What I've been doing lately (Pervert Action: Legacy progress)

I haven't been posting as much publicly as I used to about my game development progress for a couple of reasons, but mostly because I write a full blog post every week for my Patreon backers and so doing smaller updates elsewhere feels a little distracting. Also I couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't just take the form of shameless self-promotion. Anyway, in case you're interested in the larger changes that have been taking place and the general level of development of my current WIP, Pervert Action: Legacy, here's an update.

Animations in AIF

by BBBen

Kenji and Ami from Pervert Action: Future. I wish I'd
done better with the lighting in this shot, but never mind.

I'd like to briefly discuss 3D animations, as opposed to still pictures. I am (I believe) the only author to have released an "AIF game" containing animated shots; namely Pervert Action: Future. It's actually surprised me that nobody else has attempted this, although I suppose there aren't many active AIF authors making games with pictures in the first place.

It kind of feels to me like this article should be longer and more complex than it is, engaging with more of the topic, but as there hasn't been any real discussion of the topic in the community before I don't quite know what people want to talk about.

Therefore this is almost an 'open thread', but with some more of my random thoughts about the process running ahead of it.

Some questions to players about images in AIF

This isn't so much an article as an attempt to start a discussion that will hopefully give me some necessary player data. I have been wondering about these issues as I have few means to gather player metrics, etc. beyond feedback and beta testing.

3D images in AIF games – Yes? No? Maybe?

by BBBen

NOTE: This article still feels like a bit of a draft version to me, but I wanted to get it out there before the conversation had completely dried up.

Minami from Pervert Action: Future. I didn't want to use images
from someone else's game to illustrate the article without their
permission, so here's one from my game.

My attitude toward 3D design programs such as Daz Studio and Poser is a complex one. On the one hand I really like the purity of a text-based AIF; we're adults, we don't need illustrations in our novels, do we? At the same time I have to admit some hypocrisy on this as I used Daz Studio for Pervert Action: Future, and I really couldn't imagine the game without it. 

When playing a game with 3D pictures I sometimes find them distracting, and if I don't like what the author has tried to do with the pics then I will be turned off a game I might otherwise have liked. Still, the pictures do seem to be popular in the community, which has really responded to the emergence of 3D pictures in games.

The first appearance of 3D images in our community was when ~3~ started doing his "O Erin" comic strip. At the time many of us were blown away that it could be done, and it wasn't until some time later when Goblinboy started using it that I realised that it was not a total from-scratch 3D design system, and was not just something experts would use. I've been interested to see that though images are slowly becoming more common, we haven't had a total explosion and take-over... at least not yet. Maybe that's partly because we've been getting only a modest number of releases, and many of them are mini-comp entries.

Using a 3D image program

Some people probably have the impression that using Daz is either really easy or really hard. I'd say it comes in somewhere between those two poles. The most problematic things are the initial learning curve (you'll need to practice and play around with it for a while, emulating what others have done before you start to churn out anything good) and also the need to acquire content. As an aside, if you're looking to side-step the issue altogether and use some easier and cheaper alternatives to this kind of image designer, check out some suggestions in this post.

Without good content you can't do anything, and getting it can be expensive. That alone could prevent it being used by just everyone, although it is possible (naturally) to pirate most of what you'd want (I'm not advocating that approach). There are sales, and it helps if the kind of stuff you want is not particularly new or popular, as it's likely to be cheaper. Being a little clever and restrained in what you actually show will also help you get past the hurdle of not being able to get what you want for pictures. I was also able to be patient, as it was quite a while between first taking an interest in Daz for my project and actually needing to use it to make pictures. Furthermore there are some great websites that offer a lot of free stuff; the best is probably sharecg, which contains loads of content. Oh, one other thing: the program Daz Studio Pro is actually free (they make their money on selling the content).

I've found the most time consuming part of making 3D pictures is designing the characters. Once you have the characters done it's relatively easy to just pose them in new positions. It does depend, however, on how ambitious you are. If you aren't willing to get in there and tamper with the posing, the subtleties of facial expressions and such things as props, lighting effects and camera angles then you will not produce good pictures. You'll sometimes need to go back and try an idea over again, or scrap it altogether if you can't get it right or if the content you've got just isn't going to look right. You'll also need a decent sense of visual composition.

