HTML What's wrong with most HTML games, how to improve them?

[SerokMinmas]

Alright, so for no reason in particular I ask you all, what is wrong with HTML games made in Twine, how do we improve them?

Some of the most successful games to come out from this community are those made in easy-to-create software like Twine or RenPy, and its easy to understand how this choice of software can cause massive quality variation , if it's simple to start something, then a massive amount of people does (And thats good!).

I think platforms like Twine can be immensely powerful on the right hands, (Just take a look at Free Cities, that thing is ABSURD), but maybe years of usage in [abandoned] maybe causes a bad rep? Maybe it's adoption in Transformation games, causes a bad rep? How many times in the past you've seen the comment "Oh hey an HTML game that x doesn't get y! I'll try it!".

I dont know if I'm talking non-sense but hey whatever, might as well ask.

What are the main problems that plague HTML/Twine games in your opinion?

 

[hiya02]

Overuse of grainy, pixelated + watermarked gifs and the dreaded "real porn" tag.

 

[osanaiko]

Twine in particular has a very low barrier to entry.

So it's possible for very inexperienced developers / writers to jump in and start creating something quickly, perhaps without planning, preparation, taking time or efforts to get good art or customise UI or a coherent and interesting plot.

An easy development platform can be good if the developer is already experience/committed/chasing high quality. But in reality, it means that the majority of project's development can occur with very little thinking / pain / forced experience. So maybe the result is very clearly the work of an amateur.

I think i read a quote which said "true art requires the artist's suffering". If the platform makes it too easy, there is no suffering.

Twine doesn't force a game to be bad (and equally, renpy/unity does not force it to be good, clearly!), but it is certainly associated with certain simple styles of game which rarely satisfy.

 

[SerokMinmas]

Overuse of grainy, pixelated + watermarked gifs and the dreaded "real porn" tag.

As someone who's doing a game with the dreaded "Real Porn" tag, I feel you bro.

But there have been Real Porn games that I enjoyed, so its not impossible to do, but I mean, polishing a turd is also not impossible, but I wouldn't really try that very often!

Twine in particular has a very low barrier to entry...

... it means that the majority of project's development can occur with very little thinking / pain / forced experience. So maybe the result is very clearly the work of an amateur.

You are correct, I just dont think that this is a bad thing.

An easy platform removes some hurdles from the developer, allowing them to think about other things during the work, Twine for example, is easy on the programming side, but very heavy on the story side, because that's kinda all you have right. And so it might be a good tool for practicing story telling (As is AGS, As is RenPy)

Also, the story of every developer is filled with shit games when they were starting, but good developers learn when they make crap.

So I believe that Twine is a good entry level tool, and its great to teach story telling techniques the best way possible, by failing miserably, launching something to a crowd of trolls, getting tons of hate and one or two constructive critic.

"true art requires the artist's suffering". If the platform makes it too easy, there is no suffering.

I kind of agree, but I only with the first part.

The thing is, making good art will always cause suffering, that is not dependent on how easy a tool is to use.

I'll use Twine games for example since this is the whole point of the thread, making a good game on Twine REQUIRES you to suffer, because even if you dont spend time messing around with complex programming as you would with a C game, you need to write it, and the time/suffering you would've spent with the complex programming has to go somewhere, it should transfer to the story telling.

And the real nasty point is, if you dont transfer the suffering, and just delete it entirely, it can totally be noticed by the player when you release the game, in those things you said, like the UI, or the Art selection, lazyness is a virus that spreads throughout the game.

PS. I prefer Good and Bad art, Bad art is still true art, and there is no such thing as false or untrue art.
PPS. And Bad art is what you get when someone has an idea and tries, and fails in putting it to reality.

 

[khumak]

The most common issue I've noticed with adult HTML games is that most of them are basically a "real porn" slideshow with the minimum possible storyline bolted on to try and justify it as a "game". There are a few exceptions that are relatively complex like A Spell for All, but those are few and far between.

