http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/accessories/b9de/
Look past the pretty cool accessory and consider where this is leading, and you'll think the same thing I did at first: Virtual Reality can't be far away!
Then I had a reality check.
Let's consider a few basic logistical problems with Virtual Reality.
1. Sensation. VR needs to not only fool sight and sound, or other important sensations like touch and smell. Granted basic VR equipment as presented in movies might work for some (usually a visor that covers the ears), but the presence of external stimuli intruding upon the experience would lend it an awkward status that would destroy suspension of disbelief.
How would they block out outside sensation while allowing more direct examples of sensations like touch and smell? Simple, they'd have to shut off one's interpretation of the outside world and replace it with a new one. This would be INCREDIBLY invasive, has the potential for mismanagement, and leaves open the possibility of unexpected side effects and damage.
2. Collateral issues. You're put in a small 12 foot by 12 foot room and given the latest in VR equipment, touch synthesising fabric, sight, sound and smell generator mask, all that sort of thing. You go into the VR experience, see yourself in an elegant ball room and walk forward... only to smack your face against the wall you can no longer see.
VR needs to not only fool sensation, but fool experience. If you can move your arm through where a fake wall should be, you will see your arm pass through it, but if the fake wall doesn't exist there in real life, then nothing will be stopping you from doing so. So any sort of VR system that they make needs to be able to avoid interaction with the real world that ruins the mystique. Basically it NEEDS to use a Matrix-like system of completely nulling sensation of the outside world.
However, as much as I'd love to try out VR, I couldn't trust anything plugging into my central nervous system, shutting down my conscious interaction with my body and feeding me false sensations. How could I trust whatever private company does it? And even if they are trustworthy (which is likely, to be honest, no company REALLY wants to screw it's customers over. Bad for business) then there's always the risk of the technology having unforseen side effects.
3. Controlled reaction. Related to sensation, but somewhat different. Sensation represents feeling something when, by all rights, it doesn't exist. The sting of a slap, relaxation of a warm bath, or (ahem) other methods virtual reality might be put towards.
Controlled reaction refers to more extreme sensations. How would the body react when told it had been shot? Obviously these sensations would need to be toned down, otherwise it could have an incredibly detrimental effect, as well as potential psychological side effects of disjointed reactions to things that haven't happened. E.G. Feeling the sting of a broken nose well after one has left the VR experience.
This is just one of the other things that means VR NEEDS to be done Matrix style. E.G. You're in the VR, in the experience an A.I. creature punches you. You won't respond physically to the impact, other then possibly being fooled into thinking you've got a bruise. In a Matrix style thing, your in-experience avatar is affected, fooling you into thinking YOU'VE been affected.
Of course, as touched on above, a Matrix-style VR simulation just raises ethical and medical concerns.
Have I thought too much about this? Hell yes. But then again, that's probably what the blog should be named. "I have thought too much about this."
Next post I may talk about Augmented Reality. Fascinating stuff, that.
Edit: Bugger! Forgot a title!
Monday, April 27, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Makari the Gretchin
Probably my last post about Warhammer 40K, I just need to get this out.
Back in the mythic prehistory of the hobby (during the late 90s) they created an Ork (like an Orc, but IN SPAAAACE) Warboss named Ghazghkull Thraka. He was meant to be the fiercest leader of Orks in known space, and a grand threat to the Imperium of Man.
However Orks, as a race, were more comic then most of the other races. Don't get me wrong they could be very, very dangerous, but predominantly they were comic. They did stupid things, their weapons blew up, all in all it was quite funny.
And to fit in with this image Ghazghkull, despite being a very serious character, had a Gretchin (Goblins IN SPAAACE) Banna wava (banner waver/standard bearer) named Makari. In a fight, Makari was useless. He would be outfought by a normal civilian, and had only a knife to defend himself with. What he did was carrying the banner of Ghazghkull into battle, waving it with all the strength his little arms could muster. How did he survive? He was lucky. Every time he was wounded you'd roll a six sided dice and on a roll of 2 or more he survived, no matter what happened. It's just what he did. Ghazghkull was written as being very fond of Makari, as were most of the other boys, because he was just so damned eager.
I quite liked Makari. He was an amusing concept for a character.
Then Games Workshop changed Orks from "comic relief" to "one of the three greatest threats facing the entire galaxy". And so Makari wasn't needed, so they made up some stupid story about Ghazghkull sitting on him, killing him, and throwing him to a Squig, and not really caring.
Bollocks to that. Screw you Games Workshop. Upon hearing about Makari's fate, I made the following in tribute. I know I'm not a great artist (my excuse is that this was done with a mouse) or a great writer (again, my excuse is that I did this in a rush), but I wanted to share this.
Orks are creatures of war and death. Deprived of it they waste away as other species would deprived a vital part of their diet. It is the slowest and most agonising death an Ork can face. But that is not to say that Orks do not have a kind side, a decent side. A side that allows them to feel fondness of others.
