Lemma Soft Forums

Greetings!
Whenever I play a game that has a "history" menu in it (which automatically lists all the dialogues and narration in the game, very common in Ren'Py games), I find myself never using it. I prefer to just roll back a bit, or save the game often and load to a previous part.
I'm working on a game that I think would not really benefit from the "history" menu in it, so I wonder - if you play a Visual Novel that has such an archive, do you use it? Or do you just ignore it, like I do?

I use it because sometimes I do something stupid like hit a button to advance the text before I've finished reading a line, or zone out and realise a few lines later that I wasn't really reading anything. Sometimes it's also nice to look back over a complex conversation to make sure I've fully grasped everything, especially when I'm playing a game that isn't in my native language.

Hi there, thank you for answering!
I have the same problems, but I usually prefer to just use my mouse wheel to roll back and read everything in full. It's faster for me than opening the "history screen". scrolling to find the right line and read it without the sound effects or graphics... If I can ask, is such a way less convenient for you?

I've played a lot of English-localized Japanese visual novels, and they generally don't have the ability to rollback. Thus, the History screen is the only way to view anything you may have missed or just want to re-visit.

In my opinion, actually scrolling through the text is substantially more inconvenient. With the History screen, it takes no time to review a large section of text at once. If I want to read something from a while back, having to figure out how far to scroll is a huge pain. Even moreso to get back to where I was once done reading the previous section. Conversely, having a completely separate history screen means I can just open the window, find what I need, then immediately go back to playing the game. It's a lot less immersion-breaking than rolling back. I'm always unhappy when a VN doesn't include the History screen.

Thank you, you're helping me a lot!

I have never used the history screen...and am not even sure where I'd find it. Now that I think about it...I should probably disable it in my game...at the very least see what my game looks like if someone presses whatever key would bring up the history screen...because I'm certain I haven't customized that.

Aureus wrote: ↑Sat Feb 16, 2019 7:58 am Hi there, thank you for answering!
I have the same problems, but I usually prefer to just use my mouse wheel to roll back and read everything in full. It's faster for me than opening the "history screen". scrolling to find the right line and read it without the sound effects or graphics... If I can ask, is such a way less convenient for you?

As mentioned, not all games have the rollback feature, and to be honest if I'm looking back over a conversation, I just prefer to have it all laid out on the screen at once for convenience. I mostly use it when playing Japanese VNs, which typically let you jump back to any point in the history if you want to go through it again, and allow you to replay the relevant voice clip from the history.

Selidor wrote: ↑Sat Feb 16, 2019 12:16 pm and allow you to replay the relevant voice clip from the history.

This, once again, is very valuable for me. I actually always turn off voice actors in VNs, so it didn't even come to my mind.

I use the history screen all the time and usually prefer it rollback. Sometimes I'll realize I was sort of "zoned out" while reading for a little bit, and I find it easier to scroll up a bit in the history screen to reread the lines I wasn't fully paying attention to than to click rollback a bunch of times. Also, if I find a few lines of dialogue particularly funny or something, I can easily show that to my friends by taking a screenshot of the history.