Development Info DoubleBear Design Update

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Brian Mitsoda; DoubleBear Productions

Brian raises some <a href="http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,1478.0.html">interesting questions:</a>
<br>
<br>
<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;">This week I’m throwing out a design question for a system that hasn’t received much design or thought on our end, but it’s one that can alter the intent of a lot of our design decisions, and that system is the save/load system. I’d mostly like to solicit feedback from the group on this one, but here are my thoughts on save/load:
<br>
<br>
-I don’t want people to save before/reload after every single time combat doesn’t go their way, so I’ve considered no saving in combat. BUT… I understand that sometimes people need to take a call, go to sleep, or make time for loved ones or their bridge club, so I don’t want to punish those people that need to stop playing the game that moment.
<br>
<br>
-One possibility would be to allow saves during combat with a quit to menu, then erase those files when loaded, like a lot of console strategy games do. BUT I worry about people not liking the ability to save/reload when they want and if it’s worth implementing special save functionality just for combat.
<br>
<br>
-One problem we have in the game is that for the game’s narrative to really feel like a zombie movie, the player should expect to lose allies – that they shouldn’t expect to keep all their companions alive BUT there are few games I can think of where losing a genuine asset isn’t an upsetting situation to be in as a player and I can’t think of any incentive to not reload except that it’s one less mouth to feed.
<br>
<br>
-The game can become much harder if the player has been managing resources and people poorly. Some people are going to want to go back to older saves and try again BUT that kind of kills the drive to create a lot of special dialogue and events written specifically for when things get especially bad and players get really creative. Note, I know 10% of you will always let your game play out until the end no matter what happen and yes, there will definitely be material to cover a lot of the normal negative events.
<br>
<br>
-For a hardcore mode, I would prefer the game auto-saves at the beginning of the day and that’s it.
<br>
<br>
I think there were some other odds and ends to address, but I’m sure they will come up in the discussion. And with that, I have opened the floodgates on save/load opinions…
<br>
</p>
<br>
<br>
Let's see if the Codex has anything worthwhile to add.
<br>
<br>
As for myself, I think either you worry about <i>upsetting the player</i> or you don't. For me auto-saves at the beginning of the day sound like a good idea, also keep in mind that not being able to save everywhere and being forced to live with suboptimal outcomes adds a lot of tension & excitement, which certainly is appropriate for a game like that. If in doubt, tie the ability to save to the difficulty level.
<br>
<br>
<br>
Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.irontowerstudio.com">ITS</A>

 

[someone else]

Leave ironman, save-scumming decision to the player. Balance your game as if the player doesn't save-scum. If people want to save & reload multiple times when the game doesn't encourage them eg. OFP, they'll cheat and hax their way.

Another game with save/reload decision is Gearhead. The designer made it optional.

 

[Hory]

I think that AvP had an interesting system: a limited number (based on difficulty) of saves per level for the player to decide when to use. The player could be given 3/6/9 (hard/normal/easy) saves per day. I'm not sure how much ZRPG relies on optional quests, but those could reward the player with some saves as well.

I think that even players which wouldn't need to save-scum may be tempted to do it and I don't think they should be allowed to. It deprives them of the whole challenge. Don't pamper to the flaws of weaklings. Easy should have enough saves for beginners to handle it, but from there upward it should be a mandatory challenge.

Traditional saves sort of nullify the whole idea behind the mechanics, but with the AvP system, saves become a resource tied to the gameplay, e.g. "I'm just gonna risk going in without saving because there's a lot of time before I get to sleep and more dangerous situations may arise." Normal saves are particularly bad for horror games because they make the player feel safe at all times. "Problem? I'll just load." instead of "I'd better be careful and barricade this small opening too."

I don't think that the artist should create something which caters to the tastes of all player/viewers/listeners. Should some classical music works also have been published with alternate, simpler, more easily intelligible versions too and would that have meant that all listeners fully experienced that work?

An alternate idea: if time is a commodity in ZRPG (which it should be) and you can't just rest for months (as in BG2, for example), you could just make saving an activity of "going to a safe place" which takes up a few hours of the day. You save too much, you lose the entire day without accomplishing anything.

 

[GarfunkeL]

That alternate idea of Horys if pretty good one. Like how in GTA when you saved the clock was forwarded 8 hours which made you fail any missions.

 

[Shannow]

-I don’t want people to save before/reload after every single time combat doesn’t go their way, so I’ve considered no saving in combat. BUT… I understand that sometimes people need to take a call, go to sleep, or make time for loved ones or their bridge club, so I don’t want to punish those people that need to stop playing the game that moment.