"Oi, Boss, where ya goin'?" asked Graknob, before a sharp smack to the back of the head from one of his fellow Nobs silenced him. Ghazghkull Thraka, greatest Ork Warlord the Orkoid race has ever seen, did not even stop in his plodding steps as he walked away from his main tent in the camp. Some of the boyz had objected to moving the Waaagh off course to visit this small, unknown, out of the way planet. 'Itz already been smashed, why we'z goin' here?' some had asked, but never loud enough for the boss to hear. The Nobz waited for their mega-armoured warboss to be out of earshot before answering the new member of Ghazghkull's retinue.
"'E's off rememberin'" said one, an old Ork named Griksnak who had served their boss for many many years.
"'E can remember jus' fine round 'ere. What's 'e rememberin'?" asked the curious Nob, uncaring of the death-stares he was receiving from his fellow Nobz.
"Think 'bout it dis way, ya git. Us Orks love ta fight, yeah?"
"Yeah, even a snotling knows dat!"
"But da boss keeps sendin' us 'gainst da 'umies. Dis is cuz 'e hates dem. Now, why'd da boss hate 'umies?"
Graknob remained silent for a few seconds, pondering the question he was asked. "Cuz dey got ugly faces?"
The other Nobz just shook their heads. "'E lost someone ta 'em." Graknob looked around, confused. Everyone knew it didn't matter if an Ork died, he just got belched back into another body. He couldn't understand the feeling of loss.
"Oi, Boss, where ya goin'?" asked Graknob, before a sharp smack to the back of the head from one of his fellow Nobs silenced him. Ghazghkull Thraka, greatest Ork Warlord the Orkoid race has ever seen, did not even stop in his plodding steps as he walked away from his main tent in the camp. Some of the boyz had objected to moving the Waaagh off course to visit this small, unknown, out of the way planet. 'Itz already been smashed, why we'z goin' here?' some had asked, but never loud enough for the boss to hear. The Nobz waited for their mega-armoured warboss to be out of earshot before answering the new member of Ghazghkull's retinue.
"'E's off rememberin'" said one, an old Ork named Griksnak who had served their boss for many many years.
"'E can remember jus' fine round 'ere. What's 'e rememberin'?" asked the curious Nob, uncaring of the death-stares he was receiving from his fellow Nobz.
"Think 'bout it dis way, ya git. Us Orks love ta fight, yeah?"
"Yeah, even a snotling knows dat!"
"But da boss keeps sendin' us 'gainst da 'umies. Dis is cuz 'e hates dem. Now, why'd da boss hate 'umies?"
Graknob remained silent for a few seconds, pondering the question he was asked. "Cuz dey got ugly faces?"
The other Nobz just shook their heads. "'E lost someone ta 'em." Graknob looked around, confused. Everyone knew it didn't matter if an Ork died, he just got belched back into another body. He couldn't understand the feeling of loss.
----
Ghazghkull had shed most of his mega armour by the time he got to the top of the hill. Being an Ork, the act of removing armour seemed... unusual, to say the least, but it seemed appropriate to approach this site somewhat vulnerable. After all, he was meeting with the one being he knew would never harm him.
"'ey. Uhh... not sure what's I suppose'ta say 'ere. Jus' wanted tah, y'know, say 'ello. See how ya's was. Dose 'umies who got dat lucky shot off on ya? Yeah, dey dead. 'Dere planet is dead. Got lotsa da bastards. 'Ope dat helps out somehow. Wells... I's be goin', den. I... I misses ya, boy." Ghazghkull Mag Thraka turned and began walking down the hill again, leaving the grave he had been speaking to behind. A grave that simply said:
"'ey. Uhh... not sure what's I suppose'ta say 'ere. Jus' wanted tah, y'know, say 'ello. See how ya's was. Dose 'umies who got dat lucky shot off on ya? Yeah, dey dead. 'Dere planet is dead. Got lotsa da bastards. 'Ope dat helps out somehow. Wells... I's be goin', den. I... I misses ya, boy." Ghazghkull Mag Thraka turned and began walking down the hill again, leaving the grave he had been speaking to behind. A grave that simply said:
Makari
Banna Wava
Everyone knew Orks were belched back into another body after they died. Not Gretchin though. No Gretchin could ever replace Makari.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
No 40K for me
Over the past few weeks I've been developing a burgeoning interest in Warhammer 40,000. Specifically in the background, which had such potential to be cool, but does seem to be squandered.
To summarise my feelings about it: I believe Games Workshop is one of the more heartless companies that exist, and a large number of the people who are heavily interested in their products scare me. They are like Dungeons and Dragons fans who have put hundreds upon hundreds of dollars into a single competition for the sole purpose of beating others. Granted I'm sure there are plenty of normal, healthy fans who realise the purpose of a game is not to win, but to play, but the stories I hear (which I acknowledge will be the extreme ends of things) are not ones about normal people.
Never-the-less, in my search for SOME kind of hobby that I can do when I wish (rather then at some scheduled time of week or month) I toyed with the idea of attempting to collect, model and paint an army of these dudes.
