Why are animations important?

[jeash]

animations are the only things that differentiate some of the games from a book.
personally I prefer some kind of gameplay (which I realize is a lot to ask for in adult games) to do that but animations certainly help.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

So solve this doubt of mine, why are animations so special to you?

Animations in general are important because humans are hardwired to perceive the world in fluid motion and do it on the cheap using a squishy bag of fat and electrolytes. Everything we do with computer tech is an attempt to simulate it even cheaper. So if you're using renpy that almost certainly means you in-built transitions in some fashion. That's animation and everyone uses is because it's extremely frugal in terms of dev time.

Animations in sex scenes aren't that important mostly because the cost is much higher, especially in hand-drawn art. But we do have the tech for 3d renders and we can vectorize 2d art. Flash games are an excellent example of utilizing that. That said, a loop with only a few frames is often a bad idea unless it's something small, not involving full-body motions. If you fail to achieve the illusion of fluidity all your extra effort is wasted and it's a lose-lose situation, so approach carefully.

 

[Corvo Bianco]

I think for an average VN dev, it doesn't really make sense to focus on animations. It takes too much work to get it right. Play on your strengths instead of chasing a wild goose; will yield a better return.

Like I spent around 10 hours on this

You must be registered to see the links

. Could be done faster, but I had to make sure it looks good from every angle as you can rotate the camera. And I am somewhat experienced in animation, unlike most devs. Though for me, the real problem lies in making character rigs. I guess you people already have a decent automatic rigging system in Daz. I have to spend over 100 hours rigging and making blend shapes for each character :[

 

[polywog]

I think for an average VN dev, it doesn't really make sense to focus on animations. It takes too much work to get it right. Play on your strengths instead of chasing a wild goose; will yield a better return.

Like I spent around 10 hours on this

You must be registered to see the links

. Could be done faster, but I had to make sure it looks good from every angle as you can rotate the camera. And I am somewhat experienced in animation, unlike most devs. Though for me, the real problem lies in making character rigs. I guess you people already have a decent automatic rigging system in Daz. I have to spend over 100 hours rigging and making blend shapes for each character :[

The OP specifically said "Games" not Visual Novels.... who wants animations in Visual Novels, this isn't Harry Potter.

how unnerving
People expect their Novels to be still, not all animated up, with actions and sounds, and voice acting.

Action is expected in RPGs and games, but not in them there comic book stories, they is just spozed to sit quiet.

 

[jackofshadows]

So solve this doubt of mine, why are animations so special to you? Why do you find 2-3 second looped animations so much better or even prefer a few frames animations over a static CG?

Unfortunately, I'm at your side of the fence so it's also a mystery to me. I mean, I can enjoy a good animation but they're far from being essectial to me while people are indeed constantly requesting them and no, polywog in VNs as well. Take any popular western VN if you're think otherwise and talk to its funbase.

My guess is those who are requesting a lot of animations are incapable of getting immersed otherwise, simple as that. They're probably don't read much in general or at all as well and prefer not to stress their imagination too hard.

Voice over is a similiar case. I don't care about it at all unless it's done on an absolutely top-notch level but people are requesting it as well because... they're don't like to read much, apparentely.

 

[BrokenDreams]

One thing I notice being asked in almost every game thread is animations.
"Does this game have animations?" "Will it have animations?" "Are animations planned?", no matter if the game is 2D or 3D, animations are asked for quite often.

Now, as you have said, we are playing games and somewhere in our sub-conscious mind we associate movement with games portraying sexual acts (physical act where motion is of great importance). We cling onto this movement (even it is 2fps) as the differentiating factor between a game and a book with illustrations. Now, I can enjoy erotic stories with no illustrations because I can let my imagination run wild and I very much enjoy games with animations as it conveys the motion of the physical act but with static renders I am stuck halfway through my imagination as most games with no animations tend to portray a sexual act starting from foreplay to finishing off in only 2-3 renders. Finally, so many great games implement nice animations that you can't but appreciate the effort a dev is putting into animations even though the end result may always not be great.

 

[crackedreneamon]

I don't mind "choppy" animation, especially if the fames are unique and the animator is trying.

I cannot stand animations that are trying extra hard to be 60 frames +, but it's obviously been all puppet rigged instead of drawn in (even in classic limited animation style) because it just looks so unnatural, weird and like some rubberbands trying to screw.

