What is your favorite type of game?

[tanstaafl]

1. Do you prefer koikatsu, Honey select or Daz game?

Doesn't really matter if there is obvious skill and/or effort put into making a game look good.

2. What makes you decide to play the game? Art? genre? kink / fetish? or any other reason?

Story premise first and foremost. After that comes specific tags I keep an eye out for. And lastly reputation/reaction.

3. Write anything you think will make game better.

This is a no go. Most of the things that make games better are things I didn't expect the author/dev to do in the first place.

4. also if you could answer the question where we failed.

?

5. what kind of benefit do you wish to see if you decide to donate?

I don't expect a direct benefit other than timely updates and releases.

 

[Wasabi777]

Lmao, it pleases me. #Writing everything in a notebook#
Ano Nymous , I am someone who wants to make my own game someday and you gave very good advice (at least to me). Right now we are a team of three and it would take a few months before our game is even ready for initial release. Am learning and trying to implement these small things that make a game from good to great. I think his game is good but not polished as he has constrained himself in trying to make characters differentiate from looks and body tells.

P.S Am not the writer, my English is not that good (am working on improving it), am more of a codding/visual guy myself

And personality You forgot that. But that's the confusing part. Ano nymous said every character looks alike. But I don't get what he means or she means.


Visual is different, Characteristics are different, type is different, does he or she judge by clothes? Emilia just likes that type of closes and Lilly and Betty copied her.

 

[Wasabi777]

I also said, and it was the relevant part, that I cheated, and that it's not how a story is judged...




You are kidding, right ?
90% of the authors don't have more time than you to works on their games, and most of them are alone to do it so in fact they have half the time you have. Yet many achieve to do at least as much as you, while some do more.
By example, before he had to make a stop, WVM author was making +20 CG/day, which mean that your last update would have needed less than 10 days.
Another example, the chapter 3 of Heavy Five will have more than 3 000 renders, 25 fps animations included (most frame being manually corrected), done in 3 months. And each render is heavily tweaked in order that everything, including the eyes direction, will be exactly as wanted by the author. Many CG having been rendered more than once in order to find the correct one, the effective number of images rendered is more on the side of 4 500 than the 3 000 ones that will effectively be used in the update ; which lead to something like 40 CG/day, your last update in less than a week. All this being made by a single person who have other things to do in her life.

I don't say that you aren't taking this seriously, or not working hard, day and night, on your game, just that you are far, way far, to works harder than anyone else. You're perhaps working harder than most of the other creators, but the amount of works you achieve to do looks small in comparison of what the effectively hard workers ones do.




Here again, I hope you are kidding. A 5 second animation should have at least 125 frames, not at max 120 frames. Here again you are bellow what the succeeding creators do, and bellow the level of quality you claim to want.




I said "cliché", but never said, nor implied, "trash".

My comments are just the truth. I told you what should be the main focus of a game creator, how a CG should be designed, and now I tell you how many works have to be effectively done in order to make a game of high quality. If it don't please you, I'm sorry, but I can't change the truth just to be nice ; especially since your project is to make something even bigger than what you're actually doing, so something that will need way more investments.

Making a game, especially a quality one, is a passion that need 200% of your free time, dot.
Right now, a game I mod have had an update, which mean that I'll probably stay awake all night, while I have to works tomorrow. Would I was making a game and not just mods, it would be the level of commitment expected from me. Less often I hope, but still it would mean that 4 hours of sleep nights would be something frequents, whatever if there's works the next day or not.

What is wrong isn't what I said, but your expectations about what "making a game" really mean.
You discarded two third of the available games because, from your point of view they all are the same and are poor quality games. Which lead you to think that making a game is easy, and that if you works hard enough, you can achieve to do better than them. But the fact is that, by doing that, you missed a lot of information.
Discarding Ecchi Sensei like you did, by example, is part of the reasons behind your false expectations. Do you really think that his author really intend to take 52 years before he finish his game ? Because with one in-game week by year, it's what his one in-game year story will need.
Of course he don't ! One year is the time effectively needed to create one in-game week for such game. And if it was just a question of hard works, he would be working harder in order to finish his game faster. But the truth is that he and his coder already work as hard as they can.




