Let's push forward, your opinion matters.

[SeventhVixen]

Making a 3d runtime game it's only a thing that a group of many years experienced devs can achieve (and usually the result is bad/meh at most).

Many people just get Unity or Unreal, install some assets and have a running empty sandbox world in the first two days and think that it's gonna be easy making something playable or enjoyable on some months. They utterly wrong. (I know).

I spent six years making 3d and 2d prototypes games of many genres and only now I'm gonna release something for PC, and I begin with 2d (well, 3d rendered but... 2d in the end); because I'll never try to make a big 3d runtime game by myself (that is just not some rooms). Too much pain to achieve a quality where I can be satisfied to release.

 

[caLTD]

Running something like that in UE4 is doable..., and if you optimize it can run on any 10 series NVidia GPU, maybe even on a 970 or 980. It would make use of assets streaming and multiple levels, from a coding stand, the player would not even notice that he is actually changing maps/ level when entering a house for example... And to be fair, anyone expecting to run any modern/ decent 3D game on a 10 years laptop.... don't blame the dev for not being able to do it
Buildings are not a problem, the problem is the human models and animations.. Having cheap models, would result in something like House Party, or even worse, that game with a guy and his mom, hideous models ( I have forgotten the name of the game ), and shity animations will break the game.

I do not much UE4 experience. I'm working on Unity. It seems UE4 much more ready than Unity. Unity need much more components to what I'm after it.

Creating a working pipeline is my main problem. If you are meaning The Twist, From my point of view it was very successful game.

I hope to forgive me the hijacking discussion,

Today I blown my safe and bought a 1050ti these images are coming from my last broken unity project. Its about 30 fps. It has dynamic lightning (because it has dynamic lighting from current game time).

My I ask your opinions.

 

[Zippity]

To be fair, Unreal and Unity don't have a lot of limitations... You can make almost anything with them. I think people have a few misconceptions regarding Unity and UE. So, for example, Unity used to cost upfront, now, it doesn't. Same with Ue4. They both have a royalties system, but that means, you only pay if you earn, and you pay a percentage of what you make ( for UE it's 5% if you make more than 5000 $/ 3 month period. I'm not sure what Unity charges). And once you get your head around the basis of coding in them, you can add extra stuff to your game, as you learn. With RenPy, you are kind of stuck in that sense. Again, as an example, I have toyed around with creating a bonus scene for Cyndy, if you would have finished the game, you would have had access to a 3D photo shoot ( 3D model, and a couple of animations, with the possibility to save the photos on your PC), but I had to pull it out of the game, as it would have required paying for the the Game Licence from Daz ( character, clothing, morph package, hair, some accessories, in total over 500$, and I didn't think it would be something that it would have been worth doing.

Out of the box Ren'py is pretty much good to go as far as a basic Visual Novel setup, with little to no choices offered to players/readers... So of all the engines, it's the easiest to work with code wise... The text only engines are pretty basic as well, with no real coding requirement unless you want to go beyond the basics... UE and Unity require a bit more coding knowledge or at least a grasp of coding...

Zip

 

[DreamBig Games]

Creating a working pipeline is my main problem. If you are meaning The Twist, From my point of view it was very successful game.

Yes, that is the one. I am not arguing its success, but the model and animations quality.

 

[DreamBig Games]

Out of the box Ren'py is pretty much good to go as far as a basic Visual Novel setup, with little to no choices offered to players/readers... So of all the engines, it's the easiest to work with code wise... The text only engines are pretty basic as well, with no real coding requirement unless you want to go beyond the basics... UE and Unity require a bit more coding knowledge or at least a grasp of coding...

Zip

That or you can buy VN frameworks, that would only require getting the images and text in the engine, defining some branches, you know the easy stuff. But that would be like using RenPy and paying for it, so it would defeat the purpose.
But on the other hand, if people do want to do anything more complicated than a VN, I would suggest using and learning Unity or UE4, as this way, as you are working on your first, simple project, you will gather skills that you can use on your next level one. And that is how you will evolve, as a game dev.

 

[DreamBig Games]

Making a 3d runtime game it's only a thing that a group of many years experienced devs can achieve (and usually the result is bad/meh at most).

