/jp/ - Otaku Culture

tl;dr

>But surely we can do better than six sprites per major character.

Example ?

Last nukige I played, even the side character have 30ish sprites

We?

But that already exists, OP. It is called anime

5pb is trying to start something with Ever17 and Robotics;Notes.

Why use sprites at all? Develop the game using 3DCG and animate the actions as you describe them.

I know what you mean. I was playing Ar Tonelico 1 and the laziness is just ridiculous. Most of the time they just change the mouths and eyes - the poses remain static.

>>7372549
Speaking of that, what was the name of the ones who did Timeleap or whatever it was called?

>>7372542

Same pose + slightly different facial expression doesn't count as a whole new sprite. It obviously doesn't take near as much work.

You know what I want? The abolishment of the first-person view. I want quarter-turn side views like in the Fire Emblems. Protag-kun is going to need a face and a body for the ero anyway, and a side perspective would allow sprites to be more easily designed to interact with each other; particularly effective during the necessary scenes that don't completely revolve around protag-kun with everyone staring him directly in the goddamn face the whole time.

See, my ideas are cost-cutting and problem-solving.

>>7372552
>The abolishment of the first-person view
NO.

>Protag-kun is going to need a face and a body for the ero anyway
They should put this in first person view too.

>>7372552
Side facing sprites require either double the work or perfectly symmetrical character designs.
Or Nanoha feather duster hair.

>If there's a lot of violence going on, invest in action-pose sprites or CGs
>If you say there's a crowd, don't show me the same backdrop of an empty hallway you've been using from the start. Put a goddamn crowd in there.
Would you be satisfied with the degree to which Ayakashi does this?

>>7372542
>>7372536

Last I played had less than six. Three.

>>7372557
>Or Triangle Hearts feather duster hair.
Fixed.

>>7372554

I know what you're getting at. Game Arts encountered the dilemma of allowing the audience to take on the role of the protagonist in the Lunar series. Initially, they chose to make Alex, their first protagonist, a blank slate so that the player could simply project himself into Alex's position.

But when they worked later on Lunar 2, the developers realized that Alex was an almost silent character surrounded by a cast of amazingly vibrant and colorful friends and foes. Put next to them, Alex started to achieve the opposite effect from what was intended; since he was the only non-fleshed-out character in a completely fleshed-out world, his personality became interpreted as a quiet, dull guy, rather than the in-game personification of the player.

So in Lunar 2, they chose to give their new protagonist, Heero, a much more complete history, personality, and a full set of proper lines. Rather than being surrounded by characters, Heero was a man among them. Heero is introduced first, before all of the other characters, and the player walks his footsteps for a significant portion of the early game before even meeting any of the other major characters, allowing the player to establish themselves as most intimately knowledgeable about him and thus able to live vicariously through his adventures, rather than simply trying to project themselves onto the blank slate of Alex.

Kanon's Yuuichi is an example of a Heero-type protagonist. He is surrounded by a cast of characters who are full of personality, thus he needs a strong personality to match them. The player can live vicariously through him: Yuuichi doesn't necessarily need the player's permission to make a joke or do anything in particular. This is an approach to protagonist development I approve of.

>>7372576
Not what I was getting at at all.

>It is 2011.
Time doesn't have anything to do with the ability of people to churn out enough art in a limited time.

More than 6 different tachie (not counting facial expressions)? What the fuck, not even in real life I see people usually standing in 6 different ways. Stop being silly.

>take away the first person narration, which is the reason 80% of people play these games
>invest fucking huge amount of money to draw a lot of poses for games that are going to sell maybe 4000 copies if they're successful

You know who tried to do what you're proposing? Littlewitch and oyari (see Quartett and their other games). You know how they ended up? Bankrupt.
It's funny because you haven't got the slightest clue on how the industry works and yet talk big about how your ideas would make everything better. I mean, you can't seriously think no one else thought about this before, right?

