Deku Palace: Learning from Its Mistakes

After playing Majora's Mask a bit more recently, I'm looking back on it less and less fondly.  Story wise, it's one of the better Zelda games, but some issues with its level design are hard to ignore.  From that, we can gain a lesson: how to make a game less frustrating.

Still Working

Work on the survival horror game continues, and progress is definitely being made.  I don't have a whole lot of experience with more story driven games yet, but I think things are coming along fine.

As a result, though, Fungicide is getting a bit neglected at the moment.  I'd like to get some small release for it done, just to show that I'm still alive and doing stuff.

Really, I could release a demo for the survival horror game quite soon.  It's a bit different than most, and is much more an adventure game than an action game.  Puzzles can be quite rough to design.  Sure, they don't require all that artwork, but it takes some thought to make them feel unique and challenging.

The survival horror game is also the best looking that I've made.  Between the real-time lighting engine and my improving pixel art skills, it actually looks quite good.  At least, from my incredibly biased perspective.

Depending on how much I manage to get done on that, I may release a teaser page for it on Game Jolt.  Maybe.

However, since you're looking at my blog (lucky you), I'll offer a few screenshots of my upcoming survival horror game: Insomnia.

Handling Death

In games, that is!

Player characters can almost always die in games.  It's a way to keep the tension up and give them a persistent goal to work towards (don't die).  Different games, though, handle this mechanic in different ways.  Sometimes it's just a slap on the wrist, other times it comes with major consequences.

Dying usually sets you back a certain amount of gameplay.  You get tossed back to your last save, or the last checkpoint, or if you're particularly unlucky, to the main menu.  These consequences can, of course, be a major frustration to the player and cause them to stop playing.  At the same time, they raise the stakes and give the player motivation to keep going.

How do you like your games to handle death?  Minimal consequences?  Or a major hazard?

What about some sort of middle ground?

OMG IMBA WTF?!

I'm sure many of you who frequent various game communities have seen that phrase on many occasions.  It's usually pretty contentious and quickly brings tempers to a boil.  Shouts of "noob" and "l2p" are sure to abound.

Balance can be a sticky subject.  Players always seem to see changes as an attack on their own playstyle or unnecessary.  That said, the importance of balance can not be overstated.  Maintaining long term health of multiplayer games in particular rests heavily on the concept.

So, how can we possibly determine whether or not changes need to be made?  How can something be labeled a balance problem?

One concept of balance relies on the existence of viable options in the game.  One particular method should not overpower all others in every situation.  If, for example, your game allows a choice of multiple characters, one should not be obviously better than all the others.

You'll find this kind of problem in the multiplayer of the most recent Alien vs. Predator by Rebellion between the titular characters.  The differences between the two were rather minimal.  The Alien was afforded more mobility, but otherwise the Predator could do all of the same things, often a bit better.  You can't have one character be a straight upgrade of another.  For a one minor downside (less mobility), the Predator gained superior melee capabilities, and access to a variety of deadly ranged weapons.  Picking the Predator was the obvious choice for someone most interested in winning, and as a result the variety in multiplayer suffered.

Wherever you see classes, characters, or races in a game, there will be balance discussions.  For some interesting examples, you can look at the forums of games like League of Legends, Starcraft, and even Team Fortress 2.

Do you think balance is necessary for a fun multiplayer games?  Can single player games be imbalanced?

Lost in Translation

Every now and then (ok, it's extremely common) I come across things I think would be great in a game.  For instance, I'm still working on Fungicide, and I thought it would be a neat idea to base a boss off of Pride from Fullmetal Alchemist.  If you don't have any idea what that is, it's an anime series. Look it up, you'll find plenty.

Anyway, the whole, tentacle knife thing he's got going on with his shadows is something I've been trying to replicate in an enemy.  It seemed simple enough at first, but as I dug into the mechanics of it, a lot of roadblocks started popping up.  Mainly in the art area.

This kind of thing happens a lot.  The thing you want to do seems simple enough at first, and it worked really well in it's original form, but translating it to a game brings a host of new problems that the source material didn't need to deal with.

