Now that I've completely alienated the Roguelike community with a post about Uru, I thought it would be a great time to talk about Roguelikes. After all, they're not reading me any more, so it's clear sailing! ;)
When I was young, I loved Roguelikes and their surprisingly close sister: the MUD. But as I got older, I stopped liking them. Why?
This is actually a very complicated topic, because I still like RPGs. In fact, I like RPGs that are very close to Roguelikes in their UI and rules. Which means there is something outside of UI and rules that matters.
The only thing I can think of is the "narrative", for lack of a better word.
The dialog, the plot events, the way characters join and leave your party. The progression through these things.
I don't want to call it a "narrative", because I don't actually think that I care that it's a narrative. I think that - and this is going to be fuzzy - I think that it's about externality.
In a Roguelike, what you get is what you get. Although each play-through is different, the overall experience is fundamentally the same. I don't mean the UI, I mean the way you feel as you play it.
However, an RPG's content is usually more carefully arrayed.
This is the part that I think some Roguelike fans are going to misunderstand.
There is a... kind of theme to any given RPG. There are people sitting behind it and building cool shit. Someone says, "oh, and if the bad guy saves him now, it'll be cooler when he has to fight him later." Someone says, "to make it feel like a tropical island, let's make all the villagers very relaxed." Someone says "this would be a great time to kick his mage out of the party and let him sweat for a bit."
Now, each time you replay the RPG, it's the same. But that's why most people don't replay RPGs much. Instead, a new RPG is made and they buy it.
This isn't a group of consumerists addled by ads and woefully unaware of Angband. It's a group of people who want a deeper, fundamentally more coherent experience than continually replaying a Roguelike provides. And the only way to get that is to consume a work of art. To EAT it until it provides NO FURTHER SUSTENANCE. It's about exploring someone's brain, not simply a stack of rules.
In theory, it may be that you can simulate this and create infinite deeper, more coherent experiences with a single piece of software. In the same way that, in theory, it may be possible to travel to Alpha Centauri.
Now, if they're still reading, some of the Roguelike audience might be feeling wroth right now. A lot of them probably think that what I want is stupid or pointless, in which case we're talking pots and kettles.
On the other hand, it may be that they think such a thing can be generated.
HA!
Ow...
Far be it from me to dissuade anyone who wants to try. Hell, if you succeed, I'll sign right up.
But... more realistically, other approaches are more plausible. Other approaches such as the one I discussed earlier and caught flak for.
That approach is attempting to get around this difficulty. It is not made out of ignorance. It is made out of a full understanding that this has never even been remotely near something vaguely resembling success, even though literally hundreds of people try.
So... I hope that was clear. I don't like Roguelikes because I'm a zombie.
I must eat brains.
How about you?
Friday, February 29, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The Tailor's Paradox...
For the past year or two, I've had the very strong impression that if I can figure out how to put tailoring into a computer game, I will have solved a major content generation problem.
If you look at games that allow player to generate clothing, you find there are two basic approaches.
The basic approach is to let players spray paint their avatars with a semitransparent image that looks vaguely like clothes. SecondLife actually offers a wide variety of twiddles and tweaks that allow you to do this in-game, but the result is pathologically ugly, so most of this kind of thing is made by importing an image from another program.
Reskinning like this is just not what I would consider a solution. It's begging the question. Clothing has a distinct existence from the avatar - or, at least, it should.
The other method is when you build clothes as a physical object and then somehow mount them on the avatar. While this produces clothes that have a distinct physicality, it runs into a wide variety of problems with varying body sizes and animations. Flowing clothes are essentially an impossibility, and forget clothes that interact with things (no stuffing your pants into your boots!).
Physical objects are subject to the rules of physical objects, and in modern engines that usually means solid-object physics and pre-scripted animations. Engines just aren't built for soft things. I guess a game that revolves entirely around the physics of soft things might be interesting, actually.
But a larger problem than physics is actually specifying the construction of the clothing.
If you're just reskinning, you don't have to worry about it: the construction is only skin deep, literally. Just paint whatever you like.
