Remakes, was any of them actually worth it?

[215303j]

I notice that quite regularly, often half-way or even beyond that, in developing a game, a dev suddenly has a change of heart and decides to do a "remake".
At this point, the game often already has several hours of gameplay.
In some cases, these games could be ended in two / three updates.
But instead, the devs abandons the original version, creates a remake with recycled content, and then spend a year or so to get back to the story progression of the original.

In my opinion, this makes absolutely zero sense.
I think it would be much better to just end that game if the dev is fed up with it.

I get that during development, the dev may regret some choices in the game design he made earlier.
But why not finish the first game and then make a better one?

Engine changes are maybe the exception.

 

[Papa Ernie]

I think it may be a matter of the evolution of the developer's skill. Assuming most devs are beginners, their skills increase to the point that their early work on the game is far more inferior to the latest. I assume they'd want to redo the early stuff to make it consistent.

 

[kshyk]

I remember only one game with good remake: Project SAGE (still in development, but now with better writing )

 

[Oppai Auteur]

I think it may be a matter of the evolution of the developer's skill. Assuming most devs are beginners, their skills increase to the point that their early work on the game is far more inferior to the latest. I assume they'd want to redo the early stuff to make it consistent.

As a dev who is in the middle of a complete redo right now, this is exactly why we feel the need to do it.

January of this year I took a good long look at the current state of my game and my skill level, and the early content just kept looking worse and worse until the point it was beginning to really bother me. The first version of my game was out in April 2018, it was in 720p and was done with a really shit PC, with little understanding of Daz3D. I had no idea how to light a scene, my renders were all grainy, the models used out of date textures and didn't really look that much different from the standard models. I didn't know you could delete elements outside the render window to make things render quicker, or what a spot render tool was and how it could save time on making multiple renders.

At one point I got a new PC, was able to make much better looking renders that could be 1080p if I wanted, they even have something passing for lighting now lol. Not only that, I updated the model textures and made them look more unique. I even had better looking assets to use as well, but you can't just convert old renders to 1080p and call it a day. I had to make achoice of wehter to continue as I was, renders in 720p with horrible looking early work, or update it

I chose to update it.

I'm using the two renders below as an example as to why. Old on the left, new on the right. Hopefully it will be clearer in image forum lol



I know more than a few devs have soured people to redos due to them abandoning them. As a dev myself, those people piss me off because its made people so wary of something that could genuinely help make a better game, but some shitty devs gotta fuck things up for everyone

Thats my perspective on it anyway, sorry for the mini rant lol

 

[anne O'nymous]

Is their remakes that worth it ? Well yes, at least two : Lust and Power, and The Gift Reloaded.
Whatever what you can think about the games themselves, the remakes are far above what the originals were.

All depend of the reason of the remake. There's games that restart every six months, them, they don't worth it. It's the proof that the dev don't know neither what he do, nor what he want. But generally games that restarts only once benefit from this restart and are way better than the original.

 

[polywog]

Games require an environment to run in. RTE runtime environments come in all shapes, and sizes. They have different capabilities, and hardware compatibility issues to deal with. Choosing the right environment isn't easy for an inexperienced dev.

Shockwave runtime environment (Flash game) requires Flash player
JAVA runtime environment. requires JRE
.NET framework, provides a run-time environment called the common language runtime
blah blah you get the idea

kids today don't want to deal with downloading a bunch of libraries, and other programs, just so they can play a game, they want simple portable shit in a bucket games.

If a dev starts making a game that is really cool and does lots of stuff... some whiny little shits are going to complain that cool stuff is too much for them, or their hardware to handle. Sadly, rather than continuing to make their cool game that does lots of stuff, some devs give in, and restart their project as a shit bucket. As a result we have lots of shit buckets that don't do cool stuff.

On the other hand... we have a few devs who started to make a shit bucket, and then said fuck this, I want to make a game that does cool stuff. This upsets the whiny helpless mac user, who runs and tells his mommy, but who cares.