 

[Whale_Shark]

As someone who is developing a Twine game, I agree that due to the ease of entry into Twine game development, there are a sea of really unpolished, bare bones games out there. That can give the engine itself a bad reputation by association. That said, if you manage to make a game that really stands out from the pack, players will appreciate it that much more. You can make really great games with Twine: Casting Director, College Daze, The Company, Community Service, are all excellent and they inspired me to make my game, Confidence Man.

If not for the ease of entry with Twine, I never would have even attempted to make it. I do not have any experience with programming or development before this, so Twine's learning curve was perfect for me. I can make a CYOA that leans on the writing, because that's my strength. But if you want to get more complex with the coding and use a ton of JS like The Company, then you have the option to do so.

TL;DR me like Twine.

 

[TrueDeedee]

I don't even know why I started development in Twine now. Getting Twine to do more complex things is sometimes kind of counterintuitive. I think it was just like "hey, I like this game, but I would do things slightly different, lets create a game in the same engine". Having a solid background in HTML (mostly CSS if you want your game to look anything Unlike the standard Twine games) and JavaScript is a must have. Ditching twine for a command line compiler like tweego and ... idk, maybe Visual Studio Code does also help once the game reaches a certain complexity. I'm sure there are tons of good games done in Twine using only the standard repertory, but then you have to play into the strengths of twine and create an interactive fiction, and not an life simulation with feature creep .

 

[shark_inna_hat]

I've only played maybe a dozen twine/sugercube games but most off them have:
- wall of text with almost random pictures from time to time
- terrible UX, non responsive design
- tone of grind in a Groundhog Day type loop
- random encounters/events that keep on repeating

How to improve? Devs need to learn. I'm not sending anyone to take game design, user experience and writing courses (but they might help), just play games, read books and try to think what's good, what's not and do the former.

 

[Jofur]

My biggest issues are:

• Real porn or images that aren't uniquely made for the game, it's just takes you out of the writing and removes all immersion. If you really want to have it, make sure it can be turned off and the game remains enjoyable without it.
• Lack of gameplay, if I just wanted a story, I would play a visual novel instead.
• Bad controls/UI, having to click a button 5 times to do a simple action is super frustrating.
• Bad pacing, just because it text based doesn't mean you have to describe everything in excruciating detail, keep things short and concise, save your energy for the sex scenes.

 

[DaH0]

I think most games would benefit from having a design document before the devs did any code.
Just sit down, write what the game is about, what's your gameplay loop and sale point; then, figure out how much content you can do without dying.

Also a very pronounced problem in HTML games is procedurally generated content and just too many tags. Twine can make adding more content 'easy' which makes people add to much of nothing to their games; I'm not playing a game that has 3 hours of content if everything after the first ten minutes is a slight variation of shit I already saw.

 

[xj47]

I think the potential issue with stuff like using "real porn" images, no images at all, or really really crappy hand-drawn art is that it's kind of a creative shortcut.
Using high-quality custom art is way nicer, but also takes waaaay more work.

The game can still be good if the dev uses the dev-time the shortcut freed up to improve their project in other ways, it's just that many people are lazy and will just use ALL the shortcuts to release a game with minimum effort put it. So seeing any shortcut get used is kind of a red flag.

 

[Pariahronin]

For real porn photosets - you can modify the image to suit your purposes - especially if you have a bunch of reference images to blend in.
In a self serving case and point - Casey Calvert image below - being modified into Drow Elf.
https://f95zone.to/threads/drow-elf-casey-calvert.94525/

 

[KiaAzad]

What are the main problems that plague HTML/Twine games in your opinion?

The main reason HTML games are not as good as other platforms is: because the HTML as a gaming platform is relatively new.
Most engines have implemented exporting to HTML after HTML5 became a thing. And the converting is still a test feature in most cases.
Also most developers have little to no experience with HTML and code their game for PC platforms, and hope it works fine on HTML as well.
PS: compress your images people, nobody can sit with their pants down waiting for your 5mb PNG background to load.

