Category: Games

Cave Story

August 10, 2007
Cool PeopleGames
8 Comments

I’d heard that Cave Story was a stupendous free game from Japanese developer Pixel, but I only recently got around to trying it.

I want you to close your eyes and imagine. You’re ten years old again. It’s Saturday morning in the middle of summer vacation. Just last night your parents finally gave in and bought you that game that all your friends have been raving about for the last month. Your mother isn’t going to bug you; on the contrary, she’s looking forward to having eight uninterrupted hours to herself. You’ve just finished your bowl of Choco-Bombs and you’ve settled in front of the TV with your NES (or SNES, depending on how old you are). You plug the game in and turn on the console, picking up the controller with trembling fingers…

Do you remember? Good. Now go play Cave Story, because it will make you feel that way again.

(Get the Deluxe Package, it’s the easiest way to start playing the game. And use a gamepad if at all possible).

Mass Effect

July 23, 2007
Game DesignGames
10 Comments

I have never been more torn over a game than I am over Mass Effect.

On the plus side, its conversation system was apparently designed by God.

The main character is engaged by an NPC – always a good start. Notice how you quickly and easily direct the tone of the conversation rather than choosing specific dialogue. I love that – those short phrases are much easier to parse on the fly, which keeps the conversation flowing in a natural fashion. It’s not in this video, but you can also do things like cut people off if they’re annoying you by quickly choosing a hostile response.

And then we’ve got the best dynamic acting I’ve ever seen on a video game character. It’s not just the real-time lipsynching, either. Notice how Wrex looks conspiratorially to the side when he says “Now I hear you’re going after Saren” and shakes his head a little when he says, “I’m not in this for the money.” Good voice acting makes it even better. Frankly, any RPG fan that doesn’t feel funny in the pants after watching this video isn’t really an RPG fan.

So what could possibly ruin this game for me? What could possibly make it so that I don’t know if I want to play it?

Try insipid real-time squad-based combat. With Force Powers thrown in.

Ew. Ew, ew, ew. If that doesn’t look a whole lot better when the game ships…

…okay, I’ll still buy it. But it seems like such a shame to come this close to making the ultimate sci-fi RPG and then trip at the finish line.

Riding in Cars with Game Designers

June 25, 2007
Game DesignGamesThe Game Biz
6 Comments

Overheard while driving back from lunch last week:

Game Developer 1: “Hey, is [COMPANY REDACTED] still working on [GAME NAME REDACTED]?”

Game Developer 2: “Has E3 happened yet this year?”

GD1: “No, don’t think so…”

GD2: “Then no.” (grin)

One of the worst things about working in game development is knowing cool stuff and not being able to tell anybody. For instance, I am currently working on The Sims Castaway Stories. I can tell you that because the web site announcing the game is up. I can’t tell you anything else about it. As I’ve mentioned before, since Aspyr Media does almost all contract work, it’s absolutely vital that we not get a reputation for leakage.

I can’t wait for E3 to finally pass so I can tell you about the [COMPELLING FEATURE REDACTED].

What the…I can’t even tell them about that? Damn.

Credit Where It’s Due…

June 4, 2007
Cool PeopleGames
1 Comment

I forgot to mention that the terrible Cybermage audition was provided by Henry Kropf. Thanks, Henry! I’d been looking for that sound file for years.

A Note To All Budding Direct3D Programmers…

May 30, 2007
Game ProgrammingGames
3 Comments

There will come a time when you will need to change a vertex buffer every frame, either to animate something or to do clipping.

You will think, “Well, I could create the vertex buffer at the maximum possible size and then just write data to it every frame, but that would waste memory. It’ll be so much better if I actually delete the old buffer, create a new buffer at the correct size, and then fill it with the new data every frame instead.”

Do not (repeat not) do this, because it causes some video cards to go “Oh, hey, what’r you – wait, I need that – no don’t – AGH I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE!” and crash.

Instead, just create the vertex buffer once at the largest possible size, and then simply write new data to it every frame. Yes, you will waste a little memory, but everybody will be much happier.

I wasted two weeks on that bug. Sigh…

On a happier note, remember Cybermage? That awful, awful game from Origin that I used as a Name That Game! a few weeks back? Well, have I got a present for you.

See, you may ask yourself when you play old games, “Why does the voice acting suck so badly?” Well, it’s because the developers couldn’t hire professionals, so they had to make do with whoever they could find. And while the people they used may not have been impressive, the alternative was something like this.

