VN Ren'Py My Dorm [v0.27.3 S3 Ch.7] [Tropecita Games]

[Trope95]

To be honest, forcing yourself to write 50k word novel within 30 days is a noble, yet a bit crazy goal, in my opinion. That's somewhat half a number of words for a book. I can't say for other people, but I know wouldn't be able to write half a book within such time. At least not without sacrificing the general quality of it, like world building, characters, dialogues, without retouching and rewritting some of those for the sake of cohesion. I am more of a "quality over quantity" man. Sometimes even nitpicking too much, if I'm being honest.

Still, if you could turn those renders into words My Dorm update would surley fit into that 50k word goal. On the other hand, how could you tell how much one render is worth words? One could be taken right of the bat within few minutes, while the other could take an hour to set up and then another one hour to fix it, because you noticed at the end something is wrong.



Oh, wow, you're so smol. I could easily walk over you.
I am 191 cm tall, having 120 kilos of... muscles. Yes, my beerbelly is a muscle too! I can't be convinced otherwise!



Me too. Luckly Covid didn't fuck my sleeping schedule. I fucked it up myself by working two shift each day every day, sleeping but only few hours and having a nap here and there if my job allowed me to take one.
Human body is an amazing machine, capable of adapting to many circumstances. Yet I would be glad if mine could get back as it was eariler.

I wouldn't be able to write a whole book. Even less in 30 days (I'm an avid re-writer), but knowing My Dorm is in 387,000+ words (as of v.0.15) is beyond what I thought initially.
I tried to write stories before but never published one. My problem was in the dialogue. Everyone sounded artificially going directly to the point. My test readers said the descriptive part was good but the dialogues were hideous. And now I'm writing a story with over 95% of dialogue. And learning in the process.

I can't convert renders into words in any objective way. The next update will have ~3,950 renders, but I've rendered over 5,500 images (a lot of animations this time weren't good enough and needed to be retouched). But I can convert time. Martha+Emma scene took 9 days to render (2,063 definitive renders). If I can write ~12,000-15,000 words in a week spent only in writing, that would mean 15,000-19,000 words in those 9 days.
It's a false premise, because everything needs a break from time to time. When I get writer's block, I render. When a render or an animation is especially hard or frustrating, I stop and write. Or go to the forums/Discord/etc.
Writing as a 9-5 job is not for me. You need inspiration, be in a certain mood for certain scenes, recover emotionally from writing other scenes, etc.
Example: I should write the same scene in two different branches: Martha's getting a positive pregnancy test and a negative one. I can't write both branches one after the other. The mood should be different. If I wrote the negative scene after writing the positive one, she would be happier (or less caring) than she should be. So, after writing the positive scene, I perhaps go on rendering, or write another happy scene to take advantage of the mood I'm in.

650 wpm on story, now how much for writing messages on here and replying to everyone on here (plus all the private messages)?

I hope it's at least on a computer and not a phone.

A lot! I think I'm known by my text walls
650 words per day on story, perhaps 1,500 on forums/DMs/Discord/Patreon/SS (never counted them), and some thousands on my job.
Yes, I write a lot. Mostly with a real full-sized keyboard. When you have sausage fingers, writing on a phone is not as comfortable.
Edit: This post had 988 words before the edit.

I don't mean to offend anyone, I'm just asking to get a general idea of the game.
Is this game about catching them all as Pokémon and living in the same house WVM style?
Obviously with fewer ducks in the house and I guess more normal length days ?

No offense taken. I tried WVM before starting My Dorm, more than 2 years ago, and even though they have similarities (harem, lots of girls) I would say My Dorm and WVM are very different games. On My Dorm, every LI is optional, for example, and is more focused on developing the characters than in the naughty scenes. It's been more than 2 years since I played it, so my information isn't fresh. Other players have already answered this question, but if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Pretty much, although I'm pretty sure I remember trop saying not all members of the harem will actually live in the same house with you. Most of the LI's will, but there will be a few exceptions. Maddie (chick you meet who works at a clothing store), being a good example of one of those exceptions. I could just be misremembering though, maybe I hallucinated him saying that?

