Sunday, July 10, 2011

Perspective

I'm going to be placing a new poll up momentarily. This poll is basically in relation to the writing style the game will feature. The team working on the game is a bit torn on this issue so we wanted to ask you all which style you prefer. Please vote and let us know :) Also, this will give you all a brief sneak peak into the new farm event Echo is working feverishly on.

Vocal (player's character has dialogue)

This time almost bore fruit. Having met two cute girls you believed one of them to be the mysterious woman Claire spoke of. After her third drink she actually started babbling about how fun it had been to be a cowgirl, and you listened intently to her words. Her friend, annoyed by the lack of attention, proceeded to produce a pair of cat-ears. She pinned them to her head and claimed that cat-girls were much cuter. They were talking about costumes.

Nursing your seventh beer this evening, you are now impatiently awaiting their return from the toilet. At least the evening wasn’t a complete waste as they seem eager to have a “good time” with you later on.

“Mmm, table looks nice.” Face-planting the table, you try to rest for a spell.

“You are [charname]?”

“Yesh, I’m shtill me.” The world inside your head is on a roller-coaster ride to hell. To open your eyes would be a surefire way to emptying your guts, and so you decide to continue mashing your head against the nice piece of furniture.

“I vant vork. Vill you hire me?”

“Bhuuh? What?” She doesn’t sound like either of your two girls, and her accent is weird. “Who are hic you?” While you could look up, the wooden texture is excellent for massaging your brow.

“Antonina Vitte.”

“That.” A sharp intake of breath stops you from slobbering all over the table. “Doeshn’t tell me anything.” Your shoulders rise slightly, signaling your ignorance.

“I’m covgirl. You’re farmer.”

Silent (player doesn't speak, they only act)
This time almost bore fruit. Having met two cute girls you believed one of them to be the mysterious woman Claire spoke of. After her third drink she actually started babbling about how fun it had been to be a cowgirl, and you listened intently to her words. Her friend, annoyed by the lack of attention, proceeded to produce a pair of cat-ears. She pinned them to her head and claimed that cat-girls were much cuter. They were talking about costumes.

Nursing your seventh beer this evening, you are now impatiently awaiting their return from the toilet. At least the evening wasn’t a complete waste as they seem eager to have a “good time” with you later on.

“Mmm, table looks nice.” Face-planting the table, you try to rest for a spell.

“You are [charname]?”

You barely nod your head in confirmation as the world inside your head is on a roller-coaster ride to hell. To open your eyes would be a surefire way to emptying your guts, and so you decide to continue mashing your head against the nice piece of furniture.

“I vant vork. Vill you hire me?”

She doesn’t sound like either of your two girls, and her accent is weird. While you could look up, the wooden texture is excellent for massaging your brow and so you mutter your question as to who she is into the table.

“Antonina Vitte.”

As your mouth moves, drool escapes it. A sharp intake of breath stops you from slobbering all over the table. Your shoulders rise slightly, signaling your ignorance.

“I’m covgirl. You’re farmer.”

17 comments:

  1. Bwahahahahahaha!

    You got some of our dialogue through Google Talk in that text snippet; can you guess what I'm referring to?

    Also: Gogo my way! (No I will not tell you which it is. That would ruin the whole point of this poll as it could become biased one way or the other.)

    Also also: the "Mmm, table looks nice." is supposed to be in italic, signaling the thoughts of the player character.

    Also also also: "hic" in the vocal version is supposed to be displayed *hic*, but Google Talk screwed that up.

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  2. Are you going to take into account how many people voted for each?

    That is, say, if silent barely loses, the character will be vocal, but not terribly so.

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  3. It will be good for us, players, to chose between "Vocal" & "Silent" via the menu...

    Then everybody will be happy in the best of the worlds! ^^

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  4. Probably not Kei-chan. The only "levels" of "vocality" (I know it’s not a word) I can imagine would be how loud your character would shout.

    @Sevarl: That would be bad for us writers though as it would require us to write quite a lot twice over, instead of say, creating new content. :P

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  5. @Echorid : I was only thinking about shut-up the voices, not to give more work to the team... Plus, i can only read english. I'm french. :3

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  6. That may be the nicest table I've ever seen.

    And yes, table is totally a sexual euphemism.

    For what? That's for your imagination.


    Another completely useless comment brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Nazca.

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  7. i think it's not that important anyway. well, it is a decision that has to be made. i just voted for the one i slightly preferred. maybe it's like that for a lot of people, which might be the reason why it's so close up

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  8. @Sevarl: I think you misunderstand. We won't be using any voiceovers, but rather we're trying to settle for a writing style. Either the players will participate in dialogues by speaking themselves, or their actions will be described, but they will not enter dialogue.

    @Nazca: You will get to know the table very well during the night. And the floor. And the hospital... It's a bad night to get drunk, let's just stick to that.

    @hessi_james: Eye of the beholder. I'm pretty strongly opinionated on these two. One I love the other I dislike. We couldn't reach a consensus amongst each-other, so we opted to listen to you guys instead. I will write in whichever style wins though.

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  9. There is a reason the "Silent Protagonist" is such a popular trope. If the words are wrong it can be jarring. That is, if they don't fit what the player would say, it can be frustrating.

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  10. I prefer the Silent type, for a couple of reasons. It can be quite difficult to use the same generic dialogue for both manly-men and girly-girls (and would futa be either, both, or neither?) If you've established for yourself attitudes, personality, and motivations for what you're doing, hearing dialogue contradict that is immensely suspension-of-disbelief shattering.

    In general, I think "Show, don't tell" is really a good guideline.

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  11. @Dorkulon: "Generic" dialogue?! You, sir, offend me! I create no such thing as generic dialogue! Art I say! It's all art!

    ...

    Right, 5am. I'm getting sillier by the minute. Good night ^_^

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  12. For a second person game that revolves around the player putting themselves in the main character's shoes, silent is definitely the way to go.

    Check me out at:
    http://brassdragons.blogspot.com/

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  13. As an editor for the team I thought I'd like to make it known that this is a very important issue that affects all of us. Therefore, I would appreciate it greatly if you guys would share your thoughts with us. :)

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  14. To me this seems like the sort of game where silent is the way to go. A game like this, to me, is about the immersion in the subject matter, and allowing the player to produce his/her own responses to situations in his/her head allows for much greater synchronicity with the situation.

    And besides, it makes people think. And contrary to popular belief, that's a good thing. Even if they're thinking about how nice the table looks.

    And yes, that's still a sexual euphemism.

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  15. I like vocal, but I think that it works better with a Visual Novel, than a sandbox / RPG game like Pornarium, unless you can choose what to say, even if the result is the same (like in some RPG you can choose 3 different ways to say the same thing).
    So : Vocal with dialogue choices (wich means a lot of work), or silent (good, easy, and fitting).

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  16. I am going to vote silent. This game is about crafting your character the way you want and that is through actions. Unless we are getting an RPG dialogue list to pick from responses that fit our character the best, I would go silent. Actions speak louder than words and can fit whatever freakish character you may have made at the time.

    Oh and hunting elves. hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

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  17. Instead of actually going for silent/dialogue? How about options that allow our character to speak in certain manner, [excitement] [bored] [suave] [sarcastic] options to choose so we, the player, may come up with what we think/believe our character is saying while... other characters may... actually when I think about it, nevermind. That compromise doesn't really work well granted I can think of several things my character say or the NPC doesn't really react to those things as if 'I don't care'. Then again, the character isn't really silent as he/she can have moments of speaking (like the one at the patient with two dicks). Well to be honest she was actually thinking instead of speaking, but it still counts.

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