Most of the other creators do it, yes. But "most of the other creators" don't mean all of them. And the ones who don't do it also are the ones who are effectively successful.

You've decided that all 3D games are shit and so don't even look at them, and that's your main flaw, because you have absolutely no idea of what is defined as "quality" nowadays.
For you, all those games looks the same, but how can it be not said of your game, that use the Illusion studio that give you the less control over the creations ? How can your CGs compare to a game where just looking at the position of the head and eyes of the character the MC talk to, tell you that this character don't believe what she's saying ? How can they compare to a game where any reflective surface are effectively reflecting the scene ? How can they compare to a game were any blade of grass feel unique ?
Because that's what "quality CGs" mean nowadays. Of course, not all games reach this level, but around 5% of them do, which mean that 5% of what is for you look alike games, carry more information in their CGs, and are more visually pleasant, than your game. It's just a fact, nothing more.

It doesn't mean that you can't succeed with your game and your CGs, just that you'll never reach your goal ; you'll never make the most beautiful and visually enjoyable game. Simply because visually your game will not reach the quality of games like Bad Memories or Vinland, which aren't even part of the best looking ones.
It will perhaps be the most beautiful and visually enjoyable koikatsu game, what I wish for you, but that's all.

And once again, if reading this don't please you, I'm sorry, but I can't change the truth just to be pleasant.

Half the time I have? they do everything in 30 minutes? , Sometimes I attend 1 hour or 2 hours, sometimes I have to attend 5 hours in total week. In total week Sometimes I can work like 10 hours a week, or 5 hours a week. and you're saying those authors needed 2.5 hours to complete 3k renders?

Some people have easy life, me for example waking up at 10, going to job, returning, taking a break, going to second job, returning, working onthis project. before that I had 3 jobs as well, and my salary was 300$ / monthly from all jobs together.
I know your argument will be "probably you had easy jobs" I was QA, Lecturer and IT manager at the same time. next year I was QA, Lecturer and SOO in company. and yet my total salary was 400$ / month. I live an extremely poor and shit country, "Bosses" treat people like slaves, I'm trying to do something to achieve something in life. This project is one of the options to have at least 300$ / monthly. But second reason is also do something that will keep my mind off from the shitty life. I have knowledge in 10 different professions, but hey I live in a shitty country.

I sleep 4 hours every day, because I want to finish this project and make it as good as possible. So I use 500% of my free time to complete this project,and I continue to work on it until I faint, that's a signal when I have to sleep. Otherwise, I will just die.

So every time I hear a person say "You don't try hard enough as others do". They have an easy life, compared to mine.

So you're looking at situation from 1 perspective only. And everything you say seems like "everyone is better than you", "because they try hard, but you don't" .


As for renders, try doing more than 120 renders to create 5 second animation. let's see how long will it take.

 

[tanstaafl]

Here again, I hope you are kidding. A 5 second animation should have at least 125 frames, not at max 120 frames. Here again you are bellow what the succeeding creators do, and bellow the level of quality you claim to want.

I am not a graphic artist or 3d animator by any means, but could someone explain this to me? The standard FPS for a movie/TV is traditionally 24FPS, which would come out to 120 frames over 5 seconds. Is the 1FPS difference that drastic for 3d animations?

 

[Wasabi777]

I am not a graphic artist or 3d animator by any means, but could someone explain this to me? The standard FPS for a movie/TV is traditionally 24FPS, which would come out to 120 frames over 5 seconds. Is the 1FPS difference that drastic for 3d animations?

It's not, if the animations is well made.

There is a huge difference between 30 fps and 60 fps, but not much difference when at least there is like 45 fps. Unfortunetly i can't upload a video here. But that 80 render 5 seconds was smoother than 30 fps recorded video. So if the frames are skipped too fast, it will not look bad, but if it is slowly skipped, it will look horrible.