That I disagree with, as I have seen people making games, their first game, no experience in game dev prior to starting that one game. But what I do agree with, it that you need a team, or the possibility to contract/ hire modelers and animators ( especially for adult-themed games). For example, on unity and UE4 market places, you can buy everything you need to gate a shooter game done, not just to prototype. Everything from player characters, enemies, animations, AI, environments, sounds, it's all there, you only need to mash/ code them together and it's all good. But for adult games, well, there is nothing. You need to create character models, with genitalia and deformers, sex animations and morphs for the more extreme poses and this is why I have not yet tried to make an adult game in 3D yet. For my next one, I'm using sprites ( rendered in Daz3d at large sizes ( over 256 px, some at 500 px ), but I hope that for the project after this one, I will have made some funds to be able to hire a modeler and buy a mocap suit and make that really nice looking 3D sex game .

 

[SeventhVixen]

For example, on unity and UE4 market places, you can buy everything you need to gate a shooter game done, not just to prototype. Everything from player characters, enemies, animations, AI, environments, sounds, it's all there, you only need to mash/ code them together and it's all good.

That's why I said "Achieve" and "not bad/meh". What you're describing it's just an asset flip, and even "mash" the code requires good skills and practice. Moreover.... Do you think the default AI that comes (if comes) with AI behaviour trees are good for something?

One thing is to start, that in my original post I already say it's easy, but making a real enjoyable game? buf.

PS: I'd like to see the dev putting in place a save system for all that mash up... Reason that most Asset flips just have levels instead of progression, because they're unable to save the progress....

And adult game requires not only the basic, as you say, but much even more.

PSS: I don't know who mentioned, about the "bad models" of House Party; They are Daz3d models, imported like that to the game engine (Unity I guess). One can recognise every hair, clothes, etc.

Reason they look bad it's because poor ilumination and poor texture administration for the models. (It's nearby easy import daz models in unity, make them look good, requieres skill)

 

[DreamBig Games]

That's why I said "Achieve" and "not bad/meh". What you're describing it's just an asset flip, and even "mash" the code requires good skills and practice. Moreover.... Do you think the default AI that comes (if comes) with AI behaviour trees are good for something?

One thing is to start, that in my original post I already say it's easy, but making a real enjoyable game? buf.

PS: I'd like to see the dev putting in place a save system for all that mash up... Reason that most Asset flips just have levels instead of progression, because they're unable to save the progress....

And adult game requires not only the basic, as you say, but much even more.

PSS: I don't know who mentioned, about the "bad models" of House Party; They are Daz3d models, imported like that to the game engine (Unity I guess). One can recognise every hair, clothes, etc.

Reason they look bad it's because poor ilumination and poor texture administration for the models. (It's nearby easy import daz models in unity, make them look good, requieres skill)

- I don't know much about Unity, but the AI systems for Ue are good. But, as I said, those systems are made for shooter, survival games. So, for example, there are a couple of very good AI systems for animal behavior ( predator/ prey), enemies ( chase, follow, attack, etc ). As for this being an asset flip, I disagree. There is no need to reinvent to wheel for every car that was made, is there? I would rather use a market place asset that is good and can work for my idea than spend hours modeling/ coding it, as that is a major time saver.

- Enjoyable games? HAve a look at MIst Survival, Subsistence, PubG, just to name the ones that I have played. All are using models and codes from the market place, PuBG have made their own maps, but later on, after they have sold a huge number of copies. So yeah, I believe enjoyable games can and are beying done.

- Save systems: My Cyndy save system is made by me, and all I need to be able to save the state of any actor/ progress, any given var is to set a flag when I create it/ or go in a specific, preexisting asset and add it, at runtime or prior, it will work both ways. There is a similar system on the market place that works the same way( it was my inspiration, to be honest). So, a save system for a mash-up, easy.

- I have mentioned the bad models but apart from fucking up the materials ( that or unity is not so great at graphics), they have also reduced the poly count, heavily. If you want, you can extract the models out of the game, and compare them with the originals. And that is necesary because you would get a high poly count, especially with Daz hair ( over 500k poly for some hair meshes). Also, they have not just imported the meshes, they have had to get them in a 3D tool and graft the genitalia, add extra bones and reskin them. Hence the ugly looking animations, as it was not done very good.
-

 

[caLTD]

Yes, that is the one. I am not arguing its success, but the model and animations quality.

I believe he was successful there too. Because he does not use any daz model and his animation based on tween library.

However I may be biased here , I like the game and hate the implementation...

Also

Daz models does not have high poly counts. But daz hair was. Personally I do not believe (at least current generation of hardware) daz hair model was best fit for the our games. The Witcher 3 is best example, Mesh hair is much better (for performance).

