INFURIATING! games

I've noticed that most of the games I've gotten recently have been INFURIATING. All in caps.

I've still been trying to play through Fire Emblem, but it's infuriating. 90% of your characters die in two or three hits. This is made worse because they almost always kill the enemy that attacks them, making a perfect opening for another enemy to slide right in and attack. Of course, once a character dies, you need to restart the entire chapter, because a dead character is dead forever. It's like fun, except you're driving needles under your fingernails.

I've been playing through Dead Rising. It's a fun game, except that the boss fights are insanely hard. I'm level... 28 now, and I'm still stuck on the first "real" boss - a psychotic clown. He took me from full health to dead in one twenty-second-long air-juggle combo. It's not unusual. I only have a row and a half of health, only enough to survive getting repeatedly run over and shot by the Dead Rising Warthog-equivalent for a minute and a half. Pshaw, chain guns are nothing compared to psychotic clowns.

I did finally beat Gears of War, but I had to play it on easy. Even then, some of the fights were "hey, you did something slightly wrong! You die." I especially like the way they start to kill you for being in the dark about five minutes before they actually tell you that the dark is what's killing you. They also had the irritating habit of restarting you BEFORE the minute-long unskippable cut scene.

Okay, this one's great. I've been playing a bit of the New Super Mario Brothers. Except that it only saves when you BEAT A CASTLE. When's the last time I wanted to play ten levels of Super Mario straight? A decade ago? I'm not going to put it in sleep mode, because I want to use my DS for other games. So I still haven't reached the second castle. ARGH.

There's a deeply flawed thinking in these kinds of situations. It's more common in Japanese games, but western games often make the same mistakes. I don't mind a game that gives me a challenge. In fact, I like a game that gives me a challenge. But I like my challenges to be less discrete. I don't like WIN/LOSE, especially in games where "lose" means having to play large chunks of the game over again.

All I can presume is that these guys decided to "up the difficulty", but didn't know how to do that without making the player have to replay the area eight times.

Know your game mechanics. Know what constitutes a challenge and what constitutes just being an asshole.

DOA4

I finally picked up a 360. One of the games I got was DOA4, because I liked DOA2 and DOA3.

I can't say that I'm an expert at DOA4, but I have now played it for many hours, and I have some impressions.

It looks like they were trying to get DOA4 to have a better high-end game than its predecessors: the priorities are a bit more complex and there's a host of new "split second" timing possibilities. They also tightened up the timing on counters and loosened the timing on throws, making the first a bit less dominant and the second a bit more (to the point where you can throw people while they're punching you in the face, which is very irritating to low-level fighters).

They also changed the AI. I find it harder, but that's probably just because I'm used to the old AI. I've always been better against humans. :P

They also weakened the floor game - it used to be that stomping on people and kicking them while they were down was a fun part of the low-skill combat. Although the moves still theoretically exist, they don't seem to be any use even in low-skill combats, which I find irritating. Even if a technique is dominated at higher skill levels, if it is fun for low-level fights, it's a nice ramp. Also, it's a bit easier to get fucked up in a corner, which is interesting at high levels (it's 3D, so keeping your position away from corners is far more possible than in, say, Street Fighter) but, again, irritating at low levels.

They also extended hit ranges a bit, which completely throws off my sense of distance, especially since these hit ranges often extend beyond the fist. That's just bad practice.

The whole game feels a bit more "turbo", which pisses me off. While the speed of a game doesn't affect my ability against other humans much, it makes the AI harder.

Anyway, the end result is that DOA4 is much less accessible than DOA2&3. My office mate tried to pick it up. While he's not an awesome fighting game savant, he did beat Art of Fighting. But DOA4 simply irritated him, because all the low-level play had been sacrificed.

Sigh...

Well, on the upside, there is a massive clarity in which characters have what strengths and weaknesses, and what characters they are strong or weak against. That's fun, and does allow for some level of handicap by carefully choosing a character strong or weak against the enemy.

But why don't they have a handicap proper? Sheesh, it's not hard to program in a damage reduction handicap.

Unique vs Manufactured, and What's a Body Good For?

Raph has an interesting post up that made me think.

