tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52082126182586840902024-03-13T20:43:57.512-07:00AuroraBlog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.comBlogger244125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-74244494873700192612013-11-18T10:58:00.000-08:002013-11-18T10:58:00.308-08:00Four months after Amnesia's release<a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzd8f-84pcGWY2dsaf_wZPrzJDpLJZcp0sZwUme9dQWBwoByLIDbrbJ41S2iEWpakO3YYyRU0OmrrVuVFjZ5nXxb4jDSi91ign716WYmLH8j7ha3xnbw6287AfrliY7rIrV7OGhOPutW64/s1600/amnesia.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 416px height: 231px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzd8f-84pcGWY2dsaf_wZPrzJDpLJZcp0sZwUme9dQWBwoByLIDbrbJ41S2iEWpakO3YYyRU0OmrrVuVFjZ5nXxb4jDSi91ign716WYmLH8j7ha3xnbw6287AfrliY7rIrV7OGhOPutW64/s400/amnesia.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5559392938538645314" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Introduction</span><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://www.frictionalgames.com/">Frictional Games</a> have now officially existed for virtually specifically 4 years (4 years and 7 days to be precise), <a target="_blank" href="http://amnesiagame.com/">Amnesia: The Dark Descent</a> is our fourth game and it is now four month because we released it. Simply because of this we believed it was time for another round-up of sales and other stuff that has happened.<br /><br />Those who have read our two <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/10/one-month-after-amnesias-release.html">earlier </a><a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/09/one-week-after-release-of-amnesia.html">reports </a>might have noticed a little trend of the later getting a small bit a lot more good than the earlier. This post will not be an exception and we can happily announce that issues are hunting far better than ever for us. Summarizing all sales given that release really puts us in a state that we by no means imagined becoming in.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Sales</span><br />Let's start with what I guess men and women are most interested in - sales. When counting all online sales as properly a the Russian retail copies, we have now sold virtually <span style="font-weight: bold">200, 000 units</span>! This is a tremendous amount and more than we ever thought we would. Our "dream estimates" before release was some thing around 100k, and to be capable to double that feels insane.<br /><br />Note that more than half of these units have been sold at a discounted price (with as much has 75% of the cost off), so the total earnings are not as a lot as it first sounds. Nonetheless, we are in incredible great financial circumstance right now. Also, the daily sales are nevertheless fairly higher and the typical has not dropped below 200 units but. This signifies that we can nevertheless spend all everyday charges from these sales alone, enabling us to invest the other earnings into the future (for outsourcing, PR, and so forth). It also gives us a healthier buffer and permit us to handle any unexpected happenings the future may possibly hold.<br /><br />With these figures at hand, we need to confess that it offers us new self-confidence for the Pc. The sales that we have had (and are getting) are much more than enough to motivate developing a game with the Computer as the principal (and even only) platform. Based on what we have seen, the on the web Pc industry is just obtaining larger and bigger, and we are convinced we are far from the end of this development. We feel that other developers that consider creating their game exclusive to a console might want to believe once again.<br /><br />Even so, our sales have not been common and it is protected to say that we have earned more than most other indie Pc games. We have been really fortunate with our media coverage and gotten tons of totally free PR (much more on this later), some thing that has drastically influenced our sales compared to other titles. As proof of this, in the <a target="_blank" href="http://store.steampowered.com/">Steam </a>sales charts we have been amongst the best 3 games for Adventure and Indie categories virtually the complete time given that release, frequently swiftly above a lot of of the games that have been released right after ours. With this we do not seek to discourage other people from producing Computer games, we are just saying that 200k units is not something that should be anticipated soon after four months of sales of an indie game. The market place does continue to grow even though, and it may well not be lengthy ahead of these kinds of numbers are deemed completely standard.<br /><br />There is an additional truly important factor that requirements to be taken into account: If we have had a publisher and sold according to existing figures, we would not be in the state that we are in now. Far more most likely, we would now be anything much more like our <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/09/one-week-after-release-of-amnesia.html">1st sales summary post</a>. We would probably just have paid back our advance, and just recently been receiving royalties (at a much decrease rate, like 25% of what we get now). This signifies that we would most likely be searching for a new publishing deal at this point instead of possessing the freedom we now have. This does not mean that publishers are evil, just that 1 must believe very carefully ahead of signing up for something. Releasing a game with out any financial backing or assist with advertising is quite a struggle, but if you pull it off it is well worth the work!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Media and PR</span><br />Whilst we attempted to make as significantly noise as possible at the release of the game, our advertising efforts have been far from large. Our major tactics have been to spread film clips from the game, releasing a playable demo and to send out evaluation copies. We feel that most of this paid off as a lot as we could have hoped for, with great responses to trailers, players liking the demo and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/amnesia-the-dark-descent/critic-reviews">great evaluations</a>. Nonetheless, a lot of PR came from a fairly unexpected source, namely from user generated content material.<br /><br />An concept that we threw around just before release was to have some sort of audience reaction footage, like <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8TmdNVK1Nk">Rec </a>and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LfV7SGA-2o">Paranormal activity</a> trailers have had. Obtaining also significantly to do, we just left the thought lying and by no means did something about it. However, shortly after the release of Amnesia players made their own videos with <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEroDNc0fzQ">precisely this content</a>! The extent that these have spread is fairly remarkable, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loSzpvq73FY">one video</a> possessing 775k views at the time for writing. That is almost a million views! And without any cats!<br /><br />As we have now entered a new year, there have of course been a lot of awards. What is additional exciting about that is that we actually have been gotten a few! Just lately we got three nominations for <a target="_blank" href="http://igf.com/2011/01/2011_independent_games_festiva_11.html">Independent Games Festival</a>, some thing that we are really thrilled about. Yahtzee of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation">Zero Punctuation</a> fame was type sufficient to name Amnesia his forth best game of the year. <a target="_blank" href="http://elder-geek.com/2011/01/the-elder-geek-com-2010-game-of-the-year-awards/">Elder Geek awarded us</a> Computer Game of the year which was quite unexpected. IGN <a target="_blank" href="http://bestof.ign.com/2010/overall/">is presently nominating us for greatest horror game of the year</a> and also awarded us very best horror and coolest atmosphere for Pc. Lots of other awards have been offered as well and we are incredibly pleased about this kind of response!<br /><br />How has these awards and nominations been us PR sensible? Regrettably it is a bit tough to say as all have been announced in the course of the Christmas sales, a time when sales exactly where a lot higher than usual. Now when it is more than, we do see around a 75% increase in day-to-day sales compared to prior to the Christmas sale began. We think the awards and nominations are part of this improve, but the increase in new players throughout the holidays have almost certainly also helped spreading the word and enhance the sales.<br /><br />What we can tell even though, is that the awards and nominations gotten us far more consideration from the media. Specially following the IGF nomination we have gotten a lot of mails concerning interviews, evaluation requests and comparable. So even if these kind of factors are not critical for present sales, they can prove very crucial for the future of our business.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Existing scenario and future</span><br />So certainly Amnesia has been a large success for us at Frictional Games, but what does it mean for us as a business? First of all, we are now completely financially steady and have sufficient income to total our subsequent game with no any troubles. It also implies that for the very first time in our lives we can in fact get decent salaries, anything that I personally would never believed would be feasible. This means that Frictional Games is no longer a struggling endeavor that we will continue until our energy runs out. Alternatively Frictional Games has now become a correct profession, revenue provider and something we hope to continue for a lengthy time forward. Compared to how we felt just a couple of months ago, frequently contemplating receiving "proper jobs", this is quite a superb change!<br /><br />Our financial predicament also implies that we are in a position to take some amount of risk. Even though we of course do not aim to go crazy, it signifies that we can try out new issues without having danger of going bankrupt. It also means that we may have signifies to release a new game far more frequently than every single other or third year. We have some ideas on how to strategy this, and are really in the approach of trying some things out.<br /><br />As for our plans to concentrate on consoles, as hinted above, this is one thing we are reconsidering. If on-line sales figures continue like they have with Amnesia, there is truly not any purpose for us to release to anything but Computer. Nevertheless, it would be foolish not to attempt consoles out and our existing thought is to function collectively with a third party to do a port. This would mean that we can still can hold a small staff and not risk growing beyond our capabilities.<br /><br />We are also hard at function with our new game which we are very excited about. Although we nonetheless do not want to disclose to considerably, our purpose is to take "knowledge based gameplay" to yet another level. We aim to use the emotions that Amnesia was capable to provoke and to concentrate them in a distinct path, which will hopefully give delightfully disturbing benefits.<br /><br /><br /><br />Lastly, a huge thanks to everyone who have supported us more than the years, played our game, spread the word, produced crazy videos, and so on. We hope you all will continue to support is into the future!Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-19590390378565596612013-11-18T08:44:00.000-08:002013-11-18T08:44:00.874-08:00Where is your self in a game?<span style="font-weight: bold">Introduction</span><br /><a target="_blank" style="" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz31NgMMexlOiEMPqtT9WkwUd9rPFp5UovNPWY_J2b0VjR22udgiUOoc3QbM8QLKcXrnf_b-ydFLapuzQf1cqFHyo2RJ7w0W0xS69I4OzOHSaSmXTk5CJMIFWX0-EdfWvUYEwIaDA6FfGY/s1600/sci_ill_mirror.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px float: right cursor: pointer width: 247px height: 327px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz31NgMMexlOiEMPqtT9WkwUd9rPFp5UovNPWY_J2b0VjR22udgiUOoc3QbM8QLKcXrnf_b-ydFLapuzQf1cqFHyo2RJ7w0W0xS69I4OzOHSaSmXTk5CJMIFWX0-EdfWvUYEwIaDA6FfGY/s400/sci_ill_mirror.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511671243234314930" border="0" /></a>When you are playing a videogame, an external observer will probably say that you are sitting in a sofa or at the personal computer desk. But is this actually exactly where <span style="font-style: italic">you </span>are? When immersed in the virtual planet of a videogame, do you still really feel that you are sitting on a chair or in a sofa, staring at the screen?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">An experiment</span><br />Ahead of moving on, I would like you to contemplate a straightforward experiment. You can very easily do it with the help of a friend if you got the right prop: a rubber hand. Put your own hand next to the rubber one particular on a table, and spot a screen amongst them, shielding your personal hand from view. Now ask your pal to stroke the fake and genuine hand at the very same time, at the very same spot. Some thing strange will now occur. Your body image will alter, and the rubber hand will turn out to be element of you. As your friend touch both hands, you will really feel as if the feeling arise in the rubber one. All of a sudden, you will have produced an external object, turn out to be portion of your self!<br /><br />With this experiment in thoughts. The question of exactly where <span style="font-style: italic">you </span>are becomes a lot more intriguing. When playing a game, exactly where do you transport your self to? Does it depend on what the game is about and from what viewpoint it is played from?<br /><br />I believe this is not only an interesting curiosity, but a quite essential part of the experience. Identifying where the player is when playing, can be very helpful. And even a lot more critical, being in a position to "location" the player correctly is a really valuable ability.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Spectator or something else?</span><br />Let's start simple and explore movies very first. In motion pictures there is no interaction, so surely you must be a spectator to each scene in a film. A clear instance of this, is when you see a horror film and have one of those "don't go in there!"-moments. This clearly puts you in a spectator seat, treating the actor as a separate entity.<br /><br />Nevertheless, items does not get so polarized in other circumstances. Consider a gruesome torture scene or similar. These can get virtually unbearable to watch and blurs the line in between yourself and the actor. The reason why this is so is simply because of anything referred to as mirror neurons (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0pwKzTRG5E">right here </a>is a good video on the subject). What these do is to make you copy emotions from other folks, replicating some of their sensations. A single could even argue that they expand yourself, no longer limiting it to your own physique.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Interaction added</span><br />Let's go back to games now. As we can see there are two forces at function: we can trick our brain into extending the physique image and we have specialized neurons that copy other people's feelings. How these will impact us will rely on what kind of videogame we are playing.<br /><br />A single of the significant differences among games nowadays is the viewpoint, ie 1st or third person. Does this matter? Very first person areas you inside a character, putting your viewpoint exactly where it generally is. This increases the feeling of becoming the character. In third individual, you are removed from reality, and look upon your self as if in some type of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience">OBE</a>. This might make a single feel 1st person is superior, nonetheless, this only applies to the sense of sight. One more essential sense is the <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception">proprioceptic </a>1, which keeps track of your various body components. When in 1st individual, you see at most a hand or two, while in third-person gives you a complete physique image to copy. Third individual can also give your mirror-neurons a lot more to function with, like facial expressions. So based on the kind of actions you carry out, first or third will have a distinct feeling of <span style="font-style: italic">being</span>.<br /><br />Also worth noting is how very easily we shift in between different states. For example, in Silent Hill 2, I feel really considerably connected to James when I run around town. Then when entering a cut-scene, I sort of float out of him and grow to be distanced. I am no longer in manage of the character and no longer part of him. Then when controls comes back I when a lot more float inside him and the virtual characters becomes an extension of my own body once again. This kind of movement happen in just about all games.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">The roles we play</span><br />Now that we have explored how the self can shift position as we play a videogame, an intriguing query arise: What is the player's function in these distinct positions? As videogames contain interaction not only do you charge,l to various degrees, portion of the on-screen character, you also handle her/him/it. What does this make the player? Some kind of puppet master? An devil/angel on the shoulder? And far more importantly, can the part assumed, change how the game is played?<br /><br />In most games, you do not control all actions in a game, but mainly give general commands. You tell your character to jump, but not how a lot force to use and so on. You command a character to choose up an item, but have no manage more than any finer movements. This is not that far off from genuine life though, as most of your day-to-day movements are created with no any conscious believed besides the believed of initiating them. This means that creating a character jump by pressing a button provides you a quite close connection. In these situations, you may well really feel like you <span style="font-style: italic">are</span> the character.<br /><br />However, not all games have this close connection. Think about an adventure game exactly where you just choose a destination for the character or decide on in between prefabricated lines of dialog. What part does this give the player? Some type of guardian angle - a guiding voice inside the protagonist's head? Does this modify the way that the player consider of the character and how to interact with the game? Perhaps this role-assignment distances the player emotionally from the game's protagonist?<br /><br />It is exciting that some games in fact explicitly give the player a role. This is very widespread in adventure games, where the protagonist may look at the player and straight address her. Do developers actually take into account how this can influence the placement of the player's self? I should confess I have not thought about this until quite not too long ago and have not heard of a lot of discussing it.<br /><br />I believe it is quite critical to make a decision where the player is and what her part is. If this is not coherent than it might have a unfavorable effect on how the player pick to interact with the game's planet. If you know your function in the game, it gets easier to be immersed in it and know how to behave. This does not imply that the assigned role and placement of self needs to be the same all through, but that it should be constant with what requirements to be carried out. A basic instance of when this goes wrong is rapid-time-events in the course of reduce-scenes. This can be really confusing at first, as you have just gone from becoming the character (in typical play mode) and gone to spectator mode (when cut-scene is playing). All of sudden you are necessary to handle the character, anything that is not coherent with your existing function.<br /><br />This shift in placement also explains why emotional moments can be challenging to get appropriate in reduce-scenes. As you enter a cut scene you move over to "spectator mode" and all of a sudden you are no longer as connected to the character as prior to and do not care as much. JPRG:s like <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII">Final Fantasy 7</a> have it simpler right here, as the standard gameplay is more close to a "spectator mode" and therefore the distinction is smaller sized when getting into a reduce-scene. Exact same goes for a game like Heavy Rain. An crucial thing to note right here is that contrast in position appear to play a enormous function. When there is a violent shift in the place of self, it is very noticeable and the emotional connections are lost.<br /><br />Finally, I also want to add that the very same game, can have players assume very diverse roles to themselves. A excellent, although a bit extreme, instance of this, is a recent <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6100/a_journey_across_the_main_stream_.php">Gamasutra article</a>, exactly where the writer let his mother-in-law play the <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_%26_Max_Save_the_World">new Sam and Max</a>. The interesting element is that she did not release she could or <span style="font-style: italic">ought to </span>handle the characters. She just assumed (probably from lessons learned from experiencing other media) that she ought to be in spectator mode. One must have this in thoughts when designing a game and tutorials for it, and not just assume that a player knows what role they play.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Our take on this</span><br />Place of self and the part of the player is anything that I have not genuinely believed about till we exactly where creating Amnesia. I would consequently like to talk about how <a target="_blank" href="http://www.penumbragame.com/">Penumbra</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://amnesiagame.com/">Amnesia: The Dark Descent</a> differ in this aspect. As a lot of thought have gone into generating the player turn into the protagonist in Amnesia, it has had a diverse focus compared to Penumbra.<br /><br />In Penumbra, Philip narrated all the scenes, yet in regular gameplay the player very considerably was component of the character. As these narrations are very subtle, it offers a bit of schizophrenic impression. For example, at one point Philip comments that he does not like spiders upon seeing a single scuttle by. What happens right here is that we are forcing quite specific emotions on the player who will either accept or reject them. If rejecting them, it implies a huge shift in the position of the self and Philip stops becoming a component of you. From being component of the planet yourself, you are lowered to being a passenger inside Philip's head. As talked about just before, this contrast can be extremely negative for the immersion and the emotional connection.<br /><br />In Amnesia, our goal is for the player to turn into the protagonist. This is essential for the story and expertise as a whole. Since of this, there are never any words spoken, and there are no Daniel-subjective comments. We hope that this will location the player's self inside the physique of the protagonist, and to believe about what "I am carrying out" and not what "Daniel is carrying out". Our hope is that when you encounter details about Daniel's past, it feels like your personal forgotten memories. I know this is not an simple factor, and I am not confident numerous players feel this way. There is also the problems of adding smaller sized cues like breathing and heartbeats. Given that these are actions that are not totally beneath our manage, it is not incoherent to force them onto the player, but only if the player accepts it. Judging from player comments so far, there are men and women on each sides and possessing it in is a bit risky (we are actually pondering of having them optional in the future due to the fact of this).<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Finish note</span><span style="font-weight: bold">s</span><br />There is a lot more to discover, but did not want to make an currently lengthy post longer. So consider this as just a discussion starter and a brief introduction on the subject.<br /><br /><br />Now I am really interested in hearing how you really feel about this! What part do you really feel that you play in different games? Please share your experiences!Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-57778027750259432322013-11-18T06:47:00.000-08:002013-11-18T06:47:00.121-08:00Thoughts on Heavy Rain<a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigUFgvhEtMcaHxLLNu06E3Rk6dhFaBpN13gJOtD2d_m1tgl5Eq0U6Eo9Xdom6oCcuUW2zzBZAZoAFv_NKdnhHmgvRQ5TXsRrTJNZ6wK-ppfuUDf1iDu0pkLSNinOUFrgcGjOx1UCZFlxXj/s1600/heavy-rain.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigUFgvhEtMcaHxLLNu06E3Rk6dhFaBpN13gJOtD2d_m1tgl5Eq0U6Eo9Xdom6oCcuUW2zzBZAZoAFv_NKdnhHmgvRQ5TXsRrTJNZ6wK-ppfuUDf1iDu0pkLSNinOUFrgcGjOx1UCZFlxXj/s400/heavy-rain.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5670029450587090162" /></a><div><b style="font-size: large; ">Introduction</b></div><div>It is very easy to talk bad about <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Rain">Heavy Rain</a>. One can say it is just an interactive movie where you press buttons at certain key moments, in rare cases changing the outcome of the story. One can talk about the hole and cliche filled story and the weakly developed characters*. One can talk about this and other negative aspects of the game and I would fully agree. But if one only focuses on these areas, there is plenty of really interesting aspects that are missed.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>Despite all these flaws I really enjoyed playing Heavy Rain. Sure, the quick-time-events (QTE:s) really got me worked up on more than one occasion and a lot of other issues bugged me, but on the whole it was quite an engaging experience. There are some truly tense and disturbing moments in the game that work great. For example the scene at the mall, while lame in many ways, managed to capture the protagonists sense of panic and that in an environment and setup I have never seen in a game before. The game also features great graphics, nice music and not too shabby acting (for most of the time anyway, and once you get used to the uncanny valley feel). The game also lets you be in situations that I have never seen outside of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction">Interactive Fiction</a>.