Following up on my previous post about the problems with saving, I’d like to continue this with a look at the way a few games handle the various issues that can occur.
Most modern games allow the player to save progress at any time they wish. Gamers do not expect to be thrown back to the start of a level when they fail to complete it, and often this kind of gameplay can lead to players losing interest rapidly.
Giving the player the ability to save whenever they want can also influence the difficulty of a game in ways the developer may not have intended. For example, Splinter Cell Double Agent allows the player to save at any time and this results in the ability to trial and error your way through sections of the game that may have been intended to be much more difficult. The other issue with this mechanic is when developers recognise it as causing a problem, rather than solve the issue by limiting the amount of saves they begin designing level difficulty around this ‘infinite save’ mechanic.
Back in the 80’s games did not have saves. It was pretty rare to even get an option to continue your game in fact. Most games operated under a ‘three lives then your out’ system, with some (Treasure Island Dizzy) opting for just the one life. I have personally witnessed a good friend of mine reach the end of Treasure Island Dizzy only to die as he picked the very last Gold Coin required for completion. At 9 years old swearing is not as fast and thick as it would have been had he done it now, but the disappointment on his face stays with me forever. Of course, a few years later he would have his revenge when I would reach the end of Fantasy World Dizzy, and fearing a death at the hands of a badly timed jump towards a screen containing a dragon (which I might add, I had already subdued but feared perhaps it had awakened in the meantime), I instead chose to blindly leap in the opposite direction only to land in the gears of a lift and lose my one remaining life! I had literally completed the game, all I had to do was make my way to Daisy and I’d have been home free. Needless to say, my friend gleefully reminds me of such gaming disasters whenever the opportunity arises.
Of course, in today’s gaming world the above incident would not be a problem, you would simply load up an earlier save and jump in the other direction. Is this a good thing? Allowing players to prevent the loss of several hours of hard work? Or is it diluting the challenge to a degree that completing it is just not as satisfying as it once was?
I’m a firm believer in risk vs reward gaming experiences. There can be no great reward if the risk is minimal. It is a simple fact of life. If a game holds your hand all the way throughout, allows you to save whenever you want, grants any number of continues, what achievement remains upon completion of the game?
The recent Super Mario Brothers Wii has a feature that allows the console to play the game for you. Today’s Mario experience says “don’t worry, if this bit is too hard for you, we’ll do the work for you”.
Not too long ago there was a huge fuss made over the fact gamers had to complete Guitar Hero in order to unlock all the songs. If I want to listen to a particular song, I have the CD for that.
The worst offender to date (that’s right Alone In The Dark I’m looking at you) allows the player to skip levels entirely. I’m not even kidding, it is advertised as a feature on the back of the box. Don’t want to complete the game? Fine, skip all the way to the end, watch the pretty cut-scenes then put the game away never to be played again. If that is the experience you want, watch a movie. The only barrier to content is sticking around till the end, knock yourself out.
Take a look at the majority of children’s games today on the DS for example. When I was a kid just about everything in a game could and would kill you. A blade of grass, a gust of wind, a pixel to the left of the correct spot and OOPS you’re in the spike pit. Start over.. and over… and over again, till the point that when you did manage to complete the game the achievement was something worthwhile. A challenge met head on and bested. Something to be proud of. My father still fondly recalls clearing every puzzle/difficulty settings of the original Lemmings. A feat that was only achieved over long frustrating nights punctuated with rapid fire swearing. Words I had not heard used in such obscene combinations till years later. But the day he completed it a calm fell over our house, he smiled for weeks and even now, years later, if I should ever remind him of this achievement I can visibly see his eyes glaze over in happiness.
That is fulfilment, that is what we play games for. I know its not a popular thing to say in regards to current attitudes to gaming difficulty, but you didn’t get a medal for just showing up and doing your best in my day.
Assassins Creed 2 is a good example of how tutorials can be worked into a story rather than an optional training session. The game has you play a portion of Ezio’s adolescent life, completing training missions that introduce basic systems such as fighting, looting, and climbing. Some have criticised this as a slow moving section of the game that could have been accomplished in a shorter time, but a writer for AC2 (Corey May) has defended this portion of the game saying it was “necessary to spend time with Ezio as a carefree adolescent”, and that “it needed to be more than a token five minutes”.
In my opinion the starting sequence in AC2 was done very well. While it’s essentially just a tutorial session, it also builds a little back story giving some insight into Ezio’s family life and sets the stage for the main event.
Call of Duty 4 did something similar with the F.N.G opening level, introducing the player to the control system and giving a glimpse into the personalities of the NPC’s you will be fighting alongside. This section ends with a timed run through a mock-up cargo ship that explains some additional controls (rope slide) and kicks off the main story via a cut scene when the course is complete.
Optional tutorials can lead to the player skipping training in order to get to the meat of the game. This is especially true for sequels and returning players as they already know how to play the game from experience and just want to get started. Unfortunately, skipping tutorials can result in missing vital information on new features added to the game. For example, a friend of mine recently completed AC2 without using a single smoke bomb or visiting the fight trainer outside of the required mission to do so. His reasoning was that he knew how to fight from playing the first game. While it’s not really necessary to use smoke bombs or the special moves available from the trainer, it opens up an entirely new way to play. There is always a chance this could negatively affect impressions of the game through no fault of the game designer, not to mention all the work on new features going to waste if players neglect to use them.