In most games of all types, the enemies are faceless bundles of statistics, save for bosses. Similarly, the player upgrades by buying the next generic bundle of statistics, whether it's a new gun or a nifty wizard cloak.

I've played every Elder Scrolls game that's been made. You know what the biggest rush in those games is for me? The slew of random crap you pull off of every corpse and out of every treasure chest. The idea that you'll find a dagger with a few new capabilities, or a left bracer with a funky new graphic, or a loincloth of burning.

When I play those games, I'm totally addicted for ten, fifteen hours. Then I lose all interest. Why? Because the loot doesn't hold up. By the end of those hours, I've explored everything the game has to offer, at least as far as I'm concerned. The first weapon I find that does blammies when I stab someone? What an incredible rush. The next one? Not so much. The seventh one? Not at all.

It devolves: the only thing that interests me is the graphics associated with the items. A fruit-filled hat is worth more than the flamey sword of Nimbulus, because the flamey sword is just an extra +5 to something... but the bananahat is unique. Plus, I can enchant it to be a fruity hat of flaming, if I really need the flame.

Of course, a steady progression of "unique" is required there, too. The bananahat only holds my attention for so long before I must move on to the next hat.

Actually, that's a failure on the designer's part. The problem is that there isn't really enough feedback to prolong my joy in my bananahat. If everyone commented on my bananahat and changed their interactions with me in some interesting way, the bananahat would become extremely interesting to me. Also, generally speaking, there isn't much in-world feedback.

You might be able to see yourself, but it's a rear view and the costumes aren't generally very interesting from the back. Notice that the new "custom-avatar chats" always show your character from the front, even when they're full 3D? Yeah, fronts are better in terms of feedback.

Worse, the costumes themselves leave only a small mark on the screen, especially in Elder Scrolls games. World of Warcraft got this right: the costumes are extremely loud and large, totally dominating your character's appearance. Of course, there's the problem that you have fewer pieces to play with, and that's a big drawback...

Moreover, there's only so much joy you can get from permutations on the same stock. No matter how many hats I wear, they all go on top of the same head, with the same art style and the same model. The base gets boring, even if the hats don't, and that drags the hats down. Don't get the hats down!

This is true even in games like SecondLife. It doesn't matter that there are 50,000 different kinds of "hats" and more coming out every day. The stock beneath is the same, so they stop being interesting after a while. Thus the thriving business in morphing your avatar: you can't really wear clothes, but in changing the baseline you have changed your whole... um... baseline.

Okay, as per my recent unfortunate habit, I've started to ramble. What I'm saying is:

Manufactured or unique is the wrong question to ask. Randomly generating 500,000 different kinds of sword will only broaden the game so much. In the beginning, it'll be awesome, but by midgame, you'll be just as bored of the random swords as you would be of 100 carefully scripted, balanced swords. You'll know the parameters. Random generation is really a "wide" solution rather than a "deep" solution, and unless you plan on absurdly restricted access to randomly generated things, it's not going to add play depth for anyone other than newbs.

Subtracting out the gameplay elements actually deepens the play, because now the system follows supply and demand. Nobody cares that there's only three blue swords of cystic fibrosis, because they're worse than the ten thousand red swords of blammifying. But if all swords are equal, the rarity of those blue swords makes them incredibly valuable. The same idea applies for hats.

The feedback you get on your non-combat-related equipment is pretty strong in a MMORPG, although exceedingly weak in a one-player game. This means that you don't require as much depth in a MMORPG, because feedback will create more depth. In a one-player game, you'll need to go further. Much further.

For example, being able to dress a whole roster of characters in whatever fashions you prefer. Again: linking these things to play bonuses is basically a bad idea, because it dramatically limits the player's options.

Another idea is to be able to change your avatar, either piece by piece or in whole. You could pull a Shiny trick from Messiah: let the player inhabit whatever randomly generated NPC they can lure into a dark corner alone. NPCs can have some immediate gameplay results (such as being better warriors, or having access to certain places), but in the long run have fundamentally interchangeable capabilities. NPCs should look dramatically varied - it might be best to use animal-people, since they look very different from each other. Elves vs dwarves is about the minimum.