I gave up that idea when I checked out how much it would cost.
For those not involved in this particular subculture, wargames usually function by having each unit be worth a particular points value, and players use a set points value to attempt to beat each other. This means that players will strive to collect a particular total points value worth of models. In Warhammer 40,000 (the game I was looking into) a normal points value army to build up to is 1,500-2,000 points. I calculated a sample 1,500 point army that I might use, went to the official site, and checked out how much this would cost.
$750 arse swilling dollars.
Do you have ANY idea how much alcohol I could buy with that?
Screw that, screw that royally.
I'll stick with my other hobby. It only requires 1 hand*
*I speak, of course, of reading. Only need one hand to turn the pages.
To summarise my feelings about it: I believe Games Workshop is one of the more heartless companies that exist, and a large number of the people who are heavily interested in their products scare me. They are like Dungeons and Dragons fans who have put hundreds upon hundreds of dollars into a single competition for the sole purpose of beating others. Granted I'm sure there are plenty of normal, healthy fans who realise the purpose of a game is not to win, but to play, but the stories I hear (which I acknowledge will be the extreme ends of things) are not ones about normal people.
Never-the-less, in my search for SOME kind of hobby that I can do when I wish (rather then at some scheduled time of week or month) I toyed with the idea of attempting to collect, model and paint an army of these dudes.
I gave up that idea when I checked out how much it would cost.
For those not involved in this particular subculture, wargames usually function by having each unit be worth a particular points value, and players use a set points value to attempt to beat each other. This means that players will strive to collect a particular total points value worth of models. In Warhammer 40,000 (the game I was looking into) a normal points value army to build up to is 1,500-2,000 points. I calculated a sample 1,500 point army that I might use, went to the official site, and checked out how much this would cost.
$750 arse swilling dollars.
Do you have ANY idea how much alcohol I could buy with that?
Screw that, screw that royally.
I'll stick with my other hobby. It only requires 1 hand*
*I speak, of course, of reading. Only need one hand to turn the pages.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Considering GMing
Nerdtastic. To those who know me and don't wish to tarnish the herculean image you have of me with the nerderific stuff I'm about to sprout, look away.
So my nerdtasticality is springing back.
To those new readers, look back through my archive and, at one point or another, I will have mentioned that I've GMed an internet based PnP RPG. If you have no idea what those acronyms mean, then you're in the wrong place. Though since I'm generous, I'll give them to you.
GMed: Games Mastered. Basically been the referee/storyteller.
PnP: Pen and Paper. Non-computer based, done physically using dice (or other random generators, or imagination if you're a moron), and pens and paper to record results.
RPG: Role Playing Game.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm ashamed of myself, let's move on to the post.
The thing is, I'm not SO ashamed I don't want to give it a try again. I've found a pretty cool RPG system, Silhouette. It's even got a universe I don't mind too much. Next time I'll have to screen my players better, since I had some REAL duds.
1. Quiet girl. Sat around not talking much and wondering why no one dragged her into it
2. Know it all. Demanded to play a randomly complex character, was upset when things didn't revolve around him, and had an irritating habit of doing really, REALLY stupid ideas.
3. Overly eloquent dude. "I reach over and flick the ship into autopilot, then say to (soldier) 'So what happened back there?" THERE! Was that so hard to type! No. You don't need FOUR GODDAMNED LINES to say that! Nor do you need to take five minutes to type it all, slowing EVERYTHING down for everyone else. I went and got lunch MULTIPLE times during your typing.
4. Sex fiend. He seemed WAY too interested in the female characters. I found out later he tried to sollicit cybersex from them out of the gaming sessions. "We should RP out our characters in the background, don't you think?"
5. Hot chick. "What's your character like?" "Haughty hot chick." "Oh....kay. What's their personality?" "Haughty hot chick." "Appearance?" "Haughty hot chick."
I shouldn't be too rough on 5 or 1. They were the only ones I'd make an effort to invite back if I tried again. They were good value.
So what's the appeal of the Silhouette system? I'm pretty sure I've discussed the system before, but what the hell I'll do it again.
Normally games have a dichotomy of success and failure in the dice rolls, with some having 'critical success' or 'critical failure' if you roll exceptionally high and low. Silhouette dice rolling works on 'margin of success/failure'. If you fail by a certain amount, the GM is free to ascribe penalties. Most in-built mechanics require the margin of success. E.G. If you attack someone, the margin of success of the attack then has the weapon used's damage multiplier applied to work out how much damage is done.
At first I was intimidated by the rules. There are ALOT of them, and some of them involve maths I honestly never thought I'd need in life after high school maths. But then I finally realised something: Most of them are pretty optional, or so specific you don't NEED to remember them off-hand.
One problem I do have is the lack of guidelines with the vehicle creation rules. Basically you can make ANYTHING your imagination can come up with. This is good, but when you have NO idea what is normal, what is excessive, and what is lacking, it makes it intimidating. Plus it requires the same over the top maths.