You're right. In addition Megan and Alexia.

I'll answer both of you in the same answer.
Exactly that. Maddie won't move into the house during the game time. She will move in the epilogue if on the Romance route. Megan won't ever move in 100%. Alexia, Amanda, Eva, Samantha, and Simone are in (more or less) the same situation as Maddie.

Just getting back to this one after a bit of a hiatus - I didn't really do much VNing in Q3 of 2023, and have slowly been catching up. Based on the change log, I last played release 11.A.1. This is going to be at least a couple of weeks given the limited amount of play time I'll be able to get in over the next several weeks... I have a feeling my save list is going to get even more out of hand with as many LIs and likely branches we have now - and I'm only doing the "Family" route at the moment. As a completionist, and given that there seem to be some significant differences on the non-fam, things are gonna get crazy - I'd be really interested to see Trop's flow chart for this thing.

Why am I announcing all of this? Well, instead of commenting on other people's stuff so much, I'll probably be posting a running commentary of my observations and reactions, so you might want to put me on "ignore" for a while.

Welcome back!
I am waiting for your comments!

I think eventually the Marks family is going to have to buy the land around the two houses and build more for the off site LIs and of course all the rooms for the kids and other rooms needed.

Olivia is a retired real estate agent, so she will be helpful. Having the economic backing of a big company will make wonders on how the Marks Estate grows. The idea is to have some more houses built around the "core houses". Those houses won't need things like a pool or a sauna, so they will be more like "places to sleep and make babies". If they aren't needed in a specific player playthrough (because s/he isn't on everyone's path) those extra rooms will be used to host more students in years to come. A Dorm is an auto-renovating harem opportunity, with new girls arriving every few years.

I'm not so sure on that one exception. No clue how it will be handled (automatic or player choice) the game has alluded to a sensible solution.

Spoiler: My guess, but I'll spoiler it just in case.

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

1 and 2 will depend on what the family (not only the MC) chooses to do with NTR.
1 can be done or not. The option to NOT do it will only show up if not on Amanda and/or Eva's path. Once the family knows what they've gone through, they won't want to make other clones go through the same. I'm still debating if (and how) I will give this choice because, at the end of the day, the MC only owns 12.5% of the shares, so any player choice can be overruled by the rest of the owners. I can't see Martha and Norah accepting another batch of Evas and Amandas going through the same. And Eva/Amanda/Aaron own another 25%. They are in the same boat as Martha and Norah but for different (more personal) reasons.
2 will be the logical development, and closely tied with 3.
3 is a bit late to implement. It will take years of research and tests, and Meemaw would be in her 80s-90s. If the one suffering a hysterectomy was one of the 18-20 y.o. girls, I would say yes.
4 Still has some story to go.

Got late. A little progress, but need some sleep now. However, since I still had this open in the background...

Spoiler: Questionable premise...

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Finally - has the method of doing animations changed? The Emma scene in v.0.12 was a little bit seizure-inducing. My recollection is that they were a bit smoother in earlier releases. It had a lot to do with the arms - I don't think there were typically as many moving limbs before and that may have been what was doing it for me, together with head movements and eye blinks - lots of moving parts! Maybe a bit with the perspective changes as well, going from seeing a close-up on Emma's backside, then the swing to the mirror. It's a great concept, but felt a little off. I may be the only one that had this reaction, so it might just be me!

Emma is an infinite source of fun oneliners!
Basketball fan (southern) European here. I always forgot things like (American) football, Baseball, or Ice hockey exist
That animation isn't the best I bought. I even added the camera movement thinking it would improve it a bit and ended fucking it even worse. Of my three beta testers, wife, step-son, and Erica, only my wife complained about it, but she's known to get dizzy if she turns around too fast, so even she disregarded it being a problem of the animation. Player reports have demonstrated she was right.

Isn't all harem games about

You must be registered to see the links

? Some even give you an option to outright decline some or not to do any.
But FatGiant explained it fairly well already.