 

[anne O'nymous]

The standard FPS for a movie/TV is traditionally 24FPS,

No, the standard for TV is 25fps in Europe and 30fps in the USA and Japan. This is due to the refresh rate of the screens, 50Hz in Europe, 60Hz in the USA and Japan. The frame rate had to match the refresh rate, in order to never have a refreshment cycle starting with a frame, then changing for the next frame mid process ; especially since the images were generally interlaced.
As for movies, like it's a projection of the images, the frame rate doesn't matter ; there's no refreshment cycle. Therefore,
historically it was at 16fps, then was increased at 24fps when they started to add sound, because 16fps were not smooth enough. Initially they intended to have a frame rate at 25fps, but like 24fps seemed good enough for a projection, they choose it. It was a purely economical choice, since one fps less meant around 10 meters of film saved.

Is the 1FPS difference that drastic for 3d animations?

It depend of the screen you'll use. The frame rate was set at 25fps in the early age of modern computing because most screen had a refresh rate of 50Hz, then 75Hz.
But Nowadays we don't use anymore cathode ray screens, so it have less importance. There's (almost) no afterglow effect on numerical screens, because the whole image is drawn instantly, so it's less visually uncomfortable. Yet, there's still specialists to say that the frame rate should continue to match the refresh rate, so nowadays it should be at 30fps, since most screens works at 60Hz.

 

[tanstaafl]

No, the standard for TV is 25fps in Europe and 30fps in the USA and Japan. This is due to the refresh rate of the screens, 50Hz in Europe, 60Hz in the USA and Japan. The frame rate had to match the refresh rate, in order to never have a refreshment cycle starting with a frame, then changing for the next frame mid process ; especially since the images were generally interlaced.
As for movies, like it's a projection of the images, the frame rate doesn't matter ; there's no refreshment cycle. Therefore,
historically it was at 16fps, then was increased at 24fps when they started to add sound, because 16fps were not smooth enough. Initially they intended to have a frame rate at 25fps, but like 24fps seemed good enough for a projection, they choose it. It was a purely economical choice, since one fps less meant around 10 meters of film saved.

Thanks for breaking that down. I'm in my mid 40s and remember hearing that 24 was the standard at some point. I'm guessing this was before digital replacements in theaters and whatnot.

It depend of the screen you'll use. The frame rate was set at 25fps in the early age of modern computing because most screen had a refresh rate of 50Hz, then 75Hz.
But Nowadays we don't use anymore cathode ray screens, so it have less importance. There's (almost) no afterglow effect on numerical screens, because the whole image is drawn instantly, so it's less visually uncomfortable. Yet, there's still specialists to say that the frame rate should continue to match the refresh rate, so nowadays it should be at 30fps, since most screens works at 60Hz.

That makes sense. But I will say, with the abundance of games lately where the animation is 5 frames played on a loop, I'll take anything above 20 and be happy, lol.

 

[Mimir's Lab]

Most of what I'd have said has already been said, so I will take a different approach. What I will say from here on is a vast oversimplification of how I view things, so take it with a grain of salt.

What you see and hear this side of the forum (general discussions) is a minority of your player base with much stronger opinions than the vast majority of your players who try it and move on, regardless of whether they like it or not. That's to say that people this side of the forums tend to want more to digest from their games than the casual player, so any opinions of what we think makes a good game tend to vary much more. If you're trying to appeal to the masses and become successful, you need to do your own market analysis on the most successful games on here and play them to figure out what they've got right and why. That's not all though, you need to read the overviews of all the financially successful games and analyze all the screenshots and banner images of those games, because first impressions are very important if you want to be successful to the masses.

For example, when I first started making a game, I wanted to use Koikatu as well because I thought it was an interesting look for a game. At the time, there were not really any strong Koikatu-based games on the market yet, but then Corrupted Kingdoms came along and I watched it enjoy well deserved success and rise to become the most popular Koikatu game. I tried it and thought everything about it was quite excellent but til this day, I feel like it using Koikatu as a base harmed it significantly, as the majority of the players here seem to prefer DAZ or hand drawn art.

You have to compare yourself to other games similar to yours if you want to measure success. I don't think Koikatu games are anywhere close to comparable to DAZ games when it comes to popularity and earnings. Likewise, you cannot compare the success of your story-driven game with the success of a sandbox or a quick fuck game. Forgot to mention this, but you have to define what success is to you and your team. If you're expecting Summertime Saga levels of success after a few updates, you're going to be in for one hell of a disappointment, which honestly might be why you're here.

