The musics were keyboard recordings.
I don't really want to think about whether it is better for it to be side-scroll or overhead, because I am wired to think side-scroll since the beginning. So if I were to code it it would be side-scroll. Are you also interested in coding it or seeing it coded?
Properties of side-scroll:
o Can see the sky and the skyline of the city
o Can see into windows
o Can use bigger character sprites without looking too crowded
o Better sense of what is high ground and what is low ground
o "Better" stairs, area under bridges, areas with no roof
o Better view of what the pedestrians are carrying
Properties of overhead:
(By overhead, I assume that we really meant at an angle, not straight down)
o Can see footprints on snow
o A more intuitive view of the center of the plaza
o LMG can slide across the center at any angle
o Better sense of street corners
I have always feel that the overhead view is less engaging because you are looking down on the character instead of looking at the world at the same level as the character. What do you think?
"Would you like to buy some matches?"
Your Solution to Narrative Based Gameplay
Sorry. I posted a reply to this a while back but I guess it didn't get through.
I always pictured this game as being on an isometric grid similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. Not quite overhead, but just enough so that the developer has enough scenery to work with creatively. Recently in some of the more recently made 2D games I've been proven wrong, but I find that most of the time a side view can take away from an environment and in this game I feel that the surroundings are almost more important than the LMG.
I've started writing down an idea for a sort of "choose your own adventure" type game with branching dialog and slight platform elements. I'm currently trying to finish an art project but I'll post the basic gist of the game up here as soon as I can.
I always pictured this game as being on an isometric grid similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. Not quite overhead, but just enough so that the developer has enough scenery to work with creatively. Recently in some of the more recently made 2D games I've been proven wrong, but I find that most of the time a side view can take away from an environment and in this game I feel that the surroundings are almost more important than the LMG.
I've started writing down an idea for a sort of "choose your own adventure" type game with branching dialog and slight platform elements. I'm currently trying to finish an art project but I'll post the basic gist of the game up here as soon as I can.
I really like this situation where we are talking about a game that is worth making for several reasons. I hope that that something gets done from this thread, regardless how many versions of LMG we make (it could have been of another story, but since we have been talking about Little Match Girl).
[ Side-scroll style test (Flash) ]
I included random tripping. I don't think it is annoying.
[ Side-scroll style test (Flash) ]
I included random tripping. I don't think it is annoying.
I don't think that, from a narrative standpoint, videogames will ever be considered art simply because I don't think gamers would really stomach a narrative addressing the human condition, or anything headier that the typical faux philosophical shlock you usually see.
I do think that requiring all prospective game designers to read Babel might go a long way in terms of improving the narrative in a narrative based game.
Although I reject the notion that a pre-constructed narrative is necessary for emotional attachment, anyway. In a game without much of a set narrative, you can still get attached to your characters because of what they do.
However, I can't say I really remember the last time a game's storyline elicited much of an emotional response from me. Or the last time anything in a game elicited much of an emotional response from me. Actually, not quite true. A few weeks ago when I was playing Crusader Kings a lot, the reign of Giorgio Bagratuni sort of got to me -- the way he started out as a highly prestigious ruler and, despite having led a successful crusade against the Muslim Turks in Asia, ultimately ended up a broken and crippled man, disliked even by his own children, ruling over a crumbling Georgian Empire.
I do think that requiring all prospective game designers to read Babel might go a long way in terms of improving the narrative in a narrative based game.
Although I reject the notion that a pre-constructed narrative is necessary for emotional attachment, anyway. In a game without much of a set narrative, you can still get attached to your characters because of what they do.
However, I can't say I really remember the last time a game's storyline elicited much of an emotional response from me. Or the last time anything in a game elicited much of an emotional response from me. Actually, not quite true. A few weeks ago when I was playing Crusader Kings a lot, the reign of Giorgio Bagratuni sort of got to me -- the way he started out as a highly prestigious ruler and, despite having led a successful crusade against the Muslim Turks in Asia, ultimately ended up a broken and crippled man, disliked even by his own children, ruling over a crumbling Georgian Empire.
I was thinking about who would buy matches in the context of the original story of the Little Match Girl. If those matches were primarily bought by people who light their stoves to cook and their fireplaces to keep warm, it would be quite an irony because the Little Match Girl is both hungry and cold.
