Hey JFR. Good to see you too. In my defense at spelling Chloe "Cloe" I'll say that I've been working hard on a story involving a character named "Claryce," so the "Cl" just kind of rolled off my fingers. (-:
Tlaero
tlaero wrote:Download size is the biggest reason for Compression. Not everyone has superfast internet, and not everyone has unlimited. So, if you can reduce your game size by 90% without humans being able to see a difference, it's a win. To a smaller degree, there's also size on disk. We've all got big SSD cards these days, but when I'm cleaning up, I'm more likely to throw out the game that's 1/256th of my hard drive than the one that's 1/2560th.
And, even with a relatively fast internet, some download services rate limit to slow down downloads and encourage people to buy their "premium" services. I literally stopped playing Starship Inahana because I was annoyed at the time it took to download compared to the number of pictures.
And, for you, some download providers will limit how much bandwidth you're allowed to use before they charge you. Compressed images potentially would let 10 times more people download the game.
Then there's places like NewGrounds, which have a size limit on games you upload to them.
Finally, if you have a "play online" (not download) option, there's a better chance of your animations being jerky if the images are huge and you have to download a large number of them to see the animation.
Tlaero
tlaero wrote:There are some great people on *****. And there are a lot who are ... less so. Anyone who refuses to play your game because the download size is reasonable probably wouldn't be able to understand it anyway.
As for the dream sequences, those pictures you posted look great, but I'm not 100% sure they'll do what you need. A lot of strange things happen in Earth Girls so there's a point where the player just decides that all strange things are "normal." I THINK (I'm not sure) that you want to be able to distinguish between "strange thing really happening to the MC" and "MC dreaming."
Some examples:
Talking dog. In most games, you'd assume that was a dream sequence. Here, it's real.
Phone salesperson turns black and white with a Ouija board on her chest. Not a dream sequence, real.
Now go to "Friend with angel wings." Is that enough more strange than a Ouija board for a salesperson for someone to understand it's a dream?
Now go to "Hot cheerleader inexplicably wants to kiss you." In this genre, that's the least strange thing that I've listed yet.
Then, when you add in the saber, things that are even more strange start to happen.
I think you need something mechanical--something that is distinctly different than the reality bending stuff that happens in the game. For instance, in most First Person Shooters these days, they letterbox the cut scenes. The cut scenes are rendered on the fly in the game engine, so there's no technical need to letterbox them. They just do it so that you, the player know not to try to control the game at that point.
Something I've done in the past is to italicize all text that's coming from outside of the reality we're seeing. For instance, if Jason is describing something that happened and the images are what he's describing, then his words are italicized. That way, when you switch to the words matching the images (you're in the narrative) you stop italicizing and that transition is clear.
Then again, in THIS game, maybe the saber blurs the line between dreaming and not enough that you DON'T want to explicitly mark dream sequences as such. Up to you, of course, though this is still good to think about, since you'll undoubtedly do future games where different things are appropriate.
Tlaero
lydia02 wrote:So would dreams/fantasy without a needed setting work well with the clouds and italic text? And those that need a setting would also show as fantasy with italic text?
tlaero wrote:lydia02 wrote:So would dreams/fantasy without a needed setting work well with the clouds and italic text? And those that need a setting would also show as fantasy with italic text?
It's hard for me to answer that, since I already played the game and was able to figure out, for the most part, what was dream and what wasn't. This discussion is for making the game more accessible to people who pay a little less attention to the story but are still interested in it. Doing anything would probably help. I just don't know if it will help "enough." (-:
Tlaero
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