This would allow the player to grab an avatar, equip it, and run around. If he or she wants, he or she can jump into a new NPC - one that looks very different and people react to in very different ways.

This allows them to change the baseline and all the stuff on top. That's cool. I think that would be a fun game, either one-player or massively multiplayer. Imagine the economy that would spring up in body sales. Some NPCs are extremely hard to get because they are always surrounded by people, and those call in the highest prices.

Obviously, there would need to be some, I dunno, GAME involved at some point. But, pshaw, that's the easy part.

Easy Game

Testing an easy game to check balancing techniques.

Rules are here. If turned into a full game, templates would be needed to help players get started.

This post is mostly so that I can access these rules from any connected computer. Last time I uploaded something, I forgot where I put it. :P

A Balanced Fairy Tale

Gather around and I shall tell you a (very long) story of a fantastic contest, a festival of carnage which brought warriors from every corner of the globe. Yes, a good, old-fashioned, world-wide beat-down.

Wait, you've heard this story before? What's that? Mortal Kombat? Dead or Alive? Soul Calibre? Darkstalkers? Virtua Fighter? King of Fighters? Street Fighter? Fighter Fighter?

Some of the most observant of you have probably noticed that certain fighters fit certain players better than others. Other of you have probably noticed that some people consider some fighters cheesy. Others might have noticed that certain warriors tend to beat specific other warriors, but lose to still other warriors. "Is this balance?" you cry, "Nobody gets to play Vega, he's too freakin' cheap!" But the other day, it was Chun Li we banned...

I have cracked the secrets. Yes, indeed, like Indiana Jones I have braved the wilderness, searching for the holy grail of Game Balance, until now done mostly by the Deep Magic known as "Guess and Test".

The First Secret of Fighter Game Balance is Spherical Coordinates.

Nearly every move in nearly every fighting game is character-centric. The moves issue from the character, center around the character, and affect specific distances from the character.

It's a mistake to think of an attack as having a given range. Instead, it occupies specific layers of the sphere.

For ease of not-letting-our-brains-ooze-out-our-ears, spheres come in five onion-like layers: immediate, short, medium, long, and extended ranges. What these ranges actually are depends on the game - a game like Dead or Alive, with no weapons or energy attacks, "extended" is about five feet. A game like Darkstalkers, extended range is "as far as the screen can possibly stretch". Games might have fewer ranges, if you really feel like it.

Few attacks only affect one range. Most attacks will "cut through" several ranges on their path to the enemy's face. For example, thrusting a spear pokes a small hole through medium, long, and extended ranges.

What percentage of the effective surface of the sphere an attack covers is also critical. A spear thrust takes up only a tiny portion of the layers it penetrates. A swing will carve a huge horizontal line through the sphere. A vertical slice may carve a line just as large, but it cuts through less effective surface, since surface above head height is rarely used in today's 3-D fighter games (except for juggling purposes).

Now, looking at the mathematics of it, a spear thrust covers only a teeeeeeeeny tiny little bit of space - say, 1/30th that of a swing. But it's not 1/30th as effective. That really screwed me up for a long time. How do you account for it?

I tried a couple of methods, but the one that works is to add the size of the opponent to all edges of the effect. It makes sense, when you think about it: in his attempt to dodge, the opponent must heave his fat ass out of the way. The bigger the ass, the more heaving is required.

Therefore, a spear thrust pokes an enemy-sized hole through several layers of sphere while a swing carves an enemy-height hole along the course of the swing. This means that the swing is something like 2-4x as "effective", which is just about right since most thrusts are either faster or cover more layers of sphere.

Already, we can see a few fun things developing.

First, long-range swings are rather evil, since they carve a lot of surface area out of a lot of layers of the sphere. Hence, most long-range swings are quite slow, with an impressive wind-up. There are a few exceptions, such as the knight class in Soul Calibre III, and I generally find those exceptions to be the cheesiest thing since gouda.

Second, when you're fighting tiny characters, horizontal swings should be moderately more effective than thrusts or vertical swings. This is especially true because small characters typically have a much faster foot-speed and better dodge moves. Innnnteresting. This is not true of games where size is virtual and has no actual effect on the collision box, and is obviously slightly different in 2D fighters.

