110 replies to this topic

[Saijee]

Hi Saijee,

People like to see their characters fully fleshed out. Higher detail is usually more static.
I don't think the art for dialogue makes or breaks the game, unless it is really bad.

Hi 5/7, but I must frankly say that your post is very ambiguous and I make nothing of it.

[=(:5/7A!I:)=]

Saijee,

What is necessary to get the point across in your game? What would keep players engaged with the story?
People like fully fleshed out characters, but more movement may be required to keep things... well... moving - streamlined.
In my experience, I do not have a problem playing games with a simple art style and a lot of dialogue.
I suppose if your game needs to be heavily stylised to keep the experience cohesive and/or dazzling, you could choose either option. From the surface, highly detailed characters leave more of an impression and it is common to see charicatures in games.

[Saijee]

Saijee,

What is necessary to get the point across in your game? What would keep players engaged with the story?
People like fully fleshed out characters, but more movement may be required to keep things... well... moving - streamlined.
In my experience, I do not have a problem playing games with a simple art style and a lot of dialogue.
I suppose if your game needs to be heavily stylised to keep the experience cohesive and/or dazzling, you could choose either option. From the surface, highly detailed characters leave more of an impression and it is common to see charicatures in games.

Hmm. Your doing a lot of describing, but you fail to cut to the cheese. Simply put: What is your point?

Edited by Saijee, 02 March 2012 - 12:19 AM.

[=(:5/7A!I:)=]

Saijee,

There is no need to force a point out of me. Make of it what you will. I'm not sure if you're deliberately being rude and/or condescending. Obviously you don't think it is a waste of time.

[Saijee]

Saijee,

There is no need to force a point out of me. Make of it what you will. I'm not sure if you're deliberately being rude and/or condescending. Obviously you don't think it is a waste of time.

I'm not trying to be rude. But I am being blunt and honest.

I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say. Your post doesn't seem to have a point; no actual content of witch I can discuss from. A target without a bulls eye. It's just way to vague for me to determine your opinion. And if I cannot determine were you stand then I cannot form a proper response. I've a history of jumping to conclusions before, witch has lead to countless misunderstandings, so now-a-days instead of blathering out a response of my reconstruction of the orignal posters message, I press and press until I have enough information to make a proper objection or concurrence.

In short: It's a shame that there is no nice way to explain to someone that they are not making their point clear without making your point clear.

Edited by Saijee, 02 March 2012 - 01:15 AM.

[=(:5/7A!I:)=]

Saijee,

When discussing ideas in general, I think people can allow for a bit of personal/singular interpretation. I do not mind if you misinterpret my ideas, but you seem to have slammed the door on my ideas without trying to paint your own picture. How do people enter discussions when they have already made up their minds? If everyone is blunt, then natural interactions may not work.

You want me to fine tune my opinions which I have already given you. You want me to be more descriptive yet you complain of my descriptions. I was trying to open things up for you, and you want to close things down and make me come out with a specific answer. If you want my answer to slide neatly into a category, then you should have conducted a survey.

Nobody said you had to blather on: instead, perhaps you could be a little bit more liberal.

[Saijee]

Hold it. I never asked you to be more discriptive, I told you that I didn't know what your point was, and you still haven't made that clear.

To illustrate, here is a reenactment.

You posted:

People like to see their characters fully fleshed out. Higher detail is usually more static.
I don't think the art for dialogue makes or breaks the game, unless it is really bad.

My immediate response (in real life):

What does that even mean?

Nobody said you had to blather on: instead, perhaps you could be a little bit more liberal.

That's were your wrong. See if everyone posted ambiguous opinions than nothing would be made clear. It could not grow into an idea/discussion that reached an outstanding apex of a skyscraper. It could only get wider growing ever so fat.

If an artist asked you: "Witch do you think looks better? Water colors or Acrylic?"
The absolute worst answer you could give them would be: "Oh it doesn't matter. Just choose whatever you like best."

If someone asked you "Hey where do you want to go and eat?"
The absolute wort answer would be "I don't care." or even "I don't know."

I like things to be either black or white, the gray area is not appreciated.

I do not care about my opinions because I already know them very well. What I want to know is the views of others, and your not making it easy for me to figure-out yours.

Edited by Saijee, 02 March 2012 - 02:08 AM.

[=(:5/7A!I:)=]

That's were your wrong. See if everyone posted ambiguous opinions than nothing would be made clear. It could not grow into an idea/discussion that reached an outstanding apex of a skyscraper. It could only get wider growing ever so fat.

I'm not going to completely dismiss this because I agree in a way. Determination and direction/orders is needed to get somewhere far up and high. But considering you are satisified (I presume) with the majority of replies, then mine is supplementary so as to decorate your understanding. We don't want a bunch of bland looking skyscrapers where people plonk bits on top just because it is the done thing. Game designers are indeed like architects.

I like things to be either black or white, the gray area is not appreciated.

Lol, maybe the website design is encouraging me.

[Saijee]

Well for starters, what do you mean when you say: "Higher detail is usually more static" ?

