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Hey all, I'm not sure if this topic has been posted before, but if it has I'm sorry ><

Recently while working on the art and script for my game, I've realised that I'm not really sure about the balance of CGs in a Visual Novel. This post mostly addresses plot-based VNs, not dating sims, but feel free to express your opinion on either!

When would one include a CG in the game? From the games I've played, CGs are usually seen when a character makes his first appearance, during important moments in the plot, when the MC makes contact with a "get"-able character (romantic CGs) and during endings, etc. Basically during events or emotional scenes? CGs serve as visual aids (?) of sorts, I assume, that show things that sprites alone cannot.

Also, is there a CG to gameplay ratio? Should story-based games have more CGs or less CGs? I imagine it would be annoying to cut to a scene every few minutes (also it'd be really hard on the CG artist orz)...

Sorry if I'm a bit incoherent! But I'm thoroughly puzzled. T-T

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I've been thinking and doing the same thing lately, and just looking at VNs you can draw some ideas on what to expect. I think it's important to be able to define some of the elements at work in a VN.

1. Character Sprites
These are 'cutouts' of your main characters that stand in the foreground and have a variety of facial emotions, usually these seamlessly swapped by other variations in that there are very few differences between them. (eg the body posture is the same throughout)

2. Background Art
Just as it says, these are the background images that denote the place and setting. These are usually one of the first things that the reader will see. Like the character sprites these might be reused with changes to setting or atmosphere (a scene that's shown at daytime, nightime and etc)

3. Insert Art
This is my own given term for the art, so if you know what it's called please correct me. This is artwork that doesn't actually use the character sprites nor background art and is drawn in it's own entirety - an example would be that the character is drawn into the background (or no background) in a way that it is scene specific and only with a few (or no) variations. These might have interesting angles, details or close-ups. In an eroge these are usually the 'special' scenes.

Examples:

This is from the VN "Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Matsuri", here you can identify the foreground character sprite and the background art.


Here is an example of the 'insert art', which is a visually a lot more complicated than the foreground and background art because of the framing angle and character integration.

If you work through those three elements, you'll find that the least time consuming ones are towards the top of the list (since you can reuse them in many different combinations) and the more taxing ones towards the bottom. I would start out with all the essentials, such as working out how many scenes you need, how many characters and emotions they need and then finally work how many scenes that require insert art.

I hope this helps.

I think you yourself already just listed all the instances where you'd use a CG. xD When it comes to how many, it really is up to you on how many you want and how willing your artist is to draw them. (or how much money you have, if you're commissioning someone) I've played games where each obtainable guy has 25 different CGs, and then I've played games where each guy only has 3 or 4.

Personally, I feel like CGs are kind of like a "cherry on top" sort of thing, so don't feel pressured to have too many.

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Thanks for all the helpful info! I usually decide on where the CGs go as I write the script; it's never really occurred to me to finish the script first ><

I have about 20 CGs for a game with 8000 words so far, and it's likely to increase, waaah. ><

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Yeah, personally I think it'd be better to have the script done before you do CGs. That way, if something comes up and you have to go on hiatus or discontinue the project, you wouldn't have all that work going to waste. That, and because someone else is doing the CGs for me (Jadeookami), we can discuss and decide it together, since she's the artist.

But in reference to the topic? I'd say as many as you need. I know that's vague, but while having a lot can be nice, sometimes less is more.

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I'm a big fan of pre-planning before producing anything. (I went to school for media production so that's how I roll.)

CGs should be used when regular Sprite expressions prove to be insufficient.
The way I work is before the script I have an outline of the story. From the outline I can see some points that I would classify as "special moments" that would better be served with CGs.

The other thing to do is look at other games. Especially JRPGs, where sometimes full-out CGI cutscenes are used and other times, the in-game characters just have conversations.