Still, Silhouette system, here I come. Probably in Jovian Chronicles. Who can say no to 20 meter tall giant robots blowing shit up?
So my nerdtasticality is springing back.
To those new readers, look back through my archive and, at one point or another, I will have mentioned that I've GMed an internet based PnP RPG. If you have no idea what those acronyms mean, then you're in the wrong place. Though since I'm generous, I'll give them to you.
GMed: Games Mastered. Basically been the referee/storyteller.
PnP: Pen and Paper. Non-computer based, done physically using dice (or other random generators, or imagination if you're a moron), and pens and paper to record results.
RPG: Role Playing Game.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm ashamed of myself, let's move on to the post.
The thing is, I'm not SO ashamed I don't want to give it a try again. I've found a pretty cool RPG system, Silhouette. It's even got a universe I don't mind too much. Next time I'll have to screen my players better, since I had some REAL duds.
1. Quiet girl. Sat around not talking much and wondering why no one dragged her into it
2. Know it all. Demanded to play a randomly complex character, was upset when things didn't revolve around him, and had an irritating habit of doing really, REALLY stupid ideas.
3. Overly eloquent dude. "I reach over and flick the ship into autopilot, then say to (soldier) 'So what happened back there?" THERE! Was that so hard to type! No. You don't need FOUR GODDAMNED LINES to say that! Nor do you need to take five minutes to type it all, slowing EVERYTHING down for everyone else. I went and got lunch MULTIPLE times during your typing.
4. Sex fiend. He seemed WAY too interested in the female characters. I found out later he tried to sollicit cybersex from them out of the gaming sessions. "We should RP out our characters in the background, don't you think?"
5. Hot chick. "What's your character like?" "Haughty hot chick." "Oh....kay. What's their personality?" "Haughty hot chick." "Appearance?" "Haughty hot chick."
I shouldn't be too rough on 5 or 1. They were the only ones I'd make an effort to invite back if I tried again. They were good value.
So what's the appeal of the Silhouette system? I'm pretty sure I've discussed the system before, but what the hell I'll do it again.
Normally games have a dichotomy of success and failure in the dice rolls, with some having 'critical success' or 'critical failure' if you roll exceptionally high and low. Silhouette dice rolling works on 'margin of success/failure'. If you fail by a certain amount, the GM is free to ascribe penalties. Most in-built mechanics require the margin of success. E.G. If you attack someone, the margin of success of the attack then has the weapon used's damage multiplier applied to work out how much damage is done.
At first I was intimidated by the rules. There are ALOT of them, and some of them involve maths I honestly never thought I'd need in life after high school maths. But then I finally realised something: Most of them are pretty optional, or so specific you don't NEED to remember them off-hand.
One problem I do have is the lack of guidelines with the vehicle creation rules. Basically you can make ANYTHING your imagination can come up with. This is good, but when you have NO idea what is normal, what is excessive, and what is lacking, it makes it intimidating. Plus it requires the same over the top maths.
Still, Silhouette system, here I come. Probably in Jovian Chronicles. Who can say no to 20 meter tall giant robots blowing shit up?
Friday, April 17, 2009
How to trail, and how not to trail.
How NOT to make a trailer.
How to make a trailer.
Notice the difference, studios? The former was a mess of nonsensical action scenes that showed no precise enemy. It presented nothing of the plot other then "there's an enemy, and people want to run but someone says 'there is nowhere to run'". It's a mess, it shows nothing of the movie. This isn't a trailer, or a teaser. It's just clips from the movie so shortened they make no sense.
The latter one, though? The latter one had style. It summarised in brief what the movie was "there are mutants killing everyone, and mankind has been so driven back we're trying to leave earth. But Ron Perlman has a plan to save us, as long as the REAL Punisher is involved." Then whetted our appetite with a few choice action sequences, feelings of drama, and dramatic moments. THIS is a trailer.
How to make a trailer.
Notice the difference, studios? The former was a mess of nonsensical action scenes that showed no precise enemy. It presented nothing of the plot other then "there's an enemy, and people want to run but someone says 'there is nowhere to run'". It's a mess, it shows nothing of the movie. This isn't a trailer, or a teaser. It's just clips from the movie so shortened they make no sense.
The latter one, though? The latter one had style. It summarised in brief what the movie was "there are mutants killing everyone, and mankind has been so driven back we're trying to leave earth. But Ron Perlman has a plan to save us, as long as the REAL Punisher is involved." Then whetted our appetite with a few choice action sequences, feelings of drama, and dramatic moments. THIS is a trailer.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Where are they now
"Where are they now" of viral videos.
Honestly, I had forgotten half of these videos. Some of them I wish I could still forget. I mean... honestly, that resume video? When I first saw that I was CERTAIN it was intended as a parody. But according to this site, it was genuine. What sort of person produced that, looked back at it, and didn't honestly think "holy shit, I am a douche."