[=(:5/7A!I:)=]

Well for starters, what do you mean when you say: "Higher detail is usually more static" ?

The way I see it, is that proper dialogue boxes (with character picture frames relating to the speech) would benefit from having close-up, detailed, charicatures. Movement and perspective can remove one's ability to discern finer details.
Without these slow-paced dialogue boxes, the actors might move about at a different perspective in a slightly less clear albeit more expressive and useful way, that is if it is purposeful. Otherwise you wouldn't implement it.

[Saijee]

So let me make sure we are both on page 5 here.

Your saying that dialog boxes make more sense with character detailed illustrations.

Unless I utilize the characters in game graphic to have expressive animation. Is that correct?

[=(:5/7A!I:)=]

Yes, that's about it. I think there are two ways:

1. dialogue boxes
2. scrolling text, or speech bubbles.

Any descriptive narrative can be kept in bulk in static text boxes.

Edited by =(:5/7A!I:)=, 02 March 2012 - 02:55 AM.

[Desert Dog]

It's which, not witch. Maybe that's a game-pun, I don't get.

I know you've moved on from the originally topic, but I.. don't have a preference(I can't say, I don't like this, or I like this better than the other).

I think for me, some in-game sprite animation(at appropriate times in the cutscene/dialogue) + character 'portraits'.
I enjoyed this sort of thing very much in the Spirit Engine.

So I think this is a bit of a mixture of the 2..!

[Saijee]

This factors into things just a bit.

Apart from random in game-play dialog. There will also be cutscenes that pop up at important times. These will have significantly higher Graphical Quality. More or less like this render of a character I made for fun:

In case your wondering about the render itself. I made it for my dad because he wanted a flyer for his next concert, it's got nothing to do with the game, Siiya playing guitar is not cannon.

Edited by Saijee, 02 March 2012 - 04:34 AM.

[=(:5/7A!I:)=]

That's a very nice Japanese style there. Reminds me a bit of, I think, Animal Crossing. It made me think, actually, that animal crossing is full of expression. Every wobbly little character isn't complex, and thinking about it- anime itself usually cuts things down to the significant emotional expressions.

High detail, yes although I would say the starting point for that style you have chosen would not be high detail. Rendering effects make it more technical perhaps.

Well, I think you can achieve a lot with that style. Looking at it, I would say you should aim for uniformity/consistency. In your case I believe that creating stills of the animations and cropping the useful bits, would be useful for dialogue heavy parts.
I'm not sure.

I hope I did help in the end with progressing the discussion.

[Saijee]

Japanese style? Sure. But I absolutely do not want this game to feel like an anime.

And actually, the way that the story works (Each world is like it's own episode with a sub plot, witch may or may not show continuation in the other episodes) it should feel much more like a Saterday cartoon than anything else.

Hmmm now that I think about it. What if I actually did have the dialog appear in the way much resembling a saterday cartoon. I present to you a target, MLPFIM:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fSBKKPjfNA

Considering the way that the in-game models are shaded and proportioned, I think it would be quite possible for me to make the dialog roll in a way much like in the above clip. Taking these key factors:

-Simplistic art detail
-Responsive and believable character animation
-Expressive facial expressions and body animations to go with
-Smoothly animated faces
-Voice acting with proper lip syncing

That is to say that the camera would zoom appropriately close to capture the animation details, and there would be no still mugshot art of the characters.

Although there would likely be subtitles, and of course an option to turn the voices off, and another option to give you more control over the sequence (like a normal game you could make it not continue to progress until your done reading, and make it progress faster if your fast at reading.)

[=(:5/7A!I:)=]

I looked at the video and I think that the dialogue is well centered to each speaker, and in general it is very explicit. It is an easy to follow children's cartoon.
Not saying your game will necessarily be childish, but it can still have that same feeling of explicitness.
If you're zooming in on and centering on characters in an easy and casual way, perhaps there could be an option of choosing either standard subtitles, or speech bubbles- which may work with a more lazy/subdued saturday morning feel along with the low frame animations and centered faces.

Edited by =(:5/7A!I:)=, 08 March 2012 - 11:34 PM.

[Saijee]

I think I actually do want to make this game about as childish as this cartoon is. Examples:
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=IuMA_D9axKI
http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

I'm not convinced that speech bubbles are worth implementing because it would attract more attention to the words, witch your supposed to understand from hearing the voices. Witch would simply take your attention away from the animation.

Edited by Saijee, 09 March 2012 - 07:21 AM.

[Yal]

You could, obviously, use that as your incentive to not do any animations

A third way could be to use speech bubbles, but put a mugshot in each speech bubble displaying the same animation as the character does. As seen in Rockman X, this looks pretty cool.

[Saijee]

You could, obviously, use that as your incentive to not do any animations

A third way could be to use speech bubbles, but put a mugshot in each speech bubble displaying the same animation as the character does. As seen in Rockman X, this looks pretty cool.

I could, but that's a bad thing because I want to wind up with respectable animations.

Also, no mugs. Because I don't want you to see the character's face twice.