MessyAcademy
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Voting Poll: Final Gui portrait vs no portrait
🕑 Added 2021-10-24 19:38:28 +0000 UTC
Hi everyone! ^^ Hope your October is going well and thanks for being patient while waiting on the next game versions to release here.
We bring you a very, very, very early mock up for the gui elements. Mainly don't pay too much attention to how things visually look yet, as it's mainly just to give myself a early look at the placement of where buttons and stuff will go. Expect more changes coming.
With that said, we're going to focus on the lower left of the screenshot above. We can see Miki's sprite portrait displayed as if she's talking for the dialogue. Right now in the game we don't have these portraits seen on the gui, making readers have to purely keep an eye on the name area of the text box to keep track of who is talking or if it's monologue thoughts, etc.
Since our gui artist is working on the elements for us and we hope to have everything ready before December behind the scenes, that way we can get the final gui into the engine for say v0.22 to kick off the new year early on. We want to know how you all feel about visual novels that have character portraits displayed for the character talking to be more visually easier to keep track?
(The name of who is speaking will still be displayed too, but for example when Brandon is having monologue thoughts. There won't be any portrait displayed, just like how it currently works where no name is displayed during monologue/thought text. Hopefully that makes sense.) With this, we could also possibly display the protag (Brandon's sprite) in the portrait area when he's talking too. It should also be noted, the size of Miki's portrait is a big too big and ideally if this happens. Portraits would be lowered down a bit.
Mainly we want feedback and general thoughts on what you all think when it comes to visual novels. Do you like it when the game has character portraits like the screenshot sample above? Or do you find it too distracting and maybe in the way?
Comments
Sounds about right with some of our concerns too. ^^ I've seen it handled a few different ways, much like you're saying which makes sense for games like that where the character isn't seen quite like they are in the typical vn sense for their sprites. One thing that's been brought up is possibly using the portrait for the protag's expressions, since we don't get to see them as we're going through the game in their pov. Which seems like a fair use of it, or possibly as you mention with other characters where trying to fit them on screen would be a bit too crowded. (One idea with that is during times when a character event wise is meant to be further away and not seen yet.) A example being Zoey on the rooftop, to display her portrait when she first notices the guys before she rushes over to them. Little minor stuff, etc. There's some discussion too taking place within the discord, so I'm sure some other good well thought out ideas and ways to go about it will pop up too. ^^ Thank you for taking the time in sharing your thoughts and suggestion on it! <3
UnlikelyCitrus
Just my two cents, but the portrait seems a bit redundant since we can see their faces. Most games that do the portrait do it because they use sprites without facial features. In that case the portrait helps us see what the characters are feeling. I think the portrait could be implemented great in scenes where too many characters are on the screen to appear. Have the main characters be in focus on the screen and use the portrait for characters that didn't make it on the screen so we know what they're reactions/faces are.