The one that makes me most happy in my pants? Afro-Ninja. Not only did it not adversely affect him TOO much (I don't count "not being in Rush Hour 3" as a bad thing, and I have a mancrush on Jackie Chan), but he's turned it around and made it into a decent thing.
While some people seem to think that enjoyment can only be found in viral videos if someone is only suffering negative effects from it, I enjoy it more when the person involved is enjoying it. Numa Numa guy was doing what he REALLY enjoyed doing, and still is. Go you fat bastard, dance your happy little legs off, dance the dance of FREEDOM. Chocolate Rain? That guy's taking someone he's known for and carving himself a life he can enjoy with it. I would shake his hand and congratulate him for being able to root out idiots paying him to do parodies.
And now Afro Ninja. Oh lord, Afro Ninja.
I salute you. I salute you with the fire of a thousand suns.
Go stunt, you awesome stunt man you.
Honestly, I had forgotten half of these videos. Some of them I wish I could still forget. I mean... honestly, that resume video? When I first saw that I was CERTAIN it was intended as a parody. But according to this site, it was genuine. What sort of person produced that, looked back at it, and didn't honestly think "holy shit, I am a douche."
The one that makes me most happy in my pants? Afro-Ninja. Not only did it not adversely affect him TOO much (I don't count "not being in Rush Hour 3" as a bad thing, and I have a mancrush on Jackie Chan), but he's turned it around and made it into a decent thing.
While some people seem to think that enjoyment can only be found in viral videos if someone is only suffering negative effects from it, I enjoy it more when the person involved is enjoying it. Numa Numa guy was doing what he REALLY enjoyed doing, and still is. Go you fat bastard, dance your happy little legs off, dance the dance of FREEDOM. Chocolate Rain? That guy's taking someone he's known for and carving himself a life he can enjoy with it. I would shake his hand and congratulate him for being able to root out idiots paying him to do parodies.
And now Afro Ninja. Oh lord, Afro Ninja.
I salute you. I salute you with the fire of a thousand suns.
Go stunt, you awesome stunt man you.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Random Bag appendix
Short post, preparing for a celebration of drinking.
I'd let them EXTERMINATE me.
Greatest short story EVER. Unsurprisingly written by Asimov.
And finally, a statement of utter shame.
I am reading 4chan, and enjoying it. I even posted something, and was proud when it got alot of positive notice.
Well, enjoy.
I'd let them EXTERMINATE me.
Greatest short story EVER. Unsurprisingly written by Asimov.
And finally, a statement of utter shame.
I am reading 4chan, and enjoying it. I even posted something, and was proud when it got alot of positive notice.
Well, enjoy.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Internet epiphany
It's taken many years (although most of them don't count since I had no knowledge of the subject matter) but I've finally worked out why 4chan is so popular on the internet. As an estimate I'd be willing to say it's far less popular then believed, but it's notoriety is such that if you're a regular internet user and you don't know what 4chan is, you've at least felt the effects of it. Been rickroll'd or seen any of a dozen different memes (including the horrific shock sites) and yes, you've been 4chan'd.
Since learning about it I was heavily against 4chan. But having not visited it I was operating on hear-say, and as such believed them to be a bunch of creepy cultists operating from a mountain-side retreat attempting to cause suffering throughout the world for their own amusement and in the name of their unisex diety 'lulz', utilising a solely male membership in their domination plans with attempts to regress the world to a society from the 1950's, but much more open to porn. While very little of this has been disproven, I have had a startling insight.
4chan operates with a very, very simple premise in place. In some ways it is the ultimate meritocracy, but that I believe is overstating it since you require the 'merits' they believe to be an inherent good. How do they enforce such a meritocracy? Simple. The pure fact that probably 99% of all posts are done by "Anonymous".
One one hand this anonymity means that there is a great deal of stupidity present. People can post whatever they want and be as stupid as they want, and there's nothing but the uncaring nature of the people they're trolling to dissuade them. But dissuade them it does. Trolls are rated (usually quite poorly, working on the concept that the best trolling is the one where they don't realise they're being trolled), and people have more fun with them then the Troll did. But the stupidity is still there.
So what good factor does Anonymity bring in? Simple, there is no social 'clique' to get 'in' with. There are no leaders, since there's no way to identify who's leading and who's not. There is no way to grab attention since no one even KNOWS who is grabbing the attention. There is attention to grab, but it's like the person trying to step into the spotlight is invisible. This removes so much of the social drama that can exist in an internet based community.
And while it must be said this attitude does result in alot of poor taste humour and offensiveness, the fact that the entire group is founded on mutual amusement means that every now and then you just find... comedy gold.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Player vs Character skills
This post is inspired by a forum topic I saw recently, that can be found here.
This plays into a number of different factors in game design.
1. 100% completion requiring one good playthrough, or does it need more? (AKA. Characters who can do everything)
This is something I commonly contemplate. Take a game with RPG elements and alot of them will have skills such as "Conversation", "lockpick", "stealth", "pickpocket", etc etc. Just basic skills that open up new tricks in game. Now there are two ways to deal with this.