And yes, I have been assured by an old friend at Origin that the guy giving that take wasn’t joking. He was dead serious. He really thought that performance might get him the part of Necrom. This friend told me that the guy was a bodybuilder and actually did a set of squats inside the recording studio to “get himself ready”.

Obviously he should have done one or two more.

Amber

May 24, 2007
Game DesignGames
5 Comments

A friend of mine on the GameDevelopers IRC channel (#gamedevelopers on irc.starchat.net) watched my video blog about Powermonger and pointed out that Powermonger, like Populous before it, was a real-time strategy game, and wondered why it wasn’t recognized as such in articles about the history of RTS games.

Well, because if you presented these games to modern gamers as RTS games they wouldn’t recognize them as such. Because of amber.

In the early days of game design, practically every game was an experiment. Designers would stalk off into radically new directions using newly developed technologies in an attempt to make something truly unique and thus successful.

The problem is that when a developer really hits on a good permutation of a play style it tends to fix that play style in amber, like the mosquitos in Jurassic Park. It “defines the genre”, and thus games that don’t follow the convention don’t count as being in that genre any more.

Thus, in order for a game to be an RTS, it needs resource gathering, base building, and individual unit control. Doesn’t have all these? It’s not an RTS, even if it’s a strategy game that is played in real-time. Seriously, I ran into people online who claimed that Myth and Myth II weren’t RTS games because they didn’t have resource gathering and base building. “They’re strategy games, and they’re played in real-time, but they aren’t really RTS games,” went the refrain.

I once read an article on Salon where a guy bitched about how Ultima Underworld was the first true 3D game and if it had just been marketed more aggressively and more people had played it, first person games would have been slow and cerebral from then on and we wouldn’t have gone down the run-and-gun path of Doom and Quake. I guess he felt that once Quake was released no one ever did a first-person game that wasn’t a straight shooter ever again (well, except for Underworld 2, System Shock, Elder Scrolls: Arena, Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, Thief 1 and 2, Arx Fatalis, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Morrowind, Oblivion…)

Now, he was an idiot, but the succession of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake really did solidify what it meant to be a first-person game in most gamers’ minds – first-person is for shooting. Games that were first-person but didn’t do shooting tended to feel like odd men out, and sometimes it caused them to suffer in the sales department. It didn’t help that most first-person games that weren’t shooters had terribly obtuse control systems.

But that isn’t unnatural or even unwelcome. It just is. It’s just amber.

Now, I will admit that it may be getting to a fairly ridiculous point. I mean, what am I going to tell people when they ask what kind of game Planitia is? I can’t call it an RTS because that will create a false impression in their minds. I can call it a strategy game, but that word covers everything from Final Fantasy Tactics to Civilization IV so it’s not descriptive enough. If I were going to sell Planitia it would be hard because it would be difficult to market – I can’t describe it accurately enough and fast enough to get a random internet surfer interested in it.

Good thing I don’t plan to sell it 🙂

Planitia Design Pass: The Final Chapter

May 21, 2007
Game DesignGamesPlanitia
4 Comments

In this post I said that Planitia was basically going to be a remake of Populous II.

The problem is that Populous II doesn’t really need a remake. Populous II still rocks. It’s still just as fun now as it was then (and runs well under DOSBox, for those of you interested in trying it out). Yes it does have some minor interface quibbles and yes it’s annoying when you start a new land to discover that your best school of god powers has been banned, but those don’t actually prevent the game from still rocking.

(And I know some people out there are saying, “Minor interface quibbles! The interface on Populous II was just as bad as the one on Populous!” Well, that means that you never hit F7 while playing the game, which changes the interface from this:

Populous: The Beginning

To this:

Populous: The Beginning

Nice, huh? It looks and feels very modern and is much easier to use than the default interface. Populous II was the game where the Bullfrog boys finally figured out how to lay out a GUI.)

Also, remaking Populous II meant giving up on the world simulation that had been a part of Planitia’s design since it’s inception. That felt wrong.

In fact, there’s a lot about Planitia’s design that has been feeling wrong. Planitia as originally designed was going to consist of four elements:

  • A world simulation
  • An economy-building element
  • An RTS element, with direct control over military units
  • World-shaking, screen-destroying god powers

And I am currently unhappy with how every one of those elements feels.

