Quote:Original post by Nytehauq Give the player real reasons for impossibility - and don't limit them when you cannot. Developers often don't think deeply enough when designing limitations. While it might sound great to put an invisible wall in the middle of the level to stop the player's progress until a certain time, it's amazingly infuriating for the player. In this case, the player is not limited by their own abilities. They are limited by the arbritrary bounds of the game world.
Sometimes it seems developers are too obsessed with having dramatic setpieces and challenges you can't bypass. Why not let the player be clever? Or cowardly? One of my "favorite" invisible walls is the one in HL2 that prevents you from bypassing the lighthouse fight by dropping down the cliffside to the path below. Going by just the game's jumping mechanics, you should have been able to make that jump, maybe taking a lot of damage, but still...
IMO big part of the problem is that in most games the story is strictly tied to the places you go to, and there is some special place you must get to to experience the story's climax, therefore limiting movement is probably the easiest & best way to direct the player & the story. And with what better tools than infinite strength doors / invisible walls? Until...
Quote:Original post by Classy_Cojones I won't go into a lot of detail regarding Outcast. It has a very consistent world, in other words you can't mess it up. And the dramatic context comes from the world's state. You have different situations already in place prior to player involvement. Thus, you, the player, are a righteous problem solver. Of course, this gives you less feedom of choice, but isn't that role-playing?
...games become more like this. Defeating the evil dictator is no more a matter of getting the right preconditions so that you can open the infinite strength door to his lair, but effecting the changes in the gameworld that make possible his downfall. But imagine a game with the quality of say, HL2, done in this kind of holistic way rather than just providing the player with a "pipe": it would take an insane amount of resources...
Quote:Original post by Classy_Cojones micro as well as the macro. I won't say more about what and how, because perhaps one of these days I will have the funds/position neccesary to put my game design ideeas to the test.
Before you get there, I urge you to puzzle this out on paper (alone if you wish to keep it secret, but somewhere).
Right now you're in the high level theoretical realm. Get some dust on your shoes by following a particular heuristic path. You'll start seeing a lot of sequencing inconsistencies and AI issues involving knowledge. At least with that, you'll have a clearer idea of what you're up against.
Oh, and as to keeping it secret, I never bother. Anything that you and I are thinking of right now has been tried, or is being thought about. Because the problem is so widely known, thousands of minds as fine as yours and mine have been devoted to it (some for some time). So I think secrecy only stunts the game developer's own growth, unless he's actively putting something into the pipeline.
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...
My problem with games is that they are becoming too much simulations that involve running around killing everyone and following extemely loose story threads so the player doesn't feel limited. Morrowind was the last straw for me. I wasn't afraid of breaking it. I was afraid I'd never get through the click click click your dead, who's next? As a matter of fact I didn't get through it. Can't make it through a rpg at all. Blah. I get sick when people talk about they're freedom when they are just repeating the same actions over and over ad nauseum. When was the last time I empathized with a character in a game? I can't remember. They're so "freedom" oriented they have no personality. Meaningless tasks, kill a bunch of stuff, oh boy! Don't worry though, there's the super bad guy at the end you have to take out for a sense of completion. So let's take out the last shreds of plot so we have complete freedom. Yawn. Why do we feel overwhelmed? No clear goal. There's so much freedom we have no idea what we're supposed to do. It works fine for the people that simply want to kill everything that moves and trade up for bigger guns. Some people, however, would like to feel part of some greater task. Righting some wrong. Help clear up a problem. Unfortunately that is seen as a contrivance, so we're forced into the lowest common denominator. Kill!!!!
[Edited by - fireside on June 22, 2005 6:29:27 PM]
Quote:Original post by Classy_Cojones micro as well as the macro. I won't say more about what and how, because perhaps one of these days I will have the funds/position neccesary to put my game design ideeas to the test.
Before you get there, I urge you to puzzle this out on paper (alone if you wish to keep it secret, but somewhere).
Right now you're in the high level theoretical realm. Get some dust on your shoes by following a particular heuristic path. You'll start seeing a lot of sequencing inconsistencies and AI issues involving knowledge. At least with that, you'll have a clearer idea of what you're up against.
Oh, and as to keeping it secret, I never bother. Anything that you and I are thinking of right now has been tried, or is being thought about. Because the problem is so widely known, thousands of minds as fine as yours and mine have been devoted to it (some for some time). So I think secrecy only stunts the game developer's own growth, unless he's actively putting something into the pipeline.
Secret..hmm, really I'd like to discuss a lot. The only thing I'd really keep a secret are the definite answers to very niche-oriented questions. I've put down some things on paper. Knowledge isn't a problem as long as you draw things from the top to the bottom. I have some schemes for a consistent world, the only problem being that you can't really implement the kind of silly quests you see in RPGs these days. You'd have a world that at the high end has the struggle for ultimate power (between NPC's - just imagine a starcraft type AI controlling a wider array of functions in a world - in the end all human purpose relates to build/conquer actions) and at the low end it has basic survival and the fight for it (again, both for every NPC and for the player). The entertainment value comes from the full interaction with the world and the possible increase in control over world elements that comes with increase in power.
On paper I have it worked out as a MMOFPS that puts constant goal-oriented pressure on every player that is online. As a MMO it adds human variety to the world, as a consistent world, it addstrue action and purpose to the regular empty MMO.
The dreaded locked door. I'll let you know that once I stopped playing a game entirely because I couldn't open a goddamn door. Curiosity I guess, but I could never get over it. In the end I figured I had skipped something earlier and I wouldn't be able to open it, so I should start all over again. Since I had spent a fair amount of time playing already and had no saves that far back... I just stopped playing at all.
On topic: my experience is yes, I'm very much afraid of breaking the scripts of a game that I've been enjoying for a while. Or seeing the edge of the world. Self consistency is important, as pointed out, moreso than consistency with the real world. In doom you couldn't jump, but neither could the bad guys. As for those locked doors, I would have let go if I knew that whatever was in there wasn't a set piece, put in by the designers to reward good players. So if the world is consistently random, there's less fear of missing out and messing up... but also there's less reward for not messing up. If everyone is special, then no one is.
On the other hand, one tends to take pride on finding stuff if it's random (think RPG and rare drops) so maybe it's workable. I favor a rule&data driven system over a script driven one. It's feasible nowadays so why not? (of course, some genres just *have* to be script driven)
It seems that most people enjoyed digging up rupees in Zelda(Snes) and chopping the grass. That thing was very random, but there were some hidden treasures(which were useful but not needed to complete the game). These findings could be pseudo-random (that is, generated but repeatable).
So about that door. If the game was randomized I could just shrug: "hey, maybe there's nothing there. or something lame." But if I do unlock it, I'll be sure to search. And maybe, MAYBE I'll find something good, and rejoice in it. (working example of this: Diablo. Never stressed over a locked area, since they were random.)
