/fg/ - Fangames

1: I firmly believe that full tracks are better: It's alot harder to make short loops that don't become unbearable after a couple of minutes of repeat. You should make sure the music files are as small as possible, for example converting them to .ogg is a good idea. Here's a online converter I use: http://audio.online-convert.com/convert-to-ogg

2. You don't really need alot of doors. I only have 4 in Miserere. It depends on the size of the game, ofcourse but I'd say that each start world should have at least 2 branches (so 3 worlds per door minimum).

3. You don't need to have a ambigious ending to make people think. I think anything is fine though, it's your game. Just don't make it too teen-angsty, ok?

>>10576
>1.Music
A mix of both. The ambience music is great because it sets the whole world to have a special feeling. Actual ST would be mean to be used in certain decisive events (as the ending in YN, or some other important thing like that).
Also, keep the filesize with low pls.

>2.Doors
Most of the Door's worlds in YN/fangames are giant empty maps with a 2deep4u background and dildos dancing around. That isn't interesting at all. I think >=12 doors is ok, but where these worlds are actual worlds on their own rather than copies of the original (snow/neon/forest/etc world).

>3. Ending
The ending doesn't rule over what happened before it. You can speculate even knowing what happened in the end, because you don't know what happened before that, or what led to said ending.
However, if you're saying that you won't leave any black tile in the maze (Or, in other words, explain EVERYTHING), then at least make it like some kind of puzzle where connecting the dots in an interesting way leads to a firm base, though still leaving some empty spots for the player's imagination.
Kinda like, for example, you can show part of the whole image, and as you come closer to the ending, the picture becomes clearer, and also showing new points of view you may or may not have been capable of noticing before. I always love when in a game they start explaining all in the detail and you realize that you missed something that was there, in front of you, clear as water in broad daylight.

But that's just my opinion.

The other stuff will have to be up to your best judgment, but I can say something about a few other things:

1. A full OST would be much better. You can use MP3s with fades or simply use an engine that supports OGG vorbis if you'd like to cut back on filesize. Short loops do get pretty grating after a while, and they're really not all that memorable. Your players (and other audio people) will thank you for it.

>>10578
>>10579
>>10580
Thanks for the advice and quick replies. I will go with full tracks then. I'm confident I can strike the right balance of what music and ambiance goes where.

> I'd say that each start world should have at least 2 branches (so 3 worlds per door minimum).
A 1 to 3 ratio is 6 or 7 doors maximum for a game with 20 worlds then. I'll try to do much more than the minimum though.

>You can speculate even knowing what happened in the end, because you don't know what happened before that, or what led to said ending… …have been capable of noticing before. I always love when in a game they start explaining all in the detail and you realize that you missed something that was there, in front of you, clear as water in broad daylight.
I'm glad you feel that way. I imagine that revealing the "what" happened and leaving out the "how" it happened would encourage the player to question or speculate. I could make an ambiguous ending, and have a full ending if the player get's a 100% playthrough.

How do you feel about puzzles?

>>10582
They're great

>>10582
I think they suck, or, it must be quick. Being stuck in the same room for more than 3 minutes kills my thing.

Oh wait, >>10583 here.
I thought you mean puzzles like the ones of 2kki. The in-game, decisive-for-the-sake-of-moving-forward-in-the-plot kind of puzzles aren't my thing either. But if you meant side-play puzzles that add insight of the story or new data that you wouldn't normally get through the normal gameplay, they're more than welcome.

YN's effects are scattered pretty well throughout the worlds. Some areas have effects while plenty don't. By my estimation there were less rooms with effects than there were with effects to find, but I could be off. What ratio of effects to areas would be not to thin and not to thick? Of course, ideally there should be plenty of events in a game and at least one point of interest in each area.

>>10583
>>10584
>>10585
I'll keep all the puzzles in the side goal then. It should work out fine as I already have a side story portion planned, although now I'm not sure if I should keep the hint system now.

Not sure why you're trying to focus-group the development of a fangame though. At the end of the day it's really not gonna matter what we tell you we like or don't like because we're such a small sample you might as well just do whatever it is you want to do or read the various fun/mock threads about dumb things devs do.