45 replies to this topic

[Aureliano]

Actually, he is named after a song from Pearl Jam. And he has been a lot of things in his life, but never a pirate. You see, he hates water.

Newsflash : Since english is not my native language, I'm searching for someone who'll not mind reading huge chunks of text and pointing me my grammatical and ortografical mistakes. Obviously, you need a solid language knowledge to do so.

[Iron_Scarecrow]

Really I don't like water either, other than showering I avoid it. I haven't been swimming in a pool for at least 2 years, and I haven't been to a beach in at least 5 years.

But for grammar you should contact BeefontheBone, or Tai. They are part of the Abandonian Grammar Squad, I'm sure they would be happy to help you out.

By the way is this Pearl Jam song the Jeremiah was a bullfrog one, I get that sung to me a lot.

[Aureliano]

No, it's "King Jeremy". This one is a little more obvious.

[Iron_Scarecrow]

King Jeremy?

Why can't that song ever be sung to me.

[taikara]

Wish granted.

[Solarjetman]

Further to the dying dilema:
Dying in games is an oft neglected. I felt Soul Reaver had a great spin on this. Dying was not only survivable but also crucial to the gameplay, the afterlife being a distorted version of the 'real' world that must be utilised in order to progress.

As to altering save files or deleting them you could put it in as a threat rather than a reality. There was a fine moment on Eternal Darkness as it deleted your file right in your face.  

So many innovations to think about...

[Aureliano]

Well, the actual problem of Soul Reaver was that dying was not a problem AT ALL - you had nothing to fear, basically. It's also one of the beef I have with Planescape - Torment, which tells you that your death will sometimes affect the gameplay but in the end it doesn't - you just revive. I can't count the number of cheap tactics you can come with because of this - not mentioning the fact that it makes soloing the game a cakewalk.

No, death has to remain a threat. That way, dying will be a risk taken just-to-see-if-something-happens. It could be fun for the player to try and find all those moments.

EDIT : No doodles for the moment, I'm absorbed into understanding basic quantic physic so that I can actually come up with something not too ridiculous in the "future" part.

[Solarjetman]

Well the threat of dying in soul reaver was the stalling of progress, much the same as dying in any game and reloading, except you are still in the game environment rather than the loading screen.

It is always a problem of how to balance the pain of dying (ie the need to retry or have your performance rating cut (points in shooters)) and the drive to keep the player coming back for more. What better way than make dying part of the game in some way. I admit the urgency wasn't there in soul reaver but the frustration of being in the wrong 'world' was there sometimes.

Perhaps a better disscussion is save points vs quick/instant saves.  Save points act as a plot device, forcing you to segment your play into segements for areas or story arcs. However they are bloody annoying for casual play when you are forced to play for 40mins just so you can leave with a sense of achievement. Similarly earning saves like the ribbons in resident evil, etc. only makes sense if you can use them at any time. They become even more restrictive if you have to use a save point as well.

Quick saves eliminate this but they also destroy that sense of coherence in the plot. When you can reload a section to your hearts content the urgency you are striving for can be obliterated. Of course this is not a problem for puzzle games and some strategy games would suffer greatly if the quick save was not an option. When I think of quick saves spoiling I often think on thief, of how essential it was to explore and rely on the quick saves to prevent too much repition. But I couldn't help feeling that I was cheating the game, that as a thief if I should die in a trap or get caught that I should die. The immersion was not as complete as it could be.

I feel this is becoming a small essay. Sorry but I'd be interested to know your score on this. Although this could be a thread in itself but it's tied up with the game mechanics of dying. In fact I think I've almost answered my question.  Perhaps if death is total then quick saves preserve the players precious time and protect wasted effort. However if death is an alteration of gameplay then there is a benefit from save points, perhaps with performance quota quick saves, to give definate areas of progress.

Well enough of that, tell us what you're thinking Aureliano

[Aureliano]

Most of what you state is true, and reading it all at once has given me an idea (another proof that writing down ideas is vital to the process of finding new ones).

Let'sasee. The problem we have is that the player, while losing interest in the game if save points are few and far between (thus making casual play impossible, like in the serie of Resident Evil), is openly allowed to just cheat the hell out of the game if he can save to his heart's content (the Fallout serie is a typical exemple of an horrible savegame policy, while the rest of the game was good).