If you're building an actual object, the construction is usually very difficult, only made easier because the physics simulation is nonexistent so you don't have to worry about anything actually working. Most construction kits are built for solid objects like furniture, simple houses, and swords. Complex, adaptive physical constructs such as clothes and jet skis are usually quite difficult and certainly not mechanically interactive.
Many games - such as Project Entropia - solve this by having specific, tweakable blueprints. But that's not what I want. This problem is the heart of the issue, and is what I'm trying to solve. How would you (A) let the player create clothing designs and (B) simulate them on various avatars?
Remember, since we're working in a 3D space and can ignore gravity and the need to manually cut things, there's probably no reason to use 2D representations at any point.
This is not an easy problem: think about it.
If you look at games that allow player to generate clothing, you find there are two basic approaches.
The basic approach is to let players spray paint their avatars with a semitransparent image that looks vaguely like clothes. SecondLife actually offers a wide variety of twiddles and tweaks that allow you to do this in-game, but the result is pathologically ugly, so most of this kind of thing is made by importing an image from another program.
Reskinning like this is just not what I would consider a solution. It's begging the question. Clothing has a distinct existence from the avatar - or, at least, it should.
The other method is when you build clothes as a physical object and then somehow mount them on the avatar. While this produces clothes that have a distinct physicality, it runs into a wide variety of problems with varying body sizes and animations. Flowing clothes are essentially an impossibility, and forget clothes that interact with things (no stuffing your pants into your boots!).
Physical objects are subject to the rules of physical objects, and in modern engines that usually means solid-object physics and pre-scripted animations. Engines just aren't built for soft things. I guess a game that revolves entirely around the physics of soft things might be interesting, actually.
But a larger problem than physics is actually specifying the construction of the clothing.
If you're just reskinning, you don't have to worry about it: the construction is only skin deep, literally. Just paint whatever you like.
If you're building an actual object, the construction is usually very difficult, only made easier because the physics simulation is nonexistent so you don't have to worry about anything actually working. Most construction kits are built for solid objects like furniture, simple houses, and swords. Complex, adaptive physical constructs such as clothes and jet skis are usually quite difficult and certainly not mechanically interactive.
Many games - such as Project Entropia - solve this by having specific, tweakable blueprints. But that's not what I want. This problem is the heart of the issue, and is what I'm trying to solve. How would you (A) let the player create clothing designs and (B) simulate them on various avatars?
Remember, since we're working in a 3D space and can ignore gravity and the need to manually cut things, there's probably no reason to use 2D representations at any point.
This is not an easy problem: think about it.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Language, UI, and Systems Design
Oooh, such a pretentious title! Hopefully, not as pretentious an essay...
Duncan recently mentioned Uru in a comment. Uru is the massively multiplayer variant of Myst, and is a game that has done so badly that even Gametap is taking it off the roster. I only managed to play it briefly, not because it stinks, but because I didn't have much time on my hands.
Exactly why it didn't do very well can be left in the comments section, because it has nothing to do with this post. What does have something to do with this post is the Myst mythos. Mystos?
In the fiction of Myst, putting it simply, worlds can be created by writing in special books. Then you can travel to those worlds.
Obviously, the implementation of this within the Myst fiction leaves a lot to be desired: it's not an easy concept to get close to. Not simply in terms of giving the power to the player, but even in terms of giving it to writers. For example, writers decided this language has numbers in it. I can not imagine any possible use numbers would have in defining a world.
Progressions of numbers, sure. You want a symbol for the Fibonacci sequence, that I could understand. You want a symbol for "3"? Why? The idea of "3" has no purpose in algorithmic world design. It's a flat symbol.
If you didn't understand that, I... um, might be about to lose you completely.
Anyway, one of my long-time interests is the creation of worlds (... obviously?), so the idea of this language has always stuck with me.
Algorithmically designing things is right up there for efficiency. It's obviously more efficient to be able to specify that this next level is a close-combat mission containing lots of shotgun soldiers, and then have the level design itself. You could make a thousand missions a day.
In practice, this works out not so great. In practice, it's dangerously close to a "hard AI" algorithm.
This system has to design a level understanding the parameters of the player and the player's avatar, and make sure to make the level interesting, challenging (but not too hard), paced for humans... and, oh, put in fun microquests and plot elements. Moreover, the design of this level will therefore effect the design of the next levels, because the player and avatar will have slightly different parameters upon leaving the level...
