Goodbye, For Now

I'm afraid that between my school work and new friends, I've largely lost track of this blog. I forgot it several times in a row, and I'm hard pressed to come up with interesting ideas anymore. Since it's not as if this blog has thousands of followers, I don't think it'll throw too many people off if I put this on hold for now. I cannot let myself lose track of my school work, and so I say goodbye for now. Maybe after things calm down I'll start doing updates again, not nessecarily on a regular basis, but at least one every once in awhile. I'm also considering using this as a place to post updates on my current projects when they get in full swing and have real things to show and discuss. But, until then, I'm taking a break.

So... peace.

A concept art piece done over night by our artist for our ant based first person shooter.

Side Quests

Many games have side quests, optional objectives or missions that you don't have to do. However, they're generally rewarding and so can help you complete the main story quests easier. In some cases, it's only by doing optional things that you can get the best items. So, side quests are quite popular among players trying to hunt down the best stuff.

Side quests are also nice for the developer, because they provide a means to pack in more play time, without requiring you to stretch the story too far. It's annoying to the player when the story goes on and on and it's equally annoying to the developer when they have to make up ways for the story to go a little longer. If you include side quests, your story can be shorter, but the player will have more play time still because they will still have things to do. Just don't rely entirely on side quests and cut your story too short.

And there's the real problem right? Over using side quests. Lots of games these days have short stories padded with side quests. Even for the ones that don't have a super short story there's still a problem, losing sight of the real goal. In Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, I finished the tutorial and spent ten hours of play time before I even returned to the story. The good news is that I was able to enjoy myself for that long without doing anything in the story, but it also meant that I quickly lost interest in the story. The story seemed like a really long side quest. You run into trouble if your player loses sight of the ultimate goal, because they quickly begin to wonder, "Why do I care?" If your player doesn't care anymore, you've lost them.

Real life has side quests too. The main quest is (should be) your job or schooling. Side quests are time with friends, chasing girls, etc. This topic is on my mind because right now I'm trying to ensure that I don't lose sight of my story quest. I got a lot of side quests right now, thus why this post was forgotten last night, and while they're all important, you should never lose sight of the main goal. Think if that's ever happened to you in your life. Remember what happened as a result? Probably didn't go so well. Think about the same effect in games, it's not good to have there either.

You wouldn't want your player to miss now would you?

Dynamic Difficulty

Many games have a difficulty setting. Usually, it's just Easy, Normal, and Hard modes. What the difference between them is exactly, usually just comes down to that the enemies hit harder and have more health. Also, the difficulty is usually something that is set at the beginning of the game and cannot be changed except by starting over. It's when these standards are altered, that things can get very interesting.

One of the first and foremost ways to mix the difficulty up is to have unlockable difficulties. If you beat the game on Hard mode, you unlock Wicked mode. Completing the game on Wicked unlocks another higher difficulty with an increasingly excruciating name. Theoretically, this adds replay value to the game as the players looking for a challenge will play the game again at the progressively higher difficulties. However, many players do not like the idea that you must prove your worth in order to access all the game has to offer. They feel that they should not have to be "at least this good" in order to even attempt the higher difficulties. I think that, if your higher difficulty truly changes things (see below), that it is fair to do this... once.

Next up, what does the higher challenge really mean? As I said, usually the enemies hit harder and have more health. Often, this means that fights just take longer, but the only real added challenge is a new test of patience. If we really want to add challenge, we will have to do more than just power up the enemies. The obvious answer would be to change the AI. The AI would get smarter and faster as the difficulty went up. However, programming one set of AI is difficult enough, but to make multiple sets would take a colossal amount of time and energy. Halo 3 claimed to do just this. I played Halo 3, and found no noticeable difference in the AI between the difficulties. I'm waiting for some developer to do this (and do it right) because it really will be worth the investment.

So, what if we let the player change the difficulty at will during the game? What if we even let them change it during a fight? Also, in RPGs the player tends to start off very weak. So what if we increased the difficulty as the player advanced in levels? There is one game that has tried both of these, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Oblivion has a difficulty slider that can be accessed at any time through the pause menu. Except when experimenting, I've left it in the middle as per the default. The game has its hard parts, but I've found that it is fairly easy to progress through at a steady pace. I once watched one of my friends play the game. He would charge into a room, get surrounded and have the snot kicked out of him. As he was one his last legs, he would pause the game, zero out the difficulty slider, and then trash the remaining enemies. After he was back to full capacity, he would reset the difficulty, and continue into the next room. Mind you, this happened in every single room. So, about every minute or so, the slider would get moved. It would appear that the ability to change the difficulty on the spot is something which is easily abused.

Oblivion also increased the difficulty has your character advanced in levels. Every couple of levels you advanced, the enemies would receive upgrades. Weaker enemies would be outright replaced by stronger foes. Bandits would start wearing better armor and wield better weapons. So, the game would get harder. On the flip side though, the loot dropped would be better and those better weapons and armor used by the bandits could become your if you killed them. For me, the increased difficulty/loot meant I blasted myself to level 20 as fast as possible. Level 20 was when the upgrades stopped, so if I leveled to it then I would be grabbing the best equipment possible. However, for most people, this upgrade system had the opposite effect. Your character will continue to grow in power, even if you never cash in a level up. This means that most players remain level one throughout the entire game. I've seen numerous people complain that the game is effectively unplayable if you level up ever. This is odd to me, considering I try to make characters with obvious handicaps to try and increase the challenge a little. My main character is a very powerful caster, but takes 175% more damage from all magic cast at him. This means that I'm fine, until I come up against an enemy caster, at which point every move is a matter of life and death. All the while, my difficulty slider remains in the middle.

Here is where I mention what game I think has done this difficulty thing the best. After thinking about it I've decided I give the award to Neverwinter Nights. While it has the same problem Oblivion did of having a difficulty slider that can be moved in mid battle, it does enough other things right to outweigh that problem. The main part it does right is that the difficulty affects more than just changing the enemy's health. Certain spells will not affect the player at lower difficulties, namely those that would allow an enemy to take control of them. At hard mode, your spells that affect an area rather than a single enemy will begin to hit your allies if they are caught in it. Of course, the standard changes to enemies are still there but the game goes beyond just the basic changes and that's what puts it above the rest.

What do you think of variable difficulty?

A boss from Demon's Souls who, like all bosses in that difficult game, will eat you up.

The Power of Dreams

Dreams take two main forms, life goals and the ones you have at night. The life goals type are when you dream of making it big and having a good life. These are powerful in that they provide direction as you go and you often shape your life in a way to make your dreams come true. The dreams you have at night can also be very powerful, but are a little more... um... hard to use.

As I said, life dreams give you a goal to work towards. Everyone has some sort of dream, and everyone has a slightly different approach toward achieving them. Some dream small, allowing them to realize it easily. They then pick a new dream and move on, working incrementally. Personally, I dream very big, very big. It will take a lot of work and luck to make it happen, but I'm more than happy to settle for less if it doesn't happen, and if it does happen then I've done something amazing. Dream big, but be content with what you have.

Most video game characters would seem to tend toward my side. Many characters in games have huge aspirations. Prime example is Pokemon. A ten year old kid from a town of about six people wants to become the greatest Pokemon trainer in the world. Somehow, this kid in about a week runs all over creation thumping seventy year old guys who have been training their whole life. Not sure how they "train" exactly, but ten year old rarely become world champions of anything across all age groups. In order for a single person to make a major accomplishment like that, they have to be truly driven. They have their (unrealistic) dreams, and they will do anything to make them happen. This is what video game characters do. They have this drive built into their character, a pure will to succeed. Might sound stupid, but this is frequently the basis for protagonists.

Then there's sleep dreams. There's lots of different explanations for why we dream at night and what they mean. They might be cool, embarrassing, or stupid, and you might not really remember them the next morning, but these too have power. Some people try to focus on a problem as they fall asleep and tell themselves that they will dream a solution. I saw a documentary in one of my psychology classes where a NASA scientist did just this for how to build a base on the moon. The next morning he began working on a design where robots would it. Dreams can also be a source of inspiration on accident too. Two of my games I'm currently working on are based on dreams I had. They are both still in the early design phase, because I got very little from the dreams to go on, but they are fun to work on.