Well, having a close connection to Meemaw is going to help it quite a bit. After all she was, before she retired, a Real State Agent. She will talk here and there with the old friends, push some money into the few pockets and we're owning Texas. I think it will be enough room to build Meemaw's Uber Concrete Witchcraft Factory, few nurseries and mansions to live with ever increasing size of the harem, a castle in the middle of a city, because I want one, and emergency underground bunker and facility capable of withstanding the end of the world.
View attachment 3390230

Well, she was a Real Estate agent for a reason, right? There's a lot of forest around to build houses, a diaper and a baby powder factory, a nursery, and an elementary school!
A lot of the girls' professions and backgrounds will be taken advantage of once the family is established (independently of paths). Some of them in creative ways. A nun? A lifeguard? An English Literature major? A singer? We will see.

 

[HentaiKami]

Yeah he is going to need a big ass mansion for all his women and kids.

Mansion is costly and doesn't fit the theme, he is going to build real dormitory for his harem and their kids and second dormitory for the female students that aren't in his harem yet.

 

[Mommysbuttslut]

I wouldn't be able to write a whole book. Even less in 30 days (I'm an avid re-writer), but knowing My Dorm is in 387,000+ words (as of v.0.15) is beyond what I thought initially.
I tried to write stories before but never published one. My problem was in the dialogue. Everyone sounded artificially going directly to the point. My test readers said the descriptive part was good but the dialogues were hideous. And now I'm writing a story with over 95% of dialogue. And learning in the process.

I can't convert renders into words in any objective way.

Always thought it was absolutely absurd how many words go into a visual novel. The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy has off the top of my head somewhere around 450,000 words. War and Peace which is brutally long has over 587,000. Then there's Fate/Stay Night which has over 800k, or Clannad which has an absolutely massive 1.3 million. It's so weird to me how interactive books that come with pictures and need to be coded have more words than books that don't. You AVN devs do some underappreciated hella heavy lifting when it comes to literature in general.

 

[acowasto]

I wouldn't be able to write a whole book. Even less in 30 days (I'm an avid re-writer), but knowing My Dorm is in 387,000+ words (as of v.0.15) is beyond what I thought initially.
I tried to write stories before but never published one. My problem was in the dialogue. Everyone sounded artificially going directly to the point. My test readers said the descriptive part was good but the dialogues were hideous. And now I'm writing a story with over 95% of dialogue. And learning in the process.

I've yet to see a man not having a problem with writting his first book in any form. No matter how great is you knowledge, how well you know the theory, without practice, without much of a living experience it won't work that well and people will notice it, especially the ones having experience in things you're writting about. I've been there. My friends were there. Now, looking back at our hobby, a simple writting fanfics, I think we had a great opportunity to actually publish those as real in-universe stories, if asked and given permission by the IP holder, yet we basically wasted it in fear of potential legal actions and thinking we weren't good enough. So much good writting went to a bin. Still, I might be based a bit about it. After all, I have a emotional connection to it. Oh, well, we will never know.

I can't convert renders into words in any objective way. The next update will have ~3,950 renders, but I've rendered over 5,500 images (a lot of animations this time weren't good enough and needed to be retouched). But I can convert time. Martha+Emma scene took 9 days to render (2,063 definitive renders). If I can write ~12,000-15,000 words in a week spent only in writing, that would mean 15,000-19,000 words in those 9 days.
It's a false premise, because everything needs a break from time to time. When I get writer's block, I render. When a render or an animation is especially hard or frustrating, I stop and write. Or go to the forums/Discord/etc.
Writing as a 9-5 job is not for me. You need inspiration, be in a certain mood for certain scenes, recover emotionally from writing other scenes, etc.
Example: I should write the same scene in two different branches: Martha's getting a positive pregnancy test and a negative one. I can't write both branches one after the other. The mood should be different. If I wrote the negative scene after writing the positive one, she would be happier (or less caring) than she should be. So, after writing the positive scene, I perhaps go on rendering, or write another happy scene to take advantage of the mood I'm in.

