Adorya wrote:
- Code source available to read with didactic comments to prove that Ren'py is "easy to use" and can do more elaborate stuff (a practical use of the engine functions) than the demo.
Spoilers, opening the source code on an elaborate game will only prove the contrary. Elaborate things need elaborate solutions, who would have expected it. Everything that is simple is actually already in the demo, and even that is already above the heads of a lot of people.
A better question, yet in a similar vein, would be how to treat commercial games.
2) The game should have high-quality and original writing, art, music, and design.
3) The game should have some existence independent of these forums.
4) The game should make reasonable use of Ren'Py.
5) The game should be legal and tasteful.
Sorry to come out and say it like this, but the only Ren'Py game that meets those standards is Katawa Shoujo Act 1. Unless your goal is to make a rotation featuring KS Act 1 every day, you'll have to loosen up those criteria, especially the complete story one (most somewhat decent Ren'Py games are VERY short) and the high-quality writing/art one (the longer Ren'Py games tend to have subpar art and/or writing).
Guest wrote:
Sorry to come out and say it like this, but the only Ren'Py game that meets those standards is Katawa Shoujo Act 1.
Sorry to break up the Katawa Shoujo love-fest, but KS Act 1 doesn't, either. Just to pick a particularly obvious example - the art, while better than most Ren'Py games, definitely isn't 'high quality'.
Which is to say that I agree, such demanding requirements are pretty stupid.
Alas, it only took a day for the first raider to get washed up on our shores. =w=
Actually, what's more problematic for Katawa Shoujo is requirement 1. It's more of a demo than a complete story, although a very, very long demo.
Plus, I think in terms of just the story quality, there are better games out there. Katawa Shoujo's strengths are in graphics, music, programming, and longevity, not in storytelling. (Primarily because there's no discernible plot structure in the unfinished version of it)
But this is what I mean by there's a way to disqualify just about any game.
Last edited by Samu-kun on Tue May 12, 2009 5:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Guest wrote:High quality art is relative for visual novels and eroge. Would you consider Tsukihime and Higurashi/Umineko's art "high quality?"
Definetly no?
I agree that the criteria of original and high-quality story/art/music/whatever is a bit too much (or the only games that would be featured would be top commercial VNs).
But I agree to feature games that made peoples go "Wow! That was a great game." =D Memorable games needn't be really high-quality everything, but something that hits you in a way you just don't give a damn to whatever flaws there's in it.
How about something a little more challenging: Songs of Araiah vs Starlit Sky
Araiah's graphics looks better than my early shitty art, but SS has the more polished story. (my opinion, as well as DrakeNavarone's I think it was mentioned somewhere).
And btw I think it had 24 event CGs, whereas KS -- for such a long game -- only had 10.
I think the simplest thing to do would be to go through the random template with a fine comb, and chuck out a few games (yes, including Nettestadt Troll). PyTom's discretion of course, unless we go by things that just 'look' good.
And collate the random Featured Game display system to a single page like we had before the dual-pool system since its confusing to look for the source.
Another thing to note is that why the style of BL is not with regulars' cup of tea, Dream Savior Gakuen has been extremely popular. So 'Popularity' is another criteria.
Can't we do something about rule No.5... you know... amend it a bit with a few minor stipulations... make a few exceptions... a feature game but with huge text warning in big bold red text... people might miss them...
Sure, I understand the reason but still... what may be distasteful to one person may not be to another... It is kinda demotivating knowing that the game I have/will make with all my heart and soul will be buried into obscurity due to such rule...
*sniff* (Blows Nose....)
I guess my only chance to have my games featured in the near future is to hold back, stick to the usual tired boy meets girl formula thingy and worksafe...
PyTom wrote:3) The game should have some existence independent of these forums. This means a web page of some sort, and hosting that isn't these forums, renai.us, or rapidshare, megaupload, etc. Ideally, the game will have some notability outside of our community.
I'm not sure why this would matter. It's not like we have such an abundance of excellent games that we need to use arbitrary rules to cull the herd.