In the story, the matches were not bought. The story did not state the reason, only that the world is indifferent. All we can tell is that everyone who needed matches already had matches, so they were not buying any more, at least not at that moment.
It seems that the story could have expanded meaning with modifications.
Expanded Meaning 1:
There are multiple vendors of matches. The Little Match Girl is only one of them. She is in competition with the other match vendors, and the story is about a night when she is being eliminated from the competition. Her death is an event in a form of evolution. She was selected against. She dies. In the game she could have been given the signal that she was next to go. She was comforting herself, but accepted death nonetheless. It was fair game. The Little Match Girl did a good job not making a fuss about it.
Expanded Meaning 2:
The Little Match Girl is an honest and sole vendor of matches in town. Winter is wet and cold. People buy her matches to light stoves and fireplaces. In the week near the end of the year, the Little Match Girl got her money stolen. She was evicted from her apartment and is forced to sell her remaining matches. But at this time, most people already got matches. Then she her shoes were taken, and everyone was still turning a blind eye. She dies because everyone else is so selfish: once they got the matches to light their stoves, they don't care about the Little Match Girl. Should they have cared? It wasn't like the Little Match Girl gave them free matches. I think in the context of the story, the people would have done the same even if the she gave them free matches in the first place.
For the second meaning, thematically, wouldn't it be stronger if the player play the Little Match Girl in two stages: In stage 1, the Little Match Girl hops around town to bring matches to people who need them. Everyone likes her and thanks her. In stage 2, she is got kicked out from her apartment, she was knocking on people's door trying to get some warmth or some food to survive, but people were turning her away (perhaps not straight faced but indirectly or pretending to be busy with something else and close the door). The Little Match Girl didn't find any generous person so she is forced to sell matches against as a last resort. Her help to the town did not return and she dies in cold and hunger. When the player plays the stage 2, the player could compare the attitude of the people towards her. They were all kind when she was the giver, but now they all turn around and shut the doors when the Little Match Girl is in need. In stage 2, the player would be wondering whether one of the town folk she helped would return the favor. It is a story of her waiting and hope that one of them would reappear and would help her, but the ending is different.
In the story, the matches were not bought. The story did not state the reason, only that the world is indifferent. All we can tell is that everyone who needed matches already had matches, so they were not buying any more, at least not at that moment.
It seems that the story could have expanded meaning with modifications.
Expanded Meaning 1:
There are multiple vendors of matches. The Little Match Girl is only one of them. She is in competition with the other match vendors, and the story is about a night when she is being eliminated from the competition. Her death is an event in a form of evolution. She was selected against. She dies. In the game she could have been given the signal that she was next to go. She was comforting herself, but accepted death nonetheless. It was fair game. The Little Match Girl did a good job not making a fuss about it.
Expanded Meaning 2:
The Little Match Girl is an honest and sole vendor of matches in town. Winter is wet and cold. People buy her matches to light stoves and fireplaces. In the week near the end of the year, the Little Match Girl got her money stolen. She was evicted from her apartment and is forced to sell her remaining matches. But at this time, most people already got matches. Then she her shoes were taken, and everyone was still turning a blind eye. She dies because everyone else is so selfish: once they got the matches to light their stoves, they don't care about the Little Match Girl. Should they have cared? It wasn't like the Little Match Girl gave them free matches. I think in the context of the story, the people would have done the same even if the she gave them free matches in the first place.
For the second meaning, thematically, wouldn't it be stronger if the player play the Little Match Girl in two stages: In stage 1, the Little Match Girl hops around town to bring matches to people who need them. Everyone likes her and thanks her. In stage 2, she is got kicked out from her apartment, she was knocking on people's door trying to get some warmth or some food to survive, but people were turning her away (perhaps not straight faced but indirectly or pretending to be busy with something else and close the door). The Little Match Girl didn't find any generous person so she is forced to sell matches against as a last resort. Her help to the town did not return and she dies in cold and hunger. When the player plays the stage 2, the player could compare the attitude of the people towards her. They were all kind when she was the giver, but now they all turn around and shut the doors when the Little Match Girl is in need. In stage 2, the player would be wondering whether one of the town folk she helped would return the favor. It is a story of her waiting and hope that one of them would reappear and would help her, but the ending is different.