An issue I haven't run into much, but one that can be a big deal if you're making animations or have an old computer, is rendering time. When I'm generating a lot of frames with complex lighting and shadows sometimes I just have to walk away from my computer and let it do its thing for half and hour. My computer is reasonably powerful (if a couple of years old now) so if you don't have something with a good graphics processor you may find rendering is very slow. Incidentally, I'll do a separate post on the subject of animations.

Another thing I've discovered is that Daz is almost never the last stop for a picture. Photoshop (or some equivalent) is an essential second stage for picture design. That means that there's a second learning curve if you don't know Photoshop, and of course you will have to acquire the program, which is another significant expense (I lucked out there – already had a registered copy). Rather than buying Photoshop you may prefer to use one of the free alternatives out there; I have heard good things about GIMP. You can make pictures without Photoshop, I suppose, but that will mean that you can't do a lot of cool stuff. Perhaps more importantly, 3D images often have flaws in them when you render them, such as a body part clipping through a piece of clothing or a weird-looking part of a pose that you need to include in the frame in order to get the good bit in. In these situations Photoshop is one answer, as it allows you to correct mistakes that you just can't fix conveniently in Daz Studio or Poser. Tools such as smudge, blur and clone stamp are of tremendous utility for that kind of correction.

Evaluating 3D images in AIF

I've seen a lot of 3D pictures out there in recent years, and I have to say I don't like very many of them. It seems to me as if most people using the system for porn are unimaginative in their picture composition, use often mediocre or inconsistent content (and they mostly use the same stuff as everyone else) and aren't particularly meticulous in the design process. Now, I grant you, looking back on the images in PAF I already see them as underdeveloped, and I feel like I could do a much better job on them now. Some shots I still quite like, but generally the work is quite unskilled. That's fine, as it was my first shot with the software, although I should point out that creating that stuff wasn't especially easy or quick – there was quite a learning curve involved.

I really hope new authors don't all feel the need or even necessarily the desire to use Daz or other 3D image programs to make pictures for their games. I accept that things are drifting that way and that by making PAF with pictures I've furthered the trend, but I still hope that it won't go too far. At the least keeping the tight multimedia restrictions in the mini-comp seems like a good idea to me. This is fundamentally a writing community and you can't tell me that there isn't something kind of awesome about being able to entertain and enthrall people with just words to fire their imaginations. Remember that as an AIF writer fundamentally words are your medium, and they still do most of the work in a game.

And another thing! With words you aren't limited in the way you are with 3D design programs. You aren't restricted to only showing the stuff that's available in Daz Studio content; with writing, as Neil Gaimen points out, there are no rules. You can write whatever the hell you want, so long as it's good, and as a consequence you can do some amazing things. I'd strongly recommend that even if you plan to use 3D images you should write first, then see what you can illustrate. You might want to adjust what you have later, or just design the ideas but not actually write the prose until you've done the pictures, but I really don't think you should start by looking at Daz and then write what you see. Let your imagination create the game, then try to illustrate what you see in your head. Yes, it's harder that way, but your games will be better. Of course, you can go back and tweak things later if your images are good and you can come up with something cool from Daz that you hadn't thought of before – it may well stimulate your imagination – but don't let your writing suffer from using 3D design programs or your game will probably suck.

Well, that's my appraisal. I hope I didn't sound too arrogant or superior in my judgements of 3D image use on the Internet – I know I don't personally have a long track record on the issue and as I say, I think I can do better than I have done. It just seems to me that AIF is faced with a situation similar to what we've seen with other technical developments such as new IF platforms before; namely that a lot of people are going to use the new medium poorly. 

This is an issue of a lot of interest to the community these days so go ahead and comment below. Are all games going to have images in the future? Should the mini-comp ban pictures outright? Are images a great thing or a terrible thing for AIF? Are the increased demands on authors reducing the output of new games?

Easy 3D images: Alternatives to Daz Studio and Poser

by BBBen

AIF players are increasingly expecting images in AIF games. I don't personally think you need images to make a good AIF game even now, but a lot of aspiring authors might wish to do so but be put off by the challenge. While the creation of such images can be difficult, time consuming and expensive, there are some alternatives options out there that are actually very viable and (so far) not widely used. These are a few tips to get you started designing (hopefully good quality) 3D images for games without the trouble or potential expenses of making them in a 3D image design program like Daz Studio or Poser.