Then, of course, understanding where the level stands in the global game is also important, and basically requires you to solve the whole problem again from the opposite direction.
Creating an algorithm that designs a level is not really feasible.
Which is why the language in Myst fascinates me - as a concept, not as an implementation.
See, when you write in the book, the book doesn't say "this would be interesting, that would be interesting, let's think about it like this." The book says, "physics have been defined as such, materials as such, culture as such... processing..."
This leaves the hard-AI problem on the shoulders of the writer.
But, obviously, the writer couldn't simply write "make a world made of chocolate". The writer would have to write something that the simple underlying algorithm would interpret to mean a world made of chocolate.
This is why the theoretical language would need to include concepts like "high altitude wind pattern", "electron shell progressions", "elemental makeup of the planet..." and it's why "3" is so useless.
Obviously, this kind of language is a ridiculous idea. It's so complex, so interwoven at so many levels, it might actually be easier to create it using C++.
But... then again, it might be possible.
The fundamental problem is that of complexity. How many layers is the player dealing with at once? Can the player define new symbols that encapsulate packages of symbols? Can symbols interact with purpose rather than blindly being executed?
This would let "basic" players do things like write the word "elf" in their book. That word would actually be a complex piece of code that interacts with the algorithm that runs the world. It would try various things to make the world produce elves: any complexities such as lifespan management, genetic weirdities, magic, and so forth would happen behind the scenes.
Obviously, a newbie couldn't design the world "elf". Such a word would probably be more difficult to create than an entire planet from scratch. (Unless it takes the easy way out by opening a portal to a world full of elves...)
So... the design... would need to be encapsulated. There would have to be tools to help you.
Tools to help you design words that design worlds.
Now, here's the thing: not everyone would benefit from the same suite of tools. Someone who wants to design words that proliferate specific items or ideas would need a radically different set of tools than someone who is experimenting with how different universal constants affect things.
So you could have very different suites.
Imagine this as a MMORPG. Instead of choosing a race or a class or whatever, you choose what tool the character can use...
...
Unrelated problem you may have picked up on: the idea of simulating a universe from beginning to now sounds a little... computationally expensive, don't you think?
Well, I've been thinking about that. What you do is build a language that is specifically geared towards abstracting cleanly. When someone writes down symbols that change the way the universe formed, the system doesn't sit there and extrapolate every atom. It knows how the words act abstractly, and can therefore rapidly extrapolate any given piece of the universe at any given time.
Progressions would be critical to this: you don't want a world that's the same everywhere. If you include progressions, the abstraction algorithm can look at "where" in the progression it "is" and create something meaningful. Sort of like a smart random number generator.
Hrm...
Just random thoughts. What I'm interested in is a system that allows the players to design languages for designing systems. Basically, because player-generated content is crippled by the assumptions your system makes, why not let the players generate a wide variety of them as well?
Duncan recently mentioned Uru in a comment. Uru is the massively multiplayer variant of Myst, and is a game that has done so badly that even Gametap is taking it off the roster. I only managed to play it briefly, not because it stinks, but because I didn't have much time on my hands.
Exactly why it didn't do very well can be left in the comments section, because it has nothing to do with this post. What does have something to do with this post is the Myst mythos. Mystos?
In the fiction of Myst, putting it simply, worlds can be created by writing in special books. Then you can travel to those worlds.
Obviously, the implementation of this within the Myst fiction leaves a lot to be desired: it's not an easy concept to get close to. Not simply in terms of giving the power to the player, but even in terms of giving it to writers. For example, writers decided this language has numbers in it. I can not imagine any possible use numbers would have in defining a world.
Progressions of numbers, sure. You want a symbol for the Fibonacci sequence, that I could understand. You want a symbol for "3"? Why? The idea of "3" has no purpose in algorithmic world design. It's a flat symbol.
If you didn't understand that, I... um, might be about to lose you completely.
Anyway, one of my long-time interests is the creation of worlds (... obviously?), so the idea of this language has always stuck with me.
Algorithmically designing things is right up there for efficiency. It's obviously more efficient to be able to specify that this next level is a close-combat mission containing lots of shotgun soldiers, and then have the level design itself. You could make a thousand missions a day.
