Why stop at MC's name?

[RafaelLipsitz]

I have only dreamed about my AVN and started watching tutorials. So, the first step is asking the MC's name. Why not continue and ask Cut or Uncut, ethnicity, etc ... I would expect the more specific the questions become the more problematic the answers impact the visuals. I'm guessing that skin tone has no impact on animations. That cut vs. uncut may only play during hand jobs and other close animations. Ethnicity would have a large impact on facial expressions, or maybe not.

I would expect it is not as simple as assigning a unique name but does it become and unyielding problem to assign the others.

 

[FleshSac]

Unless you're making a fully 3d game that isn't an actual visual novel, every choice you make available is more work for you. Black or white character? That's two images for every shot he's in. But you should have a Latino option, right? There's 3. Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern? No problem... that's just rendering 6 images every single time he's on screen... no big deal.

Oh... now it's sex time. Circumcised or Uncircumcised? Now we're up to just a simple dozen images to render every time our hero has his cock out.

You should probably add in choice for hair color, too, though. Just the basic three colors should be enough... that's just 18 different images everytime our mc is on screen. Hopefully his hair won't be in the shot when his cock is out because 36 variable images might start to become the slightest bit of a pain to do.

Keep it simple. Make the MC you want to make and tell the story you want to tell. The more choices you give in the visual department, the less likely it is you'll ever complete a version .01.

 

[PrinceOfShades]

Basically, this is only viable as long as the game you're making is using drawn 2D art. And the way to do it is by adding another drawing on top to change color or body parts.

If you're rendering 3D shots, then this is a huge issue because of the extra time spent and space occupied. Most people don't care about appearance beyond the gender of the main character, so there are just a ton of downsides with no real benefit.

 

[woody554]

the way to do character maker in renpy is to use strictly defined generic poses (like oldskool VNs) and build the character from parts by composition. so all eyes fit any character and bigger boobs are just a matter of switching the image file and so on. essentially you limit yourself to 1-3 standing poses and only change backgrounds. this is what every flash game did for 30 years.

yeah it removes any visual interest from your game, but it does work for telling a story. it's also very complicated for a beginner, but that's how you do it.

but the other idea of rendering full alternative renders for every difference is just not sane. you're not only doubling your work (wich is already too much for 99% of people) but actually increasing it exponentially because of the combinatorial explosion.

I suggest you only use that for limited time events, like maybe you take a vacation and there's a story choice for shaven/unshaven pussy with alternative renders. but when you come back home it's back to default render. limit the scope.

if you have the ability to make realtime 3d game (which you obviously don't have) it becomes trivial. you just model different versions and interpolate between them based on factors the user selected in character maker. but the cons are you need to know quite a bit more about graphics engineering, and you'll still be limited to the poses you make. like illusion games, you have a ton of fancy sliders in character maker but only like 3 different sex positions. (you can of course make more, but it'll increase clipping problems when differently proportioned characters use the same animations.)

THE REAL QUESTION though is: is it worth the additional work? and sadly no. all the flavour variations have negligible added value, while adding astronomical amount of exhausting work you won't be able to survive.

 

[anne O'nymous]

that's just 18 different images everytime our mc is on screen.

The changes are never just visuals, what mean that it's not just 18 different variation for each images, but also the dialogs, and sometimes the story, that have to be tweaked accordingly.

By example, if he's uncircumcised in a US setting, it will be rare enough for it to be mentioned by some girls.
If he's really tall, the shortest girls will probably complain about it time to time, while some of the girls will probably find it cute if he's shorter than them.
If he don't have the dominant skin color in the game setting, he'll stand out more often, what shouldn't just be felt by the visuals. And if the story need him to investigate on something, standing out will make the investigation more difficult.

 

[Hadley]

Because you would have to render everything 10x. Makes no fucking sense when 99% of your Players will want to play a young white male.