Lemma Soft Forums

I think that maybe people are thinking that PyTom's "high standards" are much higher than they really are. I think there would definitely be games that could fulfill those criteria. I mean, it's supposed to show the "best" of what is already here, not something that isn't created yet.

If you want him to draw graphs and write numbers on what he expects from the featured games, then that will never be possible to do. Maybe just try to nominate the games you want, and see what happens?

Also, "complete story" does not exclude short games, since short stories can be complete as well.

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.

True. It would be good to have as a different project - it's too bad that the one that started up seems to have died again

Vatina wrote:I think that maybe people are thinking that PyTom's "high standards" are much higher than they really are.

If you want to exclude anything that has bad art, then you say "must not have bad art", not "must have high-quality art". There's a gulf of difference between the two meanings.

Hmm I see. Well I guess you have a point there.

What about "high-quality for ren'py standards" ? ^^;

Vatina wrote:What about "high-quality for ren'py standards" ? ^^;

So that the meaning changes over time as the average quality of a Ren'Py game goes up or down?

Honestly, it would be SO much more practical to have just one person pick 10 showcase games, let others briefly comment on that selection, and then the person (editor) would create the game pages.

This task is wonderully fitting as a job for a single person with authority, rather than a virtual process driven by collective inputs. It's infinitely more effective for PyTom to sit down with an editor and have a quick chat about what the purpose of the showcase games is, and let his/her intuitive judgment do the rest.

Pytom mentioned that he didn't play through all the games, and that's why he wants our input.

Maybe this is turning out to be more formal than it needs to be. Perhaps it's justs a question of popular consensus of the best games with a minimum of guidelines.

How do sites with tons of games of popular engines like Game Maker, RPG XP, and AGS work out their games listings?

... oh wait, they're backed by companies

Ideally, maintainers would not be developers. I'd like to opt out of my duties if I can. If I'm playing every single game out there, I won't have time to make my own.

I reiterate that the current random front page is fine (minus a few games).

http://emshort.wordpress.com/

Ren’Py… I don’t know. I have no specific recommendations here about works that were too awesome to miss, and yet I think a knowledge of the form doesn’t hurt. I’ve played a few of these, especially by Tycoon Games and Hanako Games, but I’d be interested in any suggestions if there are Ren’Py games with really fabulous stories that I’ve missed.

I'm thinking that we should go ahead with this, as a list of the best Ren'Py games will serve a need (more outside the forums than in). So I think people should start nominating the games they think should be featured.

Like I said earlier...

Tying Threads
Songs of Araiah
Winter Shard
Katawa Shoujo Act 1

On second thought, add Starlit Skies to the list as well.

Also, Magical Boutique is also quite excellent, but the latest version appears to have a bug, so I'll hold off until I finish playing through v1.2 until I nominate that.

I can't think of a single Ren'Py games that really stands out. (Well, there is "Dino Briefcase Fiasco", but that shouldn't qualify, for obvious reasons. And "The Fucking Question", but that's also disqualified.)

If I lower my standards a bit, there's "Magical Boutique". The game feels unfinished to me, but it uses Ren'Py in a novel way, it has plenty of bells and whistles, and it left me wanting more.

It's hard to make a list because is subjective. Probably would make more sense divided into some categories like "best stories", "best art", "best soundtrack" etc.
Some people might love some of my games because of art, others might hate them because of the story/writing, etc.

Wintermoon wrote:I can't think of a single Ren'Py games that really stands out.

He asked for a list of "the best Ren'Py games", not "Ren'Py games which meet some arbitrary high standard". If you can't think of any Ren'Py games that stand out in those terms it means you think that all Ren'Py games are of exactly equal quality, which patently isn't the case.

The stupid talk from the early posts of "high quality" games was rendered mostly meaningless when PyTom clarified that he has pretty low standards.


(And such a list is useful even to Emily Short - if she looks over it and it's all well below her threshold of greatness, then she can be content that there's probably nothing worth recommending people look at written in Ren'Py, because even the native community's own "best of" list doesn't have anything good on it.)

How do sites with tons of games of popular engines like Game Maker, RPG XP, and AGS work out their games listings?

By building a system for users to vote on all the games, discovering that this system completely sucks and returns no useful data at all, giving up, and having the staff pick a few games that they personally think are great.

If you play City of Heroes you can see some of the same problems coming in with the user-written missions system. Letting people vote on games sounds like a simple solution, but soon you end up with crazy spammers demanding votes for their games, crazy blackmailers demanding that you do what they say or their whole guild will one-star your game, and no clear way to tell apart the twenty thousand games which all have a four-star average. I can't speak for RPGmaker or AGS but I know GM has had problems in this area.

It's hard to make a list because is subjective. Probably would make more sense divided into some categories like "best stories", "best art", "best soundtrack" etc.

'Best' is still subjective and can lead to arguments or hurt feelings.

Possible suggestion:

Take all games that meet the vague quality thresholds stated. Look at each title. Determine what's notable about it. If you can't think of anything notable about it, discard. Display all the rest of them with their brief description and reason(s) for notability.

Reasons for notability might be an interesting art style or gameplay mechanic or really good story or all sorts of other things. If possible, allow user to sort by notability reasons, so that if they want to find something with good art they can.

But being clear that it's notable rather than best means that one can show off, say, a game written by an insane artist in brain-melting colors and bizarre effects and custom interfaces and say that it's NOTABLE for its style without having to have as much argument about whether everyone LIKES that style. 'A Game Of Interactive Psychedelia' might be clearly notable as an example of how much you can do with RenPy outside of the standard dialog box setup, but also clearly be NOT what the population as a whole would vote as 'best art'.

Jake wrote:He asked for a list of "the best Ren'Py games", not "Ren'Py games which meet some arbitrary high standard". If you can't think of any Ren'Py games that stand out in those terms it means you think that all Ren'Py games are of exactly equal quality, which patently isn't the case.

Actually I do feel that a great number of Ren'Py games have reached roughly equal levels of mediocrity. Which is to say that I enjoyed them for what they were, but I also found them flawed, and they made no lasting impact on me. I have fairly specific reasons for not listing some of the more high-profile Ren'Py games, which I won't go into because I think it would be in poor taste. Most of the low-profile games that I like are disqualified for one reason or another.

If you want another nomination, I nominate "The Rutabega". Just played it, liked it, and it seems to meet most of the requirements. I may add to the list as a play more Ren'Py games.

edit: On second thought, I am not sure about the copyright status of the images used in "The Rutabega", so it may not qualify. But I do like it quite a bit.

Troll...