VN Ren'Py The Fog [v1.1.1] [-Taz-]

[-Taz-]

This is not something to joke about.

sorry , i know you are here since the beginning. But it takes me a huge amount of time for nothing.

 

[Lynava]

sorry , i know you are here since the beginning. But it takes me a huge amount of time for nothing.

Oh, my fucking life.
Too bad, good luck with your next projects.

 

[Anteron]

Would would hope a few twunts wouldn't make you give up.

 

[Swiver]

Oh no!!!

I hope dev gives it another try some time. Something seriously written AND hot looking is not often found (I can't believe I missed this when it was first posted).

The first wave can often be of people looking for straightforward stuff, but there's a load of dev's doing solid story work or even gaming that have been doing ok for years. I'm guessing it just got an unlucky start, without build-up and word of mouth.

It is understandable and dev must have weighed the feasibility of holding out of course, but what Anteron meant is it can take a minute before it picks-up, the right-minded audience find their way and the trolls move on to the next new dev to annoy.

Not that I've ever been to the subforums, but isnt' there like a developer support thread where you brainstorm ideas on how best to approach publishing and get tips from other devs? It must be difficult to do this in isolation without any one discuss decisions with..

I've downloaded it anyway, and hopefully will review as soon as I get a chance.

Good luck to dev and hope it's not the last we see of you.

 

[m0us3r]

It's okay, I'm abandoning the project. I think people here have different expectations. I wrote a fairly long and complex script for the sequel, with quite a few twists, but I think people here want quick, straightforward content. Even for the "dark" part of my game, my goal was to denounce these things later on, to show the terrible impact they can have on people. But people just want dark content, that's all, except for one or two who told me they were more interested in the story. I also probably released this game too soon, because I was still learning. Two years ago, I didn't even know how to model a character. It takes me a huge amount of time, for too little feedback.

Another thing is, my (and many other players') usual way to read a book or to play a VN is inserting myself as MC. Playing like that, I can feel everything there much deeper.

Sometimes I even imagine acting a little different in a scene, "correcting" it for me. Then even if MC in a game acts unpleasantly, e.g. being mean where I wanted to be gentle, I might imagine that "actually" it happened in a little different way, more like how I would want it. Many games actually allow that, I mean, the story remains kinda the same, but its flair changes for me more or less significantly.

That's why here my frustration was coming also from the fact that MC was very particularly defined, and not quite fit with my personality /sympathies. (I think the largest part of dialog lines was his inner dialog.) So it was hard to ignore that much details of his inner world forced on me so thoroughly. (That ruined my attempts to imagine him more like I would want to act there.)

And the second thing, originally I expected that I would have choices to be a gentleman etc., but in fact I often had no choice. E.g., MC drove to "piss stop" because of being very horny (though the girl was not sexually appealing to me). You can often see complaints on this forum that some scenes are not avoidable. Mainly that's about sex with some characters that a player doesn't want but it's forced.

Hence I think, it might be more successful approach (or more widely appealing) if

• the focus would be on painting events and other characters rather than MC;
• MC would be painted more through interactions with others rather than inner dialog;
• and choices would actually let choose different preferences (what kind of person to be, who to romance, which type of scenes to experience...)

Good luck.

 

[danokyzu]

the game was good i was hyped i thought there was something in the woods there are not many games that have story or make you think about more then just the LI to bad s gone now ill play this update and hope the dev comes back.

 

[-Taz-]

the game was good i was hyped i thought there was something in the woods there are not many games that have story or make you think about more then just the LI to bad s gone now ill play this update and hope the dev comes back.

I asked to regain control of my thread. If I can I will release the second part of the last update.

 

[-Taz-]

Another thing is, my (and many other players') usual way to read a book or to play a VN is inserting myself as MC. Playing like that, I can feel everything there much deeper.

Sometimes I even imagine acting a little different in a scene, "correcting" it for me. Then even if MC in a game acts unpleasantly, e.g. being mean where I wanted to be gentle, I might imagine that "actually" it happened in a little different way, more like how I would want it. Many games actually allow that, I mean, the story remains kinda the same, but its flair changes for me more or less significantly.

That's why here my frustration was coming also from the fact that MC was very particularly defined, and not quite fit with my personality /sympathies. (I think the largest part of dialog lines was his inner dialog.) So it was hard to ignore that much details of his inner world forced on me so thoroughly. (That ruined my attempts to imagine him more like I would want to act there.)