Okay, so rule 1: Spherical coordinates. Rule 2: add enemy size to attack effects.

Rule 3: Optimum range.

Most moves have an optimum range. Some moves are very forgiving, with a range of ranges, but even these moves typically have a range they are "best" at. For example Ken's fireball can theoretically hit at immediate range, but is usually of more use at longer ranges.

Most characters have moves which are geared towards working at a specific range. In some games, like Dead or Alive, this is extremely subtle. In other games, like Soul Calibre, this is extremely pronounced. Most of their moves work most effectively when the enemy occupies a specific layer of our killer onion.

There's two kinds of "focusing" to take in to account. One is how forgiving each individual move is as to range. Some characters, like the barbarian class in Soul Calibre, can happily allow their enemy to occupy any of the three middle ranges because all their attacks hit all three of those ranges. Being low-focus in this way is very beginner-friendly.

The other kind of focus is how many of their moves deal with that range as opposed to other ranges. A barbarian has few immediate or extended attacks, so they are very "focused" in this way. On the other hand, a monk wielding a size-changing staff has moves for every range, usually found when least applicable. Being low-focus in this way can be easy for advanced players, but beginners will frequently suppose that "forward thrust" should be something other than "poke your finger into his belly button, if it happens to not be more than one foot away".

Once a character's optimum range and level of focus is determined, there is the art of staying at optimum range. There are two basic options for this. One is maneuvering. Typically done by smaller characters, they simply dash into their favorite place on the map.

The other is knockback. This is a misleading term, because not all knockback is actually knockback. Some people (Scorpion) have knock-FORWARD. Some people have knock-DOWN. Many people have knock-UP, usually leading to an asinine 75% damage combo.

The most interesting form of knockback is self-knockback. A lot of attacks move the attacker as well, covering distance while attacking. This is a very common method of "knockbacking" into a shorter range.

For most characters, the more they have of one of these methods, the less they have of the other.

Now we're starting to see some intertwined stats. Movement is useful for dodging as well as changing range. So, technically, movement should be nerfed somewhat, so it's not quite as easy to dodge things as it should be. Most games seem to do this.

Most games also take the approach that small characters should be fast, short-range characters. This allows them a strong "hook" to balance the game. Small, long distance chars are irritating, largely because the opposite supposition is that big characters need to be slow and long-range, giving those small guys plenty of time to get out of the way.

There are games which break these conventions. Games where long-range attacks are frequently as fast as short-range attacks. Characters that do this usually feel "cheesy" - think Kilik and, if you've ever played it, the magicians in Valkyrie Profile Fight Tag.

Blllleeeeaaaaahhhh... running low on juice. I'd like to say I'm coming up on the home stretch, but there is really no end to the exposition.

So the last thing I'll talk about is rule four: speed.

How long the enemy has to evade, block, and/or counter an attack is critical. This is primarily affected by how long the pre-attack animation is, and we can also think of the post-attack animation as part of its "speed".

Many attacks have "paths" - classically, attacks simply "popped" in, affecting their effective areas simultaneously. This changed, famously, with Dhalsim. Now there are many games (usually 3D ones) where the attacks have an effective area that changes moment by moment. Obviously, these attacks are "faster" near the beginning of their arc, and "slower" near the end, since they give more time to react.

The other half of this equation is how long the enemy takes to react to your attack. An enemy must see what you're doing. Milliseconds gone, decreases with training. They must recognize what you're doing. This takes less time the more you've fought against a character. Some characters, such as Yoshimitsu and Voldo, specialize in attacks that are hard to predict. Lastly, they must actually block (which takes a certain amount of time) or dodge (ditto).

These four primary rules interact to form a brutal statistical representation of what characters do what. I haven't explained how to actually BALANCE anything yet, and I'm not going to do that today. (And then they ate the minstrel.)

Rule 1: Onion spheres
Rule 2: Add enemy size
Rule 3: Optimum ranges
Rule 4: Speed

Rule five is combos, but I'll just leave it to your imagination.