I began to understand this when I was implementing the RTS input scheme. While I wanted direct control over military units in Planitia, I also wanted the RTS elements to be very light. I thought I could get that by trimming down the number of unit types to three, but as I implemented the control scheme for the RTS elements I realized that even with a small number of unit types, the input system was going to be very complicated – and it had to be, because that’s what people would expect. You got band selection? Yes. How about double-clicking a unit to select that unit type across the screen? Yes. Holding shift to add to the current selection? Yes… Assigning groups to function keys? Uh…well…I didn’t want it to be that complex.. Come on, man, how can you leave that out?

This is a YouTube video of master Warcraft III player Grubby doing his thing. Listen to the first minute or so of the match. What you are hearing is everything that is wrong with modern RTS design.

And here I was re-implementing it. It felt tedious and wrong, but what other way was there?

Then I played Powermonger, and my eyes were opened.

Now I’m sure you’re thinking “What the hell?! Viridian, you just completely castigated Powermonger in your video blog!”

True, but Powermonger does some things very right, and one of those things is the General. The General is a single “handle” through which you control your entire army. Thus you do not need to click on each individual unit and tell each individial unit what to do click click click click click. Want to move your army? Click the General and give him a move order; the entire army moves with him. Want to attack something? Click the General, have him attack it. The soldiers in his army are smart enough to just do the right thing in most circumstances. A lot of the player’s work goes away – and a lot of my work goes away as well. No more having to make sure units are far enough apart that they can be individually clicked on. (Because being able to do that is so important…)

Now you might be thinking, “Well, that takes a lot of control away from the player and thus won’t be that fun.” No, it probably wouldn’t be that fun…if that were the only gameplay element in Planitia. But it isn’t. It’s one of a series of elements that will support each other and (hopefully) make for a fun experience.

Playing Powermonger also reminded me of my love of little people. I share Peter Molyneux’s love for little people and I’ve always wanted to make a game that featured them. Thus, the world simulation is coming back. I have no idea how I’m going to do it, but I will do it because I want my own little people. Besides, that technology will really come in handy when I move on to 3D RPG That Really Needs A Name.

As for the economy-building…again, I’m stealing from Powermonger. On every Powermonger map are several pre-created villages, each one running a village simulation. Most of these villages start out neutral and you always start your conquest by finding the weakest one and taking it over.

Hmmm…pre-set villages that provide resources after aligning with a side…sounds like control points to me!

But control points can feel very tug-of-war, and frankly I hate tug-of-war games. So I may make it so that once a village reaches a certain size, people leave it and start another village nearby if suitable terrain can be found (and that’s your job, of course). So while there are initial control points you can also make your own if you can hold out long enough. That feels better. Remember, always give the player a way to trade time for skill (at least against the computer).

It’s weird…these decisions feel good. They feel right. They make me want to work on Planitia full-bore again. Will things change? Probably. But I feel like Planitia’s design has gelled now, which is something I frankly thought would never happen.

And goshwow…

When you know more about what it is you like about these games specifically, then a design will start to form.

You were right, Dave!

I’m Stupid

May 14, 2007
Cool PeopleGames
7 Comments

Holy Crap, why didn’t I think of this?

Your Sinclair – The Rock & Roll Years

April 30, 2007
Cool PeopleGame HistoryGames
2 Comments

One of the best things about the internet is that you’ll occasionally stumble across a site that feels like it was tailor-made to make you happy.

In the past I have bemoaned the fact that the Sinclair Spectrum, Britain’s first popular home computer, never made it big here in the States. This is only natural, really, since it wasn’t released here until after the Apple II and Commodore 64 had already asserted their dominance, and by that time the Spectrum seemed like “too little too late” even though it was cheaper than either of those models.

So finding a website that allows me to vicariously live through the heyday of the Spectrum was wonderful. This website is devoted to the now sadly defunct Your Sinclair magazine, which was to the Sinclair was The Rainbow was to the Color Computer and Run was to the C-64. It was chock-full of reviews, editorials, and hardware and software projects, and eventually started shipping with a cassette full of demos with every issue.

And as if that weren’t enough, the site’s maintainer is also in the process of creating retrospective videos for every year of Your Sinclair‘s existence, and many of these are already online.

Go Speccy!

Notes on the April Austin Game Developers Meeting

April 23, 2007
Cool PeopleFriendsGame DesignGamesThe Game Biz
2 Comments

Okay, a bit of backstory. Austin Game Developers was a group that held monthly meetings for game developers in Austin, and I went to those meetings whenever possible for years. That’s where I heard that excellent talk by Phil Steinmeyer about his work on the Heroes of Might and Magic games and the Railroad Tycoon series and the subsequent creation of PopTop.

