Tropes, Characters and Circumstances in Incest games: Suggestions ad Favourites

[Volta]

I've seen a few good examples of well executed honey select visuals, Waifu academy is visually about as good as honey select gets that I've seen so far, from what i can see it is more difficult to get original and recognisably unique characters out of HS than in Daz, now i've no tplayed with HS personally so this is observational only however i have tried Daz and getting unique characters is as simple as playing around with combinations of slider packs and preset models until you're happy, the problem is that getting a good looking character out of that is both time intensive and taste subjective.

I would say that too many people use the same off the peg Daz models, however that doesn't mean that those characters aren't good, Max for example, from BB, he is practically commons free he's so widely used now, it is however a pretty good model for a guy of 18-20 and the designer who popped him out of Zbrush deserves plenty of praise, it's a good model and anyone who has mastered the arcane art of Zbrush to that level has my respect. I've played with the "character creation" in Daz for a while, some of the results are even passable now, it does take time to do however, you're looking at a few hours for the face and roughly the same for the body if you don't use presets and just use sliders ,especially if you're quite picky like me, this represents a fair amount of work right at the beginning of a project and i can see why devs would want to jump right into posing and rendering some sample stuff, but honestly at least tweak the stock presets a bit or at least use HQ models and skins, preferably HQ models, skins and some custom shaping, but perhaps i'm asking too much, there are only so many good Daz assets out there and expecting Devs to go from scratch in Zbrush and photoshop(textures) is far over the head of the average Dev.

In short i'm ok with the Daz staples, they're great, but variety would be nice too.

 

[gamersglory]

We would kill for a Real 3D artist using Z-Brush and a real programmer. but budget-wise it's cheaper to have a good set of Daz models and the skill to use morphing tools to create a few one off's. You really have to put the money into great assists and the time into each render. Photoshop is one of those things ware Devs use it but they overuse it or they just don't know how and the end product looks weird. The biggest problem I see with daz renders is Noisey unfinished renders. That look like something on an old tube tv ware the signal is not great

 

[hameleona]

I still don't get the constant bitching about people using the same models. Big deal. Movies use a lot of the same actors.

All the talk with Japanese words here reminded me of another personal gripe with many games - the anime cast.
Now, I know the depraved glorious bastards in Japan have done a lot, when it comes to adult gaming, but come on. All those (whatever)dere characters fall flat on their faces, when inserted in to a western style novel. Not to mention, that if your character is described just as a "tsundere" - you just created a flat character.
Basically, ether embrace the anime and manga styles of storytelling, writing and tropes or avoid them. Or be really, really, really confident you have the writing skills to mix western and eastern style story telling and keep it consistent. I'm pretty certain most developers don't have the skill to do it.

As for what a game is... there is no consensus of what is considered a game. When our languages developed there were very few games as a whole. Interactive literature is less than 100 years old. Video games are even younger. Everybody has their own idea of where to draw a line. For example I don't really consider Katawa Shuojo a game, even if it technically has a fail-state and bad endings. You pick a choice, see how the story unfolds and while the few choices you make are important, there are no rules to guide you. You pick a choice, read on and go cry in a corner (usually). But that is just me.

 

[redknight00]

I still don't get the constant bitching about people using the same models. Big deal. Movies use a lot of the same actors.

Humans have charisma and presence in scene, drawings/renders do not. Which is also one of the biggest reasons why anime/manga/comics often exaggerate action and expressions and others things for increased dramatic effect.

Regarding the use of japanese tropes, they are as good as any for a surface level definition of characters, of course creators still need to go deeper than that but it doesn't mean they don't have their worth. For example, Waifu Academy does a good use of such tropes to get the player familiar with the 20+ female cast of the game, or Grisaia no Kajitsu that takes the most popular girl archetypes and builds deep stories expanding on the concepts, such as the tsundere that has actual split personalities.

 

[Volta]

I don't have a huge problem with the Japanese character tropes though pigeon holing characters as "just tsundere" is lazy at best, the same way "lovelorn little sister" is lazy on it's own, if you can sum up any character well in a handful of words then they aren't a deep character, doesn't mean they are a bad character just that the depth isn't there.

I've not got the most extensive background in in anime and manga(DBZ sort of left me cold but i was hooked on Gundam as a kid) but the problem i have with a lot of it and in fact a lot of mainstream media(not just TV, games and films but books too) is that i can watch 1/3rd of an episode/film/game ect. and know exactly what the twists will be, when roughly they will happen and how the characters will react to it and with in a little how things will work out "for the best" in the end. That is part of what switches me on with VNs, they aren't as limited to the standard formula that most media is(many are but a greater proportion are not when compared to mainstream media) perhaps this is because of the replay-ability and the meaningful choices allowing the writer to put in optional deaths (DoD, Depraved Awakening) quite drastic plot shifts and the option to get a less than perfect ending.

speaking of less than perfect ending, lets use DoD as an example, it's not a perfect game by any means, the mystery of it was somewhat less than a lot of the people on the f95 thread thought it was going to be but something and as such the ending felt a little flat, what it did do well was the "bad" or corruption ending, specifically it's a bad end as an ending not as game over which i like, it also makes the good and harem endings all the sweeter when you get around to working out how to get those. (effectively staying as a VN rather than encroaching into the old "game over you died, hit load to not suck as much next time" thing that games do, which if only minimal gameplay is present gets pretty old very quickly)