3D Sexvilla 2 or The Klub

The Klub

3D Sexvilla 2 is a game that allows the custom design of male and female sexual partners, and then putting them in scenes and situations that allow an extensive array of positions, outfits and certain other variables. The game allows you to take pictures, so you can use it to custom design characters for your AIF and then illustrate your game. The Klub is an illegally hacked and then extensively modded version of the game, which is distributed freely. I have to be honest – for the sake of your game you're probably better off going for the Klub, as it's got more content available and is more up to date. I will not, however, provide a link here to a pirated product, so if you want it you'll have to find it yourself. In addition to the Klub itself you'll want the additional content packs – at time of writing there was a mega content pack available that should give a lot of options.

I won't bother going into the process of using these programs as they are actually very easy to use, and you might as well play around with them and have some fun while you learn the ins and outs, so to speak.

Pros:

• The biggest advantages to using one of these programs is that they are fundamentally designed to show sex. They come built in with a wide array of sexual positions, slutty clothing and...
• The content works relatively well with unrealistically proportioned people. Note in the image above how the bikini tops actually fit the enormous breasts – it's actually hard to make that happen in a lot of programs.
• Easy to use and quite fun.
• Quick to get started.

Cons:

• The program is quite limited in some respects. You're not going to have massive freedom of art design, and you can't create anything that looks truly spectacular.
• It's great for designing pictures of busty bimbos getting pounded, but not so great for subtle storytelling.
• Not all the pics look as good as the screenshots I've included – those are unusually good.
• People might just say, "hey, that's a screenshot from 3D Sexvilla!" and then go off to play it themselves.

Also from the Klub – note that the character models are clipping through each other at a few points.

Skyrim and Oblivion

From Skyrim, with Caliente's Female Body Mod Big Bottom Edition -CBBE-

For fantasy settings, believe it or not your best bet might be to actually set up scenes inside The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. You'll have to mod the games first, of course, but that's relatively easy and you'll find there's a whole range of pornographic mods for the games, as well as substantial graphical enhancements for Oblivion. It may seem odd that I include Oblivion here, as it's quite an old game now, but in fact there is so much high quality (and recent) content available for it in the modding community that it might actually be the better choice, at least for now. If you need further persuading that these games can be turned to the purpose of porn, take a look at this Oblivion video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hreiOJ8M9Ms (Note: you need a number of mods to make that kind of thing happen). There's lots of this on Youtube if you just search for "oblivion bbb".

Pros:

• Great for fantasy as there's lots of content already built in, and still all right for non-fantasy, as Oblivion in particular has a lot of outfits and some mods that suit a more modern setting.
• Mods are free and not too hard to install.
• Standards of quality can be quite high.

Cons:

• Even more than the Klub, using these programs saps you of a lot of your own originality and railroads you along certain predefined lines.
• Mods can still be hard to make work in the way you want.
• You have to have the games, of course.
• Not really suited to a non-fantasy setting, despite what I noted above.
• People might just say "hey, that's a screenshot from Skyrim!"

From Oblivion, with HG EyeCandy Body

Mods you will need:

• Naked character models for both males and females (presuming you want both).
• Facial models (the base faces in Oblivion in particular were hideous).
• Sexual poses/interactions (if we're doing this the easy way).
• Outfits.
• Hi-res textures (optional – watch out, some of these can be surprisingly demanding on your computer).

Where do you find these mods? http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/

Note that you will need to sign up to the site in order to access the adult mods section, but you won't be disappointed with the number of adult mods available.

From Oblivion, the DMRA BBB Cardigan and One-piece mod, this shot also demonstrates some of the drastic character design changes you can make. Characters do not have to look like this, of course.

The process:

• Add all the mods – this will take you a little while, and getting them all to work right might take a little more time.
• Choose a scene & characters.
• Pose your characters and props.
• Take a screenshot with the "print screen" button. Here's a little guide to finding your images in Skyrim: http://j-u-i-c-e.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Take-Screenshots-in-Skyrim and here's how to do it in Oblivion: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/How_To_Create_Screenshots_Using_Oblivion – in both cases it's easy.

Conclusion:

One last tip – the most time consuming stages in the process are generally going to be setting up your programs/content, learning to use them and then designing your characters. Actually posing them and taking pictures is quite quick and easy.

Anyway, I hope this has given you some ideas and encouragement on what can be done in 3D image design without any particular technical skill or resources. The truth is that the ability to create impressive, illustrated AIF is within just about everyone's grasp these days. You just need to take the time and effort to do it.

I've been considering making a small project using the Klub myself. Do you think you'd use these methods for image design? Or do you have anything you can add? If you've got any further suggestions for other alternative picture creators, or just on ways to best use the ones outlined here, go ahead and post them in the comments below!