[POLL] IMAGES ACCOMPANYING DIALOGUE: FACES OR BUSTS

I prefer cut scenes to be animated and lively, with sprites performing gestures and walking around throughout the conversation. And I think that, at least sometimes, facesets in dialogue boxes can kinda interfere with this by taking the player's focus out of the scene and putting it in the dialogue box instead.

I'm not saying I'm good at actually accomplishing these things, mind you. I'm super lazy about making the cut scenes fun to watch because I see it as non-vital polish that can be added later, and then that "later" never happens.

I do like the big full-body portraits in games like Fire Emblem and Disgaea where they are the entire cut scene. Of course, Fire Emblem can only get away with this because nothing at all ever happens in any of the cut scenes. Disgaea uses big portraits when people are just standing around talking, but switches to sprite-based cut scenes with facesets when there is actually stuff to see, which is a nice attempt to get the best of both worlds, but is also a little jarring.

I'll admit that for my contest entries, I don't pay too much attention to the emotions on my facechips, but for my two projects that I hope will actually be good and people enjoy, I am actually making multiple facechips to convey emotions, but I'm really only using them because at the moment, they're a novelty. Beyond that, I don't think they're really necessary. You don't see them in professional games, do you except on occasion? No. They just name the speaker most of time.

Busts? I don't know...they're nice sometimes, but they seem over the top in most cases.

I mean, even without different versions of the face showing different emotions, I guess the flip side to what I said earlier is that having a larger, more detailed version of the character visible helps the viewer connect a little better. It can be a struggle for our puny human brains to give exactly the same amount of empathy to a 28 pixel tall, super-deformed sprite as to a picture of something that looks more a real person. (This is not to say using photos for your facesets is a good idea.)

Faces. Busts take up too much screen real estate which proves to be problematic in more action-heavy scenes where your attention is intended to be on the background.

For my own games, I've experimented with all of the combinations and they've all got their advantages:

• Just using a face allows you to show subtle/not subtle expressions towards the speaking character's mood.
• Just using a name allows you make use of the most of your message box for the actual text while still allowing your player to know who's talking.
• Using both allows you to acknowledge any significant name (especially one's created by the player) with its own space and color while also allowing you the benefit of using expressions to complete the scene. With the right faceset graphics, this can really make the message box feel lively.

For my main project, however, I'm using both faces and name tags to distinguish important NPCs and heroes from everybody else, to which I only give a face.

I prefer simple facesets. It's a shorter way for the eyes than whith busts.
So you don't have to always leave the textbox to see how the character is looking.

Cutscenes like in FF8 are difficult in RM-Games. Because the sprites are really small and doesn't show much.

I prefer to show the name (if known) of a character.
The player can learn the names better with this. And with a seperate namebox it also looks good.

I like busts because I like to show off my character art.

author=Liberty
I don't care either way as long as you don't mix Names and bust/faces.

Just curious about what you mean here, as I got confused :D

Despite the screen space that they take, I like busts more. I mean, when used well, they're awesome!

I'm on the "don't care either way" side, if that exists in this thread outside of Liberty's post. Both have their pros and cons; they can make your dialogue scenes look shitty if abused, but enhance it if utilized correctly.

Faces Pros/Cons:
+ You take up less space on the screen
+ A generally "safe" pick for games that have most of their action taking on the rest of the screen
- They are pretty condensed. Some people would like to see a character's full artwork.

Busts Pros/Cons:
+ Provides you the opportunity to use convincing body gestures/poses.
+ Some people like the extra detail.
- It doesn't really look good to have these portraits flashing about and have action going on at the map at the same time, so you are better off shifting focus away from what's going on at the overworld as much as possible if you use these.