VN Ren'Py Race of Life [Ep. 3.1 Extra Fix v3] [Underground Studio]

4.80 star(s) 169 Votes
Discussion Reviews (169)
Skylaroo

Skylaroo

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May 28, 2017
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Managed to try this game out and definitely a game to keep an eye on. It can get a bit too wordy on some technical aspect (ex: about health and cars). I personally prefer to trim such thing just because it's not what the players are playing the game for, but I guess it's acceptable as long as they're accurate and I'm sure some players who know a lot about them would appreciate it.

I am also a little worried about Cooper as the best bud character that he is going to be ultra one dimensional with the constant joking around. This can lead to more too-wordy dialogue where his jokes become longer and longer and longer because the dev thinks Cooper must be funny/joking to be Cooper who is worth some screen time. He doesn't.

Other than that, I think the game shows quite a lot of promise. The girls are interesting and they seem to have their characteristics too.
 
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The ArcKnight

The ArcKnight

Nylon enthusiast, Harem enjoyer.
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May 19, 2018
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Holy fuck, V is absolutely best girl. Going to wife the shit outta that woman....
 
A

Ajghz

Member
Jan 26, 2021
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Game seem interesting so far, but having just 9 save pages, at least in my version, really kills the replay value for me personally. You know like trying different choices at certain decisions. And how do you turn off save naming, as it gets tedious after awhile. So good luck I all future endeavors, undergroundstudio.
 
Balduko

Balduko

Member
Nov 5, 2016
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840
Ajghz said:
Game seem interesting so far, but having just 9 save pages, at least in my version, really kills the replay value for me personally. You know like trying different choices at certain decisions. And how do you turn off save naming, as it gets tedious after awhile. So good luck I all future endeavors, undergroundstudio.
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They removed the icons for some reason but you can still click on them. (y)

screenshot0001.png
 
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Skylaroo

Skylaroo

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May 28, 2017
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Deniz31 said:
At this point, it's obvious that episode two will be a big one. Actually, that's an understatement. It's massive.
A lot of people said episode one was large. when it came out. By comparison, episode 1 had 208 pages of dialogue (about 63,000 words).
Episode 2 is almost finished, but already has nearly 300 pages, and will likely top 120,000-150,000 words when complete (Which I hope will be in the next few weeks).
The size is my fault entirely. When I plotted the script at the start of this, I didn't take into account that the characters would have almost a life of their own. Scenes I thought would be a few lines grew larger, and scenes I thought would be mostly just following the script benefitted from having real, impactful choices, which required alternate dialogue, and so on.
The result though is, I think, a great story that the player can tailor to their own desires.
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UndergroundStudio one thing I want to comment here is that hopefully you wouldn't end up using number of words as a measure of how big an update is in the future. The reason is because what often decide how big of an update for the players is the progression of the story/character rather than how many words there are in the update. So while it's definitely commendable that you have a lot of dialogue written, it's very important that the dialogue written is necessary rather than bloat content.

Also remember that in a VN format, players have to click to progress the dialogue. More back-and-forth dialogue = more clicks = more work for the players to progress the dialogue forward. It's doubly so in the phone text message format. Reading the dialogue in Word format is a very different experience than reading the dialogue in the game where we have to click for every single line. So it's important to not be too excited and write too much dialogue if they have flavor/bloat text that could've been trimmed.

If episode 2 has more than double the dialogue of episode 1, I can only hope that there are also around double the story/character progression. Wishing you all the best. You have a game that has massive potential to be great.
 
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Garvelt

Garvelt

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Aug 26, 2020
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Skylaroo said:
UndergroundStudio one thing I want to comment here is that hopefully you wouldn't end up using number of words as a measure of how big an update is in the future. The reason is because what often decide how big of an update for the players is the progression of the story/character rather than how many words there are in the update. So while it's definitely commendable that you have a lot of dialogue written, it's very important that the dialogue written is necessary rather than bloat content.

Also remember that in a VN format, players have to click to progress the dialogue. More back-and-forth dialogue = more clicks = more work for the players to progress the dialogue forward. It's doubly so in the phone text message format. Reading the dialogue in Word format is a very different experience than reading the dialogue in the game where we have to click for every single line. So it's important to not be too excited and write too much dialogue if they have flavor/bloat text that could've been trimmed.

If episode 2 has more than double the dialogue of episode 1, I can only hope that there are also around double the story/character progression. Wishing you all the best. You have a game that has massive potential to be great.
Click to expand...
Plenty of other devs specify the number of words the update has so I don't get your point at all. In a previous progress report they also said that the update is going to have around 3000 renders which is more than double than the first episode had. I'm sure the number of animations were mentioned at some point as well. So I mean if these three aren't an indication of the size of the episode than I don't know what is.

Obviously it remains to be seen how much the actual story progresses, but by all means episode 1 was huge as far as first releases go and it covered pretty much everything it needed to cover for a first release.
 
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PheareBern

PheareBern

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Dec 27, 2017
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If this game had a lot of racing instead of a massive romance novel it would be way better. I would give it a 8.8 out of 10. Keep that story going great dynamics.
 
Skylaroo

Skylaroo

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May 28, 2017
1,732
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Garvelt said:
Plenty of other devs specify the number of words the update has so I don't get your point at all.
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The point is that "more words != more content" because content isn't just based on the number of words. I'll give you an example:

1. Scenario A: 10,000 words for 10 scenes
2. Scenario B: 8,000 words for 12 scenes

Which one has more content? The answer is Scenario B despite having less words.

It's very easy for devs to get too excited and write longer and longer and longer for a scene. But they should ask themselves whether these additional dialogue within that same scene is necessary or not, and whether it improves the game or not. An easy example in this game so far is Cooper where he has A LOT of words written for him. But ask yourself, do we really need 21 lines to talk about poop joke? Then another 38 lines just to ask MC to come and visit. Then another 50 lines between MC and Cooper in the car before we get to talk to Joe for the car race gambling. Then even more lines after that.

I'm not saying to trim everything into 3 lines of Yes/No. But it's very easy to get overexcited and write more and more and more without actually adding much. That 21 lines of poop joke could be 40 lines of next joke. That 38 lines to ask MC to visit could suddenly be 60 lines. Joking around in the car might be 80 lines next. And so on.

Why am I saying this? Because I've seen some other devs in other games doing this. They love their own writing so much because the initial reaction was good, then they got carried away. Dialogues become longer and longer immediately assuming that it will improve the game. We saw this when the dev said "Scenes I thought would be a few lines grew larger,". I'm not saying they can't grow larger, but they should only grow larger if they need to be larger. Because it's so easy that 1 few-lines scene became larger, then 2 few-lines scenes became larger, then suddenly 3,4,5,6,etc of such few-lines scenes became larger. This will result in bloat dialogue where the scenes are the same but just with more dialogue.

In conclusion, what I want is for the dev to not focus on the number of words, but how they use those words. That's why I ended my post by saying that double the words should hopefully be followed with double the progression.
 
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Skylaroo

Skylaroo

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May 28, 2017
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SamualHand said:
The real answer is, you don't know!
12 Scenes might be rushed or not. So just based on the numbers, you don't know it.
Click to expand...
You are talking about quality. The question is about quantity (amount of content). They are two very different things.

If we're talking about quality, it's the same that more words doesn't automatically mean better quality. My point stands.
 
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4.80 star(s) 169 Votes