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>What really made the game interesting though was not the things that I liked, but the things that are slightly broke. Because of the way that QTE:s work, being a quite fragile system in terms of immersion, it sort of exposes your own usually hidden thought processes as you play the game. Also, the game's filmic nature and focus on a branching narrative makes it a virtual smorgasbord of game design theory to try out. This is what truly makes Heavy Rain worth playing.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Immersion as an essence</b></span></div><div>By far, the most important realization I got when playing Heavy Rain is how interaction is not mainly about giving the player interesting choices. When playing the game I never felt the need to make choices on the basis of seeing what would happen, instead I simply wanted the characters to act in certain ways in order to confirm to my expectations of how I thought they would (and should) be acting. What I think happens is that as we interact in a videogame, there is feedback loop between us sending input to the game and us getting information back from the game (in the form of visuals, audio, etc), which builds the basis of us feeling present inside the game's virtual world. The better this loop works, the more we feel as a part of the experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>Heavy Rain is an excellent example of this process at work. When there is flow in the controls (which is usually in the scenes giving you direct character control, such as the early mall sequence), there is a very satisfying feeling of being one with the character. Then suddenly some weird QTE pops up and you either fail at completing it, or it simply does not give the result you expected, and once again you are pulled out of your sense of presence. The game is littered with moments like this, pulling you in and the throwing you back out. When Heavy Rain manages to sustain the belief of you having agency over the character, that is when the game is at it best. These are the occasions when there is a very strong loop of interaction going on and you are the most present inside the game's world. When this loop is broken, it does not matter what kind of interesting choices you might have at your disposal. The game immediately becomes less engaging the moment the loop of interaction breaks down.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>In this light of thinking, QTE events make perfect sense. It is simply a rudimentary system for trying and sustain a feedback loop during various types of scenes. It is not about setting up a competition for the player, it is just a very blunt and unreliable system to sustain a sense of presence. I really doubt that QTE:s is the way to do narrative art in videogames, but it does gives us invaluable information on how to proceed.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>What all this seem to indicate is that a videogame that wants to<a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/10/story-what-is-it-really-about.html"> tell a story</a>, should not use interaction to deliver a multitude of choice, but instead to reinforce the feedback loop of immersion. This might entail having choice, but the choices in themselves are not what is of the most importance, giving a very sharp focus on how to design the mechanics. It may actually be that the very future of making artful games with focus on narrative is to focus on this interactive loop of immersion. There is a lot more to discuss on this subjects and there are other things that also points in this direction. I am hoping to devout an entire post on that subject soon, so consider this a taste of things to come.</div><div><br /></div><div>A final note: This "interaction as a means to create immersion" does <b>not</b> imply that the future of videogames are incredibly linear interactive cinema -far from it. In many cases a non-linear and open game world is essential in order to support the feedback loop. </div><div><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span">The importance of determinism</span></b></div><div>In most games you have a pretty strong sense of what the protagonist will do when a button is pressed. Not so in Heavy Rain. Apart from direct movement and a few repeatable actions (like be able to shout your son's name in the mall scene), most of the time icons just pop up with vague hints on what the input will achieve. Sometimes you will learn what action might happen (such as that an up-arrow at a railing will mean that you will lean against it), but this takes a bit time and requires that a similar action has already been carried out.</div><div><br /></div><div>In many cases this has a drastic reduction on the sense of presence. For one, it makes you unable for you to form plans. Simply by surveying an environment you cannot determine a course of actions (even if you know all trigger spots), and during action sequences it gets even worse as QTE:s may up at any moment in pretty much unguessable form. Making up plans is one of the basic corner stones of human intelligence, and possible <a target="_blank" href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/03/14/why-did-consciousness-evolve-and-how-can-we-modify-it/">the reason we developed a conscioussness</a>, so not having the option of doing this is a hard blow against the sense of agency. Another reason it reduces immersion is that your character might not act in the way you intended. Before picking an action you almost always makes some kind of assessment of what will happen, but it is quite likely that this will be dead wrong. Thus the character your are supposed to feel a connection to, ends up performing an action that you did not intend. Of course, it is very hard to feel as a part oft he game's world when this happen.</div><div><br /></div><div>This system stands in stark contrast with how <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2011/10/thoughts-on-limbo.html">Limbo </a>works, where you are pretty much always certain of exactly what will happen. I think this is very much connection in the level of immersion Limbo manages to have throughout (unless you get stuck in trial and error of course), and how Heavy Rain stumbles through the entire experience. One should not be too hard on Heavy Rain though as the space of interactions that are possible to perform throughout the game by far outnumber those in Limbo. The real challenge for the future is to coming closer to multitude of actions in Heavy Rain, but still having the determinism of Limbo.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>The understanding between Player and Videogame</b></span></div><div>Another big problem in Heavy Rain, which is related to the point above, is that the game sometime seem to work against you. It might seem obvious that this is a dealbreaker in terms of immersion and I have already discussed <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/01/when-focusing-on-fun-fails.html">the problem of camera control in Dead Space Extraction</a>. The issue can be a bit more subtle though and Heavy Rain serves as great example of this. For instance, in one scene I had made a plan of actions: to first bandage an unconscious person and then to poke around in his stuff. There really was nothing hindering me from doing so but instead the game removed my ability to interact directly after caring for the person. The game interpreted me wanting to help the guy as I also did not want to poke around, thinking that they two were mutually exclusive actions. Of course I thought otherwise and considered it no problem at all to do some poking afterward.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are plenty of situations like this and it makes it quite clear that you should never move ahead on a bigger outcome from a choice without being certain that this is also what the player expects. I also see this as a problem of having major choices the player in a game that lack a high level simulation (like Fallout for example). Just the simple action of walking out a door can have many different meanings to a player, and one needs to be careful and make sure that most players have same idea of what it means. Once you throw branching paths into the pot, it gets a lot more complicated and clashes between player and game is much more likely to happen.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span">Emotional Simulation</span></b></div><div><div><div><div>An interesting aspect of Heavy Rain that I have not seen (at least not this directly) in any other game using QTE:s (or normal mechanics for that matter) is to trick the player into feeling certain emotions. The way it works in the game is that the player is forced to hold down a lot of buttons at the same time, while often also moving the stick around. This creates an uncomfortable and demanding way to hold the controller in, which is meant to simulate the way the onscreen character feels. While it might sound a little dodgy, it works quite well in many cases, especially in a scene containing self-mutilation.</div><div><br /></div><div>The research behind this kind of response is actually <a target="_blank" href="http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/07/07/misattribution-of-arousal/">very well established</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/post_view.php?index=7977">designer Chris Pruett has hypothesized</a> that the effect is probably a reason why many unforgiving horror games turn out to be extra scary (a design decision that comes <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-trial-and-error-will-doom-games.html">with other problems</a> though). The way it works is that we humans often do not know why we are feeling a certain way and unconsciously project it onto something else. For instance one experiment had people thinking that arousal due to their fear of heights was due physical attraction instead. </div><div><br /></div><div>All is not good with this design in Heavy Rain though. Because the inputs you perform are not fluent (as it is prompted on a situational basis) and non-deterministic (as explained above) you are mostly very conscious of what you are doing with the controller. If the controls where more transparent (like in Limbo) you would be less conscious of your input, and any uncomfortable placement of the hand is much more likely to be projected into whatever the protagonist is doing. I think this can be very potent stuff if handled properly and let the player get immersed in experiences that would be hard to simulate in any other way.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span">Trial and error</span></b></div><div>Heavy Rain boasts that it does not have any game over screen, but it still manages to have is massive amounts of trial-and-error. This time the forceful repetition of events does not only occur in death threatening situations though. In Heavy Rain it often happens during extremely mundane actions like brushing your teeth and taking a shower. It is an extremely good example why this sort of design is so immersion destroying. From believing that you are playing an actual living character, the sudden requirement to repeat an event pulls you out from the experience directly. It is so obvious that you go from trying to become present in a virtual world to just trying and overcome a very mechanical task. </div><div><br /></div><div>I think the biggest problem is that Heavy Rain is very sensitive in how you complete the QTE sequences. Let go of a button for a micro seconds and it results in an instant failure. When the game gets rid of so many other stigmas of old game design, it is sad to see it stuck in this one. I think the way it should have done it is to become a little bit more relaxed and to allow some more failures. Instead being competitive-like and very strict in the actions, it should instead check if the player tried enough to do something. As long as the players are playing along, I see no reason for punishing them. The game should have tried to keep the illusion of an interactive-feedback loop alive for as long as possible, instead of simply breaking it at the slightest incorrect input.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span">Some misc points</span></b></div><div>Now for some shorter stuff that I found interesting:</div><div><ul><li>When done right, the direct and free control method is by far the more immersive. However it also puts a lot of pressure on the character reacting in a proper way. Quite often, the character I was controlling ended up acting like a moron, walking into walls and the like, even if I really tried hard to control him properly. The constrained events do not suffer this problem, and have the characters act much more lifelike, but at the same time they do not have the same level of interaction required for deep sense of presence.</li><li>Heavy Rain is at its best when simulating tightly space and time-wise bounded scenes. At these points it was much easier to give me a sense of having agency and to let me become one with the moment. The scenes self-mutilation, pushing through a crowd, escape from bench in cellar, etc are all great examples of this. Judging from what seemed to have worked best in Amnesia, I think a lot can be gained by taking this design further.</li><li>The game is a great test bed for a game that has decisions with big ramifications, such as the death of main characters. My own conclusion from Heavy Rain is that all of these choices are probably unneeded and did not gain me much except the sense of missing out on the story. Interestingly, Heavy Rain feels quite different in this regard from a game like Fallout (with the, as mentioned, more higher level narrative simulation).</li><li>Achievements (trophies on the ps3) really suck in story-centric game. Having gone through a scene and then getting a sort of grade, really removes the ability to make up your own mind of what just took place. It is quite similar to the "understanding between player and game" problem, as achievements has a high risk of going against the player's intentions (and does not really help gain anything).</li></ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>End notes</b></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">As I think this post shows there are many reasons why Heavy Rain is a really interesting game to play. It does a lot of things that other videogames do not even dare to consider, and while it kind of fails on a lot of it, just attempting it is an important step on the way. If only more mainstream games were like this.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Also, after playing through Heavy Rain I have come to wish that there were more games like it. By that I do not mean more games with QTE:s (which I really hated much of the time) but games that allows the player to always progress and focus on a rich narrative experience. In most other games I either have to endure annoying puzzles or have to become an accomplish in a genocide. Given the high scores the game has gotten </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; ">(from press and the public)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "> I do not think I am alone in this. Please do not see this as an urge for people to copy Heavy Rain though, but instead to use the game it as a step towards something that truly makes use of the medium.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span">*Emily short has a really good essay on the story of Heavy Rain. Check it <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2010/04/column_homer_in_silicon_qte_la.php#more">here</a>.</span></i></div>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-80609374565673371652013-11-18T03:45:00.000-08:002013-11-18T03:45:00.506-08:00On Versioning (or how the simplest thing can save you from the hardest
pain)<div style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAodFT0vsEM6hYHJGdjFqNgXAHORDHb9f1TmoQX8W85JoAOdv5RRaCwqgWH7At814Q4TsMNd3zrymUBIMklP7f0qVrXSRxs3D79I2kkZLmn2LzF2R-hriPjanCDDPVczi0TYW71ANvWOob/s1600-h/simpsons_scream_l.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px display: block text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 246px height: 320px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAodFT0vsEM6hYHJGdjFqNgXAHORDHb9f1TmoQX8W85JoAOdv5RRaCwqgWH7At814Q4TsMNd3zrymUBIMklP7f0qVrXSRxs3D79I2kkZLmn2LzF2R-hriPjanCDDPVczi0TYW71ANvWOob/s320/simpsons_scream_l.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417867359226075090" border="0" /></a><span style="text-decoration: underline"></span><span style="font-size:78%">Been there, know the feeling...<br /></span></div><br />Extended titles aside, this is no flashy post. Some will even locate it a bit boring, but if at least one can find out something from it, I will be content. The motivation for it comes from an typically overlooked concern. I now have to tell how a perform day can at some point turn out:<br /><br />A freelance artist we are working with found this really strange and annoying crash bug in the LevelEditor. One point listed in the Luis's common process manual when functioning with bugs says "1st, check the logs, see if anything looks strange there", next 1 states: "try to reproduce, and operate your way on from there". Occurred that the logs looked alright, and no 1 in the team could reproduce the bug in their machines, me incorporated. So neither of these points threw any light into the concern.<br /><br />It began to look like I was staring at a single of those errors that no one desires to deal with, brought on by hardware incompatibilities or comparable übernice stuff (oh boy).<br /><br />A new log seemed to make Luis happy, showing some strange error when loading a temporary file. It warned that the file the editor tried to study hadn't been even produced. This may sound like hint... but the way the editor performs (it checks if the file exists ahead of attempting to read) undoubtedly told me that it could not be attainable. Aggravation++ now (or for the non C speakers there, Luis begins to drop his temper a bit).<br /><br />After a even though of step-by-step execution debugging, unsuccessful thinking about the trigger and some other shooting in the dark, a new log came in to my hands and, whilst it looked alright, it stank of "I fixed this warning point like three months ago". Turns out that the freelancer was making use of a dusty old version. He updated and bug gone. Gñe... now I want my sanity back.<br /><br />This longish story confirms a couple issues:<br />- You must in no way assume your users have the most recent version when they complain about some bug.<br />- You undoubtedly require a way to determine what version they are operating with out needing to ask them.<br /><br />A single may possibly consider I'm playing Captain Obvious here, but the very same type of circumstance described above happens a lot of times. It is actually strange to see no new messages for a whilst in our tech assistance forum. And even stranger if they are about stuff we have in no way noticed before. Most of the time they are currently solved troubles, and the solution for them is as straightforward as updating to the newest patch.<br /><br />So, after finding out this nice lesson, I created a small system that is referred to as by the IDE on the pre build occasion, and updates a construct-ID string (in the form of yyyymmddhhmmss, with y - year, first m's - month, d - day and so on... essentially a timestamp of the moment the point was constructed) that will then be hardcoded in the engine and apps, and seem at the initial line in logs. I am pretty certain there currently are greater options out there for this kind of stuff, but I felt like undertaking it ahead of any googling, and it didn't take long, so no big deal. At least it may possibly save me from obtaining to purchase a small suit:<br /><div style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNNC_JLazOD4zQAkzR-b6VFk6tvQyAWMmHSO28ccoOTkRSOWir25ntYt9EbAi0SvOJ0enf_0MihwHTU_33Y69U0C-x-51ADGTqCKtJv_LSuDyB_igPIPfcJx6WbgEt-RebZQ18aoaNdUti/s1600-h/bug-feature.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px display: block text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 320px height: 240px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNNC_JLazOD4zQAkzR-b6VFk6tvQyAWMmHSO28ccoOTkRSOWir25ntYt9EbAi0SvOJ0enf_0MihwHTU_33Y69U0C-x-51ADGTqCKtJv_LSuDyB_igPIPfcJx6WbgEt-RebZQ18aoaNdUti/s320/bug-feature.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417728500648167010" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%">Our Random Crash Simulator 1., feels just like crashing for real!</span><br /><div style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size:100%"><br /><span style="font-size:100%">That is enough for right now. Don't forget to take care, and always version your stuff!<br />Also, merry Christmas and pleased holidays every person!</span><br /></span></div></div>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-50999935193687119352013-11-18T03:25:00.000-08:002013-11-18T03:25:00.469-08:00Sprout's Tale at TooManyGames RecapWow. What a weekend.<br /><br />The adventure began on Thursday night. Matt, Murilo and I all stayed up til ~5am functioning on obtaining every little thing excellent for the show. Two hours after going to bed, it was Friday morning and I was packing up the vehicle to make the drive to Philly with my extremely old friend Mark, who graciously agreed to go with me.<br /><br />The drive itself was fortunately uneventful. A 2.5 ride North on interstate 95 was light on visitors nearly devoid of streetlights. For these of you unfamiliar with driving in the mid-Atlantic area, right here is what it appears like to drive on the highway around here:<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto text-align: center"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeY5eSaZGl_2kz3jYTmshE1LJ5HZtIrNWksN4No9iXy2_71DUl36y1mN2Ep8il3Ea3AvGuAxQT0Q-Cj-2egxa58ulA8sVUuye6f70PtTBUepWKG_LFAm-0Ri1tnAEz9z1Vo9xpTB_Yhoi/s1600/95.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="" border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeY5eSaZGl_2kz3jYTmshE1LJ5HZtIrNWksN4No9iXy2_71DUl36y1mN2Ep8il3Ea3AvGuAxQT0Q-Cj-2egxa58ulA8sVUuye6f70PtTBUepWKG_LFAm-0Ri1tnAEz9z1Vo9xpTB_Yhoi/s640/95.png" title="" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>Note that despite getting nearly 20 miles apart, these two photos appear nearly identical.</i></td></tr></tbody></table>You start off to get genuinely familiar with trees.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right float: right margin-bottom: 1em text-align: center"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixxWv8N2r48nuJxr1U57281pUHqZq4Sk6F2-1qhdIgKW-NgbhXMX0ouCokSIT51HWI7jX9jN-Vm4wBbxXR8wR8RKZSNXhSpmnFu7mQTbq-M9QaYjQpYOhl9jWvZW6Cu8QdWcjUecg-Dq35/s1600/20130614_170938.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixxWv8N2r48nuJxr1U57281pUHqZq4Sk6F2-1qhdIgKW-NgbhXMX0ouCokSIT51HWI7jX9jN-Vm4wBbxXR8wR8RKZSNXhSpmnFu7mQTbq-M9QaYjQpYOhl9jWvZW6Cu8QdWcjUecg-Dq35/s400/20130614_170938.jpg" title="Sprout's Tale table at TooManyGames" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>After just setting up the table. It turns out that significantly less than half of the free<br />IndieGame tables like this 1 really showed up. We remaind<br />neighborless for the duration of the show.</i></td></tr></tbody></table>Anyway, the drive at some point ended, we checked into our hotel and created our way out to the convention center to set up, which took no longer than 5 minutes on any day. We were the initial of the IndieGame Showcase tables to show up, but I felt confident the rest would be along shortly.<br /><br />As you can see in the image, even though, most of the booths have been currently set up. These positions cost a bit added and, being unfamilar with the con and, to be honest, these kinds of things in general, I opted against it. Maybe the incorrect move, but nothing damning. We set up a couple of little images and some small pouches and our medium-sized monitor and got prepared for visitors.<br /><br />My very first pang of regret came quite quickly. I wish I'd splurged and purchased some type of giant printed logo issue for the game, but alas, I did not.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left text-align: left"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Dv0JgNEuOefx0_7UnZ0OJsi0e3dap2hYl5XsdMi_CWPPkv55gKBRhAFXGgdlttXVp8sciVUTjbV0t6CFVdWpmDGrOPU97kn4XLU5ugC0Cw5vh4XQxN9T789jMK5N7Kt2qrWDT05AqKB5/s1600/20130616_120357.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="Sprout's Tale and a Creeper" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Dv0JgNEuOefx0_7UnZ0OJsi0e3dap2hYl5XsdMi_CWPPkv55gKBRhAFXGgdlttXVp8sciVUTjbV0t6CFVdWpmDGrOPU97kn4XLU5ugC0Cw5vh4XQxN9T789jMK5N7Kt2qrWDT05AqKB5/s320/20130616_120357.jpg" title="A Creeper at TooManyGames gets dangerous close to Sprout" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>I created confident to preserve my distance even though<br />nabbing this picture.</i></td></tr></tbody></table>Friday was a slow day, in common. We got some folks playing but not many. Mixed with the fact that I had only gotten ~2 hours of sleep, I ended up leaving feeling, well, depressed. Mark recommended that the level was a bit as well spread out. Not adequate events. So that night I began more than. Spent three hours in the hotel space redoing almost everything ahead of I passed out with my face on my keyboard. I can only hope I didn't drool.<br /><br />I had smartly set an alarm for 6 am the subsequent morning so I could finish, which I did. We arrived at the con about half an hour early, giving us enough time to test the new level and uncover and fix all the (several) errors. Every single time we did locate one, although, it sent a jolt of adrenaline via my body and my heart would race as I attempted to quickly right the error before I was tried and hanged for gross negligence.<br /><br />After discovering a way to semi-loosen up, I went around to take some images. Among Back to the Future, a creeper, a pair of full-sized Mario dolls sitting on a couch playing Mario, and the not pictured billions of game vendors, Mark and I have been thoroughly, thoroughly pleased.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right margin-left: 1em text-align: right"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Kl9jkyKy5q8/Ub4IrJ98RLI/AAAAAAAABho/vcjvJDLjdFU/s1600/20130616_132129.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="" border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Kl9jkyKy5q8/Ub4IrJ98RLI/AAAAAAAABho/vcjvJDLjdFU/s320/20130616_132129.jpg" title="Jumping gets smiles in Sprout the Game" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>One particular of several smiling children who played Sprout</i></td></tr></tbody></table>When every little thing was ready. Factors start off to go significantly much better. The reality that Matt was on hand pretty much non-cease all weekend to deal with some of the more technical troubles was a enormous boon to what we had been able to accomplish. In my opinion, compared to what we went in with on Friday, what we left with on Sunday was about a million times much better. And I consider it really showed on the faces of individuals who played. Virtually every person smiled at the sight of the vine-growth, swerved in their seat as they dodged a shadow-enemy, and remarked at how <i>gorgeous</i> they believed the game was. It is with some sense of embarrassment that I should admit I was virtually beaming with pride.