Creative solutions for displaying descriptions [code/writing/art]
Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 2:11 pm
I was doing exercises at analyzing games to help better make mine, both good and bad, and one VN that my friend pointed to me was a game called 999. I've been running it and braking it down and it's really great and I highly recomend it to anyone who wants to try to iincorporate puzzles into their game to disect it or wants to write a thriller. However there's one thing that's puzzeling me, it's displaying the font.
there will be no spoilers in this thread
on the DS origanal release of 999 the descriptive font is displayed on the bottom screen, the background echoing what you see on the top of the screen but more faided out. This makes it great for the characters talk on the top screen and you can read stuff on the bottom screen. The limitations on the space really forced each line to pack as much punch in there. And it does.
However on the remastering of the game for PC / PS(3?) (4?) it looks somthing like this.
and one can see
that it can get a bit claustrophobic, as characters talk and descriptions are made more and more text just piles onto the screen. Me being an artist I would hate having text just filling the artwork i worked hard on. But overall it does make it easier to read so I can see the appeal. And me writing my own stories, i would want to not only have it easy to read but also have the space to add descriptive text.
Yet the only different way ive seen with renpy being able to display text is by this method.
game: katawa shoujo
game: a mock up from doki doki literature club
And that is by putting text right on the center of the screen. (I know it's not technically narrative describers of the character's surroundings and them/other's body language but i hope get what i mean.) And this is something I don't want, I want the text to roughly be in one place, but some sort of indicator showing that it's just talking about "adjectives" of what you are seeing even when the art is present. The writing makes up for the lack of artwork.
The only other method I know of is by changing the display box at the bottom of the screen where by text is being shown.
if clever enough one could make different borders for the text depending on what is talking. A color for each character maybe as well, and a neutral color for discriptions. But from my understanding of meddling with the program so far, the GUI seems very static, like it's not ment to change. Is my understanding flawed?
I guess what I am getting at is this, with coding is there a way to constantly rapidly change what the text box looks like? Theoretically could that work for a whole game as frequently as characters change? I'm not asking for suspifics like actual lines of code just hypothetical (if you have a game in mind that does this point me to their direction). ((and if you do want to show code examples ill be more than happy to look at them))
Art wise as one artist speaking to the other, is it for the betterment of the story for you to bite the bullet and have text take over the screen? What are your thoughts on that?
And to writers, What sort of writing style do you write in? Do you think it is worth describing, if briefly, the characters actions or do you depend more on the artwork that the artist make to tell what the character is doing? Do you write more akin to if you where writing a proper noval or do you adopt a different writing style, omiting descriptive text MUCH more often than what you would usulaly do? I understand that having a drawing of A PERSON saves like a paragraph on writing how they look, but as a whole do you cut even more out of it even when their actions don't reflect whats in the artwork due to art limitations?
there will be no spoilers in this thread
on the DS origanal release of 999 the descriptive font is displayed on the bottom screen, the background echoing what you see on the top of the screen but more faided out. This makes it great for the characters talk on the top screen and you can read stuff on the bottom screen. The limitations on the space really forced each line to pack as much punch in there. And it does.
However on the remastering of the game for PC / PS(3?) (4?) it looks somthing like this.
and one can see
that it can get a bit claustrophobic, as characters talk and descriptions are made more and more text just piles onto the screen. Me being an artist I would hate having text just filling the artwork i worked hard on. But overall it does make it easier to read so I can see the appeal. And me writing my own stories, i would want to not only have it easy to read but also have the space to add descriptive text.
Yet the only different way ive seen with renpy being able to display text is by this method.
game: katawa shoujo
game: a mock up from doki doki literature club
And that is by putting text right on the center of the screen. (I know it's not technically narrative describers of the character's surroundings and them/other's body language but i hope get what i mean.) And this is something I don't want, I want the text to roughly be in one place, but some sort of indicator showing that it's just talking about "adjectives" of what you are seeing even when the art is present. The writing makes up for the lack of artwork.
The only other method I know of is by changing the display box at the bottom of the screen where by text is being shown.
if clever enough one could make different borders for the text depending on what is talking. A color for each character maybe as well, and a neutral color for discriptions. But from my understanding of meddling with the program so far, the GUI seems very static, like it's not ment to change. Is my understanding flawed?
I guess what I am getting at is this, with coding is there a way to constantly rapidly change what the text box looks like? Theoretically could that work for a whole game as frequently as characters change? I'm not asking for suspifics like actual lines of code just hypothetical (if you have a game in mind that does this point me to their direction). ((and if you do want to show code examples ill be more than happy to look at them))
Art wise as one artist speaking to the other, is it for the betterment of the story for you to bite the bullet and have text take over the screen? What are your thoughts on that?
And to writers, What sort of writing style do you write in? Do you think it is worth describing, if briefly, the characters actions or do you depend more on the artwork that the artist make to tell what the character is doing? Do you write more akin to if you where writing a proper noval or do you adopt a different writing style, omiting descriptive text MUCH more often than what you would usulaly do? I understand that having a drawing of A PERSON saves like a paragraph on writing how they look, but as a whole do you cut even more out of it even when their actions don't reflect whats in the artwork due to art limitations?