Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Infinitron]

I talk about the development of Tyranny at Obsidian.

 

[Roguey]

Tim says Chris Avellone started as the game director of Tyranny. A story that Chris didn't tell during the May of Rage about why he quit?

One of Avellone's mandates was that Tyranny was a world without religion (tips fedora). Tim told him that religions exist in every culture, but was fine with him going with this idea. One of his ideas that didn't make it into the game was that god existed in a cave but didn't want to be worshiped, so he used an edict to remove religion from the world and lock himself in the cave for eternity which distributed the edict powers elsewhere.

Anthony Davis convinced Tim to go to Obsidian's New IP meetings. Tim pitched one that started as fantasy but becomes science fiction. He gave up on these meetings because every single one got shot down by the owners, who privately revealed to Tim that they were expecting someone to pitch an idea that aligned with something they already had in mind. Just wasting everyone's time.

Tim did a bit of work on coding a few of Deadfire's spells (but not enough to get credited).

 

[Egosphere]

Interesting to hear that Avellone started as director.

Would have been interesting to see the original vision for the game he had in mind.

 

[Grauken]

Anthony Davis convinced Tim to go to Obsidian's New IP meetings. Tim pitched one that started as fantasy but becomes science fiction. He gave up on these meetings because every single one got shot down by the owners, who privately revealed to Tim that they were expecting someone to pitch an idea that aligned with something they already had in mind. Just wasting everyone's time.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

That's just office politics 101.

 

[PanickedTushkano]

Slight correction:
The idea for god in a cave was by Brian MacIntosh as Tim Cain does mention.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Anthony Davis convinced Tim to go to Obsidian's New IP meetings. Tim pitched one that started as fantasy but becomes science fiction. He gave up on these meetings because every single one got shot down by the owners, who privately revealed to Tim that they were expecting someone to pitch an idea that aligned with something they already had in mind. Just wasting everyone's time.

This sounds, so much like something Feargus would do.

 

[Bohrain]

Yeah there's probably a good reason why Avellone absolutely hated Feargus and Parker.

 

[Forest Dweller]

I talk about the development of Tyranny at Obsidian.

Some juicy things in this video.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about my most fulfilling game development experience, which led to the hardest lesson I had to learn about game dev.

 

[Roguey]

The lesson Tim has to keep learning over and over again: People lie.

 

[Grauken]

The lesson Tim has to keep learning over and over again: People lie.

He's probably lying

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the tendency for players to hoard items and skills until they are "really needed" but then they go unused, and how game design can encourage players to use their items and skills instead of hoard them.

 

[Roguey]

I started The Otter Worlds recently and the amount of loot just out there for you to pick up is nuts. Thinking of just selling most of these consumables because I haven't needed anything other than basic healing items during 20 hours of play on normal difficulty.

I see Tim played Pillars with the restricted stash. I did not.

I don't see any solution to curbing hoarding behavior, other than taking the Witcher 3 approach and making consumables a resource that can be refreshed for free after the initial purchase. Or the Harebrained Shadowrun approach of having companion consumables refresh for free at the start of a new mission. If an optional resource is limited, there are people who won't want to use it, no matter how abundant it is.

"Using these resources is mandatory for this section of the game" can also work, but it's tricky to come up with mandatory situations for all possible effects and some may resent having to do so. This is another one of the things Breath of the Wild did to some extent (a handful of places where you need to use cold/heat protection consumables to avoid taking environmental damage unless/until you get armor that gives you protection).

 

[Egosphere]

Have some sort of post-level/mission screen where you're offered to pick up whatever gear you want, like in Battle Brothers. Or if its an 'open world' rpg, have stringent weight limits for carried items outside of what you're wearing, and some sort of mechanic that will sweep any place you've cleared of all the low worth consumables and miscellaneous pick-ups. Will force you into choosing what you're going to be carrying with yourself,. Or have potions and powerups degrade with time, so that they're only useful if they're fresh when found, or if you brew something alchemical yourself. If you hoard them, they spoil. Think that was the Battle Brothers approach as well, with the food having a limit to the days that it will last in your inventory.

 

[antimeridian]

I started The Otter Worlds recently and the amount of loot just out there for you to pick up is nuts. Thinking of just selling most of these consumables because I haven't needed anything other than basic healing items during 20 hours of play on normal difficulty.

I'm in the minority here since I didn't think Outer Worlds was THAT bad but I would recommend turning up difficulty, if it's even possible mid-game. It doesn't really get hard but at least you'll use more of those resources the game spams at you. Always worth remembering that for any modern console game, "normal" = braindead.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Items going unused is a problem of gaming difficult and balance. Hoarding is not bad per se, I love to hoard stuff as long as I can organize things my way and the process of resource gathering itself is not tedious. What I hate most is Bethesda style container spam with randomized loot which you feel bound to pick up because you can sell it for pennies (often you'll find the pennies strewn in the containers for no reason, as if NPCs didn't care about money). Actually, now that I think about it there are a million RPGs like this.

