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@Saki_Sliz feel free to make your edits to the post above and just @ me or reply to this message, and I will make it it's own new thread in Tools & Tutorials.
 

MaksB

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In my game I use only ghost lights (except outside scenes and the lights that is already in the environment). Yes, everyone will say that it is not right. But it is quick and easy. That's what I get.
 
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recreation

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In my game I use only ghost lights (except outside scenes and the lights that is already in the environment). Yes, everyone will say that it is not right. But it is quick and easy. That's what I get.
The reason for people might say it's not right, is that with ghostlights it's not easy to get realistic light and it's especially hard to keep the details on skin. If you can manage that, then there is no problem with using them. I use them a lot too.
 

lancelotdulak

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Despite what.. certain.. untalented peole have said here.. you have talent for someone who just started in daz (If i offended any of the above posters.. it wasnt accidental. im talking about you). Im not even remotely a fan of the models.. theyre just bad. Go into shaping and play around.. learn daz texturing and texturing in general. Two things ive realised about adult games: 1: its about the story.. a great well done story and gameplay will offset meh or even bad models. 2: the models. A brilliant model will have people clicking like mad to get through your shit story. If you have both you have something like DMD etc...
 

Saki_Sliz

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@lancelotdulak
I don't mean to go looking for a fight, but it sounds like you might.
But I'll take the risk of being the first to respond.
("first" implies the assumption that others may decide your reply merits their response as well).

May I suggest the next time you decide to make a post, to try to take a more tempered approach.

By temper, I don't mean you shouldn't make aggressive or confrontational remarks (one of the shortcomings of written language is that there is no voice, sometimes things can sound meaner than they meant to), but rather, I am referring to your "realizations." How you choose to behave is your own prerogative, and I don't mean to tell you how to live your life. However, when it comes to sharing misinformation, short-sighted opinions (or oversimplified statements), or giving advice to others (especially to new members of the community or those seeking advice), I do take a special interest to make sure no one is suffering from any disservices.

I would suggest that you avoid statements of absolutes, for example: your remark about your observation of story being the most important, followed by a good model. At the very least, it is a basic simplified idea, and that is fine. But the way you worded your statement, to me at least, it sounded like you are instructing the OP what they should be doing, instead of offering just raw observations and information, and allowing the OP to form their own opinion based on that.

The reason I am making this reply isn't to talk to @lancelotdulak but rather to the OP @WTFosaurus (or was lance replying to @MaksB ?). It is very easy to make assumptions without realizing it, especially when it comes to game making and what we think are basic ideas. @lancelotdulak observes story being the most important. When you read that sentence just now, you (anyone who is reading this) just made an assumption without realizing it. Do even know what a story is, or did you just read through with the assumption, "yeah, story, I know what that is, brain please read the next word." But if I asked the question, what is a story, or what makes a good story, I am sure we could all get in a lengthy discussion about what we have seen work and not work. The point is, ideas are complex, and we can even make assumptions inside assumptions.

Like here is another assumption, when we think story, we think words, or at least I do with respect to the F95Zone community. I find the F95Zone community to only be one group out of many, with different nsfw communities having different qualities. lots of F95Zone users prefer games with a good story, however, this isn't true in the NSWF commercial space, or in other communities like average nsfw Newgrounds users who tend to be a bit younger and looking for less of an investment (you can thank a black hat for that bit of questionable information). So a story may not be the number one thing, depending on the game's application, ie, who is your intended audience. And then going back to the question of what is a story, I find what matters isn't what's written (I may write walls of text, but I have no attention span for text in games, I'm a born hypocrite XD), but I prefer interesting characters, and what makes characters interesting are their relationships and interactions between either other characters or even just themselves, and relationships are based on past interactions, and what makes interactions interesting tends to be situation involving conflict (not a fight, but something like, your bully develops a crush on you and they have to figure out how to resolve it), and what makes conflicts interesting is having the conflict come from the context of the story's world, and context comes from pass story events, and pass story events, if not told to the players directly in the game description or the intro, often come from the wake of resolved conflicts in past events of the story. Basically, what I am saying is I am working on a model based on rhetorical theory, where, if you just need context, as a prerequisite everything else that happens, allowing for a daisy chain effect that naturally creates an enjoyable experience (often found in beloved shows like star trek, star wars the clone wars, total drama island, etc.), and context can be from anything, not just words, but you could throw someone into the game, let them explore, never use words, and they can still experience an epic. (ie communicating visually or with context instead, ie, finding someone's lost good luck charm and giving it to them is all the context you need to explain why one character likes the player, no need trying to figure out how to write a character in a way it is believable that they now like the player).

