Three general game questions.

[mickydoo]

Hi all, ever since I joined this forum the plan was to to learn things and make a game. Ive had health issues and computer issues along the way but all is good now. I have learned as much about daz and renpy as I am ever going to learn without actually doing something, so after much searching and researching I have obtained the assets I require, and have the game plot in my head pretty much how I want it start, the end game, and what I want in between. I have three questions I would like the answer and/or opinions on.

1. The players name
The male you play in game, Ive named him Trevor for my sake, he looks like a Trevor, I'm also Australian and Trevor is an Australian name. Do people prefer having the name of the character set in stone like Max from Big Brother, or be prompted to input their own name?

2. To animate or not animate.
I do not have the pc power to achieve this easily, nor do I plan to include any in the first release, but down the track should add animated scenes?

3. Size of initial release
As something I completely made up, as I have no idea how long/big a game should be, is something like 100 images and and say an hour of game play a good starting point. As a very rough idea I am thinking of maybe, release an update once a month for 12 months and that relates to real time in the game as well so the character spends a year doing what he his doing and that equates to 1200 images and 12 hours of game play.

 

[HopesGaming]

1. Input name with a defined name if no name has been entered.

2. Animate. People like it when stuff moves.

3. Around 1-2 hour content was my goal for my first release. 30 mins is the minimum a first release should have.
Anything lower just sends the wrong signals imo.

 

[baneini]

1. The players name

If you're telling a story the name has to have meaning, its chosen by his parents. It's suitable to the surrounding culture. It's part of the characterization. You cannot ask a name in that scenario without forfeiting narrative integrity.
If you have a character creator, rpg stats, the mc is an orphan dropped into a strange place from the sky and you can choose multiple diverging paths for the plot then it might make sense to allow inputting a unique name. Even then it's not clearly the better choice if the name relates to the narrative.

2. To animate or not animate.

Depends on implementation. If you can make it look good it's potentially positive. Most low effort implementations of DAZ model animations aren't worth it and the game would be better if they were omitted. I HATE control being taken away from me which happens with rpg animation sequences where I can't skip it. With renpy you can skip it so its not as big a deal. In general I'd advice to not do animation. Pixel animation seems to be better executed for most games?

3. Size of initial release

A complete VN in renpy takes about 5 minutes to complete with the power of Shift key. It's hard to have a proper "game play" hours without "game play". Many people think of updates as combination of the amount of sex scenes or number of words. I'd estimate people expect like 4-5 sex scenes per patch. It's also a question does those scenes appeal to the individual or do they skip it. I wouldn't recommend tiny monthly updates over substantial ones because you want most people to feel it was worth to dl and play each patch.

 

[Deleted member #270782]

1. Give players the ability to name the MC themselves. Use a check and give the player the default name of your choosing if they leave it blank. Even give the ability to rename their characters mid-game. People share saves, and would be appreciative to not be stuck with some random name they don't like.

2. Animating is usually wanted throughout, BUT not needed. If you believe you can create enjoyable animations, do it.. Start small if you don't have the technology to produce a lot of frames in a small amount of time. Before any major upgrades, I would render my animations overnight @ 30 frames with the seamless animation playing forward -> backwards. It never looked as good, but I made do with what I have. It was good enough. Now I do 100+ frames for each animation as I've invested in better equipment.

3. All depends on what you think is a good end point for each build. Many people prefer smaller, constant updates, while others want bigger updates with longer times between releases. Choose what YOU want to do.

 

[DarthSeduction]

1. The players name
The male you play in game, Ive named him Trevor for my sake, he looks like a Trevor, I'm also Australian and Trevor is an Australian name. Do people prefer having the name of the character set in stone like Max from Big Brother, or be prompted to input their own name?

I care more that the character is well written. Sometimes that means you should name them. For instance, Shepard, the main character in Bioware's Mass Effect series, is a character who's first name is choosable, but for reasons, has a last name. Why Shepard though? Well, the reason is Shepard is totally a Jesus allegory and so calling him Shepard is a sign to that. So, if your character has any allegorical or thematic reason to have a specific naming convention, go for it. If your character has no reason to be named anything, there's no reason other than taste. Some people will get off on the character sharing their name, there's nothing wrong with this, but it's not necessary.

2. To animate or not animate.
I do not have the pc power to achieve this easily, nor do I plan to include any in the first release, but down the track should add animated scenes?

Do not animate unless you're going to put the time and energy into doing it right. Bad animations are much worse than no animations. That said, when you don't animate, that means you still need to make these scenes good. Don't pull a Dark Silver and give us 10 poorly framed images of sex. My recent masturbation scene was 23 images, and honestly, I feel like more might have been better. There are like, 60 images in the sex scene in the first release. Put effort into your sex scenes. Animations are fine, but only when they're well done. If you can't animate well, make sure to give us some variation in your scenes with lots of renders.

3. Size of initial release
As something I completely made up, as I have no idea how long/big a game should be, is something like 100 images and and say an hour of game play a good starting point. As a very rough idea I am thinking of maybe, release an update once a month for 12 months and that relates to real time in the game as well so the character spends a year doing what he his doing and that equates to 1200 images and 12 hours of game play.