Hard to not agree. If you're in love you write with love about love. If you're sad, you write sadly about the sad. Mood is as important as the knowledge and experience. Without it people will notice and will question it. Like in the example you provided. She would be happier, if you had to write those two one after the another.

I would say writting 9-5 ain't for anyone if they want to have a quality writting instead of quantity of it. Best examples are the articles over the internet, where people are payed for words, not the cohesion and getting to the point. Because, sometimes, doing so would mean but a only few sentences, not an article. They are beating around the bush with usless words. I really hate it, yet I understand it sometimes, because I was guilty of doing so in my writtings too. Out of passion I would say, to describe everything in every little detail, rather than the amount of words to have, but still did it when it wasn't called for.

As you wrote, you need inspiration, a mood, time to recover. You never know when Lady Inspiration is going to sit on your shoulder. You never know in which mood you are going to be in a five minutes. Happy, Angry, Horny, Sad?

A lot! I think I'm known by my text walls
650 words per day on story, perhaps 1,500 on forums/DMs/Discord/Patreon/SS (never counted them), and some thousands on my job.
Yes, I write a lot. Mostly with a real full-sized keyboard. When you have sausage fingers, writing on a phone is not as comfortable.

You call that a text wall? Tis but a fence high!

Well, she was a Real Estate agent for a reason, right? There's a lot of forest around to build houses, a diaper and a baby powder factory, a nursery, and an elementary school!
A lot of the girls' professions and backgrounds will be taken advantage of once the family is established (independently of paths). Some of them in creative ways. A nun? A lifeguard? An English Literature major? A singer? We will see.

Well, Betty is a surgeon, right? I think she's working overtime now increasing and decreasing MC's dick size between his sexual encounters.

 

[Deleted member 2572880]

I think MC should build a manor to support his LIs and relatives. After half a century, it will become a town named after MC.

 

[Trope95]

Always thought it was absolutely absurd how many words go into a visual novel. The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy has off the top of my head somewhere around 450,000 words. War and Peace which is brutally long has over 587,000. Then there's Fate/Stay Night which has over 800k, or Clannad which has an absolutely massive 1.3 million. It's so weird to me how interactive books that come with pictures and need to be coded have more words than books that don't. You AVN devs do some underappreciated hella heavy lifting when it comes to literature in general.

The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is 481,103 words. I guess I will catch up on v.0.19 at this pace
I'm a bit far from The Wheel of Time series, though: 4,410,036 words.

Writing a story through dialogue only (without narrative or long inner monologues) takes a lot of words. It would be easier and shorter to explain all the NTR history through a "narrator voice", but since it was Aaron/Eva/Amanda explaining it, and Norah/Martha/the MC reacting/interrupting/asking questions it drags a bit.

You should also note that the word count involves every possible path and patch status. No player will read the 387,000 words in a single playthrough (neither in 5-6 runs, too many combinations). I guess the most a single run would be able to achieve (full harem, full pregnancy, unpatched version) would be around 80-90% of those words.

There are great AVNs out there with a lower word count. Some weeks ago, a player sent me a comparison with one of the games My Dorm has been compared in the past, and it had an average of 5,095 words in the last 3 updates (15 days/update cycle), so 15,285 words in total in the same 45 days My Dorm had 27,215.
Which is better? I can't know because I am not playing any other game and wouldn't be objective comparing them even if I did. I think different styles of storytelling need different word counts (and different render counts). I don't think more words or renders make a game better. It's the quality of those words and renders what makes it.

I've yet to see a man not having a problem with writting his first book in any form. No matter how great is you knowledge, how well you know the theory, without practice, without much of a living experience it won't work that well and people will notice it, especially the ones having experience in things you're writting about. I've been there. My friends were there. Now, looking back at our hobby, a simple writting fanfics, I think we had a great opportunity to actually publish those as real in-universe stories, if asked and given permission by the IP holder, yet we basically wasted it in fear of potential legal actions and thinking we weren't good enough. So much good writting went to a bin. Still, I might be based a bit about it. After all, I have a emotional connection to it. Oh, well, we will never know.

