The State of the Game

[Sol Invictus]

Something has been bugging me about RPGs (and games in general) lately.

It?s the fact that designers and programmers just aren?t putting enough freedom or innovation into their products.

I?ve known this for quite awhile, but the thought really came to my mind the other day when some random fellow asked me if it were possible to get the girl who tries to con you in Neverwinter Nights in Act 2 by asking you if she can join your party, which if you say ?yes? to will proceed to ask you for money to purchase equipment and eventually get mad at you and leave if you opt to help her buy the equipment rather than give her the money outright.

Anyway, my point is that it seems that most RPGs these days are limited not by the gamers? lack of imagination, but the designers? own. Gone are the days of Ultima and Bard?s Tale where you could cook bread if you wanted to, or poisoned someone?s pet animal for the fun of it and bring up the subject with the NPC awhile later.

When it seems that you should be able to do something you want to, given the logic to it, such as detonating an explosive at the fence in Fallout 2?s junk yard in Klamath to get to the car, or perhaps climbing the fence if you have a high agility rating ? the game itself simply doesn?t allow you to do any of that. Frankly, I find this sort of poor design to be really quite sickening, not to mention tedious.

For one, it seems that the designer makes the assumption that the average gamer won?t be able to come up with the idea to proceed through such courses of action. Talk about catering to idiocy!

I no longer find most games to be as fun as they used to be. The only kind of games holding my attention these days are a few select strategy games (Medieval TW and Warcraft 3, and very hopefully C&C Generals when it comes out), old ass games like Tyrian and CounterStrike. Fallout?s about the only RPG I can stand to replay. I?ve sort of given up on the rest of them.

ToEE is my only real hope now. Though, I?ll be so very happy if Eric manages to pull Lionheart off. I can?t think of any other title to think about.

*sigh*

 

[Mad_Dog]

When it seems that you should be able to do something you want to, given the logic to it, such as detonating an explosive at the fence in Fallout 2?s junk yard in Klamath to get to the car, or perhaps climbing the fence if you have a high agility rating ? the game itself simply doesn?t allow you to do any of that. Frankly, I find this sort of poor design to be really quite sickening, not to mention tedious.

The engines of most game would probably have a hell of a time doing that though. I know nothing about programming, but I'm assuming that building a engine that allows any and all deformation of terrain would be quite difficult. There's no reason you can't climb the fence though. Splinter Cell allows the agent you play to pull off some cool moves; although they are implemented in a 'jumping puzzle' manner in the game, if the levels were better designed, you could probably make Fisher do anything you could in real life.

 

[Deathy]

Not really.
Climbing/swimming might involve a bit more programming, but destructible tiles can be pretty much likened with destructible entities (ie: critters) because, for all intents and purposes, they're the same thing.
It's only a matter of the extra animations and design problems that these bring about.

If you create a dungeon, for example, and set a path (or paths) through it, it's not going to work when the character can just blow open a wall and get to the Dragon's loot without fighting the dragon.
So they have to change the way they look at dungeon design. It may be a good thing that they do, but I'm sure the first few attempts at this will be pretty pissy.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

Something has been bugging me about RPGs (and games in general) lately.

It?s the fact that designers and programmers just aren?t putting enough freedom or innovation into their products.

I?ve known this for quite awhile, but the thought really came to my mind the other day when some random fellow asked me if it were possible to get the girl who tries to con you in Neverwinter Nights in Act 2 by asking you if she can join your party, which if you say ?yes? to will proceed to ask you for money to purchase equipment and eventually get mad at you and leave if you opt to help her buy the equipment rather than give her the money outright.

Anyway, my point is that it seems that most RPGs these days are limited not by the gamers? lack of imagination, but the designers? own. Gone are the days of Ultima and Bard?s Tale where you could cook bread if you wanted to, or poisoned someone?s pet animal for the fun of it and bring up the subject with the NPC awhile later.

When it seems that you should be able to do something you want to, given the logic to it, such as detonating an explosive at the fence in Fallout 2?s junk yard in Klamath to get to the car, or perhaps climbing the fence if you have a high agility rating ? the game itself simply doesn?t allow you to do any of that. Frankly, I find this sort of poor design to be really quite sickening, not to mention tedious.

For one, it seems that the designer makes the assumption that the average gamer won?t be able to come up with the idea to proceed through such courses of action. Talk about catering to idiocy!

