Does anybody even read video game dialogue? Or: How I learned to cut down text so people would stop ignoring my work |
- Does anybody even read video game dialogue? Or: How I learned to cut down text so people would stop ignoring my work
- Better to stay in company and ship game or accept new job?
- New game jam for charity! Godot Fire Jam
- DINO CRISIS Recreated in Dreams
- What is your favorite game and what sort of impact did it have?
- when is researching turns to a waste of time / procrastination from actually making the game? (or story writing?)
- how to give 2d game a better look with less performance hit
- I created a high quality pack of low poly swords!
- Make Knife Hit on Unity
- Can anyone point me to an algorithm for drawing 2d lines that gives just ONE pixel per scanline at what would effectively be the pixel closest to the real line?
- Struggling a lot with level design, gameplay momentum
- need some help/advice or pro tips
- Idle Game, rendering issue with dynamic elements using RequestAnimationFrame()
- have a question/need advice
- How do you get past that point?
- I made my first original game on Godot Engine
- Plop Stories?
- What kind of Tools you use or with which mobile games Ad networks/partners are you working to acquire more users? Need recommendations!
- Will you receive a 1099 Tax form from Valve if your game makes no money? (For example, free games)
- Full time programmer + Masters in Data Science student + game dev = burnout?
- How can I keep the text in a fixed position even if the camera rotates in SFML C ++?
- Is it not illegal to sell ripped off animation on Asset Store?
| Posted: 27 Sep 2021 09:20 AM PDT Okay, so bear with me here. I'm actually the writer for a game I'm working on, along with a few other roles. I know that obviously some people enjoy narrative. The thing is, in our playtests, the vast vast vast majority of people kept skipping all the dialogue. We didn't measure anything properly but it was obvious that most players were skipping most of the content. Our game is, erhm, an arcade metroidvania precision platformer of sorts. So not exactly narrative-driven. I know that we can't expect everyone to be interested in the dialogue in such a game - which is why we were wondering whether we needed to do something about it, or just accept that players didn't care about dialogue and move on. In the end, we decided to try and change the situation, for two main reasons. Reason 1: I put a lot of effort into the dialogue.A bit selfish, yeah, but still. I made sure every line had a purpose, that every character had personality and a unique way of speaking, set up a bit of a mystery to make players intrigued, with a lot of depth and hints that make sense in hindsight. All the good stuff. I went out of my way to come up with catchy in-universe names for the regions, enemies and other elements, and had the characters mention them casually in dialogue so you could pay attention to make sense of the world. I also included plenty of humor, with a few recurring jokes and subtle leaning on the forth wall from time to time. The plot itself has a bit of a funny premise, so it all flowed quite naturally from it. Again, I know that this is a bit of a selfish point - so far, it's about getting my efforts recognized rather than the worrying about players' experience. However, even from the players' perspective, it's not so good for all that stuff to be ignored. I could tell that the few people who read the narrative quite enjoyed it. They were really engaged, and mostly noticed and complimented a lot of the stuff I mentioned above. So I knew that it was an enjoyable aspect of the game, at least to some - and well, it only makes sense to try and change things up so more people would enjoy it, right? Reason 2: The experience of purposefully skipping large amounts of content is not fun.For the player to fully skip the dialogue, their brain must going "ohhh godddddd get onnnn with ittttt", which isn't the feeling we aim to generate on people who trusted us to entertain them (thought it may be the feeling you are experiencing right now as you realize how long this post is) We decided to take a step back and try and find where things were going wrong - just as we would do when we wanted a part of the game to be challenging and players found it too easy, or when we wanted something to feel rewarding but players found it annoying instead. We've experimented a lot with the content itself, along with other factors such as how often there was text to read, how the interactions with NPCs worked, in how many lines it was broken down, etc. After a lot more experimentation and playtesting, we've managed to change things up so the majority of players read a significant portion of the dialogue. Again, no figures to share, sadly, just a feeling that most players had started reading most of the content instead of the opposite. Before I tell you what were the problems we found and their solutions, contemplate the