Sleep dreams are also used in games a lot. Usually, they are ways for the game to give you hints of some sort. Many times a character will jump up and exclaim they had a dream where the Goddess spoke to them and so they know we must go to the western mountains. This usually seems like a convenient cover for a plot hole the writers couldn't think of a better way to solve. Other times, NPCs will contact the player through the protagonists dreams. In Fallout 2, the village mystic would speak to you while your character slept to tell you that time is running out.

Yeah, wouldn't really want this guy showing up in my dreams. He also freaked me out real bad the first time, because I hadn't met him so I had no idea who he was.

There's one more way for dreams to be used in games. In high school I took a class about the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, writer of the Lord of the Rings. In one of his essays on fantasy, Tolkien spoke about "Dreams as an Excuse". He said that one of the worst things a fantasy story can do is to write it off as a dream at the end. The truth of this isn't fully apparent until one considers what the Lord of the Rings would be like if the last sentence of the book had been, "And then Frodo woke up." Maybe he gets a cup of coffee and picks up his briefcase to catch the bus to work, I don't know. But I think the books would be much less popular if that had happened, it would ruin everything previously written.

Games do this sometimes, and it usually has that very effect. A game can always be trashed by a terrible ending, but using the dream excuse is one of the worst. There is one game that did this, and for once did it well. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. It's hinted at in the title, and the goal of the game is to wake the sleeping Wind Fish. Waking him is the only way to leave the island everyone says, but the bosses (appropriately called Nightmares) claim that doing this will destroy the island. In the end, Link defeats the Nightmares and meets the Wind Fish. Mr. Fish ends his monologue with, "Come Link, let us awaken... together!" After the island fades, we see Link sleeping clinging to a piece of his ship destroyed by lightning at the beginning of the game. Link then wakes up and sits on the wood. The entire game was a dream. But, what makes it work for me, is that right after that the Wind Fish flies overhead. So maybe it wasn't a dream, or if it was, it had real world consequences. That makes it work for me. Personally, I don't plan on ever trying to pull of a dream excuse ending.

Link's Awakening Ending


So, what do you think of dreams and how do you use them?

I almost feel bad for killing that last boss in Awakening. On one level, he's actually trying to save everyone on the island, but mostly just himself.

I'm Going to Kill You... After I'm Done Telling You That I'm About to.

Shortened edition this week. I'm on my way to Grad School and time is short.

I recently, and finally, picked up a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 for my PC. I decided that I'd enjoy it, despite it's flaws and this proved true. I just like the screwing around aspect of the GTA games, and this is still quite intact. It's a bit hindered by the cars all being built out of lead, a criticism I had heard of. Having to take people out on the town is annoying, another criticism I was aware of. But there's one thing that really bugs me that no one had yet pointed out, every time I'm sent to kill someone I walk right up to them and tell them so.

I like avoiding messy fights. A nice clean head shot can settle an assassination mission quickly and quietly. I certainly don't like finding myself in the middle of a room full of people who I just told I'm going to kill. But no, I always have to watch a cut scene and get planted in the middle of the room with everyone shooting at me. Arresting control from the player is something that should always be done sparingly. But to consistently put the player in danger? Maybe sometimes, but it is happening quite frequently. Kill the player? Rarely, and only as part of the story. Players get tired of getting automatically killed very fast. But punish the player for dying when you threw them in the middle of danger? Now that's just not nice.

Letting the player strategize and plan their attack is an important factor in games. It gives the player more control, something they often like. Forcing them around makes the game more linear, and robs them of control. As I said, doing this sometimes can be great as a sudden switch in circumstances can really throw the player for a loop and add challenge to the game. You don't want things to get predictable. But when the player predicts they will need full health and armor before a mission because they're going to lose half of it before they can move, it's getting bad.

Always be careful about stealing control from the player. When done right and rarely, it is amazing. When done wrong and too often, it can cloud an otherwise great game.

This is the last guy I killed. And, despite starting this close to him, it took me ten minutes to chase him down. All because Niko opened his mouth.

Time's Always Ticking

No matter what you do, time is always passing. While it may not always seem so, it is a good thing it always flows forward. It means you can't go back to last Thursday and pay your phone bill on time, but if time was unpredictable it wouldn't be very good for your sanity. It might not be a good thing to wake up in yesterday tomorrow.

Time also flows in many games. Most of the time, this is really just a cosmetic effect. Day and night go by to no real concern of the player. Sometimes, it will have a minor effect on gameplay. This might be that stores are closed at night, and the player will have to wait for day to dawn before they can sell their loot. Designers must always consider time when making a game. Even if there is no passage of time within a game, they must still consider how long the player will spend in the game. At other places, developers may use time as a means to increase the challenge of a particular objective.

Trying to jump across a series of platforms is always more difficult and nerve racking when a clock is ticking at the same time. Just like trying to mail a letter before the post office closes, the threat of the platforms disappearing in ten seconds makes the task harder. Unless you work very well under pressure, it actually can be harder to write that letter the way you want with the timer going. Likewise, adding a timer can make a player rush and cause themselves to fail a simple jumping challenge they would have otherwise made. In this way, one can add difficult to a game, as well as the overall time the player spends playing (since they have to make more attempts).

Sometimes, timers are used as a cheap trick. No game makes a better example of this than Star Fox Adventures. I recently guided a friend through the game and warned him that, "Everything is timed." While this is not entirely true, it is a pretty accurate description of the game. Basically every challenge has a timer linked to it. The few that don't involve precise timing anyway, by say requiring that you quickly turn off a series of fire jets quickly to prevent them destroying a bomb quickly flying past. Quickly, quickly! Time is always against you in this game, and it gets rather grating very quickly. A time challenge here or there is fine, but if the player is constantly pressed they get burned out.

Another side to time in games, is the ability to manipulate it. Unfortunately, time manipulation has become incredibly common place, particularly in first person shooters in the form of bullet time. The ability to slow down time for everyone but you is quite advantageous in such games. However, as I indicated before, it is so common that it fails to interest many players anymore.

But what about the forms that have not become common place? How about rewinding time? Few games have used this ability as well as Prince of Persia Sand of Time. Braid is more recent and also did very well with it, but I am less familiar with Braid, and so I will use Sand of Time. The basis was very simple, here is the story of what I did earlier. Because the entire game is the Prince just recounting the story, he might "goof" in his recollection. While it may be hard to believe his memory is so faulty that he may accidentally claim he was sawed in half, and then quickly correct himself, it is quite handy if you actually are sawed in half. With a simple button press, the prince's body will reconnect and he will leap backwards through the air to land on the platform he fell off of. Then you can try again. And again. And again. While it may seem like this makes the game simple, just keep trying since there's no penalty because you'll eventually make it, the game managed to maintain a good level of challenge throughout. Faulty memory not withstanding.

At this point we come to my favorite time manipulation game, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. If you are familiar with the game this choice may strike you as odd. If you are not, let me explain why it would be odd. To do this, let me start by setting the scene. Time is always ticking. You have three days to save the world before it is destroyed by the creepy looking moon crashing into it. Time passes at a rate of one second of real time to one minute of game time. This means you have 72 minutes to beat the game. You've also been turned into a Deku Scrub, which really can't do much. In the last moments (the last six hours) you confront Majora's Mask, but are powerless to stop it from calling the moon down on you. You do manage to reacquire your ocarina, which it stole from you, and remember the Song of Time. If you play it, the Goddess of Time will aid, or so you've heard. At that moment, your companion cries out, "Help! Someone, anyone! Goddess of Time! We need more time!" Which is true, so you play the song... and find yourself back at dawn of the first day.

All of a sudden, the time limit becomes less of a problem. You can reset time as often as you need to. You also get the ability to slow time to 1/3 it's normal speed giving you much more time to do things. I said earlier that constant time limits are grating, and while this game is constantly timed, it is mostly a back burner type issue. The interesting thing about the time manipulation, is that you can go forward 12 hours, but you have to reset all the way back to go back in time. Since all the actions of the NPCs are dictated by time, missing an appointment means you will have to reset time in order to catch it on the next set of days. Resetting time has another interesting consequence, all but the most important progress is lost. The bosses must be defeated again, you must introduce yourself to people again, etc.