I think from the start we should define what type of savegame policy we want in the game. My theory is that a game is separated into different "goals". These goals can be short and numerous (levels of a shooter, plateformer or puzzle game) or few and less definite (the different "chapters" of a rpg). In the first type of game, saving should be allowed only inbetween goals (levels) because being able to save just before the end of a level would eliminate the difficulty of the challenge. In the second type, because the game is more open to exploration, and because action parts are shorter but more intense, saving should be allowed at certain key-points (in aeras where rest is possible, or just before a very difficult challenge). Thus, if you can define how the "goals" in your game work, you can define how the "savegame" works too.

I'll take the same example as you : Soul Reaver. I think we all can tell how much this game relies on exploration and platform, and how awfull the action parts are (although they are well animated). The ennemies, in fact, are just additional obstacles on your way to the top. Dying, in this game, is just like falling off a ledge : it makes you have to start over. Knowing this, the team probably decided that since the whole world was like a giant platform level, saving would only affect what you changed in this world - not your actual position. This obligates you to restart the game from the start each time you load, a concept that could have seemed interesting in theory but that I found extremely tedious.

The goals in Soul Reaver are to gain a certain number of abilities that will allow further exploration that will open new goal that will give new abilities, ect. A particular beef I have with this is that it's completely unrewarding - the actual reward consisting exclusively on plot development, which was rather painfull (considering you just ended up on a cliffhanger, with more questions than answers). So allowing the player to restart at his last position was considered obsolete, and instead he was allowed to teleport at certain key locations so that he would the ability to choose which part of the world he would explore next.

Ok, so let's see it that way : before we decide how the savegame works, we need a very clear idea of how the game will work - and what the player will have to do. If the type of game is preformated (like a japan-style rpg), thinking about it is unneeded, but if we are going to do something a little unorthodox, it becomes vital.

The way I see this game, the "goals" will consist of doing most you can in a given time period - when this time period ends, so does the level. The player will be given the choice to save at that point, to restart the level or to carry on with the game.

The originality of this system will lie in the fact that each level offer different types of possibilities and time-based goals, which will affect the storyline (who will live, who will die, who do you meet, what type of item do you find...). The level ends when the new "scene" is supposed to happen, and it's up to the player to give all he's got to make the most out of it. Dying automatically ends the level, not the game. The number of "lives" you have allow you not to die, which will in return NOT end the level. Thus, the number of lives you got actually allows you to make mistakes more often during your level. Do I need to mention that the best ending will require having the less possible number of lives at each given point ? Gotta reward good players.

I'll give you a clear example of a level and what does the time limit implies.

Example : Megalopolis riot

The city of megalopolis is in the middle of a riot. The main character has to flee before something dangerous happens.

Time limit : 20:00

Goal : reach the other part of the city before the time ends (if not met : Game Over)
   - Optional goal : Save Chloé. You let the baby you took care of in your house when you got out of home today, and if you don't go rescue her now you will probably never see her again. (if not met : Chloé disappears from the storyline)
   - Optional goal : Kill Velkorn. Velkorn is the highest authority of the terrorist group responsible for the suicide bombing. The actual chaos makes him more vulnerable than before : killing him now will set that group off balance for a while. (if not met : Velkorn and his group will attack at a certain point and ruin some of your plans, affecting the storyline)
   - Optional goal : get the sidecar. This vehicule is in your headquarter in the opposite side of town, but could prove usefull for your actual escape and also for your future projects. Who knows if someone doesn't wait you there, tho... (if go : optional boss, Alexei) (if met : next level will be different than normally, affection the storyline).


You get the general idea ? Each level will give between one and three opportunities to alter the storyline (and the nature of the next level). Each of your action has a consequence. There will be also "calm" levels without action and in which you decide when they end, and which serve two purposes : you will be able to develop the story line but meeting/talking to new or old characters, and you will also be able to familiarize with a given place (that place could very well turn into a particularly difficult level, like Megalopolis in the example above).

Was I clear enough ? Who agrees with me that this, while being difficult, would be awfully cool ?

