Get that thing off your chest... Now...

[Maelstrom-Fenrir]

I personally have found agreement in lots of things anonl says in his reviews.

And no I don't think he is someone who believes all evn suck and only jvn are good. To me it doesn't look like he comes off that way at all. He is just harsh and has decently high standards.

He seems to know his stuff pretty well, imo.

[Blane Doyle]

To weigh in on this: Personally I do think he's a bit harsh in his reviews, but I wouldn't just brush off what he says as "well, he just hates EVNs". Deji is right when she says he more or less gives his opinion on things, this is especially true when it comes to him judging the story, but someone's opinion can be helpful, harsh and blunt as it is. In the case of his reviews, I think a good rule of thumb is to take it with a dose of sugar to make it easier to take.

I'm not actually sure if the reviews are meant for other players... or for other CREATORS. Most reviews for other players I read seem to focus a lot on balance and just saying whether or not an aspect is good. These reviews seem more like incredibly blunt feedback that isn't directly given to the creators of the games when it gets past the story part. Since Shira Oka was mentioned, take this piece from the review: "The eyes are sometimes misaligned, and some mouth images have a pixel of black color bleed at one edge."

Though the reviews come off as harsh (because they are) there is some good feedback in there (as shown above). I personally would love to see him review something I made so I can take the most helpful quips and prove that I can use what he says to make something better. I may not agree with his opinion on some things (oh boy do I not agree sometimes), but if he says that I am making the same grammatical error constantly? Well, at least I would know what I did wrong so I can fix it. So that's a plus.

But I actually ask for blunt negative critique so... I don't know if anyone would agree with me. As long as he isn't directly attacking the creators I think his reviews are mostly harmless and potentially helpful. But for the most part?

I go back to what I said before. Flavor his harshness with your seasoning of choice so it's easier to swallow, because I don't think he's going to stop reviewing this way any time soon. The best you can do aside from ignoring them, which I don't think is a good idea given he does give good feedback sometimes in the midst of his harshness, is to just not let his tone bother you. It's difficult, VERY difficult, to do something like that but it is doable.

(But I will say it would be REALLY nice if he would go more into detail about what he thinks is done well and what he liked. Maybe he thinks we get positive feedback enough elsewhere so he feels it isn't overly necessary? His conclusions seem to focus almost entirely on the negative and while it is helpful to know what he thinks can be done better... it would be nice to see him give just a sprinkle of praise for something in there that isn't 1/6 the length of the negative remarks.)

[Donmai]

Hmm... about my entry he wrote: "Surprisingly decent".

I believe this mysterious sentence is in need of a good review .
But I appreciate his comments (I only would like to know why he was so surprised ).

And yes, my English is extraordinarily unwieldy (a new word to my vocabulary), for a very good reason.
(BTW that's why I rarely post on the General Discussion threads. Often I can't understand what people are tallking about and, when I understand, frequently I don't know how to express my thoughts in "Ingrish" without risking to be completely misunderstood).

[Faze]

Phew, just finished setting up the geometry for the 3D in one background. Still need to re-texture it, but I think it's looking pretty nice(the camera mapping):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6zeLKeo ... e=youtu.be

Took me about...fifteen minutes to turn a 2d image into that. Next comes a heavy dose of photoshop on the textures to make them look nicer. Then, I gotta photoshop the window contents right out of the picture to insert an actual water animation behind it, then I gotta animate the curtains. Sounds like a lot but the geometry for everything is actually already done so it shouldn't take long. Surprisingly, this is all going way smoother than I thought it would. Never thought camera mapping 2D images would be easier than camera mapping real pictures. Living and learning!

...Texturing the actual characters is gonna be a bit of a pain, but I have the protagonist modeled and textured already so there's that.

[TrickWithAKnife]

That's beautiful functionality. Which engine are you using, or is it for a video within the game?

[Faze]

That's beautiful functionality. Which engine are you using, or is it for a video within the game?

Thanks! I'm using Unity right now, though the project started on renpy. I mapped the 3D using Blender, then just had Unity render it. I had the camera on a fixed path for the sake of recording it, but it was rendered in real time. You can look left/right/up/down with that map with no problem at all. Luckily it looks like I won't need to mess with shaders too much. The camera mapping is actually doable on Renpy for realtime rendering as well if you are willing to do some annoying(but not really that difficult) math and raycast it all. The only concern(and what really pushed me to switch to Unity) is that raycasting the entire thing was way, way more complicated programming wise and (ironically enough) not overly kind to not-especially-powerful computers.