>>7372557

I struggle to think of very many asymmetrical character designs in VNs. All of the Yume Miru Kusuri characters had symmetrical outfits, and most of them had symmetrical hairstyles. The same is true of the Fate/Stay Night cast; only Sakura's asymmetrical hairstyle comes immediately to mind.

There might be some extra work involved in having to double up on drawing asymmetrical costumes over standard poses twice, or having to do a similar thing with asymmetrical hairstyles, but it's hardly double work. It would most likely be a third to half extra work.

Or you could just be a typical fighting game and give not a single fuck, if "extra" work is such a bother.

This shit is embarrassing to read, stop it.

>>7372582
>You know who tried to do what you're proposing? Littlewitch

No they didn't.
But then I only played Romanesque. And they went bankrupt because the art is ugly and the game is boring.

>>7372582

I meant only first person visual perspective, not narration.

>>7372561

I haven't read it, so I can't comment on it completely.

If that screenshot is an honest indicator and not just a rare exception to the rule, then yes, that looks like it's headed in the right direction.

Not all VNs can be Muv Luv.

>>7372597
littlewitch that group that made flash novels and the characters were all anorexic?

>develop a game blowing huge amounts of money on it just to fit my individual tastes
>I don't think this is too much to ask, really.

Yakuindomo was a terrible anime.

>>7372611
>the characters were all anorexic?
It's not even that they were so skinny, it's that they were so elongated. Those poofy dresses in Romanesque made them look so much better.

>>7372614

Blowing huge amounts of money? Buddy, how much do you think a sprite costs? If anything, it's the needless voice acting that soaks up the budget. Bottom line, all I really want is enough sprites and CGs to illustrate any scene or action significant enough to be described at length in the text.

I may have gone on quite a tangent about protagonist personality and visual perspectives, but those are really all just extra little wants. And even those are nowhere near the level of expense that would come from animation and voice acting, both of which have appeared in bullshit throwaway nukiges like Amorous Professor Cherry.

I dare say you may be slightly exaggerating my position.

>>7372589
Saber's gauntlets. Anybody holding something that's "handed," like a bow or a sword. Anime hair isn't as symmetric as you think. Unless it's perfectly straight or parted down the center, any bangs will have a direction.

>>7372628
I can agree in theory with the sprites and CG but I seldom remember thinking "wow, this game needs more varied CG".
As for the protagonist personality...No. Just no. That just makes it clear you don't really know what you're talking about.

>>7372600
First person narration with third person perspective is just awkward with the amount used in visual novels. I can't think of anything except echoing thoughts or past tense storytelling in Disney movies or parenthetical thoughts in RPGs.

>>7372629

Small parts like that can be accommodated without having to redraw an entire costume over and over again. Gauntlets and hair are good examples of this. You can illustrate the parts of a sprite that will be symmetrical, and layer over that base sprite the parts that won't be symmetrical to make the complete sprites. It's nowhere near as much work as making two complete sprites by hand.

>>7372628
>Buddy, how much do you think a sprite costs
depending on the artist, 100-150 dollars per unique pose/clothes (all the various expressions in that pose included). CGs make the price skyrocket, it can easily go from 200 for bottom tier artists to 1000 for popular ones.
This is all without coloring, just the line art. Again, for games that sell more than 10000 only when they're extremely fucking good.
Source is an eroge dev blog post, by the way.

>>7372635

I have to point again to Kanon and its protagonist, Yuuichi. Yuuichi is NOT a blank slate and he is not at any time lacking for words to fill the air. While the player is able to control the major decisions made to put him on one route or another, Yuuichi is rather in charge of things once he's on the player-chosen set of rails. All protagonists do this, but the Alex-types are written with a fear that anything they do will cause too much discord with the player, and instead of creating an ideal template for the audience to project itself onto, it makes a disturbingly quiet, dull character in and of itself. The difference between a protagonist who has a well fleshed out personality and one who doesn't isn't one that allows the player to project any better on one than the other.