<br /><br />In spite of obtaining a total sleep time of about 11 hours over 3 nights, I'm nonetheless feeling ridiculously excellent. Confident is a word I may be taking into consideration utilizing.<br /><br />Here's some more pictures:<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto text-align: right"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uQOItSUZFCI/Ub4IrOU74LI/AAAAAAAABho/HLXocj_m4xk/s1600/20130616_142345.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="Sprout's Tale challenge" border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uQOItSUZFCI/Ub4IrOU74LI/AAAAAAAABho/HLXocj_m4xk/s320/20130616_142345.jpg" title="A player struggles with a shadow enemy as others wait their turn" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>She had a truly tough time passing one particular of our far more<br /> deadly obstacles.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto text-align: center"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wnSArsmd0b0/Ub4IrFzhoCI/AAAAAAAABhk/2G5dx7ldFgA/s1600/20130615_153442.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="" border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wnSArsmd0b0/Ub4IrFzhoCI/AAAAAAAABhk/2G5dx7ldFgA/s320/20130615_153442.jpg" title="Dante from Devil May Cry plays Sprout's Tale" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>Dante plays Sprout even though Pikachu looks on.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto text-align: center"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqU2r7TMc7EqIdCLnCOp0IE6R5OPsawe7crxeIv3xXWYFfwPkgMlhodHLDU-tMYDfqQhlQJ3Vy8HziLWUqENwQd1M3XROcMeEGUM4Wz2ycBSZJUjwDxqQ0SMKI3fz1ntLmIQnUmGaT0Jqp/s1600/20130614_173720.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqU2r7TMc7EqIdCLnCOp0IE6R5OPsawe7crxeIv3xXWYFfwPkgMlhodHLDU-tMYDfqQhlQJ3Vy8HziLWUqENwQd1M3XROcMeEGUM4Wz2ycBSZJUjwDxqQ0SMKI3fz1ntLmIQnUmGaT0Jqp/s320/20130614_173720.jpg" title="Come on, you know what it is." width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>You know what this is. I shouldn't have to say it.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-58581184727257563532013-11-16T15:10:00.000-08:002013-11-16T15:10:00.413-08:00The World of SproutSprout requires place in a planet with no life- this considerably has hopefully been made clear by now.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right margin-left: 1em text-align: right"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr7mMlo2xqJPN7XA34w211zotlJIw-AGnYWD-gBMsUeUHqI2BghPCfH8jWfx6sTb2X7hD3HSbc2j6zCgQvLLNqHj6O_C4WyvJwQutt_eJR7KxyNrSqi-rsEJ7ALpgLPNMcZZwBnl61Wrhr/s1600/house_rocks_001.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: auto margin-right: auto text-align: center"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr7mMlo2xqJPN7XA34w211zotlJIw-AGnYWD-gBMsUeUHqI2BghPCfH8jWfx6sTb2X7hD3HSbc2j6zCgQvLLNqHj6O_C4WyvJwQutt_eJR7KxyNrSqi-rsEJ7ALpgLPNMcZZwBnl61Wrhr/s320/house_rocks_001.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center">The earliest concept art for ruins had wood as a major feature.</td></tr></tbody></table>But it appears some individuals are asking yourself what precisely "no life" signifies.<br /><br />No life indicates no men and women, animals, plants, bacteria, viruses, fish, or even dance parties. Indeed, you will take on the part of the mysterious principal character, who finds himself suddenly alive in a planet with nothing else. In reality, the world of this game is so fully dead that even all organic matter- wood, cloth, bones- has fully rotted away. All that is left of the old globe- our globe- is stone and steel.<br /><br />But there are monsters. These are the memories of evil deeds from the past, whose shadows reside on in a kind of stasis of wrongfulness (so apparently that's a word!).<br /><br />I never want to reveal what precisely the principal character is but, but I will say that I am fairly satisfied with his "origin story" which will be revealed in the game itself. There's no huge twist or big wow moment, but I believe most players will nonetheless find some thing to like about it.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both text-align: right"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBwzHw5tIdiU-oSGOPNRvz4k0FByuYzW7-1gLr__mx6geDWYpdBw9P9INXNUNZC5NK2jP-2CVv4ggsJcUuFA_QqHreZsKZAG1pf6BM43f7lxrYynd3jpNJWDadS-mJSU61Z2xijZhNP45k/s1600/house_ruin_002.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBwzHw5tIdiU-oSGOPNRvz4k0FByuYzW7-1gLr__mx6geDWYpdBw9P9INXNUNZC5NK2jP-2CVv4ggsJcUuFA_QqHreZsKZAG1pf6BM43f7lxrYynd3jpNJWDadS-mJSU61Z2xijZhNP45k/s320/house_ruin_002.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both text-align: left">Also, locating and grabbing the collectibles all through the game will revive a handful of lost souls that will then settle and build a village that offers the player access to the game's specific functions and some crucial character upgrades.<br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both text-align: left">Anyway, that is all I'm going to say for now. I can't wait til you guys can play it!</div><br />Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-10062507085121044892013-11-16T14:25:00.000-08:002013-11-16T14:25:00.752-08:00Future of Adventure Game Interaction<span style="font-weight: bold;">Introduction</span><br />Interactions in adventure games has gone from written input (aka "<a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_adventure">text adventures</a>") to todays mouse controlled (and often single-button-driven) games. There still exist text adventures though, although now called "Interactive Fiction", and here the complexity of interaction has increased instead of becoming simpler. It seems like the way of interacting has on one end gotten more and more complex over the years, while on the other end it has gotten more and more simplified. What I want to explore in this post is if this great polarization has made us miss out on other ways to interact in adventure games and in what other ways interaction might be possible.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">History</span><br />Before moving on to the core of this post I need to very briefly discuss the history of interaction. It is always important to know the past in order to figure a way to progress in the future.<br /><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_7Lorv1MEjbuu_lOWbaPvTRJiTFSUaC5acbih00BE6iUMOmx0bpt742BkNhYp46aO4mXE-hrf4IGHcUEzQ68G96fN01uoYqcMXM7Cgp7JkMUaRqjpQ0r9AiI56yJlumc6uoyepPsL9pQC/s1600-h/Mystery_House_-_Apple_II_render_emulation_-_2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 254px; height: 174px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_7Lorv1MEjbuu_lOWbaPvTRJiTFSUaC5acbih00BE6iUMOmx0bpt742BkNhYp46aO4mXE-hrf4IGHcUEzQ68G96fN01uoYqcMXM7Cgp7JkMUaRqjpQ0r9AiI56yJlumc6uoyepPsL9pQC/s400/Mystery_House_-_Apple_II_render_emulation_-_2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420402503347283138" border="0" /></a>The first adventure game created was <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure">Colossal Cave Adventure</a>, aka "Adventure",<cite></cite> which was built on top of a cave simulator and featured interaction through text commands. After Adventure more text adventures followed and as time went on the parser became more and more advanced. The parser is what handles the text input and translates it into game commands and the better the parser the more synonyms and complex grammar is supported. A few years after the release of Adventure, text adventures started to get a graphics, but still had a the text input (like <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_House">Mystery House</a>).<br /><br />The first evolution in terms of interaction was to add third person character and allow movement using the arrow keys. Text was still needed to do actions, but the player could explore the environments more freely (moving around in text adventures can easily become quite confusing). Examples of this type are the original <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest">King's Quest</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_%28series%29">Leisure Suit Larry</a>.<br /><br />It is important to note that the divide between text and graphical adventures started here. Texture adventures continued to evolve along their own path, getting more complex interactions, while graphic adventures instead started to become more and more simplified. Both types co-existed commercially until the early 90s when commerical text adventure games where pretty much extinct. Text adventures still continued to be developed by hobbyist though and has continued to evolved the entire time (now days called Interactive Fiction).<br /><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRlD3AZvOVgnRY5iZGD0QnwV9TPkHsItVRebX13mMHHryPDaiyzpJGemko4pcRMBRCgDmuEFn97U1ahy3Gyfsu9_BBlv2hIgDR6yujcYeFMXiX2sd2WId-4Xam49EAOpIai_Mq8L5QPui/s1600-h/maniac+mansion.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 160px; height: 193px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRlD3AZvOVgnRY5iZGD0QnwV9TPkHsItVRebX13mMHHryPDaiyzpJGemko4pcRMBRCgDmuEFn97U1ahy3Gyfsu9_BBlv2hIgDR6yujcYeFMXiX2sd2WId-4Xam49EAOpIai_Mq8L5QPui/s400/maniac+mansion.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420402620911229138" border="0" /></a>The next evolution was made in <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniac_Mansion">Maniac Mansion</a> by skipping the text input and instead exclusively using the mouse (except for some shortcut keys) and a predefined verb list with words such as "Push", "Open", "Walk to", etc (all in all there where 15 verbs) . To simplify things further objects that could be interacted with had their name displayed when the mouse was over and right clicking carried out a default command (such as "walk to" an empty spot or "look at" a sign). This trend of interaction continued and was further evolved by cutting down on the number of verbs.<br /><br />The next and most recent big step has been to take away the verb list altogether and restrict the possible actions in such a way that all the user has to do is to click on things that requires interaction. An early example of this is <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst">Myst</a> and now days pretty much every adventure game use this system.<br /><br />An important thing to note is that as adventure games have evolved with the interaction, the unforgivingness (mostly meaning how easy it is to die and get stuck in an unwinnable state) have decreased as well. This is of course due to improved design, but I also believe it has to do with the interaction systems. With more actions, there are also more ways to mess up. Text adventures actually tend to be more unforgiving than adventure games released in the same time period. Although it is certainly possible to make text adventures free of cheap deaths and places where player can get stuck (there are many modern examples of this), but the large space of possible actions makes it more easy to do so. More on this later.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why simplicity?</span><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoT1il_ZnM2rev5qcnJH5ErxSc9YixJJTjN56vDvIhEurXsAfv6EQq4eMqrbiH64qZsMOBTdZVlovkD08DmRt0hEBN1VX-Vhh0PE4e_8-Va2I_5-sKey2axSxUXl6lYQMUrCeQDHlIu8b0/s1600-h/samarost2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 212px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoT1il_ZnM2rev5qcnJH5ErxSc9YixJJTjN56vDvIhEurXsAfv6EQq4eMqrbiH64qZsMOBTdZVlovkD08DmRt0hEBN1VX-Vhh0PE4e_8-Va2I_5-sKey2axSxUXl6lYQMUrCeQDHlIu8b0/s400/samarost2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420405051487615202" border="0" /></a>The main (and probably obvious) reason for making the interactions simpler, is to make the game easier to play. For example, games like <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samorost">Samorost </a>are extremely simple to get hang of. In text based interaction (especially with older parsers) one quite often ended up in a guess-the-verb- situation and having to pick from a list of verbs can easily become a boring activity. Also, text input requires a bit of knowledge of what kind of actions usually works and which doesn't. This makes text based games harder to get into for beginners.<br /><br />When using verb lists much of the freedom from text input was lost and interaction could become the boring task of testing every word in the list against every object in a scene. This is similar to the situation of branching dialogs but mostly without without a fun response for a specific combination ("cannot push door", "cannot pick up lawn", etc are quite common). Because of this, just using a single command context-sensitive interaction for each object can even increase the immersion.<br /><br />Another major reason for simplifying is that it makes the games more laid back to play. Modern graphical adventure games are often quite relaxing and one can easily lie down (or some other comfy position) while playing. Actually, requiring the player to use the keyboard seems to be a hideous crime in some gamer circles. We have even gotten quite a few angry emails regarding the "dated input method" in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.penumbragame.com/index.php">Penumbra</a>.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why complexity?</span><br />So if having simplified interactions makes adventure games easier to play and more relaxing, why add more complexity? Does the years of evolution from complex to simple not show the right way to go? I confess that this might be the truth, perhaps the current system is the best way to go and further enhancement should be concentrated around making things simpler still (like the evolution has been so far). However, I suspect that there is bias towards simplicity lurking and that the success of some titles have set the path for other designers as well. Before moving on to the reason for me suspicions, I would like to quickly discuss why I think increased complexity is a good thing.<br /><br />My main motivation for increasing complexity comes from playing Interactive Fiction (ie "text adventures"). As stated before, this genre diverged from graphical adventures almost 30 years ago and has, contrary to graphical adventures, increased in complexity since. By using the rich space of actions provided by words, there is a lot of actions possible that are not possible in graphical adventures. A major feature is ability to use all senses: the player character (abbreviated PC) can "touch" an object hidden from view in order to get more information, smell the air for tell-tale signs of some gas, listen next to a door to overhear a conversation and more. It also allows for more intricate interaction, for example when holding a piece of paper it can be crumbled to a ball, folded to become a container or rolled up to act as a funnel. To include these actions in a modern graphical adventure game they would either have to be special cases (like a folding-paper mini game) or implemented as a default action in some situation (using the door when in cell makes the PC listen next to it). Both of these solutions are forced though and do not give the sense freedom that a text parser would.<br /><br />Am I suggesting that we should go back to some older type of interaction? No, I am not. What I am suggesting is that instead of improving the interaction by simplification, some other route should be taken. Making a user interface better does not always mean making it simpler. Consider first person movements as an example. The first <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter">FPS</a> games like <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_3D">Wolfenstein 3D</a> had really simple controls, with arrows for moving and strafe modifier key for sidestepping. Later on games like <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock">System Shock</a> made the controls more complex, adding the ability to look up and down and more. These where then made easier to use in <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake">Quake</a> by using mouse control for head movements. Since then controls have become even more complex with leaning, crouching, etc. The controls for first person games have over time become more simple to use, yet more advanced and allowing greater interaction in environment. I think that the same could be true for the future adventure game interaction.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The problem with freedom</span><br />So, what should be the goal with interaction in adventure games? The first reaction might be to use some kind of virtual reality suite (or matrix-like brain connection) that can entirely immerse the player in the game, allowing any kind of interaction. I do not think this would be wanted though as a big part of designing a game is actually to restrict the player from doing certain actions. If the player picks up a very important key and then throws it into a bottomless pit, it will probably be very hard for the player to continue. Although a designer can add alternative solutions for situations like this, due to time and resources it will not be possible to add for every possible bad choice the player makes. It is also impossible to find all of these situations during testing, given the huge amount of choice a realistically simulated world would give. Some actions might seem so stupid that player deserves ending up in an unwinnable state, but this can be a really fine line at times (especially for a designer that knows how the game is "supposed to be played").<br /><br />The problem with freedom is actually a lot easier to control in a modern point-and-click system. When the designer can exactly determine all possible actions, it is a lot easier to make sure that the player does not end up in an unwinnable state or manages to skip large sections of the story. This is a really important bit to have in mind when designing a new system and simply going for whatever gives the most freedom will simply not be enough.<br /><br />Because of the problems with too much freedom, it might actually be harder to design puzzles for adventure games with high interaction complexity. When designing a puzzle in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amnesiagame.com/">Amnesia </a>the idea was that the player should open a door connected to rope throwing the rope through a pulley, tie the rope around a rock and then push the rock into a hole, pulling the door up. When doing this with physics as implemented in penumbra it simply was not possible without adding lots of restrictions. The stone should not be possible to push down the hole before rope was in the pulley and tied around it. Also, the rope should not be possible to tie around rock until it was pulled through the pulley. Restrictions could be added to make it work, but would make the game too inconsistent (it would the depend on the situation if a rock could be pushed or not, etc). Making alternative solutions is possibility, but cannot be done indefinitely (especially if the difficultly level of the solutions should be similar).<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Future </span><br />The problem here is that more complexity is wanted, but at the same time the player must be restricted. How can these ideas be united? I do not have an answer to this, but have at least some ideas in what directions to start looking.<br /><br />First of all I do not think it would be worth thinking about things that might be possible in the future. This would include things hooking up some device to the players brain or to have some kind of AI in the parser that could understand a wide variety of phrases and respond accordingly. I think it is more interesting to discuss what can be done now or even that which could have been in the past. When it comes to the evolution of first person control, much of it does not depend on technology and could have been implemented much earlier than it did.<br /><br />A path that might lead fruitful results is the use of predefined verbs. The major problem with this was that they where always visible to the player and easily became an exercise in trying combinations. Text adventures are not far from this kind of interaction, since they too have a set list of verbs, but these are never visible to the player and because of this, they feel more free. So, the idea is simply to add some kind of way to use a certain amount of actions without listing them in view for the player. This can be done using mouse gestures which, if similar to the action performed (for instance: move mouse in a circle to spin something), could be quite intuitive. Even if intuitive, it would take some time to get into and would be far from as easy to pick up as the modern point and click mechanic. A sort of remedy could be to allow combinations of gestures to make more actions, requiring only a few base movement to be learned. An example would be that there was a gesture for each body part and then some other gesture for the type of movement performed. Of course this does not require mouse movements and key combinations is another alternative. Games that kind of use a similar approach are <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom_%28video_game%29">Loom </a>and <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Void_%28video_game%29">The Void</a>.<br /><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy0Q2RJrYgSN1_PhryS8qKSs5_6H-h6kq8b7yIAF4VcN1y1R4dKaAzG_5FHINuvyC8KGsMR2EtoXFaxSc9EToXHyRId2fSB4IhlRpXBWMXqmt3_saEWQ-QL3HlHgdwMxS957BPcY-f5YWT/s1600-h/Farhenheit.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 217px; height: 265px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy0Q2RJrYgSN1_PhryS8qKSs5_6H-h6kq8b7yIAF4VcN1y1R4dKaAzG_5FHINuvyC8KGsMR2EtoXFaxSc9EToXHyRId2fSB4IhlRpXBWMXqmt3_saEWQ-QL3HlHgdwMxS957BPcY-f5YWT/s400/Farhenheit.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420402919362582706" border="0" /></a><a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_%28video_game%29">Farenheit</a> (and the upcoming <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Rain">Heavy Rain</a>) has another way to tackle this problem: By having context-sensitive inputs depending on where the PC is. This system works pretty well to add a great deal of possible actions and the additions of "gestures" (this might stretch the definition, as I do not think calling button mashing a "gesture" is entirely correct) can add some simply gameplay and challenge to this. These gestures are quite nice at the start of the game, and gives the feeling of actually performing the action, but later on they get quite arbitrary and feel more like a chore. This system would work without gesture though and could just be a single button push or icon click (if using a mouse-only system). The main problem with the system is that it just like visible verb list boils down to a try-all-combinations-exercise (even more so than the verb list!). I think that for a system like this to work, the actions available need to be meaningful choices and not just different ways of interacting (which is also the direction Heavy Rain seem to be going).<br /><br />Finally, I do not want to rule out physics even though <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/08/puzzles-in-horror-games-part-3.html">we have had some problems with it</a>. Physics work extremely well for objects that are in limited in their movements, like doors and drawers. It is much more complicated when it comes to stones and furniture that can be moved in any which way. I think that using some kind of hybrid system would be investigating more, but the focus must be on providing consistency. What works so good with physics is that it uses the simple and intuitive point and click input, but allow for a lot more possibilities. And that is something must be retained as much as possible.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusions</span><br />Getting interaction in adventure game has taken quite a bit to come where it is today, both for text-based and graphical adventures. This means that finding another way of doing it will not happen over night, but will take a lot of time, testing and iteration. I do however think that it is something well worth exploring and although we will not have anything revolutionary for Amnesia we plan to give this some more thought and research for what ever game comes after.<br /><br />If you know any adventure game that have an interesting way of doing interactions, please let us know! We are also very interesting in seeing what other people have written and of course hearing your thoughts about this!Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-76980085169532052322013-11-16T11:05:00.000-08:002013-11-16T11:05:00.098-08:00Amnesia "Launch" TrailerWe just completed our "launch" trailer for <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amnesiagame.com/">Amnesia The Dark Descent</a>. Watch here:<br /><br /><center><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/u1nY_5-UrY4?fs=1&hl=sv_SE"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/u1nY_5-UrY4?fs=1&hl=sv_SE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br />Now for a swift producing of the trailer:<br /><br />First of I started out producing a text synopsis over the clips required for the trailer. I had an idea of starting the video with a <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch">lynchian </a>stare, that ought to set the mood for the rest of the trailer. My design method was then for me to lock myself inside a dark area, lie on the floor and mumble stuff whilst gesticulating in the air.<br /><br />I then showed the synopsis to Jens and when he had approved after some smaller sized modifications, I set Marcus and Luis to perform with recording. I gave them descriptions on how I wanted the clips to be, they then recorded anything, sent sample and I largely told em tons of stuff to increase. It took a day and something like 5 - 50 retakes for every shot (one ended up not becoming utilised) to comprehensive. We now had the clips!<br /><br />One clip was missing though: Some fancy logo animation! This we could not do ourselves so I began searching for a organization to do it for us. This turned out a lot tougher than I believed! First finding a organization was a pain all I ended up discovering exactly where wedding photographers and the like. Nothing what we required naturally. Soon after some work I manged to discover 19 different companies and mailed em. Three replied! All of which where fully booked or on getaway of course. But from one particular organization, whose staff was on holiday, we got a tip about <a target="_blank" href="http://atmospheres.co.uk/">Atmospheres</a>, a UK firm that ended up doing the animation. I feel it ended up very good! Specially given the time and resource limits we had to give the firm.