- Nov 26, 2019
- 9
- 66
Oh, thank you for taking the time to respond! My apologies if my comments came across as somewhat harsh, by the way; while I do believe the issues I raised are valid, I likely would have phrased them differently if I knew the author was going to read them.
If you don't expect to do anything more complicated than this, I really do think Ren'py would be better for the project; it's extremely simple to use, great for projects involving a lot of writing, free, and has all the functionality expected of a VN baked in already. Your friend shouldn't have any trouble switching to Ren'py, even if they aren't familiar with it previously - I'd go so far as to say that you could probably do it yourself, if need be. Take a glance at their websiteYou must be registered to see the linksfor more information.
The problem is that it's a real pain for other forms of gameplay - if you were planning on including an inventory system, fights, or anything else that adventurers do, then sticking with Unity might be less of a headache. If you do those in a VN-like structure (say, choosing from a variety of options as the fight progresses, attaching a value to each of them, and deciding whether they win or lose at the end based on the total value), it works out just fine, but adding an entirely new system... Usually doesn't end up working well. It's very good at what it does, but trying to branch out of what it does ends up sticking out in a bad way, at least for a lot of the projects I've seen.
Even then, though, I might recommend dropping any planned gameplay in favor of the core VN, just because people so often get Unity wrong for VNs when they try to rebuild the proverbial wheel. Take a fast forward button, for instance; if a game's just been updated, or the player wants to try a different branch, they have to go through a lot of text to see the new stuff. That ends up becoming a real slog if there's no fast forward button, but plenty of devs don't consider that because it's not a problem for them when writing the game, and it's not included by default. Or they do include a fast forward button, but don't have an easy way of distinguishing between previously seen text and new text, so the player ends up skipping things not realizing a scene was changed in an update or as a result of their decisions.
Ah, that does sound pretty neat, actually. I see a good amount of potential there later!
If I might make a suggestion, it might be better to elaborate on that more at the start - such as having one of the characters give more details about what the old team was trying to do, or talking a bit about how one of their friends (Belle, though I'm guessing that's supposed to be a surprise? Just talking about her without naming her should still preserve that mystery, if that's a concern) had gone missing on the expedition.
It's more difficult to get invested in what they're trying to do if we don't know much about it ourselves - we don't need a long scene about it, but a bit more detail about who went missing and why helps it feel more real.
Just to be clear, "fake decisions" can still work as a mechanic, in moderation - even if both branches end in the same place after a paragraph, it can make an otherwise linear VN feel more dynamic, and let the player feel more investment in important scenes. The issue, specifically, is that the way it's done currently negates the player's input by forcing them to go back and choose the other option after all.
If, for instance, the princess just said "No, I'm going to touch the flower anyway," that still works, because the player feels like they at least tried to stop it; going back and being forced to pick "yes" is the problem here. At least, in my opinion.
Yeah, just to emphasize the point, that's probably more of a "me" problem than a problem with the game; I tend to identify with the characters in the game, so the idea of just looking "myself" in an incidentally fanservicey pose... Doesn't do much for me. I mean, I could just do that at home.
The idea of deliberately posing sexily because some unknown force is encouraging me to do so, well, that's hot... But I understand if that's not what the game is going for here.
This is just an idea, but one solution might be to put out regular "incremental builds" for your donors, while releasing larger public builds for everyone else. This would allow you to get the frequent feedback you're looking for from those who are very interested in your project, while those who are less interested can be assured that each update they see has a significant amount of content added.
Other than that, though, I would just like to mention that there's no option that really keeps everyone happy; some people are annoyed if there's not much new in an update, while others are annoyed if they go too long without seeing any progress. So long as you're making consistent progress, now that it's released, it's probably best to tune out comments regarding the update schedule.
Thanks a lot for even making the points clearer, I don't think the feedback was harsh, actually those were really good points and maybe the wouldn't be that "direct" knowing that the author was going to see it. I´ll keep them as great advice and ways to make a better version of the first part and make the second part better!
