Ren'Py Work In Progress: Advice and Feedback Needed

[thecardinal]

Abandoned this game after the Patreon thing. Made into a friend of the family thing, then back to being about your own family. Many character revisions and re-rendering of scenes. This thing is a mess. Just looking for some feedback and critiques. This is like 3/4 of a 0.1, so keep that in mind.

It's a PC version I uploaded to MegaUpload. This game has gone through a lot of revisions, so it's a bit messy. When the dialogue starts, click anywhere on the screen and move the mouse around, the characters can move.

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[General F. Apper]

Issues

• weird font
• some renders are cut off
• the other sisters and the mother have no talking head unlike Carina
• breakfast table talk had repeat dialogue
• no renders for the car ride to school
• jarring position of the principal and miss greenwood in the office
• don't call it dean's office if the position is principal
• the character renders looked flat especially in the office with the principal and olivia - needs lighting, i think
• other GED students don't have talking heads
• other GED students appear out of nowhere on the screen
• an exception occurred while loading <'image'Naomi 1-1.png>
• two Bins appeared on the screen

How to improve

• change fonts
• have talking heads for the dialogue boxes
• have an editor to look over the script
• have transitions like fade to black to indicate change of location
• call the principal dean since it is a community college
• in the flashback, have the dean sit on her chair so that the scene doesn't look weird
• have lighting for the model renders
• too many characters were introduced and talking but unnecessary for the story so it felt like padding the game

So, what are your plans?

 

[thecardinal]

Thanks for the feedback. A know a few of the characters need sprites, but I missed the repeated dialogue and the dean's office and principal office thing.

Most of these can be easily fixed, but I'm still plan on keeping the number of characters high.

 

[Agent HK47]

A few things I noticed so far:

• The face of Carina looks to be roughly cut out from another render
• Many images suffer from obvious seperate backgrounds, with somewhat poorly placed characters pasted in the front of them.
• The dialogue face for Carina seems out of place, especially since no other character uses it
• Some characters make either stern or frowned expressions while the dialogue gives no reason for them to be unhappy or annoyed.
• The HUD is simply too pink for my liking. I almost feel like showing a barbie doll down my throat to stimulate my gag reflex for a while.
• Carina's hair when everyone comes down to eat eggs is messed up. It doesn't connect to itself, and has several bit and pieces floating in the air.
• The talk about rent repeats itself during the breakfast scene
• The switch from the kitchen scene to the school was pretty weirdly done. I didnt realise I was driving the car until the last frame before I got there.
• The girlfriend doesn't know who Carina is? From the sound of it they dated for some time, and Miles never showed her a picture of his family, or had her over to meet them? Sounds fishy.
• The scene in the Dean/Principal's office (umm, which one is it?) is pretty poorly done, to say the least. The characters are nowhere near normal positions and it really breaks the immersion.
• Don't specifically write "Look me in the eyes!" and then not have any of the characters change the position of their heads in any way (yeah, the african american lady looked a little sadder, but her eyes didnt change focus at all).
• Oh boy, this scene keeps on going, doesn't it? Don't know what to say here. There scene jumps from the Dean/Principal scolding a teacher, to her having her pussy eaten out by a student in the next frame. Not really sure how to give feedback in this one.
• The choice boxes are very hard to read if you don't hover over them, which is a pretty poor design, espcially if you are ever in a situation with multiple choices to choose from.
• So, let me get this straight: Miles is in his first day of school. After class he asks Malcolm if he can use his phone, which Malcolm seems to agree to. However, Miles now asks Bin the same, and says he needs to call Vivian. Bin tells him to just press redial. Soooo, Bin knows Vivian? Is she her girlfriend or something? I assume Vivian is the 3'rd sister of Miles, since she is present at the house early in the morning, but she is never stated to be releated to Miles, unless I missed something.
• At the end, Dumpster (or whomever it was) asks Bin if she wants to join him for a smoke, but she declines and tells everyone that she is leaving. Miles however must have already smoked some good shit, cause to his eyes, Bin is in 2 places at once when is telling everyone that she is leaving, and after she left she is STILL THERE, right next to Malcolm, or Dumpster, or whomever the fuck the guy was.
• Lots of grammatical errors
• The text is difficult to read at times, but at least it is pretty unique, so there's that I guess.

I think the game has potential, but I honestly think you should scrap everything and start over, to avoid having a huge mess of pieces of an old game, which you are trying to glue together with the new parts.

*Edit. Damn, I only now took the time to see that HARiBON pretty much pointed out the exact same things I did. I well, I guess he spotted some things I forgot and I have pointed out a few things he didnt mention. As for the other flaws we both pointed out, I guess that just confirms the issue, so I guess my time wasn't a total waste

 

[thecardinal]

Yeah, you guys nailed it. I'm keeping the storylines and characters but re-rendering most everything (luckily I haved most of the files saved to re-render.

I really appreciate you two taking the time to play through and give quality feedback.