 

[Wasabi777]

Most of what I'd have said has already been said, so I will take a different approach. What I will say from here on is a vast oversimplification of how I view things, so take it with a grain of salt.

What you see and hear this side of the forum (general discussions) is a minority of your player base with much stronger opinions than the vast majority of your players who try it and move on, regardless of whether they like it or not. That's to say that people this side of the forums tend to want more to digest from their games than the casual player, so any opinions of what we think makes a good game tend to vary much more. If you're trying to appeal to the masses and become successful, you need to do your own market analysis on the most successful games on here and play them to figure out what they've got right and why. That's not all though, you need to read the overviews of all the financially successful games and analyze all the screenshots and banner images of those games, because first impressions are very important if you want to be successful to the masses.

For example, when I first started making a game, I wanted to use Koikatu as well because I thought it was an interesting look for a game. At the time, there were not really any strong Koikatu-based games on the market yet, but then Corrupted Kingdoms came along and I watched it enjoy well deserved success and rise to become the most popular Koikatu game. I tried it and thought everything about it was quite excellent but til this day, I feel like it using Koikatu as a base harmed it significantly, as the majority of the players here seem to prefer DAZ or hand drawn art.

You have to compare yourself to other games similar to yours if you want to measure success. I don't think Koikatu games are anywhere close to comparable to DAZ games when it comes to popularity and earnings. Likewise, you cannot compare the success of your story-driven game with the success of a sandbox or a quick fuck game. Forgot to mention this, but you have to define what success is to you and your team. If you're expecting Summertime Saga levels of success after a few updates, you're going to be in for one hell of a disappointment, which honestly might be why you're here.

Corrupte kingdoms is an example of a VN. An amazing game. I couldn't find any minuses that needs to be pointed out. To me that game is perfect. The level of details that game uses, we can't reach that level because of lack of time.

As for success, for now first goal would be achieve at least some fan base on discord server and everything takes time. Achieving 500 or 900$ monthly already gives us an opportunity to give game 2-3 hours more. Because ATM, we all have jobs, and not 1, but 2. In my case I have 3 jobs atm, so achieving that amount will let me enable to quit at least 1 of the jobs.

There are rich countries and poor countries. I'm from a poor country and even with 3 jobs I have 300$ monthly salary. And no "find a better job" doesn't work here. I was COO, lecturer and QA as mentioned in post before, and my salary was still low. BCS this is a poor country and everyone treats us like slaves.

Anyway after reaching first goal, we can improve many things. By fully immersing in the game, we can become better. Summer time saga level is achievable when you have a team and time.

 

[woody554]

1. Do you prefer koikatsu, Honey select or Daz game?
-out of these three? daz. but only after process of elimination. I'd prefer something like serpieri, manara, giraud. doesn't have to be that good, just have your own style instead of tracing an industry of clones.

2. What makes you decide to play the game? Art? genre? kink / fetish? or any other reason?
-women must look adult. not like "lisa just looks like a jailbait, but she's really 18yo" -adult, but real adult. a woman, not a girl. mom/son stories a plus, but I can't stress enough how none of the characters having sex can even remotely look 'too young'. if there's a question about it, she's 10 years too young. romance is plus, because it tells the writer it at least trying to tell a story (instead of boring nukige).

but there are far more things that make me drop a game like it was a shit on fire. child heroines, shota mc, scat, ntr, rpgm. also softer things that make me pivot at the door, not as hard as the previous things, but just don't interest me: female protagonist, lesbian only, futa, gay, transform (because it's ALWAYS just the game turning into fem protag or futa after 5 minutes). more power to people who like those genres, but they're not in my interests.

3. Write anything you think will make game better.
-generally the biggest one problem I find in games is lack of sexual tension, lack of emotional building. most games just throw the sex at you without any building up, and as a result lose all tension 5 minutes into the game. only things you struggle for can make you really yearn for them. and if you don't yearn, if there's no hunger to get there, it won't feel like anything.

4. also if you could answer the question where we failed.
-I'm the wrong audience. wasn't your problem.

5. what kind of benefit do you wish to see if you decide to donate?
-I donate out of wanting to be a fan. I don't care if I get something for it.