two versions of the following conversation: Before —Wow, the creature just won't get tired! He —Yes, I do dig what you mean, Adamastor. —No doubt. He really likes them, huh? —Perhaps he tries to collect those so —Nah, pretty sure he just likes them. Is —Aw, poor sap. Well, there is no point in After —Wow, he just won't get tired, huh? My man just —Far out! This hero is the cat's pajamas! They did —No doubt. He's THIRSTY for them. Look at how much —I do dig what you mean. He really likes coins! I saw —Nah, pretty sure he's just having fun. I think he's Now, the problemsIf you have some experience with writing, you might read these two samples and argue that all I did was write better the second time. I think that's true, but let's get into the specifics of what I think was making people skip, and how I managed to improve it. Problem 1: There was too much dialogue.That's probably the most obvious thing to consider if people are skipping most of the dialogue, right? We've removed about 30% of the encounters with NPCs, and spaced them further apart, especially in the beginning of the game, so as not to overwhelm players with text. Obvious in retrospect. We tried to make the remaining encounters as short as we could, as well. In the example above, the second version has 96 words as opposed to 116 - so about 80% of the previous number of words. There's one less bit of dialogue too, so you can read it all in five button presses, as opposed to six. (I'm calling each of a characters' lines a "bit" of dialogue, so as not to confuse the word line with actual lines of text which I also talk about in the post.) (Also, I'll take this moment to apologize to our producer who, throughout the development of the game, told me he was worried that I was writing too much dialogue about 96 trillion times.) Problem 2: The amount of text shown at a time was too long.Even though our text bubble is pretty small, we noticed that people were very likely to skip dialogue when text filled it up completely (which would happen when a bit of text ended up being four lines). I've then revised all the dialogue in the game, and we've made some adjustments to how the text is displayed, aiming to have mostly two lines of text on-screen at a time, with a three-liner only on occasion - and never four. You can tell that there's only ever two lines at once in the second version. Problem 3: The dialogue wasn't dense enough.In our game, there are three main reasons why a bit of dialogue could be engaging. Either it's useful (gameplay-wise), interesting (contributes to worldbuilding) or funny (makes players laugh I guess). When I was revising everything, I've noticed that even though most bits of dialogue fulfilled at least one of these purposes, some of the words in the bits weren't helping any of them. So as I needed to make things shorter anyway, I tried to find ways to trim things down while keeping the humor, usefulness or wordbuilding aspects of the content. In the first example, the "all day" in the first line was pointless, along with the "The creature" which can be understood just as well if changed into "he". On line 4, I've completely removed the bit about the character wondering if the hero gets coins to battle bosses or not - it didn't contribute to any of the aspects above. The "He really likes them" I changed into "He's THIRSTY for them" which is supposed to be funny and help further show the character's personality. I've even added a thing here and there in ways that increased the engaging-stuff-per-word-ratio, such as calling coins "giant golden coins". This became kind of a recurring fourth wall joke about the NPCs reacting to the fact that there's a bunch of giant coins floating around everywhere for the player to get. Problem 4: The dialogue wasn't skimmable enough.Another thing we noticed is that sometimes a bit of dialogue was referencing the previous bit, which required the player to keep a lot of stuff in their heads to understand what was going on. That means that as the player skims through the dialogue, they'll often not understand what the text on-screen is talking about because they didn't pay enough attention, or don't remember what was said the previous bit. In the first example, the second bit uses "them" to refer to "shiny objects" from the previous bit. Then on lines four and five, pronouns are used again to refer to the coins. In the second one, I got rid of all that, so each bit can stand on its own. Problem 5: The characters' personalities were too subtle.To keep things fresh, I made a point to have each character in the game speak in a very characteristic way. The thing is, I ended up being a bit subtle with it, and some players didn't notice what I was going for at all. I suspect that, by not being over the top with the characters' personalities, it instead felt like they were just all speaking weirdly in general, and not each with a particular type of weird. As you can hopefully notice, the second character from the