Hello. I’m a foreign developer, making a game set in Tokyo. Do you like it?

26 comments

1. The cars look very American. We don’t have many American imports here.

2. Yeah looks pretty decent, but them vehicles though, too many American diddler vans, not really a thing out here.

3. The vehicles, vans specifically don’t look typical for Japan or Tokyo and are too numerous.

4. I’ll make an extra comment, just so the entire thread doesn’t become about cars: I am aware! These are placeholders! I didn’t find any avaialable Kei car models to use, and I don’t know how to model them from sketch: cars are very complex

   Edit 1: Some people say the lights are green. Some say they are blue. I’m going insane.

5. I don’t think you need a 止まれ sign when there is a stop light.

6. UI looks very Atlus-y 🙂

7. This looks pretty accurate! You got a lot of details right.

   I can point to a few details that make it less Japanese:

   – Tokyo streets have a lot of traffic cones laying around, but they ones in backstreets are typically solid color rather than striped. They look [like this](https://www.google.com/search?q=tokyo+traffic+cone&udm=2).
   – Some buildings seem to be built with bricks in the screenshots. That’s very rare in Tokyo and looks off to me.
   – To make it more “Tokyo”, add random clutter: [potted plants](https://www.google.com/search?q=tokyo+plants+street&udm=2) in front of houses, [recycling boxes and trashbags](https://www.shutterstock.com/search/tokyo-recycling) laying around, a few old bikes parked on the roadsides, etc.
   – As someone mentioned, your cars don’t look very Japanese… get some kei cars and taxis instead. Maybe a bus or two.
   – Houses don’t have much details… they seem to have too little windows. You can also add random cables and pipes like [this](https://www.threads.com/@ivva/post/DDgIFTDSMu5) or [this](https://www.bigmediumsmall.com/tokyo-back-alley).

8. I’m not good at gaming field, so what I say is just my opinion for the picture as Tokyo scenery.
   What I notice/ feel different from those pictures are…

   -Colour of traffic lights
   ”green light” maybe too blue. Little more green here. And less bright?
   -Colour of Guide signs (4th picture)
   Their buck colour is usually blue in usual road. (On highway, it’s green)
   And shape of the board is more like a square here
   [https://www.mlit.go.jp/road/sign/sign/annai/direction-sign.htm](https://www.mlit.go.jp/road/sign/sign/annai/direction-sign.htm)

9. Do you have any videos of this? It’d be cool to see it in motion.

10. Looks great. Advice is to browse Google street view and walking videos if you can’t be in Japan. Look at various areas and get a feel for the objects and layout. Focus on micro details and not just the big stuff

11. Yup, Stoplight is too blue. People say Japanese stoplights are blue, but that’s a language thing, not actually the wavelength of the light emitted.

    I see you have Sakura trees. The thing about Sakura is that there is a *very* short time between the flowers blooming and the petals falling. And I don’t think the petals all bloom at the same time. Basically, when I see trees that are in peak bloom like what we see in your shots, I expect to see fallen Sakura petals all over the sidewalk beneath them from the buds that bloomed early. *Unless* someone has been out just before to sweep all that up.

    So I guess what I’m saying is that this is a chance for environmental storytelling. Sometimes people get this idea is that the reason all the photos they see of clean Japan is because Japanese people are inherently cleaner, but the reality is that Japanese people are just as messy as anyone anywhere else in the world is, but there are people in Japan who clean up after others, either in a paid janitorial role or just out of a sense of personal responsibility. But if cleaning up after everyone else is impossible because the formerly dead are out trying to eat everyone’s brains, that system is going to break down. So if the zombie outbreak happened the same day as the scenes we’re seeing in the photos, then that’s about right. But very quickly after, things are going to get messy as people aren’t out at the crack of dawn hosing off their sidewalks. It occurs to me that Sakura could be one way of showing how long the outbreak has been going by showing a growing carpet of fallen blossoms that start out as a magical pink but eventually rot over time or get dragged into furrows as the walking dead shuffle through them.

