Suggestions to game uploaders
- Thread starter megaplayboy10k
- Start date
- Mar 3, 2018
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I don't really see how you are in a position to make such a statement. You are telling people (people who most likely work full-time jobs) who volunteers to spend countless hours every week to upload games here, so that people like yourself can play them for FREE, that they are not doing a good enough job?
With how much content these guys upload, it is not a realistic thing to ask them to test everything first. It would triple or quadruple the time they would need to spend on the site, basically forcing them to only provide a third or fourth of the content they would normally do.
If you want this info so badly, why not become a patreon for the dev, and ask him/her these questions directly on there? You are much more likely to get the info which you seek this way, because most of these things are something only the dev can really tell for sure, but even they can't tell some of the things with certainty.
How long is the game? Depends on the player. If you skip all dialogue and only watch the "good stuff" it might be 10 minutes. If you take time to enjoy the story, it might take 2 hours. If you are a slow reader, it might take 3 hours. If you get stuck, it could take 4 or 5.
The native language of the developer would not help. Most of the time I see american/english natives messing up the proper use of "Their, There & They're" and people from non-english contries being the ones who corrects them. If you told me that Donald Trump was an english native speaker, I would never believe it, based on the grammar from his twitter posts. My non-english friend has dyslexia and still manages to do better grammar in english.
How complete a game is, is always subject to change. Maybe the dev has a sudden amazing plot twist come to mind, which doubles the content, or maybe the players of the game has some cool ideas which he/she decides to add to the game. Perhaps some parts of the game just aren't working well and needs to be removed after a while.
Update pace is also subject to change. Maybe the dev works faster than expected and completes the update in half the time? Maybe their harddrive crashes and now they are forced to start from scratch? Maybe they are just struggling to get the light of a certain scene just right, and it ends up taking 10 times longer than anticipated?
You have good intentions, and I would like if your ideas were realistic to achieve, but they are not. The devs don't know much of this stuff, and the uploaders have no chance at all to provide the information.
When you get a service for free, you are not really in a position to be demanding about the people who provide that service. Just be glad that there is new stuff to play every day.
- Sep 17, 2017
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mate, check out vndb.org. it shows ya how to properly give infos how time consuming a game is. and no one complained so far.
if a dev gets ill he simply has to write one single post and everyone knows: no content due to illness. it's like doing normal work. you also tell ya chef that you are ill right? without saying anything he would rage too.
so it's not possible to tell people how far developed a game is, yet the dev can decide to use fucking imaginary version numbers? give me a break :noexpression:. every decent dev knows how far he has developed his game so far. it's not any different than writing books, scientific reports and even sinply essays.
actually his ideas show us if a dev is decent or if you can give a damn to his empty words.
and some devs are doing all the ideas already wirh a huge sucess.
- Jul 4, 2017
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Most devs who aren't tying themselves to a monthly update schedule do offer progress updates, and those who do fall ill or have real life happen and need more time do make that post. But not here, not for the pirates, on their patreon page for the people funding it. If you want to find that information, do the developer a favour and check out their patreon. Usually their progress bar will be public, something they update on the overview post every so often. But no, the unpaid uploaders who volunteer their time and internet connection to get you mirrored links of all these games to play are not going to spend extra time getting this information for you.
As to "How long the game is going to be" I can tell you I have 12 updates planned, but I can't tell you for sure that it will be 12 updates, I can't tell you for sure that it will be one year. Because I don't know those things for sure. It could be that my outline will be thrown out the window next release because I've put too much into one update and we need to make some adjustments and split some of them up to get the right amount of content. I may decide that a subplot needs a little more attention and expand it. Can we tell you how much content it has? Well, I can say that if you read every word and masturbate it might take you x amount of time to finish, but you could also be that guy who doesn't care about the plot and just clicks past it all for the sex and is done in no time. So no, I can't tell you how long it will take YOU to play it.I can only show you the version number and hope I've provided enough content each update to please you.
If you wanna have a conversion about poor versioning that's fine. There are several already in general discussion. Go on, you'll find them.