Majora's Mask is one place where the time manipulation is highly controlled, and has consequences. The Prince of Persia can rewind ten seconds if he misses a jump and try again. But if Link resets time after missing a jump, it's a lot more work to get back to the jump. Also, resetting time is the only way to permanently save the game. I usually don't like games with limited saving, but here I enjoyed it. I like a game that forces you to run a tight ship (but not too tight) and Majora's Mask does just that.

In the end, time manipulation is far from a new concept and perhaps needs to be given time to rest and cool off. Individual timed challenges can be good when well placed, but overusing them as Star Fox Adventures did wears the player out. Majora's Mask's answer of a long overall timer worked for me, but it was one of the main criticisms of the game, alongside being too short. Perhaps the best answer is to take the real world example and let time just go by as normal. Just like it's good for our sanity in real life, it may be best for the player's sanity as well.

There, that is the moon and you have three days to stop it. Go.

Communcations 101 - (Un)Expressivness

When talking to another person, body language plays a key role. Even the slightest facial twitch can completely change the message your sending, whether you meant to or not. Over the phone this is lost. However, it can usually be made up enough by tone of voice. The way you say something can be as effective as a face twitch. But then we boil communication further down to just text. It can be surprisingly hard to pass on the way you're currently feeling through text alone. This is probably where emoticons came from to add mock facial expressions to text chat. In case you're unfamiliar with the term emoticon, that's adding things like :) to make a smiley face. You've probably seen those around. I use emoticons frequently in text only chat because it's very hard to convey my type of humor without them.

But what about the non-humans in games? Even in online games, there's still communication without a human on the other end. These are usually done through text only in the online sector. But, on the single player offline games, giving voices to most or all of the characters has been a standard for a long time now. How expressive these people are depends on a few things. First, the voice actor. I've gone into voice acting in great detail before, so I'll just reiterate that the person needs to be able to read expressively to give the character some depth. Second, the writing needs to be descent. If the lines are stupid, then they won't communicate well no matter how good the voice acting is. Third, and the one I'm going to go on about here, is facial expressions and body language. This is important for the same reasons it is important in real life.

My Dad recently got me thinking about Botox, and not because he got it. But it sometimes seems like many NPCs in games have gotten several Botox shots, their faces don't budge at all. One might argue that this is a minor point, and so the animators should spend their time on other areas. Fair enough, but it can sometimes really wreck the immersion in a game when you zoom way in on someones face and they stare at you all zombie like. They blink at regular intervals, their eyes move back and forth methodically, and they all have a scowl, happy, or neutral face. The only time their face changes is when it moves between these states. The rest of the time it is frozen in one of those positions. At least their mouth moves when they talk. But they're content to stare at you for hours like this until you select a response. Problem is, it's still really creepy.

I are robot BEEP BOOP. Fear my neutral expression.

Because this frozen face bit is unsettling, it breaks the player out of the game. This is something we want to never do. The player should feel like part of the game world, and throwing them out of it with zombie facial expressions (unless they are talking to a genuine zombie) is a problem. I do have to give Oblivion credit (Bethesda really) for taking the initiative to do such close facial conversations, and being the first I know of to do so with every NPC and with such detail. It had problems, but every game since has gotten better. This is a problem that will fade out as the technology improves for one, and as game developers get better at making conversation system that use this, but it is one that should not be forgotten. This is one of those simple things that can really jar a game.

Sometimes, a nice fist is what's required to stir conversation up a bit and bring out the angry face.

Would You Like A Hint?

Games, regardless of genre, always present a challenge in some form. Maybe it's a complicated puzzle or a boss battle. Either way, the player has to figure out what needs to be done in order to proceed. The question is, when do we help the player with this and how much help do we offer?

There are the two extremes, no help at all and giving the answer away. I've found that the "no help at all" approach is mostly a thing of the past now. Maybe I just haven't been playing the right games, or I'm extremely smart, but lately games seem to have been giving me more than enough help to get by. This "no help" method used to be the approach taken by the old adventure games such as the King's Quest games, a genre which was notorious for having trains of thought that only made sense to the game's designer. On the other end lies the "giving the answer away" crowd. I've never played Uncharted, but apparently it frequently presents you with ancient mystical puzzles and you solve them by opening your journal and reading the answer out of it. One of my favorite reviewers called this the "Dan Brown school of thought approach to puzzle solving".

One of the big factors when considering how much help to give players is how much time the player has to act. In the middle of an intense gun fight with the main villain, the player usually does not have a good chance to sit back, survey the area, and determine that there is a representation of the Fibonacci Sequence in the corner that the player needs to add the next number to in order to expose the boss' weak spot. On the other hand, in a game like Myst time is never an issue and so the player may take as much time as they wish to complete a puzzle. As a result, the puzzles get more complex, and the hints get fewer and farther between.

As usual, I find the answers for such problems lie somewhere in the middle. Take Metroid Prime for example. You can scan every enemy in the game to get information about them and how to defeat them. This is nice, because it makes obtaining the information optional. You are not forced to get the games hints, but can fall back on them if you are stuck or having difficulty figuring out how to topple a given foe. Scanning an enemy takes precious time, and you cannot attack, so getting the info leaves you vulnerable. However, it is worth it, as the data is very useful. The important thing to remember here, is while scanning often outright tells you the method to beat an enemy, you still have to actually pull that method off yourself.

Compare that to Luigi's Mansion. To take out the ghosts with your vacuum, you must first expose their heart. For the common enemy this is fairly easy, but for others it can be very complicated. You have the option to scan their heart for hints, which leaves you wide open for a long time, but usually the information isn't very helpful. One ghost, when scanned, says that no one can see him in the darkness. However, lighting the torches around him is only step one. You must then drain his food, kill the two butler ghosts who appear to replenish his plate, drain the plate completely, and the dodge his fireballs he belches at you until he gets tired. Then he can be captured. The entire time, all scanning mentions is the darkness bit.

Still, I find bad information is better than having the game beat itself for you. As I implied at the end of the Metroid Prime discussion, even with hints or just figuring it out yourself, you must still do it yourself. But what if the game were to do that part for you? In Super Mario Galaxy 2, if you fail at a given point a certain number of times, a friendly "Cosmic Guide" (who will look very familiar if you played the first Super Mario Galaxy) will appear and offer to guide you to the star. I have never taken her up on this offer, as her appearance just makes me more determined to do it myself, but what's the point of trying if she'll just take you to it? Oh, because if she guides you there it's a bronze star, which doesn't count. So then why would I ever take her up on her offer? Having never used it, I'm not sure what the guide process looks like, but I fail to see the logic behind the mechanic at all. The only use I see getting out of it, is that the path is shown to you if you don't know the way. But the worlds are basically linear, making getting truly lost an unlikely possibility.

How to steer the player the right way without holding their hand is a tricky problem. I find too many games these days are hand holders. How much help do you like?

Uh, yes please Ma'am. And while you're at it, could you do the rest of the game for me?

Options: The Few and the Many

Most of the time, options are a nice thing to have. Options allow you to play the way you want to. Maybe you'd rather kick the fortress door down and charge in instead of sneaking around the back way. More ways to complete objectives gives more flexibility and adds replay value to that game, since players will want to try different tactics next time.

There's another kind of options though, the kind that lives in the Options section of the Main Menu. Usually just below "Return to Game" and just above "Quit", this is a menu area many rarely visit more than once, depending on the game. Sometimes, people don't return for good reasons, but often the reason is bad: there are too few options that don't change enough necessary things.

This area seems neglected by developers a lot. Sometimes, it's just plain left out. On the PC, this usually isn't as much of a problem. That's because PCs need to have a lot of options for display. The hardware is not immediately known to the game. On the consoles however, this is largely unnecessary because the hardware is (well, should be) immediately known.

That all however is the Graphics and Audio section of the Options, but what about the Gameplay section? Some games are excused from having a section to alter gameplay, namely online games that always involve multiple players. But then there's the single player only games, they don't have much of an excuse. Maybe there's a difficulty slider to add or remove challenge from the game. Maybe there's things that aren't really gameplay related, like disabling public chat in private areas (from Dungeons and Dragons Online, which could be excused from this). But there's some options that I'd like to see that I never have: Always show the short attack animations, Disable speaking in combat, Left or right handed character, and Don't confirm when selling items (seen this, but not anywhere near enough).

