KITTEN2021'S PROFILE

post=91118
I actually haven't seen the FF7 movie, but it has two things going for it right from the start:
1) It's largely for people who've played FF7 - they're already interested.
2) It's a movie. It has lower expectations for interactivity and, let's be honest, more impressive non-interactive ways of getting things across than most of us are going to manage.

OK, bad example to use, I know... But my point wasn't the movie itself, my point was how they portrayed the history of it all. The premises of how they portrayed it; they used multiple "shot's" if you will to basically explain the reason for everyone being sick and dying in like one simple phrase spoken by one little girl. I can't remember the phrase, it was something about Gyostigma or whatever it is. But that's all besides the point; the point is, it was simple clear and sweet... Another one would be the Lord of the Rings, the second movie, it opened showing two people enjoying themselves and then finding the ring or whatever and the ultimate down fall of man kind in that one false swoop (yes I know, another movie...); a good game to use as well was Xenosaga, can't think of any others off the top of my head, but you see where I'm driving at. They all used history as a means to make the present understandable...

post=91118
Omit details and don't text dump or include a lot of names. If you're having trouble getting it out that way, the initial hook needn't necessarily be very related to the main conflict or setting of the game - maybe it's something to keep the player going until they absorb enough information for the main hook to make sense.

I'm sorry, but I don't think I understand what you mean by this... If by omit details and text dump you mean don't include things that really are not necessary for the opening, then yeah, I understand that. But if not, then I'm sorry, could you elaborate for me? And at what point is the history telling too much...? How do you find the fine line between, "Well I know this is very important, but I have the opening already going at 3 minutes long... Should I or shouldn't I add it?" and "Well, its already 3 minutes long, another small subject like this wont hurt." Do you see what I'm saying?

My game revolves around what destroyed the world years ago and how the people have learned to live on after it and have even evolved beyond it. But the evil returns later on, and I want the player to understand when it gets to that point and basically sit there and go, "Oh crap! That again!? Wow, the worlds in big trouble now!", you get what I mean... -.- I'm just not sure what the limit would be for that... I suppose the only way to know would be to get it done and then offer a demo and see what people say I guess, would that be wise to think?

Thanks btw for responding in a kind manner... It is appreciated more then you know! :)

post=87388
8. Long intros aren't fun, they're boring. More than a minute of intro is too long. People like to play the game.

I just wanted to ask something real quick... About number 8, if you have a game that ties in to things that occurred in the past, isn't it good to have a fair decent amount of history played at the beginning of the game for the intro?
I mean, sure there is a very fine line that you need to be VERY careful with when you do things like this, but I like to think of how FFVII the movie did it; they played the intro to show what happened in the past and to explain why their world was so screwed up now and then plopped you right on into the movie and allowed to characters of the movie to explain the rest to you as it went on.

What I guess I'm trying to figure out is what would everyone really constitute as too much time spent at the beginning and too little time spent on the beginning?

BTW, please ignore the text, this was done on purpose to prevent anyone from seeing the names and so forth of the chara's I'm using for now. :)

Lol, would of never thought of doing that... Thanks! Also something else I have started doing is playing with the Face Maker and the Char maker at this site: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://www.famitsu.com/freegame/tool/chibi/index1.html < Credit HIGHLY goes to someone else for this post though, forgive me deeply, I can not remember who it was and nor can I find the forum discussion I found it in anymore... > It has kind of helped me in making some new faces and so forth and I have enjoyed playing with it... Its brought some idea's to my head, not many, but some. :)

Hey guys! I am creating my first full length game in VX and was wondering if I could get a little feedback and advise on it.

I have it barely going right now and am just trying to figure out on what it is I should really be concerned with when I am making it. I have done a lot of planning on my previous games but then I ended them. So this time I am just going head-long into what ever pops into my head and placing it into the game.

What do you guys think I should do...? Do more planning and think of what the world should look like or just go for it and add to the game as I go on? I'm not sure...