Hard to not agree. If you're in love you write with love about love. If you're sad, you write sadly about the sad. Mood is as important as the knowledge and experience. Without it people will notice and will question it. Like in the example you provided. She would be happier, if you had to write those two one after the another.

I would say writting 9-5 ain't for anyone if they want to have a quality writting instead of quantity of it. Best examples are the articles over the internet, where people are payed for words, not the cohesion and getting to the point. Because, sometimes, doing so would mean but a only few sentences, not an article. They are beating around the bush with usless words. I really hate it, yet I understand it sometimes, because I was guilty of doing so in my writtings too. Out of passion I would say, to describe everything in every little detail, rather than the amount of words to have, but still did it when it wasn't called for.

As you wrote, you need inspiration, a mood, time to recover. You never know when Lady Inspiration is going to sit on your shoulder. You never know in which mood you are going to be in a five minutes. Happy, Angry, Horny, Sad?

You call that a text wall? Tis but a fence high!

Well, Betty is a surgeon, right? I think she's working overtime now increasing and decreasing MC's dick size between his sexual encounters.

Starting to write something is one of the hardest creative works I've ever done. You can have a huge flowchart about how will people behave, how the world works, what will happen on and off camera, or how the story will evolve... and then you have that blank paper/file, and writing the first 10 words is like carrying a big box upstairs. Without knowing how much the box weighs. Without knowing how many floors are between you and your goal.

Part of my job is writing technical guides about things I can do with my eyes closed and one hand tied. Even those aren't easy to write if the mood isn't the correct one. As you say, if you do something passionately you can go into every single detail (sometimes overdoing it, so instead of a story you write a travel book to guide the reader through your world), but if you write in the incorrect mood, it will be unbearable for the reader.

It's not Betty's doing. It's erosion and regrowth!

 

[Deleted member 2572880]

Always thought it was absolutely absurd how many words go into a visual novel. The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy has off the top of my head somewhere around 450,000 words. War and Peace which is brutally long has over 587,000. Then there's Fate/Stay Night which has over 800k, or Clannad which has an absolutely massive 1.3 million. It's so weird to me how interactive books that come with pictures and need to be coded have more words than books that don't. You AVN devs do some underappreciated hella heavy lifting when it comes to literature in general.

Developing an AVN is more like filming a movie or series.

 

[Estuana]

1 and 2 will depend on what the family (not only the MC) chooses to do with NTR.
1 can be done or not. The option to NOT do it will only show up if not on Amanda and/or Eva's path. Once the family knows what they've gone through, they won't want to make other clones go through the same. I'm still debating if (and how) I will give this choice because, at the end of the day, the MC only owns 12.5% of the shares, so any player choice can be overruled by the rest of the owners. I can't see Martha and Norah accepting another batch of Evas and Amandas going through the same. And Eva/Amanda/Aaron own another 25%. They are in the same boat as Martha and Norah but for different (more personal) reasons.
2 will be the logical development, and closely tied with 3.
3 is a bit late to implement. It will take years of research and tests, and Meemaw would be in her 80s-90s. If the one suffering a hysterectomy was one of the 18-20 y.o. girls, I would say yes.
4 Still has some story to go.

I don't think it's really about ownership as Martha, Norah, MC, Eva, Amanda and Aaron together from that meeting have enough say without the rest that the MC was offered the job of CEO (Not agreed yet, but is still on the table). I doubt his girlfriends will go against him unless he wants to continue what was already being done.
As for Meemaw, even if one was ready to go right now (no R&D time) between the surgery and recovery period it would be risky enough that the family would be against it anyways.

That animation isn't the best I bought. I even added the camera movement thinking it would improve it a bit and ended fucking it even worse. Of my three beta testers, wife, step-son, and Erica, only my wife complained about it, but she's known to get dizzy if she turns around too fast, so even she disregarded it being a problem of the animation. Player reports have demonstrated she was right.