But about a year ago AGD lost it sponsor and could no longer hold meetings. Things looked bad for a while, but Austin Game Developers finally managed to respawn as the Austin chapter of the International Game Developers Association. And they just held their first meeting a month ago.

Unfortunately I didn’t know about it, so I missed a talk by one of my favorite programmers, Mike McShaffry. Grrr….

But the grapevine did its job and I heard about this month’s meeting, which would feature a three-person panel talking about how to make video games fun. The panel? Richard Garriott of NC Soft, Harvey Smith of Midway, and Chris Cao of Sony Online Entertainment.

(Yes, yes, I know, go ahead and make your “Sony Online? What the heck do they know about making games fun?” crack.)

The meeting was held at Midway’s Austin studio. Just getting to the front door of Midway is an epic-level challenge, as construction has turned the parking lot into a maze. But once inside I was greeted by a very nice-looking game development space. Clean and well-laid-out, with lots of big conference rooms (one of which sports a beautiful projection TV). Big lounge and kitchen space, big offices. But it doesn’t feel too corporate – it definitely feels like a game studio, with Xbox 360s in practically every room you visit and posters, concept art and toys all over the freakin’ place. The only exception – tiny, tiny cubes. It seems that Midway Austin is growing.

When I arrived the Mingling Period was well under way. I saw several friends of mine whom I hadn’t seen since…well, the last AGD meeting. One of them was the Fat Man; it was great seeing him again. And I discovered that several of my friends whose fate I lamented in one of my video blogs ended up at Midway and seem to be doing just fine.

Then they fed us. The food was good but too spicy for me. I got a free alcoholic beverage and asked for a rum-and-Coke, then I put another can of Coke into it and it was drinkable. (Not trying to slight the bartender; please recall that alcohol doesn’t taste very good to me.)

So there I was, drink in hand, listening to some very good game developers speak. Frankly it was the most fun I’ve had in months, and I’d forgotten how much I missed going to those meetings because I always feel recharged and excited about game development afterwards.

Each person on the panel gave a short presentation on what they thought “fun in games” meant and then the panel took questions from the audience. It was fascinating to see how different these three guys were in their philosophies.

Chris Cao was first. His presentation was shortest and highest-level. His basic message was that you can make fun games by having fun making games and fostering an environment where crazy thinking can happen. He said that one of the imagination-building exercises he used was having every member of his team – no matter what their actual duties – make a board or card game so that they all understood the entire game-making process.

Richard Garriott was next. His presentation could not have been more different than Cao’s; the first slide Richard presented said, “Research, research, research!” Richard’s point was that “fun” is hard to define and a real “lightning in a bottle” quality, so the best thing to do was use rigorous procedures and follow basic rules of software design so that the fun could come out unmarred, if it were there. He talked a lot about things like not obscuring what would have been a fun game by making the actual software too hard to use. He also talked about the tropes that gamers tend to respond well to and understand, like numerology and symbolism.

Harvey Smith was last. His talk was closer to Garriott’s than Cao’s, but he had some unique things to say. He didn’t shy completely away from defining “fun” like Garriott did. Instead he presented a concept by Marc LeBlanc, another designer, called The Eight Kinds of Fun. Harvey seems to definitely subscribe to this philosophy and says that the first step to making games fun is to define which of the eight types you’re going to try to provide for your player.

Once all the presentations were over, they took questions from the audience. Some questions drifted away from the topic but nobody seemed to mind. Richard Garriott got the biggest laugh of the night when he responded to a question about game development funding and return-on-investment by saying, “I made Akalabeth in six weeks after school. The cost of development was zero. It made me about $150,000. That’s effectively an infinite return-on-investment, and somehow it’s all been downhill from there.”

Afterwards we retired to the large conference room with the beautiful projection TV I mentioned earlier to play some Guitar Hero II. The Midway guys had completed the experience by decking the room out with disco balls and strobe lights. It was awesome. Fat challenged me to play a song competitively against him; I accepted, sure that I was going to go down to ignominous defeat. We played “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”, and to my great surprise I kicked his ass even though I’d never played the song before.

And he calls himself a musician…:)

Final note: the official wrap-up of this meeting on the IGDA Austin site is here, and you can download the slides for all three of the presentations from that page. You can also see me if you really really want to; I’m in the third picture. I’m sitting in the front row and wearing a black shirt. I am apparently amusing my friend Jamal Blackwell by doing the hand jive.