the story by inputting your own sentences for the story to 'react' to.

 

[nulnil]

If you're using galleries, you've messed up the adult presentation somewhere. The purpose of a gallery is to let you view the lewd scenes incase you weren't ready to finish your session when they appeared. However this usually gets blown out of proportion (since developers lose sight of the gameplay) to extents such as:

• Some scenes only appear in the gallery.
• The gameplay has no actual connection the the porn.
• Absurd grinding for renders/scenes to extend playtime.

This results in a game being reduced to a bag of renders covered by a hard shell of grinding and irrelevant gameplay.

Let's think, what can a game offer that rule34 or pornhub can't? Gameplay, and that's where the porn needs to go. Sex attacks, or any relevant sexual mechanics (i.e. genetics in a breeding game) are what turns a bare minimum adult content into a porn game. That being said, you can have ways to replay boss fights quickly or an arena mode where you can spawn enemies.

Either way, the one good thing VN's have done is expose how bad galleries are for gameplay.

 

[Rafster]

Galleries can be good, I included one in my latest update (twine games does not include them like ren'py), as a way to view a series of scenes again without loading old saves, and they are kinda trophies. I'm not against them, they are gameplay elements like many others.

 

[Winterfire]

These games that I'm mentioning are the games that have a galery and/or a galery mod. What's the point of playing a game like that if I can just look at a galery or open game files and look at the media myself?

Games should offer more than that and something else, not just scenes but a way of interaction and stimulation which galery or scene play wont achieve.

Like randomization, simulation and more interactivity. A more responsive world and/or an ai of sorts that would react to you.

Having a gallery is a good way to keep track of your progresses, I usually do a playthrough and after checking the gallery I can spot the (usually) many things that I have yet to do, so I know I will need to make different choices to unlock the rest of the story (if I care to) and replay my favourite scenes.

Gallery mods and opening game files is cheating, if you use this as a reason why the games you play are not fun, then maybe... Do not cheat? Duh.
Any game, no matter how deep and complex it is, can get much more boring and not exciting if you godmode and one shot every challenge.

Also, what the gallery does not give you (nor opening the game files) is context.
How did MC and the heroine end up fucking on top of a building?
When playing a game, we all know the heroines presented will end up naked, so this is not a surprise, the "HOW" is.
How their character and their relationship is developed, and how and why the scene is playing out. In short, plot, which is what makes a VN different from a random pornhub video.

If you get all you need from simply watching gallery scenes or looking at files, congratulations... You are a very simple person.
Nothing wrong with that, it simply means you are easier to please... In fact, it can even be a good thing thinking about it x).
I'd never get any excitement out of a scene or even worse a few cgs without knowing the context behind them.

 

[Winterfire]

Galleries can be good, I included one in my latest update (twine games does not include them like ren'py)

Ren'Py does not include them either, unless they started to with Ren'Py 8.

 

[Rafster]

Ren'Py does not include them either, unless they started to with Ren'Py 8.

I stand corrected then, I thought it was an out of the box feature since so many games have it, almost every ren'py game I've played had one (there were some exceptions). Ren'py should have it, though, would be nice.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Ren'Py does not include them either, unless they started to with Ren'Py 8.

Hmm, so what the

You must be registered to see the links

page of the documentation talk about ? And it's far to be something new, the replay feature appeared ten years ago in the version 6.15.0, while the image gallery was already present since a long time.

I stand corrected then, [...]

No you don't.