I encourage all new developers to consider the release method we use and apply an appropriate context to it, that of a series. Whether you treat each release as an episode, or a chapter, or a segment, etc, each release should feel like it has a definite beginning middle and end. In most releases the beginning and end are going to be about linking what you're doing in that release to the previous and next releases. You want to end your release with questions, with something that the player wants to find out in the next release. You want to open the next release with some of the answers to those questions, maybe not all of them, but at least answering some of them so that the story can pick up where it left off. The middle of each release should develop the story more leading up to the new questions, and working through the answers to the old ones.

All of this is to say, your release should be exactly as long as it takes to set up, develop, and create the question to be answered in the next release. Sometimes the question is something like a "Will they, won't they" the common theme in sitcoms. In my recent release the question is straight up handed to you with the MC, Eve, saying that, "In hindsight, I really shouldn't have let myself fall asleep like that," or something along those lines, as she'd just passed out after giving herself an orgasm in a shared dorm room. So, the obvious payoff in the next episode is the consequences of that.

This is true whether you're developing a Life Sim, or a Slave Trainer, or a VN. In the first two, the overaching plot is usually less important, and instead driven by characters, so in each release you should develop at least one character in a satisfactory way. You start at a certain point, the question being how do things go forward, and you begin to answer those questions, introducing some conflict, and leaving us both satisfied with the development, and wanting more next time. In a VN your overarching plot matters a lot. You want to seed questions about characters, how they interact, and how all that relates to the main plot. If that plot is a romance, that's pretty obvious, but that's where introducing conflict comes in. If it's something else, like say Depraved Awakening's mystery, you want to develop the mystery plot and determine how it's continuation affects your character's relationships. Each release should move things along, introduce new questions, and make you interested in more.

How long does it take you to do that? Then that's how long it should be.

 

[zerozip0]

1. I prefer to be able to name the player myself. The upside is that one can more closely relate to a character that does not have a set name. On the downside it requires a bit more to impliment in the interactions with npcs in the game.

2. That really depends on your skillset as an animator. On one hand I would like to see animated stuff, but on the other I would rather not see them if the animations are bad.

3. An hour is ok for a first release, but an hour where you see the same images repeated over and over is not ok in my humble opinion. Variation is key. Grinding is unwanted. Vaginal or anal sex between a male and a female must be included in a lewd game before i take a crack at it. Last but not least tags; some of them instantly make people such as yours truly avoid a game(futa/shota, gay, tentacles etc...) while other tags more or less must be included(vaginal/anal, male protagonist).

Good luck with your project!

 

[Agent HK47]

1: I prefer when I can name my own character (with a default name if I don't put in anything) and all NPC's have set names. I don't want to spend 10 minutes simply naming every single character in the game.

2: Depends. If you feel like you can do quality animation, then sure. For me, personally, bad/non-skippable animations annoys me greatly and only serves to take me out of the game immersion. I will take great still renders over a bad animation any day.

3: Again, it depends, because different people play the game at different speeds. What takes 1 hour for the first guy, might take 10 mins for the next one. I would suggest aiming for about an hour of gameplay at the least, but again, it will be hard (if not impossible) to make equal playtime apply to everyone.
If you are an average speed reader, then I would suggest playing the game yourself, reading through all the text (think of it as a final proof-reading) and trying out every choice in the game, since many players use saving+reloading to figure out what kind of response their choice will yield. When you are done, take the time you spent and use it a milestone for yourself, and decide if you personally feel like it is enough to justify a release. That is probably the best way of judging if your game is ready.

 

[mickydoo]

Appreciate the responses, I really appreciate it. All Ive been doing up til now is making girls and making them do naughty things

 

[RedPillBlues]

1. The players name

A lot of people don't mind having a character already named, but a lot of people do. So in my opinion since its a easy win/win just have a name set as default and if the player wants to change it let him.

2. To animate or not animate.

This depends, if down the line you feel like you're up to the task then sure, but while learning to animate isn't super hard, its not a overnight skill. So not only would you need to learn how to (assuming you already don't) and you also need to take into account that it takes a lot more time to animate, aka less content that update.

3. Size of initial release

Initial releases are the first look people are going to get into you and your game, these first impressions say a lot about ability and expectations. If your first release has a huge amount of content then some people are going to assume that you work a lot faster then you do, alternatively a bad first release can and will turn off a lot of potential fans. So you have to find a balance between the two. Concerning a first release I would suggest you get all of your internal gameplay mechanics, UI, a stable code, ect out of the way. This way from this point forward you wont have to worry about these things and you can just worry about putting out content updates (This goes a long way). Now you need to decide on how often your going to put out updates, and here consistency matters, both monthly/bi-monthly work fine. Also don't worry about the build coming out on the exact same day, just as long as there within relatively the same period of time. Humans are creatures of habit. So now that you have all that's done I would recommend for your initial release to have about 2 dev cycles of work put into it, so that people don't get their expectation too high, while also being able to enjoy whats there.

Of course this is all without knowing what kind of game you're making.