If the camera movement speed was reduced it might help a bit. The fast snaps from looking down, and to the mirror and back remind me of the old "found footage" movies like Blair Witch. Rapid camera movement can make people motion sick, even if they don't generally experiance motion sickness.

I think MC should build a manor to support his LIs and relatives. After half a century, it will become a town named after MC.

Welcome to Marks Town! (Mothers Attentively Rearing Kids Society)

 

[Trope95]

I don't think it's really about ownership as Martha, Norah, MC, Eva, Amanda and Aaron together from that meeting have enough say without the rest that the MC was offered the job of CEO (Not agreed yet, but is still on the table). I doubt his girlfriends will go against him unless he wants to continue what was already being done.
As for Meemaw, even if one was ready to go right now (no R&D time) between the surgery and recovery period it would be risky enough that the family would be against it anyways.


If the camera movement speed was reduced it might help a bit. The fast snaps from looking down, and to the mirror and back remind me of the old "found footage" movies like Blair Witch. Rapid camera movement can make people motion sick, even if they don't generally experiance motion sickness.


Welcome to Marks Town! (Mothers Attentively Rearing Kids Society)

That's what I meant by "not giving that option". If the player votes for keeping NTR as it is, logically Martha, Norah, and Aaron/Amanda/Eva will oppose that choice. They, together, have 50% of the shares. The MC should convince Erika, Emma, and Daphne to side with him to get a tie. A tie would mean nothing changes but although I can see Daphne (in a scientist-only mindset) voting to continue the cloning investigation, she's too empathetic to vote for the mercenary clones. Erika is too emotional to vote for it. Emma is a loose gun and easily manipulable, so it would be a wildcard depending on who manipulates her better. But even then it would be a false choice. Martha, Norah, Erika, and Aaron/Amanda/Eva has 62.5% of the shares.

With Meemaw's age and her cancer history, she wouldn't be a good candidate for something like that even if it was possible right now.

I learned a lot about camera movement speed doing the panoramic of Daphne's hotel room. It's a 180º turnaround and it took 18.6 seconds (560 frames) to do it smoothly (perhaps I could have done it with 18s). Emma's scene, with a ~90º (I don't remember the exact angles) camera movement took around 60 frames (2 seconds), so it was clearly insufficient once I discovered what I now know.

 

[Slavoj]

Haven't been here for a while, are we already past the time skip so the girls show signs of pregnancy or are we still getting there?

 

[Satou Pendragon]

Haven't been here for a while, are we already past the time skip so the girls show signs of pregnancy or are we still getting there?

Still getting there.

 

[JJ1960]

Haven't been here for a while, are we already past the time skip so the girls show signs of pregnancy or are we still getting there?

We are still at the "condom skip" phase.

 

[acowasto]

There are great AVNs out there with a lower word count. Some weeks ago, a player sent me a comparison with one of the games My Dorm has been compared in the past, and it had an average of 5,095 words in the last 3 updates (15 days/update cycle), so 15,285 words in total in the same 45 days My Dorm had 27,215.
Which is better? I can't know because I am not playing any other game and wouldn't be objective comparing them even if I did. I think different styles of storytelling need different word counts (and different render counts). I don't think more words or renders make a game better. It's the quality of those words and renders what makes it.

Comparing is in human nature. Because by having a point of reference we can easily say something is better or worst. Yet, the comparison itself shouldn't be used only as review, because it doesn't give the full description of the thing we are trying to review.

My Dorm is a VN focused around a certain plot, dialogues are added onto the static graphics with fewer animations reserved for sex scenes.
Melatonin Magiks is a AVN with multiple plots all over the place, with dialogues added onto the static and animated graphics, but also with tons of animations during sex scenes and between dialogues.
Aurelia is a VN with multiple plots, with dialogues added onto the static graphics and tons of minigames with animations reserved for minigames and sex scenes.

I can say My Dorm has less animations than Melatonin Magiks, and no minigames like Aurelia, but does it mean it's worst game? Not quite. It's different. If I had to say if My Dorm is a good game I would have to write a proper review, a review in which I can describe in in detail, like quality and quantity of writting, graphics and animation, plotholes, etc.

