Another thought just to maybe extend this a bit:
The Depopulation Problem
I think that if the world can be emptied of inhabitants it hurts the sense that you're playing in a world. Yet while it's easy to use something like respawning, there's the companion problem of making the player's actions of campaigning against them pointless (a complaint I've heard about the respawning guards in a game like Farcry).
So how to have both?
What Creates A World?
A possible solution would be to have spawn points with an associated monster queue. Instead of just respawning the same two guards, the second spawn might be a temporary recruit, or a beefed up security force. The third spawn might be a bunch of angry farmers with pitchforks. Or a hired assassin waiting in the treeline. Or some drunken teenagers who heard it's dangerous to hang out there.
Not only does it provide some variety for the encounter, it also gives some story flavor to the zone. So that killing effects the world, but the landscape can still be entertaining. But it would lose some merit if the player encounters the same group of teenagers/assassin/farmers randomly at every spawn point.
Might even be that a spawn point becomes a peaceful encounter after so many killings. Maybe an old drunk, or just a rabbit, as a reminder that there was something there, but it's gone.
With a well-constructed sequence, it could be that over time the spawn point grows back, and the player could either kill the rabbit or wait for a tougher opponant to appear.
A long sequence would also contribute to a sense of a larger, living world.
[Edited by - AngleWyrm on August 10, 2010 12:43:13 AM]
Not only does it provide some variety for the encounter, it also gives some story flavor to the zone. So that killing effects the world, but the landscape can still be entertaining. But it would lose some merit if the player encounters the same group of teenagers/assassin/farmers randomly at every spawn point.
Might even be that a spawn point becomes a peaceful encounter after so many killings. Maybe an old drunk, or just a rabbit, as a reminder that there was something there, but it's gone.
With a well-constructed sequence, it could be that over time the spawn point grows back, and the player could either kill the rabbit or wait for a tougher opponant to appear.
A long sequence would also contribute to a sense of a larger, living world.
[Edited by - AngleWyrm on August 10, 2010 12:43:13 AM]
Quote:History I agree is very powerful, but the problem I tend to have with it is relevance to gameplay.
I think that depends on two things:
1. Your (Designer's) goal of the game, and
2. How the game is actually perceived and played by the players (Gamers).
Rummaging through history and paying to such subtle details can actually BE the gameplay in some cases, either designed such as so by you the designer, or perceived as such by the gamers even when the game's original intent isn't to concentrate on the game world.
Having a game world is purely optional depending on the goals of the game I think; and yet, you can also argue that every game has a game world, no matter how fleshed out or focused on. Even classics such as Tetris, you can argue that the game world consists of bricks dropping down in a well (or, if as a Gamer who didn't look in the manual, a bunch of blocks falling down in some kind of container). For Pong, it was just you against your computer opponent and nothing else. Yet these two games have engaged many.
Games now are trying to include all kinds of latest features - it must include a storyline, vehicles (if FPS), multiplayer, this and that - which is fine, but I'd like to say that all those things are different goals, and can be the gameplay themselves.
Interactivity, Choices, and Game "Worldliness" are all different subjects, in my opinion.
Some ways I think you can flesh out the game world of a game without having to resort to heading to your local in-game bookcase (fantasy RPG) or audio clip (Doom 3):
- Include graphical hints in the level that something has happened before you came along to that place. Half Life 2 has done a lot of this in their levels, ranging from empty makeshift abodes in particular areas of the level (implying that there have been survivors whom scraped together some materials to live there for a while before you came along), to ruins, etc. Contrast the slums of Half Life 2 to the shiny sleek plating of the alien-tech tower to which eventually you wander into to fight your end boss - this kind of stuff to me conveys that the tower has just been newly built versus the slums that have been there all the long.
- Star Wars. Although not a game, one of Lucas's design mentalities was to make everything look worn and used, in order to convey the sense that the movie world has been lived in (and is continuing to thrive) far before the viewers came to see the movie.
- Include graphical hints in the level that something has happened before you came along to that place. Half Life 2 has done a lot of this in their levels, ranging from empty makeshift abodes in particular areas of the level (implying that there have been survivors whom scraped together some materials to live there for a while before you came along), to ruins, etc. Contrast the slums of Half Life 2 to the shiny sleek plating of the alien-tech tower to which eventually you wander into to fight your end boss - this kind of stuff to me conveys that the tower has just been newly built versus the slums that have been there all the long.