- Sep 17, 2017
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who says the dev HAS TO?
we just ask them nicely to do so. if he isnt willing we will try to fill in the infos. but telling then that it might be worth the effort could be a win win situation. really...think a bit brighter use his ideas and refine them instead ox denieing them right away.
vndb cant be a pirate site cause its a data base -_-, yet it tells people how long a game lasts and no one complained about that.
The vast majority of content being quantified on vndb is done so by the combination of wiki style community tagging and data provided by the companies that developed the games. The uploaders here do not have those resources. We are not a database. We are a piracy site.
As to what the developers could do, you're right, they could, if they wanted to lower the chance of fickle people like you playing their games and therefore lower their chance of making money. Nothing you're suggesting is about helping them all their product, it's about providing information that helps you, the player, determine if the product is worth your time. This system is already weighted in your favour. You don't have to pay for anything you don't want to. Just take the time and play the damn games. If you don't like them, abandon them. That's all it takes.
- Aug 10, 2017
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I agree that I find that information valuable as a user. A quick look at a change-log with dates listed can quickly show you the pace of development on a game. This information is readily available on Patreon, but is often hidden amidst tons of art demo and content posts.
- Sep 17, 2017
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- Jun 10, 2017
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Based on which criteria ? In Ren'py games with free roaming possibilities, there's people who check every single location every time, and those who goes straight to the point. Same with RPG Maker games there's those who click on every single piece of background just in case there's an object hidden, and those who go directly where they are expected ; without forgetting those who don't have a good sense of direction and get lost every time.
To this, you must add the fact that none native English reader can need more two or three time more time to read the text if their English skill aren't really good. And finally there's all the little things (a VN made with RPG Maker have a shit ton of loading time, a SDD hard Disk while goes way faster than a HDD hard disk).
In conclusion, a game which while take 1 hour to be completed by someone can legitimately need three time more for someone else.
While the author should know his story from start to end, and the pace he will update it, it's still not reliable.
A whole game take at least one year to be done (most of them do it on their free time), and a lot of things can happen during this time. He can be sick, can be victim of a disaster (natural or not), can have personal issue (someone in his family die, his kid/wife/husband is sick, an increase of works needed at his job, etc.). This will affect either the update pace. It can also affect the game state because the author will finally don't use this or that, kind of rushing the game to its end, to have more free time for his kid/wife/husband by example.
There's also the fact that he can have an idea to increase the content without going outside of his story, and/or can think that adding this fetish can be a good things, and/or discover that that fetish is mostly disliked and want to remove it.
So, once again, it's not a reliable information
My native language is French. Are you happy now ? Have you been able to adjust your expectations regarding my comment ? Hey have you even had a single clue that I'm a none native English speaker and not just a native English speaker with a bad grammar and poor vocabulary ?
Anyway, what's the matter to know his native language ? It will change nothing to his English skills. There's a lot of Russian games around here, some have a marvelous English version, others can give you headache in less than three lines. Does this mean that all native Russian speakers aren't equal when it come to speak English ? Surprising.
And what when the game start as linear, then include some grinding to finally end as sandbox ? No, it's not stupid, look at recent games made with Ren'py, half of them start in a way, then the author change his mind (or finally learn how to do this/that) and the whole game system change ; everything before "this" update stay as linear, and everything after is now grinding/sandbox/open world/whatever.
In the same time, a lot of games start with a point system, which is finally forgot by the author and the game end kind of linear. There's also the case of those games which look like none linear because they have a lot of choice every two dialog lines, but are in fact fully linear because the said choice don't matter. To know this, you don't just need to play the game, you need to follow each options to look at the difference they make. And what if the choice doesn't matter at first but will change everything in two/three updates, when the story will be fully installed ?
In fact, what you want is that uploaders make a review of the game for you... It's not their task, but it doesn't matter since there's a review system and it's a forum where everyone can comment the game's thread. So, use your eyes and you'll know if the game have or not a lot of content, the average quality of the English, and what kind of game it is. You'll also learn a lot of other things regarding the game, as useful if not even more useful.
Mea culpa maxima. Was not my intention to offend. Was simply thinking out loud about things that would be helpful to players about to d/l and play posted games. Your feedback, helpful, harsh or otherwise, is nonetheless appreciated. Thanks.