I hate when people compare things to eachother just to say something is better than the other thing without words to back it up.

Starting to write something is one of the hardest creative works I've ever done. You can have a huge flowchart about how will people behave, how the world works, what will happen on and off camera, or how the story will evolve... and then you have that blank paper/file, and writing the first 10 words is like carrying a big box upstairs. Without knowing how much the box weighs. Without knowing how many floors are between you and your goal.

Part of my job is writing technical guides about things I can do with my eyes closed and one hand tied. Even those aren't easy to write if the mood isn't the correct one. As you say, if you do something passionately you can go into every single detail (sometimes overdoing it, so instead of a story you write a travel book to guide the reader through your world), but if you write in the incorrect mood, it will be unbearable for the reader.

That's why I liked In Medias Res so much. I could have just simply jump right into the action, leaving my worries about the beginning and the end for later for a narrator, or even the character himself, to explain when the situation allowed for it. Sadly, I often put myself into a corner of having to explain things from few chapters eariler, but it had to be done.

I still have my old notes and loose writtings about the world, characters, about things evolving stored safely on my PC.
Yet, when I took the will to write somethingg again and I look onto the blank screen of text editor I can find it just as hard as I was writting for the first time. This blockade is annoying sometimes.

Haven't been here for a while, are we already past the time skip so the girls show signs of pregnancy or are we still getting there?

 

[Trope95]

Comparing is in human nature. Because by having a point of reference we can easily say something is better or worst. Yet, the comparison itself shouldn't be used only as review, because it doesn't give the full description of the thing we are trying to review.

My Dorm is a VN focused around a certain plot, dialogues are added onto the static graphics with fewer animations reserved for sex scenes.
Melatonin Magiks is a AVN with multiple plots all over the place, with dialogues added onto the static and animated graphics, but also with tons of animations during sex scenes and between dialogues.
Aurelia is a VN with multiple plots, with dialogues added onto the static graphics and tons of minigames with animations reserved for minigames and sex scenes.

I can say My Dorm has less animations than Melatonin Magiks, and no minigames like Aurelia, but does it mean it's worst game? Not quite. It's different. If I had to say if My Dorm is a good game I would have to write a proper review, a review in which I can describe in in detail, like quality and quantity of writting, graphics and animation, plotholes, etc.

I hate when people compare things to eachother just to say something is better than the other thing without words to back it up.




That's why I liked In Medias Res so much. I could have just simply jump right into the action, leaving my worries about the beginning and the end for later for a narrator, or even the character himself, to explain when the situation allowed for it. Sadly, I often put myself into a corner of having to explain things from few chapters eariler, but it had to be done.

I still have my old notes and loose writtings about the world, characters, about things evolving stored safely on my PC.
Yet, when I took the will to write somethingg again and I look onto the blank screen of text editor I can find it just as hard as I was writting for the first time. This blockade is annoying sometimes.

That's exactly what I mean. You can't compare two games by quantity alone, or even by the quality of that quantity. There are a thousand factors that make a game good or bad, but at the end of the day, what matters is what it makes the player feel. And every player is different. And he feels different things watching the same content than another player seeing the same scene.
I like that you put those two games as an example. I didn't know either of them, but in and of themselves, they are incomparable because they use different engines. Melatonin is Koikatsu and Aurelia looks like Pixelart. I have absolutely no idea how to use those engines, so I don't know how much work they require. That leads me to the fact that they are incomparable with each other, with My Dorm, with a Honey Select game, or with a Hand-drawn one. And I'm only talking at a work load level. There are players to whom seeing a Koikatsu or Honey Select character gives them the same feeling as seeing a bus stop, none, and there are others who love that kind of art.
I don't think there are games that are "the best globally".
A Koikatsu fan might prefer a game made in Koikatsu over one made in Daz or Honey Select.
There will be players who prefer a story with adult elements and others who prefer a game that is more porn-oriented.
There will be players for whom it is important to have a complete story and prefer a finished game, while others will prefer a game that updates every 1-2 months, and others will prefer to wait 8 months or a year.
What about Sandbox or NTR? These are two genres that seem to have very vocal communities for and against. If the best story in the world of AVNs, with the best graphics, the best update times, and a huge amount of content per update, has the NTR tag, it can never be the best game ever for a part of the community. And if it doesn't, it won't be for another part either.