Today I blow my safe and buy a gtx 1050ti and another 8gb of ram. I hope I can create my pipeline without entering the performance optimization madness again

Wish me luck

 

[caLTD]

Pfff I update wrong message. Too much working :=) please check my upper posts

 

[DreamBig Games]

Daz models does not have high poly counts. But daz hair was. Personally I do not believe (at least current generation of hardware) daz hair model was best fit for the our games. The Witcher 3 is best example, Mesh hair is much better (for performance).

In my tests, Gen 8 is around 39k, no genitals, no, hair, clothes and NO SUBDIVIDER. No subdivision, the models don't look too great, do a test ( export them into Blender, Maya, and you will see a lot of straight line/ sharp angles ( boobs, nose, ass, hips, shoulders ), etc.), so if you want a good looking model, as they look in Daz, you will need to apply subdivision in a 3D Tool, and guess what? You, poly count, will increase dramatically. Add to that clothing and you will struggle to run a game with 2-3 characters in the viewport at the same time. I have tried that in UE4, and the project( 1 room with a couch, bed, and a wardrobe, plus 3 characters, no hair) would not run on a 960 ( I was getting below 10 frames/ sec on an I5, 960, 8GB ram).

For hair, I have found that Hair Cards ( what Witcher is using, and most newer games ) is the way to go. I have looked into Paragon assets ( they are free for anyone using UE4) and they are using hair cards, it looks awesome, and the poly count is below 5k.

Good luck with your upgrade, but are you buying a 1050TI for renders? If so, I would buy a used 1070, or a 1070TI, Double the amount of VRAM and more CUDA cores ( this would allow you more models in the same scene and faster rendering times)

 

[caLTD]

In my tests, Gen 8 is around 39k, no genitals, no, hair, clothes and NO SUBDIVIDER. No subdivision, the models don't look too great, do a test ( export them into Blender, Maya, and you will see a lot of straight line/ sharp angles ( boobs, nose, ass, hips, shoulders ), etc.), so if you want a good looking model, as they look in Daz, you will need to apply subdivision in a 3D Tool, and guess what? You, poly count, will increase dramatically. Add to that clothing and you will struggle to run a game with 2-3 characters in the viewport at the same time. I have tried that in UE4, and the project( 1 room with a couch, bed, and a wardrobe, plus 3 characters, no hair) would not run on a 960 ( I was getting below 10 frames/ sec on an I5, 960, 8GB ram).

For hair, I have found that Hair Cards ( what Witcher is using, and most newer games ) is the way to go. I have looked into Paragon assets ( they are free for anyone using UE4) and they are using hair cards, it looks awesome, and the poly count is below 5k.

Good luck with your upgrade, but are you buying a 1050TI for renders? If so, I would buy a used 1070, or a 1070TI, Double the amount of VRAM and more CUDA cores ( this would allow you more models in the same scene and faster rendering times)

I buy 1050 ti for unity 3d game. My rig has Ryzen 5 2400 and it's internal gfx chard run my test game (sample is bottom) at 16 fps. Because of lack of hardware my game runs slow and I got not enough performance sickness, then I jump the premature optimization game then my project blows.

Before the blow the project I create a test sample. After buying the card I run test again and I reach 30 to 40 fps. I believe I can reach my goals.

Also my game checks game time and arrange the global lightning and because of this it uses realtime ligtning. That was real fps killer.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I wonder back in the day (way back in the day), Patreon's of the arts.. If they would demand of painters, composers, sculptors, inventors (list goes on), if the backers was standing over them demanding they would always complete a painting once started a new canvas or god forbid that stone is expensive so if your sculpture fail, off with your head!.

It happened, but you can't compare this with nowadays Patreon's like funding. At this time, protector's of the arts were people who paid an annuity high enough for the artist to live decently. And obviously, when you give each month what would now be something like $2000, it's legit to be way more demanding than when you give few bucks.

 

[HopesGaming]

• Would you like to have deeper stories with sex-scenes who rather act as a side-activity instead of being the main focus?

I am doing such a game.
But my opinion is that there should be all kinds of different styles. Focus on porn. Focus on the story. Focus on both etc.
The more styles out on the market the better.

• Would you like to see more common gameplay approaches like having First Person or Third Person games, something in the line of Mass Effect or The Witcher?

Not realistic.

• Do you prefer a god or a bad protagonist as the main character?

Both. Depends on the game, setting, and story.

• How about Character Customization? Going a bit further how about NPC Customization, settings presets (small boobs, big boobs, thick, thin, etc.) for the characters you will meet throughout the game (in a non-spoiler way ofc).

Not realistic as the majority of games are based on still images.