 

[woody554]

I am not a graphic artist or 3d animator by any means, but could someone explain this to me? The standard FPS for a movie/TV is traditionally 24FPS, which would come out to 120 frames over 5 seconds. Is the 1FPS difference that drastic for 3d animations?

it can't be noticed, unless there's some moire effects from some other periodic phenomenom. like if you video a 24fps film on a 25fps video, you'll create a 1/25 pulse on the screen from the interference. about once a second, which will be incredibly disrupting.

the jerkiness of animation depends on a few things and can't be nailed down fully. first is the technical side, which means angle of change per frame time. the more the thing moves in YOUR field of view (not the screen's FOV), the faster the fps must be or you'll notice separate images. and the smaller the angular movement in your FOV the less fps you need to hide the jerkiness.

the other side is we're not all build equally regarding this, for some 24 or even 12 fps can look smooth, for others you might need much more. and the more you do animation the more sensitive to jerkiness you get. your brain gets better at picking it up because you train it every day to notice it. a lot of japanese animation is 12, 8 or even lower fps, because almost all of it is done as cheap and badly as possible. there's only one ghibli, and even that vision was forced through the industry by one man.

but, in the end it doesn't matter that much. if your story is engaging you can generally use stick figures and it'll still draw you in. and that is the real strength of ghibli for example, not just the amazing magical nature scenes.

***

about number of renders per update... the more I've played through VNs, the more I'm leaning to that less is more.

yes, there are people who can churn out amazing number of renders per update, even when it's not just animation, but I've yet to see how that's brought any increase in quality. and when I think about comics, real comics, about 5 images per page typically does FAR better job both visually AND telling the story than our VNs here.

people here often fail at composition, AND storytelling in one image. and I mean the 'good ones', not the obvious beginners. if we could get more deliberate design like the limited space of a page forces, maybe we could get at least the important qualities half-decent. rendering 200 bad frames is nothing to be proud of.

I think that the low number of renders gets mixed with is people being lazy. different things. there's a difference in taking a long time to make better images and only working for a couple of hours.

I mean if someone here could make only 5 pages per month, but they would look like druuna, I think we'd have a huge following. and if they kept that pace for one year, it would make a 60 page album. a totally acceptable time for a comic. 100x better than someone spitting out 200 pointless renders a month.

 

[Nottravis]

*is awakened*

Another example, the chapter 3 of Heavy Five will have more than 3 000 renders, 25 fps animations included (most frame being manually corrected), done in 3 months. And each render is heavily tweaked in order that everything, including the eyes direction, will be exactly as wanted by the author. Many CG having been rendered more than once in order to find the correct one, the effective number of images rendered is more on the side of 4 500 than the 3 000 ones that will effectively be used in the update ; which lead to something like 40 CG/day, your last update in less than a week. All this being made by a single person who have other things to do in her life.

Hrm? Well, strictly speaking it's over 8,000 renders if we include animations (and at 30fps if we want to get accurate...)



But you're right about wastage. That can be huge. One thing I'd defo advise any new dev to get is the biggest screen they can afford. What looks fine on an average monitor can be rather cruelly exposed when you find people playing on bigger screens.

And testers. For God's sake get people outside of the team to play it before release. Players will find all sorts of stuff you'd never dream of trying and break your game in more ways than you'd imagine. Much better to let them do it and fix it before the rest of world does.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Hrm? Well, strictly speaking it's over 8,000 renders if we include animations (and at 30fps if we want to get accurate...)

Wait... is it you that made 5 000 renders in just one week, or me that slept through the last time you said how much renders you've done ?
Note: my guess goes for the second...

One thing I'd defo advise any new dev to get is the biggest screen they can afford. What looks fine on an average monitor can be rather cruelly exposed when you find people playing on bigger screens.

I would add "testing it before buying it". I have two screens attached to my computer, and despite all my attempt to calibrate them, they clearly don't show the same colors ; One is darker, or the other lighter I don't really know, while having both a correct calibration.

 

[Nottravis]

Wait... is it you that made 5 000 renders in just one week, or me that slept through the last time you said how much renders you've done ?
Note: my guess goes for the second...

You being sleepy, I've the only the one PC!