I no longer find most games to be as fun as they used to be. The only kind of games holding my attention these days are a few select strategy games (Medieval TW and Warcraft 3, and very hopefully C&C Generals when it comes out), old ass games like Tyrian and CounterStrike. Fallout?s about the only RPG I can stand to replay. I?ve sort of given up on the rest of them.

ToEE is my only real hope now. Though, I?ll be so very happy if Eric manages to pull Lionheart off. I can?t think of any other title to think about.

*sigh*

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/0 ... ad&tid=127

yes you will actually have to go there and read what it says .
NO quote .

 

[Vault Dweller]

I totally agree with Exitium. The possibilities and player's options are not limited by technical implementation, but by designers' imagination. Taking Fallout's example with the car, I don't really need to see the jumping, climbing, blowing up the fence, good ol' test message will do for me. May be it's not the best solution, but it's much better then knowing that my character could not handle a fence. ( And he has the nerve to call himself an adventurer )

 

[triCritical]

I don't really need to see the jumping, climbing, blowing up the fence, good ol' test message will do for me.

I remember during the early development of Lionheart people wanted a shield bash. Reflexive replied saying that they did not have time to do the animations... Anyhow I suggested having implicit shield bashes only showing that a text message that you did extra damage with a shield. Suffice it to say that idea was not too popular. Both St. P and Exitium among other people told me what an ass I was for suggesting that.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The engines of most game would probably have a hell of a time doing that though. I know nothing about programming, but I'm assuming that building a engine that allows any and all deformation of terrain would be quite difficult. There's no reason you can't climb the fence though.

Art assets make climbing the fence more difficult than anything else. Of course, the tiles would also have to have a few data fields saying the fence could be climbed and how many pixels tall that fence is so the animation knows how far to climb.

I remember during the early development of Lionheart people wanted a shield bash. Reflexive replied saying that they did not have time to do the animations... Anyhow I suggested having implicit shield bashes only showing that a text message that you did extra damage with a shield. Suffice it to say that idea was not too popular. Both St. P and Exitium among other people told me what an ass I was for suggesting that.

I liked the idea of shield bashing, it's the text part that got me. In a real time game, you have to limit the amount of text displayed for everything in combat, because it's going so fast on the screen. NWN does this, but we're talking about a game that uses the ROUND EQUALS SIX SECONDS game, and even then the floating text goes by pretty quickly. If Lionheart implimented several special moves which only had floating text to show that move was done at a faster pace... Well, I think you get the point.

 

[GreenNight]

Some problems that create this lack of freedom are: art, programming and story writing.
You need the art for the possible animations that your action may need. You need that the game knows how to handle your actions and an interface that permits them. And you need a reactive story that reflects the consecuences of your actions.

But there's another fact, and this is the fact that it's almost impossible to have the game prepared for what the players might want to do because you really don't know what they will want to do. This is the same problem most game masters have. I smile everytime I remember how there's allways and army next to the vilage my group is just in case be decide to attack it (some of the group care a lot about XP).
And this needs that the game reacts to your actions and permits actions not intended or imagined by the story scripters (that was what the article of chrisbeddoes was about).

Well and you also need an interface that permits you to do the action.

For example climbing is not implemented in fallout, so there are no animations (other than going up some ladders) and there's not an option to climb things. And also you have that perhaps in the game they would have though that that fence had some barb wire on the top so there was no option to climb it. Then a clever player would shout "
Hey! I'll use this spare tunic I have to put it over ther wire and pass over it without problems". And there could be endless more problems that the master could see or think for impeding that the players retrieve the car in an unintended way, but we know how resourceful players can get if they want :wink:

So, in short, unless you have an interface that permits those actions (through having the needed art and programming) and you have a story that can reflect such actions (more programming and some story writing) there's no way you'll have all the freedom you want. After all, game makers just have a limited amount of time, and there are two infinite things, well not sure about one.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

There is a great article here


http://www.unknownplayer.com/archive/03/02/03/1380.php

To my great dismay, horizons turned from a gamers-game which would have a devoted user base, to a more user friendly, mass marketable dumbed down version that appeals to brainless masses. If we look past the massive amounts of poorly thought out titles on the drawing board today, ranging from Shadowbane which was one of the most hyped titles I've ever seen, to Trials of Ascension which is an experiment in permadeath. We see only very few glimmers of hope I see on the horizon (bad pun). A few mentionable might include Darkfall online which may offer more freedoms that any game before including unlimited PvP which is to be monitored only by the players, and a great economy. Darkfall almost sounds too good, so this is one game I'll continue to keep a close eye on. Dransik is a good bit of fun for a few days, but has no real future. Eve-Online suddenly came out of no-where just after E3 2002 with a demo video that caught a lot of early attention, and the game itself continues to draw fans. Beyond these titles (and a few others), the future of gaming looks to be quite dull. Diablo 2 popularized the mindless trend of click-fests, and The Sims Online became a graphical chat room for pedophiles around the world. Just like these guys who met in an online chat room make a great lesbian couple.