Situations in games are fluid, you have to account for many different possibilities and the actions of the player.  It can be hard to plan things too in depth without heavily restricting the player.

Of course, you want to limit such restriction as much as possible, so you tweak the source until it becomes something you didn't even expect, but still works.

At least there's that much.

Graphics Aren't Important. Deal With It.

Alright, now that I've got your attention with an inflammatory and topical title, let's talk about this.

The Internet is abuzz with graphics right now, since some guy who representing Crysis has said graphics are 60% of a game.  Be careful with that 60%, it just came out of his ass.

Graphics do NOT make up the majority of a video game experience.  Do they make up some of it?  You bet, but to say 60% is ridiculous.  You only have to look at recent gaming discussion to understand how little they tend to matter in the grander scheme.

Aliens Colonial Marines didn't have the best graphics, and sure people complained, but they complained FAR louder about the buggy gameplay and shoddy design.  Which is more important again?  Could the game's graphics have made up for its numerous other flaws?

Graphics are a "pass or fail" kind of thing in game design. Sure, people say they want the best graphics, but when it comes right down to it, you'll find that the acceptable threshold is actually really low.  As long as the game's graphics pass that point, people will buy it.

Where is that point, exactly?  I don't know, but I'm sure marketing departments have thought a lot about it.  Graphics are the easy sell.  They aren't abstract or hidden like game mechanics and design.  You can put out a gameplay video, show off all the flashy graphics, and expect to get some response.

They're shallow.  They're easy.  They speak nothing of substance.

But they sell.

Note: Some exceptions exist.  This involves games that don't base their art style on gritty realism and try to have their own feel and look.

Earthbound Dungeon Design

 

Earthbound, the quirky little SNES RPG everybody knows and loves.  As an RPG, it obviously has a few dungeons, so let's talk about those, shall we?

 

You'll find that Earthbound likes to point out general tropes about other RPGs.  For dungeon design, we get Brickroad, the budding dungeon designer.  So, what does he say about dungeons, and how does Earthbound follow those guidelines?

 

"Items that are easy to get are usually disappointing."

 

You've surely been on the recieving end of this tactic.  Your walking along a hallway in a dungeon, and up ahead, just a few steps off the main path, is a glorious treasure chest.  Excited at your discovery, you rush over to recieve your bounty.  What do you find?  The much sought after Rock of Does Nothing.

 

It's a pretty all pervasive thing in games.  If you found it easily, it's a piece of crap.

 

Now, that chest behind the spike traps, across the bottomless pit, surrounded by a lake of lava?  You definitely want that one.

 

"Congratulations, you finally made it!
There's a sign upstairs that says that."

 

RPG dungeons tend to go on forever.  Just when you think you've reached the light at the end, the door's locked, or you need to go find an old lady's cat.  Whenever you go into a dungeon, expect to be in it for the long haul.  If you're lucky, there might even be save points.  But probably not.

 

Earthbound is full of little nods to RPG design of the time.  Keep an eye out for the the next time you play.



Long Night Programming and Testing Multiplayer

It was a long road, but the 2-player online for Fungicide is off the ground, even if just barely.  A number of errors and bugs are still around, especially around the end of a game, but it's functional.  The refining comes next.

The version up here doesn't have the multiplayer capability yet.  I have a bit more testing to do before I put it up.  I can tell you how it works, though.

Over LAN, all is well.  The Host has an IP, and the Guest uses that IP to connect.  They can then play a little 5 minute game of Killing Spree.  It was quite entertaining, with my cousin helping me to do some tests.  Everything seemed to sync up well, and the experience was great.

Over the Internet?  I have no idea.  I haven't had any chance to test that out, but it probably catches fire.

Through that testing, I learned a lot about my game.  First, working together makes things easier.  Second, having a partner easily doubles the entertainment value.

A lot of work remains, but things are progressing well.

I expect to have a working multiplayer version available here by Sunday.

Patching and Sloppy Game Design

You know, it seems more and more that patching makes room for some pretty questionable game design choices.  After all, no matter how back something gets screwed up, you can just go back and fix it later, right?  This attitude seems to pervade the gaming industry as a whole, and it's behavior that the average consumer seems fairly willing to tolerate.