It's a shame I didn't get to this thread before it turned into an in-depth analysis of Little Match Girl and how it could be translated into a game. I wanted to explore the idea of games in which defeat does not necessarily mean game over. What got me thinking about this idea was Soul Nomad and the World Eaters, in which there is a battle early on that is pretty much impossible to win when you first encounter it. The enemy is level 1000, and if you play through somewhat normally, you'll be about level 5. Encountering a battle you are meant to lose has been done before, and often (e.g. FF4). But what made this different is that, like pretty much all Nippon Ichi games, you can play through the game several times while keeping your levels and equipment, so you can actually win the battle. Unfortunately the game ends pretty abruptly afterwards, however, with no resolution to the story.
So my rough idea is having a few very challenging, pivotal battles that are branch points for the plot. As an example, say the first pivotal battle is on the border between two countries. If the player wins, the battlefield moves into enemy lands. If the player loses, his home castle is besieged, and the player has to escape and assassinate the enemy leader or infiltrate the enemy castle and take the king hostage. There might be just two or three different outcomes but many paths to reach them, and that would make up one "chapter" of the game. The outcome would affect subsequent chapters, as well. In my example one outcome could be a diplomatic resolution and the country might send some strong fighters to join the player. Or maybe the enemy country is taken over by the player and more resources become available to him. The outcome might change how enemies in later chapters treat the player, perhaps with respect if he's proven his prowess in battle and disdain if he talked his way out of trouble, or vice versa.
Story branching is just one aspect of the OP's original post, while another is emotional attachment to a game. Perhaps I'm unusual, but I get attached to most of the games I play. When I beat a game that I've grown attached to, I actually stop playing video games for a couple weeks, and turn to reading for my escapism fix. In FPS games I go very slowly and carefully because I don't want my character to die, even in games where I know I'll just lose a couple minutes of playing if I do die. I'm a level grinder in RPG's because I don't want to lose any battles - I beat the final boss in FFX in 3 hits - one hit from Tidus and a double-casted Ultima from Yuna and it was over. In Fire Emblem games I immediately start the battle over if one of my characters dies. I don't know that I've ever cried when playing a video game, but then, I've never cried reading a book either, unless you count laughing so hard I was crying. Watching a sad movie I might get a lump in my throat or tear up a bit, but that's really the extent of it. So I don't really see that as a very good metric of judging video games' worth as art. My wife, on the other hand, watched the end of FFX and started tearing up, even though she hadn't watched any of the rest of the game. Does that mean video games already are an art form?
Either way, in the game that is forming in my head I hope to develop an attachment between the player and the characters, and among the characters as well. The problem with this is that it will require a great deal of dialogue, so I guess I should just warn players ahead of time. I've posted this before, but the two game design books I've checked out from the library both really hate the idea of games driven by the game designer/writer's story, because the player isn't creating their own story. But I'm glad I'm not the only one who rejects that idea.
Also, as a side note, the Moby Dick article is pretty good on its own, but continue reading the first several comments to make the whole package a very insightful read. Good stuff.
So my rough idea is having a few very challenging, pivotal battles that are branch points for the plot. As an example, say the first pivotal battle is on the border between two countries. If the player wins, the battlefield moves into enemy lands. If the player loses, his home castle is besieged, and the player has to escape and assassinate the enemy leader or infiltrate the enemy castle and take the king hostage. There might be just two or three different outcomes but many paths to reach them, and that would make up one "chapter" of the game. The outcome would affect subsequent chapters, as well. In my example one outcome could be a diplomatic resolution and the country might send some strong fighters to join the player. Or maybe the enemy country is taken over by the player and more resources become available to him. The outcome might change how enemies in later chapters treat the player, perhaps with respect if he's proven his prowess in battle and disdain if he talked his way out of trouble, or vice versa.