All of that is to say, Lance's statement about the story being the most important is as most would understand, to be an oversimplified statement, but I wouldn't want the OP to erroneously conclude (and assume) that they should write an epic if they want to make a good game (happens more often with newer/younger members to the nsfwdev community). A good story can come out of a game even without text, as I have (hopefully) tried to explain. It is something I am trying to prove by making my own game. So there is no one right way to do things, there hardly ever is in life.

The whole reason I felt like responding wasn't to make too much of an ass of myself, but I wanted to make a point about discussions. Instructing others on "what is the right way" to do things, when we talk too simple and tell others what to do and pretend like we know what we are talking about as if we had some authority (I'm looking at you @lancelotdulak), such processes are destructive to the community because it locks down everyone's perspective to a small idea of what is possible, which limits the potential of great games (ie I'm already bored of visual novel format, and I played only like at most 15 in my entire life). But if we hold discussions in a way that does not restrict other's to think in a particular way, and we just share raw data and feedback, it will allow the new and young to be able to reach new conclusions the rest of us hadn't even realized were possible they could create the next great game (I guess summertime saga is currently the biggest name in the community, as an example).

If this reply felt a bit hostile towards lance, my apologies, but it was an opportunity to talk about something I'm passionate about (the nsfw community), but before any retaliation, yes, I do practice what I preach. If you look back to the first response the OP recieved, it was me, and one of my opening statements was,

this isn't telling you what to do before you release, but rather, here are things to try as you get more experience in the future and want to experiment with improving your art.
I try not to be pushy, and try not to make my suggestion the OP's top priority (I make no demands), let them know it is ok to come back and review what I have said at another time that is more convenient (when they want to experiment). This allows readers to review the data and observations and draw their own conclusions, avoiding users taking what I say as gospel. Throughout the rest of my replies, when I give a statement, I don't just give it, I also give a why, an explanation of how the conclusion or statement was reached, or why doing things in a particular way may be of interest to the reader, nothing is left in a vacuum, and that's why I'm the ass that makes walls of text, so I don't make an ass of my self for being to brief. it's perfectly imperfect logic :p
 
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anne O'nymous

I'm not grumpy, I'm just coded that way.
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Despite what.. certain.. untalented peole have said here..
Mostly there's two people who answered, and both have proved, more than once, that they are far to be untalented. So I'm wondering to whom you're talking here. As untalented people in this thread, there's me, but well I haven't addressed OP's abilities so...


Im not even remotely a fan of the models.. theyre just bad.
Like every "untalented" people who talked before you said/implied, the light is responsible of most of the problems. With a more proper lighting, the models will lost most of their angular aspects and look betters.
This said, it's your right to dislike the models, everyone have it's taste and it's natural. But qualifying them as "bad" is just untrue ; it's confusing what the model looks like, with how the model is done. The characters aren't at your taste, alright, but there's nothing wrong with the meshes ; at least nothing that can qualify them as "bad".


Two things ive realised about adult games: 1: its about the story.. a great well done story and gameplay will offset meh or even bad models.
That's not what the, many, meta threads about this said. A good story make people excuse average CG, but that's all. There's, more than one, game that failed because the CG were really too bad despite the interesting story. There's also many games that have an interesting story, but also have endless arguing about the not this good quality of the CG.


2: the models. A brilliant model will have people clicking like mad to get through your shit story.
Just look at A Wife and Mother, you'll see that it's far to be true.


If you have both you have something like DMD etc...
Since Dating My Daughter have an average story and average models, served with an average rendering, what point are you trying to make ?
You want a great story, look at Depraved Awakening or Seraphim Academy, by example. You want great rendering, look at the, already named, A Wife and a Mother, by example. You want to see a good story, using good models and having good rendering ? Look at The DeLuca family, Heavy Five or City of Broken dreams, by example. All those games over pass Dating My Daughter in term of quality ; not that it's a bad game, just an overrated one.

You started by judging other talent, ended by judging games, and apparently you're not this good at both.

There's other issues with your comments, but @Saki_Sliz already addressed them.
 

WTFosaurus

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Aug 11, 2018
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I'm not gonna wade into the rest of it but he had a point about the models. No matter which way I lit it or moved the camera around there was that green shading on the parts of the body pointing towards the camera. Basically anytime the camera was catching more than a few inches of the edge of the skin shader. I tried to rectify it but I ended up ditching it altogether. Compare3.png
That image is way over exposed but you can clearly see the differences between the old skin and new (not talking about the tan). Open the full size image in a new tab to a better picture. Not as clear just using the viewer.
 

HopesGaming

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Green shading on the body part is not normal.
The asset creator would have gotten in deep trouble if he/she released an asset that had such a big flaw.
So unless his/her promo renders were full of green shading on the figure- the asset would probably had been removed from Daz.