<br /><br />Jens now started working on the editing. This has triggered us tons of difficulty with all codecs and other crap that in no way performs out as planned (blog post about it <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/12/video-editing-hell-linux-to-resuce.html">right here</a>), but Jens has began to master it now and is typically pretty fast. So he cut and mixed with the cut em collectively, which took half a day or so. I contributed with the graphics for the texts and some quote mining (a talent any dev requirements to learn!). Following some minor fixes, the editing was accomplished!<br /><br />Ultimately was time for Jens to place sound on it. You see, in order to get nice sound you do not preserve something from the original clips, and add new sounds for all. Otherwise you get all kinds of reduce off sounds in between cuts. It ended up taking Jens over three days to full this (and is why "launch" trailer is not on launch). The final project file contained 52 tracks, every track obtaining hundreds of sound samples.<br /><br />Entertaining reality is that this process of design -> graphics -> editing (scripting) -> sounds is pretty considerably how we created levels in Amnesia!<br /><br />There you have the story! Lots a work for a little over two minutes. Hopefully it will lure someone into acquiring! :)Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-47201717475457499652013-11-16T08:59:00.000-08:002013-11-16T08:59:00.136-08:00The Problem of Repetition<a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLSvC5Q5T5-n0Uina2OazNK0nERvkYpqmqjL3_0g85II5lmOTLxtOyxiSP2Wd310FpUZgJlv-v4HPQTZ0ylOYvfw-D9IqmMLOG-rtlkhp0xa5LvPMtO64Wo1sTd92bVqUCWHofIE6By_fH/s1600/infinite-regress.jpg"><img style="display:block margin:0px auto 10px text-align:centercursor:pointer cursor:handwidth: 400px height: 198px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLSvC5Q5T5-n0Uina2OazNK0nERvkYpqmqjL3_0g85II5lmOTLxtOyxiSP2Wd310FpUZgJlv-v4HPQTZ0ylOYvfw-D9IqmMLOG-rtlkhp0xa5LvPMtO64Wo1sTd92bVqUCWHofIE6By_fH/s400/infinite-regress.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5679471360614238514" border="0" /></a><div><b style="font-size: large ">Introduction</b></div>After having played some adventure and RPG games lately one thing struck me: repetition in games have practically the identical problems as <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-trial-and-error-will-doom-games.html">trial-and-error do</a>. This is not truly a shocking conclusion, because repeating things in a game is basically what you do when stuck in a sequence of trial and error. But considering that the repetition is not a direct consequence of getting unable to progress, and that not all repetition is poor per se, I figured it was worth seeking into a bit.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%"><b>The Problem</b></span></div><div>Most of the time the issue arise when performing an action many instances causes the identical response. Largely, this does not apply when undertaking issues to dead objects, like shooting a bullet on a wall. We count on that if we shoot the identical bullet at the exact same location twice, the same response happens each occasions. Even so this is not usually accurate. For instance, numerous games use randomized particle effects for sparks from the hitting bullet. In far more complex method, like water splashes, this is even far more frequent, and even though it might not be directly noticeable if they repeat, it can unconsciously lead to the virtual world getting observed as less "actual" (what I truly imply is sense of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude">verisimilitude</a>, but far more on that later) . So even although it does not constitute a massive dilemma, we do run into difficulty even when repeating consequences for extremely basic interactions.</div><div><br /></div><div>The dilemma becomes a lot more jarring when the object of interaction is a supposed to be an intelligent agent. This is really widespread in RPGs and adventure games for the duration of dialog, where the identical query generates the very same answer regardless of how numerous times you ask it. Adventure games are usually a little bit greater than RPGs and often have NPCs providing a summary rather of the exact very same response and a lot more frequently terminate threads of conversation. Even so, a large part of dialog in both sorts of games have actions being met by the exact exact same response no matter how many instances they are repeated.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are of course a cause why it is like this. The player may well have forgotten some data and want to hear it once more, forcing dialog to be repeated. Or there may be some compulsory puzzle that requires the player to trick or persuade a character, which forces the player to redo the same conversation if unsuccessful at the very first attempt. I consider these reasons expose two troubles that narrative focused video games have: reliance of "information dumps" and puzzles as core activities. Information dumping is a kind of exposition that one particular tries challenging to keep away from in other media, yet is really frequent in video games (frequently forming the core storytelling device). It is one thing that I consider needs to be deemed more (and I am well aware we have been making use of it as well a lot in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.frictionalgames.com/site/games">our own games</a>). Puzzles is some thing I have <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2011/10/thoughts-on-limbo.html">talked about getting damaging effects just before </a>and this is but yet another argument to why we should try and reduce down our reliance on them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another extremely typical form of repetition is that of obtaining the identical sort of gameplay situation repeated many times throughout the game. Occasionally this can be a core component of the knowledge, but most of the time it is just a form of padding and an try to prolong the time it requires to finish the game. There are tons of examples of this and two that spring to thoughts are the <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2011/02/thoughts-on-dead-space-2.html">vent sections of Dead Space 2</a> and the spirit capturing in <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbrothers:_Sword_%26_Sworcery_EP">Sword and Sworcery</a>. I felt that each of these activities would have been a lot more intriguing if not repeating so a lot. You speedily become very familiar with them and they ultimately loose significantly of their first</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a deeper purpose why repetition is so typical in videogames. Several games base their interactions on classic games and computer software systems exactly where reproducibility is a corner stone. You do not want to use a paint-tool and not know what anticipate when pressing a button, and the only way for you to get this information is to is for consequences to repeat themselves. In traditional games, you need to have systems that a human player can hold track of, and as a result the consequences of actions must be simple to comprehend. Videogames carry baggage from each of these directions, and thus it is not strange that video games include a big share of repetition.</div><div><br /></div><div>As you may have guess I feel this sort of repetition can be very bad for videogames that concentrate on story and narrative.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%"><span style="font-weight: bold">The Causes</span></span><br />As I mentioned earlier, the repetition has pretty considerably the same issues as trial-and-error. Given that they are each about carrying out the same thing over and over, this can really feel fairly a lot self-evident and not worthy of much discussion. Nonetheless, even though trial-and-error components are far more simply pointed out and can be straight addressed, repetition is far more subtle and not constantly as clear. Many of problems with repetition are also generally observed as limits of the medium (or at least our present technology) and therefore not really addressed. I do think these difficulties can be overcome although, and a 1st step is to figure out what give rise to them.<br /><br />- Mechanics gets apparent</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">By getting some thing repeated over and more than to players, they will speedily commence to notice patterns and brief soon after figure out the program under. What this leads to is that the player will no longer concentrate on what the method is trying to represent (eg. dialog with a person) but will rather see the mechanics that it is built from (eg. the abstract dialog tree). Repetition does not force this onto the player as trial-and-error do (exactly where the player often is <i>needed </i>to discover the method in order to continue). But because numerous of the issues that are repeated constitute a large portion of the expertise, the issue piles up. Like I mentioned above the repetition can incorporate whole scenes and the player may possibly go via a section in a go (ie no trial-and-error). But then when a quite comparable sections is repeated throughout the game, the underlying mechanics turn into far more and much more visible. As an example I consider the enemies in our personal game <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amnesiagame.com/">Amnesia </a>have this really issue. This dilemma is extremely subtle though as it only applies on longer play sessions and can therefore a lot more easily slip by.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">There is another aspect to this, that makes the difficulty even much more severe. Once you figure out the mechanics of a method it can damage events that you knowledgeable when you did <i>not</i> have this understanding. For instance, if you really feel like a conversation is genuinely meaningful, and then later on uncover this very same character reduced to mechanics, it will change the way you view your prior knowledge. It will be very challenging to still really feel the exact same sense of meaningfulness when seeking back at the conversation. Your mental construct of an aspect of the game's globe has now been decreased to a mechanic and when you later summarize the encounter you have had, this can severely minimize any emotional attachment you may well have had to earlier happenings. As this piles up, it will gradually degrade the expertise and tends to make you less emotionally connected to the game's globe.<br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">- Reduce in Verisimilitude</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">What verisimilitude indicates is essentially how actual and truthful the fictional world feels. This does not mean how nicely it replicates the genuine world we reside in, but how much a it feels like it represents an actual spot. In most narrative media, giving a robust sense of verisimilitude is truly crucial. As I said, this does not mean that every thing ought to be "just like in genuine life", but instead follow the fictional world's internal logic somehow. What this signifies in games is that when encountering a virtual element, such as a character, we do not need for it to behave specifically like in true life, but just to behave in such a way that it evokes feelings of verisimilitude.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">This means that we can tolerate dialog selection and equivalent, whilst other factors are immediate deal breakers. I feel a single of these deal breakers is the repetition of a responses. If a character repeats the same sentence over and over, it is extremely tough to see them as nothing at all but a simplistic automaton. We can very simply disregard our understanding that there is not a sentient mind </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"> shaping the responses, just like know something is not <i>actually </i>taking place in a film. But when the data that the knowledge is feeding us (in this case the repeated voice response), the extremely thing that is supposed to assistance the view of an intelligent being goes straight against its purpose.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">Not only dialog is impacted by this but a lot of other elements. For instance, whenever you have to go about clicking on the identical hot-spots over and over in an adventure game, it also considerably lessen the feeling of verisimilitude.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">- Lower in effectiveness</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">This point is almost identical with what takes place in trial-and-error. Specific scenes and events simply does not do well when repeated. For some events it is just that they are quite emotional, and it will be challenging to feel the same way after again. You will grow desensitized and less prone to reacting to it. Just examine a film filled with gory sequences to one with a single visceral scene. The latter will pack a a lot harder punch. Other instances it may possibly be that the occasion or scene is set up like a magic trick - it only performs when you are not expecting what will occur. Ultimately, it may possibly merely be that the passage is too boring, sensory intense or comparable that you cannot bare to take further viewings. Other media rely on things like these difficult-to-repeat moments a lot, but because games are so prone to repetition, they are considerably harder to place in and/or to have the identical emotional worth.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%"><b><span class="Apple-style-span">The Cure</span></b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">So how do we overcome these troubles? I feel there are a few items to preserve in mind when designing that makes them a lot easier to stay away from:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span">Not a method the encounter as a competition. The significantly less ambitions we set up for the player the much less most likely we are to need to have to repeat items for the player or to make them repeat their own actions. </span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span">Make sure that the story is understandable without the need to have of information dumps. If the player is necessary to have story associated data repeated to them, then I would consider that undesirable narrative design. The story ought to emerge basically out of playing.</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span">Skip the notion that players need to learn a system. I believe this is mainly historical baggage from how software functions for much more practical application, exactly where mastery of the technique is important. Creation of narrative art does not have this requirement although, and I feel we ought to instead make the player focus on the representations (graphics, sounds, etc) that the program give.</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span">We have to demand a lot more of the player and give them far more accountable. We need to teach them them live in our virtual worlds as an alternative of attempting to beat our game systems. As most games reward players for combing the virtual globe for goodies this is not the easiest of tasks even though. Our aim should therefore be to undo this and reward roleplaying alternatively.</span></li></ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span">These modest rule<span class="Apple-style-span">s does of course not resolve everything and there is a lot of difficult issue connected with this. For instance, conversational responses is an extremely difficult issue and the identical is true for na</span>rrative devices in games.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">Nevertheless, I think just a small adjust in our thinking can take us a extended way and just recognizing the issue is a large step forward.</span></div></div>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-52644189661239602142013-11-16T02:08:00.000-08:002013-11-16T02:08:00.850-08:00Sprout the Game's New Tune<div style="text-align: center"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Qz5HbqXu2nc?feature=player_detailpage" width="640"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left">New video shows some tightened controls and the newest music from <a target="_blank" href="http://fortesounds.com/">Forte Sounds</a>. I consider what we'll in the end end up doing is getting several tracks cycle periodically by way of a level to avoid repetition. Whilst the game has a quantity of similarities to Mario, being stuck on a puzzle and possessing to listen to the Mario theme for an hour straight possibly would not be fun to any person.</div><div style="text-align: left"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left">So there ya have it. Please comment, share, +1, and send your queries to info@sproutthegame.com</div>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-10111603952438396392013-11-16T02:06:00.000-08:002013-11-16T02:06:00.243-08:00Why Trial and Error will Doom Games<a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ji59TxfFyNZnhagZGPa2gUwUx60s7rZIPHGjMtA1KZawBaMhlAT8HHkmIyrf1GKrLt3Ev3T8JitBIz16eXlLa3BlDmXYWJcHANjnSPDX0WmDqz_vlgGczsJfumOveiIIkC4eQzZOS7_Q/s1600/monkey_and_typewriter.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px float: right cursor: pointer width: 287px height: 189px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ji59TxfFyNZnhagZGPa2gUwUx60s7rZIPHGjMtA1KZawBaMhlAT8HHkmIyrf1GKrLt3Ev3T8JitBIz16eXlLa3BlDmXYWJcHANjnSPDX0WmDqz_vlgGczsJfumOveiIIkC4eQzZOS7_Q/s400/monkey_and_typewriter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458662664307440914" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold">Introduction</span><br />A sort unspoken rule in game design and style is that players must be in a position to drop. Just about every game has some sort of basic mechanic that is feasible to fail. Whenever this occurs, the player needs to try once more and repeat the process until successful. This is believed to add drama, tension and also make the player's actions count. It seems to be believed that without having it games would not be games and rather some kind of boring linear entertainment. I feel this position is wrong, really hurtful and if not fixed, will grow to be the downfall of the medium. In this post I will clarify why.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">The Problem</span><br />In a book or movie it is common that the reader/viewer need to knowledge really upsetting events, that can be really difficult to read about/watch. This is specially correct to horror, where the goal is often to upset the reader/viewer and to evoke feelings such as anxiousness, worry and disgust. It is also common to have a lot more boring and slow sequences in order to create mood, explain character motivations, etc. These are not necessarily quite entertaining/simple to encounter but will make up for it later on and acts as an important ground to build the story from. Note that these "hard to repeat" moments are not merely handy plot devices or related. They are fundamentally vital for making meaningful experiences and a lot of (if not all!) of the excellent works amongst books and motion pictures would not be possible with no them. But, at several times the only reason 1 can put up with these types of sequences is simply because one know there is an finish to it. Just keep on reading/watching and it will sooner or later be more than and hopefully an critical payoff will be provided.<br /><br />This is not correct for games. Whenever in a situation exactly where loss is feasible, the player is forced to meet particular criteria or she will not be able to progress. It is not attainable to just "stick with it" to complete these kinds of sequences. The player wants to maintain playing the same passage over and more than once again until suitable actions have be performed. Not until this is accomplished is the player permitted to continue. This either comes in the form of talent based actions (e.g. platform jumping), navigational issues (e.g. discover the way out) or some sort of puzzle that demands to be solved.<br /><br />For sequences that are meant to be emotional this can be devastating. Usually the player is not compelled to relive the experience and/or any impact the sequence was meant to have is lost. Also, it sets up a barrier and properly blocks particular players from continuing. How can games possibly hope to match the impact of books and motion pictures, when the capability to have critical "hard-to-repeat" moments are almost impossible since trial-and-error?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Case Study: Korsakovia</span><br />This issue is extremely evident in the game <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/11/horror-tip-korsakovia.html">Korsakovia</a>. The game puts you in the part a man with <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsakoff%27s_syndrome">Korsakoff's syndrome</a> and is played out in a sort of dream world, interwoven with dialogs in between you and your doctor. It is a quite exciting encounter, but also a extremely disturbing one particular and the game is very brutal on the senses. Even so, I felt compelled to continue and it felt like worthwhile experience. This was till I the gameplay began. Korsakovia has all issues related with trial-and-error (ability, navigation and puzzles) and this combined with the exhausting atmosphere created it not possible to for me to full it. It was merely not achievable for me to replay certain segments of the game and what was the 1st time about immersive turned into an annoyance and a (literal) headache. I am convinced that the game would have been a lot greater, and possibly a actually great encounter, if the trial and error mechanics exactly where removed.<br /><br />I do not mean to trash Korsakovia and I feel it is a really fascinating experiment. Nonetheless, it is such a fine instance of how trial-and-error can go incorrect and I urge you all to try it out. Taking into consideration that it is a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.thechineseroom.co.uk/">analysis project</a>, I think that is mission achieved for the creator!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Allowing The Player to Play</span><br />The problem with players not finishing games is some thing that recently have gotten a lot more and much more focus in the games business. After analyzing stats collected, it has become really evident that anything demands to be carried out. For instance, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep1/?gamesHelp">less than 50% of players</a> ever completed <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2:_Episode_One">Half-Life 2-Episode 1</a> which, taking into consideration the game's length, polish and difficulty, I am certain that is a extremely higher figure compared to other games. This signifies that a lot more games have began to attempt out methods at solving the dilemma. Some examples are:<br /><ul><li><a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Files">In Secret Files: Tunguska</a> one particular can decide on to show all of the interactable regions in a scene (decreasing pixel hunting). </li><li><a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_in_the_Dark_%282008_video_game%29">Alone In The Dark</a> makes it possible for the player to skip chapters in order to force progress in a game.</li><li><a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Super_Mario_Bros._Wii">New Super Mario Brothers</a><a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Super_Mario_Bros._Wii"> Wii</a> has a mode where the game requires more than handle and completes sections for the player.</li><li><a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock">BioShock</a> by no means actually kills the player but rather just teleports them to a distinct portion of the map and leaves the enemies and environment in the very same states as when the player "died".</li></ul>Even though this may possibly sound like steps in the appropriate direction all of these solution suffer from the identical issue. They are all ad-hoc and breaks the immersion. The solutions are soon after thoughts, do not genuinely belong in the game world and feels a lot more like cheats than a part of the knowledge (BioShock attainable excluded as it actually works it into the story). When the player chooses to display things and other interaction points in the game, it turns the game from a living planet into an abstract interface. By skipping chapters in Alone in the Dark the player effectively skips component of the narrative and misses out on parts of the knowledge. The trick utilised in Super Mario removes any interaction from the game, which is definitively not excellent for immersion.<br /><br />Lastly, despite the fact that BioShock is by far closest to having a operating remedy it nonetheless feels tacked on and can simply lessen immersion (for instance when forced into respawn, charge with wrench, repeat situation). The player nevertheless also wants to overcome specific challenges and are forced to repeat sections more than and more than. Nevertheless, there is never ever a moment where the player is unable to progress, offered that they are prepared to remain at it, no matter their skill level. It is far from an ideal answer, but a lot greater than blocking players from progressing.<br /><br />I feel that the correct way to solve this is to incorporate it as a feature in the game from day a single. Producing sure that players are not unnecessarily blocked from continuing, is not some thing that ought to be slapped on as a side thing. It is also quite critical that players do not feel that the game is holding their hand each and every step of the way, something that can be very hard unless planned from the start. It is vital that players feel that the performed actions and selections are their personal and that they are not just following commands like a mindless drone.<br /><br />Fixing this situation is truly important. Games can not continue to deny content material to players and demand that they meet particular criteria in order get the complete expertise. Not only does it discourage folks from playing games, it also make it impossible to generate a lot more "holistic" experiences. By this I imply games that demand the entirety of the function for the player to genuinely appreciate it (anything I aim to speak about an upcoming post). It will be really challenging certainly to insert deeper meanings into games unless this dilemma is dealt with.