In practice, this works out not so great. In practice, it's dangerously close to a "hard AI" algorithm.
This system has to design a level understanding the parameters of the player and the player's avatar, and make sure to make the level interesting, challenging (but not too hard), paced for humans... and, oh, put in fun microquests and plot elements. Moreover, the design of this level will therefore effect the design of the next levels, because the player and avatar will have slightly different parameters upon leaving the level...
Then, of course, understanding where the level stands in the global game is also important, and basically requires you to solve the whole problem again from the opposite direction.
Creating an algorithm that designs a level is not really feasible.
Which is why the language in Myst fascinates me - as a concept, not as an implementation.
See, when you write in the book, the book doesn't say "this would be interesting, that would be interesting, let's think about it like this." The book says, "physics have been defined as such, materials as such, culture as such... processing..."
This leaves the hard-AI problem on the shoulders of the writer.
But, obviously, the writer couldn't simply write "make a world made of chocolate". The writer would have to write something that the simple underlying algorithm would interpret to mean a world made of chocolate.
This is why the theoretical language would need to include concepts like "high altitude wind pattern", "electron shell progressions", "elemental makeup of the planet..." and it's why "3" is so useless.
Obviously, this kind of language is a ridiculous idea. It's so complex, so interwoven at so many levels, it might actually be easier to create it using C++.
But... then again, it might be possible.
The fundamental problem is that of complexity. How many layers is the player dealing with at once? Can the player define new symbols that encapsulate packages of symbols? Can symbols interact with purpose rather than blindly being executed?
This would let "basic" players do things like write the word "elf" in their book. That word would actually be a complex piece of code that interacts with the algorithm that runs the world. It would try various things to make the world produce elves: any complexities such as lifespan management, genetic weirdities, magic, and so forth would happen behind the scenes.
Obviously, a newbie couldn't design the world "elf". Such a word would probably be more difficult to create than an entire planet from scratch. (Unless it takes the easy way out by opening a portal to a world full of elves...)
So... the design... would need to be encapsulated. There would have to be tools to help you.
Tools to help you design words that design worlds.
Now, here's the thing: not everyone would benefit from the same suite of tools. Someone who wants to design words that proliferate specific items or ideas would need a radically different set of tools than someone who is experimenting with how different universal constants affect things.
So you could have very different suites.
Imagine this as a MMORPG. Instead of choosing a race or a class or whatever, you choose what tool the character can use...
...
Unrelated problem you may have picked up on: the idea of simulating a universe from beginning to now sounds a little... computationally expensive, don't you think?
Well, I've been thinking about that. What you do is build a language that is specifically geared towards abstracting cleanly. When someone writes down symbols that change the way the universe formed, the system doesn't sit there and extrapolate every atom. It knows how the words act abstractly, and can therefore rapidly extrapolate any given piece of the universe at any given time.
Progressions would be critical to this: you don't want a world that's the same everywhere. If you include progressions, the abstraction algorithm can look at "where" in the progression it "is" and create something meaningful. Sort of like a smart random number generator.
Hrm...
Just random thoughts. What I'm interested in is a system that allows the players to design languages for designing systems. Basically, because player-generated content is crippled by the assumptions your system makes, why not let the players generate a wide variety of them as well?
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Home, Home on the Lagrange...
If that's not a filk song, it should be...
Those of you with particularly good memories and long attention spans might remember that I talked about the idea of having a "home" in a video game. I said I thought it was important.
I've been thinking more about it, and I realized some interesting things.
One of the major purposes of a "home" in a video game would be to recalibrate the player. To bring his experience back to a set type. This is important because players react differently to pacing and prefer different tempos - so dragging them back together allows you to keep things coherent instead of trying to build a system that magically adapts to their preferences.
An easy example of this is save points. When you run into a save point in a game, your brain does a little mental jig that "resets" your experience. It builds or releases tension, depending on the situation, and resets the tempo from wherever you have dragged it off to.
I don't know if that's clear: Home is a well-lit save point. When you hit a save point, you go "whew. Okay, ready? Let's go!" Everyone does. No matter what kind of player, no matter what your preferences are, just seeing a save point (even if you don't use it) brings your mindset back near the same point as every other player who saw that save point.