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The game I'm participating in, ADRIFT, has almost 100,000 words, and only 2 CGs. Lol, seriously. When the very rare fullscreen special graphic comes, it's really an intense scene, such as a plot revelation or touching moment. It's easier and sometimes even more immersive to just take the sprites and animate them furiously during those minor events where you think you may need an event CG but ends up being a mundane scene.

I just took a look at another project, one that I worked on for two and a half years. The folder contained 110 PSD files. So that's 110 files divided into 130 weeks... so basically, it means you should be able to make 1 CG per weekend. In the future I'm only aiming for 40CGs at most (usually I'm tending towards no CG projects).

One thing you should probably also bear in mind is if your VN does contain "get-able" characters; then they should have even amount of CGs for each; eg "4 obtainable guys/girls with 10 CGs 'each'"

Otherwise; people may think that the author is biased to one character or established a canon pairing =P (but ish up to you ^^)

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If it's a free game and you can squeeze in 10 CGs total, that's a lot. Anything more is gravy with cherries and whipped cream on top.


That's probably too many. I like CGs, but how are you going to get them all drawn with the game growing still?

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Haha, that's the problem orz My team was planning for a playtime of 2-3 hours and used Japanese visual novels as a reference for how many CGs they should have. We know they're commercial and we should probably have much less CGs, but most games we researched amounted to about 100-200 CGs per game.

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Unless you have a large team of dedicated artists with lots of time, or you're SUPER-fast, don't even entertain the idea of doing anything in that ballpark.

ToL1 has a playtime of about 15-30 minutes, and it's about 8000 words. If you extrapolate this to 2-3 hours, that's at least 32000 words. Twenty CGs planned for 8000 words so far means you're on track for a planned 20 x 4 = 80 CGs at the very least in a 2-hour game. If you don't scale down the CGs (and possibly the script) I'm 99% sure you will not finish. Trust me, I've been around the OELVN community since it began >_<

I want to see you successfully complete a game!

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If you look carefully, often a single base template will spawn 6-12 variations of the same image.

My baseline is the cheapest no-name VNs from DLsite and they only have 12-16 image gallery slots.

Of course there recently was deIz but that was made by an artist, and the lack of music and too many pictures per wordcount in my opinion was wasted potential. Not to mention Sketchup-looking backgrounds.

Reading this, I feel extremely depressed orz Thanks for the advice! I'm revising the script atm because of pacing issues. So it's likely that I'll be able to throw out a few unnecessary CGs xD We're probably gonna cap it at 80 CGs.


The games we looked at had 100+ base images.

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Japanese visual novels often are much longer than our games (I have been playing Lamento for almost 8 hours total and have seen all of like 6 CGs so far, by the way, and I'm about 60% through one path in the game), they have entire teams of artists working, AND they're commercial. Do not use their work as a standard for your short, free work or you're pretty much doomed to failure like Lemma said. If you have the time and inclination to put 20 CGs in your 8,000 word game, great. But focus on getting the rest of the VN done first.

I was telling this to Auro when we were talking about how many CGs and stuff we wanted in BCM: you need sprites, GUIs, BGs, and obviously the script to have a game. If your game doesn't have CGs, people might be a little off-put, but you still have a game finished. Do all the necessities; things like CGs are just the cherries on top and if you focus on the cherries before you even finish the sundae, you get no dessert. ):

I'm also wondering what games you were looking at, because most otome/BL games in my recent memory still only have around 10-15 base CGs per guy and only 3-5 guys. Add that to another 6-8 general CGs and it's nowhere close to 100-200 CGs. 0_o

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I've realised that! orz


We were looking at Omerta ><

The thing is, compared to sprites, we feel CGs better express the atmosphere we're trying to achieve? Sprites are rather static; although they can change poses and expressions, they still lack perspective and feel a bit too stiff. I'm working on a horror game, so to us, the atmosphere is the most important ><

But I understand what everyone is saying about the amount of CGs leading to people not finishing games, really. We're cutting down!

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