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Less Challenge, Much more Immersion</span><br />Allowing the player to get the complete knowledge and not possessing win-to-progress scenarios is a great start, but just the initial step in the proper path. As with Bioshock, the game can nonetheless have trial-and-error like moments, exactly where the player is forced to play section over and more than in order to continue. This brings us back the difficulty that I mentioned in the starting: that repeating a certain experiences will either lessen their effect and/or discouraging the player from progressing. As these "tough to repeat" sequences are vital in order to expand the horizon of the medium, it is important that we find approaches of adding them. And in order to do so, trial and error have to go.<br /><br />I believe that 1st step towards this is to throw away the concept that a videogames requirements to be a challenge. Instead of considering of a game as a one thing to be beaten, it need to be thought of as an expertise. Some thing that the player "lives" by way of rather than "plays" via. Why designers are unable to do this probably since they are afraid that it will lessen the sense of accomplishment and tension of a game. A lot of appear to consider that trial-and-error based obstacles are the only way of generating these feelings. I consider this untrue.<br /><br />Let's 1st consider accomplishment. Even though this is typically evoked by completing a devious puzzle or defeating an enemy, there are other methods to really feel accomplishment. Basically performing a basic act that adjustments the game world somehow can give this feeling. For instance planting a tree or assisting out an NPC. There is no need to have for these to be obstacles in order for one particular to really feel accomplishment either and as a result any sort of trial-and-error is removed. It can also come in other forms such as just reaching a location. Also, if created correctly a single can trick the player into considering they achieved some thing, for example escaping a monster even even though there was no never a way to fail.<br /><br />Generating tension is not only achievable with no employing trial-and-error skipping it might even lead to improved tension! When the player fails and is forced to repeat, there is no element of surprise left and it often also leads to immersion being broken. For instance when playing horror games like <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_Frame">Fatal Frame</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill">Silent Hill</a> I can be play for quite some time with no dying, feeling highly immersed. Even so, as soon as death (which is portion of the trial-and-error mechanic) occurs I am pulled out of the atmosphere and abruptly understand that I am playing a game. This signifies death lessens the immersion and breaks the flow of the game. But will it not make the game far more scary?<br /><br />Regarding death and worry-element, think about the following:<br /><br />1) If the player fears death since of a trial and error program, she fears an abstract mechanic and not some thing of the game planet. By worrying about a game mechanics, the player is pulled out of the experience.<br /><br />two) As soon as death has occurred, the player will know what to anticipate. If killed by a creature that jumped out from behind a corner, the subsequent time the encounter will have far from the same impact.<br /><br />Instead of punishing the player, I believe it is better to add consequences. Even just producing the player think that there are consequences (which <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Rain">Heavy Rain</a> successfully does) can be enough. Also, if a single keeps the player immersed then it is also less difficult for the players to roleplay and convince themselves that they are actually in wonderful danger even though they are not. In our game <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amnesiagame.com/">Amnesia</a>, we are undertaking our very best to minimize the amount of trial-and-error and still retain a actually terrifying atmosphere. So far it is seeking very good for this approach and we have only observed great items come out of it (I guess time will tell if we pull it of or not). If horror games, that are notorious for utilizing trial-and-error mechanics to boost their mood, can do fine without trial-and-error, I see no purpose why other genres should not.<br /><br />To sum issues up: When one relies on abstract game mechanics for generating emotions, 1 does so at the price of immersion and the players capacity to turn out to be part of the game planet.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Finish Notes</span><br />Of course trial-and-error ought to not be banned from game design and style. Several games like <a target="_blank" href="http://thelettervsixtim.es/">VVVVVV</a> and Super Mario thrive on the trial-and-error and has it as an integral element of the design and style. Likewise, numerous adventure games are supposed to have tricky puzzles, and could not do with out them. Some games are meant to be "just games" and to be a challenge to the player. I am not in any way opposed to this sort of design.<br /><br />Nevertheless, in other games trial-and-error is just undesirable and truly drag down the expertise. In its worst kind trial-and-error:<br /><ul><li>Discourages players by setting a common of what sort of players are allowed to continue.</li><li>Drastically lessens the emotional effect of events by requiring repetition.</li><li>Breaks immersion and makes the player focus on abstract game mechanics.</li><li>Forces games to focus on moment-to-moment fun and discourages a holistic payoff.</li></ul>It is very critical to be conscious of this and to ask oneself if a trial-and-error mechanics actually serves the game right. It is only by breaking cost-free of conventions like this that it will be feasible to take games into new and current directions!<br /><br />I would like to finish with some wise words from funny man <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dara_O_Briain">Dara Ó Briain</a>:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdQK4Wp10qo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdQK4Wp10qo</a> (Check at around three:18!)<br /><span style="font-size:85%">(From a British system called <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brooker%27s_Gameswipe">Gameswipe</a>, which is nicely worth watching in its entirty)</span>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-4017403738286440082013-11-14T14:05:00.000-08:002013-11-14T14:05:02.032-08:00Fractional Fun<span style="font-style: italicfont-size:100%">(Applications and Mandelbulb screensshots offered at the finish of the post!)<br /></span><br />This weblog post will not be completely game associated, but far more about the engine and a recent obsession of mine. Do not fear although! It ought to hopefully nevertheless be interested and I will also offer some good pictures! Hopefully it will also be able to evoke a sense of wonder as well. Study on to uncover out!<br /><br />Ten years or so ago I wrote a paper for school about <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal">Fractals</a>. These constitute a huge range of objects but what they all have in widespread is that they have numerous levels of self similarity. Nature consists of tons of fractals, for example trees and mountains. In games the term <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_landscape">fractal landscape</a> was <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51E_G7NCXVM">very typical at time</a> and was a way of generating terrain. Despite the fact that not heard of as a lot today it is nevertheless a component of game making. Below are some examples of fractals, note how the very same kind of shape seems more than and over once again:<br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzr02l7ypNfdi0sjTliblvE4DPiI6AdTlTmwcMHW9rRxVeN4v8QVTwkAOdAaOFiJpdPiPpbd6Jjhhj0xy9Cn2z1hVL-XrZb5xnfoxaggk6O7VNlNefN58YeAGUTpmfTh9XKq1GPC5pxMU/s1600/threeFractals.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px display: block text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 448px height: 172px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzr02l7ypNfdi0sjTliblvE4DPiI6AdTlTmwcMHW9rRxVeN4v8QVTwkAOdAaOFiJpdPiPpbd6Jjhhj0xy9Cn2z1hVL-XrZb5xnfoxaggk6O7VNlNefN58YeAGUTpmfTh9XKq1GPC5pxMU/s400/threeFractals.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405083885043466914" border="0" /></a>Now, even though doing the paper for college I came across a weird issue named the <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set">Mandelbrot Set</a>. This is a specific function that when iterated and mapped (drawn to screen) creates a fractal. The function for the set is extremely easy and is based about this formula:<br /><span style="font-style: italic"><br />N() = c</span> <span style="font-style: italic"> N(n+1) = N(n)^two + c</span><br /><br />What this implies is that one particular starts of with a quantity <span style="font-style: italic">c</span>, then multiply by itself and ultimately add <span style="font-style: italic">c</span> to get the subsequent quantity in the sequence. If completed with normal numbers, a single gets something like this:<br /><span style="font-style: italic"><br />1 + 2 + 5 + 26 + ... and so on towards infinity</span><br /><br />However, there is a twist to this formula when generating the Mandelbrot set, alternatively of using a regular quantity for c, a <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_number">complex number</a> is used. A complex number has a actual and <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_number">imaginary</a> element and is written like this: <span style="font-style: italic">c = 3 + 2i</span> (the imaginary parts gets i behind it). When employing the above formula on a complicated number, it gets slightly a lot more complex and is (kinda) analogous to a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/%7Ecfadd/1150/03Vct2D/Vectrs.html">2d vector</a> being rotated by itself.<br />Now, to get the Mandelbrot set, 1 "merely" checks if a certain c tends to make N go toward infinity or not. If it it does not, then it is component of the set. In practice a single just iterates (does the very same issue more than and more than) the formula a fixed number of times and see if it has reached a certain limit worth. If it has it is mentioned to be <span style="font-style: italic">not</span> component of the set.<br /><br />Hopefully the math portion made sense and was not too boring, but I felt it was needed for complete understanding of what makes the Mandelbrot set so wonderful. And to see why it is incredible one particular has to visualize it. This is accomplished by letting c be a point on the screen where the x coordinate is the actual portion of the y coordinate the imaginary. Then a single colors the pixel black if it is part of the set, and if not colour it based on how numerous iterations it took to attain the limit value. Doing so will produce this picture:<br /><div style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_WtbA4Va0BHVZ7pipAKfmJgOfKQE9FZHyjXDwzWTRVYZkWaz3p_rpzFF__ATKZWZtq-cTDmFUVQsQwC_1yb6b47pKBnTGqC9q93IyHzplJ-76s961BPXVMdVsJCfbrgTzT3X1XDbFstKb/s1600/Mandel_zoom_00_mandelbrot_set.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px display: block text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 336px height: 252px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_WtbA4Va0BHVZ7pipAKfmJgOfKQE9FZHyjXDwzWTRVYZkWaz3p_rpzFF__ATKZWZtq-cTDmFUVQsQwC_1yb6b47pKBnTGqC9q93IyHzplJ-76s961BPXVMdVsJCfbrgTzT3X1XDbFstKb/s400/Mandel_zoom_00_mandelbrot_set.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405090618433377554" border="0" /></a><a target="_blank" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Mandel_zoom_00_mandelbrot_set.jpg"><span style="font-size:85%">Click here for big version.</span></a><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size:100%">I gotta say that that is a pretty damn detailed image a single gets from just iterating some boring function! If an individual had just shown me the formula </span>I would never have guess it could generate such a wonderful result!<br />It gets even better still! If a single zooms in on this image, the specifics just hold coming and they <span style="font-weight: bold">in no way</span> repeat! As with the other fractals same type of shapes return again and once more, but in no way in the exact form. The beauty of it is breathtaking! Here are some examples of zoomed in parts:<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZKmsmqWN0dP4e2ceaezlOTbdyW7EsWGfo0WlPZj2cmYTZUdARxByqSkaASdyBrZFoQF9LyQzRHCVCEc0HNqiixHaU0vWlZs2kt2oK-fWDq6Iyqv0cS8DnFWA2O1_qk2x-3aZGqyrIew-j/s1600/ThreeMandelZooms.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px display: block text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 454px height: 125px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZKmsmqWN0dP4e2ceaezlOTbdyW7EsWGfo0WlPZj2cmYTZUdARxByqSkaASdyBrZFoQF9LyQzRHCVCEc0HNqiixHaU0vWlZs2kt2oK-fWDq6Iyqv0cS8DnFWA2O1_qk2x-3aZGqyrIew-j/s400/ThreeMandelZooms.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405093074951597682" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%">Big versions: <a target="_blank" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Mandel_zoom_02_seehorse_valley.jpg">here</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Mandel_zoom_04_seehorse_tail.jpg">right here </a>and <a target="_blank" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Mandel_zoom_07_satellite.jpg">here</a>.</span><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size:100%">When I made my personal Mandelbrot system I could not cease looking the set. It felt like I was exploring some type of alien world and it feels so weird that such a straightforward formula can develop a cosmos of infinite detail. If you want to explore it your self, <a target="_blank" href="http://mandelbrotexplorer.com/">right here</a> is a quite nice web application for just that.</span><br /></div><br /><br />Quick forward to present day. Last Friday Luis sent me a hyperlink to this <a target="_blank" href="http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html">web page</a> of a person who managed to generate a 3d version of the Mandelbrot set. Naturally this was irresistible for me and inspired by the performs of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.iquilezles.org/">Iñigo Quilez</a> (I had his presentation "Rendering World with Two Triangles" as a reference all through this project) I set out to develop a genuine time application that could discover this planet .<br /><br />My notion was to use some kind of ray tracer to render out depth, then use that depth to produce normals and just plug that into the deferred shader and let it add <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2332">ssao</a>, good light and fog. I believed about this for a although and came up with the notion to use the exact same strategy as when rendering <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/09/parallax-trix.html">higher top quality parallax</a>. This strategy is known as <a target="_blank" href="http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/%7Eoliveira/RTM.html">relief mapping</a> and performs by 1st producing a rough linear search for an intersection and then a binary search to pin the precise place down. Hopefully this would prove quickly enough to do a good 3D Mandelbrot in true time! What I ended up with was an algorithm that could render arbitrary mathematical functions, so I tested this on some functions and got pretty nice outcomes:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center"><br /><object height="300" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9-jGWLmDUXY&hl=sv_SE&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9-jGWLmDUXY&hl=sv_SE&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="300" width="400"></embed></object><br /><span style="font-size:85%">Some metaballs rendered and animated. This is not the fastest way to do this, but proved that stuff worked!</span><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center"><br /><object height="300" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l2qFHyR-TQs&hl=sv_SE&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l2qFHyR-TQs&hl=sv_SE&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="300" width="400"></embed></object><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size:85%">Right here is an animated "Sine Landscape" that is just a bunch of sine curves added with each other.</span><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size:100%"><br />What was left now was to attack the Mandelbrot set! The formula for obtaining hold of the 3D version is a tiny bit distinct from the 2D one particular and is not truly THE 3D Mandelbrot either, but it certainly the closest I have observed! It was found by <a target="_blank" href="http://www.skytopia.com/">Daniel White</a> and operates by utilizing<a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_coordinate_system"> spherical coordinates</a>. Bear in mind how I said that the 2D Mandelbrot formula was sort of like rotating a vector by itself. Well, in the 3D version 1 rotates a 3D vector about itself by making use of spherical coordinates alternatively of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_coordinates">polar</a> (skipping formula, but if any individual is interested I can give much more specifics!). Also, to make it look great in 3D, one has to have a power of eight in the formula, which means that one spins the coordinate about by itself eight instances!</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-size:100%">It took quite some time get this working as the 3D-card did not do what I want to and so on. But ultimately I got it all working and boy was it worth it!!! Here are some screens:<br /></span><br /><div style="text-align: center"><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0iaIkwt34C9d7_nKj0LItgMA14_mz0Q6C18QWheJ-Acfj50ohHXeeC3z3ROkI_ifTSECLSWz5c_AE2QBjzp7-v7JrccsTsgpz35AkaUdHzmtXHgYaKHNk9eIXkPBN4YR45CTT9RRcsZQ/s1600/Screen_Simple3D_057.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px display: block text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 400px height: 300px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0iaIkwt34C9d7_nKj0LItgMA14_mz0Q6C18QWheJ-Acfj50ohHXeeC3z3ROkI_ifTSECLSWz5c_AE2QBjzp7-v7JrccsTsgpz35AkaUdHzmtXHgYaKHNk9eIXkPBN4YR45CTT9RRcsZQ/s400/Screen_Simple3D_057.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405122206422994546" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%">At the edge of a hole. Possibly some strange creatures reside in those burrows?</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh47SLtM5nOjFDUZpDOaxm2kCVQn0yI-ed9dyt0qCJti4EVFgftV0HYE9INHPfnN9qo_-HC5gTmMOnhRLySoewL3R0W5xjeqqT-etYwC3NBHA2Ea0xnl_iu_DRZiol4_uOKCLk3qROesDqc/s1600/Screen_Simple3D_053.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px display: block text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 400px height: 300px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh47SLtM5nOjFDUZpDOaxm2kCVQn0yI-ed9dyt0qCJti4EVFgftV0HYE9INHPfnN9qo_-HC5gTmMOnhRLySoewL3R0W5xjeqqT-etYwC3NBHA2Ea0xnl_iu_DRZiol4_uOKCLk3qROesDqc/s400/Screen_Simple3D_053.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405122828275802594" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%">This is a 3D version of a <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_set">Julia set</a>! Looks like some alien space ship flying via the vacuum.</span><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left"><br />Once I got this far I could not quit utilizing it! It was so significantly exciting exploring the weird world of the 8th degree Mandelbrot fractal! Simply because of some limitations in the ray tracing technique I added a new version of the renderer that builds up the image in slices and can use a lot far more iterations when checking if it is in the set or not (a lot more iterations = much more information). It is slower, but creates more particulars in the photos and it is entertaining to use it when one discovers some further exciting shape and want it enhanced. Right here is a video of me exploring the set:<br /></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center"><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/h5yLl9Z4C2A&hl=sv_SE&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/h5yLl9Z4C2A&hl=sv_SE&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /></div><br /><br />Now the best of all this is that YOU can explore this strange planet oneself! To do so, just download the <a target="_blank" href="http://unbirthgame.com/MathFuncRenderer.zip">MathFuncRenderer </a>and get going! (ShaderModel three capable card essential) Windows, Mac and Linux version below.<br />Note that you require OpenAL installed for it to run. Get that here:<br /><a target="_blank" href="http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Downloads/Forms/AllItems.aspx">http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Downloads/Types/AllItems.aspx</a><br /><br />Winodws:<br /><a target="_blank" href="http://unbirthgame.com/MathFuncRenderer.zip">http://unbirthgame.com/MathFuncRenderer.zip</a><br /><span style="font-size:85%"><span style="font-style: italic">(Hyperlink may adjust so please do not hotlink)</span></span><br /><br />Linux:<br /><a target="_blank" href="http://unbirthgame.com/MathFuncRenderer-Linux.zip">http://unbirthgame.com/MathFuncRenderer-Linux.zip</a><br /><span style="font-size:85%"><span style="font-style: italic">(Link may adjust so please do not hotlink)</span></span><br /><br />Mac:<br /><a target="_blank" href="http://unbirthgame.com/MathFuncRenderer-Mac.zip">http://unbirthgame.com/MathFuncRenderer-Mac.zip</a><br /><span style="font-size:85%"><span style="font-style: italic">(Hyperlink may possibly adjust so please do not hotlink)</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italicfont-size:85%"><br />(Also note that since of some nvidia driver troubles in OSX, some nvidia card will not perform appropriately, 7300 GT on leopard is known and there may well be much more.)</span><br /><br />I am very anxious to see what kinda of strange photos you all can take so have opened up a <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3279">post for this in the forum</a>. I have currently posted more of my own images there.<br /><a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3279"><br /></a><a target="_blank" href="http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-3044.html?highlight=fractal">http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-3044.html</a>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-9999346911990794812013-11-14T10:40:00.000-08:002013-11-14T10:40:00.215-08:00Looking for Help<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right margin-left: 1em text-align: right"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="http://puu.sh/4DbKu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="" border="0" height="181" src="http://puu.sh/4DbKu.jpg" title="Early Level design shows rain cloud" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>New buildings in the background. </i></td></tr></tbody></table>Despite all the superb, amazing, astounding, stunning progress this week, Sprout's Tale has suffered an additional considerable setback that has left us in require of somebody to buttress our forces. The previous couple of months have been relatively demanding on all of us functioning on the game, but not too long ago Matt's faced the brunt of it. With his available time becoming far more and much more scarce, and the end of the year fast approaching, we require an individual else to join us.<br /><br /><br />I am personally still attempting to piece together bits of code to learn my way around C# in Unity (I've in no way truly been extremely excellent at programming), but all my perform looks terribly, horribly, Frankensteinian.<br /><br />Right now we're focused on replacing the terrain with something that is going to be less difficult to put with each other in a way that will not show seams and offers a lot more variation. In the picture above, you can see its a bit wonky. That is a lot more my fault than Murilo's, but a number of extended discussions have led us down the path to this choice. Carrying out it this way is also going to give us more opportunity to effortlessly re-texture the very same terrain assets to supply world variation with no possessing to in fact model a complete new batch of meshes.<br /><br />I am also working on making some minor adjustments to the character controller that's going to enable for really controlled movement across the Z axis at times. In the picture below, you can see that at the far finish of this stage, the player will walk back across to path to have access to background path. It's a bit tricky. How do I move the player across the Z without having taking control away from him or her? If I give manage to the player, how do I justify taking it away when the player is back on our much more traditional "2D" paths?<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto text-align: center"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="http://puu.sh/4DD20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="new house assets for the game" border="0" height="226" src="http://puu.sh/4DD20.jpg" title="Sprout's Tale gets a home" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>A swift demo level for Sprout's Tale</i></td></tr></tbody></table>Now we've got Earth Wind Water and nearly fire. Add some heart (and I've offered it lots) and it seems we've accidentally produced a Captain Planet game.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Effectively, guys, til next time. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you know any with experience in C# and Unity and is looking for function, send him our way! </div><div><br /></div><div>Thanks!</div><div><br /></div><div>Also I feel like I've been below-repping our great company logo, so right here it is again:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnNGbOJtq0dw7wvyQUy_9Eoc92BuJFd3mZQY78u7Uf1dBUGPen2L_y4gv0i9pAf5iLc0u9LkRDL3OvyvbTLaaFr8pCFBnYml47PEY7DnHQGFizbEBO0Ub_jdIN216Gf0eyvS5nDyu9IZT0/s1600/01-+version+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em margin-right: 1em"><img alt="" border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnNGbOJtq0dw7wvyQUy_9Eoc92BuJFd3mZQY78u7Uf1dBUGPen2L_y4gv0i9pAf5iLc0u9LkRDL3OvyvbTLaaFr8pCFBnYml47PEY7DnHQGFizbEBO0Ub_jdIN216Gf0eyvS5nDyu9IZT0/s400/01-+version+2.png" title="Decade Design logo" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /><br /><br /></div>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-55422469149057697792013-11-14T07:20:00.000-08:002013-11-14T07:20:00.543-08:00Creating a characterWhat a weekend. So busy I forgot it was even a weekend. Oh well, tends to make today feel less like a Monday.