This is often taken an extra step by actually resetting the game state to a neutral setting. A save point often restores HP/MP (or lets you use special items to do so), thereby even more blatantly resetting your experience to a neutral baseline.
...
Not all homes are save points. That would be silly.
Every game has a home or two. Every single one. An RPG with no save points uses the character screen as home. First person shooters use cut scenes. Multiplayer games use the team/map select menus. Short games use the game menu itself. (Interestingly, the same items are not used as homes in games of other genres... they don't produce the same feel! A cutscene in an RPG is not usually a home, oddly enough.)
It sounds like it's just some kind of ivory tower babble, like calling a game "a reductionist viewpoint of classic Marxism" or some such total bullshit, but it's not. The fact is that a player cannot simply always play your game. They get worn down and worn out.
So every game needs to have a break - something that lets the player stop and catch their breath. Let them think for a moment about what happened before, and predict what might happen next.
What I'm calling "home" is simply a method for doing that.
But I'm not calling it "home" because it sounds nice. I'm calling it "home" because it really is. In fact, it is all the definitions of home, if you squint. Except maybe the ones about baseball and old people.
The reason I'm doing this lexical gymnastics routine is because home can be more than a save point!
What do you think of when you think of "home"?
I guess if you're a young American, you might not have a really strong sense of home. We move around a lot and we don't usually have much in the way of heritage... but that's no excuse! We don't have much in the way of magic or space ships, either, but we include those in our games.
What else is home good for, besides letting you catch your breath?
...
There are a bunch of things... like... um...
Gosh, this is a complicated topic.
Radial design ("All Roads Lead to Home")
Ownership/customization
Comfort and belonging
Protecting something that isn't your own self-absorbed ass
NOT BEING THE GAME
The last one is important. The house was not the player's home in The Sims. In some regards, it could be argued either way, but in general a home has to be a change from the normal course of the game in order to generate a distinct feeling.
Of course, places don't have to be homes. In Ico, Yorda was home.
In games like Animal Crossing you have a home, but I don't consider it to be a good one: there's no emotional or gameplay punch to it.
Anyhow, that kind of went on longer than I wanted, so I'll just leave it at that.
What are your opinions on the concept of "home"? What do you think about the additional features I've suggested?
Those of you with particularly good memories and long attention spans might remember that I talked about the idea of having a "home" in a video game. I said I thought it was important.
I've been thinking more about it, and I realized some interesting things.
One of the major purposes of a "home" in a video game would be to recalibrate the player. To bring his experience back to a set type. This is important because players react differently to pacing and prefer different tempos - so dragging them back together allows you to keep things coherent instead of trying to build a system that magically adapts to their preferences.
An easy example of this is save points. When you run into a save point in a game, your brain does a little mental jig that "resets" your experience. It builds or releases tension, depending on the situation, and resets the tempo from wherever you have dragged it off to.
I don't know if that's clear: Home is a well-lit save point. When you hit a save point, you go "whew. Okay, ready? Let's go!" Everyone does. No matter what kind of player, no matter what your preferences are, just seeing a save point (even if you don't use it) brings your mindset back near the same point as every other player who saw that save point.
This is often taken an extra step by actually resetting the game state to a neutral setting. A save point often restores HP/MP (or lets you use special items to do so), thereby even more blatantly resetting your experience to a neutral baseline.
...
Not all homes are save points. That would be silly.
Every game has a home or two. Every single one. An RPG with no save points uses the character screen as home. First person shooters use cut scenes. Multiplayer games use the team/map select menus. Short games use the game menu itself. (Interestingly, the same items are not used as homes in games of other genres... they don't produce the same feel! A cutscene in an RPG is not usually a home, oddly enough.)
It sounds like it's just some kind of ivory tower babble, like calling a game "a reductionist viewpoint of classic Marxism" or some such total bullshit, but it's not. The fact is that a player cannot simply always play your game. They get worn down and worn out.
So every game needs to have a break - something that lets the player stop and catch their breath. Let them think for a moment about what happened before, and predict what might happen next.
What I'm calling "home" is simply a method for doing that.
