Siegfried: about your game. Have you ever been to Yorvik in York? When travelling through on the little buggy things, you hear ambient voices speaking in old-something (not sure what era it was... can''t remember...).
So how about, in your game, don''t have them speaking in old languages, because about 99% of the population don''t speak them, and nobody wants to read subtitles if they don''t have to. Instead I would encourage you to have "random chatter" sounds that you play when you''re in a village or something, to set the scene. Even the guards, when you''re sneaking around the manor castle, instead of saying "Halt oh ye olde intruder-e" they could say "Dochye-farhood!" but they would say it in an angry voice so the player would understand that they are angry.

But for important dialog, keep it in english =)

Oh.... sorry.. what was this topic originally about? Oh yes, I remember. Yes I have to stand in defence of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Plot: Princess is kidnapped by evil arabian thief dude. She drops the ocarina of the title which is by chance picked up by a young elf-boy. He doesn''t know how to use it, but he is guided by a misterious Shiek (sp?) who teaches him the ways. Over time he grows and learns to unlock the power of this artifact. He acquires a horse from the local stables, and resuces some villagers from the local bandits, as well as retrieving chickens for a troubled house wife, and fishing in the pond =) Oh yeah, he also does some dungeon hacking and bad guy slaying!

I actually loved this game, despite its "childish" plot. I loved the small things: the sunrise/sunset, the sadness of the melodies (call me sentimental =), the small tasks, the sorrow of the shiek''s tale, and that bit where you have to fight yourself in a foggy swamp. Even the scarecrows, and the old guy in the windmill who tells you how you came there 7 years ago and played the song of storms...

* freshya digs out his 64 and loads up ZELDA!!!

Yes... topic? oh well... too late now!

Oh yeah two more things I forgot!

1) the music in the Gerudo valley was great, as was the fighting and sniping with your bow.

2) I loved the bit where your elf g/f has to leave you and accept her destiny - she realises that some things are more important for the good of Hyrule than her petty emotions. She reminds me of Faraday from Sara Douglas''s "Axis" trilogy

And I probably should have posted:

WARNING!!! SPOILER!!!

in my last post, but.. oh well!

I agree with Siegfried: you must not loose the player between multiple goals. What should the player do to solve the scenario ? Explore the country or explore the intricacies of the scenario ?

When you look at Might and Magic 4 and 5: you do have much land to discover and a global quest to accomplish before you are too old. The scenario is really simple: roam the country to accomplish the stepping stone quests to be able to solve the last one. The game was provided with a printed map of the area so you were not lost.
When you look at Final Fantasy 7: you have to follow your destiny (somehow) to understand who you are. Eventhough you have a big country, only the cities are important to solve the global quest to advance in the scenario.

In an unfamiliar land, the means to advance in a scenario must be clear: I move from city to city to interact with everybody / I explore the whole country to find powerful artifacts.

Still eventhough the games can be immersive, the experienced player finds out that the knowledge to play is in the game. Everything that he (or she) knows outside of the game from studies or books is not applicable. Thus the proposition to theme the game in ancient period of history. If the environment is known to the player before playing the game, he will be able to
do more complicated tasks to advance in the scenario.

Example: a game set in medieval France around 880. Scenario: to become king of France. You start out as one of the lords of France. A french player with the knowledge of French History
will try out many options like diplomacy (with other lords of France or out of France like England or Rome), like finding out
ancient artifacts (a piece of the true cross anyone) and also
war (plus some wizardry but beware of inquisition !).

This type of game can be extremely immersive but it has some
drawbacks:
- The design must be based on general and accessible knowledge
(see above post about dialogs in old english)
- The number of all possible actions that can be taken by the
player can be huge and impossible to code them all (you will have
to focus on one aspect: see the game Shogun more focused on war)
- The theme of the game can appeal to the people who have the
exterior knowledge while for the people of the other country it
will be no different than a kind of fantasy (eg: the game about
becoming king of France will appeal to french people as is, but
will be no different than becoming king of the elves or goblins
for japanese and american players.

My 2 cents ...
Red.

Here is the problem that people have with fantasy rpgs, there isnt anything wrong with them its just that we are forever bombarded with the fantasy representation of Euro based fantasy, where are the games based on Incan or Mayan fantasy, or even Native American or Egyptian, shoot I would even go for something Chinese or Japanse or maybe even Arabic for something easy, heck even a fantasy game baased on Greek mythology, (for those of you who must absolutely still have white folks in your game), or I mean why couldn''t it be something like a fantasy game but based underwater? why must it always be the story of Sir Dirtyshorts the Knight, Evee the elf and Drunkbeard the Dwarf, that is what people are tired of, the same face on every fantasy based game. I mean come on folks is the fact that some of us arent as good game designers as we think or say we are the reason why this road always followed the same way? Or is it maybe the racism in the game industry with the product subject matter, that the game industry will never admit? I mean if youre not a great game designer and need subject material I recommend Palladium books pen and paper rpg Rifts, especially the South American books, and the Rifts Japan book, incredible subject material, how nobody ever picked this stuff up for an online rpg or something is beyond me, it certainly has more than any D&D book would ever have.

I got Ultima VIII as a CD-ROM Classics title. The game wasn't worth the small amount of money I spent on it. I never played it long enough to discover much about the game. The box reads: "The rules are different here from familiar Britannia [...]". Yeah, no kidding.

Did anybody here ever play "War In Middle Earth"? I never really understood that game. The characters would walk and walk, screen after screen, passerby after passerby, then they'd find a fire and rest, and then they'd get up and walk... Invoking the map would speed things up, but then I couldn't tell what was going on back in the world. I wonder if that floppy still works.

[Update: the WIME floppy doesn't work anymore. I've never heard a floppy disk squeal so loudly before.]

Edited by - chronos on April 30, 2001 5:58:20 AM