Because a perfect projection would require the player to have to make a large number of dialogue decisions, if not all of them. Anything less than that, and the author-written character HAS to fill in the blanks with his own lines. There is inevitably going to be a character there, regardless of the reader's input. It's just that one design philosophy can make that character a lifeless thing.

And I would hate for that to go on, because Yuuichi was fucking great. So was Rance, for that matter. A protagonist doesn't have to lack personality for a reader to enjoy living through their experiences and sharing in their inner dialogue.

>>7372597
>the art is ugly and the game is boring.
You have shitty taste then. And ADHD.
Oyari Ashito art is the art of the Gods, and Romanesque was a masterpiece.

>>7372666

But the point is that their design philosophy of using high-quality art in their products directly led to their bankruptcy.

>>7372656

Sounds like you need to kidnap an artist and chain him up in your basement.

Or co-found your company with one.

>>7372661
Once again, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. There are no VNs with "Alex-type" protagonists. Yuuichi doesn't even have a face.

>A protagonist doesn't have to lack personality for a reader to enjoy living through their experiences and sharing in their inner dialogue.

Christ, this. I really can't stand people who insist blank-slate self-insert main characters are the only possible way to do things. I don't identify with bland faggots either way - let the protagonist actually have a meaning in the story other than "Wow, it's just like 3-6 attractive girls REALLY want my cock".

>>7372680

He didn't start with a face, but he did start with a strong personality. Yuuichi's sense of humor sets him miles apart from the typical VN protagonist, and he's fucking ancient among them to boot.

The personality of the protagonist is important. Interaction between any heroine and the protagonist can only go as far as their personalities do. A blank slate protagonist will present a characterless wall for her to struggle bouncing her part of the dialogue off of. Yuuichi is an important example of a protagonist who not only does not drop the ball, he serves well and thus forces the other characters to react to him. That ability to generate social momentum is important. It's what writes conversations without giving them the sense of being forced that you'd expect from a VN with low-quality writing - the kind of writing which is too lazy to fit a personality to the single most important character in the work.

>>7372705
but blank slate protagonists only appear in low quality games. Why are you complaining that low tier games aren't comparable in quality to high quality games? You're so retarded it hurts. I'm just waiting for you to say that Yume Miru Kusuri is a high quality game

>>7372536
>It is time to stop describing with text against a blank backdrop with no sprites about some goings-on

I rarely see this happening in the VN I play. Probably because a good game doesn't need to rely on a crutch like narration to convey what is happening.

>If there's a lot of violence going on, invest in action-pose sprites or CGs. It's a fucking action scene. The audience will orgasm over that shit.

Playing a VN for action scenes is like eating soup because you like the spoon. Also, VN aren't aimed at 10 year olds, so flashy action scenes with terrible plot and characters aren't going to bring in viewers. (Then again, FSN did get really popular, so I might be wrong here.)
>Not dedicating illustrations to action scenes for budget reasons is like turning off the camera just before the money shot in order to save battery power.
Have you any idea how much action scenes would push up costs? It'd make the whole thing 5 times more expensive. And in any case, a "money shot" is just plain unattractive so it's a terrible metaphor in this case. If I wanted to see some guys semen spurting over a girl with a stupid expression on her face, I'd masturbate over my little sisters friends faces whilst they sleep.

You're getting angry because not all VN are dedicated to supporting your particular interests, which seem to be action scenes and ejaculating over womens faces.

If this is what you are looking for, their are plenty of anime which do the first well, and plenty of fetish porn productions for the latter. You'll even find a few VN which do one or maybe even both well, though this is far from all of them.

>>7372705
>the kind of writing which is too lazy to fit a personality to the single most important character in the work.

That's funny, I thought people bought eroge for the girls, not the protagonist.

>>7372680

I think you're mixing up the meaning of the Alex-type.