But I'm not calling it "home" because it sounds nice. I'm calling it "home" because it really is. In fact, it is all the definitions of home, if you squint. Except maybe the ones about baseball and old people.
1. A place where one lives; a residence.
2. The physical structure within which one lives, such as a house or apartment.
3. A dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it; a household.
4.
a. An environment offering security and happiness.
b. A valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin.
5. The place, such as a country or town, where one was born or has lived for a long period.
6. The native habitat, as of a plant or animal.
7. The place where something is discovered, founded, developed, or promoted; a source.
8. A headquarters; a home base.
9. a. Baseball Home plate. b. Games Home base.
10. An institution where people are cared for: a home for the elderly.
11. Computer Science
a. The starting position of the cursor on a text-based computer display, usually in the upper left corner of the screen.
b. A starting position within a computer application, such as the beginning of a line, file, or screen or the top of a chart or list.
The reason I'm doing this lexical gymnastics routine is because home can be more than a save point!
What do you think of when you think of "home"?
I guess if you're a young American, you might not have a really strong sense of home. We move around a lot and we don't usually have much in the way of heritage... but that's no excuse! We don't have much in the way of magic or space ships, either, but we include those in our games.
What else is home good for, besides letting you catch your breath?
...
There are a bunch of things... like... um...
Gosh, this is a complicated topic.
Radial design ("All Roads Lead to Home")
Ownership/customization
Comfort and belonging
Protecting something that isn't your own self-absorbed ass
NOT BEING THE GAME
The last one is important. The house was not the player's home in The Sims. In some regards, it could be argued either way, but in general a home has to be a change from the normal course of the game in order to generate a distinct feeling.
Of course, places don't have to be homes. In Ico, Yorda was home.
In games like Animal Crossing you have a home, but I don't consider it to be a good one: there's no emotional or gameplay punch to it.
Anyhow, that kind of went on longer than I wanted, so I'll just leave it at that.
What are your opinions on the concept of "home"? What do you think about the additional features I've suggested?
Monday, February 25, 2008
No More!
I just got hit with a flurry of annoying theories using the ever-popular "Two Axes of Whatever" approach. I really hate that shit. I don't know why, it just rubs me precisely the wrong way.
Which means I was very pleased with this cartoon you already read.
I wonder if he's been reading the same essays I've been reading...
Which means I was very pleased with this cartoon you already read.
I wonder if he's been reading the same essays I've been reading...
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Toys and Engines
These days, whenever I think of a game idea, it seems to revolve around a toy. Some system that lets you do a wide variety of irrelevant but interesting things.
For example, I just built a silly little prototype for a game based around building weird steampunky machines on the outside of a weird steampunky space station. Lots of levers and gears and winches and stuff.
The algorithm is kind of fun, you can build a wide variety of things with relatively few pieces.
But it's not a game, and that's an important thing to remember. When people say that Sim City is a toy, not a game, I have to disagree. The game is to build a functioning city. While you are not limited in your approaches, the simulation offers very clear guides. You get smacked down by traffic, pollution, power, sanitation, fire... all of these factors that you need to manage, not to mention the economics.
It's an open-ended game, sure. But the algorithm is very strict, very limited. The goal is very clear. If you call it a "toy", you're saying that every open-ended game is just a toy... I guess if that's what you want to say, that's okay, but I disagree.
See, a toy would be a box full of building-shaped blocks that you could plunk down to your heart's content. No zoning, no economy, no rules. Just doing whatever you want.
This is an important distinction to me, because recently I've been making a lot of toys. I've come up with a lot of rather nifty little rule sets that let you do a lot of interesting things... but they have no external factors. There is no goal, open-ended or not. There are no limits, and therefore no inherent goals to overcome.
It's important to have external factors when you're designing a game. Something to measure success and failure with.
Right now, I can't really figure out a way to make the steampunk machine thing interesting. There's simply nothing to do. No matter how miraculous your machine is, it accomplishes nothing. There are no goals.
I can't really think of any goals for this particular game, none that are compatible with the engine. So I think it's important to think up goals before you really come up with an engine. The goals can be open, like Sim City, or they can be closed, like 99% of other games out there. But the gameplay has to interact with external factors, or it's just plain boring.