Well, sometimes at least.

Turns out, an alien swarm is the least of the problems here.

 

Colonial Marines, was highly anticipated.  Lovers of the Aliens franchise haven't gotten much love in the game department, and CM promised to scratch that particular itch.  I was looking forward to it, for sure.  It offered split screen CO-OP, which is a pretty big deal in my social circles.

 

Then the critical response came in.  Warmer receptions are given when Africanized bees enter a new state.  One of the best responses you can find is "yeah, the multiplayer is better than having a tornado go through the living room."

 

After the fact, a huge list of things to be patched is released.  You can find it at the bottom of this post.  The question becomes, did no one even play this game before it was released?  Or did all these problems come up in testing and the developers just thought "we'll fix it later?"  Sorry, developers, but when you're selling something for $60, you have a high standard to meet.  make sure you ship something reasonably polished.  Then again, if it's fun, you may not have to.

 

I'm actually not going to comment on whether the game is good or not.  I haven't played it, but probably will, even with all the negative criticism.  It just doesn't seem worth full price.  I can overlook technical faults if the game is entertaining.

 

Speaking of technical faults:

 

General

• Improved texture resolution.
• Various visual improvements.
• Added mouse smoothing to options menu.
• Fixed crashes tied to launch and motion tracker.
• Added additional safeguards to better protect save data.
• Resolved an issue where a player's level could sometimes appear incorrect when backing out of a party.
• Addressed several scenarios under which players could spawn without a weapon.
• Changes to better prevent audio from sometimes cutting out during end of mission cinematics.
• Fixed issue where Xeno death animation was not properly calculating momentum of the killing blow.
• Smart Gun animation now properly tracks targets.
• Addressed some instances where Xenos would display erratic animations.
• Increased light radius for player's shoulder lamp.
• Adjusted aim assist to better reflect player input.
• Addressed an issue that could sometimes cause co-op player revival to not work under certain circumstances.
• Addressed issues with players not spawning into a level properly.
• Fixed a marine player invincibility exploit.
• Resolved several instances where players could walk or fall outside of maps.
• Addressed an issue where Ripley's Flamethrower (bonus content) would sometimes fire continuously without player input.
• Fixed an issue that could cause localized text to sometimes display incorrectly.
• Addressed an issue where weapon ammunition was not always highlighted properly.
• General user interface improvements.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes.

Campaign

• Tweaked enemy and friendly AI to be more aggressive and responsive.
• Modified campaign difficulty to account for improved AI responsiveness.
• Improved enemy collision detection regarding doors and Power Loader.
• Addressed some issues that could cause improper warping for co-op players.
• Various tweaks to address instances where NPC characters would not always properly navigate to objectives.
• Players will no longer bleed out immediately when downed in a Power Loader.

Versus

• Fixed issues that could cause clients to report inaccurate results and statistics.
• Addressed instances where a map would appear to "pop in" when loading into a new match.
• New Xeno appearance customization added.
• Multiplayer teams should now correctly auto-balance between rounds.
• Increased duration of Lurker Pounce Challenge "Cat-Like Reflexes" from 10 to 20 seconds.
• Fixed issue where certain multiplayer challenges would not unlock properly for all characters.
• Crusher pick-ups now correctly appear as highlighted for clients.

I forgive a lot of the multiplayer faults.  Sometimes you just can't tell how things are going to work when lots of people are using your system in a competitive setting, and adjustments must be made.

Fungicide: 2D Zombie Shooter

Caution: Contains animated violence and gore

 

An action packed, zombie murder spree.  Go back to the days of classic shoot 'em up arcade games with Fungicide.

 

Infectious fungal spores have turned an entire city into raving undead monsters. Fight through the hordes, while suriving the best you can.

Zombies are not the only threat. The infection has created large mutated creatures and even changed some common denizens of nature into killing machines.

 

Fight your way through two game modes, and over ten different enemy types.