Funny story: I was originally just programming the entire thing on Renpy, but the more I got into the pseudo-3D stuff I figured it would probably be easier to just use Unity for full 3D than to keep using Renpy. Which is a shame since I do miss Renpy for a lot of things, but I'm half-done with my "borderline usable" VN engine for Unity so things are looking up.

Just for completeness sake, this was the original image before I camera mapped it:

[Kinjo]

For me, I consider anonl's reviews a sort of litmus test for determining whether or not an EVN is any good. That said, I can usually make these same judgements myself when I play the game. But as a creator I should make it a goal to know what my audience likes and dislikes, and that is where anonl's reviews are most helpful.

What did Person X's game do right? What did it do wrong? Now look at A, B, C, and D. How do they all compare? What are ALL of them doing right, what are ALL of them doing wrong? If you look at all of his reviews he always judges by the same (high) standards, and that, to me, actually makes the reviews worthwhile. The lack of a numerical rating system also helps by scrutinizing each individual element rather than the whole, making for more detailed and more effective feedback.

Reviews that are sugarcoated with needless praise defeat the purpose of the review in the first place. Setting a high standard for EVN is the only way to ensure that high-quality EVN are made, and I often get annoyed when bad games are given good reviews (especially when it's because the reviewer doesn't want to hurt the creator's feelings). Separate the creator from their work for a bit and just realize objectively where the work stands, and it can be made a whole lot better than if it remains sheltered the whole time.

In short, the problem isn't that anonl is too negative with his reviews. The problem is that most EVN are so bad that an honest review will earn a negative response from him.

[TrickWithAKnife]

@Faze:

Any chance you'd be willing to share some code snippets or references you used for 3D in Ren'Py? I'm sure there would be a lot of people who would be interested, even if it was very limited.

[Faze]

@Faze:

Any chance you'd be willing to share some code snippets or references you used for 3D in Ren'Py? I'm sure there would be a lot of people who would be interested, even if it was very limited.

Oh yeah sure, absolutely. It's only pseudo 3D, mind you, since it was just raycasting, but I can definitely post the code later. It's the same principle SusanTheCat described here with some small adjustments over texture quality. I just need to clean it up a bit because it's a bit disorganized(I'm the type of person who leaves unused code in the middle of functional code up until the clean-up time comes. I'll definitely post it if people are interested in it though, just need some time to do some cleanup first.

I can also make a tutorial on the 2d-to-3d thing. I'm not sure if it would actually be helpful to anybody though, even considering I think it would still be useful even if you were making a 2D game for videos.

[papillon]

I have no problem with anonl's reviews - the only thing that annoys me is (no offence Kinjo) some people using them as a guideline of quality without taking the time to understand the approach. I've seen people look over the review blog and conclude that "All of these games are complete crap because he had something negative to say about each of them!"

And that's just silly. There's not a game or VN or piece of art in the world that doesn't have flaws.

If you read the reviews dispassionately as a "here are things I noticed" rather than a "this is why it's shit" and judge for yourself whether those things would make a game unplayable for you, you'll have a very different experience than if you're trawling the blog looking for an unequivocal thumbs-up.

And that, I think, is part of why some people would like to see more accent on the positive. Not pointless praise, which is useless for developers, but so that potential players will stop using those reviews as "proof" that games are all terrible.

[TrickWithAKnife]

@Faze:

Any chance you'd be willing to share some code snippets or references you used for 3D in Ren'Py? I'm sure there would be a lot of people who would be interested, even if it was very limited.

Oh yeah sure, absolutely. It's only pseudo 3D, mind you, since it was just raycasting, but I can definitely post the code later. It's the same principle SusanTheCat described here with some small adjustments over texture quality. I just need to clean it up a bit because it's a bit disorganized(I'm the type of person who leaves unused code in the middle of functional code up until the clean-up time comes. I'll definitely post it if people are interested in it though, just need some time to do some cleanup first.

I can also make a tutorial on the 2d-to-3d thing. I'm not sure if it would actually be helpful to anybody though, even considering I think it would still be useful even if you were making a 2D game for videos.

I'd be one of the people who would be interested in reading a guide like that, for sure.

[Faze]

@Faze:

Any chance you'd be willing to share some code snippets or references you used for 3D in Ren'Py? I'm sure there would be a lot of people who would be interested, even if it was very limited.