For example, I just built a silly little prototype for a game based around building weird steampunky machines on the outside of a weird steampunky space station. Lots of levers and gears and winches and stuff.
The algorithm is kind of fun, you can build a wide variety of things with relatively few pieces.
But it's not a game, and that's an important thing to remember. When people say that Sim City is a toy, not a game, I have to disagree. The game is to build a functioning city. While you are not limited in your approaches, the simulation offers very clear guides. You get smacked down by traffic, pollution, power, sanitation, fire... all of these factors that you need to manage, not to mention the economics.
It's an open-ended game, sure. But the algorithm is very strict, very limited. The goal is very clear. If you call it a "toy", you're saying that every open-ended game is just a toy... I guess if that's what you want to say, that's okay, but I disagree.
See, a toy would be a box full of building-shaped blocks that you could plunk down to your heart's content. No zoning, no economy, no rules. Just doing whatever you want.
This is an important distinction to me, because recently I've been making a lot of toys. I've come up with a lot of rather nifty little rule sets that let you do a lot of interesting things... but they have no external factors. There is no goal, open-ended or not. There are no limits, and therefore no inherent goals to overcome.
It's important to have external factors when you're designing a game. Something to measure success and failure with.
Right now, I can't really figure out a way to make the steampunk machine thing interesting. There's simply nothing to do. No matter how miraculous your machine is, it accomplishes nothing. There are no goals.
I can't really think of any goals for this particular game, none that are compatible with the engine. So I think it's important to think up goals before you really come up with an engine. The goals can be open, like Sim City, or they can be closed, like 99% of other games out there. But the gameplay has to interact with external factors, or it's just plain boring.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Nothing New?
While I like open-world games, one of the problems is that they are generally very boring. Every interesting aspect of an open-world game is carefully scripted in.
Scripted events bother me for a variety of reasons. The most important is that they are very fragile: if a player does something the scriptor didn't think of (or even something they did, but in a weird order), the script breaks. This leads to the designers brutally crippling the player's capabilities.
Examples of this are easy to find everywhere, but a recent one for me was the Vampire computer game I played. If you've never played in the system it's based on, let me explain: vampires don't suck. If you meet a vampire with level five auspex, it doesn't mean that he gets a +3 to his perception. It means he can astrally project, not to mention the telepathy and object reading he's already picked up at levels three and four.
Personally, I think the system is shitty even at it's finest. I much prefer Mage, which is really White Wolf's only fun system. But that's besides the point: in order to keep the game "balanced", they crippled everything down to a simple stat increase.
This isn't even mentioning the artificial limits they impose: no attacking plot characters, no turning down quests, no blowing up buildings, no lying or omitting things except when the writers deem it to be so... in short, no deviating from the rails.
This is not acceptable to me, because I want to play amberites and nobilis.
So, let's imagine that we want an open world game with a bunch of interesting content that's not specifically scripted in. How do you do it?
How about we make every interesting thing an active agent seeking to affect the player?
Sure, I'm talking about events. "Helicopter chase!" "The lights go out..." "The Sabbat attacks the Prince." Whatever you like.
But I'm also talking about things. People, places. "The Empire Hotel". "The Prince". "The Antediluvian". "The video tape".
I'm also talking about concepts. "Ghouling". "Gehenna". "The Beast Inside You". "Blood-spattered". "Disease". "Sunlight burns". Eighty different kinds of madness. Punk rock. Sexy.
Anything that you can think of that is of interest is an active agent trying to affect the player.
Please note, I didn't say they are actively trying to happen, or be near the player. Just talking about something grants it some level of power, some more sway over the game, and therefore many agents will try to inject themselves into conversations, news, graffiti... whatever they can do that the player will notice.
Obviously, happening to or around the player is good for an event, and people like making things happen to the player or, to a lesser extent, being affected by the player...
The agents are poised pre-game with a bunch of directives and probably some noise to keep things unique per play through. Then they are unleashed on the world to do their best to lure the player in, bludgeon him, help him, change his experience somehow.
They team up with other agents and static elements (the map, for example, could be pretty static) to create these events. They might even form alliances and rivalries with other agents: the "helicopter" agents might band together and ally with "the Prince" agent, meaning that the Prince would use a lot of helicopters. Both agents would prosper: the Prince has a definite method to affect the player (helicopters can ferry him around, helicopters can attack him, etc), and the helicopters, obviously, have a willing patsy to spread helicopteriness around.