[BeefontheBone]

sounds groovy, though pretty ambitious. you're right about soul reaver, that was tedious, but I found the quicksave ability in, say, Half-Life meant you could effectively control the difficulty yourself as you went along - not quicksaving at all except in particularly tough bits (damn entry to Nova Prospekt takes forever to get right on Hard), and you can then go back and try, for instance, playing the whole game without autosaves for extra challenge once you beat it. The saves in resident evil were one of the main reasons I never played those games - backtracking through boring bits just in order to save? no thanks! limiting where you can save is fine, so long as the designer gets the positioning right.

It's a tricky thing to get right - avoiding tedium without removing the challenge, but it's possible to leave it up to the player to a certain extent.

[DeathDude]

I agree quicksaving is a nifty feature and I really like it when that feature is used in games, especially if I've been gaming and end up getting wasted by an enemy, it's useful to go back not to your last save, I also like when you can save anywhere, yeah I know if defeats some of the challenge, but in comparison I mean to games in which you can only save in certain places, which can be really annoying.

[Aureliano]

Because I don't like the idea of quicksave, I add this idea of time limited levels so that it will make restarting less tedious. Dynasty warrior had that feature and it was good,except when you lost near the end  - meaning that we just have to make the level shorters, that's why I've chosen 20 minutes instead of an hour (which would be plain boring).

[Aureliano]

http://jeredisaster..../CT-Beyond.html

Authors and art pages up and running. Content will be added throughout the afternoon.

[Solarjetman]

The save dynamic sounds similar to viewtiful joe, although there was no reward for time, rather it was points that gave gameplay prizes and the plot was linear with respect to your choices (actually a perfect viewtiful performance on time, points and life allowed you to unlock viewtiful mode...). The mission system sounds like thief (again no time limit but you do discover stories arcs more money for equipment, etc) or golden eye (unlocking cheats/rewards/levels based on difficulty and time).

Hats off for the ambition, but I don't envy the juggling you will have to do with the gameplay to preserve the vast variation of plot. Not only will multiple story arcs be difficult to make compatable from one level to the next but each level must channel the plot to some extent so there will have to be either some linearity (I'm thinking of Deus Ex here) or plot specific levels - different for different arcs. While it is important to make the player feel free it can be daunting to know there are 50 different endings that require possibly 20 plays through to see and say 30 different levels of which only 20 are played through with each go. It can be done but perhaps it would be better to start simple and build up. I'm reminded of FF Endless Nova and how the creater is constantly updating the possible story arcs, adding love interests, new weapons, levels etc. If you can do it all at once Aureliano you're a better man than I.

I take what you mean about Soul Reaver, the only reward aside from new abilities was the plot and exploration. While the plot was a HUGE dissapointment i'm a bit of a graphics wh*re and liked just looking at the new areas (It was a major pull of beyond good and evil, pikmin1/2 and morrowind just to be in those beautifuly rendered enviroments). Of course soul reaver's graphics don't weigh up now but aesthetics does count for some things. In general the game was poor but its no death policy, no loading screens (all games should do this, after the initial load, adjacent areas are loaded while you explore, each area being big enough to load the others before you get to them. Think how great the tension in half life1/2 would be if the section loads were removed and you really did feel lost in a complex), and parallel dimentions (done better technically but not visually in zelda link to the past) were noteable achievements. SR was a fine experiment that turned out quite well, apart from its timewasting faults and dissapointments in plot. Oh and the combat was repetitive, pointless, unchallenging. But the scenery... sad I know but I'm a tourist as well as a gamer, searching for new ideas, experiences and knowledge and then taking them home. I remember first playing the demo of Soul Reaver, climbing and gliding up a cliff face, impailing enemies and sucking up their souls, reaching the top of the light house and thinking, when that lights up it's going to be great. Some games have an atmosphere and I remember most of SR well, the early parts at least.

But hey we can make better games right? keep us informed Aureliano

[Aureliano]

Well, my idea isn't that original. Everyone has heard of "Do your own adventure" books. The twist here is that it's not a boring pseudo-rpg but a fast paced action game.

I'll do the thing gradually : first, writing the plot. Second, separating said plot in "pieces" and events. Third, do a chart to say which events must happen when and in which level. Fourth, design and link said level.

After that, the normal game-making procedure will begin.

Also, I don't plan to do that many different endings. Only two, maybe three if I can find the inspiration. The idea is that there will be "big" endings, those I'm talking here, and "ending twists", which subtly modifies one of the big endings based on the different goals you have reached throughout the mission.

Again, this idea is nothing original. I'll keep tuned.