The first is that the skills only open up pointless side things that may have some degree of reward for doing so (extra money/experience/items, etc etc). The problem with this is that they then either feel useless (why bother getting them if you can spend that on more fighting instead, since there's so little bonus) or essential (I've got to get my proud knight 'Lockpick', so he can get his hands on that super sword early on). Of course, even if they aren't essential then you will still have to deal with people who want to be able to do everything in one playthrough trying to force the skills into a character not designed to deal with it.
The second is to offer them as alternative pathways. This was done successfully in the Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines: When too many colons are never enough, PC game. Since there were nearly always alternative methods to most things, it meant that two playthroughs with characters of different strengths were nearly always very different. This in turn makes it a successful game in my view. The trouble is that there will always be things you need to fight your way out of, so if you play a heavy combat-only character then those fights go amazingly quickly and easily, and there's very little else you can do. Alternatively if you play a skill-heavy character, suddenly you find yourself in a fight you struggle heavily to come out ahead in.
That leads neatly into my next point.
2. Player ability compared to supposed character ability.
A game that best shows this off, for me, is "Sid Meyer's Pirates!", exclamation mark included. In that game when creating a character you get to choose one of many areas for your character to specialise in. Outside of buying special items, this is the only RPG element in the game, and the only advancement your character can get. The areas of specialisation as basically things like "Swordplay" (better at the swordfight minigame), "Charm" (better at the dancing minigame), etc etc. Most minigames had a specialisation attached.
The trouble is that this led to an interesting situation where the player was best off having their character specialising in an area they were genuinely bad at. The idea of having a specialisation in an area you're bad at just sounds amusing, even if it makes a degree of sense (using the mechanics to make up for a weakness), it just doesn't sound right.
And the concept of player capabilities against character capablilities struggles in a few other senses. If a character is meant to be an elite ranged soldiers (either because that's what the game represents, or it's an RPG where they specialised in that field) it just feels weird that they struggle to kill even basic enemies. But if you 'boost' them up with certain things (such as autotargetting, etc) then it doesn't feel like they're the ones who're expert marksmen.
3. Micromanagement of characters vs faith in computers ability to manage such things.
Moving onto RTS style games, this is something that has bugged me for a while. As someone who loves large scale combat in RTS', micomanagement bothers me. The smallest scale I enjoy is for a single hero in a fight (where he is the ONLY micromanagement I have to do), or readjusting the siege weaponry so they fire at the section of wall I want them to fire at. In a game like Warcraft 3 or Starcraft I have no enjoyment from watching micromanagement win the day over grand strategy.
In the thread linked to, it mentions things like "making specific units throw grenades", discussing if it should be a micromanaged thing, or entrusted to the AI. Personally I would prefer for the AI to use it responsibly then having to trigger it manually every single time I do it. This then raises the problem in that the AI in a vast majority of games is so thick you could favourably compare it with a whale's penis (also known as a Dork). An obvious solution would be to allow the players to set the ability to either be triggered by the player, or the AI.
What'd'ya know, there's a game that does that. Sins of a Solar Empire, one of my favourites.
This plays into a number of different factors in game design.
1. 100% completion requiring one good playthrough, or does it need more? (AKA. Characters who can do everything)
This is something I commonly contemplate. Take a game with RPG elements and alot of them will have skills such as "Conversation", "lockpick", "stealth", "pickpocket", etc etc. Just basic skills that open up new tricks in game. Now there are two ways to deal with this.
The first is that the skills only open up pointless side things that may have some degree of reward for doing so (extra money/experience/items, etc etc). The problem with this is that they then either feel useless (why bother getting them if you can spend that on more fighting instead, since there's so little bonus) or essential (I've got to get my proud knight 'Lockpick', so he can get his hands on that super sword early on). Of course, even if they aren't essential then you will still have to deal with people who want to be able to do everything in one playthrough trying to force the skills into a character not designed to deal with it.
The second is to offer them as alternative pathways. This was done successfully in the Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines: When too many colons are never enough, PC game. Since there were nearly always alternative methods to most things, it meant that two playthroughs with characters of different strengths were nearly always very different. This in turn makes it a successful game in my view. The trouble is that there will always be things you need to fight your way out of, so if you play a heavy combat-only character then those fights go amazingly quickly and easily, and there's very little else you can do. Alternatively if you play a skill-heavy character, suddenly you find yourself in a fight you struggle heavily to come out ahead in.
That leads neatly into my next point.
2. Player ability compared to supposed character ability.
A game that best shows this off, for me, is "Sid Meyer's Pirates!", exclamation mark included. In that game when creating a character you get to choose one of many areas for your character to specialise in. Outside of buying special items, this is the only RPG element in the game, and the only advancement your character can get. The areas of specialisation as basically things like "Swordplay" (better at the swordfight minigame), "Charm" (better at the dancing minigame), etc etc. Most minigames had a specialisation attached.