Story branching is just one aspect of the OP's original post, while another is emotional attachment to a game. Perhaps I'm unusual, but I get attached to most of the games I play. When I beat a game that I've grown attached to, I actually stop playing video games for a couple weeks, and turn to reading for my escapism fix. In FPS games I go very slowly and carefully because I don't want my character to die, even in games where I know I'll just lose a couple minutes of playing if I do die. I'm a level grinder in RPG's because I don't want to lose any battles - I beat the final boss in FFX in 3 hits - one hit from Tidus and a double-casted Ultima from Yuna and it was over. In Fire Emblem games I immediately start the battle over if one of my characters dies. I don't know that I've ever cried when playing a video game, but then, I've never cried reading a book either, unless you count laughing so hard I was crying. Watching a sad movie I might get a lump in my throat or tear up a bit, but that's really the extent of it. So I don't really see that as a very good metric of judging video games' worth as art. My wife, on the other hand, watched the end of FFX and started tearing up, even though she hadn't watched any of the rest of the game. Does that mean video games already are an art form?
Either way, in the game that is forming in my head I hope to develop an attachment between the player and the characters, and among the characters as well. The problem with this is that it will require a great deal of dialogue, so I guess I should just warn players ahead of time. I've posted this before, but the two game design books I've checked out from the library both really hate the idea of games driven by the game designer/writer's story, because the player isn't creating their own story. But I'm glad I'm not the only one who rejects that idea.
Also, as a side note, the Moby Dick article is pretty good on its own, but continue reading the first several comments to make the whole package a very insightful read. Good stuff.
Examples of emotional response from games:
I think one of the emotional response you can get from games, but not from non-interactive media is the feeling of loss. It is the feeling you get when something shockingly bad happens in the game. You feel like your heart fell through the floor.
In games you also get the type of emotions stemming from decision making, such as the feeling you get when you decide to stick with an original choice while the environment is tempting you to change your decision; or the feeling you get when you believe that you had finally figured out the solution to a puzzle; or the feeling you get when you realized that you had made a very bad choice and your character will pay dearly.
Simpler yet you get the horde of emotions related to chances, such as the one you get when a low level monster happens to drop a rare item. The feeling you get when you find a game fun. The feeling of relieve after intense action. The feeling of boredom when the game is boring. These are more common across media.
Following the idea of a dynamics dictionary, I think that each emotion has a direct translation--there is a minimal formula to evoke each emotion; sadness, happiness, etc. The style of definition is the same as how "Misfortune" and "Prejudice" were defined earlier:
Misfortune
Requires random events that hinders the progress of the player agent.
Prejudice
Requires non-player agents exert hindering forces based on an assumption on the role of the player agent.
What is the dynamic definition of say, "Happiness?"
Happiness
Requires an event or an element that conforms to the player's value of the participants of the event or the recipient of the element. (When things happen to those that deserve its happening.)
This definition is independent to visual and audio supports. It is not about whether the scenery appears joyful, but whether an interaction evokes happiness. Under this definition, a dynamic that evokes happiness could take the form as follows:
1) Present a character that does not receive what he deserves
2) Present an event where he gets it
The relation between 1 and 2 can be considered the moral of the story--what does it take for one to get what he deserves? Does he need to be clever? manipulative? or just stay good and be patient and it will happen? How this character gets the deserved event is not part of the definition of happiness, but the intermediate events could interact, in that, depending on those intermediate events, what the character deserves could change. The character could end up deserving a lot more (or a lot less) in the end.
Happiness is also associated with other terms such as achievement, and fairness. In this style, the definitions of these terms are non-associative, in that achievement and fairness do not imply happiness. You could have a situation where the player felt a profound achievement is made but is still unhappy; or a situation where the player had made the situation fair, but still unhappy.
I think one of the emotional response you can get from games, but not from non-interactive media is the feeling of loss. It is the feeling you get when something shockingly bad happens in the game. You feel like your heart fell through the floor.
In games you also get the type of emotions stemming from decision making, such as the feeling you get when you decide to stick with an original choice while the environment is tempting you to change your decision; or the feeling you get when you believe that you had finally figured out the solution to a puzzle; or the feeling you get when you realized that you had made a very bad choice and your character will pay dearly.
Simpler yet you get the horde of emotions related to chances, such as the one you get when a low level monster happens to drop a rare item. The feeling you get when you find a game fun. The feeling of relieve after intense action. The feeling of boredom when the game is boring. These are more common across media.
Following the idea of a dynamics dictionary, I think that each emotion has a direct translation--there is a minimal formula to evoke each emotion; sadness, happiness, etc. The style of definition is the same as how "Misfortune" and "Prejudice" were defined earlier:
Misfortune
Requires random events that hinders the progress of the player agent.