Less containers, organized/rational inventory instead of an infinite list of everything from weapons to herbs and bottles, and weight limits to discourage picking up useless items are the way to go, imo.

 

[Butter]

Skyrim is the worst offender I can think of for potion-hoarding, and it's caused by a few factors. One is that the game is generally pretty easy, so you don't need to bother with consumables. The second is that the inventory UI is fucking awful, and players will naturally avoid using it whenever they can. The third is that most potions (especially player-brewed potions) have worthless effects like +12% fire resistance. That shit is going to clog up your inventory for the next 40 hours while you wait for the fight that's actually difficult enough to justify digging through the menu to use it.

Compare to Dark Souls, where hoarding the Estus Flask usages is never a thing. The game is challenging enough to require it, the interface isn't atrocious, and it has a big effect. There's a lesson here.

 

[Diggfinger]

Tim did the first pass on ciphers, monks, crafting, and strongholds.

The stronghold was originally less abstract and included procedurally generated dungeons (here we go again) your companions would run through to complete quests.

He also wanted to include player-generated companions you could level up through procedurally generated dungeons. Starting to get the idea that he's obsessed with putting procedurally generated content in RPGs.

He wanted to add a bunch of annoying Watcher-oriented animations to skills (like a ghost springing a ghost trap, a ghost opening a secret door instead of those things just popping up as colors when detected). Like Fallout but worse. Felt so strongly about this that he advocated for it once more after it was rejected the first time.

They moved him to Tyranny immediately after Pillars shipped. Lotta work to be done.

Tim must like a challenge; Josh Sawyer said in his recent CP2077 stream that random generated content in Pillars is [U]impossible[/U]to do due to the engine (Unity).
Not sure if it cant be done in any Unity game, or if its just the way Pillars was programmed.

 

[Roguey]

Tim did the first pass on ciphers, monks, crafting, and strongholds.

The stronghold was originally less abstract and included procedurally generated dungeons (here we go again) your companions would run through to complete quests.

He also wanted to include player-generated companions you could level up through procedurally generated dungeons. Starting to get the idea that he's obsessed with putting procedurally generated content in RPGs.

He wanted to add a bunch of annoying Watcher-oriented animations to skills (like a ghost springing a ghost trap, a ghost opening a secret door instead of those things just popping up as colors when detected). Like Fallout but worse. Felt so strongly about this that he advocated for it once more after it was rejected the first time.

They moved him to Tyranny immediately after Pillars shipped. Lotta work to be done.

Tim must like a challenge; Josh Sawyer said in his recent CP2077 stream that random generated content in Pillars is [U]impossible[/U]to do due to the engine (Unity).
Not sure if it cant be done in any Unity game, or if its just the way Pillars was programmed.

https://gamedevacademy.org/complete-guide-to-procedural-level-generation-in-unity-part-1/

Certainly seems possible, but I'm not sure why Tim thought it could be done with Pillars and its prerendered backgrounds, unless he was thinking of just reusing the same maps and only replacing enemies/treasure.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Tim did the first pass on ciphers, monks, crafting, and strongholds.

The stronghold was originally less abstract and included procedurally generated dungeons (here we go again) your companions would run through to complete quests.

He also wanted to include player-generated companions you could level up through procedurally generated dungeons. Starting to get the idea that he's obsessed with putting procedurally generated content in RPGs.

He wanted to add a bunch of annoying Watcher-oriented animations to skills (like a ghost springing a ghost trap, a ghost opening a secret door instead of those things just popping up as colors when detected). Like Fallout but worse. Felt so strongly about this that he advocated for it once more after it was rejected the first time.

They moved him to Tyranny immediately after Pillars shipped. Lotta work to be done.

Tim must like a challenge; Josh Sawyer said in his recent CP2077 stream that random generated content in Pillars is [U]impossible[/U]to do due to the engine (Unity).
Not sure if it cant be done in any Unity game, or if its just the way Pillars was programmed.

https://gamedevacademy.org/complete-guide-to-procedural-level-generation-in-unity-part-1/

Certainly seems possible, but I'm not sure why Tim thought it could be done with Pillars and its prerendered backgrounds, unless he was thinking of just reusing the same maps and only replacing enemies/treasure.

He might have wanted to create modular fragments of maps that are put together by random generation, like rooms or corridors.

 

[ciox]

Planescape Torment did this shit in 1999. Clearly it's impossible in the current year.

https://torment.fandom.com/wiki/Modron_Maze

 

[Roguey]

Planescape Torment did this shit in 1999. Clearly it's impossible in the current year.

https://torment.fandom.com/wiki/Modron_Maze

That's just one room copypasted multiple times with entrances and exits randomly assigned.

 

[0sacred]

I talk about my most fulfilling game development experience, which led to the hardest lesson I had to learn about game dev.

Tim attributing to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

 

[0sacred]

Items going unused is a problem of gaming difficult and balance.

This. If you feel you can hold on to all your precious consumables, the game isn't challenging enough. Or maybe using those consumables make you lose an action that you'd better spend doing something else, in which case it's a problem of balance.