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right text-align: right"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8FiKGR69rwVExvYIFU6-wvJ3a0NllVAau8qgXPCmauZIHbJ-uZDJx4KMk11hv9Dqh2BsnXJANUaBEDEJjYZxz1Ck2jRne6dmFslwMJ5qyX2C49bDgxKueXYwMTZp_SdbSEhF1F7QuM6aQ/s1600/new+character.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8FiKGR69rwVExvYIFU6-wvJ3a0NllVAau8qgXPCmauZIHbJ-uZDJx4KMk11hv9Dqh2BsnXJANUaBEDEJjYZxz1Ck2jRne6dmFslwMJ5qyX2C49bDgxKueXYwMTZp_SdbSEhF1F7QuM6aQ/s400/new+character.png" title="Sprout the Game main char" width="236" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>We managed to hammer out the details of the character design and style on Friday evening, and I am really content with the result. It might not look like a lot, but a ridiculous amount of time and work went into this tiny guy. You can see from older posts the various prior designs we went by way of that got us here, and you can see which components got to keep and which ones had been banished.<br /><br />Considering that we're an web team, the way we in fact go about designing this may appear a tiny unusual. So I've decided to just go ahead and give you a run down of the approach, in case any person is interested.<br /><br />I will preface every thing by very first saying that the group carries out virtually all communication through Gchat. I've had very a bit of expertise with numerous Cloud solutions and video chat service, and Google seems to have the most dependable of every category.<br /><br />Needless to say, there are going to be folks who have had distinct experiences and have diverse opinions, and that's all fine by me. I am no fan-boy, I'm just trying to get perform accomplished. I'll give far more specifics on how we use Google's services to our benefit on a later post.<br /><br />In the meantime, here's how the art creation process tends to function:<br /><br />Initial, the artist (the unbelievably talented Murilo Kleine) and myself set a time to meet on Google. Generally it really is between 7:30 to 8  in the evening- the ideal time to accommodate the time distinction. Once we meet, we begin a "Google Hangout" and open up screen share. There is a chat window on the appropriate of this and we use that to go over a plan of action for the evening. Then he starts drawing. Meanwhile, I share my screen, generally set to show an MS Paint window, so that I can draw actually rough versions of what I'm searching for so he can turn it into anything that will not make individuals want to vomit, which I am sure you are undertaking proper now thanks to the picture on the bottom left.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left text-align: left"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxgY8n1F30uPp7dC43JTQqSZEIKrUY7WKrcrhQjTiVQgrJonptR7sOlIDVoHf4UKDQKPOAdp9zaRRXMMJFHEtIR_j6I348KEuFg9zJJjBpwqXhzdPZUQRxy74Y5OuwDQtIafh6qpIsgELj/s1600/life_pre_concept_02+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxgY8n1F30uPp7dC43JTQqSZEIKrUY7WKrcrhQjTiVQgrJonptR7sOlIDVoHf4UKDQKPOAdp9zaRRXMMJFHEtIR_j6I348KEuFg9zJJjBpwqXhzdPZUQRxy74Y5OuwDQtIafh6qpIsgELj/s320/life_pre_concept_02+(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>The distinction amongst talent and the opposite of talent</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />So he draws and asks for input as he goes. I respond with ideas but typically try to give enough freedom for him to get something that fits his own talents. For example, the original character style had a hat that looked like a tall sauce pan and garments that looked like olde-timey pajamas.<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCKx3tdzWjVv9elCg5SobMsSXns1yM52lDMMXJt6OAm1UIPCmAQmFItQ-8OAGp8GS00eQmQ_qsyuIR1gNOa6DdkHovNYolMAhRjndV22j18qziDVtn8qrzmUm4lHRe5w_2Co3Yo4yy0h8x/s1600/bg3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left display: inline !important float: left margin-bottom: 1em margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCKx3tdzWjVv9elCg5SobMsSXns1yM52lDMMXJt6OAm1UIPCmAQmFItQ-8OAGp8GS00eQmQ_qsyuIR1gNOa6DdkHovNYolMAhRjndV22j18qziDVtn8qrzmUm4lHRe5w_2Co3Yo4yy0h8x/s320/bg3.png" width="320" /></a>Needless to say, the new design and style is a VAST improvement, in each style and art top quality. I was against giving the character hair til I saw how it looked!<br /><br />So anyway, we devote a few hours performing that and then we start fiddling with colors and then we get tired and go to bed and do it all again the subsequent day. It is lengthy and tedious, but really I consider we both have a lot of fun with it.<br /><br />That is a pretty short overview, but I guess it will do! Let me know if you want to know something else!<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both text-align: center"></div><br /><br /><br />Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-56075984354611308092013-11-14T06:17:00.000-08:002013-11-14T06:17:01.186-08:00Editors are out!<a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIz3NpLlAPLkLsQ6n7WnSK4mZ2S_lxs3yKoODXLM8KrXeJHrm7VlCu6US6Te7z3IWkw992j57DDe_mMtV18WM9PORjE_IYFRv2r19c_rMmap59lHmuFYAc7PRHKM93JJcU4TAjCWKnv4j3/s1600/editors.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 400px height: 225px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIz3NpLlAPLkLsQ6n7WnSK4mZ2S_lxs3yKoODXLM8KrXeJHrm7VlCu6US6Te7z3IWkw992j57DDe_mMtV18WM9PORjE_IYFRv2r19c_rMmap59lHmuFYAc7PRHKM93JJcU4TAjCWKnv4j3/s400/editors.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516776746951022370" border="0" /></a>Just wanted to notify all that the editor tools for Amnesia: The Dark Descent are out. These are the same tools that we used the produce the game, so at a minimum you will capable to do all that is completed in the game.<br /><br />All information is getting collected right here:<br /><a target="_blank" href="http://hpl2.frictionalgames.com/">http://hpl2.frictionalgames.com/</a><br /><br />I suggest you begin by 1st downloading the tools <a target="_blank" href="http://hpl2.frictionalgames.com/tools">here, </a>then follow the guide <a target="_blank" href="http://hpl2.frictionalgames.com/amnesia:devenvguide">right here </a>and ultimately begin checking some <a target="_blank" href="http://hpl2.frictionalgames.com/tutorials">tutorials</a>.<br /><br />If you have any queries about the editors, please use our modding forum found right here:<br /><a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.com/forum/forum-35.html">http://frictionalgames.com/forum/forum-35.html</a><br /><br />Pleased editing! :)<br /><br />NOTE: Only windows version released so far. Other platforms coming shortly!Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-41339381486149111942013-11-14T02:25:00.000-08:002013-11-14T02:25:00.268-08:00Best of 2011Considering that 2012 is here I thought it may be a excellent time for a quick ideal of 2011 list! Note that only games that have been released for the duration of 2011 are integrated (and not games that I have <span style="font-style: italic">played</span> last year). So without additional ado, here are my best picks from the past year (beginning in reverse order, to make issues fascinating!):<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size:130%"><span style="font-weight: bold"><br />3 - Portal 2</span></span><br /></div><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixekYJmYToKBgwv8oo304q8D-fsvfuFOLdGM_DBX60aHbK7GFa8TEQhc0T0TOEy59WFLwuIGexUMBkq9x019cms1R5JDOzgDxSppDB9unFdJcqZv4vbu2k8zC8T_7ekctzzk-KO99QU9Mi/s1600/Portal2.jpg"><img style="display:block margin:0px auto 10px text-align:centercursor:pointer cursor:handwidth: 400px height: 225px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixekYJmYToKBgwv8oo304q8D-fsvfuFOLdGM_DBX60aHbK7GFa8TEQhc0T0TOEy59WFLwuIGexUMBkq9x019cms1R5JDOzgDxSppDB9unFdJcqZv4vbu2k8zC8T_7ekctzzk-KO99QU9Mi/s400/Portal2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693063432627571986" border="0" /></a>What I liked the most about Portal 2 had been these little moments where you really felt immersed in the planet. For instance if you hesitate to follow Wheatly's tips and a make a not quite safe seeking leap down, he will try to persuade you employing hilarious quips. These (sadly sparse) moments developed this kind of specific connection to characters you seldom see in games. There also exists a really strong sense of place in Portal 2. I feel this is mostly created by how the dialog and environments come together and interact. Unfortunately most of this is in the initial third or so and the game becomes more and more drawn out for the duration of the end. There is also a lot of truly lackluster puzzle sections exactly where you are merely attempting to locate the right area to location a portal. In spite of these short comings, Portal 2 had me fairly engaged and proved to be 1 of the greater experiences of last year.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%"><br />two - To the Moon</span><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgutzs5fqwJ3wZCFL-7y0gnpP80DH9-s_kRMCb9lpy0KN-DURyX7Wd0vbNJsHWqTkNcdfZCxIcO0jQLD4GTOa9teNWSb2fqefEhlBmlRBOb68fzXJLFYjFlj_CwG1OwkY4rlVx_IcgmPHRO/s1600/To-The-Moon.jpg"><img style="display:block margin:0px auto 10px text-align:centercursor:pointer cursor:handwidth: 400px height: 180px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgutzs5fqwJ3wZCFL-7y0gnpP80DH9-s_kRMCb9lpy0KN-DURyX7Wd0vbNJsHWqTkNcdfZCxIcO0jQLD4GTOa9teNWSb2fqefEhlBmlRBOb68fzXJLFYjFlj_CwG1OwkY4rlVx_IcgmPHRO/s400/To-The-Moon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693063717512022082" border="0" /></a>I think the most interesting aspect of this game is how it in some ways is a culmination of a 25 years JPRPG pixel dramaturgy. The emotional displays of the simplistic sprites are quite restricted, but are used to perfection and creates a really effective and mature narration. The game also feature extremely exciting take on puzzles and action. Sometimes it is attainable to make a decision how a lot challenge you want and at other occasions the activities are irrelevant and simply there to make you much more connected to the world. Unfortunately this is at its ideal at the begin of the game and it gets progressively worse. The end even contains a terrible action sequence.<br />What actually brings the game home even though, is how To the Moon manages to bring up mature themes in a way that is extremely rare in videogames. These play out in pretty non-interactive situations and hence are not any kind of revolution. But just seeing a game where the core experience is a meditation on really like, relationships, memory and what is truly essential in life, makes me genuinely content and hopeful.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">1- Sword and Sworcery</span><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4KuOU2iSMyPPt8wcTjOj_9UgXe53jULddDoFXSP6e5ioNhglAHo1s8AQFGtJImgrn3n1hnrKpYNE_hLYFMOaBhYzZMOsy2DbNQjRjMm_EDuNq6chzx3qm0MglLTkOdg_e9ZqOfQKBd5C5/s1600/sword_sworcerer_sshotr.png"><img style="display:block margin:0px auto 10px text-align:centercursor:pointer cursor:handwidth: 400px height: 267px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4KuOU2iSMyPPt8wcTjOj_9UgXe53jULddDoFXSP6e5ioNhglAHo1s8AQFGtJImgrn3n1hnrKpYNE_hLYFMOaBhYzZMOsy2DbNQjRjMm_EDuNq6chzx3qm0MglLTkOdg_e9ZqOfQKBd5C5/s400/sword_sworcerer_sshotr.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693063816483367170" border="0" /></a>This is by far my favorite game from final year. The videogame's sturdy concentrate on producing some thing that blends interaction, music and visuals creates a genuinely engaging expertise. This is actually a game that aims to take you inside a one more planet and it is all about living it alternatively of attempting to beat it. One more issue I actually liked about it is how the game does not force you into continuing playing it. Sword and Sworcery in fact explicitly tells you to take a rest and come back later in between chapters. In an sector where it is all about getting players hooked and by no means stop playing, this is extremly refreshing to see. Combined with this, the game also asks you to reflect upon it and encourages the player to not just have a shallow, addictive expertise. I truly hope to see much more of this! The game is not with no flaws of course. There are lots of problems with the usually annoying combat, repetitive puzzles, the twitter integration did not really feel required and some of the writing feels a bit as well quirky and lazy. Nonetheless, Sword and Sworcery is really the point and I urge all of every person to give it a go.<br /><br /><br />Now I am interested to hear which three games from 2011 were your favorites!Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-74653008693998728652013-11-13T23:07:00.000-08:002013-11-13T23:07:00.650-08:00Tech Feature: Undergrowth<span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Introduction</span><br />Following a small break with updates on the <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/12/bye-bye-pre-pass-lighting.html">rendering technique</a>, holidays and super secret stuff, I could ultimately get back to terrain rendering this week. This meant operate on the final huge component of the terrain technique: Undergrowth. This is basically grass and any sort of little vegetation close to the ground.<br /><br />As often, I started out carrying out a ton of analysis on the topic to at least have a chance of generating proper decisions at the start off. The dilemma with undergrowth/grass is that even though I could discover a lot of resources, most had been quite specific, describing strategies that only worked in unique cases. This is really typical when doing technical stuff for games even though there are a lot of good data, only a quite modest component is usable in an actual game. This is specially true when dealing with any larger technique (like terrain) and not just some localized unique effect. In these cases reports from other developers are by far ideal, and writing these blog posts is partly a way to spend back what I have learned from other people's work.<br /><br />Now on with the tech stuff!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Plant Placement Information</span><br />The 1st dilemma I was faced with was how to define where the undergrowth need to be. In all of the resources I located, there was some sort of density texture used (meaning a 2D image where every single pixel defines the quantity of plants at that point). I did not like this concept quite significantly although, primarily due to the fact I would be forced to have lots of textures, 1 for each undergrowth kind, or to not permit overlapping plants (which means the same area on the map would not be able to contain two different varieties of undergrowth). There are approaches past this (e.g. the FrostBite engine <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slideshare.net/repii/terrain-rendering-in-frostbite-using-procedural-shader-splatting-presentation">utilizes sort of texture atlases</a>), but then creating it perform inside the editor would be a discomfort, most most likely demanding pre-processing and a particular editor renderer. I had to do anything else.<br /><br />What I settled on was to use region primitives, basic geometrical shapes that defined exactly where the undergrowth would be. The way this operates is that each and every primitive define a 2D location have been plants need to be placed. It then also contains variables such as density, enabling 1 to location thick grass at 1 spot, and a sparser area elsewhere.<br /><br />I ended up implemented circle and convex polygons primitives for this, which throughout tests appear to function just fine.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%"><span style="font-weight: bold">Producing the Plants</span></span><br />The next dilemma was how generate the actual geometry. My initial idea was to simply draw the grass for each area, but there were some issues with this. One significant was that it would not appear excellent with overlapping regions. If areas of the exact same density overlapped, the cross section would have twice the density of the combined area. This did not seem proper to me. Also, it was problematic to get a good distribution only making use of locations and I was unsure how to save the information.<br /><br />After once more, the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slideshare.net/repii/terrain-rendering-in-frostbite-using-procedural-shader-splatting-presentation">report on the FrostBite engine</a> gave me an thought on how to method this. They way they did this was to fill a grid a with probability values. For every grid point a random quantity in between and 1 is generated and then compared to to the 1 saved in the grid. If the generated number is lower than the saved, a plant is generated at that point, else not. Each and every plant is then offset by random amount, creating a nice uniform but random distribution of the plants!<br /><br />This program match ideal with the undergrowth places and simplified it also. Using this method, an undergrowth area does not need to worry about generating the actual plants, but only to create numbers on the grid.<br /><br />The final version works like this:<br /><br />There is an undergrowth material for each sort of plant that is utilized on a level. This material specifies the max density of every plant and as a result determines how the grid should look. A material with a high density will have a grid with many points and a single with a low density will have few grid points. Each point (not all of course, some culling is employed) on the grid is checked against a region primitive and a value is calculated. This is then repeated for each area, adding contributions from all places that cover the identical grid point.<br /><br />This solves the issue of overlapping regions, as the density can in no way turn into bigger than max defined by the grid. It permits makes it achievable to have adverse areas, that reduce the amount of undergrowth in a particular place. This way, the two easy region primitives I have implemented can be utilised for just about any type of undergrowth layout.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Cache system</span><br />Now it is time to discuss how to create the actual plants. A way to do this is to just produce the geometry for the whole map, but that would take up way as well a lot memory and be very slow. Instead, I use a cache program that only generate grass close to the camera (this is also how <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frostbite_Engine">FrostBite</a> does it).<br /><br />The engine divides the whole terrain into a grid of quads, and then generates cache data for every quad that is close adequate to the camera. For each and every quad, it is checked what places intersect with it, and layers are made for every undergrowth material that it contain. Then for every layer, plants are generated based on the technique described above. The undergrowth material also consists of texture and model information as effectively as a bunch of other properties. For instance, the size can be randomized and diverse parts of the texture utilised, all to add some range to the patch of undergrowth. Finally plant is also offset in height according to the heightmap.<br /><br />This cache generation took quite some perform to get good enough. I had difficulties with the game stuttering as you traveled via a level, and had to do a variety of tricks to make it more quickly. I also made positive that no far more than one patch is generated at every frame (unless the camera is teleported or comparable).<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%"><span style="font-weight: bold">Rendering</span></span><br />As soon as the cache method was in location, rendering the plants were not that considerably of a dilemma. Every generated patch comes with the grass in globe coordinates, so it is as straightforward as it can get. The only fancy stuff taking place is that grass in the distance is dissolved. This signifies that the grass does not finish with a sharp border, but smoothly fades out.<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CkshKqLAOw-2aFUM4NbHipgHLGrwS0R1jLcdILhcVoloXJGURHOJsTBTuVyF6kllBvx_DKJXuBcHGcITq919ijPRyfgb7OyGX_gAadUVcLG9AAjcTBvHFWYJCvUnh4waU95Hkd0nOMbR/s1600/field_of_grass.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 300px height: 226px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CkshKqLAOw-2aFUM4NbHipgHLGrwS0R1jLcdILhcVoloXJGURHOJsTBTuVyF6kllBvx_DKJXuBcHGcITq919ijPRyfgb7OyGX_gAadUVcLG9AAjcTBvHFWYJCvUnh4waU95Hkd0nOMbR/s400/field_of_grass.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5564211544026814114" border="0" /></a><br />In the above image you can see how the grass dissolves at distance. Here it appears pretty crappy, but with appropriate art, it is meant that grass and ground texture ought to match, as a result producing the transition pretty significantly unnoticeable.<br /><br />Yet another thing worth mentioning, is that the normal for every grass model is the identical as the ground. This offers a nice appear to many plants, but an individual plant gets fairly crappy shading. Undergrowth is meant to be modest and not observed close-up even though, so I consider this need to function out fine. Also, when creating grass earlier (during development Amnesia), normal normals (ha...) were utilised and the outcome was very negative (sharp shading, and so forth).<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Animation</span><br />Static grass is boring, so of course some sort of animation is necessary. What I wanted was two diverse types of animation: A international wind animation (distinctive for every single material) and also local animation due to events in a restricted area (somebody walking by means of grass, wind from a helicopter, etc).<br /><br />My 1st idea was to do all of these on the cpu, meaning that I would need to resend all the geometry to the graphics card each and every frame. This would enable me to use all kinds of fanciness for animation (like my dear <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/11/tech-feature-noise-and-fractals.html">noise and fractals</a>) and would effortlessly allow for lots of neighborhood disturbances.<br /><br />Even so, I did some pondering and decided that this would be a undesirable idea. Not only does the sending of data to the graphics card take up time, but there may possibly be some quite heavy calculations required (like rotating normals) for a lot plants, so the cpu burden would be extremely heavy. Rather I chose to do almost everything on the GPU.<br /><br />Implementing the global wind animation was fairly basic i was just a matter of sending a handful of new variables to the grass shader. But it was a bit tougher to come up with the actual algorithm. Probably I did not appear hard adequate, but I could discover quite small assist on this area, so I had to do a lot of experimenting as an alternative. The idea was to get anything that was quickly (i.e. no stuff like <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise">Perlin noise</a> permitted) and however have a natural random really feel to it. What I ended up with was this:<br /><span style="font-style: italicfont-size:85%"><br />add_x = vec3(7., three., 1.) * VertexPos.z * wind_freq + vec3(13., 17., 103.)<br />offset.x = dot( vec3(sin(fT*1.13 + add_x.x), sin(fT*1.17 + add_x.y), sin(fT + add_x.y)), vec3(.125, .25, 1.) )<br /><br />add_y = vec3(7., three., 1.) * (VertexPos..x + vOffset.x) * wind_freq + vec3(103., 13., 113.)<br />offset.y = dot( vec3(sin(fT*1.13 + add_y.x), sin(fT*1.17 + add_y.y), sin(fT + add_y.z)), vec3(.125, .25, 1.) )</span><br /><br />This is essentially a couple of fractually nested sin curves (<a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Brownian_motion">fbm</a> fundamentally) that take the present vertex position as input. The essential factor to note is the prime numbers such as <span style="font-style: italic">vec3(7., three., 1.)</span> without having these the cycles of the sin curves overlap and the end outcome is a quite cyclic, boring and unnatural appear.<br /><br />The offset generated is then applied differently based on the height of the plant. There will be a lot of swaying at the best and none at the bottom. To do this the base y-coordinate of the plant is saved in a secondary texture coordinate and then looked up in the shader.<br /><br />Now lastly, the regional animation. To do this entities known as ForceFields are utilized. (Thanks Luis for the name suggestion! It created carrying out the boring parts so considerably much more fun to make.) These are entities that come with a radius and a force worth, and is meant to produce effects on the graphics that they touch. Proper now only grass is impacted, but later on effects on ropes, cloth, larger plants , and so on are meant to be added.<br /><br />These effect of these are applied in the shader and currently I help a maximum of 4 ForceFields per cache patch. In the shader I either do none, a single entity or four at after. This means that if three entities have an effect on a patch, I nevertheless render the outcome of 4, but fill the final one's data with dummy (null) values. Using four is in fact almost as fast as utilizing a single. Since of how GPUs operate, I can do a lot of function for all four entities in the exact same amount of directions as for a single. This tremendously reduce down the quantity of operate that is required.<br /><br />Again, just like with the international wind, it was tough work to come up with a great algorithm for this. My very first thought was to basically push every single plant away from the center of the force field, but this looked genuinely crappy. I then tried to add some randomness and animation to this in order to make it nicer. As inspiration, I looked at <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_quest">Titan Quest,</a> which has a really good impact when you walk by means of grass. After nearly a days work the final algorithm appear anything like this:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italicfont-size:85%">fForce = 1 - distance(vtx_pos, force_field_pos)/force_field_radius<br /><br />fAngle = T + rand_seed*6.28<br />fForce *= sin(force_field_t + fAngle)<br /><br />vDir = vec2(sin(fAngle), cos(fAngle))<br />vOffset.xz += vDir * fForce</span><br /><br />Rand seed is variable that is saved in the secondary texture coordinate and is generated for every plant. This aids offers a lot more random and natural really feel to it.<br /><br />Here is how it all appears in action:<br /><br /><center><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/o5dwhrYBN4c?hd=1" width="425" frameborder="0" height="349"></iframe></center><br /><div style="text-align: center"><span style="font-style: italic">Note: Make certain to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5dwhrYBN4c&hd=1">check in HD</a>!</span><br /></div><br />And in case you are wonder all of this is ugly, made in 10 seconds, graphics.