examples above uses hilariously outdated slang, and the first one uses vocabulary that I have personally, painstakingly lifted from actual teenagers' tiktok comments. In the second version, I was way more blatant, to the point that it can't really be missed and everyone should at least get the joke. This relates to point 3 as it was a way of adding more of what matters, and was one of the few changes that I made which increased the amount of text a little bit, though the increase was minor when compared to the other things that drastically decreased it. When the second character says "Far out! The hero is the cat's pajamas" - that was just adding stuff. But I thought the stuff I added did such a good job in the dialogue, it was worth the space, and increased the "density" of good stuff overall. It's finally overAnyway, yeah. As you can tell, I like to write. I genuinely think this is the most important stuff I learned writing for this game, so I thought I'd share here. If you have dealt with a similar problem, I'd love to know about how you handled it, or about your thoughts in general with regards to players ignoring dialogue, or just hear your two cents on what I shared here. I'll be around madly refreshing this page and answering your comments for as long as I can. (Another reason why I posted this is because I secretly want you to check out Super Mombo Quest on Steam, thank you very much. But don't tell anyone.) [link] [comments]  | ||
| Better to stay in company and ship game or accept new job? Posted: 27 Sep 2021 03:56 AM PDT I'm a concept artist currently working on a AAA title. Wild story but I didn't technically get 'hired' into the team but integrated into it as the last company I was at got bought by this bigger studio. I never felt I fit into the place and my style wasn't entirely align with the new game style (fantasy, painted, stylised). However saying that, the team seems happy with my work and I've been here for almost a year now. They're not ones to waste time on people who aren't up to par and I've seen many fired for this. Now recently I caught the attention from another AAA company I'd been wanting to join for a long time, their salary is likely much higher and the style is far more complementary to my work. The issue I have is that I hear it is better to have completed, shipped titles in your portfolio. I already have one title but this will be my second, and first AAA game. The likely chances of me getting a pay rise staying here is slim... Since I'm not exactly excelling. The duration I have to stay may be another 1-2 years before it is shipped, and by that time I don't know if the offer for the other company will still stand. What should I do? Some advice please :( *Edit: thanks for the advice guys. I'm still mulling things over as there are other factors such as differing work environments, but the comments here really helped put things into better perspective for me! [link] [comments]  | ||
| New game jam for charity! Godot Fire Jam Posted: 27 Sep 2021 09:01 AM PDT Hi all, Relatively new here, but not to game dev in general, as I've been working with the Godot game engine for several years now. I've finally decided to hold my own jam! There are a few things that set it apart from other jams, but the biggest part is there are very large prizes...actually bonkers how much money I'm giving away. :) Come check it out if that sounds interesting, and feel free to join up! https://itch.io/jam/godot-fire-charity-jam-1 [link] [comments]  | ||
| DINO CRISIS Recreated in Dreams Posted: 27 Sep 2021 08:27 AM PDT
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| What is your favorite game and what sort of impact did it have? Posted: 27 Sep 2021 03:43 AM PDT For me it would be Viper Racing which got me interested in the physics of racing and lead me to specialize in building racing games. It felt ahead of its time to me as it allowed clutch and shifter inputs which most other games did not. The AI also had no catchup so to win you had to get good. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 27 Sep 2021 03:00 AM PDT do you guys have seen or experience or maybe there's a name for this situation where one keeps writing the story - never finishing that story yet, and or keeps researching scientific / mechanical stuff that no one (not them) knows if it will even be used in the game. maybe its ok to write the story and complete it first before doing any programming? or what are your thoughts? Im looking to hear from more experienced people thank you. is continuous researching a form of procrastination? or its reasonable to do it? [link] [comments]  | ||
| how to give 2d game a better look with less performance hit Posted: 27 Sep 2021 07:02 AM PDT i Have created a game with bloom post effect but as soon as i turn on bloom the performance drops drastically like previously it was 20 or 40% gpu usage now its like 100% with fps drop on android made with unity and anyone know how to give it a better look neon like or florescent [link] [comments]  | ||