One reason this doesn't happen is to avoid showing too many options. Not to pick on DDO again, but the User Interface section is insane. There are (in order) 32 check boxes, 1 slider bar, 2 drop down menus, 14 color selection panels, 18 more check boxes, 29 more color selection panels, and one last drop down menu. That's 97 options in a single non-sortable list. In counting just now, I found several options I never knew existed, and noticed several that apply to only one very specific character type. What's worse, your choices do not carry to your other characters, you have to make your selections for each and every character. The opposite of this is Vanguard, where all options were shared between all your characters. My favorite was a cut down the middle, Everquest 2 where each character had their own set but you could choose another characters set to use or at least start from.

Having too many options in a fashion that more directly affects gameplay also comes forward in DDO, as well as Neverwinter Nights. Being based on Dungeons and Dragons, a character can level up in multiple classes. Might not sound like much at first, but it has a profound impact on the number of possible characters. There are so many different combinations to try. This is why I like these two games so much, but it's also why I'm bored with them. I keep trying so many different characters that I never get beyond the first few areas.

But the second, and probably more prevalent reason we don't see so many options, is that each and every one of those options not only has to be made, but made correctly and tested. Options eat up test time like almost nothing else. Multiple endings probably eat more time, but it's expensive to make options. I love options very much, but I probably won't see many more than are already there sadly.

This whole discussion doesn't even touch Controls at all. I'll visit that topic another time.

How many options do you like?

A Prime Piece of the DDO UI Options Section.

The Final Showdown

Forgive my last two short posts. I was about to leave for vacation and threw them together last minute. I'll try to make up for it this week.

Every game has final battle of some sort. Obviously it greatly depends on the game how this turns out exactly, but the story needs some form of closure. A final challenge that delivers the ultimate feeling of satisfaction when the player finally topples it. Some games pull this off excellently and, of course, others completely fail. The entire game is usually focused around increasing challenge and player skill, and players feel cheated if the ending fails to meet their expectations. Let's take a look at some examples across the spectrum for a little perspective on this.

The Ugly: Fable II.

When it comes right down to it, there is actually very little story to be had in Fable II, which is odd given its name. Most of the story points come down to "Go here and beat this". One could argue that most games, certainly RPGs, are this way and they would be right. But never has it felt so obvious as it did to me when playing Fable II. What is truly sad though, is the final encounter. Here you have the man who killed your sister and your dog (of you do the good ending), nearly killed you, enslaved thousands, and is attempting to take over the world using a method that destroyed the world the last time someone tried it. How do you defeat such a devious foe? By shooting him. Once. That's it. Didn't pull the trigger in time? No worries. The blind lady will shoot him for you if need be.

The Final "Boss"

"I thought he'd never shut up." I think the entire game was worth it just for that.

The Bad: Two Worlds.

I played this on the PC unlike most of my friends, and therefore thought the game was only half bad. The Xbox 360 port was quite hard to control. In any case, again, this was a game surprisingly lacking in heart. By that I mean depth. Most things seemed very shallow, and like Fable II, the story was stupefyingly short. I was disappointed, but not surprised, when I arrived to steal an artifact from a White Dragon nest to find no dragon. The actual story could probably be completed in a couple hours. Talk to this guy, this guy, this guy, that guy again (mind you there about ten feet away from each other), your sister, this guy again, collect these four things (the longest part, one of these things is in a white dragon nest oh no!), talk to this guy, go to one of five towers, kill the guy on top, go to final battle. The final boss is not the actual last fight in the game, but it is more difficult so I count that as the final one. This guy (one of the ones you talked to earlier, yay!) transforms into a demon and you kill him, through whatever means your character fights. As an archer, I ran away and shot him a lot. It took me about ten minutes. The entire time he hit me once, and instantly killed me. I appeared about 100 feet away with full health, went back and finished him off. Not that amazing, went like every other boss fight in the game.

Here's The Final Boss As I See It (Jump to 2:00)

Goes a bit faster as a melee, just wish his attacks weren't so obviously coming.

The Good: Donkey Kong 64.

All around an amazing game. The story was very simple, again, but unlike the other two this is not an RPG really. The goal was to collect enough Golden Bananas to proceed to the next area. That, and beat the boss of each area. It actually played a lot like Super Mario 64, but seemed to have so much more to it. There was a truly incredible number of abilities spread across the five Kongs, and you had to master each in order to reach the end of the game. Things really picked up when you go on a timed invasion of the enemy's stronghold, but he runs away before you can reach him. He attempts to fly away but ends up crashing behind your island. With nowhere left to run, he stands his ground and bring out one of the most complicated and amusing boss battles I have ever seen. It's set up as a boxing match (with how an entire boxing stadium fit inside his ship left conveniently unexplained). Each Kong is given two three minute rounds to take out K. Rool in whatever way matches their style. It truly requires you to master each and every Kong, since you have to play as each to beat this fight. This tops off the learning curve quite well. Unfortunately, it also means you DO have to be good with each and every one and Lanky's fight in particular is infamous for giving people trouble. In the end, a challenging fight that feels very rewarding to overcome. It also fits in very well with the game's undercurrent of slap stick humor.

The Introduction And The First Three Kong Battles. Don't feel like you have to watch the whole thing if you don't want to, it is quite long. But do give it a look.

"Fair and Unbaised" Give me a break.

The Excellent: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.

This one has frequently topped people's "Best Games of All Time List" or their "Top 10" type lists. I've only ever seen one person who did not like this game, apparently he didn't like the transition to 3D (this was the first 3D Zelda game). Most however, consider it a milestone, and a benchmark to measure other games by. Unlike all of the previous games I've mentioned, the story in this game cannot be summed up in a sentence or two. Oot had a complex story, though not hard to understand by any means (a problem plaguing many games today). Each boss felt like a nice finish to its respective dungeon. But then came the final battle. You had to climb to the top of his tower, hearing faint organ music that grew louder as you climbed higher. Finally, you entered the room where he was waiting for you. After giving the required speech, you fight him one on one. For the first time ever, your fairy is blocked from getting close to him, which means you can't actually target him, except when he is down.

Link VS Ganondorf

The way the light hits him when you shoot him with a light arrow looks so painful.

But wait! There's more! As he lies dying, Ganondorf commands his tower to collapse, initiating a timed escape from the falling tower! The path you have to take is different from the one you took up, so you gotta learn the way to go to get out in time. Just as you make it out the door, the tower crumbles behind you leaving nothing but a pile of rubble.

Yay! The Game Is Over, Right?

Obviously, there was a little more to do.

I love everything about that fight. I find it a bit odd that Navi could target this boss and not the previous one, but I'll let it slide. But seeing Ganondorf transform into Ganon, the King of Evil, and then having your sword (which is the sword of evil's bane mind you) knocked to where you can't get it just tops off the intensity. Unlike some bosses where each form is just a more powerful version of the previous one fought in that same way, the phases of this fight seem to flow into each other. Ganondorf's refusal to give up no matter what comes through here with his sheer determination. It truly was the crowning moment in an amazing game.

The Odd Man Out: The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask.

I don't feel this discussion is complete without mentioning this curious little bit. We've looked at games whose final boss is no challenge, through to ones that place the final cap to close the game. But about games like Majora's Mask? This is the only example that readily comes to mind but I'm sure there are others. What about games, whose final boss can be either super challenging and a nice wrap up, or that you can just walk over like its nothing?

This final boss comes in three stages, and requires you to be pretty good with Link. Unfortunately, I think they missed a lot of potential by having you transform into the other forms (Deku, Goron, and Zora). Transforming to these forms is not even possible. In any case, the fight is a nice challenge, and while not as good as Ocarina of Time, it is still a nice close.