Prejudice
Requires non-player agents exert hindering forces based on an assumption on the role of the player agent.
What is the dynamic definition of say, "Happiness?"
Happiness
Requires an event or an element that conforms to the player's value of the participants of the event or the recipient of the element. (When things happen to those that deserve its happening.)
This definition is independent to visual and audio supports. It is not about whether the scenery appears joyful, but whether an interaction evokes happiness. Under this definition, a dynamic that evokes happiness could take the form as follows:
1) Present a character that does not receive what he deserves
2) Present an event where he gets it
The relation between 1 and 2 can be considered the moral of the story--what does it take for one to get what he deserves? Does he need to be clever? manipulative? or just stay good and be patient and it will happen? How this character gets the deserved event is not part of the definition of happiness, but the intermediate events could interact, in that, depending on those intermediate events, what the character deserves could change. The character could end up deserving a lot more (or a lot less) in the end.
Happiness is also associated with other terms such as achievement, and fairness. In this style, the definitions of these terms are non-associative, in that achievement and fairness do not imply happiness. You could have a situation where the player felt a profound achievement is made but is still unhappy; or a situation where the player had made the situation fair, but still unhappy.
Saying you want a 3 hour game with 200 decisions is all well-and-fine, but you have to keep in mind that the amount of work needed to generate content in the decision tree grows exponentially with increases in the number of decisions.
If you want to have 200 decisions in each game, this means the depth of the decision tree is a whopping 200. That is HUGE. You will have 200! leaves on the tree, for a total of 2*(2^200) nodes (since given the nature of a balanced binary tree, the total number of nodes above depth i is the same as the number of nodes AT depth i).
Assuming that decisions will be distributed relatively uniformly, we can take 3*60*60/200 to be the number of seconds of content needed for the transition between each node. This comes out to 54 seconds of content, for each of the 2^201 nodes in the tree.
Obviously, this assumes there is no repetition in the content, and that each decision leads to a unique point in the world (however, wouldn't the decision be redundant and useless if it led to the same point as another decision?). Even so, this is an impossible amount of content to generate for a 3 hour game (which would be incredibly short compared to the industry standard).
It's a decent idea, but it has been done before, but with a much smaller problem set (number of decisions). There was a series of videos on youtube like this, but I can't remember the name off-hand. It would let you watch a video, then make a decision as to what your "avatar" should do next, then it would have you click to the next video in the sequence. If I recall it had something like 5 decisions, with some redundancy in footage.
I don't know if you've ever read a "choose your own adventure" book, but this reminds me a lot of those. They were popular when I was a kid, probably not so much now.
The only way for large decision trees to be feasible would be to have the computer dynamically generate the story elements and NPC interactions, however this is more in the domain of computer science than game design/storytelling. If you are interested, I might suggest reading up on wikipedia about agent systems.
If you want to have 200 decisions in each game, this means the depth of the decision tree is a whopping 200. That is HUGE. You will have 200! leaves on the tree, for a total of 2*(2^200) nodes (since given the nature of a balanced binary tree, the total number of nodes above depth i is the same as the number of nodes AT depth i).
Assuming that decisions will be distributed relatively uniformly, we can take 3*60*60/200 to be the number of seconds of content needed for the transition between each node. This comes out to 54 seconds of content, for each of the 2^201 nodes in the tree.
Obviously, this assumes there is no repetition in the content, and that each decision leads to a unique point in the world (however, wouldn't the decision be redundant and useless if it led to the same point as another decision?). Even so, this is an impossible amount of content to generate for a 3 hour game (which would be incredibly short compared to the industry standard).
It's a decent idea, but it has been done before, but with a much smaller problem set (number of decisions). There was a series of videos on youtube like this, but I can't remember the name off-hand. It would let you watch a video, then make a decision as to what your "avatar" should do next, then it would have you click to the next video in the sequence. If I recall it had something like 5 decisions, with some redundancy in footage.
I don't know if you've ever read a "choose your own adventure" book, but this reminds me a lot of those. They were popular when I was a kid, probably not so much now.
The only way for large decision trees to be feasible would be to have the computer dynamically generate the story elements and NPC interactions, however this is more in the domain of computer science than game design/storytelling. If you are interested, I might suggest reading up on wikipedia about agent systems.