Stop trying to please everyone. Make a decision before you start making your game. "My game is going to be cool, and haters are gonna hate" or "I'll just bend over to accommodate as many players and devices as i can"

 

[Nottravis]

I think it may be a matter of the evolution of the developer's skill. Assuming most devs are beginners, their skills increase to the point that their early work on the game is far more inferior to the latest. I assume they'd want to redo the early stuff to make it consistent.

This. *points up*

I'm learning as I go. I'd never touched coding nor Daz before my first game so what I know now to what I knew when I started is a world apart and I cringe at my earlier stuff (especially as it was made on a 1050 2GB card so had a few limitations there!)

But I do get the whole thing about peeps getting irked by redoes, especially if they are patrons.

The way I'm going about it is to remaster everything at the end. Partly as I'll need a bit of time to fully get ready for the next game and so re-rendering stuff whilst I work stuff sorta works for me.

 

[215303j]

I think it may be a matter of the evolution of the developer's skill.

Yes but my question is more related to the dilemma whether it's wise to go back and correct past mistakes, or just accept the mistakes which are present and try to get things right in the next game.

Is their remakes that worth it ? Well yes, at least two : Lust and Power, and The Gift Reloaded.

Lust and Power I haven't played.

The Gift Reloaded, yes it's better than the original. But I found the original also quite playable as it was, and the dev did "waste" a lot of time with that remake. The game could have been finished already if he wanted. Personally I'd have preferred that. Then we'd be playing The Gift II right now, or something completely different but using similar mechanics. And there is still some features missing in The Gift Reloaded, like the room renovation system which will take a long time to develop, I think. So the game is nowhere near finished, while the story could be.

Games require an environment to run in.

One word: Ren'py
Yes it does have limitations but for a VN it's nearly perfect, IMHO.

The way I'm going about it is to remaster everything at the end

I think this is the most sensible thing to do.

What I see a lot are games which are not perfect but still interesting enough to play. Actually very, very few games are "perfect". Even AAA games contain tons of bugs and get DLC's to add content which didn't make it to the original release....

Then the dev decides to do a remake, the game loses momentum and support and by the time the remake gets published nobody cares anymore, and in the end the game ends up abandoned after about the similar point in the story as the original version, or even earlier.

Maybe there is an inherent perfectionism in devs which drives them to re-iterate too much on their earlier content.

Another thing is the speed with which games are improving. When DMD first came out, it was pretty awesome. Now it's quite mediocre visually speaking, also compared to Melody for example. Still, Mr. Dots did stick with D's model, who is on one hand a quite overused asset, on the other hand iconic in this community. And I think he made the right decision with that.

 

[Rythan25]

Only for engine change... if you re-write your story chances are you piss off fans of your older version... if you change models/characters chances are you'll piss off fans of the original character...

Examples of both....

My New Life - changed most of the story to "have it make sense" and ruined one character's (Sarah) personality, ruined plotlines... we didnt need more reasons to hate the Bully kid, adding possibe NTR made it far worse...

Dark Silver - the changes he made to the cast of Big Brother within Glamour are god awful !! Aunt Kira remained her sexy self... Alice remained her meh self... but the two top babes of the game look horrible... Ann looks younger and less thicc... Lisa got a shit-smeared hairstyle (Pixie-cut)... He also changed the story of BB while at it....

Good remakes ? (meaning engine changes)

Fashion Business - went from RPGM with a horrible driving part (in which you could crash and die, or get run over an die) to Ren'py goodness that while still grindy you can hit "ctrl" to skip through the grind mostly.

 

[anne O'nymous]

The Gift Reloaded, yes it's better than the original. But I found the original also quite playable as it was, and the dev did "waste" a lot of time with that remake. The game could have been finished already if he wanted.

I'm pretty sure that it's not his fault if Patreon changed their Terms of Service, leading to the ban of his account and an understandable discouragement. Firstly he had to totally rethink half of his story, then he had to fight against Patreon to take back his account.
If the game isn't finished, it's because of this, not because he restarted it.

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Only for engine change... if you re-write your story chances are you piss off fans of your older version... if you change models/characters chances are you'll piss off fans of the original character...

I've actually had nothing but positive feedback on both accounts.