Alex is from Lunar 1, where the developers felt that less would be more in allowing the player to project himself onto Alex. Alex is a quiet, but not completely silent-type. But he is similar to silent-type protagonists like Crono and Mario.

Heero is from Lunar 2. A Heero-type specifically is meant to have a more fleshed out personality and history, because of the "Alex Effect" observed in Lunar 1 where Alex's quiet lack of a personality became his personality - rather than "making room for the player," Alex became "a quiet guy." Heero was given a strong personality to prevent this effect, and it worked brilliantly. The player still makes important decisions for the protagonist, but the Heero-type has plenty to say to fill in the space between major player-made decisions.

There are lots of Alex-types in the world of eroge. They try to make room for the player to project by lacking personality, but this causes the Alex Effect to take place.

A Heero-type, like Shirou or Yuuichi, has their own personality to fill in the void and prevent them from becoming awkwardly quiet or silent protagonists. This does not prevent the audience from associating closely with them, and that's the important part. Hell, if anything, we love them all the more for it, and make a million threads to analyze their characters to death about it. Shirou in particular stands as an example of this.

How many VNs has OP read anyway.

>>7372749

A heroine has a hard time trying to simulate a romantic relationship with a wall - or in our case, the inside of a monitor. A well-developed protagonist provides her an opponent with whom to volley.

Having a heroine with a route and a shitty protagonist is like having a drawing of a heroine with a shitty knowledge of anatomy. When it's done right, nobody notices the anatomy, but when it's done wrong, everyone knows it's fucked, even if they can't quite put their finger on exactly why.

>>7372536
>>7372552
>>7372576
>>7372589
>>7372628
Sorry for the off topic newfaggotry sorry-I-don't-lurk-enough question but what are these gifs from?

>>7372754
I can remember more threads about Shiki than I can about Shirou, and Shiki is a perfect example of what you call the "Alex-type".

>>7372705
What is this "typical VN protagonist" you keep going on about? Faceless nukige protagonists?

Yuuichi has been overshadowed by countless protagonists after him. Hell, Tomoya is basically Yuuichi improved in every way possible.

Taichi, Kenichi, Kyousuke, Shikako, Chris Vertin, and Kyouma all have well defined personalities, faces, and, for the last three, voices. Most of them are the most developed and important characters of their respective stories. Chris and Shikako even have sprites. But I still would prefer that first person perspective. Not because I want to project myself onto the protagonist, but the opposite. I want to feel like the protagonist has become part of me.

Plus, it's kind of cool when you get to finally see the protagonist when there's a perspective change, like in Kira Kira, Symphonic Rain, or Ever17.

>>7372780

Seitokai Yakuindomo.

It's pheepin' fantastic.

If you're into 24/7 dick jokes.

And Maka voice.

>>7372782
>Plus, it's kind of cool when you get to finally see the protagonist when there's a perspective change, like in Kira Kira, Symphonic Rain, or Ever17.

That really all depends on what sort of game you are playing. If it has little story and more sex, there is no need to for something like that. If it has an advanced plot and is more like an anime, then sure, I can agree with that. However, the description the OP gave is very vague, and seems to be the premise of most basic, generic games.

My point is, why play games that are meant to be generic if you want ones that are not?

>>7372786
twintails all over the place. I'm sold.

thanks anon

>>7372782

I thought Tomoya was a bit lacking in the humor department.

Okay, actually I thought he was a fucking dullard and I got bored of Clannad really fucking fast.

But that's just a minor nitpick.

>>7372786
Hmm...That picture you used...It reminds me of touhou.

>>7372786
Waiting for season 2 ;_;

why can't there be another protagonist like Adam Blade?

>>7372818
fuck you guy i see it too. but to be fair this kind of thing is not exclusively to touhou

>>7372818

Well, that does it. Good game, /jp/. I guess I'll see you next thread, before your ADD brings you back to gensokyo again.