| I created a high quality pack of low poly swords! Posted: 27 Sep 2021 11:52 AM PDT
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| Posted: 27 Sep 2021 07:11 AM PDT
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| Posted: 27 Sep 2021 06:33 AM PDT I know I can just walk Bresenhams and do it that way, but I wondered if there was a specific algorithm for it that single steps the points, rather then just discarding the oodles of unnecessary points on low slope lines (for example). [link] [comments]  | ||
| Struggling a lot with level design, gameplay momentum Posted: 27 Sep 2021 04:43 AM PDT Howdy hey folks, new-ish dev here. I've been working fine on rpgs and the like for ages, but the transition to platformer design has me stumped. My game's heavily built around speed and rocketing around as fast as possible, using weapon recoil to propel yourself and slide around. The problem is, I don't know what games use that I can study to create good levels. Worse, trying to draw levels out at scale on my computer seems to run into technical issues with line quality that make it hard to design grander overall levels that click with the gameplay loop I'm going for. Does anyone have any advice or guidance here? I know what I want the game levels to be, but I can't seem to make the level design start towards that ideal. [link] [comments]  | ||
| need some help/advice or pro tips Posted: 27 Sep 2021 12:06 PM PDT Sorry for the 2nd post, im just trying to find something out specific This goes out to anyone whos marketed their upcoming game or broadcasted their game or company online… If you used paid ads or advertisement, was there a noticeable difference as compared to not advertising or doing ads? I know that advertising your game is a lot different of a market than say using ads or advertisement to promote a business, especially if its an indie game like me that has a more limited audience? Although i could be wrong If anyone is able to help or share how using ads has helped their game out, then that would be very helpful...that or what else you recommend that i can do. Any advice and help would be very appreciated. thanks [link] [comments]  | ||
| Idle Game, rendering issue with dynamic elements using RequestAnimationFrame() Posted: 27 Sep 2021 12:04 PM PDT Hi All, I am a pretty novice programmer but I am trying to work on an idle game, I have an array of elements (animals) that I need to render out, but it has to be done dynamically because the array is always changing. Sometimes there may be 0 items, sometimes there may be 100. Currently, my gameloop looks like the following (simplified) My renderUI function ends up calling the code below to render out the array of animals, and the problem is that it is being re-rendered so frequently that the onclick attached to the div element doesn't appear to end up being clickable. What is the best/proper way to render elements like this? The code works when hardcoded into the html file, but it seems that it is being re-rendered so fast that I can't click the button. Oddly enough when I use Chromes developer tools (F12) and simulate a mobile device, the clicking actually works. Not sure what the difference is. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 27 Sep 2021 12:04 PM PDT So there's a old xbl indie game now steam that long story short, is about to have a long awaited update release on steam But I need help I need help in figuring out the best way to push the game or advertise it for others to see. Obv this isn't a business I'm trying to advertise bcs if it was or if it was a product then Facebook or google would be perfect, but as one of my friends said... "The biggest issue is we aren't a business, we are selling an indie game. An indie game on steam. A sandbox vixel based indie game on steam. That is a very specific target demographic that social media will innately struggle to find users for" Personally I do know that even a few paid posts would help Obv having a great trailer does help But I'm not sure what All my options are... This is what my friend wants... "Speaking for myself, I'm not going to read some link, full of information in which most of it isn't relevant. I simply don't have the time, or interest. Honestly speaking, I don't think facebook ads, or youtube ads, even twitter ads will help in any way. I think they will be a waste of money. You're going to have to show me some very solid data to convince me otherwise." I have some screenshots of some of the conversation Pretty much...what should I do? What do you guys recommend I do?are there any good sites or companies or services that would be useful? Any and all advice helps out [link] [comments]  | ||