12. Made me remember GhostWire Tokyo

13. Somehow it feels less like Tokyo. Tokyo feels more packed somehow. There are usually more apartments (4-5 stories tall) and a lot more random stores/restaurants/bars/etc everywhere. Also, many areas in Tokyo are not flat.

14. To add on to some comments:

    – In screenshot 1, you have a covered parking area for bicycles on the sidewalk. Sidewalks, especially the area directly adjacent to the road, is almost always reserved for pedestrians and cyclists’ right-of-ways. Also, on-street bicycle parking is rarely covered. There are exceptions, but again, the parking is not covered:

    https://preview.redd.it/hju8m4utaiif1.png?width=1927&format=png&auto=webp&s=bb3fdb585fd42891efc232d3941751628e2d09cb

    – In screenshot 3, you need to have the road marking for car stoppage (“止まれ”) behind the intersection, not after it. Also, the rhombus needs to be marked on the proper lane, not in the middle of the road.

    – In screenshot 4, you feature extensive green signage. In Japan, green signs are almost exclusively used for highway signage, and signs pointing to interchanges. Signs on roads that narrow would be very sparse, and if they do exist, they would be in blue.

    – Road markings in the last screenshot are very weird.

15. 止まれ is way too close to the crossing

16. What’s up with all the comments being downvoted?

17. Random roadworks
    For night scenes, random ambulances or fire engines

18. 青だよ

19. Cars are super duper wrong but otherwise pretty close to how things are here.

20. Good job, it is good. Sorry about my writing. I am just gonna scribble few thoughts here. But you good do a lot more on texturing the walls of houses. Manholes with Japanese text, pavements, most of the pavements have tiles on them. At some narrow alleys you can add some premature graffiti.
    You need to add combinis for sure. Japan post boxes.

21. Japanese here, I live in Tokyo.
    I wrote a whole comment…but I accidentally swiped and it’s gone. Sorry if my English is bad.

    So TL;DR
    Image 4:
    1. Green signs are seen in highways, blue ones in large roads and mostly none in residential~medium sized roads. So it looks strange to see it in a place like this.
    2. The white diamond on the road indicates a pedestrian crossing is ahead. They show the distance (I’m not sure about the exact numbers, also see that image 6 is kinda wrong as well). The thing that caught my eye is that it’s centered. To me the roads look like 2 lanes, but residential roads are more like 1.5 lanes.

    Image 7:
    The white shading on the road kinda looks strange with the edge/border….. try looking at real examples on google maps. They don’t exist in such small roads, and now that I see it the distance between intersections is way too close.

    Overall:
    I think the scale? Is sort of small, and that’s what’s causing it to be packed. To me, the roads look…strange? The size and the white lines…something seems off….. It doesn’t quite feel like Tokyo (I can’t quite explain sorry).
    I do, in fact, would like to see more of this in the future.

    Sorry if I was rude in some places.
    Good luck!

22. At first glance, the Koban looks too large. You have POLICE next to KOBAN, and typical Kobans are small, one unit buildings, and either Koban or Police is displayed depending on their local population. Kobans also usually have the branch, or town area displayed to designate their jurisdiction.
    You have a cherry blossom tree that is in full bloom, and it may seem to represent what Japan is known for, but they bloom for only a short period in the spring. I was in the game industry in Japan for close to 30 years, and if you depart too far from reality, users will nitpick you to hell. Too much clutter, even if realistic, will limit game play movement of both users and NPCs.
    Traffic cones are placed only when there is some construction going on, designating a dangerous or restricted area, or to reserve a parking space, etc., they are not works of art to be displayed for the enjoyment of public viewing.
    Adding building that you can look into or enter, adds interesting things to do for the users and gives the game a feeling of depth and reality instead of a just being a 2D movie set.

23. Another thing: green signs are for expressways and blue signs are for local roads.

24. I would make the street narrower, Japan street barely fit both cars

25. Most of the points have been noted, but I didn’t see anyone mention the bikes.

    Mountain bikes aren’t so common compared to mamachari.

    https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=mamachari

    These are a very Japanese thing compared to the bikes commonly used in the west and shown in your screenshots.

26. The green lights need to be blue