 

[PTSdev]

I'm currently developing a HTML / Twine game, it's still a long way to go, but I've spent months on building an intuitive UI and the general game systems. One of my design pillars is that it never should take more than three clicks to reach the desired screen.

Personally, I really like good HTML games, Whale_Shark has already posted a few gems. The Company also was an inspiration for me. But I agree that most Twine games are just empty loops of "go here, repeat event x times, get grainy gif, go there...". That's why I'm aiming to make a game that is different. It's going to be a mix between management and choice driven narrative.

On real porn: It's difficult. As I'm not an artist, I simply can't draw good portraits, let alone create animations. Real porn can be great if it's used well. The most important thing imho is to have matching visuals. There's also the big question about copyright laws. Purely text based games can be cool as well, but the audience for those is very niche. I agree that especially video content should be optional.

The worst offenders in the genre really are those video dispensers. I like good smut, but in a porn game, smut has to be earned in a meaningful way. The groundhog day loop fascinates me. I mean... why are so many games using it? These loops are also present in many Ren'Py titles.

On random events: Just no. In my opinion, progression should not be linked to randomization.

On the coding side: Luckily, Twine is very well documented. If a project reaches a certain size, the Twine software itself is not suited for development. Like... at all. Managing branching storylines and dialogue trees in the Twine software is an absolute nightmare. It's good for smaller games, though. For larger projects VSCode + tweego is the way to go imho. I use the latest release of SugarCube, which can be easily modified.

 

[Pariahronin]

There's also the big question about copyright laws.

The law is fairly simple - if discovered you can be sued and the money you'd spend on the lawyer will probably not be worth it for the game you are making.

That said... (and I'm not a lawyer so don't take this as legal advise) if you wanted to fight it you could - the best likely defense you could use would be the Fair Use copyright legal doctrine.

 

[Rafster]

For larger projects VSCode + tweego is the way to go imho. I use the latest release of SugarCube, which can be easily modified.

I've been wondering about this myself. I'm just a newbie and I'm currently working under twine 2.3 . For coding, I just copy/paste the code to Visual Studio Code and work it there (I have a sugarcube extension that works wonders there) and then paste it back to twine. But sometimes I wonder if I should just ditch twine completely for tweego, since I intend my game to be a big project.

 

[PTSdev]

Ditch it. Build a folder structure that can carry you through the whole project. You don't need to visualize the project if the folder structure is built well. My structure looks like this, I'm creating a management game:

00 Core - all the special passages + the hub area of my game + JavaScript / CSS
01 Main - all major passages (agency, science lab, room construction, financial overview etc.)
02 Sidebar - the sidebar menu passages (game options, player character info etc.)
03 Characters - for the main characters' storylines. Character folders loosely sorted by the moment the player unlocks them in the game, subfolders for character routes
04 Staff - for the staff characters
05 Story - for big story events
06 Special - for special events
07 Other - everything else, e.g. bonus content

How you build your own structure depends on the type of game you're making.

 

[Rafster]

How you build your own structure depends on the type of game you're making.

Yikes, trying to convert into a folder system my disaster called project...that is a huge task

 

[ManhunterAlpaca]

The law is fairly simple - if discovered you can be sued and the money you'd spend on the lawyer will probably not be worth it for the game you are making.

That said... (and I'm not a lawyer so don't take this as legal advise) if you wanted to fight it you could - the best likely defense you could use would be the Fair Use copyright legal doctrine.

I don't think fair use covers making porn games, haha. But yeah, no one will be arsed to sue unknown developers lifting random images from the internet, especially if they are not even making money from it.

 

[Pariahronin]

I don't think fair use covers making porn games, haha. But yeah, no one will be arsed to sue unknown developers lifting random images from the internet, especially if they are not even making money from it.

If they were doing it for free I'd agree with you - but a lot of these developers on this site seem to be setting up Patreons Profiles and other payment methods to keep developing their games.

Fair use doesn't specifically cover porn games - but it doesn't exclude them either. I am not personally aware of a time that any developer has been taken to court over use of real porn photosets/videos... but that doesn't mean the vulnerability isn't there.