And the second thing, originally I expected that I would have choices to be a gentleman etc., but in fact I often had no choice. E.g., MC drove to "piss stop" because of being very horny (though the girl was not sexually appealing to me). You can often see complaints on this forum that some scenes are not avoidable. Mainly that's about sex with some characters that a player doesn't want but it's forced.

Hence I think, it might be more successful approach (or more widely appealing) if

• the focus would be on painting events and other characters rather than MC;
• MC would be painted more through interactions with others rather than inner dialog;
• and choices would actually let choose different preferences (what kind of person to be, who to romance, which type of scenes to experience...)

Good luck.

Thank you for this well-reasoned comment.

It's very interesting, and I understand.

That said, when I look at most games with similar content, the main character seems to be quite well-defined as well. As soon as there are inner thoughts, the main character is inevitably more or less defined, unless you have a choice for each thought. But I agree that he should have been a bit more neutral (less sarcastic and asshole-like), focusing more on the story than on his inner turmoil.

 

[-Taz-]

Oh no!!!

I hope dev gives it another try some time. Something seriously written AND hot looking is not often found (I can't believe I missed this when it was first posted).

The first wave can often be of people looking for straightforward stuff, but there's a load of dev's doing solid story work or even gaming that have been doing ok for years. I'm guessing it just got an unlucky start, without build-up and word of mouth.

It is understandable and dev must have weighed the feasibility of holding out of course, but what Anteron meant is it can take a minute before it picks-up, the right-minded audience find their way and the trolls move on to the next new dev to annoy.

Not that I've ever been to the subforums, but isnt' there like a developer support thread where you brainstorm ideas on how best to approach publishing and get tips from other devs? It must be difficult to do this in isolation without any one discuss decisions with..

I've downloaded it anyway, and hopefully will review as soon as I get a chance.

Good luck to dev and hope it's not the last we see of you.

Your comment is very kind.

The problem is that quite a few people were interested in my project from the start, but gave practically no feedback. I wasn't even asking for funding, just discussions to see if I was on the right track. What others are saying, like Mous3r, I kind of suspected, but in the feedback process, I just kept doing what I was doing. In hindsight, the characters didn't look their best, and the dialogue could make the MC unpleasant for many players, without giving them enough choices.

But believe it or not, many of the choices you make are recorded and were meant to have an impact later, either in events or just in dialogue.

For now, I'm going to rework my characters and think about a more enjoyable script for the player. I've already modified them. Anna and the MC now look normal (in my opinion).

But right now, it's hard for me to stay motivated given the circumstances. I see this as a bad start. I just need to draw some conclusions and start again with something more solid.



I can't continue down a path I consider a failure. I have a job in real life, and developing this game was taking up almost all my free time. I have to believe in my project and make sure the players are blown away.

 

[Sir Anal]

I would say that I don't like most of the games here, they're not my thing. That doesn't mean I tear them apart or go around saying the developer is an idiot.
If I don't like it, I don't play it, that's all.
And I think that, as a creator, I would almost say, as an artist, the developer does what he wants with his work, he doesn't have to adapt to his audience. The audience either likes it or doesn't, that's all. We're not in a commercial environment where you have to adapt to customers. Especially on a pirate site like this one where the games are free.
It seems to me that trashing a game here is just for the sake of trashing it, shooting at anything that moves to feel powerful. Especially from people who have never made the effort to try to build a programme, who, in most cases, don't even really know what they're talking about.
I haven't really tried this game, but I'm going to. Whether I like it or not, I sincerely hope that the developer continues or, at least, makes another game someday.
Keep your spirits up, believe in yourself and your ideas, and don't listen to the morons.

 

[-Taz-]

I would say that I don't like most of the games here, they're not my thing. That doesn't mean I tear them apart or go around saying the developer is an idiot.
If I don't like it, I don't play it, that's all.
And I think that, as a creator, I would almost say, as an artist, the developer does what he wants with his work, he doesn't have to adapt to his audience. The audience either likes it or doesn't, that's all. We're not in a commercial environment where you have to adapt to customers. Especially on a pirate site like this one where the games are free.
It seems to me that trashing a game here is just for the sake of trashing it, shooting at anything that moves to feel powerful. Especially from people who have never made the effort to try to build a programme, who, in most cases, don't even really know what they're talking about.
I haven't really tried this game, but I'm going to. Whether I like it or not, I sincerely hope that the developer continues or, at least, makes another game someday.
Keep your spirits up, believe in yourself and your ideas, and don't listen to the morons.