Although in my case I actually showed the updated models to fans first, with it right next to the original. Let them voice their opinion before I implemented the change, while also explanining the reason behind the change. Usually something like making them look closer to their stated age, or updating textures etc.....In one characters case it was because I didn't give her eyebrows the first time round lol

And when it came to the story I rewrote it to add appearances from different characters I've designed for future games so fans could have an early look at them. I already had these characters in my art thread so they already had fans, and people like the idea of my future work taking place in the same world

Its all about how you implement the changes, making sure you present good reasonable reasons for said changes. You do it that way and the response is miles better

 

[Nottravis]

Maybe there is an inherent perfectionism in devs which drives them to re-iterate too much on their earlier content.

This is a really easy trap to fall into, especially as your skills and rendering power go up. I won't even look at my first two chapters anymore because I just know I'd hate what I see now I've got better.

 

[Rythan25]

I've actually had nothing but positive feedback on both accounts.

Although in my case I actually showed the updated models to fans first, with it right next to the original. Let them voice their opinion before I implemented the change, while also explanining the reason behind the change. Usually something like making them look closer to their stated age, or updating textures etc.....In one characters case it was because I didn't give her eyebrows the first time round lol

And when it came to the story I rewrote it to add appearances from different characters I've designed for future games so fans could have an early look at them. I already had these characters in my art thread so they already had fans, and people like the idea of my future work taking place in the same world

Its all about how you implement the changes, making sure you present good reasonable reasons for said changes. You do it that way and the response is miles better

I havent followed your game closely, but if your one of the devs that listened to a "loud minority" of ... lets call them "people" to keep it civil, that cry about how they want moms/milfs that look in their mid thirties to actually look in their mid to high 50's... than thats a shame... just because women age like cheese in the neck of the woods doesnt mean its "realistic" where I live cougars in their 50's look in their mid-thirties !

 

[polywog]

One word: Ren'py
Yes it does have limitations but for a VN it's nearly perfect, IMHO.

Renpy visual novel engine is good for VNs, that's what it's made for, but it's got no game engine. Even supplemented with Python, it's sandboxed, browser-based app only. Renpy is good for displaying images, getting better but still lacking at animations, and you have to use Unity's renpy parser to run renpy VNs on consoles, or to add "game" functionality.

I'm pretty sure that it's not his fault if Patreon changed their Terms of Service, leading to the ban of his account and an understandable discouragement. Firstly he had to totally rethink half of his story, then he had to fight against Patreon to take back his account.
If the game isn't finished, it's because of this, not because he restarted it.

I'm a huge fan of "The Gift" before reloaded. The Gift did not have incest. It would have passed the patreon incest ban, unscathed. He added incest in reloaded right when the ban hammer was coming down. Talk about bad timing, it was like he was giving them the middle finger adding incest when he did. We all said it would be best to put the original back online, but he got locked out before he could do it. THEN came the non-consensual ban which meant neither version was acceptable, being mind control based.

 

[Oppai Auteur]

I havent followed your game closely, but if your one of the devs that listened to a "loud minority" of ... lets call them "people" to keep it civil, that cry about how they want moms/milfs that look in their mid thirties to actually look in their mid to high 50's... than thats a shame... just because women age like cheese in the neck of the woods doesnt mean its "realistic" where I live cougars in their 50's look in their mid-thirties !

Actually it was to do with the younger characters looking a little older than they should, due to the fact it was early in my Daz3D days so they were closer to the standard models rather than being more unique.

Also I was actually aging up the matures not down lol Again the characters were made before I got these really good age morphs so i wanted to sort that

I'm not someone who gives vocal people what they want just cause they shout a lot

 

[Flecc]

As someone who pledges devs on patreon ,I Do it because i lke the work the dev is doing.So unless it is something unavoidable like Patreon changing the TOS keep doing what you are doing.Whilst i appreciate devs want to improve themselves, their stories and renders .You also need to realise that backers are happy with what you are doing thus far.So unless their is an unavoidable reason for changing tack keep going to completion then make any changes afterwards,and put your new found skills into the next game if you carry on developing.Whilst i know their is no guarantee of an end product it sure as hell makes me want to continue supporting devs if i get game completions

BTW pledged some game called heavy five this evening No pressure

Seriously though Remakes suck unless they have a justified unavoidable reason .