I think the most effective game tutorials are integrated into the story in such a way you barely notice they are there. AC2 gradually introduces elements throughout the game in a way that seems a very natural progression of learning skills as the character does. It could have perhaps used a little fine tuning but still a great example of how to work a forced tutorial into story elements.
Terry Cavanagh has a post up on his site Distractionware, talking about how his game VVVVVV, has been leaked on 4chan by someone who donated for beta access.
Firstly, I just want to say this is not some deep pocketed company like EA you are ripping off (not that ripping off EA is any better morally), it’s an independent developer.
Secondly, for the low donation he was asking for (to help fund the projects entry to IGF) you could have played the Beta to your hearts content and helped a small developer at the same time.
Anyone in the comments section claiming they wouldn’t have donated in ‘good faith’ for a game they have never played, you could have tried out any of his previous games to get a feel for the quality. You could have read the impressions posted about the game, or checked out a gameplay video, or looked through the screenshots available.
I keep getting searches for information on how to change rooms in Adventure Game Studio.
It’s quite easy actually, all you need is the following code;
cEgo.ChangeRoom(room number, x, y)
Replace “cEgo” with your character name, change “room number” for the number of the room you want the player to be taken to, and lastly set the x/y co-ordinates you wish the player to appear in the room.
Easy 
Whilst looking for some info and images of the old C64 game, Monty on the Run for a Game Maker project, I came across this great video…
Driving back from the Stewart Lee gig last night, the conversation turned to gaming, retro games we enjoyed, an attempt to list our top 5 games of all time.. the usual stuff. Then someone brought up a very valid point I’d not given much thought to at the time.
Why is it, in Fallout 3, you can do everything right, be the saviour of the wasteland, help out many, many people along your way, basically become a living god in the eyes of Fallouts inhabitants.. but if you so much as swipe a carton of smokes from someones table by pressing the wrong button, then the whole population nearby will mobilise against you and cut you down where you stand. You might have just saved that guys daughter from rape and slavery but if you DARE to take a spanner from his pile on the shelf, you are going to regret it sunshine!
Why is this? A game like Fallout, which does so much right, cant include some variable in the code that deals with this. Surely something as simple as checking the players karma level and adjusting NPC’s reaction accordingly cant be that hard? They obviously have a way of tracking your karma based on the missions you accept and complete.. +10 karma for a ‘good’ quest, -10 karma for an ‘evil’ quest or something? How hard could it be to check that counter and adjust NPC behaviour accordingly?
I don’t know, maybe it’s harder than I imagine, I’ve only barely scratched the surface of coding so I’m not one to call people on this stuff but it’s things like this that can ruin the immersion you have spent so long on and worked so hard to achieve.
If I act like a bastard enough, I expect people to run from me screaming. If I save your family from slavers I expect some understanding if I mistakenly pick a spanner up from your shelf because I hit the wrong damn button.
Had to talk about this a little..
Clarvalon is working on a plugin that:
prepares AGS game files in a way that is suitable for conversion to the Xna Adventure Game Engine(XAGE), in order to play them on the Xbox360 or via a web browser. It is designed to be as straightforward as possible, so the instructions should hopefully be self-explanatory. After copying AGS.Plugin.ExportToXAGE.dll to the AGS Editor executable directory, a new option should appear on the toolbar, ‘Export -> Prepare game for XAGE‘:
You can read more about this at the AGS forum thread, or at Clarvons blog.
As you can imagine with me starting my own AGS project, I’m very interested to see how this progresses.
Hand drawing sprites is bloody tedious! No wonder so many people just recolour existing characters in games and reuse them.
Lots of progress on the point-and-click game yesterday. Rough outline laid out with a handful of detailed scenes, objects, characters. Got a few backgrounds sorted and the sprites for the main character movement are now in place. Can start messing around with room scripts now.
If anyone is looking to use Adventure Game Studio, a great set of video tutorials can be found here
I’ve not vanished again. Far from it.
Lately I have been learning C#, and dabbling with Game Maker 7 on and off. I’m planning to pick up enough C# to move to XNA then start putting together some simple games for windows. If all goes well I’ll probably pick a license up for the Xbox side of things and try my hand at that.
As I mentioned, while I’m learning C# I am also playing around with a few projects using various ‘game making’ software available around the internet, mainly Game Maker right now but I also have a point-and-click style project planned for Adventure Game Studio too.
Game Maker is a perfect program for the hobbyist game maker. The software features lots of drag and drop commands making it fairly easy to jump in with both feet and start knocking basic games together. After following the tutorials provided on the Game Maker homepage (http://www.yoyogames.com/) you should be able to put together simple top-down shooters and platform games in no time. For a glimpse at the sort of things Game Maker is capable of, take a look through the submitted games section – http://www.yoyogames.com/browse
Ignore the numerous Pokemon clones, Mario rip-offs, Metroid-em-up submissions and you will find some pretty decent games. Spelunky is a good example of the type of quality you can obtain from Game Maker with the appropriate work and dedication. According to the games site, the creator is porting it over to XNA for release on the Xbox 360 Live Arcade section which should give hope to any armchair enthusiast. Best of luck Derek, hope Spelunky does well!
The other program I have been briefly playing around with is the Adventure Game Studio. I’ve barely scratched the surface of this so I cant offer much information right now but as soon as I get more into it I will post some updates. Again, you can find plenty of examples of what is possible using this software in the submitted game section. The games submitted by Yahtzee (ZeroPunctuation) are well worth checking out for a good idea of what is possible with AGS.
Twitter: Eckyman