 

Game Information:

Players: 2 (splitscreen only)

Controls: WASD movement and mouse aiming

Game Modes:

  Killing Spree - Kill as many as you can.

  Survival - How long can you last?



Fungicide is currently in early Beta.  Feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Send in high scores for glory!

 

Please report broken links.  Thanks!

Give the Player More Options, Not Less



The recently released Sim City seems to be a decent game, based on what I have seen.  No matter how great the game may appear (or even be), I will never own it.  Online-only games have always been on my no buy list.  They're simply too restricting for my taste.  I have no idea how the creators of Sim City can justify what they have done, either to themselves, or their customers.

The main argument for Sim City requiring an Internet connection revolves around the player experience, or at least that is the official story from the developers.  They had a "vision" for their game, and the players have no say in the matter.  First, they wanted to get rid of the isolated feel of the past Sim Cities.  I don't know when people started complaining about lonely single player, but they need to stop.

The lonely days of being able to play games anytime you want



Besides, that argument is completely irrelevant.  In the newest Sim City, you don't have to have neighbor cities controlled by other players.  You can create your own separate region unsoiled by the vicious crime and rampant pollution out of your control.  Why then, Maxis, couldn't the player disconnect from your servers to do this?  This portion seems to work more or less like Sim City 4.

NO ONE LOSES FROM THIS OPTION. 

The people who want to play on their own can, and those multiplayer types can get in their socialization.  It seems, though, the larger developers have given up on thinking from a player's perspective.  Games are more interesting overall with more options available.

Of course, the DRM argument is around.  Honestly, it seems like the best explanation.  It's the one that benefits the developers most.  The problem is, though, DRM is useless.  Pirates can already play Sim City offline. 

I do not understand why video game companies continue to punish their paying customers.

Game Making With Game Maker: The Basics

A tutorial on the basics of Game Maker.

Lower Pleasures

Society’s not quite sure what to do with video games yet.  Questions still remain on what effect they have on the human brain among many things.  As they have become more prominent, games have entered into many discussions.  More often than not, they are relegated the category of “a waste of time.”  A discussion on utilitarianism I had recently would call them lower pleasures, that is, something that does promote happiness, but must be subordinated to other, more noble pursuits such as poetry.  Such a view could only be founded in ignorance, and this article will highlight two notable counterpoints to this belief.

***Spoilers for Bioshock Follow***

What Makes Multiplayer Fun?

Your average college male probably spends ten times more time playing Call of Duty or Halo than he does on his studies.  For some reason, all that dull stimulation of reading just does not appeal to them over the frantic, fast paced electronic world that video games can provide for them.  What are they even doing in these games that takes up so much time?  Multiplayer, of course.  Hours upon hours are devoted to capturing a flag, planting some C4, or just enacting genocide on their fellow man (or aliens, as the case may be).  How can they spend all this time doing what pretty much amounts to the same thing over and over?  As I’ve played games, two distinct types of multiplayer experiences have become apparent.  Let’s take them one at a time, shall we?

Story Vs. Cinematic in Video Games

A recent article (ok, rather recent anyway) on 1up.com has David Jaffe, creator of God of War, railing against story in games.  Citing other games he has created, Jaffe looks back on his career wishing that he had not valued story so much in many of his games.  Story, he says, adds a large technological burden on the developer and, as a result, the mechanical qualities of the game diminish rapidly.  The desire within the game industry to make games more like films is heavily to blame for the loss of focus on game mechanics and has caused some serious problems.  Well, is he right?  And who is anyone to argue with such a prominent member of the industry?

Level Design in Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Let's take a look at Skyward Sword in my first ever game analysis video!  Someone cue the awesome music and confetti.

A comparison between two areas in Skyward Sword:  Faron Woods and Eldin Volcano.

Filmed somewhere in the grainy darkness.

Story Time

Story in video games is quite the hot topic (no, not the store).  People stand on both sides of the debate.  Some think story is incredibly important aspect of a video game.  Meanwhile, others don’t want all of those complicated words getting in the way of their virtual genocide quest.  Who’s right, then?  Can games be good without a story?  Does a story actually detract from a game?