The fuck? Do fights take 20+ minutes to finish? Is there no pause/turns? What's the problem with replaying 2 minutes of combat because you had to turn off the computer? Or leaving the game in pause for a few minutes?

Other save systems: Ingame resource and/or save-spots (+ possibly affected by skills) like in Resident Evil.

Personally, I'd favour a saves per level/day limit imposed either by difficulty setting or http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic ... 30#1110930
Ironman should auto-save after every major action (rest, initiate/finish combat, start/finish dialoge, etc.) and when quitting.

 

[treave]

An alternate idea: if time is a commodity in ZRPG (which it should be) and you can't just rest for months (as in BG2, for example), you could just make saving an activity of "going to a safe place" which takes up a few hours of the day. You save too much, you lose the entire day without accomplishing anything.

I like this idea. Reminiscent of the old Harvest Moons where you could only save if you were going to end the day, and I think it'd suit a more free-form, replayable game like ZRPG. Restrict save points to safe houses only, but maybe implement a single-save only system during missions/quests. Diablo had something like that if I recall correctly. Single saves, I mean.

-I don’t want people to save before/reload after every single time combat doesn’t go their way, so I’ve considered no saving in combat. BUT… I understand that sometimes people need to take a call, go to sleep, or make time for loved ones or their bridge club, so I don’t want to punish those people that need to stop playing the game that moment.

This, well, I think if a game is fun enough I don't mind having to replay it after getting interrupted by real life and not being able to save. After all, there could be some different things happening on the mission second time around, right? :hope:

And ZRPG is not gonna have unskippable cutscenes I have to sit through every time I restart, right?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Hitman also had a limited number of saves per level. Good because if the player needs to get up for something else, he'll always have at least one save reserved for that.

The "temporary save" also exists in N64's Zelda Majora's Mask. When you're in a hurry, it saves your current status (including time of the day), but it's deleted when you load again, and then you must save by normal means, whichever those are in the game. In Majora, you need to play the song to go back to the first day; in the zombie rpg, it would be the beginning of a new day.

And if no one is scared of being called a copycat, there's the Resident Evil approach too - find "save items" to be allowed to save. RE uses save points, but regular saves could consume these items too. Even if that would give the ability to save anywhere, it still maintains the tension by limiting the number of saves. Players who feel they might need to go back to real life soon would reserve an item just for that.

 

[Gragt]

I like the Frayed Knights approach: you can save and reload anytime and as much as you want, but as long as you keep playing you get special points that can allow you to perform special actions, like heal a character, the whole party, or even revive a dead party member if you got a lot of points. These points get wiped out as soon as you quit or reload.

You can of course adapt the rewards to fit ZRPG better, such as turn them into stat bonus over time or increased chances to find items, but I like that approach because it give those who want it the ability to quicksave/load anytime but rewards those who got the balls to keep going and not reload each time they got a scratch or a critical miss.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I don’t want people to save before/reload after every single time combat doesn’t go their way

Back when they were a decent game company, Bethesda had the same problem. Since the solution is either to let go, or turn all nazi on your customers, they decided to let go. But they still designed the game they wanted and tried to appeal to the player common sense. From Daggerfall's manual :

I think it's an elegant and respectable decision. Do the best game you can, explain it to the player, and be done with it.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

What happened to Bethesda?

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

They scaled.

 

[Hory]

Popularity.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It says so on the first sentence. "most computer gamers save scum". They realized there is no PC gaming master race and just let it go.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Brian raises some <a href="http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,1478.0.html">interesting questions:</a>

<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;">This week I’m throwing out a design question for a system that hasn’t received much design or thought on our end, but it’s one that can alter the intent of a lot of our design decisions, and that system is the save/load system. I’d mostly like to solicit feedback from the group on this one, but here are my thoughts on save/load:

-I don’t want people to save before/reload after every single time combat doesn’t go their way, so I’ve considered no saving in combat. BUT… I understand that sometimes people need to take a call, go to sleep, or make time for loved ones or their bridge club, so I don’t want to punish those people that need to stop playing the game that moment.

-One possibility would be to allow saves during combat with a quit to menu, then erase those files when loaded, like a lot of console strategy games do. BUT I worry about people not liking the ability to save/reload when they want and if it’s worth implementing special save functionality just for combat.

-One problem we have in the game is that for the game’s narrative to really feel like a zombie movie, the player should expect to lose allies – that they shouldn’t expect to keep all their companions alive BUT there are few games I can think of where losing a genuine asset isn’t an upsetting situation to be in as a player and I can’t think of any incentive to not reload except that it’s one less mouth to feed.

