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[Muz]

Try reading some of Robert E. Howard's books/short stories (especially Conan). I love how the fast-paced, actiony writing of it. Unlike most writers, he skips trivial details and focuses on the important stuff, which gives his writing a very fast paced look.

I think the problem with a lot of writing is that it tries to cover everything. It shouldn't; nobody cares about a lot of descriptions. It's often info dumping, though you can include detailed descs to simulate a slower moving 'camera'. It's perfectly possible to describe motions in writing.

[Evan Balster]

This would be very useful advice if I were using text as my predominant means of conveyance.

In other news I found out how to make those silly GIFs.

[Graham-]

That's pretty good.

This is what I would do:
  . collect some resources: animation, movies, photographs
  . write a short dialog between 2 chars

  . for each sentence, phrase, or piece of a phrase, write down a
  description of the "emotion" the eyes show at that point - ideally
  the most important emotion - just choose 1 simple one to start
  . for each "emotion" collect the resources that most closely
  approximate what you have in mind
  . script your eyes for each emotion
  . play out the scene. dialog appears on the screen and the eyes
  behave in time with it.

Next step would to generate some bodily movements, ideally that suit
the mechanics you're thinking of, paste eyes on them, then have them
react to the player.

[gimymblert]

This might be interesting as an inspiration:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012460

I Would advise you to go 3D because it will be easier to the long terms as movement would be clumsily constrain if 2D:
http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vault/gdc09/slides/Fortier_Universal%20Saints%20Row%202.ppt


This one is only tangentially related, I just put it there:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014362/Cinematic-Character-Lighting-in-STAR

[Evan Balster]

Graham:  Mos def.  Since I'm interested in getting these to a point where they're semi-autonomously expressive I plan on messing with algorithms for blink rate, dilation, focal point, and squint level being controlled by more abstract variables or state representing emotion.


Gimmy:

The characters are going to be in a sort of 3D perspective rendered to 2D.  It's a weird imitation-animation system I'm trying to homebrew and not necessarily a good idea but I'm trying it.  The thinking was things like eyes would be slapped on like decals in this system, which I've learned isn't ideal...

Thanks for the references.

[Graham-]

One tip. Nail a few big emotions you know play well before tackling the general formula. Easy to misstep there.

"Decals." I don't know what you mean but it doesn't sound ideal.

[gimymblert]

Do what you want, It's your project, experiment

I have loosely plan something like you but I need to take care about some step before reaching that point, I'm not as good with programming.

I just want to point that despite those reference use realistic character rendition, they might work with simpler (even 2D) representation in spirit, especially "wind wakerish".

Eyes in wind waker are a sort of decals too, not sure.

Edit:
also

[Sergi]

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9792/do-eye-movements-reveal-how-a-person-is-thinking

[gimymblert]

It's crap but it useful for communicating intent in a fictional setting, aka it is a representation
It's the same for facial feature, it's crap, but work well in character representation.

[Evan Balster]

At the very least conveying introspection through non-focused eye movement is a very good idea.  My characters (or at least the protagonist) will frequently be stopping to think.

Fernando Ramallo reminded me of "body noise" today, as a response to my eye video.  Small, pseudorandom movements as the body adjusts and rebalances itself.  Like the motions of one's hand held at arm's length, or the twitch of an eyelid after a quick movement.  That's something worth considering as well, though I'm contemplating perhaps a more animated look.

[Sergi]

It's crap but it useful for communicating intent in a fictional setting, aka it is a representation
It's the same for facial feature, it's crap, but work well in character representation.

The thing about the NLP one is that it's made-up unscientific bullshit, and no one can read those subtleties intuitively (because they're not true). The second one, on the other hand, does correspond with the way we communicate non-verbally, so it could be used anywhere

In a game about NLP (nevermind its validity ), you could teach the eye cues and then it would be consistent in that game's universe, while you could use the poses in the second image in any game because even a child would get the meanings.

[gimymblert]

Anything in game is made up bullshit, look at sword fighting, and combo system! I m not sure if you are saying it is bad, but any layer of consistent and intuitive information is good for a design. At least, while the nuance of direction might be lost to the beginner, the overall meaning (pausing to think) get through. Better is that there is a logical consistent explanation for the nuance that can help the beginner pick them up.

[Sergi]

I was referring to the specific meanings of each direction. It's not intuitive if the game has to explain it, and it would have to, since it can't be intuitive if it's not true.

Looking to a side when thinking is intuitive, a lot of gestures carry meaning, that's intuitive. Top-right meaning "I'm making images up in my head" is not.

[gimymblert]

You can still go the naruto way, up is "hopeful", down is "fearful", left is memory, right is thinking, LA noir would have it and would be a better game

[Sergi]

My point is, if you want to use that in a game, you have to tell the player what's what first. On the other hand, if you use common body language, the player will just intuitively know. Nothing wrong with the former, it's just different.

[Evan Balster]

Since the body language in my game is less a mechanic and more an aesthetic (though arguably is a bit of both) I'd rather avoid things that require explanation.

A sort of tenet I'm following for the design of this game is "speak little, tell much".

[Graham-]

Why not make it both mechanic/aesthetic? Or at least link them.

For example... in a lot of action games monster tells are critical. What if battle tells thematically linked to behaviour in story sequences, etc?

Nice tenet.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

to me this thread reads like:

hi i'm a visual artist so i'm going to make a game without graphics, how do i do that?

[Graham-]

where did you get that from?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

where did you get that from?

there's a religious myth among game developer and game design theorists that text in games is somehow an immoral thing to do, when players of videogames are under no such impression; games with text are loved and enjoyed by everyone except for a small subsection of weird mentats

example: from the first post: "who wants to read in a game?" the answer of course is: pretty much everyone loves to read in videogames (or else games would not use text at all!). rpgs and visual novels sell wildly. the trend in modern games has been towards more text, not less (compare even fps games of 10 years ago to today, there's a lot more text in them). text sells, it's what people want, and it's fun to read, text adds to the fun and gameplay of a game. what people *don't* like are walls of text, which aren't a good thing even in novels. but the solution to boring walls of text isn't no text, it's less and more precise and carefully chosen/edited text