 

[Deleted member 805449]

Animations are a waste of time - they are usually very rudimentary and end up on the wrong side of uncanny valley because most devs aren't professional animators. Also, clip loading times on renpy are abysmal. Videos probably could be optimized for it, but most devs don't have on that.

I prefer to just see a nicely composed render and imagine it "in motion" on my own.

 

[Domiek]

Animations can add a lot to a game if they're done well. If done poorly, people would rather have more static CGs than a shitty 1 second loop. Imagine if these games had art that looks like it was drawn by a toddler. People would much rather have more time spent on the story rather than seeing some shitty stick figures having sex. Same for animations.

The problem of course is that you will need to spend countless hours making shitty animations before you can make good ones. If you want to add animations to your game because you think that's what people want, it may not be worth it. If you're actually interested in animating and getting better, then it's definitely worth pursuing.

I started using Blender specifically because I wanted to get better at animating. It's really fun and satisfying for me. This wont make everyone happy of course because it means longer waits for updates but at the end of the day, you've got to enjoy your work.

 

[SpikeZg]

for me, animations bring scene to life (if they are done right)
those slide show "animations" are the worst, never do them, ever! They should not exist!

 

[Karnon254332]

One thing I notice being asked in almost every game thread is animations.
"Does this game have animations?" "Will it have animations?" "Are animations planned?", no matter if the game is 2D or 3D, animations are asked for quite often.

I was always kind of curious, but I never paid too much heed on why people are so interested in animations, until today.
I was looking through F95Zone threads when I noticed a comment in a game thread going something like "Animations would be cool, even if they were a few frames looped".

I thought to myself "Wait, for real?", a few frames looped would be kind of ugly in my mind, at that point I would prefer the CGs to be static.
Then again, I have played quite a few Japanese titles and animations are really rare there (none of the titles I have played had animations), I have grown accustomed to static CGs so I see no special charm in animations, yet I seem to be the only one thinking this.

So solve this doubt of mine, why are animations so special to you? Why do you find 2-3 second looped animations so much better or even prefer a few frames animations over a static CG?

Personally, animations are neither expected nor a necessity for me to enjoy an adult game (there are factors like genre and content preferences, general art style and quality of stories, while so much more contributes to my impression on any game), but their inclusion is absolutely appreciated. Think about icing on cupcakes.

It really depends on one's expectations when they start playing a game: You may be more than content with static CGs if you play a certain game for the story or characters, but if you are playing a game solely to masturbate, well-made animations are a game-changer.

For me, short animations are a bit more engaging and immersive than static CGs as fapping material. Of course, they are better in small doses for me because I don't want to be spoiled (not to mention the additional workload that comes with animations).

This is Karnon, a self-righteous fapper, signing off.

 

[Ophanim]

I would agree with the above, with the icing on the cake analogy, in that I think writing is waaaay more important for building tone, and sound for building atmosphere, and both are often criminally undersold. Bad writing especially is just painful sometimes for an otherwise promising game, or completely absent, though I'll leave it to you to decide if bad writing is better than none at all. Just... good lord, if your game relies on writing to carry a scene, take the hit to your pride and ask your thread if anyone wants to proofread for you, or something, please? If fanfic authors can do it, trust me, so can you.

Anyway, regarding animations, I think it might have something to do with the wider gaming trend of graphical fidelity being seen as the main deciding factor of quality. People have been increasingly pushed by AAA studios to use graphics as a shorthand for whether a game is worth playing, a state of affairs that I'm sure has benefited absolutely nobody in the business of selling graphics cards for the past twenty years

I mean, if you think about it, it's blatantly obvious that the end goal of 'photorealistic' graphics won't necessarily result in games with enjoyable stories/gameplay/atmosphere, but it feels like an assumption a lot of people are unconciously making, because those concepts are so heavily conflated in gaming media, and then they also see people around them parroting those opinions back at whatever the latest big budget release is, and the association grows. And from that (imo flawed) position, animation is the next step up in graphical quality from still images. It's a sad state of affairs, but I don't think it's going to go away soon, unless there's a major paradigm shift away from gaming being primarily associated with uber expensive gaming rigs as a status symbol for their ability to render gramfiks good.