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">End notes</span><br />Now that undergrowth is lastly completed, it signifies that all fundamental terrain attributes are implemented! In case you have missed out on earlier post here is a summary:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/11/tech-feature-terrain-geometry.html">Terrain Geometry</a><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/11/tech-feature-noise-and-fractals.html">Fractals and Noise</a><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/11/tech-feature-terrain-textures.html">Terrain Texturing</a><br /><br />I hope this has been of use and/or interest to somebody! :)<br /><br />Subsequent up for me is some final terrain stuff (basically just some clean-up) and then I will move on to far more gameplay associated stuff. Much more on that later though...Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-56736347781453823562013-11-13T23:04:00.000-08:002013-11-13T23:04:00.175-08:00The news, the nooseWhat a dramatic title this week! I admit, 50% of that title is just the reality that I realized noose and news sound sort of the exact same. This post actually will have nothing at all to do with literal nooses.<br /><br />Figurative nooses, on the other hand, is a diverse story. Things have been actually tight for us lately, with day-jobs for Matt, Murilo, and me fully taking more than our lives. Extended hours with tiny rest and then we get residence and each and every try to force issues forward on our front.<br /><br />Because of that circumstance, we went via a long period with reasonably little acquire and what I would say had to be the slowest period of Sprout improvement because day 1. Suddenly our switch to Unity seemed bleak. I continued developing when the hours allowed it, but largely I identified myself falling asleep at my desk.<br /><br />Reluctantly, then, I started to consider the most logical next step. Bringing on a fourth member. A fourth full-time member with a lot of knowledge in Unity. It was a hard selection for various causes, but ultimately I think I produced the right choice when I accepted and was honored by Ashley Ross' (Rossy) offer to help us.<br /><br />Rossy not only has a lot of Unity knowledge, but he has a complete game under his belt- a side-scroller constructed with the Unity engine known as Dot.Stop.Run. Although it is still in Beta (only 4 levels so far) you can find the game on <a target="_blank" href="http://www.desura.com/games/publish/dot1">Desura</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.omnomcom.dot">Google Play</a>. Here's the trailer:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" scrolling="no" src="http://www.desura.com/media/iframe/835210" width="560"></iframe><br /></div><a target="_blank" href="http://www.desura.com/games/dot1/videos/sneak-peak-gameplay-video">Sneak peak gameplay video - Desura</a><br /><br />So Rossy's been with us for about a week now and currently we're seeing massive progress in organization and coding. He actually reorganized our entire Drive, something I had seriously been starting to think about starting to plan on doing eventually.<br /><br />We've also got grass growth in now and trees will come shortly. We're only a handful of methods away from acquiring back to what we are now calling the "prototype" version built on XNA. It's nice to start feeling the buzz and power once more.<br /><br />It appears like we're back on track.Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-75128552685189808412013-11-13T21:12:00.000-08:002013-11-13T21:12:00.306-08:00Tech Feature: Terrain geometry<span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Introduction</span><br />The past two weeks I have been operating on terrain, and for two months or so prior to that I have (at irregular intervals) been researching and preparing this operate. Now ultimately the geometry-generation portion of the terrain code is as excellent as completed.<br /><br />The 1st issue I had to decide was what sort of approach to use. There are tons of methods to deal with terrain and a lot of papers/literature on it. I have some tips on what the super secret project will need in terms of terrain, but nevertheless wanted to to maintain it as open as achievable so that the tech I produced now would not turn into unusable later on. Because of this I required to use some thing that felt customizable and scalable, and be able to fit the needs that might arise in the future.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: boldfont-size:130%">Creating vertices</span><br />What I decided on was a an updated version of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomipmapping">geomipmapping</a>. My main resources was the original paper from 2000 (located <a target="_blank" href="http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Fast_Terrain_Rendering_Using_Geometrical_MipMapping.shtml">here</a>) and the terrain paper for the <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frostbite_Engine">Frostbite Engine</a> that energy Battlefield: Undesirable Firm (see presentation <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slideshare.net/repii/terrain-rendering-in-frostbite-using-procedural-shader-splatting-presentation">here</a>). Basically, the method works by possessing a <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heightmap">heightmap </a>of the terrain and then produce all geometry on the GPU. This limits the game to Shader Model three cards (for NVIDIA at least, ATI only has it in Shader model four cards in OpenGL) as the height map texture requirements to be accessed in the vertex shader. This means fewer cards will be capable to play the game, but considering that we will not release until two years or so from now that ought to not be much of a dilemma. Also, it would be achievable to add a version that precomputes the geometry if it was genuinely required.<br /><br />The very good thing about undertaking geomipmapping on the GPUis that it is extremely simple to vary the quantity of detail utilised and it saves a lot of memory (the heightmap requires about about a 1/ten of what the vertex information does). Prior to I go into the geomipmapping algorithm, I will very first discuss how to create the actual data. Essentially, what you do is render one or many vertex grids that read from the heightmap and then offset the y-coordinate for every single vertex. The regular is also generated by taking 4 height samples around current heightmap texel. Right here is what it looks in in the G-buffer when normal and depth are generated from a heightmap (which is also integrated in the image):<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqmiWXLEU0hY-9jJTVigDIcBbfANuypnq5x2LewdyqYIpGDZJ9siliNsZKywWQZutLFGyF2Fg1sJeCex5Ql32ZYPLVlU2NfDiXwfQw995POVgFOhpu2qk2O97xpfJJd9VAf7vLBmiHYkGe/s1600/01_normal_and_depth.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 456px height: 136px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqmiWXLEU0hY-9jJTVigDIcBbfANuypnq5x2LewdyqYIpGDZJ9siliNsZKywWQZutLFGyF2Fg1sJeCex5Ql32ZYPLVlU2NfDiXwfQw995POVgFOhpu2qk2O97xpfJJd9VAf7vLBmiHYkGe/s400/01_normal_and_depth.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535744479075055522" border="0" /></a><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2E0c0trtgw8gM82sqdENHTLfH4Gz-AzeWHl39c9PI7i-HF9m05Hzf9za-gqy6ItTq6Cy-vyem6PHhWTZynR1LtkYf4OHcP2xvTx2rYfWB-G1g7YvG_2pN1GTCuM90ciFjN3E1DHloUvRn/s1600/01_normal_and_depth.jpg"><br /></a>Given that I spent some time with figuring out regular generation algorithm, right here is some explaination on that. The fundamental algorithm is as follows:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%"><span style="font-style: italic">h0 = height(x+1, z)</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic">h1 = height(x-1, z)</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic">h2 = height(x, z+1)</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic">h3 = height(x, z+1)</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic">normal = normalize(h1-h0, two * height_texel_ratio, h3-h2)</span></span><br /><br />What occurs here is that the slope is calculated along the x-axis and then z-axis. Slope is defined by:<br /><span style="font-size:85%"><span style="font-style: italic">dx= (h1-h0) / (x1-x0)</span></span><br />or put in words, the distinction in height divided by the distinction in length. But because the distance is usually two units for both the x and z, slope we can skip this division and merely just go with the difference in height. Now for the y-component, which we wants to be 1 when both slopes are and then steadily decrease as the other slopes get greater. For this algorithm we set it to two although considering that we want to get the rid of the division with two (which means multiplying all axes by two). But a issue remains, and that is that actual height worth is not always in the exact same units as the heightmap texels spacing. To fix this, we need to have to add a multiplier to the y-axis, which is calculated like this:<br /><span style="font-size:85%"><span style="font-style: italic"><br />height_texel_ratio = </span><span style="font-style: italic">max_height / unit_size</span></span><br /><br />I save the heightmap in a normalized type, which implies all values are in between 1-, and <span style="font-style: italic">max_heigh</span>t is what each value is multiplied with when calculating the vertex y-value. The <span style="font-style: italic">unitsize </span>variable is what a texel represent in globe space.<br /><br />This algorithm is not that precise as it does not not take into account the diagonal slopes and such. It performs pretty good though and provides good results. Here is how it appears when it is shaded:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpJEkonCWmiNU5CxrjDMiqrX4J4yBVI0aFQKGH9Z20uENXCoujKfr0nzIgqDZLjFR8WgjW5ywKesp-hwvYnkowrupe3XIeN01gjsTxCIqCC1FMxTcDGXlssycmkhmhKfzQKy-54M_d_hE_/s1600/02_first_shade.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 268px height: 201px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpJEkonCWmiNU5CxrjDMiqrX4J4yBVI0aFQKGH9Z20uENXCoujKfr0nzIgqDZLjFR8WgjW5ywKesp-hwvYnkowrupe3XIeN01gjsTxCIqCC1FMxTcDGXlssycmkhmhKfzQKy-54M_d_hE_/s400/02_first_shade.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535743363487971682" border="0" /></a><br />Note that here are some bumpy surfaces at the base the hills. The is since of precision concerns in the heightmap I was making use of (only used 8bits in the first tests) and is something I will get back to.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%"><span style="font-weight: bold">Geomipmapping</span></span><br />The basic algorithm is pretty easy and is fundamentally that the longer a element of the terrain is from the camera, the less vertices are utilized the render it. This operates by having a single grid mesh, named patch, that is drawn several occasions, each time reperesenting a different component of the terrain. When a terrain patch is near the camera, there is a 1:1 vertex-to-texel coverage ratio, which means that the grid covers a little element of the terrain in the highest possible resolution. Then as patches gets additional away, the ratio gets smaller sized, and and grid covers a higher region but fewer vertices. So for really far away components of the atmosphere the ratio may be one thing like 1:128. The concept is that because the portion is so far off the details are not visible anyway and each ratio can be a referred to as a <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail">LOD</a>-level.<br /><br />The way this operates internally is that a <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_tree">quadtree </a>represent different the various LOD-levels. The engine then traverse this tree and if a node is discovered beyond a specific distance from the camera then it is picked. The lowest level nodes, with the smallest vertex-to-pixel ratio, are always picked if no other parent node meet the distance requirement. In this fashion the world is built up each and every frame.<br /><br />The dilemma is now to figure out what distance that a particular LOD-level is usable from and the original paper has some equations on how to do this. This is based on the alter in the height of the details, but I skipped obtaining such calculations and just let it be user set alternatively. This is how it appears in action:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWNFuITQ-r7mueRZ5U6G-xkc4mopqUXZfuh5zYMN3gHECCwyz-Ed7ovS-ahXXIM4_fiMo2Wzq1Ga4r4IXtp4lPKkn3pZQRq5HQ-qh-a2hqjpzF25UQpCC31lMn5n8oNKzBm2Vnk3HcoOsD/s1600/03_mipmap_levels.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 292px height: 220px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWNFuITQ-r7mueRZ5U6G-xkc4mopqUXZfuh5zYMN3gHECCwyz-Ed7ovS-ahXXIM4_fiMo2Wzq1Ga4r4IXtp4lPKkn3pZQRq5HQ-qh-a2hqjpzF25UQpCC31lMn5n8oNKzBm2Vnk3HcoOsD/s400/03_mipmap_levels.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535749076084359538" border="0" /></a>White (grey) areas represent a 1:1 ratio, red 1:two and green 1:4. Now a dilemma emerges when making use of grids of various levels next to one particular an additional: You get t-junctions exactly where the grids meet (due to the fact exactly where the 1:1 patch has two grid quads, the 2:1 has only one particular) , resulting in visible seams. The repair this, there demands to be unique grid pieces in the intersections that generate a much better transition. The pieces look like this (for a 4x4 grid patch):<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5QoUMsaVaTLvgZ7olmgazSZerRkcBvBQ5ogxA-dMkf4nM0axNHoehRnMzi1vpdhtpHecyYa1kxwYYJTg5ABpr3pfg4ZauClmS0hqqygUTYsCUlzcyRNVQwfX83dH5ckPDdkx9JheGyTnT/s1600/04_patch_types.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 400px height: 167px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5QoUMsaVaTLvgZ7olmgazSZerRkcBvBQ5ogxA-dMkf4nM0axNHoehRnMzi1vpdhtpHecyYa1kxwYYJTg5ABpr3pfg4ZauClmS0hqqygUTYsCUlzcyRNVQwfX83dH5ckPDdkx9JheGyTnT/s400/04_patch_types.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535752223250387586" border="0" /></a>Although there are 16 border permutations in total, only 9 are required since of how the patches are generated from the quadtree. The exact same vertex buffer is employed for all of these sorts of patches, and only the index buffer is changed, saving some storage and speeding up rendering a bit (no switch of vertex buffer required).<br /><br />The difficulty is now that there need to be a maximum of 1 in level distinction between patches. To make confident of this the distance checked, which I talked about earlier, demands to take this into account. This distance is calculated by taking the minimum distance from the previous level ( for lowest ratio) and add the diagonal of the AABB (where height is max height) from the prior level.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%"><span style="font-weight: bold">Enhancing precision</span></span><br />As pointed out before, I utilized a 8bit texture for height for the early tests. This offers quite lousy precision so I necessary to generate a single with larger bit depth. Also, older cards have to use a 32bit float shader in the vertex shader, so possessing this was essential in a number of approaches. To get hold of this texture I employed the demo version of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.geocontrol2.com/e_index.htm">GeoControl</a> and generated a 32bit heightmap in a raw uncompressed format. Loading that into the code I currently had gave me this pretty picture:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6huQKVAptSJoPTOk2VSqNZtHZMploxwmZn4EvNPcg8JgwrxkKVFoP1_ltL2j9cOtEvmBRpDO9tiPO4CIka6T_sS1DMi3de1aV4O43X04isHG4TZL6le4D0mCzTeuWC4d534o6euf85NZE/s1600/07_4096_terrain.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 302px height: 226px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6huQKVAptSJoPTOk2VSqNZtHZMploxwmZn4EvNPcg8JgwrxkKVFoP1_ltL2j9cOtEvmBRpDO9tiPO4CIka6T_sS1DMi3de1aV4O43X04isHG4TZL6le4D0mCzTeuWC4d534o6euf85NZE/s400/07_4096_terrain.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535756371383312386" border="0" /></a>To test how the algorithm worked with larger draw distances, I scaled up the terrain to cover 1x1 km and added some fog:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMzQEfZGjaXc00klbBhNSzd2TqI3AVLm13EvkHiCbPLUlb77fR9aONpd5G9pOqJ8KJfPNQm0iZz524jM4kaCjyRxZzqyjAlKN8d7rHQPYoDF8GcQ5jUpdlmckMH_hy9CmRHuBZS8js-7a5/s1600/08_4096_terrain_and_fog.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 400px height: 300px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMzQEfZGjaXc00klbBhNSzd2TqI3AVLm13EvkHiCbPLUlb77fR9aONpd5G9pOqJ8KJfPNQm0iZz524jM4kaCjyRxZzqyjAlKN8d7rHQPYoDF8GcQ5jUpdlmckMH_hy9CmRHuBZS8js-7a5/s400/08_4096_terrain_and_fog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535756748199520706" border="0" /></a>The sky texture is not really fitting. But I consider this shows that the algorithm worked quite properly. Also note that I did no tweaking of the LOD-level distances or patch size, so it just changes LOD level as quickly as feasible and most likely renders more polygons due to the fact of the patch size.<br /><br />Next up I tried to pack the heightmap a bit since I did not want it to take up as well a lot disk space. Rather of writing some kind of custom algorithm, I went the simple route and packed the height data in the exact same manner as I do with depth in the renderer's G-buffer. The formula for this is:<br /><span style="font-size:85%"> <span style="font-style: italic"><br />r = height*256</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic">g = fraction(r)*256</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic">b = fraction(g)*256</span></span><br /><br />This packs the normalized height worth into three bit colour channels. This 24 bit data gives fairly significantly all the accuracy necessary and for further disk compression I also saved it as png (which has non-lossy compression). It makes the heightmap information 50% smaller on disk and it looks the identical in game when unpacked:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRp1f-rXSyKnrn40y5hz9Up_XalMhUbshxASl9Qgt-4YJy_n8WTR2OoWnyWkyvoLIHgIStm7PwkHCsNoqp0sznq1lmdBsoRTy3JplVcuJuB0vfxpWTf4rDNkZVEXqO_3tb1QWmvAaSBFBv/s1600/10_png_compressed_rgb_packed_24bit.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 400px height: 150px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRp1f-rXSyKnrn40y5hz9Up_XalMhUbshxASl9Qgt-4YJy_n8WTR2OoWnyWkyvoLIHgIStm7PwkHCsNoqp0sznq1lmdBsoRTy3JplVcuJuB0vfxpWTf4rDNkZVEXqO_3tb1QWmvAaSBFBv/s400/10_png_compressed_rgb_packed_24bit.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535759560677219266" border="0" /></a>I also attempted to pack it as 16 bit, only employing R and B channel, which also looked fine. Nevertheless when I attempted saving the 24bit packed data as a jpeg (which makes use of lossy compresion) the result was much less than good:<br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjot4EoiZZ9Eff3ZPerjkM8ezenFjMkVcril2kqThN4heF32Gh2kFNEIQE55wgHx-pk0Ng_EYpHxQg1zREfV1atTB9U8rlngiGF2NePuwmqbBORMUPznM86-CdfF0cnr_FnXESrAu9PXHiH/s1600/12_jpeg_lossy_rgb_packed_24bit.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 240px height: 180px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjot4EoiZZ9Eff3ZPerjkM8ezenFjMkVcril2kqThN4heF32Gh2kFNEIQE55wgHx-pk0Ng_EYpHxQg1zREfV1atTB9U8rlngiGF2NePuwmqbBORMUPznM86-CdfF0cnr_FnXESrAu9PXHiH/s400/12_jpeg_lossy_rgb_packed_24bit.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535759960625560290" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%"><span style="font-weight: bold">Final thoughts</span></span><br />There is a handful of bits left to fix on the geometry. For instance, there is some popping when altering LOD levels and this may well be lessened by using a gradual adjust rather. I initial want to see how this appears in game even though prior to obtaining into that. Some pre-processing could also be employed to mark patches of terrain that never need to have the LOD with highest detail and so on. Utilizing hardware tesselation would also be exciting to attempt out and it must aid add surfaces considerably smoother when close up.<br /><br />These are things I will attempt later on though as right now the focus is to get all the fundamentals operating. Subsequent up will be some procedural content material generation employing perlin noise and that sort stuff!<br /><br />And finally I willl leave you with a screen container terrain, water and ssao:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP2VSX6c-rnyIYf0R0TmGsrkNyTdDft8AOb7Uz0Omu7I_lllmCZ9o8oVPe5CJstcLuuR11E9FFF0-14qJ6NhbT1Dzf-B3Zj6HOFEpcayQSxj4aFgAM4ww2ESA8Rv69mXNhpDukjQi1_d2l/s1600/13_water_and_ssao.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 400px height: 300px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP2VSX6c-rnyIYf0R0TmGsrkNyTdDft8AOb7Uz0Omu7I_lllmCZ9o8oVPe5CJstcLuuR11E9FFF0-14qJ6NhbT1Dzf-B3Zj6HOFEpcayQSxj4aFgAM4ww2ESA8Rv69mXNhpDukjQi1_d2l/s400/13_water_and_ssao.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535761275329038834" border="0" /></a>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-29123039499058200322013-11-13T16:47:00.000-08:002013-11-13T16:47:00.294-08:00Puzzles in horror games. Part 5.<span style="font-style: italicfont-size:85%">Due to illness and an unhealthy obsession in producing rendered water look nice this post is a small late. Hopefully no harm has been triggered :)</span><br /><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully() catch(e) " href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheY39mz7tM5vB3p08A3XTruQibSxwYWGqXE80z8aLQeZW1wsrjT2cQPdSpV1DhJBg3o9Hk-vQzhyphenhyphenTmqdn0joU8Pg_0LSMKgrccESCePhi_UcWgLx5Gk1uGIyvwR8n2IDFovmB7_QDz3PFW/s1600-h/thinking_man.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px float: right cursor: pointer width: 188px height: 234px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheY39mz7tM5vB3p08A3XTruQibSxwYWGqXE80z8aLQeZW1wsrjT2cQPdSpV1DhJBg3o9Hk-vQzhyphenhyphenTmqdn0joU8Pg_0LSMKgrccESCePhi_UcWgLx5Gk1uGIyvwR8n2IDFovmB7_QDz3PFW/s200/thinking_man.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382549862342112258" border="0" /></a>Figuring out a very good puzzle is typically a difficult and tricky approach. Occasionally a puzzles presents itself from story and atmosphere naturally, but far more frequently it is put in just to add some gameplay and/or slow the player down. This means very first coming up with some sort of <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/07/problem-with-obstacles.html">obstacle </a>and then designing some sort of solution for overcoming it. Throughout this method, and specially when "forcing" a puzzles into the game, one has to consider a couple of issues. The most essential of these are:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Enjoyment</span><br />How enjoyable a puzzle is to solve and how distinctive is it both establish the level of enjoyment a player gets from trying to figure and truly solving a puzzle. Solving the same type of puzzles more than and over is by no means fun and any look of a <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_puzzle">sliding puzzle</a> is bound to bring forward feelings of unhappiness.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">Cleverness</span><br />Whilst a bit connected to Enjoyment, a clever puzzles does not actually need to be entertaining, it just wants to have a answer that tends to make the player think out of the box. A clever puzzles often consists of utilizing something in a non-obvious way and/or piecing with each other several fragments of info. If a game mostly relies on solving puzzles (such as <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Layton_and_the_Curious_Village">Professor Layton</a>), getting clever options becomes added essential.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold">World Coherence</span><br />This indicates how well the puzzle fits with the story/globe and is often the hardest element to accomplish. A puzzle with excellent planet coherence adds realism and immersion to the game, even though a negative one pulls the player out of the experience. In order to acquire higher coherence a puzzle have to match with the story and also suite the world and not feel out-of-spot.<br /><br />When designing puzzles for Penumbra and our upcoming game, it is often a balance between these. Occasionally a puzzle may possibly fit completely with the story but just be really dull and sometimes a fun puzzle does not match at all with the game world. It is nearly not possible to come up with a puzzle that "score" high in all the above criteria, so one particular has to concentrate on anything.<br /><br />In horror games, exactly where immersion is essential, it is probably very best to usually make certain that no puzzle feels out of place. For some reason several action based horror games appear to overlook this and are filled with mood breaking puzzles. In Penumbra we did our very best to have as high world-coherence and frequently had to sacrifice other criteria in order to do so. This is one of the causes why Requiem includes so small story, we wanted for as soon as to concentrate on the producing fun and clever puzzles.<br /><br />Most (at least we hope so!) puzzles in Penumbra exactly where not dull and stupid, but typically we concentrated on either making it clever or enjoyable. In the cryo-chamber, obtaining the head out of the jar was not a quite rewarding puzzles to resolve, but the principal thought there was to let the player do anything exciting (who does not like playing about with severed head?), rather of teasing the player's brain. Figuring out how to enter the cryo-chamber was as an alternative an try at producing a clever puzzles and required several pieces of info to be linked.<br /><br />By attempting to vary puzzles like this we hope to have produced the expertise much more fascinating. As discussed <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/06/fun-in-horror-games.html">earlier</a>, games does not need focus on making joyful feelings all the time. By letting the player sweat more than a a lot more difficult task, more feelings can be added to the game and end up becoming a more rewarding knowledge. Adding instances of much more entertaining and basic puzzle in between breaks issues up and make the brain-teasing components stand out a lot more.<br /><br />This brings me to the final troubles one particular has to consider. Difficulty. I did not consist of it in the list above because, while an critical thing to ponder, it is quite a different beast. The major issue lies in that when a solution is recognized it is no longer tough to solve, and hence it can be difficult for designer to now the difficulty of a issue. Even so, it is a really important element of the gameplay and the time spent pondering a puzzle plays a massive part in the gameplay flow. At instances it may possibly be fitting to throw a harder challenge at the player and other times the player must be able to solve it quickly. Specifically when a predicament is meant to be frightening, possessing the player scribbling on a note in the "genuine planet" is not great for the mood.