There's a little secret though. If you collect all the masks in the game and complete an event requiring you to give them all to little kids with brain damage and limited vocabulary (seriously, those kids are scary weird) you obtain the Fierce Deity Mask. Wearing this (only possible in boss rooms) transforms you into Fierce Deity. FD is about seven feet tall, looks like Adult Link, and wields an awesome looking double helix sword. This sword shoots beams of power when swung at a targeted enemy. All three forms of the final boss have no defense against this beam... none whatsoever. So, if you're FD, you can stand in one place and swing your sword over and over until the boss dies. No challenge at all. The reason I exempt this from "Ugly" status, is because this is essentially a reward for completing everything the game has to offer. Most of the masks are not required, and some are very hard to track down and obtain. An interesting way to reward the player for their extra work.

It's also odd to note that the mask is given to you by the boss itself (effectively).

Final Battle, Without Fierce Deity


Final Battle With Fierce Deity (and getting the mask itself)


What's your favorite final?

Not actually the final boss of DK 64. This is the boss from the last level, a cardboard cut out. It was harder to defeat than it sounds.

Withdrawal

There's always something that you love to do. It might be reading books, golfing, or playing video games. Having a hobby of some sort is always a good idea, it's something to turn to in order to take your mind of any issues for awhile and just generally relax. After awhile, your brain becomes accustomed to having that release time. And when you, for whatever reason, can't get that time, you go into withdrawal.

Of course, with any discussion of withdrawal usually comes one of addiction as the two go hand in hand. Addiction is a dirty term, used to blast down the unworthy. Being called an addict can really rub you wrong. This is why it hurts so bad when people accuse video games of turning people into socially rejected addicts who spend their lives in front of computers, instead of say raising a family.

With that, goes the idea that if a video gamer is deprived of games for awhile, he'll go  into a minor coma and drool until he's given his games back. Yes, games are very nasty that way. But think for a minute, what about your own hobbies?

What if you were unable to do the thing you enjoy most during your relaxation time? Maybe you'd have backups, but what if those were unavailable as well? If you were unable to do anything that you considered fun and rewarding during your free time, you may well go nuts too.

If we want to look at things in this light, then everyone is an addict probably. If they're not, then they're probably a very sad person, not enjoying anything in life. Addiction seems to me to be either perfectly natural, or in need of a better definition. Either way, I think that the people who accuse video games this way need to step back and look at their own habits a little more first.

Okay fine, I have to admit, he's got it pretty bad.

Yes, Mom.

This is something we've all said in real life. Even with the most outrageous requests, we almost always give in and allow Mom to force our hand for awhile. Eat your vegetables. Drink your milk. Wipe your bum. We go through this in our real lives, but what about the virtual ones?

I posted awhile ago about annoying support characters, and recently I've been helping my neighbor play through the game containing the classic example of that, "Hey! Listen!". Yes, Ocarina of Time. Looking at the game again, having been awhile since I last played and not being the one playing for once, I've been trying to truly evaluate the merits of what many consider the greatest game of all time. One thing I've noticed, the game forces you into a particular course of action all the time.

It's odd to see, after coming out of more recent games with all their multiple endings and open world sandbox play. After all the thousands of conversation branches possible in Dragon Age, it's amazing to go back and see the day where if you told someone "No" they'll repeat themselves until you say yes (to say nothing of this particular neighbor's speaking habits in addition to the game's). Often, choices are not really choices, but really seem thrown in just for the sake of making sure the player is paying attention.

To be honest though, there's nothing wrong with linearity. There's a story to be told, and there's only one way to tell it. Fair enough. Plus, even though the story is linear, progression is not so rigid as the designers intended. I for one, discovered it is possible to skip the entire second dungeon as an adult in Ocarina until you've done all the other dungeons. What you get from that dungeon is not needed in the following dungeons, but is required to complete the game. But it still feels fun to have Navi yelling at you to go to the mountain when you're way past that.

Also, at times the game is rather open about how to proceed. Even "That cloud over Death Mountain... there's something strange about it...." gives you no hint as to how to do anything once you've gotten there. It's nice to see after all these games today that blatantly tell you the answer to see one that points you in the right direction and leaves you to find the answers there. It also saves the player from the pitfall of many open ended games, "Where do I go now? What do I do now that I'm here? What am I accomplishing exactly?".

It's nice to find the flexibility within the guided tour of Hyrule that Ocarina provides.The best games I find are the ones that let you run free, while maintaining a clear ultimate goal, and Ocarina provides.

No, that's not my Mom, but Princess Zelda sure acts like it.

"Do you have it? "No." "Do you have it?" "No." "Do you have it?" etc.

Limited Audience Games

With any game, movie, book, or really any product, you ought to know your target audience. Do you want to target teenage boys, or little old ladies? Once you've identified where you want to steer your game towards, then you can start tailoring the experience to be more appealing to your target. In this case you would want to make sure that Grand Theft Little Old Lady includes as much zombie killing as possible, while Tea(n) Boy Party includes as many different tea flavors as possible with an accurate timer to make certain the tea comes out just right. Now you... wait a second....

A lot of work and research goes into this area. Most of the time, game developers make an effort to reach out to as many people as possible. This usually ends in one of two cases: 1. It's too general, so lots try it, but none like it. 2. The wider appeal thing has no effect and only the normal audience plays.

But, what if you were to turn things the other way? Rather than try to have mass appeal, have massive appeal within a narrow focus. This might not seem the best marketing tactic, but this can result in a rather strong following that will keep you going. Plus, who says you can't make multiple games with this idea and get several focused groups behind you? Still sound crazy? Well, one could argue it's already been done by Wisdom Tree with their game Bible Adventures, but I won't go there. Though I must mention I find it interesting that Nintendo wouldn't approve the game, so like good Christians they licensed a voltage zapper to bypass the security on the NES. Good one guys.

Regardless, what if you took the small audience idea one step further? What if you made a game... for a single person?

Again, crazy, but think about it for a second. Obviously, you would only go through this much work for someone you know rather well (or who is paying you rather well). In that case, you know your target audience very well and could tailor the game to be exactly the sort of thing they'd love to play. Put yourself on the receiving end for a minute and think how great it would be to have someone make your perfect game just for you.

I mention this because I just began such a project yesterday. A custom made game for someone I've known my whole life, so I think I will be able to make it just the way he wants it (for a video game, I think he'd prefer a book, but that's not what I do now is it?). Now, I'm clearly not out to make money on this game, and any developer that is probably shouldn't invest much in a game for a single person. But what about making a game, or anything, for someone you love? An old friend? Yourself? What about making a game without thinking about profits? What about making a game... for fun?

I think the small audience idea (and when I say small, I'm talking tens of thousands still, instead of millions) has potential. But I also think that regardless of audience size, designers need to sit back a bit and think about what they're making and why they're making it. Nothing kills the fun of a job like doing it because you have to, instead of because you love to. And believe me, the difference shows in the end result.

And here we have an example of the other end of the limited audience spectrum: Making a game just for yourself and publishing it worldwide. It seems the designer on this had this idea up his craw and didn't listen to any ones input. That's the only reason I can think of for this game being the way it is.

Red, White, and Blue

Color has existed in games for a long time now. Computers have supported colors for ages. Consoles got them in the early 90's, but handheld gaming platforms came last in the race, not getting much prior to the Gameboy Color in 1998. Color, on all platforms, has become standard, and is only lacking or skewed in certain situations like a flashback, or if the designer is making an artistic statement. Because color is an assumed trait of video games, designers have frequently tried to capitalize on it by working color into gameplay.

The first real example of this I encountered was Link's Awakening DX, which was a remake of Link's Awakening that was specifically made for the Gameboy Color. In this game, they added a new dungeon appropriately named the Color Dungeon. As the name implies, most of the puzzles and enemies were focused around color. Turn all the switches red, knock the green enemy into the green hole, and kill the boss by hitting him until the turned red, which he was kind enough to even tell you himself. Most of these would be difficult or impossible to decipher in monochrome. This is why the entrance is guarded by two skeletons who won't let you in unless you can tell them the color of their clothes. Completing this dungeon rewards you with the choice of red clothes, which doubles your damage dealt, or blue clothes that halve the damage you take. What I find interesting, is that if you walk up to the skeleton guards while playing on an old Gameboy, they will tell you to go away, without giving you the option to even guess which is wearing red or blue. It also bothers me, that the boss is defeated by turning him red, which you do by hitting him a lot, which you don't need color to do.

One of the puzzles in the dungeon that would be hard without color.