Oh yeah sure, absolutely. It's only pseudo 3D, mind you, since it was just raycasting, but I can definitely post the code later. It's the same principle SusanTheCat described here with some small adjustments over texture quality. I just need to clean it up a bit because it's a bit disorganized(I'm the type of person who leaves unused code in the middle of functional code up until the clean-up time comes. I'll definitely post it if people are interested in it though, just need some time to do some cleanup first.

I can also make a tutorial on the 2d-to-3d thing. I'm not sure if it would actually be helpful to anybody though, even considering I think it would still be useful even if you were making a 2D game for videos.

I'd be one of the people who would be interested in reading a guide like that, for sure.

Alright, I'll prepare one of those as soon as I have time then - should be around this weekend, I think. Those things are pretty easy to set up once you get past the "Say what now" stage. Just one question though, where would a 2d-to-3d thing go, exactly? Creator Discussion or Ren'py Cookbook?

[DaFool]

Alright, I'll prepare one of those as soon as I have time then - should be around this weekend, I think. Those things are pretty easy to set up once you get past the "Say what now" stage. Just one question though, where would a 2d-to-3d thing go, exactly? Creator Discussion or Ren'py Cookbook?

+1 to this. Cookbook would be nice, and just a followup post to one of the Ren'Py 3D topics (either Susan's topic or another one) just for cross-referencing.

[Blane Doyle]

There's not a game or VN or piece of art in the world that doesn't have flaws.

100% correct. Nothing will ever be flawless, it's theoretically impossible. And even if majority can find no flaws in something, someone else will because they may be looking at it different.

If you read the reviews dispassionately as a "here are things I noticed" rather than a "this is why it's shit" and judge for yourself whether those things would make a game unplayable for you, you'll have a very different experience than if you're trawling the blog looking for an unequivocal thumbs-up.

And that, I think, is part of why some people would like to see more accent on the positive. Not pointless praise, which is useless for developers, but so that potential players will stop using those reviews as "proof" that games are all terrible.

You just said one of the EXACT reasons why I would like to see more positive notes in his reviews. Looking through his reviews again, while he has many negative notes... he's never outright stated "this game is bad". He's said "bland". He's said "I hate this". He actually said "it's not awful, just generic" once in one of his conclusions. So it seems like he's not trying to say everything he plays is bad, the negatives are just what he seems to focus on.

The other is that it is nice to know what you are doing right so you can, at the very least, try to keep level quality in that area while trying to improve in others. Knowing what needs more focus and what can remain the same for a short while instead of just your worst aspects is helpful in my opinion. (If majority says my dialogue is fine but my scenery description needs less detail, I know to keep said dialogue from getting worse while improving scenery description at the same time, for example.)

[Kinjo]

I have no problem with anonl's reviews - the only thing that annoys me is (no offence Kinjo) some people using them as a guideline of quality without taking the time to understand the approach. I've seen people look over the review blog and conclude that "All of these games are complete crap because he had something negative to say about each of them!"

And that's just silly. There's not a game or VN or piece of art in the world that doesn't have flaws.

(My post started out as a response to you, but it may have turned into a general rant. This is the thread for that, thankfully.)

Sure, I'll agree that some games are worse than others, and that simply having something negative to say does not automatically make a game bad. When video games published by big companies are released, they can have lots of negatives too. That's what a review is, an analysis of the positives and the negatives.

All I'm saying is that creators should pay more attention to anonl's reviews rather than call them overly negative and ignore them, because he's being honest about his experience reading the game. His opinion matters too -- and more often than not he isn't the only person with that opinion. I'm quite glad he reviews things the way he does, because he ends up saying a lot of things that I don't have to.

He doesn't just tear a game apart, though; he explains what was wrong with it and what could have been done to fix it. If he says the sprites don't look natural, chances are other people are thinking that too. You could ignore what he's saying, or you could go read up on anatomy and become a better artist. If the advice is taken, the game becomes better, and you learn a life skill too.

Maybe some people are more lenient when rating VNs, but personally I'm not. Why is there no music? Why are the text and GUI so hard to read? Why did the developer pick such an annoying sound effect? Why are there meaningless choices? And why is the game crashing every ten pages? If I'm asking myself questions like these, I can't tell myself that game is good. These VNs exist, you will find them in his reviews, and you will find that these reviews are negative.

I'd like to see more long/serious VNs being made rather than short 5-minute parodies or "Worst VN Ever" kind of stuff that can be made in two weeks. It's easy to make something that's bad. Trying to make something that's good is a lot harder, but considerably more rewarding if accomplished. Even if it takes forever to get the game out, it's better than releasing a bad one.