I don't try to outdo any other game. I don't want My Dorm to be better than Melatonin or Aurelia. I only want the current My Dorm update to be better than the last one. It's the only thing I have "some" control over. And not much. The last update had Daphne as the protagonist of the lewd scenes, and the next one won't have her. Daphne-only players won't consider v.0.16 better than v.0.15!

 

[rambo455]

good game so far but man could i not care less about dadies issues XD first time in ages i actually went back and just skipped a part of the story just because i could literally not be assed to give a fuck rest of the game so far really intersting

 

[acowasto]

That's exactly what I mean. You can't compare two games by quantity alone, or even by the quality of that quantity. There are a thousand factors that make a game good or bad, but at the end of the day, what matters is what it makes the player feel. And every player is different. And he feels different things watching the same content than another player seeing the same scene.
I like that you put those two games as an example. I didn't know either of them, but in and of themselves, they are incomparable because they use different engines. Melatonin is Koikatsu and Aurelia looks like Pixelart. I have absolutely no idea how to use those engines, so I don't know how much work they require. That leads me to the fact that they are incomparable with each other, with My Dorm, with a Honey Select game, or with a Hand-drawn one. And I'm only talking at a work load level. There are players to whom seeing a Koikatsu or Honey Select character gives them the same feeling as seeing a bus stop, none, and there are others who love that kind of art.
I don't think there are games that are "the best globally".
A Koikatsu fan might prefer a game made in Koikatsu over one made in Daz or Honey Select.
There will be players who prefer a story with adult elements and others who prefer a game that is more porn-oriented.
There will be players for whom it is important to have a complete story and prefer a finished game, while others will prefer a game that updates every 1-2 months, and others will prefer to wait 8 months or a year.
What about Sandbox or NTR? These are two genres that seem to have very vocal communities for and against. If the best story in the world of AVNs, with the best graphics, the best update times, and a huge amount of content per update, has the NTR tag, it can never be the best game ever for a part of the community. And if it doesn't, it won't be for another part either.

I don't try to outdo any other game. I don't want My Dorm to be better than Melatonin or Aurelia. I only want the current My Dorm update to be better than the last one. It's the only thing I have "some" control over. And not much. The last update had Daphne as the protagonist of the lewd scenes, and the next one won't have her. Daphne-only players won't consider v.0.16 better than v.0.15!

I completely agree. There is nothing more to be said in this regard then, so I'll see myself out... By using a GIF I worked on for two hours. HornyyPussy

 

[Satou Pendragon]

HP he's trying to provoke you

 

[Horny Toad]

Not to mention there's no Queen Duckface or any of her duckface minions.

Jeez, the knocks WVM is getting here and another forum. At least the MC here shows his face.

 

[Horny Toad]

Just getting back to this one after a bit of a hiatus - I didn't really do much VNing in Q3 of 2023, and have slowly been catching up. Based on the change log, I last played release 11.A.1. This is going to be at least a couple of weeks given the limited amount of play time I'll be able to get in over the next several weeks... I have a feeling my save list is going to get even more out of hand with as many LIs and likely branches we have now - and I'm only doing the "Family" route at the moment. As a completionist, and given that there seem to be some significant differences on the non-fam, things are gonna get crazy - I'd be really interested to see Trop's flow chart for this thing.

Why am I announcing all of this? Well, instead of commenting on other people's stuff so much, I'll probably be posting a running commentary of my observations and reactions, so you might want to put me on "ignore" for a while.

Spoiler: My Save List

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I think Daph the Corruptor should be her D&D character's name.

Enjoy the rest of the game, good thing a lot of save pages available.

 

[motseer]

Damn! I wish I knew what we are arguing about but... I went blind halfway down the page...