We shouldn't be making people watch countdowns and type in captchas to be told that they should go buy an account or wait another fifteen minutes before downloading, IMO. Also, Megaupload has scammy popunders and Mediafire's popunder is probably trying to do something obnoxious that doesn't work on Konqueror.
Sorry to waddle in here even though I'm still very new to the forums, but I hope I could add input and thoughts
As a newbie to ren'py original games, I do have to be honest and say that I haven't played a lot of games over at the wiki. I have a hard time picking one because a lot of them seem rather short and themes not much to my taste... ^^;;
If the site is going to feature games I think it's a great idea, to help promote ren'py and what it's capable of.
As far as artwork rating, beauty is in the eye of the beholder... ^^;;
It might be hard to judge on this, I mean I thought Moonlight Walks 1.1 was okay. I didn't think the artwork quality was bad or anything. On the other hand I would rate depending on artwork originality (ex. if the characters were just traced from another game, background and menu etc)
Would be be possible to maybe make a review site? Where viewers could input their own thoughts and ratings? Then games could be ''featured" and not only one person would do all the work... Ratings on story, artwork, menu/graphics, pros and cons on the game could be input on the condition that they are constructive (no flames like 'this game sucks')
As someone new to using ren'py I can get how excited one gets when finishing a game and quickly put it up for others to play. Perhaps that's one reason there are so many demos, sort of incomplete(?) and short games on the wiki right now...?
Edit:
Also, I wanted to add that maybe the criteria could be a bit more lenient since (excluding commercial games) the games are free and people are doing this in their spare time. ^^;; I'm sure if they were getting paid more hi-quality games would be developed.
Edit 2:
Perhaps after the criteria list is decided on, in the future if people want their game featured in the future, they could send in some sort of 'registration form' to qualify for the spot light on the main page? Then they could write down what sort of features the game has, options if they wanted to share the source code etc...
(*´﹃｀*) Commissions Open! Art samples: afuji.org
Looking to work on otome games~ (indie or commercial)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adorya wrote:
- Code source available to read with didactic comments to prove that Ren'py is "easy to use" and can do more elaborate stuff (a practical use of the engine functions) than the demo.
Spoilers, opening the source code on an elaborate game will only prove the contrary. Elaborate things need elaborate solutions, who would have expected it. Everything that is simple is actually already in the demo, and even that is already above the heads of a lot of people.
A better question, yet in a similar vein, would be how to treat commercial games.
Players will first play the game before trying to have a peak in ren'py's file, it's simplier to just launch it than read the code source before playing.
And then, there would be no point in spoiling self to win because the "good" story is supposed prevent you from wanting to complete 100% HCG right now or to warp to the last scene.
Battle of Wesnoth is an open source game and I only had a peek in the code after beating the official scenario, spoiler had nothing to do with it.
delta wrote:
Spoilers, opening the source code on an elaborate game will only prove the contrary.
And then, there would be no point in spoiling self to win because the "good" story is supposed prevent you from wanting to complete 100% HCG right now or to warp to the last scene.
I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant. Rather, that he's giving away the apparently-not-commonly-understood bit of information that complex games have complex code behind them.
Also:
Guest wrote:
It is kinda demotivating knowing that the game I have/will make with all my heart and soul will be buried into obscurity due to such rule...
Not being on PyTom's "featured games" list does not automatically relegate your game to obscurity. I'd expect that it probably has little effect on the popularity of a title at all, to be honest.
Guest wrote:
worksafe...
And 'worksafe' and 'legal and tasteful' are two very different things.
Jake wrote:
Not being on PyTom's "featured games" list does not automatically relegate your game to obscurity. I'd expect that it probably has little effect on the popularity of a title at all, to be honest.
Indeed, and the reason for this is that it's still a showcase for Ren'Py, not a showcase of good games. I would not go to that list if I was just interested in some cool things to spend my time, only to find some good examples of games using this specific engine so I don't have to waste my time.
I think that some additional review site for all kinds of OELVN-ish games would be a very good idea, but this isn't it.
