What does every game need?

[Nutluck]

This may be a "lost in translation" thing. There are several languages where the "you" does not necessarily refer to the conversation partner, but as a general term.

I just accept things at face value and maybe that is not how he meant it. But with how it was written that is how it came across and what I assumed he meant.

 

[Nutluck]

To be fair, I was just explaining why your idea wasnt nearly as easy or feasible as you made it sound in your first post:
"[I'm doing it]...So I know this can be done and something I would like to see a lot more from devs of all games"

PR is not only time consuming but also has several disadvantages that must be put into consideration, having an active dev in the game thread is not always a good idea.

I mean you even stated this yourself:

It exclusively works in your case because you are talking about a community project, there is a lot less risk for you.

But imagine what would happen to any patreon supported project if a dev publicly stated "I will likely die before the game is finished".

Fair enough, but the OP asked what we would like to see not what we would not like to see.

Anyways how about we agree to disagree and just move on.

 

[Nutluck]

lots of stuff

The OP asked what players would like to see. I answered the OP. He did not ask what we don't want to see or why any suggested idea's would not work.

I didn't bother to read your last post, because it is obviously pointless to discuss this with you.

So lets agree to disagree and move on.

 

[trex999999]

An MC with agency, whether that agency is through writing a complex character that has desires, goals, and faults of their own or by giving the MC's agency over to the player's in game choices.

Even among harem games where the premise is supposed to be something along the lines of "The MC is a handsome ALPHA MALE with a HUGE COCK that WOMEN CANNOT RESIST!!!" there is a large amount of them where the MC is in reality an empty vessel, a doormat. The story happens to him, the women around him make all the decisions for him - he's not really a person at all, just a sort-of sentient dildo.

Either make me root for/relate to the MC in some way, or give me direct agency through game choices. Unless the game's premise is explicitly being dominated or being a voyeur, the greatest sin you can commit is making the MC essentially a camera with a penis, simply a POV through which we observe the story happening to us.

 

[demonbra]

I'm a rare, but diehard windowed fullscreen enthusiast - I want the game window to be maximized, but not to the point that my taskbar is cut off, making me feel as though I'm locked away from the rest of my PC. SO glad that this is inherently an option in all RenPy games - I'm often weary about other engines for this reason.

While your idea is far from being stupid or uninteresting, it's complicated to achieve, as it would break the ratio of the game window. And 99% of porn games are drawings or pre-rendered pictures which size can't be adjusted without breaking its quality and adding black stips to the side.

Sorry if you’re aware of that, I didn't’t want to sound pretentious about it.

I'm referring to the little things. Generally someonething that is fairly common place in adult games, but can be an inconvenience or annoyance if it doesn't exist. I'm not referring to your favorite tags, story setting, nor character type. Here's my list, what else am I missing?

• A folder within a Zip

It's such an unimportant inconvenience that I think means the world. It's always annoying to unzip 4+ games, only to find one has imploded onto my hard drive. Even more so if the games were unzipped in a folder containing several other games. I have to create a folder manually, name it, track down the renpy, game and lib folder, plus any additional contents and move them into that new folder. It can be even more annoying if a dev decided not to name the EXE and instead just leave it as 'game'.

It's such a stupid thing to get annoyed by, but I do every single time. While I know that I can just create a folder before extracting it, and I can even have WinZIP do it for me, but that just creates an additional folder and another minor inconvenience for the vast majority of games rather than having one for the minority of them.

• An opacity slider

I know that many dislike the text boarders in visual novels, but I have to strain my eyes every time there isn't one and still can't read half a lot of the time. An opacity slider is a great way to solve the problems of both sides. While I don't know how much work goes in to make a slider, I always appreciate those that do. If not an opacity slider, at least allow me to increase the boarder around the text, basically making it bold (don't remember what that setting is called right now).

• Unskippable Text

This is a very niche problem that rarely exists anymore. I have come across games which removes the option to skip after choices and transitions. Just let it keep skipping? Why remove this option in the first place? Also, non Renpy games, please add some sort of skip function to your games if you can. I know that doing so in RPGM may be a bit difficult, but several Unity games have it. Skipping text and rollback are the two primary reasons why I prefer Renpy. If they became common in Unity, I'd likely play more Unity games. Simple.

Also, I know that an older version of Renpy doesn't have this option in the first place. I'm not referring to those.

• Everything to do with saves

First, I don't care much for naming saves. It's generally just an additional click, but I do appreciate it when games allow you to disable the feature. Secondly, please name the save folder within the roaming folder... I'm sure most haven't really bothered with it, but I don't know how many times I've had to methodically move massive amounts of folders around only to find a single folder named 'persistent' or 'Blank4' or something.