-The game can become much harder if the player has been managing resources and people poorly. Some people are going to want to go back to older saves and try again BUT that kind of kills the drive to create a lot of special dialogue and events written specifically for when things get especially bad and players get really creative. Note, I know 10% of you will always let your game play out until the end no matter what happen and yes, there will definitely be material to cover a lot of the normal negative events.

-For a hardcore mode, I would prefer the game auto-saves at the beginning of the day and that’s it.

I think there were some other odds and ends to address, but I’m sure they will come up in the discussion. And with that, I have opened the floodgates on save/load opinions…
</p>

Let's see if the Codex has anything worthwhile to add.

As for myself, I think either you worry about <i>upsetting the player</i> or you don't. For me auto-saves at the beginning of the day sound like a good idea, also keep in mind that not being able to save everywhere and being forced to live with suboptimal outcomes adds a lot of tension & excitement, which certainly is appropriate for a game like that. If in doubt, tie the ability to save to the difficulty level.


Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.irontowerstudio.com">ITS</A>

You want the player to have an incentive NOT to reload as soon as an ally gets killed/zombified? Make the process of zombification work like in Return of the Living Dead (part 1) OR like vampirism in 30 days of night: not in terms of the biological/supernatural mechanism, but in that there is a slow changing process, during which the character will have access to the zombie's strength and immunities, be able to pass through them unmolested (they seem him/her as one of them), but for a time retain their normal personality. Make it a long enough time that players might actually want to explore it. There's a great b-grade sequence in Return of the Living Dead where the two morticians exposed to zombie-gas are slowly working out (with it being eventually pointed out to them by ambulance officers) that they're dead from the poisoning. Plenty of room for both tragic and comical hijinks before the craving for flesh takes over.

So an otherwise useful character just got shot in the belly? You could (a) reload or (b) shoot her in the head once she 'dies' to make sure she doesn't rise, OR (c) use your persuasion skill to convince her NOT to put a bullet in her head, but to allow herself to become zombified (assuming that ala Romero all dead are rising rather than just the bitten ones - modify the tale otherwise). Once the process starts she'll no longer be hindered by the gut wound, and will have 2-3 days (with antibiotics) before she succumbs to brainless zombiedom. That might make her the group's only chance to get some vital food and supplies/weapons that are currently in the middle of zombie territory. An armed strike would be suicide, but she can now just walk in, grab what she likes, and walk back out (though you might need to plan ahead to ensure that other survivor groups - or others in your own group - don't put a bullet in her head).

On hard difficulties a melee character who is willing to sacrifice his life for the group (say he has a loved one or a kid you've got to promise to look after in return) might allow himself to become infected once you've gotten pre-prepared with high-strength intravenous antibiotics and researched zombification-slowing meds. He might then have 2 weeks of being an uber-buff character before shooting himself in the head (again, this would probably only be worthwhile on hard difficulties - but might be a great choice to force on players trying to work out how to survive against the unfair odds of hardest difficulties).

You might have an 'evil' option where you can to a limited extent 'train' a zombie. So there's that guy in the group who you don't like and keeps challenging your decisions? Quietly inject him with zombie-blood, lock him away from antibiotics so he gets turned in hours rather than days, and tell the others he was attacked or just went missing. In the meantime you've got him chained in the basement with an electric shock collar. Training is going to be a tough process, and a pretty gruesome one...after all you're going to need some human victims if you're going to use the shock collar to teach him through pavlovian conditioning that he can eat those you point at, but not you. And there's bound to be some conflict if/when someone else in the group stumbles upon him. But if you persist through (think increasing levels of dastardry, like the grimoire of pestilent thought in PS:T) you'll end up with a unique and quite powerful 'pet'.

Basically a short-term benefit by itself is not enough. It has to be either mid-term, or even better a short-term event with long-term benefits (such as the benefits of the otherwise unreachable weapons/supplies in the first scenario). That way you're trading one benefit (the NPC) for another, rather than just sacrificing for the sake of seeing all the options.

 

[janjetina]

1. One shouldn't neglect the fact that saving the game protects the player from the effects of Murphy's Law: in-game game corrupting bugs, game crashes and freezes, Windows related crashes and freezes and power outages. Windows OS is unstable and betting on the bugless RPG is a sure way to lose money. Another thing to consider is limited time available to play the game.
These two considerations put forward unlimited saving outside of combat as a requirement.

2. Disallowing saves inside combat is a sensible option in the case combat encounters are short. Losing 30 minutes of gameplay due to a crash or BSOD is a negative play experience, that is usually enough for me to choose the uninstall option. For example, only one encounter in Prelude to Darkness lasted more than 15 minutes, so I was able to complete the game without too much frustration, in spite of frequent crashes (every 20 minutes).