- Star Wars. Although not a game, one of Lucas's design mentalities was to make everything look worn and used, in order to convey the sense that the movie world has been lived in (and is continuing to thrive) far before the viewers came to see the movie.
What creates a world for me?
Here's a quick answer:
I think one of the strongest aspects of world creation is creating in depth-lore and mythology and bringing that in to the game....having it affect the characters.
To use a recent example, I'll reference Mass Effect 2. For example, throughout the game, you hear about the Rachni Wars and the Krogan genophage not only in the codex but that material is brought to personally affect some of the NPC's, mainly Urdnot Wrex, Grunt, and Mordin Solus. This really made the world of Mass Effect alive and not just another level. History that you could only read about in the codex was brought alive by it being connected to the characters in some way. However, one weakness of the game is that it still has the Level feel in some parts, as most models are always in the same spot. Fallout does a good job of avoiding this. When you leave places like Junktown and The Hub, people you might be looking for are not always at the same place.
Dragon Age...has a huge codex like Mass Effect, but the world was not as alive and compelling as Mass Effect. The lore almost never had any personal effect on your companions, and the lore just became a boring thing to read (I rarely read any of them after a while).
Here's a quick answer:
I think one of the strongest aspects of world creation is creating in depth-lore and mythology and bringing that in to the game....having it affect the characters.
To use a recent example, I'll reference Mass Effect 2. For example, throughout the game, you hear about the Rachni Wars and the Krogan genophage not only in the codex but that material is brought to personally affect some of the NPC's, mainly Urdnot Wrex, Grunt, and Mordin Solus. This really made the world of Mass Effect alive and not just another level. History that you could only read about in the codex was brought alive by it being connected to the characters in some way. However, one weakness of the game is that it still has the Level feel in some parts, as most models are always in the same spot. Fallout does a good job of avoiding this. When you leave places like Junktown and The Hub, people you might be looking for are not always at the same place.
Dragon Age...has a huge codex like Mass Effect, but the world was not as alive and compelling as Mass Effect. The lore almost never had any personal effect on your companions, and the lore just became a boring thing to read (I rarely read any of them after a while).
Re: What creates a world and what gives the feeling of immersion
Re: Steppan
I was indeed just focusing on the first question ("What creates a world"), because it is the prerequist for the player to feel being immersed in a world instead of some other environment.
Suppose that is how doors work in the game world, what can the designer do to make the world believable without any verbal explanation?
A geometric example:
Imagine a white 2D environment with only three kinds of stuff:
o White circles with black lines
o Black horizontal lines
o Black vertical lines
All circles are animated. The player controls a circle. The computer controls the other circles. Circles can roll on horizontal lines, and falls off when the line runs out. When a circle rolls into a vertical line, it will always come out of another vertical line. Use your imagination to move the circle and observe the movement of the other circles. Now, make the vertical lines white. You see that even though they are white (thus invisible), you can still know that they exist and remember where they are.
Next, since the player's circle can move based on the player's will, the other circles should exhibit similar behaviors. The circles explore and try to go to a higher horizontal line. Periodically, a circle at the lowest rank pops and turns into inanimated segments. These segments can be picked up by other circles. Once a circle has picked up enough segments it can spawn a circle on a horizontal line immediately above itself. If a player spawns a circle, the player controls the upper one and loses control of the lower one.
...
Anyway, I am interested in the essence of what makes a world feel like a world. The way I study it involves my attempts to recreate it using as few things as necessary. When I do the example above, I went through a few decisions. I don't know whether they are necessary, but you could think about them:
1) If the agent that the player controls has a normal behavior, similar agents controlled by the game should be have similar normal behavior.
Comment: This is why I would not accept it if the other circles could only randomly move around. But to make them behavior similar to the one the player controls, they must all share some similar goal. The first goal that came to me is survival. Therefore I added a way for the circles to die. I don't think that death is a necessary phenomenon. But I didn't want to get into having the circles evolve and define their own behaviors.
2) If an agent can be destroyed, there should be a way to create new independent agents.
Comment: If the circles can die but cannot replenish, soon there won't be any circle. When that happens, the environment would feel like a trap. For the environment to be a world, there needs to be some sense of perpetural existance. If the don't die then it is fine. But if they do, something in the world needs to be able to create new ones.
Re: Steppan
Quote:Original post by steppanQuote:Original post by Wai
Re: Bob_the_dev
If there is no interacting entities, what is in the content of the backstory of the setting?
