Discuss: Visual Novel Direction

[Zakamutt]

This evening, I rather suddenly remembered one of my own playful attempts at making a VN. I started up Ren'Py, quickly wrote some bullshit, took World End Economica's Hagana sprite-set and BGs, and went to town; not necessarily in that order. I soon noticed how much more alive simple changes of expression made my poor stolen sprite feel. I also saw how much better it looked when I added with dissolve after everything (this is your cue to call me a pleb).
 
It's got me thinking about visual novel direction.
 
While the unique challenges of writing for a VN has been handled in a topic or two in this forum, I haven't seen a real discussion thread (though I do think I saw it in a guide somewhere.) To clarify, with direction I here mean screen effects, sprite movement, transitions, and so forth - basically, what's in the script that's not the actual writing. Whether you think sound direction is a different thing is something to think about as well; some VNs actually had separate sound directors as far as I know.
 
I have a more... academic interest in the subject since I'm unlikely to ever make my own VN, but I think it's an interesting topic.
 
A few questions to start things off:
 
Who should do it?
 
One way of doing it is to just have the writers themselves handle it, but it's quite possible to make it a separate post - working together with the scene's writer(s), perhaps? Whether you can afford / need a dedicated director would likely depend on your skills, and potentially your budget. Do you think it's worth it?
 
What makes for good visual novel direction?
 
Can you think of VNs that did direction well?
 
What makes for poor direction?
 
What visual novels suffered from especially poor direction, in your opinion?
 
Do you know of any guides / discussion of this that I missed / forgot / tl;dr'd?
 
(Being a pleb, I only really have something to say regarding the first question).
 
I'm really interested in your opinions and potential tricks for this, especially from VN devs. Now then, let the thread commence... hopefully?

[Eclipsed]

Who should do it: idk, a dedicated team of direction experts who get input from what the writers are aiming for in their scenarios maybe?

Neko Para wins direction hands down for its use of... sprite movement? (animated sprites ftw)

 

eden* had some superb transitions with its abundance of CGs that I feel really made the reading experience more enjoyable

Direction has always been one of my guilty desires from VNs, for the exact same reason you stated: it makes everything feel more alive.

 

It's why I can't read older VNs; their direction is simply outdated. Very static.

"B-b-b-but story brah!" nah man, I'm in it for the art & direction too yo  and the pr0n

[babiker]

 I also saw how much better it looked when I added with dissolve after everything 

100% true, Can confirm. Those are the words of a true pro! 

 

I don't really think something as simple as this requires it's own guy. Unless you're making a huge VN and have a massive budget, it's simpler and easier to do it yourself.

 

I think the best direction in terms of movement I've seen so far is in Fate/Hollow Ataraxia. The amounts and different types of sprite movements was just amazing. The Fate VNs are by far the best when it comes to action in VNs (at least for translated stuff).

 

Another VN worthy of note in this is probably Narcissu. With what little they had, they did a pretty good job with depending on sound effects and moving the CGs (like the car one). It was little, but enough to give the VN enough atmosphere.

 

I can't really think of a VN that did it poorly... Then again I haven't read much VNs myself really, especially bad ones. 

[Zodai]

Okay, I feel like an alien sloth turtle at the moment, so this is going to be brief.

 

Direction, at least to me, feels like a piece that's very limited by the programming ability of the team, tied directly to their ability to make sense of everything that goes on in those incoherent walls of code.  That said, my programming ability is limited, so I may be incorrect.

 

Secondly, I don't agree with Palas' statement regarding screenwriters.  While the screenwriters certainly do write stuff, in movies the text isn't the primary method with which the audience is engaged.  The text is front and center in a visual novel, and this turns it into the pillar holding the other areas together.  A draft stunning in a word document can go anywhere from adequate to drivel as a direct port into a VN, and so as a writer it's absolutely necessary to edit the text as much as possible, even more so than standard writing.  You're going to be fiddling around with those sentences long after they've been place in - before, during and even after the setting of the scene's direction.

[Keinart]

I'll add a couple of examples to that "dissolve everything" that you don't really realize until you start working in a visual novel yourself.

 

First is the position of your dialogue and characters. In the past I thought that a lot of Visual Novels were still 800x600 just because they didn't know better, but that's not the main reason. The wider your resolution is, the more separated each of your elements in your novel will become. You need to get your text a lot higher that what you may think in the first place if you want the reader to be able to read and see the change on the sprites while reading. Check it yourselves, pick any VN with a good resolution, and compared where the dialogue box is compared to those at 800x600. You will suddenly notice how there a huge gap between the bottom of the screen and where the text start. Sometimes a smaller resolution makes everything easier for the eye when it comes to focusing your eyes to the screen.