One possibility would be to allow saves during combat with a quit to menu, then erase those files when loaded, like a lot of console strategy games do.

This is a horrible solution. It doesn't protect from bugs and crashes (the game or the OS could still crash during combat) and represents a malware behaviour (a piece of software shouldn't fuck with my files, unless I explicitly command it to).

I like Azrael's idea.

 

[denizsi]

I wonder how much of the feedback Brian finds useful or interesting, at ITS. (I doubt he reads Codex news threads of the ZRPG at all).

At ITS, he rarely posts anything other than weekly updates and sometimes straightforward answers to questions posted by others. Every week, it's like "here's an interesting thread for you about our game, now discuss while I disappear completely".

I'm sure he's pretty busy and I don't expect him to get carried away in every discussion at all, but it's near impossible to tell what design ideals he upholds when he's MIA and whether he's letting in any outside influence at all. He often appears to be asking for feedback and ideas but he almost never gives any himself or the impression, or rather the sign, if he's even getting some feedback.

He sure is no VD. Hopefully, he's reading it all and finds something useful every now and then.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

*placeholder post*

can't wait to read this/give opinions/in before skycraze whinges.

 

[denizsi]

I'd like a loose casuality mechanic to predetermine whether an NPC will or may unavoidably die by, for instance, receiving exceptionally bad rolls after a certain point because it had so many shots in the past and wasted them all in bad ways, eventually becoming those characters in the movies that you can tell right away will die because they are so stupid/awkward/something.

Since characters will be partially autonomous, it will be up to player to keep them living, so the player needs to be a good people manager and prevent your NPCs from doing the stupid thing. When you fail that, they do stupid things. They do too many stupid things, they reach the point of no return after which, every roll will be exceptionally bad so whether you reload to keep him alive for that one encounter is futile because he'll just keep sucking and become a burden on the player itself, giving an incentive to say "fuck it, just fucking die and rid me of the torture, motherfucking stupid bitch!".

How exactly would this work in game? I'm not sure. I remember some talk about panicking NPCs going apeshit. Well, it could be that when this happens to a NPC and that NPC comes too close to dying (getting heavily wounded, thus necessitating material resources and time to become healthy again; running away, making lots of noise and attracting zombies; uhh, something) too many times, the game flags it so it receives increasing penalties to every roll after everytime it succeeds at something despite the odds. Roll to move quite, to evade close encounters with a zombie or with anybody, to To Hit rolls, to damage dealt and received, to simply use an item, like firing a weapon blowing on him or a setting himself alight while trying to throw a molotov cocktail etc.

Also, depending on what triggers combat, a combat encounter could last as short as seconds as in JA2. There, when you don't have enemy in your LOS or aren't in LOS of an enemy for two turns, the combat ends and it's back to real-time. If it's planned to be the same way in ZPRG, I don't see any problem with preventing saving during combat and simply randomizing some of the stuff (like zombies/enemies placement, direction if walking, reception/awareness, some of the environmental stuff) at each reload to at least keep some surprise element, might do wonders.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Azrael the cat I like your ideas, maybe you should post this on ITS forums too.

 

[Barghest]

'Save Anywhere' - If I want to save the game let me do so.

Not that fucking difficult is it? If you want to be hardcore use the ironman mode.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Windows OS is unstable and betting on the bugless RPG is a sure way to lose money.

First Fable is so fucking bugless (at least for them) they never released a patch (unless you count Lost Chapters). And Fable prints money.

 

[deuxhero]

The GBA fire Emblem games had an interesting method of countering reloading. If one of your units died, even if you restarted, they would have a death marked on their record (the games have permadeath). One of the Mario Sports games allowed you to suspend to restart a match, but would mark the completion with a silver star instead of a gold star (it didn't effect anything, but you would know you didn't win legitimately).

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

First Fable is so fucking bugless (at least for them) they never released a patch (unless you count Lost Chapters). And Fable prints money.

I never finished Fable TLC, it kept producing corrupt saves and then I was fed up with this shit. Kicking chicken & farting was innovative though...

 

[ghostdog]

You want the player to have an incentive NOT to reload as soon as an ally gets killed/zombified? Make the process of zombification work like in Return of the Living Dead (part 1) OR like vampirism in 30 days of night: not in terms of the biological/supernatural mechanism, but in that there is a slow changing process, during which the character will have access to the zombie's strength and immunities, be able to pass through them unmolested (they seem him/her as one of them), but for a time retain their normal personality. Make it a long enough time that players might actually want to explore it. There's a great b-grade sequence in Return of the Living Dead where the two morticians exposed to zombie-gas are slowly working out (with it being eventually pointed out to them by ambulance officers) that they're dead from the poisoning. Plenty of room for both tragic and comical hijinks before the craving for flesh takes over.

