How do you credit people in your VN?

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Catlip Candy
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How do you credit people in your VN?

#1 Post by Catlip Candy »

Hello!

I think I've read somewhere that to properly credit, you must also state what kind of licence the resources are and also add some links, but sometimes, I can see people crediting in game with just the name of the creator of BG/Music etc minus the links and the license. So which do people prefer?

I'm thinking of crediting just the names of the artists/musicians in game, and just add the links in the thread since it's a bit lengthy.

Also, do you think it's kind of annoying to put ten images for credits in game and make the player click through it all to read the next script? I'm not sure about the best way how to put credits in game.
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ZanthosAC
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Re: How do you credit people in your VN?

#2 Post by ZanthosAC »

Hopefully someone can elaborate on this. I personally have not reached the credits screen of any indie vn or games so I'm pretty clueless here. Most professional works are credited by first + last name then role which is the standard.

If you have a lot of "free open source" works or free resources that require credit, it seems like it would be a nightmare and look unprofessional with a lot of random links. (Did I mention unsightly long links that might clutter the screen and look ugly?)

Maybe it would look better on scrolling credits or a screen that has infinite scrolling space. As long as you have the person's name or alias then say their website or social grouped together.

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Re: How do you credit people in your VN?

#3 Post by Imperf3kt »

I prefer my credits to be linked from the main menu. This way they are accessible from the very start of the game (without needing to play through it in order to see who was the sprite artist / composer / bg artist etc). I leave it up to the player whether they wish to view them or not.

As to linking the licenses, they must still be linked from the game itself, not the thread where you released the game. If you wish to keep them out of your credits, you can place them in a text file in the game folder. Something like credits.txt is common.
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Re: How do you credit people in your VN?

#4 Post by Mammon »

I made credits in P&Y in the traditional fashion of screens appearing with a few names. I split it up into a few sections to make it more organised and added a few reused CG parts or sprites to it to make it more fun to look at. Use as much overlap as possible, for example instead of saying it's background music you instead put that on top to show that it's all background music. But that's standard stuff. The same can be done for when you're using more from the same artist, which isn't the case in the image below. Then you can just put the artist there once and the songs underneath each other with less of a whiteline in between. Makes the credits feel a bit more organised, and thus more likely to be read. My credits were about seven of these images.

I'd say something to take care of and remember is that you know where all your sources came from. Looking for something you found after hitting some keywords in google and then browsing a bit, you'll probably won't find back. Even if you'd remember the keywords you used, the search results may change over time. So links are a good thing to keep with your assets, but don't put them in the credits. Maybe in that .txt though. Just give the people enough information to find it back, like I did here by saying it's on freemusicarchive.com and giving them the name of the song so they just need to use the search engine there. Also remember that some people may want to be credited differently than what their name is, for example on Lemmasoft there's sometimes someone who wants to be credited differently than what their account name is. Keep that in mind.

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Re: How do you credit people in your VN?

#5 Post by mikolajspy »

It also depends on kind of license and if something is written about it.
Some licenses do allow to not credit at all (some from CC series)!
Or, some sources allow to make credit list on website, and link it in game. For example:

Something from WEBSITE.com
Full list available here - [link]

Or just:

Full list of resources used under various licences can be found here: [link]

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