I'm always open to constructive criticism. For example, when someone told me the characters were ugly, I acknowledged they weren't great, but at the time the problem was simply that I wasn't capable of doing better. That said, I managed to improve them later.

But yes, seeing people practically insult you and mock your work, which is FREE, is frustrating. Especially when, as you say, listening to them makes everything seem easy. Like someone who said that creating a character takes a few minutes in Blender, when you actually have to model it, do the UVs, rig it, texture it, create the clothes, adjust the weight painting so the clothes follow correctly, etc., etc. It can take days.

I'm not going to stop working in this field, but I have to consider this an experiment and think about what to do next.

 

[m0us3r]

Like someone who said that creating a character takes a few minutes in Blender, when you actually have to model it, do the UVs, rig it, texture it, create the clothes, adjust the weight painting so the clothes follow correctly, etc., etc. It can take days.

When I said that, I was thinking of tools like MakeHuman plugin for Blender. It's easy to find it.

It can give you a good starting model of certain race, sex, build, face type, rig etc. with many sliders and some pre-made textures. You can customize it further, but in the essence yes, it's a few hours from start to a specifically looking model. Later re-creating and adjusting a model can be done in several minutes.

Another option is to model humans in DAZ and then export them for Blender (or pose and render them in DAZ).

Then a video card with ray tracing (like GeForce2000+ series) can produce very nice renders.

 

[-Taz-]

When I said that, I was thinking of tools like MakeHuman plugin for Blender. It's easy to find it.

It can give you a good starting model of certain race, sex, build, face type, rig etc. with many sliders and some pre-made textures. You can customize it further, but in the essence yes, it's a few hours from start to a specifically looking model. Later re-creating and adjusting a model can be done in several minutes.

Another option is to model humans in DAZ and then export them for Blender (or pose and render them in DAZ).

Then a video card with ray tracing (like GeForce2000+ series) can produce very nice renders.

I'll see that.

thanks

 

[-Taz-]

If the moderators allow me to regain control of my thread, I will work to release at least part two of the current chapter, to conclude it.

 

[-Taz-]

Work in progress :

an update with many fixes and improved dialogues is almost ready.

54 renders are already made for the second part of the last chapter.

 

[lurkerlurklurk]

I'm quite looking forward to what you're cooking up, so far my only complaint is that I was expecting a little more content for a version 1.1, it feels a little more like a version 0.1. Also beware that you don't put too many unnecessary choices in the game to avoid having to make too many different paths with many different renders. Something like a choice map could help with this. Keep up the good work lad.

 

[-Taz-]

New update is ready. Minor corrections, no need to play it if you already finished the last version. Next update will add more content.

 

[-Taz-]

I'd like to know what you all look for in a visual novel. I'm not necessarily talking about adult content, but more about the general elements.

Also, I'd love your opinion on one of my ideas: giving the player the choice, at certain points, to try and go home early. This would lead to unique branching paths—some funny, some dramatic—but all resulting in a game over.
A player seemed to find that frustrating and pointless. However, please note that in the second-to-last update, this specific branch was updated to include story elements and hints about future secrets.
What do you think?

thanks

 

[Anteron]

I'd like to know what you all look for in a visual novel. I'm not necessarily talking about adult content, but more about the general elements.

Also, I'd love your opinion on one of my ideas: giving the player the choice, at certain points, to try and go home early. This would lead to unique branching paths—some funny, some dramatic—but all resulting in a game over.
A player seemed to find that frustrating and pointless. However, please note that in the second-to-last update, this specific branch was updated to include story elements and hints about future secrets.
What do you think?

thanks

Bad endings in an AVN are a terrible idea, unless it's from doing something incredibly stupid. Worst violators are when the choices are like "go right" vs "go left" where one moves on and the other is a bad ending.

 

[lurkerlurklurk]

I think I personally prefer games with a semi linear story over full on sandboxes. Furthermore, I find that a game can work with mediocre art, if the story is intruiging. If a story is uninteresting to me the art has to be perfect.

I also have checked out of a couple of games due to the fact that devs have ended up in what I'd refer to as a rework or remaster loop. Make sure you plan your story line beforehand so you do not end up having to remaster or redo everything constantly.

I despise ai for character and setting use, smaller things can be alright, but if I notice a lot of ai use I'll avoid a game entirely.

I think I'd say that adding too many of those extra bad endings, especially if they are not clearly leading to a gameover, can be pointless and annoying. Adding a few, without a surprise game over should be alright though.