 

[Sol Invictus]

The engines of most game would probably have a hell of a time doing that though. I know nothing about programming, but I'm assuming that building a engine that allows any and all deformation of terrain would be quite difficult. There's no reason you can't climb the fence though. Splinter Cell allows the agent you play to pull off some cool moves; although they are implemented in a 'jumping puzzle' manner in the game, if the levels were better designed, you could probably make Fisher do anything you could in real life.

If really old games like X-Com: UFO Defense can accomplish terrain deformation with relative ease, I don't see why new generation engines can't do the same. By all means, it should be easier considering the fact that most game engines today are 3d-based.

Heck, if Jagged Alliance (both 1 and 2), and Westwood's Nox have such features, it's really unforgivable that a supposed 'next gen' RPG like Neverwinter Nights doesn't even have a hundreth of the features from previous titles.

As Deathy stated above, by all intents and purposes, destroying a piece of terrain follows the same rules as an immobile critter. You could, in a way, see it as a different way of opening a 'door'. Instead of opening a preset door trigger by clicking on it, you'll instead shoot open a piece of wall with an 'explode on hit' trigger set to it.

Vault Dweller wrote:
I totally agree with Exitium. The possibilities and player's options are not limited by technical implementation, but by designers' imagination. Taking Fallout's example with the car, I don't really need to see the jumping, climbing, blowing up the fence, good ol' test message will do for me. May be it's not the best solution, but it's much better then knowing that my character could not handle a fence. ( And he has the nerve to call himself an adventurer )

Precisely. The first Fallout implemented such things quite beautifully. Remember the rope you got from Shady Sands and used in a variety of locations to access difficult areas? The same could have been done with the fence in Fallout 2. You could have very well been able to click on the fence and select the option to climb it. The result would be determined based on the amount of Agility your character may or may not have possessed. A character with less than 6 points in Agility would have been given the message: "You find yourself in an inept position as you attempt to scale this rather tall fence.", while a character with an agility of exactly 6 would have received the message "You climbed the fence, but not without difficulty. You receive 10 points of damage from pulling a hamstring." So on, and so forth.

Saint Proverbius wrote:
Art assets make climbing the fence more difficult than anything else. Of course, the tiles would also have to have a few data fields saying the fence could be climbed and how many pixels tall that fence is so the animation knows how far to climb.

Fair enough.However, in a 3d engine, it wouldn't be that difficult to pull off. Games like Fallout wouldn't need such animations, however. The setting up of ropes in Fallout 1 is a good example of how it could work.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

If really old games like X-Com: UFO Defense can accomplish terrain deformation with relative ease, I don't see why new generation engines can't do the same. By all means, it should be easier considering the fact that most game engines today are 3d-based.

Actually, tiles make this easier, since all you have to do is update the map content the back buffer is drawing while displaying the explosion over top the tiles that are being removed.

Fair enough.However, in a 3d engine, it wouldn't be that difficult to pull off. Games like Fallout wouldn't need such animations, however. The setting up of ropes in Fallout 1 is a good example of how it could work.

It's not hard in a 2D engine. I think the main reason it's not done more often is for design purposes and player funnelling than anything else.

 

[Sol Invictus]

When I said 3d engine, what I meant was 3d graphics engine, rather than terrain engine. You're right on both counts, however.

I meant that animation and art would be a lot easier with a 3d (tile based) engine when it came to the destruction of walls and stuff like that, because the artists wouldn't have to devote as much time to the art resources as they would have to if they animated each brick in 2d.

What ever physics engine the game uses would take care of all of the 'falling of bricks'. That's the plus of using a terrain physics engine like the one in Red Faction and Red Faction 2. Something like th Karma physics engine in Unreal Tournament 2003 could be used for the tossing of corpses and other things.