| How do you get past that point? Posted: 27 Sep 2021 11:51 AM PDT I am fairly new to game dev, I only finished one game so far that I released for free on itch and that was played by around 30 people… Anyway I always reach that point when I start a new project, once I'm about 3/4 weeks in. The initial motivation and excitement is gone, my code starts to look messy and confusing, the game is very buggy, and doesn't look good, cause I didn't put any efforts into the graphics or the UI yet, and nobody cares about the project, since all I have to show is an ugly buggy mess… So my question is how do you get past that point where you already put a lot of work into your game but you don't really have much to show for it yet? [link] [comments]  | ||
| I made my first original game on Godot Engine Posted: 27 Sep 2021 11:46 AM PDT (only for Windows 64 bits at the moment) https://broqui-game.itch.io/fireoc (Note: the game is still in development) [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 27 Sep 2021 05:46 AM PDT I write interactive fiction for a company and worked at another previously. However, a bunch of co-workers and I have been reached out by Plop Stories to put our work on their interactive fiction site. That's usually a red flag for me, but I also always check Glassdoor as well but I couldn't find them on there and same with their company (penbound partners private limited). I tried to find other reviews that wasn't on their App Store, but again, I couldn't really find anything or even a journal either praising or telling people to stay away. It's interesting too that they're a 12+ app and they market erotica 😳 (though I know the app story can be a little weird when trying to change the rating system). So! Does anyone have any experience working for Plop Stories or have heard of more than what I have found? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 27 Sep 2021 05:24 AM PDT Hi all! We are a mobile kids games developer and are looking for more channels for User Acquisition. Would really appreciate your recommendations for some Tools that you use or Ad networks that you partner with to acquire users. Thanks!!! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Will you receive a 1099 Tax form from Valve if your game makes no money? (For example, free games) Posted: 27 Sep 2021 06:58 AM PDT Do you still receive tax forms if you make no money on Steam Store? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Full time programmer + Masters in Data Science student + game dev = burnout? Posted: 27 Sep 2021 10:05 AM PDT I am a recent college grad working as a full time programmer/data scientist. I fell in love with game dev during school. I have an idea for a simulator game and I want to make something of professional quality. I am worried that programming all day, then programming/doing homework, and then throwing in game dev on top of it is a recipe for burnout. My friends think going this route is a bad idea and I should get a hobby outside of programming (modular synths catch my eye). Should I abandon game dev for now and maybe come back later in life? [link] [comments]  | ||
| How can I keep the text in a fixed position even if the camera rotates in SFML C ++? Posted: 27 Sep 2021 10:03 AM PDT I am programming the engine for a 2D game and as with GameObjects, I would like the camera to move and rotate. Using the sf::View functions is pretty easy to do, but the problem is that the HUD text will look rotated. Is there a way to make all the HUD elements unaffected by this rotation and stay in position permanently? I leave a link to a video in which I show the problem. The text that says "Score" is the one I was referring to. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Is it not illegal to sell ripped off animation on Asset Store? Posted: 27 Sep 2021 09:03 AM PDT https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/animations/samurai-katana-animset-87700 I was searching for good animations in Unity Asset Store, and I stumbled upon this. and it looked so famillar... soon I recognized it is same animations from Ni-Oh, made by KOEI-TECMO. I found it out because I literally completed those series, while some others could not aware of that animation assets came from other games. It has been 4 years from that asset been on Unity Asset Store, which could make thousands of sellings. So, my question is... doesn't Unity manage those kind of illegal thing? What if some small company/indie game didn't acknowleged infringement as they 'legally' bought from Asset store, and uses this kind of 'rip-off' and published their game, and got sued by the big game companies? Why does Unity sells this kind of things without much supervision for copyright? Or is it safe to copy the animations from big games and sell or uses in their game? How someone can know about those infringement when buying some graphical assets from store? Asset shopping would be so dangerous without proper administration from store owners like Unity / Epic. // I'm sorry for my short English skill, as English is not my mothertongue. If there is any rude word or unpleasnt feeling in my post, I apologize. [link] [comments]  |
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