 

Having the text going from one character to another is not as easy as just "changing the color of the name". When you read your own text is easy to know who's talking because you did it, but give it to someone else and he will probably have issues to know when someone is talking, destroying the entire flow of dialogues by a making him look for the name everytime. Reality is no one reads the name box and it's just there as support so you need to avoid this. The main trick most visual novels use for this are sound for dialogue, let it be voice actors or just beps like in the Ace Attorney series, or get sprites to the side of the box so that way you can know who is talking by the side of your eye. This is specially important when there are a couple character on screen, or if your main character has no sprites so dialogues don't get mixed. There are other techniques like making your sprites go darker when they are not talking, change the color of the boxes, make the boxes appear at different parts of the screen depending who's talking, etc...

 

Dissolving everything makes everything goes smoother, that's for sure, but at the same time it changes the flow of the of the dialogue compared to normal books A LOT. Now you suddenly have small stops of 0.5 seconds everytime a new character talks. This is not of a big problem most of the time, but there are moments you need your text to be fast or at least get quick reactions from your characters for a bigger impact. In this sense writting a visual novel is completly different to a normal book and you must look for ways to make it don't lose quality or impact with your own words. There's also some techniques like adding sound effects, shake effects, or transitions on the screen to develop this impact in different ways.

 

Talking about sound effects. They are not as important as you think. Never. In fact, having too many sound effects will even ridicule your text. If you pay attention to movies or anime you will see that a lot of times the sound effects used for some acctions have nothing to do with what the sound would actually be in real life, but again, it's more important to get an emotional or acction-reaction effect from the sfx that everything else. For Visual Novels this makes the sound effects to be less important since the actions and reactions are usually narrated and you won't have many scenes that require this effect. So don't get too frustated to get good sound effects, your music and your text are a million times more important.

 

And I'll leave it like that for now.

[Chronopolis]

I hardly know anything on the topic from the creator's viewpoint, but Gurenka had a lot of direction (more specifically sprite animations and sounds) which did a lot of work in the VN.

 

Motions I noticed:

A character (with super-human powers) jumping away: the sprite (goes down a little, then up while fading (forget if it was box fading) while a woosh sound plays.

A character touches down after having been scouting the area: the sprite transitions in with a small downward motion, there's a clear "step" sound.

A character jumps away from the MC: the character sprite zooms to the right off the screen, there's a woosh sound.

 

There are ways to represent being the MC being knocked down, particularly, it's good to have the jar to the screen be similarly jarring compared to what the MC is receiving. Combine with a blunt muffled impact sound.

 

As for when to include sounds...my snap gut response is whenever the sound would help the person strongly be aware of the action and you actually want their focus to snap to that action for a moment.

 

During fights, I get the feeling it's important for sprite zoom to change to represent different distances the MC and foe. (Source: Gurenka, Eustia, many others)

For moments in which the foe is difficult for the MC's eyes to follow manipulating focus and not in focus, combined with a certain kind of wave up and down motion on the sprite seems good. (Source: Muramasa, maybe others).

 

Himanatsu had sprites for each character, but of their back. By quickly flashing the back sprite, they animated a character turning around quickly and leaving. It was quite captivating.

[Zakamutt]

The main trick most visual novels use for this are sound for dialogue, let it be voice actors or just beps like in the Ace Attorney series, or get sprites to the side of the box so that way you can know who is talking by the side of your eye.

I never realized beps were a things in Ace Attorney, but I think 999 really nailed it. I'd have preferred voice acting most likely, but on a budget, it's a pretty cool replacement if done right. How well it works likely depends on the atmosphere of the VN though.

 

Sound effects are powerful as they give your scenes identity and solidity even if the events are already being described, thus making the emotions in a scene more "three-dimensional", so to speak.

At least for me, sound effects like students talking in the background, cars passing by etc can sometimes make the text harder to focus on / read. I'm very sensitive to distractions though, so this might not apply universally. That said, there's a time and place for it - I just prefer that you don't play it during an entire scene, even if it doesn't actually stop in-universe.

[Zodai]

But I did reach the conclusion that it's not the case for writers to abandon their text in VNs there in the end.

Apologies in that case - like I said, was like an alien sloth turtle at the time.  ><;;