Just for kicks, here's the boss from the dungeon. The first 15 seconds is an intro, but give the first 15 seconds of actual video a try. I enjoy how the boss tells you how to beat him, and how the color is fairly irrelevant.


The most recent encounter I've had with color meeting gameplay, was in Fable II when I finally decided to head into the Cursed Snow globe Downloadable Content(DLC). The world was devoid of color, except for my weapons. My sword glowed blue and my gun yellow, matching the colors normally associated with them in the game. I quickly bumped into a set of blue ghosts. Being a Magic (red) user, I blasted the ghosts for about five minutes before I gave up and used the matching blue sword. They quickly fell. You had to match the color you attacked with to the enemy. This culminated in a final battle of sorts where all three types attacked me at once and I was forced to swap my weapons quickly. After that, color returned to the world as normal.

The Snow globe world and it's blue denizens.

Even when color is not so strictly matched to gameplay, color is still often used to convey information quickly. A classic example is if an enemy's name appears in red, it is hostile. For the most part this would seem a fine way to add a little more to the gaming experience, or chop the amount of information the Interface needs to display. There's just one problem though, some people are color blind.

The most common type of color blindness is Red-green, which Wikipedia tells me affects 7 to 10% of all males. That's a rather large portion of players, particularly when you add that it is more common in men, and men make up most of the gaming population. That means that out of ten players, one is likely to be unable to distinguish between the red hostile and the green friendly, taking a few more hits to the faceplate before it sinks in.

I'm a little more sensitive to this problem than most, not because I have color problems, but my Dad does. It made playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy more interesting I will have to admit, namely because the red explosive barrels, the green poisonous barrels, and the brown treasure barrels all looked the same to him. After getting blown up, the game told him to "Shoot red barrels from a distance" and he had no idea what it was talking about. He then unleashed poisonous gas upon us all and when I told him not to shoot the green barrels he responded, "There's green barrels?" Given that we were a third of the way through the game already and he hadn't noticed, we decided that I would handle all barrel openings from then on.

How do you fix this problem? World of Warcraft has a colorblind mode where the hostile and friendly tags are shown in the tool tips. Dungeons and Dragons Online allows you to change the color of all the chat channels and damage texts, allowing you to customize them to colors you can more easily distinguish. Most games however, do nothing at all. It is only 10%, but it's a 10% that will greatly appreciate the extra effort on your part.

Barrel, Barrel on the wall... who is the brownest of you all?

The Joke(r)'s On You

I just finished seeing The Dark Knight for the first time (finally). Upon some reflection of that movie, and movies in general, I've ended up thinking about plot holes. Mind you, I enjoyed The Dark Knight very much, but there are a few unanswered holes. Namely, where did the Joker come from? Now, in this case, it actually works in the movies favor. Giving us nothing to go on (the Joker gives us a couple flashbacks, but really he can't be relied on) actually makes the character creepier. That something like this could just spring into existence is quite a shock, and adds mystery to the character and the movie as a whole.

This is a rare case where such a tool is used appropriately. Too often in games plot holes try to breeze by unexpected. Unfortunately, it either completely fails to do so, or does only the first time. The latter case only makes you feel like an idiot when all your friends point it out, or you're attempting to explain the game to them only to realize you can't (thank you Geist).

The alternate side to being unable to explain your own plot, is covering up a hole when you shouldn't. As I said at the beginning, not knowing the Joker's background makes him scarier. What if, right after the first couple of scenes with the Joker, Batman figured out who he was and read off his whole backstory to us? The mystery would be lost, and the character would be less powerful. In the game Condemned, the people of the city go mad and start attacking each other. Even after the horror game is finished, no explanation is given. In Condemned 2, they explain in the first chapter that someone has hung hubcaps on the walls which make a loud and annoying noise, driving sleepless people crazy (never mind how you get hubcaps to make noise 24/7). As one of my favorite reviewers said, "Thank you Condemned 2, I was just about to get interested."

Plot holes, when they don't add needed mystery, usually only make the developers look bad. As I implied before, can't you explain your own plot? I've noticed an increase lately in plot holes, Super Mario Galaxy 2's complete failure to acknowledge the first game being the largest and most recent. I think writers are trying too hard to come up with new and exciting plots (or in Mario's case recycling the same one for the last fifteen years or so) that they lose track of their own loose ends. Having a complex plot is fine, but make sure people can still follow it. And personally, I can't accept the "It's open to interpretation" excuse. In that case, I feel like I'm supposed to make up half the plot myself. Braid, I'm looking smack at you.

Of course, gameplay is the central most important thing to a video game. But, like so many other things, the plot can make the difference between a good game and a great game. Between a game people play once, and one people play year after year. Between a game people are over, and one people clamour for a sequel to. Between a bad game that everyone returns after an hour, and one people force their way to the end of (an ugly possibility, but still...).

One of the most out there (not there) plots I've ever heard of. Fortunately, the game itself is awesome.

The One Ring

In playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, I have run into a dilemma. There is a series of dungeons that you must do one right after the other, each of which can take about 45 minutes depending on difficulty and how well your group performs. With three of these in a row, it is quite a time commitment to get through to the end. I was lucky, and got a good group on my first run through, allowing me to complete the entire series on the highest difficulty, thereby earning the best rewards. Now I am poised to level beyond that content, and seek new quests. But, I don't want to. Why not? Because I didn't get a Ring of Feathers.

The Ring of Feathers, when worn, causes you character to fall slowly, allowing you to steer better in midair and take no damage upon landing, regardless of the height you fell from. The advantages of this are obvious to a player, since there are a large number of places that require accurate jumping to get to and also one could then just leap down a wall at no risk instead of climbing. This ring is the only item in the game to grant this effect permanently while worn at level 1. Other rings with this effect exist, but the require very high levels and are randomly generated, meaning you have an equal chance to pull that as any other item from any given chest in the game. This is the only ring with no level requirement, and to have a set chest. Ergo, the ring is highly sought after, not just to use, but to sell.

The usual cost of one of these rings when buying from the player based market, is a staggering 1,200,000 gold pieces. In the many hours I have spent playing this character, I have only saved up 8,000 gold pieces.

So, you either have the choice to farm up 1,200,000 gold, or rerun this quest series over and over until you get the ring. That's about two hours worth of questing for a CHANCE to find this ring (in of course the very last chest). I can't even fathom how long it would take to get a hold of 1,200,000 gold.

And then, the player has a final choice, don't get the stupid ring.

There are many rings with much more useful effects for many characters. There are plenty of easily obtainable items that provide the effect temporarily with limited uses, which would leave you a free ring slot. There is only one place where the ring is frequently considered required, a dungeon properly named The Pit.

Yet, despite this, when the ring goes up on the market, it is usually sold in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

I have seen full groups of level 20's (the quest is level 4-7) blast through the quest line over and over until they get one.

I have heard people cry (literally) over the voice chat when the ring doesn't drop for them.

I have run this series about 8 times over multiple characters, I have never seen this ring drop for anyone.

The last group I was in for this spent most of the time discussing addiction to games, how you could spend that time raising a family, how people in Everquest 1 died from playing instead of eating, and yet: this was their third run that day.

Speaking of addiction, this is where it comes from. Highly sought after rewards that never appear in that chest. Without rare drops, there would be no prestige to owning a piece of gear. There would be no one better than anyone else. So we have to have rare rewards to give players something to strive for, otherwise there's no sense of achieving anything. But, there still needs to be ways to reward the player with a sense of accomplishment that doesn't drag on for hours. You might think at first that this is exactly what keeps people playing MMOs, and you'd be right. But I've also seen so many people leave because they realize that these games are nothing but a massive time sink.

We need to improve the Rewards VS Time ratio. It'll let people move on through you game, and stop them from losing interest. A possible solution to my particular example? Give the ring a descent chance to drop (say 30%) but change it so that it cannot be traded. You want your ring? Go get it yourself.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a ring to hunt.

My... Precioussssss....

Lights! Camera! Act... Wait, where's the camera?

The camera, friend to players and foe to developers. In case your not quite sure, the camera is what the player sees "through". It is their viewpoint on a given situation. The friend and foe idea comes from the fact that a good camera system can be rather hard to make, but the player needs to see what is going on. Therefore, a well designed camera system is critical, and a poor camera can cripple an otherwise great game.