100% agree with the folder !
How many time did I had to clean my whole folder because a Unity game throw ~30 files in the middle of nowhere....

 

[Chalker]

Brown girls!

 

[BaasB]

Straight furry content

 

[Müptezel Emo]

Straight furry content

Is this even possible?

 

[BangB420]

Is this even possible?

Monster Girl Quest?

 

[Meaning Less]

Monster Girl Quest?

Monster Girl != Furry

 

[Müptezel Emo]

Monster Girl != Furry

Monster Girl >= Furry

 

[forzato]

• Poor navigation system: This drives me nuts! A fast travel feature that you can hover on the side which pops up can easily be overlooked. It's also frustrating when developers disallow fast travel due to a cutscene in an area leaving you confused what needs to happen.
  • Highlight features, doors etc when mousing over them. Look at classic adventure games like Monkey Island 3 or modern indie dev adventure game UI.
  • Have a fast travel thumbnail list across the top of the screen. This isn't necessary but I greatly appreciate it if your game involves a lot of free roam such as Power Vacuum. I do not enjoy clicking 10 times to reach a destination, especially if you don't have random story events. If your complaining about composition framing then use a 2:1 aspect ratio for your renders so you don't block the top of your image or just allow extra head room.
• Uneccesarily large file sizes: I'm currently in the early process of designing my first visual novel. It has shocked me to learn how many developers are wasting unecessary space because they are using jpg instead of webp which supports alpha for additional layers.
  • Say I have a 1080p image and then adjust the facial expression or slightly tweak a pose. Instead of over a dozen of subtle spot renders in a scene where each jpg contains 300-1.5mb (depends on detail), just use webp lossy or lossless with an alpha mask and layer it over the top.
  • I did an experiment which I don't recommend for increasing quality with BeingADik just to see if I could make a 4k version with less space than 1080p using layers. I dwarfed it in size creating an upscaled 4k version of images for Episode 9 in 906mb instead of 3.13gb. The same test with 1080p would be something like 300mb for comparison.
  • Yes it's a little more tedious to create layers instead of adding images but you don't sacrifice quality and the players don't waste unnecessary space.
  • I have a suspicious feeling some developers might be doing this intentionally believing their game will be perceived higher value if they contain more renders, animations, audio and as a result larger file sizes.
  • For an example of optimising this look at Our Red String. You don't need to just use this trick for backgrounds and sprites.

 

[FromOtherSpace]

Hi,

Would also be great to include some alternate fonts for those who have dyslexia or other issues.

How can we know if a font is good for "everyone"? I remember seeing docs and guide about accessibility but its was about daltonians and color only.

 

[trex999999]

View attachment 2314050
Brown girls!

I've seen albinos with deeper tans!

also that's a cat

 

[Nutluck]

I've seen albinos with deeper tans!

also that's a cat

None of the cats I have had, look remotely like that.

 

[danarchist_lewd]

Better navigation, for sure. Even in top rated games, moving around in renpy spaces usually feels like shit. I think a lot of games could use animation for moving from one space to another so it's more obvious how the volume of the space works, but also, like... a lot of games don't even really have gameplay justification for that kind of navigation in the first place.

 

[danarchist_lewd]

Hi,

How can we know if a font is good for "everyone"? I remember seeing docs and guide about accessibility but its was about daltonians and color only.

You must be registered to see the links

's a set of guidelines specifically designed for gaming though it actually doesn't have any recommendations about font.

 

[LewdLewy]

Hi,

How can we know if a font is good for "everyone"? I remember seeing docs and guide about accessibility but its was about daltonians and color only.

There won't be a single font that is good for everyone. For example,

You must be registered to see the links

would be great for those with Dyslexia, but it's kind of ugly to look at for those who don't have that issue. Fortunately, there are tons of free fonts out there. As long as you stay away from cursive/handwriting based ones or any that have terrible kerning, then you can't really go wrong.

 

[kalibugan]

MC or Protag that is a decent human being or at least a character that has something above average to them(not just their dicks). Not gonna lie, Most of these games where we play as the absolute dregs of humanity is just a little bit(just a lil bit) annoying.

 

[FromOtherSpace]

LewdLewy Thanks for your reply.

I take a look at danarchist_lewd link and saw that a good contrast, no small size and easy to differentiate characters are good for most case related to text. Godot, on which I "work", have many theme options easily accessible, I' going to give a try to a decent customisation menu on top of those.