There is no doubt that there are some models and skin texture better than some others. But have yet to come across a skin texture that couldn't be saved with proper lighting techniques.
 
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WTFosaurus

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I might not have tried the correct combination of lighting then. But it also wasn't published on the Daz marketplace. Regardless though since the texture was for the MC I wouldn't want to fuck with the lighting endlessly for every scene.
 

Saki_Sliz

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Since I am a blender user, I do not know the technical aspects of Daz. Is the skin a type of shader, which you can change or adjust the parameters, or does daz default to a particular type of shader that can not be changed, or is the shader baked into the assets when you buy it, making it even hard to customize (and being prone to having issues such as publishing the file with a bad shader asset). In blender, you just make a better shader if you have the skills, nothing is locked in.
 

WTFosaurus

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Aug 11, 2018
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Since I am a blender user, I do not know the technical aspects of Daz. Is the skin a type of shader, which you can change or adjust the parameters, or does daz default to a particular type of shader that can not be changed, or is the shader baked into the assets when you buy it, making it even hard to customize (and being prone to having issues such as publishing the file with a bad shader asset). In blender, you just make a better shader if you have the skills, nothing is locked in.
It is a shader. You can adjust pretty much whatever you want. I'll probably be lessening the tan on that character before I'm finished with her. I played around with the original skin but I couldn't find a parameter that strengthened or noticeably lessened that weird shading. I don't know enough about it to say it can't be fixed only that I don't know how to fix it if it can. I've applied other skins to the same figure and didn't really have similar issues with any of them (one had a slight blue tint without blue light but it was barely noticeable). It might be why it was one of the cheapest complete models I saw.
 

WTFosaurus

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Aug 11, 2018
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I've been building the house where most of the game will take place. I am supposed to go out so don't have time to render any more angles atm. The hallway is all primitives except the doors because I couldn't find anything that fit well (that was free w/ commercial license).

Please feel free to comment and critique on anything. Architecture, interior design, textures, shaders, lighting (I just threw some up), the floating plant, the door being blocked off by the chair... etc.

Hallway.png Hallway2.png fixed.Living Area 3.png fixed.Living Area 4.png fixed.Living Area 5.png fixed.Testing Firefly2.png fixed.Bedroom test 2.png fixed.Bedroom test.png

I designed it so every room (except two) has huge windows to allow light from the HDR. On the second floor where most of the bedrooms are the entirety of the east and west walls are windows. There are five bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, the open living room/dining room/kitchen, a room upstairs we don't know what to do with and a laundry room. Trying to make it as close to a functional house as possible. I had to replace most of the solid walls in the pack I bought with textured planes so I had functional doors. The stairs are made from primitives. The slope is kind of steep 45 degrees instead of a more normal 30-35 but the steps are proportioned correctly (fuck OSHA). I placed the house out in the woods with a tall fence because otherwise it would be a privacy nightmare. The outside needs a lot of attention still. Excluding the HDR the only plants out there are in the concrete planter boxes I placed in front of the columns supporting the second floor (so people don't crash into them with their cars). Need to add a pool but the only decent one I found for free was on a questionable site. Pretty sure I can make one but it would be fairly simple.

What I am planning on doing is using this whole house map as the base for each scene and just hiding every element that isn't going to visible to reduce render times. I have the assets in each room all grouped so that that they can easily be hidden/shown. My thought process is that having elements from other rooms just outside the scene visible will help with the continuity and immersion that the player will feel.

Will that poster in the bedroom cause any issues? Not sure how litigious the CW is.
 

WTFosaurus

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Aug 11, 2018
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Added a pool finally. Ended up just using primitives to make it. I found a free ladder and diving board that I was going to use with it but both them only had one surface the monochromatic diving board just looked way too off. I might need to scale the ladder down a bit. Dimensions for the pool are 4.5m x 9m with about 1m deep on the shallow end and 3m of the deep. (about 15'x30'x3'x9' for those not versed in real measurements). Still need to find some lounge chairs to go with it. Let me know if you see any improvements I can make.

Pool.png Pool2.png
 

Saki_Sliz

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I wish I could respond or give some feed back, but for some reason this past week my internet been hit or miss, I can't seem to load any images.
 
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WTFosaurus

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So I got around to lessening the tan on my MC and found that her reflection had this sunburned look to it. Anytime in iray that there was a refracting of the image it applied it. Such as looking into a mirror or through water etc. It wasn't so bad on the base skin because the dark tan helped hide it but when I lightened her it became very evident. The cube that she is half in is just water.
Problem.png
What i did to fix it was alter the SSS color to completely white 255 255 255
Fixing.png
Then I just adjusted the diffuse color and weight until I'd gotten close enough to the original.
Fixing3.png
Then applied it universally.
Fixinged.png


If there is a better way to fix this issue let me know!