Example One, Bad Camera: Neverwinter Nights 2. Simply put, the camera in NWN2 is abysmal and really drags the game down. There are three camera modes. The first (theoretically) gives you the ability to look any way you want, while your character moves in any direction independent of the direction of the camera. Problem, you must click where you want your character to go. How do you click where you're not looking? The second is a pure top down view called strategy mode. Again, you click but at least you usually can with this view, though you must keep pushing the mouse to the edge of the screen to see what's ahead. Problem, when you're looking down from kinda far out on a dark field at night with slow moving zombies, how do you tell what/where anything is? The last mode, which I use, is driving camera. Now you steer the character with the keyboard and the camera follows behind. However, the pitch of the camera up and down is very sensitive, making it very hard to change accurately when pushing the mouse against the top or bottom of the screen. The camera is also bound by any roof you may be under, making it ridiculous to use inside. You can also push  right or left with the mouse to look around, but then the camera either swings sickeningly back into place, or your character flips around in place. Good one guys. Several times I've charged into battle facing the wrong way.

Example Two, Okay Camera: Dungeons and Dragons Online. I've been playing this a lot lately and so it comes to mind when thinking of video game things. The camera in DDO is as I said, Okay, nothing more. And here, Okay is much better than bad, and perfectly functional. The camera is locked behind your head. You can move it up or down quite accurately and left and right. However, if you move your character the camera will stay put but your character will move in the direction the camera is now facing. If you hold both the mouse buttons and the movement keys you can look around while moving. A bit impractical, but there is rarely a reason to watch constantly to your character's right while running full speed. There is a bit of an exploit with this camera though. You can zoom rather far out. With the camera zoomed out, I can look around a corner to see if there is a group of orcs ahead. The orcs have no way to see me, I can thoroughly examine them and prepare, and my character is facing a wall. Um... yeah.

Example Three, Good Camera: The Legend of Zelda Windwaker. For the most part, all the Zelda games have a good camera, but WW sticks out for an extra feature. First of all, the camera generally stays behind Link, but if you make a major change in direction it will only adjust when Link starts to run off screen. It's smooth and slow, but not too slow. You can also with the touch of a button (that your finger is probably already on) snap the camera right behind Link's head again. You can also lock onto a single enemy keeping the camera always focused on it. Where WW breaks away from the style of every other Zelda is that hitting the C stick breaks the camera into free mode. By tilting the stick you can rotate the camera all the way around Link, at a speed varying by how much you tilt the stick. By tapping that button again, you return to normal camera. This pretty much allows you to look at whatever you need to or explore your options easily.

All of these problems were fairly moot back in the 2D days, but now 3D has been the standard for a long time, and the player needs to be able to see things (often quickly) in order to succeed. A little extra time and polish on this aspect of your game will keep your player's frustration level down a bit. A lack of time and polish here and your game will be notorious for a bad camera. It's one of those things that usually goes un-thanked when done right, and draws a lot of hatred when done wrong. Just like an IT job.

Look out below! (Or judging by Link's expression, maybe we'd rather not see what's down there.)

Atmosphere

Recently, I finally bought Dragon Age, and more recently I got back into Two Worlds. Layer that with the Everquest II and Dungeons and Dragons Online I've been playing, and that's four RPGs I've had my head stuck in a lot this past week. Quickly switching between the four has not only given me difficulty in remembering which buttons do what right now, and what my character can do, but has really given me stark comparisons between them.

What are the big differences between these games? The answer, as you might expect if you've played any of them, is a lot. In terms of core game play, they actually paint an interesting spectrum of differences. Personally, I love options when it comes to how to build and play a character. Dragon Age comes in last in this area having only three classes to choose from. EQII has 16. DDO only has 11, but you can greatly customize your ability choices within those classes and maintain up to three different classes on one character. Then there's Two Worlds, which has no classes, only skills you put points into at level up. Since you can put your points in any distribution you want, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination and the total number of skills available. With about 40 skills, that's not a small number.

I think that's the reason I keep coming back to Two Worlds, despite my issues with it. All of my friends, who convinced me to buy it on release day with them, wrote it off as a bad game and only a few of them finished it, which is not hard to do. I too was disappointed. I don't call it a bad game, rather I call it: A game with great potential that wallows in mediocrity. What causes the mediocrity? For the most part, the core gameplay is solid, with the foremost issue most run into being repetition. The only real gameplay problems are: 1. Don't make an archer, they are HACKED and can destroy most foes in a single shot. 2. Don't make a sneak attacker, because it's nearly impossible to sneak up on something and then it's very hard to actually hit with the attack. Your character lunges forward often stabbing the air in front of the target, and even if you do kill it the thing screams as it dies drawing all his friends onto you. So much for a silent kill.

But besides those issues, what prevents me from having as much fun as I should with Two Worlds? Why do I play it intensely for two days before I go back to Dragon Age for two months before I touch Two Worlds again? Well, it can't be because you slow down to 5% movement speed if you enter swim mode which you do if your toe so much as touches the water. It shouldn't be the way that 99% of the NPCs in the game serve absolutely no purpose. It's not the way the entire town comes after you after you accidentally pick a lock because you didn't realize the door was locked. It's not that most of the wilderness is boring and pointless to explore. Not that you never make any friends or have companions to help you. Can't be that using illegal magic in street causes no one to bat an eyelash. Nor is it... wait... or is it all of these together? There's so little real interaction with the world around you. You don't feel like you're a part of this world. In short, the atmosphere is lacking.

And this is where we come to the heart of the issue. Any developer will tell you (should tell you) that gameplay is the most important thing in a game. What is the player doing? How is he fighting monsters? How is she solving puzzles? Whatever it is, what drives this game? But there's more to it than that, certainly in an RPG but not necessarily in a typing tutor, how is the player part of the world? Lack of atmosphere prevents a game from drawing the player in. When a player's not drawn in, they tend to lose interest. It's why I keep leaving Two Worlds.

The other side of the atmosphere coin is the world itself. Of course, every world should be different. This also varies by game and genre. A horror game will have a creepy and dark world, while the Care Bears Adventures will have a bright and rainbow filled world. This all should be obvious, but the world should be interesting to help the player feel like they're really there. This should go beyond just having every different area look drastically different, there should be some mystery, make the player want to explore. Why do I still prefer Everquest I to Everquest II? Because, unlike EQII, I saw things every day in EQ that I could not explain how someone had done that. How did she get herself to look like an orc? How did I turn myself into a skeleton? Why is that wheelbarrow looking at me?

In short, the problem that holds back some (too many) games is lack of atmosphere. I can appreciate that the core of the game is great fun, but I want to have fun in the  down time too. There's more to gameplay than just the combat, puzzles, or being scared by zombies. There's also interaction, playing a role (particularly in RPGS, they're called Role Playing Games for a reason), and just plain having fun.

Two Worlds 2, set to release in September, battles with Atmosphere issues!

Will they be fixed in the sequel?

I Can't Do That, It's Against My Alignment

Aligments. Many games have them, RPGs in particular. Alignment usually just boils down to good versus evil. Most of the time, aligment choices are that simple. You can be a good person or a bad person. Some games put a small twist on the terms be renaming them paragon and renegade. Other games, have two aligment axes that they judge you by. Dungeons and Dragons has a good versus evil axis and a lawful versus chaotic axis. This means you can be chaotic good (freespirit who still does the right thing, eg. Robin Hood) or lawful evil (stick to strict guidelines and rule with an iron fist, eg. Sauron), or any other of the nine possible combinations. Fable II has a good versus evil and a pure versus corrupt axes. Unfortunatly, I have never been able to have a corrupt good character or an evil pure character since actions will often shift your alignment on both in the same direction.

Which leads me to the problem with these systems, moral choice systems are bad. It's not that they're a bad idea, but their implementation is often incredibly poor. The frequent problem is that your character is supposed to be the hero of the day (or galaxy) and so the story writers have to come up with contrived reasons that everyone would put their faith in such a bum. Personally, I would not trust someone who murdered three villages worth of people to save the world. At least when I'm good aligned the evil people are smart enough to shoot me on sight.