The trouble is that this led to an interesting situation where the player was best off having their character specialising in an area they were genuinely bad at. The idea of having a specialisation in an area you're bad at just sounds amusing, even if it makes a degree of sense (using the mechanics to make up for a weakness), it just doesn't sound right.
And the concept of player capabilities against character capablilities struggles in a few other senses. If a character is meant to be an elite ranged soldiers (either because that's what the game represents, or it's an RPG where they specialised in that field) it just feels weird that they struggle to kill even basic enemies. But if you 'boost' them up with certain things (such as autotargetting, etc) then it doesn't feel like they're the ones who're expert marksmen.
3. Micromanagement of characters vs faith in computers ability to manage such things.
Moving onto RTS style games, this is something that has bugged me for a while. As someone who loves large scale combat in RTS', micomanagement bothers me. The smallest scale I enjoy is for a single hero in a fight (where he is the ONLY micromanagement I have to do), or readjusting the siege weaponry so they fire at the section of wall I want them to fire at. In a game like Warcraft 3 or Starcraft I have no enjoyment from watching micromanagement win the day over grand strategy.
In the thread linked to, it mentions things like "making specific units throw grenades", discussing if it should be a micromanaged thing, or entrusted to the AI. Personally I would prefer for the AI to use it responsibly then having to trigger it manually every single time I do it. This then raises the problem in that the AI in a vast majority of games is so thick you could favourably compare it with a whale's penis (also known as a Dork). An obvious solution would be to allow the players to set the ability to either be triggered by the player, or the AI.
What'd'ya know, there's a game that does that. Sins of a Solar Empire, one of my favourites.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Writers in games
Read this. Then come back here.
Go on, it doesn't take long, I'll wait.
Read it? Good. When I showed that to a friend their reaction pretty much summarised my view.
"Accepting your flaws is a good thing. Embracing them is bad."
That's pretty much what the article is about. Yes, it is true that very, very few games have good stories. Halo's story was so laughable I had to treat it as a subtle parody just to play it. Half Life fans seem to have mistaken a 'complex' story with a 'good' one. There are many games that need to learn when to shut up and let us shoot space marines with our magical gun that fires cosmic paperclips. However the tone the (very short) article seemed to take seemed to me like the guy was saying "Well we can't do stories, so let's just keep rendering those three dimensional breasts and swords and cut one off with the other to our heart's content".
To that I say NO I RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE WITH YOUR OPINION IN A LOUD TONE OF VOICE.
One one hand I understand what is being said, people need to realise that a game is an interactive medium and so being treated to a visual book is no fun, but stating that developers should stop trying to tell grand stories in their games actually offends me. There are not many of them, but there are some GREAT games out there with great stories. Yes, they are the minority, but they are growing, and they show how possible it is with this medium to tell a grand tale.
You know what fills me with hope? When I hear of game studios hiring professional writers for their epic games. More often then not it doesn't happen, since the game will be the baby of the original head developer (who doesn't realise his story telling ability is often somewhere between an apple and an orange). However there are plenty of cases of games studios hiring writers. Often it seems the writer is hired just for small things (like randomly generated missions in MMOs), but there are also occasions of games with actual authors and professional writers attached.
That leads me neatly into a point I've wanted to bring up for a long time. A while back I stumbled across an epic arguement on a forum about the quality of the story behind the Halo games. One party claiming the writing could be disfavourably compared to being attacked and eaten by zombies, the other party claiming it was inspired by divine sources and milked from the nipple of Aphrodite herself.
Obviously I've already revealed my side in this arguement. The Halo story is as enthralling as a damp rag. The part that really made me laugh was when side one argued about how horrible the story was, side two replied with the following.
"If you read the novels you'll see why the halo story is so awesome."
I've never looked at the Halo novels, I don't know if they are well written, or what. But here we have the subtle collapse of the pro-halo-story arguement. The arguement is that the Halo story is horrifically bad, the Halo story is seperate to the novel. It's like someone saying the Spiderman movies are great because X happened in the comics (I know, not entirely metaphorically correct, but the point stands). The Halo novels are giving the setting and characters to an actual author and saying "What can you do with this, having been given this background information?". When arguing about the quality of a game's storyline, all you can utilise is the game itself.
Now, let's finish on something completely different.
Awwwwww..
Go on, it doesn't take long, I'll wait.
Read it? Good. When I showed that to a friend their reaction pretty much summarised my view.
"Accepting your flaws is a good thing. Embracing them is bad."
That's pretty much what the article is about. Yes, it is true that very, very few games have good stories. Halo's story was so laughable I had to treat it as a subtle parody just to play it. Half Life fans seem to have mistaken a 'complex' story with a 'good' one. There are many games that need to learn when to shut up and let us shoot space marines with our magical gun that fires cosmic paperclips. However the tone the (very short) article seemed to take seemed to me like the guy was saying "Well we can't do stories, so let's just keep rendering those three dimensional breasts and swords and cut one off with the other to our heart's content".