Would you say that when you look at a still photograph of an empty terrain, you feel that it is a world because you see a sky, you see land, you see an atmosphere and possibly how the climate has shaped the land over eons. You are seeing interacting entities (sky and the land).
Why do you think that a detailed environment is necessary? What do you call an expansive space with no details? Compare two scenes:
1) A picture of sand dunes under a blue sky.
2) A picture consists of a horizontal line dividing two colors. It is sky blue on top, and sand color on the bottom.
Picture 1 looks normal because you have seen it and you know apriori that it is possible to see such a scene on Earth, and Earth is a world. You also know that the wind shapes the sand dunes. According to you, this is sufficient for you to feel that there is a world. By your definition, since you can infer from it that the picture depicts part of a world, the picture must have enough details.
What about picture 2? Does it look like a world? If not what are the minimum details it need for it to look like a world? Since simply adding random circles on the picture would not make it look more like a world, we know that it is not details that make it look more like a world, but another property within the details that allows you to see it as a world. What are those properties?
Compare the follow attempts to make picture 2 look more like a world:
o Add a white cloud shaped object on the top
o Add a cactus shaped object on the bottom
o Add a cactus shaped object on the top
o Add a white cloud shaped object on the bottom
o Add a UFO shaped object anywhere in the picture
o Add a drawing of Earth in the middle of the picture
Why aren't these added details equal in helping picture 2 more like a world? What is the difference in the details that gives different effects?
Is it possible for the player to sense a world from a picture when nothing in the picture refers to the world we know it? Can we only detect a world as a world if we have the apriori assumption that it is a world?
My thought is that when a viewer is shown a picture with a reference to the real world, the interactions can be infered, which allows the viewer to identify the image as a picture of a world. If there is nothing familiar in the picture, the viewer cannot draw the inference of interaction. At this point, the viewer must observe the interactions itself, which cannot be displayed by a single scene. So the missing factor is interaction, not between the viewer and the objects of the world, but among the objects of the world itself.
You make a very valid and interesting point here, but at the same time you are questioning what makes an environment a world?, rather than what makes an environment "feel" like a world?
These are 2 very different questions, and I believe that in asking these questions you've partially answered the question of what makes a player feel like he/she is in a world.... this being that familiarity is clearly a key concept in an environment that makes the player feel like he/she is part of a world.
Now I am not saying that it is the only thing, but to some extent I believe it is still an important part
****
for example: in Dead Space, a game I enjoyed playing a lot, I personally felt like I was in a world, granted it was just a spaceship and I have never been in a spaceship nor have I ever seen one. So how can I be familiar with it? you ask; well as much as I have never been in any kind of environment that ressembles the spaceship of Dead Space, I still know a doorway when I see one, I see the door frame and the basic shape and I know that if I walk up to it and press a button it should open. But if you were to have a completely blank wall with nothing there and I had to walk up to it and it magically appeared a gap for me to walk through, I would have no idea what was going on, and the illusion that I was in a believable world would quickly disappear.
****
So I guess if the player does not fully understand what is not familiar with what is around him/her, then the player would just be wandering around questionning everything that they see. Which I don't know for the rest of you, but when I walk to the shop or just for a stroll into town, I don't question what everything means or does.
I was indeed just focusing on the first question ("What creates a world"), because it is the prerequist for the player to feel being immersed in a world instead of some other environment.
Quote:But if you were to have a completely blank wall with nothing there and I had to walk up to it and it magically appeared a gap for me to walk through, I would have no idea what was going on, and the illusion that I was in a believable world would quickly disappear.
Suppose that is how doors work in the game world, what can the designer do to make the world believable without any verbal explanation?
A geometric example:
Imagine a white 2D environment with only three kinds of stuff:
o White circles with black lines
o Black horizontal lines
o Black vertical lines
All circles are animated. The player controls a circle. The computer controls the other circles. Circles can roll on horizontal lines, and falls off when the line runs out. When a circle rolls into a vertical line, it will always come out of another vertical line. Use your imagination to move the circle and observe the movement of the other circles. Now, make the vertical lines white. You see that even though they are white (thus invisible), you can still know that they exist and remember where they are.
Next, since the player's circle can move based on the player's will, the other circles should exhibit similar behaviors. The circles explore and try to go to a higher horizontal line. Periodically, a circle at the lowest rank pops and turns into inanimated segments. These segments can be picked up by other circles. Once a circle has picked up enough segments it can spawn a circle on a horizontal line immediately above itself. If a player spawns a circle, the player controls the upper one and loses control of the lower one.
