CrossdressinginCamelot
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Alternate Text Format Idea
🕑 Added 2022-09-13 06:37:50 +0000 UTCNSFW Image Below!
Edit: As the results are pretty clearly in favour of this, I'll be starting to experiment with it in-game. I'll probably patch in some content for version 0.34 with this setup to get feedback on it in-game as well.
I’ve gotten some feedback about how RPG Maker's default way to display text can be annoying with how dialogue heavy the sex scenes are in-game sometimes, so I've come up with a potential alternate way to display text in game. Basically, it’s quite similar to how the text used to be displayed in twine. Multiple passages are displayed at once, with standard text that isn’t spoken shown in white, and character text shown with quotes surrounding it and in different colors to indicate who is speaking. This is a quick example from the first sex scene with Beatrice in-game. By doing it like this, I can combine six text boxes into one, to reduce how often you need to click or press Z to progress the scene. This wouldn’t be used all the time, but mainly focused on scenes with short back and forth between characters, like this one.
There are some drawbacks to this. As you can see, in this scene, the text covers pretty much all of the artwork. You can hide the text with tab, but I think having text at the bottom of the screen and most of the image visible is better. This would also be the case in scenes where things are going on on-screen via sprites, like characters moving around and the like. So I would probably only do this with scenes where there isn't much going on on-screen. Another drawback is that this removes face image artwork when used. Most characters just use art made within RPG Maker, so it might not be a huge issue, but it’s worth mentioning. The last negative I see with it is the time it would take to do, as I need to manually set how many lines each text box should be, figure out what passages should be combined within it, add in the text color and quotes, ect. If I was going to do this, I would initially focus on mandatory content like quests and new content. And like when I made large text passages all show in one box instead of splitting, this would be something I’d do a bit at a time in each update, to try and not slow development much.
Please let me know what you think with this poll, and if you have any other comments on the potential benefits/drawbacks to this idea, please leave those below.
Also, kind of a side-note, but I’m also going to add an auto text feature to the game, so you’ll have the option to have text boxes progress automatically after a certain amount of time. I figured that could be another way to help players who find many small text boxes annoying.
Comments
Princess Narii
Artwork is very important to me, Love the amount of energy is put in to that, and i prefer the first option for sure!!!
Totoro too
First off, absolutely amazing work on the game. Very impressed with what you've done so far! For some scenes, it's the length of the scene that can drag the game to a halt. I know everything is work in progress, and maybe this is already the plan, but it may also help the flow of longer scenes to break them up into shorter scenes with additional art or animations or character action in the middle so the player isn't just staring at text for minutes on end.
StickyIcky
Thanks for your feedback. However, it sounds like you are just describing what "shift" does during scenes. Were you unaware of how that worked? You can press shift and scroll back through the scene freely if you'd like to. Though it doesn't display text in exactly the same way it does normally when you do that.
Throwaway227
Main reason I picked the second option is because I find myself wanting to re-read things sometimes, especially in sex scenes, so being able to see more at once in lieu of a "go back" option would help with that.