• Since most developers use DAZ for their characters, how important are custom DAZ characters for you? Do you dislike seeing the same character in multiple games or do you don't mind?

Very. It's very easy to do. Few minutes tops per character. Devs tend to eighter be lazy and just use a premade character or copy paste a popular character (such as the main girl from DmD)
The worst sinners are the one the above mentioned for their main characters.

• Would you like to see larger game areas and have the possibility of exploring these areas to your hearts content?

Depends on the game. For an rpgm game, I prefer to have exploring areas as long as there is content for it and not just big for the sake of being big.
For pure VN games, I like it to be as focused as possible. (I don't mind a bit of free roaming)

• How important is a good looking environment for you?

Very. Not a lot of time goes into making a decent environment. Which is a shame.

 

[Rastafoo]

I know that this thread isn't a discussion on developers - but can't we all agree that DLsite has the best games?

The only way we're going to get better games is via dlsite, because Western developers tend to avoid hard fetishes, especially with Patreon being all authoritarian.

Japanese developers are better than Western ones

 

[DreamBig Games]

I buy 1050 ti for unity 3d game. My rig has Ryzen 5 2400 and it's internal gfx chard run my test game (sample is bottom) at 16 fps. Because of lack of hardware my game runs slow and I got not enough performance sickness, then I jump the premature optimization game then my project blows.

Before the blow the project I create a test sample. After buying the card I run test again and I reach 30 to 40 fps. I believe I can reach my goals.

Also my game checks game time and arrange the global lightning and because of this it uses realtime ligtning. That was real fps killer.

If you are aiming for an optimised 3D, nice graphics game, with loads of lights, day/night cycle and such, I would say give UE4 a try. As far as I am aware, it's much better when it comes to optimizations, and it's graphics are way ahead of unity. Also, you don't need to pay anything upfront, so no Unity Splash screen in Alpha of your game, you would only pay 5% when you sell over 5000$/ 3 months.

 

[Joshua Tree]

I am doing such a game.
But my opinion is that there should be all kinds of different styles. Focus on porn. Focus on the story. Focus on both etc.
The more styles out on the market the better.

• Would you like to see more common gameplay approaches like having First Person or Third Person games, something in the line of Mass Effect or The Witcher?

Not realistic.

I agree with you so much on this one. Different styles and so on, but one of the issues is the players as well who seem to demand "the same". If a creator focus more on one thing or the other they get railed on. I like slow building stories, few of those around, and they usually get a lot of "where is the sex/porn" remarks over and over.

I don't think anything is "unrealistic", it just depend on how much work and effort you put into it, the engine you use and how many working on the project and so forth. When speaking of something in the line of "Mass Effect, or The Witcher", doesn't necessary need to be of the same quality of, just style. Then again both those series have come a long way since the release of ME1 and Witcher1, though.

Not that many games around here made in Unreal, but if you look at "Real Life Sunbay", which seem to turn into some sort of GTA5 sex clone. or whatever. Nothing is to far fetched.

 

[HopesGaming]

I agree with you so much on this one. Different styles and so on, but one of the issues is the players as well who seem to demand "the same". If a creator focus more on one thing or the other they get railed on. I like slow building stories, few of those around, and they usually get a lot of "where is the sex/porn" remarks over and over.

I don't think anything is "unrealistic", it just depend on how much work and effort you put into it, the engine you use and how many working on the project and so forth. When speaking of something in the line of "Mass Effect, or The Witcher", doesn't necessary need to be of the same quality of, just style. Then again both those series have come a long way since the release of ME1 and Witcher1, though.

Not that many games around here made in Unreal, but if you look at "Real Life Sunbay", which seem to turn into some sort of GTA5 sex clone. or whatever. Nothing is to far fetched.

I know of that issue very well. I got my fair share of the screamers who demands sex. But I either just give a friendly reply or ignore. They may get pissed but I know that I still got many who do appreciate my style.
Some get offended and leave while others get offended and lurk around, liking every negative posts/reviews and so on.
But it has never been an issue for me. And should never be an issue for any other devs. They just need to learn to have thicker skin.

The reason why I write 'unrealistic' is simply thinking on the current market situation right now.
It's usually made by a single person (and some rare cases- two people) that is learning everything as they go.
Even something as simple as a pure vn takes it time.
Script, rendering, music, coding, and so on. If you go through some of their threads- even the simple games- they tend to get a couple of the generic comments such as "milker" "slow dev" "update when" "taking forever" and so on.
And that is all for simple 2d vn games. Imagine a single guy going for a 3d game? It would be 'unrealistic' for the average dev, imo.
The game you mentioned, Real Life Sunbay, I have not tried but a quick look at the reviews and thread and it already confirmed that. People complaining about the lack of content and giving it a bad review already.
It can still be a success if the guy is not the average joe but is a master dev.