Speaking of the evil people, where are they? Often times there is no real hub purely for evil people. If there is, all too often it is under supplied and lacking in work and quests compared to the good areas. Which leads to the next problem, it's hard to be evil. I can understand if it's a little more difficult, needing to stick to the shadows in cities and avoiding mercenaries hired to chase you down, but often being evil is outright crippling. Usually in the games where it's not, being evil feels no different than being good. You just get spat on in the street more often.

Some games counter this problem by having you be an evil overlord as the main story of the game, an example case would be the appropriatly named Overlord games. The problem here, is that when the game expects and requires you to be evil, it kinda takes the fun out of it. I enjoy playing evil characters when I'm given a true choice in the matter. When it's all evil all the time, you might as well be playing an all good all the time game.

Then, there's a lack of depth problem. If you want to be the ruler of an evil empire in a game, you go cut someone's head off. If you want to be the ruler of an evil empire in real life, you pretend to be good and benelovent until people trust you, then BAM! You can't do that in a game. Of course, the first counter argument to such a system is that it would be complicated to implement. Well, yeah. Of course it would. People's motivations are complicated and good versus evil is certainly complicated. But, if you could put together a working system based on that, players would appreciate it.

All of these point me towards a statement I think many developers are making (intentionally or otherwise), be a good person. Don't be evil and bad. Well, okay thanks. It's not like my parents didn't teach me that when I was little. It's fine with me if you want to reiterate that, but the problem I have is: why are you holding the flag of ultimate freedom up high when you activly discourage the player from a full half of what that freedom should represent?

Now this Overlord knows how to be evil AND get all the girls!

Bosses - Oh, the (im)possibilities...

Bosses. They are the big nasties of every game. Big and strong, these are the main antagonists of games and provide the player with a more difficult challenge prior to obtaining some goal. If you need to enter ten dungeons to collect the ten Keys of Nature, then you can bet that each dungeon will have a boss right before that key.

The real purpose of bosses is to provide a sense of climax. If the evildoer you've been chasing the whole game is no more difficult at the end than your average orc, the player is going to feel let down. To this end, the boss should be difficult, but not impossible.

Of course, there are two large exceptions to that rule. The first is scripted losses, and the second is super bosses.

A scripted loss goes by many names: automatic loss, unwinnable fight, and supposed to lose fight are a few examples. These fights take a few forms, but as the name implies the main point is that the player is not expected to win the fight. Sometimes the player characters meet a main antagonist early and are wiped out by their power, coming back years later to defeat that person. Golden Sun has the player meet the two main antagonists as small children. They are soundly squished with no chance of winning. Those same two are fought as the final bosses of the game.

Other times, the battle could/should have been avoided. Skies of Arcadia has the player meet the final boss twice before the final confrontation. Both times the player may either surrender to him, or resist. You are supposed to surrender, as the game rewards you with an increase in renown when you do. Resisting neither gives nor takes renown, but you earn a solid thumping and are usually KO'd in one turn by his Silver Eclipse attack. The main character both times advances to attack, but is warned off by another character who knows him and warns that he is too powerful.

The final commonly used fight of this type is one where the player is encouraged and expected to run from the fight. Final Fantasy III has the player investigate Bahamut's lair early in the game. When Bahamut returns unexpectedly and challenges the player, the character all shout "Run Away!" and the player must either select the run command, or get descimated.

Next, we have super bosses. These guys are for the completionists and the players looking to get more fun and challenge from your game. Such bosses are usually completely optional, hard to even get to, and much stronger than the final boss or any other enemy. The fights are characterized by absurd amounts of health, BS attacks, and much frustration on the player's part. My example for you today is Dullahan from Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Notable parts of his battle include: he moves three times per turn, can use a summon which has a high chance to instantly kill all members of your party, can change his weaknesses at will, and can put all of your Djinn in recovery mode. To those of your who don't know what Djinn are, think of it as having a boss strip you of all your equipment, ultimate attacks, and forgetting half your moves and you have to run around picking it all back up and putting it on while he continues to whale on you.

Dullahan. This guy makes it look easy (most of the time anyway). Fight starts at about 1:00 and about 2:56 is where the player has his closest scrape with death.


There is really so much more that can be said about bosses, but this covers most of what can be said about a couple types of them. Make sure you don't bog your player down with too many scripted losses, they'll feel powerless. A game need not include any at all. But most players will appreciate a super boss, and those that wouldn't can simply pass them by.

I never did beat this guy...

Him: "Descend... heartless angel..."

Me: "Aw... CRAP!"

Breaking the Game Illegally - Hacking

Each game has its rules and contraints. These are put in place to keep the game fair and balanced within its gameplay. Such as only having three companions follow you and assist you in combat. Other times, things are done to keep the game within the power of its engine. An example of this would be having corpses decay after two hundred of them are present to prevent overloading the memory of the computer or console.

At the same time, most games are fun for only so long. You beat the game, you're really good at it, and hungry for more. But there's no more to the game and there's been no mention of a sequel yet. So what do you do? You break down those constraints and mess with the heart of the game, you hack it.

By hacking, I don't mean modding. Modding is using the game's builder toolset to make new areas or monsters. I might cover that later, but for now we're talking about what you can do with something like an Action Replay or Codebreaker. These devices directly alter the data read in from the game disk. The results can on one hand be amazing, hilarious, or just plain stupid.

One can (and many people do) use these to give themselves unlimited time or health to breeze through the game easily. I am going to leave those out as I think they're pretty self explanitory and boring to watch. What I am going to look at is some of the more interesting or amusing results of hacking and some of the challenges that people pit themselves against.

First up, and fun one. Many times on a PC version of a game, the developers will leave the console intact in the release version. The console is where all the behind the scenes action takes place in a game. When an NPC gives you an item, the console will display somehting like "player.additem 034bbc45 1". This says, to the player's inventory, add 1 of this item, where the item is referenced by that indescipherable blob of letters and numbers. The developers use the console during development to test things out and bypass bugs until they can be fixed. As I said at the beginning, many times developers leave this in place in the release version. With a little practice and patience, players can learn to use some of the more unique commands to produce interesting results. Here we have Fallout 3. One of the commands is timescale. The timescale is the amount of time that passes in the game for every second of real time. The default is 30, 30 seconds pass in the game every second that you play. Here we have a player messing with the time scale. At first you just see some rather quick night and day cycles, but at about 3:15 he goes inside and observes the "lifestyles" of the NPCs under quickened time. I find it rather amusing.

Warning: This video opens with an epilepsy warning and I believe it. I recommend skipping to 3:15 immediately if you have a problem with flashing lights.


So, there can be a fun side to hacking, and for many people that's the only real goal. They're just trying to squeeze a little more fun out of the game. When hacking a single player game, this is pretty much all it is. When doing so in online multiplayer games, then it can give that player an unfair advantage.

Now, to look at some of the challenges people have set up. Kingdom Hearts II is a particularily good example because the engine is amazingly robust. You can sub bosses in for allies, bringing the ability to fight multiple bosses at once. You can only do so many though, or the game crashes. But you can also fight in areas only seen in cutscenes, use your drive forms (transformation ability) to turn into another character, or give yourself the moveset of one form while appearing in another. Let's look at the results for each of these attempts.

Fighting three of the same boss. Notice that the screen darkens during his ultimate attack, and that it does so for each doing the attack, and that all three do that attack at the same time at one point. Very hard to see.


That same boss (he's a popular one) fought in an area that only appears in the intro scene.


This boss is supposed to be fought with this character using two weapons at once. Instead, he's been hacked to still only use one and can use the drive command to drive into his form where he has two weapons. I particularily enjoy the first time its used and on completion of the effect the boss does the reaction from the cutscene when the player first pulls out two weapons. "Two?!"


And finally, the move set of Final Form on the Antiform. (Sorry he picked Marluxia again to showcase this on. I TOLD you he was popular!)


So, at the end of the day, hacking a single player game is pretty harmless and can add extra entertainment value to a game. Hacking to give yourself tons of cash in an online game is considered quite rude, unfair, and can get you permanently banned. Hacking is something you should do in private on your own time, not in front of others.

Please Hack Responsibly