I think the people leaving comments like this often haven't thought about their opinion enough to even articulate why they want animations, is the thing. It's a kneejerk response similar to 'ew gay' and 'NTR? REEEE!" that come from unexamined beliefs which they see as perfectly normal and reflective of reality, because some beliefs are considered normative and go largely unchallenged in wider society. Afaik in sociology these are referred to as 'hegemonic' belief structures, but that's really getting into the weeds. Anyway, I don't think there's much real thought there about what the media is trying to do, or how the game design works to further those goals. Even static art suffers from this trend, with people often unable to actually critique art beyond 'omg masterpiece' or 'looks like dogshit'.

Animations can make or break a game, I think. They're like... a force multiplier, I guess? They can be an excellent emphasis of what writing and sound are already doing, or they can puncture the mood just as easily as a misplaced bit of imagery by distracting from a mental image that might have been sexier than what the animation is showing. Even good animation can end up harming a project if it causes the game to start lagging behind in other areas, like the writing quality, or art, or gameplay suffering because the developer is spending more time on animations, which as I just said, may not actually help the atmosphere of a scene in the first place. I'm not an animator, and I'm not too interested in becoming one, but I guess it really depends if animations are a good call for the dev, for their work habits and for what game they're trying to make?

Sorry if this is kinda incoherent, I was just spitballing my thoughts on visual trends and media crit in games and it turned into this

 

[CoolKittyRhymes]

The VNs I first played did not have animations, and so when I first encountered them I found them nice. But my opinion has never change: nice but not necessary. If you're doing everything else right (story, still images, etc.) then I'm happy.

Currently I'm working on learning and improvement my animating skills because a half-assed motion clip is going to be a bigger eye sore than a half-assed still image.

 

[Mr. McFucker]

Adding animation is one of the easiest ways to boost the popularity of your VN. Imagine you're a developer. You're creating a VN with static frames, a solid storyline, and beautiful graphics. At some point, you find yourself in a situation where the growth of new fans stops, or worse, you start losing them. What would you try first? Read more books to improve your writing skills? Or try to enhance the static frames? At this stage, it would be challenging because you simply wouldn't know what and how to improve. So, a simple solution would be to add animation to your project. And I'm not talking about 2-3 frames that repeat like a slideshow. I'm talking about well-made animation at 24 frames per second, lasting around 10 seconds (meaning it's a loop of 240 frames). Usually, this duration is enough to add secondary movements and make the animation less monotonous. Of course, initially, fans might have to endure poorly made animation as the creator may lack the skills, but usually, a few months of practice bring the situation back to normal. And when the developer reaches a decent level of animation quality, their project will simply stand out compared to others without animation. Though I understand people who ask these questions here because, for some, the priority may not be animation or graphic quality, but a quality storyline. But I think most people are driven by their fetishes. Add mom and her son to the game, and people won't care about the depth of the game's plot. They crave action, and that's it.

 

[McFuckyy96]

I think some people are overthinking this.
People like animations simply for the visual appeal, people like seeing things in motion. Less need to use imagination and more just coom-staring at a scene to fap. A lot of people treat these games as porn basically, they just want to fap and get off to their fetishes and scenes, so it makes sense that animations help with that by seeing a sex scene play out.

Though granted there is subjectivity involved with this in regards to what is considered a good animation and would a bad animation take away from the scene/game. I mostly play 2D games so I don't really mind 3-4 frame slideshows, especially if the art is good. But I've seen in 3D games in particular the limb warping and stretching in some animations can take you out of the immersion.

 

[Joraell]

I think animations are cool Moving tits and butts! I like it!

 

[Fuchsschweif]

So solve this doubt of mine, why are animations so special to you? Why do you find 2-3 second looped animations so much better or even prefer a few frames animations over a static CG?

Because it simply makes the experience more immersive. Where I see most devs fail though is to animate the cum and put it on loop. Being "surprised" with a static image after cum kinda kills the tension.

There are very, very few games with static images that stand out. This here is one of them: https://f95zone.to/threads/a-boy-and-his-perverted-oneesans-happy-h-apartment-life-aomizuan.2511/

But the speeding lines that imply movement, the pacing between two images and the sound effects make it feel like you would experience this in 60fps fully animated.

It's crazy how so many details can add up to an immersive experience even with the absence of animations.

 

[RealGoodStuff]

Both visual and animation aspects are commendable; preferences vary among individuals .