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[POLL] [RM AND LIKELY REN'PY TOO... ANY ENGINE, REALLY] HOW TO HANDLE DRASTIC DIFFERENCES IN BUST SIZE?
Poll
Which sizing style for busts do you think has the least negative impact. - Results
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Bust sizes properly proportionate to one another
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4
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50%
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Bust sizes based on screen size
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4
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50%
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Posts
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Dragnfly
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CloseWhile working on parts of my project that aren't the maps and sprites I've been working on for ages (LOL) I came to realize that the drastic size difference between my characters presents a problem with busts. So here I am with another poll to get a feel for preference in different game communities.
The pros and cons are pretty much opposite to each other. Depicting character sizes accurately will cause small characters to be buried behind the text box. But making everyone of equal size affects the player's perception of their sizes (even if to-scale sprites are right there on screen most of the time).
Asdivine Hearts handled this in a most awesome manner with one of its small characters jumping up and hanging off the text box. We love ya, Felix, but none of my characters are quite that small.
An old on-hiatus game of mine dealt with the issue because the one small character was floating, which made her essentially average "height".
I've also seen other games start the bust at the chest or waist rather than the more-common knees. I can't use this method because one part of the game actually relies on the busts being from at least the hip up.
jRPGs and Japanese visual novels that have large differences in size between characters seem to fudge it a lot. I didn't see any common industry trend to it.
Sorry for forgetting this important info. In my case the sizes are like this.
smallest = 145cm (57")
tallest = 233cm (92")
(NOTE: This isn't a topic for if games should use busts or not. There's already topics for that. This only pertains to games that use busts.)
The pros and cons are pretty much opposite to each other. Depicting character sizes accurately will cause small characters to be buried behind the text box. But making everyone of equal size affects the player's perception of their sizes (even if to-scale sprites are right there on screen most of the time).
Asdivine Hearts handled this in a most awesome manner with one of its small characters jumping up and hanging off the text box. We love ya, Felix, but none of my characters are quite that small.
An old on-hiatus game of mine dealt with the issue because the one small character was floating, which made her essentially average "height".
I've also seen other games start the bust at the chest or waist rather than the more-common knees. I can't use this method because one part of the game actually relies on the busts being from at least the hip up.
jRPGs and Japanese visual novels that have large differences in size between characters seem to fudge it a lot. I didn't see any common industry trend to it.
Sorry for forgetting this important info. In my case the sizes are like this.
smallest = 145cm (57")
tallest = 233cm (92")
(NOTE: This isn't a topic for if games should use busts or not. There's already topics for that. This only pertains to games that use busts.)
Yeah, I thought of that after I wrote it. Didn't think it was worth changing:)
Well, I guess in a sense we are, now that I think about it. I checked over 100 Japanese VNs (thanks, vndb random button!) and there was one game that had an oppai loli who had her boobs propped up by the text box. That was funny. But it stands to reason that where the text box cuts off has some impact on how we see the characters. Some other interesting trends I saw were that it seemed otome and BL games tended to favour from the chest up. My initial belief of the average being from the knees up was also wrong, since the average was by far mid-thigh.
But I'm getting off-topic. I mean busts as in the art depicting a character which often appears behind the text box in VNs and jRPGs.
My research on vndb, memory and google images turned up no useful data. Looking through my own jRPG collection the only games that have an even comparable size difference is Cross Edge and some of the Neptunia games but they, sadly, told me nothing:(
Well, I guess in a sense we are, now that I think about it. I checked over 100 Japanese VNs (thanks, vndb random button!) and there was one game that had an oppai loli who had her boobs propped up by the text box. That was funny. But it stands to reason that where the text box cuts off has some impact on how we see the characters. Some other interesting trends I saw were that it seemed otome and BL games tended to favour from the chest up. My initial belief of the average being from the knees up was also wrong, since the average was by far mid-thigh.
But I'm getting off-topic. I mean busts as in the art depicting a character which often appears behind the text box in VNs and jRPGs.
My research on vndb, memory and google images turned up no useful data. Looking through my own jRPG collection the only games that have an even comparable size difference is Cross Edge and some of the Neptunia games but they, sadly, told me nothing:(
I'm on the proportions side, I hated stuff like in FF4 where the kid characters were the same height in pixels as the adults and ended up drawn in a different style entirely. Fudging the actual proportions should be fine though, Andre the Giant and Mini-Me would be difficult to have correct proportions with and getting both on the screen. Marking parts of the screen as the head location for character height groups should be fine. So for example Andre is "tall" which is "head is near or even a bit over the top of the screen", while Mini-Me is "small" which is "head is about 1/3rd of the screen space above the message box". Something so the difference in height is immediately noticeable as part of the bust but not making it so small characters are invisible.
Another alternative is to change the perspective of the bust. Change the angle so it's below the character's head and add a bit of perspective (or foreshortening?) to convey some extra height to the character without actually making their bust in pixels larger.
I am curious though, what kind of character height difference are you planning on that this has become an issue?
Another alternative is to change the perspective of the bust. Change the angle so it's below the character's head and add a bit of perspective (or foreshortening?) to convey some extra height to the character without actually making their bust in pixels larger.
I am curious though, what kind of character height difference are you planning on that this has become an issue?
Crap I always leave important info out of my topic. Sorry about that.
smallest = 145cm (57")
tallest = 233cm (92")
First post updated.
smallest = 145cm (57")
tallest = 233cm (92")
First post updated.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the actual heights were important information. I was just curious since I don't think I've ever seen this particular issue before. The only games I can think of with a big size disparity are like your Felix example with critters or something like Breath of Fire 3 but that doesn't even use busts anyways.
Not many have. And although I'd love to see BoF 2, 3 and 4 get a full remake even if Capcom did (LOL) it'd probably just get regular modern 3D cutscenes.
Compile Heart (and by extension Idea Factory) has it a good amount but they just fudge it in various ways. Agarest 1 and Zero both had a huge size difference between characters but they did a thing of resizing whoever was talking so there was no sense of who was taller than who. I can't do that.
The Neptunia games have had some mecha characters which are much bigger than the girls (especially the twins) and it gets around them by having the start point of the characters be in different places (the girls are mid-thigh up and the large characters would be waist-up). Cross Edge did this too, except it also resized characters.
NIS crosses over absolutely all their stuff but I still wasn't able to find VN-style scenes that even had large characters like Baal or Valvoga in them, much less them with a tiny character like Raspberyl.
Ar Nosurge would be a great contender except that it only used VN-style cutscenes for the cosmospheres and I don't remember Earthes or Korsal and a small character like Nelo in the same dialogue. It also used 3D models so it's tougher to gauge easily.
Seriously, I'm thinking the industry actively avoids this issue LOL
Compile Heart (and by extension Idea Factory) has it a good amount but they just fudge it in various ways. Agarest 1 and Zero both had a huge size difference between characters but they did a thing of resizing whoever was talking so there was no sense of who was taller than who. I can't do that.
The Neptunia games have had some mecha characters which are much bigger than the girls (especially the twins) and it gets around them by having the start point of the characters be in different places (the girls are mid-thigh up and the large characters would be waist-up). Cross Edge did this too, except it also resized characters.
NIS crosses over absolutely all their stuff but I still wasn't able to find VN-style scenes that even had large characters like Baal or Valvoga in them, much less them with a tiny character like Raspberyl.
Ar Nosurge would be a great contender except that it only used VN-style cutscenes for the cosmospheres and I don't remember Earthes or Korsal and a small character like Nelo in the same dialogue. It also used 3D models so it's tougher to gauge easily.
Seriously, I'm thinking the industry actively avoids this issue LOL
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