>>7372829
Yes I know. I watched SYD too, so the correlation between character types is already there.

Are there even any blank slate protagonists outside of nukige?

The Junker in Planetarian kind of seems like a blank slate, but I think it works well with the setting. His survival depends on his emotionlessness. As the planetarium show gives color to the blank sky, Reverie gives the Junker a new meaning to life.

>>7372666
His art is good but he's rather hit and miss.

>>7372543
Those are just powerpoints nowadays.

>It is 2011. It is time...

Let me stop you right there. Who the fuck decided that you would dictate what "progress" occurred in what timeframe? You? Who are you? Just some random anon, that's all.

If you're going to make some call to action, at least do it without being pretentious.

>>7372892

>Let me stop you right there.

>>7372824
You know Adam Blade wasn't he protagonist. It's Yamada.

>>7372896
All the points OP raised were countered with sound arguments, one after another. If you wish, keep on believing that everyone is too stupid to notice his fantastic proposals that would make the whole genre better for everyone if it makes you feel any smarter, I'll be in my pragmatic corner.

>>7372920

>All the points OP raised were countered with sound arguments, one after another.

I'm pretty sure that was just /jp/ throwing a shitfit like usual. We may have interpreted the course of this discussion differently.

>>7372942
He said
more cgs, more sprites, more art in general -> money costs make it an unreasonable demand
not blank-slate protagonists -> only low tier games have them, most good games have protagonists with a clearly defined personality
did I miss anything?

>>7372951

Both of those are just the main arguments brought to the table by both sides. The discussion is pretty much unresolved. It's just two different philosophies that have been presented at each other.

Actually, not even, on the point of the protags, since "well it's only like that in shitty VNs" is basically agreement. So at least that's conclusive, but that's because there's no more opposition to the point.

At worst, one for two. Not too bad.

Play games by Swaneye. I love watching the girls breathe and the MCs have faces.
http://www.swaneye.com/swaneye/index.html

>>7372973
Maybe I just misunderstood the thread then. Was OP just saying that he likes games with more budget and protagonists with a personality better?
Because it seems to me he was saying that most companies are stupid for not spending more money than they can get back and that everyone should do it, basically ignoring what kind of customers companies are cathering to. Am I wrong?

>>7372987

I believe a pet peeve was being shared.

>>7372782
>Kyousuke
>defined personality

No. He's a blank wall that pretends to have a personality.

He's very much an 'Alex-type' or whatever that guy was talking about.

Play Gothic Delusion, it's a fully animated eroge.

>>7373015

>Hm, kind of a small thumbnail, I guess I'll open it to see what's uUUUAAAAAUGH!

>>7373014
He was a manipulative, money obsessed Oedipus.

>>7373015
>staring into MY SOULLLLLLLLL

>>7373014
He had a personality.
But he was more like a side character watching the real main characters from the side line.
Basically he was the Watson to Haru's Sherlock Holmes.

I don't see why the fact that it's 2011 has anything to do with it. It's not like VNs have been hardware-intensive for a very very long time, if ever.

>>7373015
Not fully animated, just segments of it.

>>7373040
Maybe they SHOULD be hardware-intensive? Where the fuck is my Crisis tier VN?

>>7373177
Mass Effect 2, amirite?

It's clear that the OP has played half a dozen VNs tops, all from years ago.

>>7373177
>Where the fuck is my Crisis tier VN?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Leap

>>7372782
>Plus, it's kind of cool when you get to finally see the protagonist when there's a perspective change, like in Kira Kira, Symphonic Rain, or Ever17.

This, this. It's so cool when you suddenly start playing as somebody else and they get the faceless/voiceless treatment.

Quite often you get to see a completely different perspective on the main protagonist's character, too, like how Chris became a delusional idiot in Symphonic Rain. More games need to do this.

Bump.

>>7376856
Reported, why the fuck would you bump a dead thread to the first page?

>>7372536
>pet peeve