So an otherwise useful character just got shot in the belly? You could (a) reload or (b) shoot her in the head once she 'dies' to make sure she doesn't rise, OR (c) use your persuasion skill to convince her NOT to put a bullet in her head, but to allow herself to become zombified (assuming that ala Romero all dead are rising rather than just the bitten ones - modify the tale otherwise). Once the process starts she'll no longer be hindered by the gut wound, and will have 2-3 days (with antibiotics) before she succumbs to brainless zombiedom. That might make her the group's only chance to get some vital food and supplies/weapons that are currently in the middle of zombie territory. An armed strike would be suicide, but she can now just walk in, grab what she likes, and walk back out (though you might need to plan ahead to ensure that other survivor groups - or others in your own group - don't put a bullet in her head).

On hard difficulties a melee character who is willing to sacrifice his life for the group (say he has a loved one or a kid you've got to promise to look after in return) might allow himself to become infected once you've gotten pre-prepared with high-strength intravenous antibiotics and researched zombification-slowing meds. He might then have 2 weeks of being an uber-buff character before shooting himself in the head (again, this would probably only be worthwhile on hard difficulties - but might be a great choice to force on players trying to work out how to survive against the unfair odds of hardest difficulties).

You might have an 'evil' option where you can to a limited extent 'train' a zombie. So there's that guy in the group who you don't like and keeps challenging your decisions? Quietly inject him with zombie-blood, lock him away from antibiotics so he gets turned in hours rather than days, and tell the others he was attacked or just went missing. In the meantime you've got him chained in the basement with an electric shock collar. Training is going to be a tough process, and a pretty gruesome one...after all you're going to need some human victims if you're going to use the shock collar to teach him through pavlovian conditioning that he can eat those you point at, but not you. And there's bound to be some conflict if/when someone else in the group stumbles upon him. But if you persist through (think increasing levels of dastardry, like the grimoire of pestilent thought in PS:T) you'll end up with a unique and quite powerful 'pet'.

Basically a short-term benefit by itself is not enough. It has to be either mid-term, or even better a short-term event with long-term benefits (such as the benefits of the otherwise unreachable weapons/supplies in the first scenario). That way you're trading one benefit (the NPC) for another, rather than just sacrificing for the sake of seeing all the options.

+1

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

I wonder how much of the feedback Brian finds useful or interesting, at ITS. (I doubt he reads Codex news threads of the ZRPG at all).

He lurks here now and then. And I do, so I update him if something's pertinent (you know, responses that aren't like 50% talking about my breasts).

Hopefully, he's reading it all and finds something useful every now and then.

He does, and we do. We were working on chewing over the core systems for the game for a while before we announced anything about it, and Brian has had the idea for this game for AGES, so yeah, there's gonna be some stuff that's kinda set in stone as far as theme and feel and certain design goals. That big long thread about allies being orderable and not controllable? That was one of those "set in stone for thematic reasons" things, but that doesn't mean we don't really like hearing peoples' takes on things, why they like or dislike something, and things of that nature. There are also things - like the save system - that we're figuring out, and we are directly soliciting feedback on it because it IS a key feature that we want people to be satisfied with.

And yeah, we're both busy, this is true, but often the reason we don't post as much is that we don't want to intimidate people, making them feel like they're confronting us directly, or that we're gonna shit on their ideas as soon as we type them out. If they're way off base, we'll let them know, or if something is really rad, we'll call it out, but often we like to get people discussing stuff without them feeling like we're entirely guiding things.

Like that example someone gave about primarily using bikes for transportation - I actually sat down and talked about it with Brian, and while it's compelling, we came up with multiple strong reasons why it likely wouldn't be a good idea (i.e. hard to ride and shoot, can't carry a ton of weight, hard to traverse difficult terrain unless bike is special and/or rider is trained, can't carry wounded allies, etc.). Doesn't mean we've dismissed bikes entirely and for all time, just that they have major issues that would be problematic and take time to address.

(Also, Azrael: awesome idea, but we're rolling with Romero-style zombies that DON'T give you special powers, that you're essentially "sickened" when you're infected, and zombies won't react to you any differently. I like your idea - it's compelling! - although I'd move it to an alternate format, like a sort of District 9 angle (just off the top of my head) or something like it. Very interesting!) :D