Re:
The kind of factual portrayal of death you might need to make people cry (I am not talking about the tone of the passage below, just the content):
"Patrol officers are often tasked with informing members of the community that a traffic crash or medical event has caused the death of a family member. After being informed of the tragic news, the common response is usually denial due to the individual's inability to immediately process the shocking information. It is common for people to buckle at the knees, collapse, and even pass out when informed that their loved one has just died or been killed. Furthermore, police officers report that they are often requested, by demanding family members, to attempt life saving measures on individuals who are obviously dead (some in full rigor). The family members have a difficult time processing and accepting the fact that their loved one is dead and they want every lifesaving measure attempted. Even when one is informed by police that their loved one has died, often the reaction is denial."
Quote:Defeat will create tragedy. Horrors come alive, friends stolen away, sadness unresolved, etc.
The kind of factual portrayal of death you might need to make people cry (I am not talking about the tone of the passage below, just the content):
"Patrol officers are often tasked with informing members of the community that a traffic crash or medical event has caused the death of a family member. After being informed of the tragic news, the common response is usually denial due to the individual's inability to immediately process the shocking information. It is common for people to buckle at the knees, collapse, and even pass out when informed that their loved one has just died or been killed. Furthermore, police officers report that they are often requested, by demanding family members, to attempt life saving measures on individuals who are obviously dead (some in full rigor). The family members have a difficult time processing and accepting the fact that their loved one is dead and they want every lifesaving measure attempted. Even when one is informed by police that their loved one has died, often the reaction is denial."
It's good to see more people posting in here.
I started this post to get help for my own idea. But I'm beginning to see that listening to others ideas has proven to be much more beneficial.
This thread is not supposed to be based on one linearly developing design for a game, but the shifting and morphing idea that is our definition of what a narrative game is.
Please feel free to summit any ideas or thoughts that you feel may contribute to this discussion of narrative based gaming.
----
TO MortusMaximus:
The original idea for my game came from reading some of my old "choose your own adventure" novels. I felt that gaming would be the most appropriate medium to turn these novelties into something much more meaningful. The stories often were told in a perspective where so little is known about the main character that the reader would be able to place themselves in the role of the character very easily because they were reacting how they normally and simply seeing how the fictional world reacted to our decisions was entertainment enough. I often feel that these stories have more in common with the narrative in games than they do with actual novels. Authors had to be knowledgeable about what there readers wanted to do than what they themselves wanted to express. As game designers we have to be just as focused on what the player wants as what we want to tell them.
My game would focus on giving the player choice to impact the world they live in, not by simply reaching giving them goals to complete but by allowing their actions to have a realistic weight. When I said before that I wanted to give them roughly around 200 choices that would impact the story, I did not mean that all of these would be intended to branch into other choices (though my story would be composed of at least 20 branches). The idea would be that everything the player does has importance and weight in the game. Just as every page you turned impacted how your the ending to your story.
I started this post to get help for my own idea. But I'm beginning to see that listening to others ideas has proven to be much more beneficial.
This thread is not supposed to be based on one linearly developing design for a game, but the shifting and morphing idea that is our definition of what a narrative game is.
Please feel free to summit any ideas or thoughts that you feel may contribute to this discussion of narrative based gaming.
----
TO MortusMaximus:
The original idea for my game came from reading some of my old "choose your own adventure" novels. I felt that gaming would be the most appropriate medium to turn these novelties into something much more meaningful. The stories often were told in a perspective where so little is known about the main character that the reader would be able to place themselves in the role of the character very easily because they were reacting how they normally and simply seeing how the fictional world reacted to our decisions was entertainment enough. I often feel that these stories have more in common with the narrative in games than they do with actual novels. Authors had to be knowledgeable about what there readers wanted to do than what they themselves wanted to express. As game designers we have to be just as focused on what the player wants as what we want to tell them.
My game would focus on giving the player choice to impact the world they live in, not by simply reaching giving them goals to complete but by allowing their actions to have a realistic weight. When I said before that I wanted to give them roughly around 200 choices that would impact the story, I did not mean that all of these would be intended to branch into other choices (though my story would be composed of at least 20 branches). The idea would be that everything the player does has importance and weight in the game. Just as every page you turned impacted how your the ending to your story.
This topic is closed to new replies.
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