To that I say NO I RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE WITH YOUR OPINION IN A LOUD TONE OF VOICE.
One one hand I understand what is being said, people need to realise that a game is an interactive medium and so being treated to a visual book is no fun, but stating that developers should stop trying to tell grand stories in their games actually offends me. There are not many of them, but there are some GREAT games out there with great stories. Yes, they are the minority, but they are growing, and they show how possible it is with this medium to tell a grand tale.
You know what fills me with hope? When I hear of game studios hiring professional writers for their epic games. More often then not it doesn't happen, since the game will be the baby of the original head developer (who doesn't realise his story telling ability is often somewhere between an apple and an orange). However there are plenty of cases of games studios hiring writers. Often it seems the writer is hired just for small things (like randomly generated missions in MMOs), but there are also occasions of games with actual authors and professional writers attached.
That leads me neatly into a point I've wanted to bring up for a long time. A while back I stumbled across an epic arguement on a forum about the quality of the story behind the Halo games. One party claiming the writing could be disfavourably compared to being attacked and eaten by zombies, the other party claiming it was inspired by divine sources and milked from the nipple of Aphrodite herself.
Obviously I've already revealed my side in this arguement. The Halo story is as enthralling as a damp rag. The part that really made me laugh was when side one argued about how horrible the story was, side two replied with the following.
"If you read the novels you'll see why the halo story is so awesome."
I've never looked at the Halo novels, I don't know if they are well written, or what. But here we have the subtle collapse of the pro-halo-story arguement. The arguement is that the Halo story is horrifically bad, the Halo story is seperate to the novel. It's like someone saying the Spiderman movies are great because X happened in the comics (I know, not entirely metaphorically correct, but the point stands). The Halo novels are giving the setting and characters to an actual author and saying "What can you do with this, having been given this background information?". When arguing about the quality of a game's storyline, all you can utilise is the game itself.
Now, let's finish on something completely different.
Awwwwww..
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Giant robots represented as @
Edit: Fixed the link.
Holy crap, nearly up to post 200. Only 20 to go, which should only take me a month and a half.
Any of you know what a Rogue-like game is?
Rogue was a game back when graphics were for PANSIES and real men used screens with black backgrounds and a blinking tile showing you where the cursor was. If you needed a mouse you were a WUSS. In that game, your character is represented by a coloured @, your enemies are represented by appropriate letters all the colours of the rainbow (capital letters if they're a -real threat-), and you kill them by moving around with the up, down, left and right keys, then attempting to move into the square the enemies are in. It's like the ultimate in minimalistic gameplay. The true genius of this? Since the gameplay coding can be done predominantly in a VERY short time, that leaves the creators the chance to work on some very, VERY in depth background coding.
With that in mind I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine. Gearhead. Say hello Gearhead.
Gearhead: Hello.
Thank you. Now what impresses me about Gearhead? Let's ignore for the moment that it's a quite strategic RPG with both personal scale and giant-robot scale combat, or that it's got giant robots in it, or that it's a quite in depth open ended RPG sandbox game. What does it have?
One simple phrase: Every. Play-through. Is. Different.
I don't mean in the sense "Well I used the plasma rifle to kill the bad guy THIS time" sense. I mean in the sense that it randomly generates an overall plot for your character at each juncture. Granted these randomly generated plots may not have as much depth as specifically written ones, but it works. It works REALLY WELL.
Give Gearhead a try. I've attempted number 2, but I actually prefer the Rogue-like system over the poor graphics, personally.
Holy crap, nearly up to post 200. Only 20 to go, which should only take me a month and a half.
Any of you know what a Rogue-like game is?
Rogue was a game back when graphics were for PANSIES and real men used screens with black backgrounds and a blinking tile showing you where the cursor was. If you needed a mouse you were a WUSS. In that game, your character is represented by a coloured @, your enemies are represented by appropriate letters all the colours of the rainbow (capital letters if they're a -real threat-), and you kill them by moving around with the up, down, left and right keys, then attempting to move into the square the enemies are in. It's like the ultimate in minimalistic gameplay. The true genius of this? Since the gameplay coding can be done predominantly in a VERY short time, that leaves the creators the chance to work on some very, VERY in depth background coding.
With that in mind I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine. Gearhead. Say hello Gearhead.
Gearhead: Hello.
Thank you. Now what impresses me about Gearhead? Let's ignore for the moment that it's a quite strategic RPG with both personal scale and giant-robot scale combat, or that it's got giant robots in it, or that it's a quite in depth open ended RPG sandbox game. What does it have?
One simple phrase: Every. Play-through. Is. Different.
I don't mean in the sense "Well I used the plasma rifle to kill the bad guy THIS time" sense. I mean in the sense that it randomly generates an overall plot for your character at each juncture. Granted these randomly generated plots may not have as much depth as specifically written ones, but it works. It works REALLY WELL.
Give Gearhead a try. I've attempted number 2, but I actually prefer the Rogue-like system over the poor graphics, personally.
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