Time is the biggest issue for the witcher/mass effect style of game. Going 3d requires either massive talent, to be able to do it in a reasonable timeframe, or a big team.

But again, unrealistic to expect that for the average dev out there.

 

[Joshua Tree]

I know of that issue very well. I got my fair share of the screamers who demands sex. But I either just give a friendly reply or ignore. They may get pissed but I know that I still got many who do appreciate my style.
Some get offended and leave while others get offended and lurk around, liking every negative posts/reviews and so on.
But it has never been an issue for me. And should never be an issue for any other devs. They just need to learn to have thicker skin.

The reason why I write 'unrealistic' is simply thinking on the current market situation right now.
It's usually made by a single person (and some rare cases- two people) that is learning everything as they go.
Even something as simple as a pure vn takes it time.
Script, rendering, music, coding, and so on. If you go through some of their threads- even the simple games- they tend to get a couple of the generic comments such as "milker" "slow dev" "update when" "taking forever" and so on.
And that is all for simple 2d vn games. Imagine a single guy going for a 3d game? It would be 'unrealistic' for the average dev, imo.
The game you mentioned, Real Life Sunbay, I have not tried but a quick look at the reviews and thread and it already confirmed that. People complaining about the lack of content and giving it a bad review already.
It can still be a success if the guy is not the average joe but is a master dev.

Time is the biggest issue for the witcher/mass effect style of game. Going 3d requires either massive talent, to be able to do it in a reasonable timeframe, or a big team.

But again, unrealistic to expect that for the average dev out there.

I kinda guess some creators find their comfort zone and stick to it maybe? So like idea of go towards unity, unreal (or whatever else), and try something new might be daunting? But yea, skills and the "know how" varies a lot too. I applaud every creator for trying even though result might not be "up there". But who knows, they might in the future.

Players got "unreal expectations" when it come to what (how much) content creators can push out in a given time frame as well though. Best for creators is just to block out all the "moaners" and just focus on what they doing. Most annoying thing I see is when a creator start give in and you end up with "back seat directors" ruining something that had the prospect of being good.

 

[Aesouh]

As a C# Developer using unity, at least I can say I have more experience making 3D games than 2D games. I really do enjoy making a visual novel because so much of it is basically UI development, data management and lots of figuring out things as you go. Of course it depends on how you go about it. Lots of Unity "devs" out here do use fungus and other libraries, and rightfully does get a bad rep, because they rarely even do write one line of code.

Would like to add that, I am always learning as I go, I never worked with visual novels before, but of course i have played some, so I am totally just figuring things out and do them like i want it to be, adding things i thought missing from other games etc, the coding is not that difficult per se if you look at general programming knowledge, but there are for sure components around the dialogue system and progression systems that can take a lot of thinking if you do it from scratch like I have, Later on the more you add, of course everything has to play well together too. Bigger game, more to test. I am having a blast, just like for artists, its a creative outlet for me. The feeling of developing new features with ease because i made the core flexible and strong, is an amazing feeling. and seeing people appreciate your hard work, that's really a motivator.

Some reasons for why we are using pre-rendered art, first of all it's the artist

2D / 3D Artists use completely different skillsets in many aspects, you can't for example render and then touch it up in photshop, its a completely different thing from making games in 3d, where you need realtime shaders, highly detailed textures etc.

Another huge reason for going 2D is the performance. Most people aren't neccesarily on gaming hardware. The kind of assets people use for 3d games are really hardware heavy, even if it doesnt look that good. Twist is one example.

Not only the performance but the quality too, you'll get the art like the artist envisioned it, most of the time. No compromises on texture quality, or lighting.

3d games is not that difficult to code, you are just working on one more dimention, depth. Most of the work comes into the animation, texturing, 3d modelling, this is generally not the work of the programmer. Someone makes the animation, the code then triggers the animation and plays it at appropriate speed, lots of work there but yeah...


3d games and drawn 2d games tend to have a lot in common though, once you set both up you can adapt the gameplay a lot based on what is already added previously. For example, you can reuse assets , change foreground and background combo for some variation, barely any work once its all in there.

with pre-rendered games, every render is a lot of damn work, unless you do the cutout approach similar to drawn-art games.