Because agents are out to affect the player's experience, not the game world, there is very little that happens "behind the scenes". The only time something happens behind the player's back is when the agent in question doesn't have the pull to directly affect the player and is instead going for an indirect effect via news bulletins or street conversations.
Now, the fun aspect here is that the player is certainly welcome to have powerful abilities and/or do weird things. These are excuses for agents to piggyback on to the scene. If the player kills someone important, virtually every heavy hitter in the books will have an opening to come in after him. And character agents are free to cozy up to the player directly, and the player can make any human a ghoul, at least in theory. Remember, though: they're trying to affect the player. Simply hanging out with him is not enough.
The difficult part in this is, as usual, the goddamn dialog.
Scripted events bother me for a variety of reasons. The most important is that they are very fragile: if a player does something the scriptor didn't think of (or even something they did, but in a weird order), the script breaks. This leads to the designers brutally crippling the player's capabilities.
Examples of this are easy to find everywhere, but a recent one for me was the Vampire computer game I played. If you've never played in the system it's based on, let me explain: vampires don't suck. If you meet a vampire with level five auspex, it doesn't mean that he gets a +3 to his perception. It means he can astrally project, not to mention the telepathy and object reading he's already picked up at levels three and four.
Personally, I think the system is shitty even at it's finest. I much prefer Mage, which is really White Wolf's only fun system. But that's besides the point: in order to keep the game "balanced", they crippled everything down to a simple stat increase.
This isn't even mentioning the artificial limits they impose: no attacking plot characters, no turning down quests, no blowing up buildings, no lying or omitting things except when the writers deem it to be so... in short, no deviating from the rails.
This is not acceptable to me, because I want to play amberites and nobilis.
So, let's imagine that we want an open world game with a bunch of interesting content that's not specifically scripted in. How do you do it?
How about we make every interesting thing an active agent seeking to affect the player?
Sure, I'm talking about events. "Helicopter chase!" "The lights go out..." "The Sabbat attacks the Prince." Whatever you like.
But I'm also talking about things. People, places. "The Empire Hotel". "The Prince". "The Antediluvian". "The video tape".
I'm also talking about concepts. "Ghouling". "Gehenna". "The Beast Inside You". "Blood-spattered". "Disease". "Sunlight burns". Eighty different kinds of madness. Punk rock. Sexy.
Anything that you can think of that is of interest is an active agent trying to affect the player.
Please note, I didn't say they are actively trying to happen, or be near the player. Just talking about something grants it some level of power, some more sway over the game, and therefore many agents will try to inject themselves into conversations, news, graffiti... whatever they can do that the player will notice.
Obviously, happening to or around the player is good for an event, and people like making things happen to the player or, to a lesser extent, being affected by the player...
The agents are poised pre-game with a bunch of directives and probably some noise to keep things unique per play through. Then they are unleashed on the world to do their best to lure the player in, bludgeon him, help him, change his experience somehow.
They team up with other agents and static elements (the map, for example, could be pretty static) to create these events. They might even form alliances and rivalries with other agents: the "helicopter" agents might band together and ally with "the Prince" agent, meaning that the Prince would use a lot of helicopters. Both agents would prosper: the Prince has a definite method to affect the player (helicopters can ferry him around, helicopters can attack him, etc), and the helicopters, obviously, have a willing patsy to spread helicopteriness around.
Because agents are out to affect the player's experience, not the game world, there is very little that happens "behind the scenes". The only time something happens behind the player's back is when the agent in question doesn't have the pull to directly affect the player and is instead going for an indirect effect via news bulletins or street conversations.
Now, the fun aspect here is that the player is certainly welcome to have powerful abilities and/or do weird things. These are excuses for agents to piggyback on to the scene. If the player kills someone important, virtually every heavy hitter in the books will have an opening to come in after him. And character agents are free to cozy up to the player directly, and the player can make any human a ghoul, at least in theory. Remember, though: they're trying to affect the player. Simply hanging out with him is not enough.
The difficult part in this is, as usual, the goddamn dialog.
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