...
Anyway, I am interested in the essence of what makes a world feel like a world. The way I study it involves my attempts to recreate it using as few things as necessary. When I do the example above, I went through a few decisions. I don't know whether they are necessary, but you could think about them:
1) If the agent that the player controls has a normal behavior, similar agents controlled by the game should be have similar normal behavior.
Comment: This is why I would not accept it if the other circles could only randomly move around. But to make them behavior similar to the one the player controls, they must all share some similar goal. The first goal that came to me is survival. Therefore I added a way for the circles to die. I don't think that death is a necessary phenomenon. But I didn't want to get into having the circles evolve and define their own behaviors.
2) If an agent can be destroyed, there should be a way to create new independent agents.
Comment: If the circles can die but cannot replenish, soon there won't be any circle. When that happens, the environment would feel like a trap. For the environment to be a world, there needs to be some sense of perpetural existance. If the don't die then it is fine. But if they do, something in the world needs to be able to create new ones.
Immension, for me, would result when, for example:
My warrior romances a girl in a village. One-two years later when he returns to the village, she's married with children, her husband the NPC you bullied last time you were there. While you where away she got tired of waiting and decided to move on.
For me, that would be immension. Stuff happening while you are away, not scripted but acctually computet along the way, reacting you the choices you make. But... it might be impossbile to tweak a game like that since there is so many variables.
My warrior romances a girl in a village. One-two years later when he returns to the village, she's married with children, her husband the NPC you bullied last time you were there. While you where away she got tired of waiting and decided to move on.
For me, that would be immension. Stuff happening while you are away, not scripted but acctually computet along the way, reacting you the choices you make. But... it might be impossbile to tweak a game like that since there is so many variables.
Quote:Original post by Wavinator
Another thought just to maybe extend this a bit:
The Depopulation Problem
I think that if the world can be emptied of inhabitants it hurts the sense that you're playing in a world. Yet while it's easy to use something like respawning, there's the companion problem of making the player's actions of campaigning against them pointless (a complaint I've heard about the respawning guards in a game like Farcry).
So how to have both?
There are two methods I prefer:
1) Have a world so large (on the order of thousands, if not outright millions, of km²) and the population so big that even at optimal killing speed they will replenish just as fast through natural reproduction.
2) Have inaccessible (or just very, very far away) parts of the world where different populations "respawn", then migrate into the playing area. This works best if there are simulated interactions between the different populations. For intelligent populations, they can just set up camps somewhere "depopulated", which then - if unchecked - grow to become villages, then towns all on their own.
Quote:Original post by Wavinator
Another thought just to maybe extend this a bit:
The Depopulation Problem
I think that if the world can be emptied of inhabitants it hurts the sense that you're playing in a world. Yet while it's easy to use something like respawning, there's the companion problem of making the player's actions of campaigning against them pointless (a complaint I've heard about the respawning guards in a game like Farcry).
So how to have both?
My first play-through on Fallout, I played as the hero; and it felt like a world to me. The scope was limited not because the world was small but because I only had my legs to travel on. (In my mind, that means they succeeded to convince me it's a world.)
My second play-through with Fallout I decided to play a bad guy; it went as you might expect.
My third play through I was a "bad guy" again. But not just a simple jerk or a thief...but a psychopath. To see how the game would react. I went into each of the first two towns, did all of their quests, then massacred the inhabitants of those towns. They all turned on me as I had them - united against this threat against their village - but to no avail (because I'm intelligent and have a Save/Load button) and played most of the game like this.
This had two effects. First of all, I leveled up MUCH faster, and second of all, it still felt like world: but much more desolate and barren. And there were other weird effects, like more bounty hunters, and the merc camp's reaction to me.
As the good guy, they attacked me on sight.
As the bad guy, they sold wares to me, even late game.
As the psychopath, they treated me like a long lost friend, told me they were leaving and couldn't take everything with them, so they let me take whatever I wanted to free.
People were weird and distant me with my character for the third play through. No praise or accusations; just a cold distance. Absolutely fascinating.
Anyway, the "desolate" thing works for a game like Fallout, but I don't think it would work for the likes of Morrowwind, not all the time. Sometimes if you kill a shopkeeper, though, he needs to stay dead (or be replaced?). Not sure how to make the latter work convincingly, but you could make it comical. ;)
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