Unpopular opinion: Adult visual novel devs should not be focusing on animations.

What irks me a little are the new Ai "devs". They are devs to a point. They don't create images or animations what little there are. They simply punch in a few lines of text and out pops an image. I know this as I have been toying with Ai a little while now.
I am sure there are some online script editor that can do the coding and dialogue too. I know some Ai devs make animations and images in DAZ which takes time and effort and then use Ai to enhance the images. This is actually brilliant to be honest and I like it.

Still for me animations should enhance something and not rule it. What irks me more are images that have floating characters or clipping or weird lighting more than an animation that is a bit wonky. BUT i agree, slapping in short animations to make us all feel "excited" whilst playing the game doesn't work. Sexy scenes should excite us.

Sky Piece said:

In my opinion, saying Adult Games suffer from animations, is painting with a brush that's too wide. I mean, would you play a touching simulator game if it was only still images and two miles of describing how the mc massages the girl's breasts?

I agree with the notion that time used on animations is time removed from story/dialogue writing, which is critical for VN's.
But there are also genres that are dependent on animations.

Click to expand...

To narrow the definition some, I think you can clearly define games between realtime (such as unreal engine etc.) & image based narrative games (often renpy etc).
-Real time animations are extremely important as they are what is driving the game.
-Image/Narrative based game animations are not as important when stacked up against writing the game itself (and this extends beyond VN). Here interatctions/choices are important, its amazing how much doing something as simple as being able change outfits etc. through dialouge options & having these recognised by the game moving forwards really increases a games interactivity (or many smaller branching animations rather than just chunks of animation).


Edit: ignore the below as off topic - posted in wrong thread
Is there a category tag for 'clicker' type games - i.e. animations joined very, very simply (is there a tag for that)? I feel that if not one is kinda important, particuarly as the AI slop is turning up en masse. A game with 0 interaction beyong clicking next thats not actually created like Novel (VN) shouldnt be given the VN tag.

EDIT: Suggested adding a 'Simple' 'Clicker' or 'VSS' (Visual Short Story) tag or prefix in the tag suggestion thread

suprisedcrankyface said:

Is there a category tag for 'clicker' type games - i.e. animations joined very, very simply (is there a tag for that)? I feel that if not one is kinda important, particuarly as the AI slop is turning up en masse. A game with 0 interaction beyong clicking next thats not actually created like Novel (VN) shouldnt be given the VN tag.

Click to expand...

I think so? If this is what you are talking about.


Also, if a game is only clicking next how would it not be like a VN? Example? Honest question because I can't think of any.

suprisedcrankyface said:

Is there a category tag for 'clicker' type games - i.e. animations joined very, very simply (is there a tag for that)? I feel that if not one is kinda important, particuarly as the AI slop is turning up en masse. A game with 0 interaction beyong clicking next thats not actually created like Novel (VN) shouldnt be given the VN tag.

EDIT: Suggested adding a 'Simple' 'Clicker' or 'VSS' (Visual Short Story) tag or prefix in the tag suggestion thread

Click to expand...

kinetic novel exists as a tag. that's just clicking through a story. but i dont get what animations and how they are done has to do with that.

tanstaafl said:

I think so? If this is what you are talking about.

Click to expand...

I think they are talking about games that have animations and basically nothing else. They are not VNs because there is not enough narrative content to justify the N. Basically 95% sex doll simulator. So, simulator is probably the tag.

Point and Click is a genre of adventure games, like Monkey Island. Or in our porn-brain case games Tales of the Moon or Another Chance.

Sky Piece said:

While reading this thread, I couldn't help but feel that when people are saying Adult Game, they tend to mean Adult Visual Novel. And I get why that is, this site really loves AVN's (just go to LU, sort by weighted rating, and you'll see that 28/30 of the top rated games are visual novels).

In my opinion, saying Adult Games suffer from animations, is painting with a brush that's too wide. I mean, would you play a touching simulator game if it was only still images and two miles of describing how the mc massages the girl's breasts?

I agree with the notion that time used on animations is time removed from story/dialogue writing, which is critical for VN's.
But there are also genres that are dependent on animations.

Please, let's not lump everything together and say "Animations are hurting Adult Games."

Click to expand...

I think the original venture of this post and the title of the thread was specifically for visual novel stuff.

But I'll just go with my other post here about Tweening and bad bones animations because I don't like them in other kinds of games too.

The side-view characters that move their stick-like limbs as if stuck in the 1990's era of hierarchy linked bones and stiff movements can kill it, even if you try to do it with a wonderfully drawn character.

Once those limbs start waggling around like they have a pin at each joint like a paper doll you know you are in for a treat.

I may have missed some great games because of terrible animation, but that's ok! I'll live.

peterppp said:

kinetic novel exists as a tag. that's just clicking through a story. but i dont get what animations and how they are done has to do with that.

Click to expand...

Well its simple really, I got my wires crossed edited the wrong post (was meant to be in 'ban ai in games')

(FYI i was referring to what I would call 'minimalist' games, absolute slop with 0 effort pumped out in a few hours (not a Kinetic novel unless it has 3 images and 4 lines of words).

will delete it out for clarity of anyone reading the forum

My point in this Thread would be to make a comparison to 'good' game art - often its someone using the minimal amount of lines to make to make a very good impression of what they are trying to represent (look at the faces in the drawn games for example, nothing like faces, but can excellently convey whats happening in the story).

So for animations its - the minimal amount of animation to convey your intent is perfect, overly long & over implementation of animations hurt a game. I.e. If a two second animation of 'spanking' & a sprite update to add some red works perfectly, why make a 30 second animation that traps the player when you could just enable the animation to be run a second time. Basically allowing player interaction represented efficiently > long well rendered animation that stalls the game while it runs.

This doesn't apply to kinetic novels, as that's literally just a slideshow so animation or images, its not really changing anything as there 0 interaction.