I have a general request because it's something that frustrates me every now and then, and I'm sure it's affected others before. I would've posted this in the GIP forum but I think it needs discussion.
It would be nice if those who post up information about their new game could give a few paragraphs of examples of dialogue from their games - because in the past I've seen games that look amazing, or at least their artwork is very tempting - but when it comes to playing, the dialogue is absolutely awful. It would generally just be nice to know what kind of effort is going into dialogue, rather than just a percentage or total silence on this front until the game's release.
I don't want to put any games down - but what I also believe is that exposing poorly written dialogue early on would give every developer the chance to get some critique and essentially find help or assistance with making it that little bit better. Dialogue is commonly overlooked and you just don't hear anything about it. I know for my game the dialogue has been annoying some people and with a few suggestions it could be put right, however that's not always possible until a demo or even the full-game is out.
Please give it a thought - because dialogue is as equally important as graphics and all the rest.
:)
I think you're right. In upcoming games (and possibly the one I'm working on now), I'll give some dialogue samples. I don't think I'll show any on this forum though, because interest for my game has gone down. I'll post it on the
Dogmaday Games Forums
(http://www.freewebs.com/dogmadaygames/forums)Ã,Â
if anyone's interested (the game is David Smith: Private Investigator).
You have right about auful or endless dialogues. However, in my opinion a game can be very interesting even if it hasn't any dialogue but it is based to smart riddles for example. If you have played Myst, you will realise what i am talking about.
The point isn't that a game has to have a dialogue, but that if a game has dialogue it should match the quality of the rest of the game.
I think including a sample of dialogue in the GiP is a really nice idea, but I'm not certain it should be mandatory. That might just lead to Darth having to lock more threads, and his thread locking-finger must get pretty tired as it is.
I wonder if there would be a way of encouraging people to give a dialogue sample without compelling them to do so.
I think it's a good idea because, as you said, dialogue is just as an important part of the game as graphics and story.
However, as Ali pointed out, I don't think it's something that should be required ... just encouraged. Because there are already a lot of rules that, though clearly explained in the rules thread, people STILL can't seem to manage posting properly in there.
I need to update the example thread anyway (the screenshots didn't get transferred to my new server) so I can add some dialogue examples to it as well.
I like it, it's like a screenshot. I'd be in favor of adding such functionality to the games.php page so that it can (1) link to a small page of text (e.g. summary or dialogue or whatever), and (2) link to a music file in case people want to hear a game before playing.
Of course authors are not required to use either, but at least they'll be able to.