Mixing ADV and NVL?

[Nouvaxio]

I was thinking of mixing up NVL and ADV in the project I'm currently doing. NVL for large narration parts, ADV for dialogues and small narrations in-between. Any opinions/suggestions about this, or any games out there that already uses this style or something similar to it?

[RotGtIE]

G-Senjou no Maou does it. In particular, it uses ADV when the protagonist is in control of the narration, but switches to NVL when shifting the perspective to describe what is happening to other characters in the third person, especially when the protagonist is not present.

I thought it worked out very well, but it might be a pretty tricky technique to execute properly. I think editors recommend against head-hopping and switching between first and third person narratives when you can help it, but I can't see how that VN could have been done without the judicious use it made of those techniques.

[Nouvaxio]

Well, my VN is mostly first-person. The only third-person part would be the prologue, rest is first-person. I was thinking of using NVL for when the character is describing a scene and long narrations similar to that, while ADV is used for dialogues and short narrations of the character in-between, or when he/she talks to him/herself then goes back to dialogue or something like that.

I know that the success in pulling this off depends on how it is executed/presented, but I still wanted to hear other people's opinion regarding this, so thank you for the response.

[Donmai]

Isn't it a common pratice already? I've seen several VNs made this way. Katawa Shoujo is the first example that comes to my mind.

[michan]

Hello. I don't see a problem if you want to use both in your VN, so long as it makes it more effective to relate your story to the reader. (LOL I'm doing the same in my own WIP, but just because I can )

Best regards.

[papillon]

The Royal Trap has sections in NVL because it has an intentionally wordy narration which would have been a pain to slog through in tiny dialog windows all the time. It doesn't have ALL the narration in NVL, only when it's going to be long and doesn't need the dramatic breakup of box-by-box.

I've seen several Japanese visual novels also shift from mostly-ADV to NVL when they need to do a big infodump, for similar reasons. If you suddenly need to explain a scientific principle to your readers, ADV is probably not the best way to do it.

Basically, what you're describing sounds pretty standard to me. There's even a tag for it.

[Tyrantauranox]

I hate when the text box covers up characters, but if you stay away from that, I'm okay with NVL

[truefaiterman]

I think NVL works pretty well to set the mood, and with narrations and such. I'm also used to see it combined with ADV, and it works pretty well to me (well, I actually combined them, too!).

[qirien]

I thought "The Elevator" did that really well. Right now I'm using NVL mode for computer messages, and ADV mode for people talking. If you have a lot of narration, NVL mode is good for that.

[OokamiKasumi]

I was thinking of mixing up NVL and ADV in the project I'm currently doing. NVL for large narration parts, ADV for dialogues and small narrations in-between. Any opinions/suggestions about this, or any games out there that already uses this style or something similar to it?

I've used both NVL mode and ADV mode in almost every game I've made. However, I set the NVL mode text to only cover SOME of the screen, not All of it, and give NVL mode its own textbox.

This was my very first completed game.

These are from successive games.

I've learned quite a bit since creating my first game.

[Taleweaver]

I did it for The Dreaming. Still think it worked well - NVL for the narrative, ADV for the dialogue. Not terribly hard to code, either.

[Lightworker]

How do you switch from Adv to nvl and vice versa?

[Taleweaver]

You can define for each character whether he/she speaks in ADV or NVL mode. For example, you can define a narrator and have him use NVL mode while using the ADV mode for all the other characters. Again, this is what I did in The Dreaming. Check it out if you like.