<br /><br />Pretty a lot the only factor that can be utilized to test difficulty is comprehensive play testing, but this being time consuming and costly (specifically considering that the very same person can not reliably test something twice) other approaches are needed. I generally attempt to "wipe" my mind, believe myself in the situation of the initial time player and think about the moves she would make. This is truly not far from the tactic used when designing scary conditions, some thing that also significantly relies on an unknowing player. Designing puzzles is really kind of connected to generating a horror atmosphere in that a single has to attempt mess with an additional person's thoughts and provide hints, confuse, etc in order to develop a satisfying encounter. This is but one more motives why horror games and puzzles are such a good match.<br /><br />What do you think is most critical criteria for a good puzzles? As usually we are also eager to hear feedback on puzzles present in Penumbra with the above in mind!Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-11919711282921564652013-11-13T02:32:00.000-08:002013-11-13T02:32:00.790-08:00Thoughts of The Walking Dead (ep1)<br /><div style="font-weight: bold"><div class="separator" style="clear: both text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUAckZfKr4lm2-GTPUEU5bhPnjSulgyIBSY5Gow-Dp9laR4IESJGYraR_umjIqAJNEJkMypf9vVr0VKvTi4QD-s4pLUP7nrXGxVzfVjGLWZK46YzMYh4ZVNHhb_udZc8T0FR6x3BP4DFFD/s1600/walkindead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUAckZfKr4lm2-GTPUEU5bhPnjSulgyIBSY5Gow-Dp9laR4IESJGYraR_umjIqAJNEJkMypf9vVr0VKvTi4QD-s4pLUP7nrXGxVzfVjGLWZK46YzMYh4ZVNHhb_udZc8T0FR6x3BP4DFFD/s400/walkindead.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />Introduction</div>I played via the initial episode of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_(video_game)">The Walking Dead</a> recently and few stuff popped up that I thought was worth discussing. For these of you who do not know what The Walking Dead is, it is a horror adventure game based upon a comic book (which is now also tv-series) featuring Heavy Rain inspired gameplay. It is developed by Inform Tale (makers of the Sam and Max reboot, and so forth) and is released on an episodic basis. I was unsure if Tell Tale could provide a game with this type of atmosphere, but possessing played I have to say that it is fairly effective. The 1st episode is not a master piece by any means, but include a couple of things worth bringing up.<br /><div style="font-weight: bold"><br /></div><div style="font-weight: bold">Graphics</div>The comic-book inspired art path combined with so-so animations does not look all that inviting and immersive. But when you play the game, it works very properly and does the job. This even even though the drama of the game is largely about close-up dialog and relationships. I consider this is a quite essential lesson about not having to have photo realistic graphics even even though the game is meant to concentrate on human feelings. I have a difficult time saying that Heavy Rain, which as a lot far more gloss on its visual, managed to elicit any much more emotions from me. Even so, watching trailers, Heavy Rain appears a lot greater in this aspect and I thought Walking Dead looked downright horrible at occasions. But in-game it turned out not be genuinely matter. This is also lesson in taking care of how you present the game in trailers and such, and make certain that the feelings you get from actually playing the game comes across.<br /><div style="font-weight: bold"><br /></div><div style="font-weight: bold">Alternatives</div>Just like in Heavy Rain, a large feature is to make hard choices all through the game. You should pick who to save, no matter whether to lie or not, and so forth. Most of these are made using timed dialog selections, where you only have a short time to choose what to do. On paper I feel it sounds okay, but I just do not like how it feels when truly playing. There is just some thing that bothers me in realizing that all of these alternatives are prefabricated and that I the decision I did not make may have been greater. And it does not truly matter that the options do not have an effect on the game mechanically (eg like in Mass Impact exactly where poor choice may well imply much less gain), there is just some thing holding me back from playing along with it.<br />I think a huge dilemma is that it is way too clear that you are actually making a option. Supporting this hypothesis is that the game by default provides a pop-up hint of the consequences of a decision (eg that a character trust you significantly less), and removing this tends to make it a lot much better (but nonetheless not great sufficient). A few choices are made in a sort of "Virtua Cop"-like manner exactly where you have to point a cross-hair more than a target and then pick an action. It is not usually clear that these are actual choices, in element because it is much much more analog (not just deciding on from a list of alternatives) and partly since it is less clear that you can only can decide on a One of the presented alternatives. These sequences did not bother me at all as considerably as the dialog options.<br /><div style="font-weight: bold"><br /></div><div style="font-weight: bold">Pixel hunting</div>While the game does a lot to eliminate annoying adventure game functions and make a smoother knowledge, it also falls back upon some annoying elements of the genre. The most clear is that of pixel hunting. There are only genuinely two main adventure-game like puzzles in the game and both of these has the player browsing for a single or many objects, non-certainly situated, in the environment. The worst of these is a remote handle that is hidden in  drawer which is not accessible until you have accomplished particular unrelated actions. This brought on me to wander aimlessly in the scene for far as well extended.<br />I feel it is actually crucial to attempt and lessen this sort of things as it makes you go about exploring the scenes in a very unnatural way. Greatest is if the player can sort a puzzle out without having obtaining to search every nook and cranny for items.<br /><div style="font-weight: bold"><br /></div><div style="font-weight: bold">Repetition</div>When you get caught up wandering without any genuine aim, like I talked about above, you commence performing the identical items more than and over. This is when you begin noticing the slim output of lines that characters have. When asked the exact same query, they just repeat the identical line they gave before. This is specifically jarring when it amounts to longer exchange in between the protagonist and a supporting character. Repeating canned responses like this really breaks the sense of immersion for me. I just basically can not function-play when I am subjected to this sort of repetition.<br />I feel the game must have removed hot-spots, provided leading answers from characters (particularly the protagonist), and so on. Anything to push me in the path and to keep up the make-belief that it is genuine characters inhabiting the virtual globe. Now they just come of as cardboard indicators the moment you start wandering off the intended path.<br /><div style="font-weight: bold"><br /></div><div style="font-weight: bold">Finish Notes</div><br />I'd say that The Walking Dead is worth playing and being just more than 2 hours of gameplay in the first episode it just not that considerably wasted time in case you end up hating it. Although the game did not blow me away, I was pleasantly shocked and am intrigued to see how the subsequent episode will turn out.<br /><br />If any individual else has played the game, I would adore to hear your thoughts on the following.:<br /><br />- What did you feel of the graphics? Was the discrepancy amongst trailer and in-game also large?<br />- What did you like the choices? Did it really feel like you could roleplay or was it challenging to put as side that there was a far better option?<br />- How did you really feel about the repeated lines? Not bothering at all, or a nail in eye each time they had been encounter?<br /><br /><ul></ul>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-73065336446634214232013-11-12T09:53:00.000-08:002013-11-12T09:53:00.910-08:00Physics and Heightmaps<a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpmqbRX8WWt4wJR3vwzz0WDJakjdGQfoT5kxrj_KmhJCh7acCo5o8F0wZF3wStkFH6I5Au2eXWIOwOK1TvAtxqrCmLBdmz3QkuHj94dfuVG01cnV-5uyi-WfqLU5s6G5eX6rc8mxzFwip2/s1600/box_n_terrain.jpg"><img style="display: block margin: 0px auto 10px text-align: center cursor: pointer width: 291px height: 217px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpmqbRX8WWt4wJR3vwzz0WDJakjdGQfoT5kxrj_KmhJCh7acCo5o8F0wZF3wStkFH6I5Au2eXWIOwOK1TvAtxqrCmLBdmz3QkuHj94dfuVG01cnV-5uyi-WfqLU5s6G5eX6rc8mxzFwip2/s400/box_n_terrain.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566097035105861970" border="0" /></a>When I thought that all difficulties with heightmaps was over, I stumbled upon one thing sort of tricky not too long ago. The only point I had left for heightmaps was to add physics to them. This seemed effortless to do as it was fundamentally just a matter of sending the raw heightmap information to the physics engine (<a target="_blank" href="http://newtondynamics.com/">newton game dynamics</a>) Nevertheless just as I had carried out this I realized that this was not adequate: the terrain could have several diverse physical properties at various locations (a spot with dirt, one particular with rock, etc).<br /><br />The point is that in physics simulations you give a material per shape, every material possessing specific properties (friction, etc) and special effects (sounds, etc). The heightmap is counted as a single shape, and as a result it only has a single physics material. This was something I had entirely forgotten. Fortunately, the physics engine supports the assigning of particular properties to each point in the heightmap. Once I located the proper info, it was pretty basic to add this (see <a target="_blank" href="http://newtondynamics.com/wiki/index.php5?title=Tutorial_201:_-_Advanced_Custom_Material_System">here</a>).<br /><br />Now it was just a matter of adding extra material values to the heightmap (generally just an array of single integers, the id of the physics material at each point). My initial thought was that this could be "painted" on as an additional step, and to be sure I asked Jens what he believed about it. His reaction was that this would be way too a lot perform and wondered if it could not be auto-generated alternatively. We currently had a physics material assigned to every single render material, so the standard information was very easily accessible.<br /><br />Nonetheless, when I started to pondering about this, I located the actual auto-generation increasingly tricky. How must we establish which of the several blended components to set the physics properties (blending was not feasible)? Also, how do I get this details, considering that the blend textures can saved as compressed textures, into a CPU buffer?<br /><br />The way we chose to solve the material picking was that the best visible (which means more than a specific limit opacity) blend material constantly sets the physics material. This allows map creators to set priority on materials in terms of physics, by simply placing them at various areas amongst all blend components. For example, if a material like gravel should also have its effects shown no matter what it is blended with, then it must be placed higher up in the list. Whilst currently untested this seem quite nice and can also be tweaked a bit (like having anything else figuring out priority).<br /><br />The generation of this information was made by rendering the blend textures to an off-screen target and then grabbing the information into regular memory. What this meant is that the GPU would decompress any packed textures for us. This also solved some other issues, like the require to resize the texture according to heightmap resolution. Once the data is grabbed from the GPU it is just a matter to loop by way of it, check values and create to the final buffer.<br /><br />Difficulty was ultimately solved and physics properties auto-generated!<br /><br /><br />With this small post I hope to show that there usually is more to a issue than what is visible at first. Also, this shows one more benefit of using standard texture splatting (much more information <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/11/tech-feature-terrain-textures.html">here</a>), alternatively of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaTexture">megatextures </a>or similar. With the auto-generation of physics, it is significantly easier to produce and update the terrain, one thing very important when you are a tiny team like us.<br /><br />Would be quite intriguing what other tactics men and women use (or recognized of) for setting up physics properties on terrain!Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-48990162097408758072013-11-12T06:32:00.000-08:002013-11-12T06:32:00.507-08:00The Nature of EnemiesEnemies.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Sprout, for those of you who never but know, takes spot in the distant future. A world where all human, plant, and animal life has been wiped away so that all that is left is a rock with an atmosphere. I never know if anyone's been questioning, but it's not about nuclear war or global warming or something like that.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's just that the world ended. Suddenly, violently, and inevitably. There will be clues along the way. You will see. It will make sense.</div><div><br /></div><div>But how do we match living enemies into a planet with no life?</div><div><br /></div><div>Nicely, that was in the cards practically from the beginning. Every single enemy type will be an embodiment of "sin". Not in the religious way, but as in any evil deed accomplished by man or woman. Specially, and personally, I wanted these deeds to reflect my extremely personal worst moments of guilt. It is about Sprout's semi-hidden metaphorical meaning. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, I have thoughts like this:</div><div><ul><li> Plant a tree and feel you happen to be secure, but a Betrayal enemy clamors down when you turn your back and tries to kill you.</li><li>A Dishonesty enemy would be disguised as a seed that the player will attempt to pick up.</li><li>A Ego enemy would somehow cause the players head to expand and then explode. Idk.</li></ul><div>Anyway, you get the gist. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>Here's a picture for you as we wait for the subsequent big update:</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto text-align: center"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz8-evoadfVJzGnoScdkjV0PFaHenkwWJWFGk77qm11OfS6iHLSiNPOQkxvHanFR06FWw5U2WVZNJfYV9nt4hppI_gaNseeuO9-_jphD2bN2ni86YWLV3K_l-NO1xWnjPY5whPRB8uokVI/s1600/cavesnfire.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz8-evoadfVJzGnoScdkjV0PFaHenkwWJWFGk77qm11OfS6iHLSiNPOQkxvHanFR06FWw5U2WVZNJfYV9nt4hppI_gaNseeuO9-_jphD2bN2ni86YWLV3K_l-NO1xWnjPY5whPRB8uokVI/s640/cavesnfire.png" title="Sprout the Game Cave Puzzle" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center">An early level style for Cave levels in Sprout, using the light designed by fire demons.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div>Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-33737730046219042862013-11-12T01:23:00.000-08:002013-11-12T01:23:00.024-08:00Too Many Games and Sprout's TaleThese of you who adhere to along know that T-MODE was a fantastic understanding expertise for me. Now that I'm gearing up for my second show, I really feel much far better ready. This convention is fairly a bit bigger and with a concentrate solely on gaming, it'll be a much much better fit for us.<br /><br />With that mentioned, right here once again comes all the brainstorming. I nevertheless have tons of pouches, so that's 1 much less factor to be concerned about, but I need to have some way to decorate my table correctly and make it attractive. Lots of individuals have suggested bringing in plants, but that indicates receiving dirt all over my auto and also possessing to be accountable for one more living issue, which is most likely going to finish in tragedy.<br /><br />So I do have some ideas about basically effectively reduce photos on poster board being propped up somehow, but it is all really vague.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left margin-right: 1em text-align: left"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_3-Wgu4veZvtEF2mVkRItKkjOmVjdULrf7TNdrCyAJTiRDcVRxEcyEjaewn3jqjfE5k1k9wqhQ80qWL_579sfhbuY6ECNPI1lcp5ST8f7z9GroezCxi8_8n7r48C4ivwUcQb3bs_dkQfo/s1600/received.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_3-Wgu4veZvtEF2mVkRItKkjOmVjdULrf7TNdrCyAJTiRDcVRxEcyEjaewn3jqjfE5k1k9wqhQ80qWL_579sfhbuY6ECNPI1lcp5ST8f7z9GroezCxi8_8n7r48C4ivwUcQb3bs_dkQfo/s320/received.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center">Sprout's in Sweden! Twitter  @reo_swe</td></tr></tbody></table>Meanwhile, reports hold coming in of our distant fans receiving their tiny Sprout packs in the mail! It was kind of a discomfort putting them all together (I have to use scissors, and as a individual suffering from chronic left-handedness, that can be a actual challenge!), but it feels completely fantastic to see the photographs of them following their arrival. The one on the proper went all the way to Sweden! Wow!<br /><br />I want there was more stuff I could put in there, but unfortunately I'm nevertheless just also darn poor! In the meantime, if you do decide that you want a single, just e mail information@sproutthegame.com I will ship to just about anywhere.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Also! Maybe even more thrilling. Fan art! Wow! Thanks to Twitter's @laconiclelex for the 3d and @fight691 for the stunning, Lovely 2d.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left margin-right: 1em text-align: left"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDMebSU7PYRZJDTKPCeNG5MSLUIUoTaDXPBYl2AiOvsKh0u782FkyVjmAslG9_ZdWPUof77mN6j8Tgv17UlI17wF46Do5yPD-BQER4jECdAt-Sxtp8HZrkqKJKoF202xmMpXMYz1VHzHpo/s1600/2d+fan+art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: auto margin-right: auto"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDMebSU7PYRZJDTKPCeNG5MSLUIUoTaDXPBYl2AiOvsKh0u782FkyVjmAslG9_ZdWPUof77mN6j8Tgv17UlI17wF46Do5yPD-BQER4jECdAt-Sxtp8HZrkqKJKoF202xmMpXMYz1VHzHpo/s1600/2d+fan+art.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>Majesty</i></td></tr></tbody></table><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right margin-left: 1em text-align: right"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhav8CL-Siig2P8DRSPhK8k9sycVMe0tLNPJWyBGbCwSdNPPpkBnECdBJkjwT5HCPLBglRBWDVsfD5xkCwnk3m7f-2qdo0DiQhLw1BCcOATR7wrrZoCDI8e6n6npugySKHqawC6DltVuJ5/s1600/3d+fan+art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: auto margin-right: auto text-align: center"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhav8CL-Siig2P8DRSPhK8k9sycVMe0tLNPJWyBGbCwSdNPPpkBnECdBJkjwT5HCPLBglRBWDVsfD5xkCwnk3m7f-2qdo0DiQhLw1BCcOATR7wrrZoCDI8e6n6npugySKHqawC6DltVuJ5/s320/3d+fan+art.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center"><i>Grace</i></td></tr></tbody></table><a target="_blank" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhav8CL-Siig2P8DRSPhK8k9sycVMe0tLNPJWyBGbCwSdNPPpkBnECdBJkjwT5HCPLBglRBWDVsfD5xkCwnk3m7f-2qdo0DiQhLw1BCcOATR7wrrZoCDI8e6n6npugySKHqawC6DltVuJ5/s1600/3d+fan+art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right float: right margin-bottom: 1em margin-left: 1em text-align: center"><br /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />So, til next time. Never neglect, tell your friends. And tell them to inform their frends. We need to have your support!! Thanks everybody!<br /><br /><br />Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5208212618258684090.post-59538261142209870652013-11-12T00:28:00.000-08:002013-11-12T00:28:00.052-08:00How Gameplay and Narrative kill Meaning in "Games"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Introduction</span><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhJZFMtZZkDGnz5H8WGoxboMJheyWVJKzKtWpm0QTF-gUnQ0_JMll3HZCqPG83lrSjo1IHCy4bx1Bpeq5O3XLvzifRhnyO5TPQLROKVlTKYkDXTQaclmdpD0Pd-mEo9xdJ3Z5YXDz7DnDv/s1600-h/skull-crossbones.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 197px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhJZFMtZZkDGnz5H8WGoxboMJheyWVJKzKtWpm0QTF-gUnQ0_JMll3HZCqPG83lrSjo1IHCy4bx1Bpeq5O3XLvzifRhnyO5TPQLROKVlTKYkDXTQaclmdpD0Pd-mEo9xdJ3Z5YXDz7DnDv/s400/skull-crossbones.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426989143803279954" border="0" /></a>In many of the posts here I have been discussing how having "unfun" gameplay can greatly enhance the experience. I have also ranted about how too much "fun" can completely destroy the intended experience. What I want to discuss now is how a game's most common ingredients might be detracting from certain kinds of experiences and are in some cases best gotten rid of. These ingredients are Gameplay and Narrative. It is my view that these two features can seriously get in the way when trying to take the interactive medium in new directions.<br /><br />I also believe that using the word "Game" is holding back progress in certain areas. The reason for not using the word "Game" is that it comes with certain expectations, which I will go through below, and these can work against both user and creator.<br /><br />This post will also explain a bit about the design and goals for our upcoming game <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amnesiagame.com/">Amnesia</a>. Hopefully it will provide a bit insight into the game and explain some of the concepts and ideas that we are trying to accomplish. In <a target="_blank" href="http://www.penumbragame.com/">Penumbra </a>we put a lot of focus on the actual emotional experience and in Amnesia, we aim to take that thinking a step further.<br /><br />To get things started I will first dive into something that lies at the heart of all artistic creations.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Meaning</span><br />In many people's minds, the word "meaning" probably provoke images of some hard-to-grasp piece of art with deeply hidden messages. That is not the sort of meaning I will discuss here though. Instead I am going to define it as the essence of all creations. When one make some sort of creative work there is always something that the creator wants to express with it. This can be to create a certain emotion, explore an idea, describe some events and countless of other things. It is this that I call "meaning". It can be shallow or very deep. It can be very obvious or extremely obscure. No matter its form, it is always there at the core of the work.<br /><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9SoJsmsPCzmgIZoK0_Ch9gh_26Tjhj8kn1Enpbk9IGf0jbtEWsxTqux-pvJEZP9vB4_BKqnW49WWfpLEUTmOCW8GWfcz4_mmQK_3MFKYxNCeXTw_XFD0Myuj-tzyDgN-2uRpLx8Pzxjwp/s1600-h/atlasshrugged1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 184px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9SoJsmsPCzmgIZoK0_Ch9gh_26Tjhj8kn1Enpbk9IGf0jbtEWsxTqux-pvJEZP9vB4_BKqnW49WWfpLEUTmOCW8GWfcz4_mmQK_3MFKYxNCeXTw_XFD0Myuj-tzyDgN-2uRpLx8Pzxjwp/s400/atlasshrugged1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426984546822022082" border="0" /></a>Different kinds of medium have different tools for expressing this meaning. When writing a book there are plenty of ways to do so (e.g. style and format) and the same is true for any other medium. When working in a medium a certain type of implementation is most often used because it will best express the intended meaning. This means that two works of fiction, using different implementations, can express the same meaning. For example, take the book Atlas Shrugged by <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand">Ayn Rand</a>. This books tells a lengthy story, but its meaning is not the narrative but an explanation and exploration of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_%28Ayn_Rand%29">Objectivism</a>. The important thing here is that the story could be changed but the meaning, the essence of the work, would still be left the same. Further more, compare this with other non-fiction books written about Objectivism where the meaning can be very similar, but the implementation quite different.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Narrative</span><br />Basically, a narrative is a sequence of events and is (mostly) the building block for a story. I am aware that narrative, just like "meaning", does not have an exact definition and will therefore make it more precise in order to avoid confusion. When I say narrative, I mean a sequence of preplanned and connected events that have been laid out by a designer. The sequence can be branching and be told out of order, but it remains a narrative as long as the events have been purposely placed and in some way connect to one another. For many media, narrative plays a very large role. Pretty much all fiction books and movies use a narrative in order to express meaning and the craft of creating a narrative has been analyzed and evolved for a very long time.<br /><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqQUXGefDNALUwPFv17qgFCyK2S8KurcMhgMUX3BvYija0LmRjtdblXogjeo3d4Sh496jGkFUrmOIunc-A8B_o0GXje3u_fesbrKUtNb3GLhHRmy_q7Kg7pExvSZDcKJR-KSULTDVGJE4Q/s1600-h/AnotherWorld_Poster.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 207px; height: 309px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqQUXGefDNALUwPFv17qgFCyK2S8KurcMhgMUX3BvYija0LmRjtdblXogjeo3d4Sh496jGkFUrmOIunc-A8B_o0GXje3u_fesbrKUtNb3GLhHRmy_q7Kg7pExvSZDcKJR-KSULTDVGJE4Q/s400/AnotherWorld_Poster.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426984973308218866" border="0" /></a>Early games used the narrative structure to add more meaning, but mostly it was not connected to the interactive experience. Often the narrative was just inserted in between levels and had little to do with what the game played like. One of the first games that really connected narrative and interaction was <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_World_%28video_game%29">Another World</a>, where changes from cut scenes and gameplay where seamless. Also, most action that took place had relevance to the actual story. Since then the biggest step forward came with <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_%28video_game%29">Half-life</a> where the line between narrative and gameplay blurred to the point where the word "cut-scene" was not really applicable. Now the narrative was expressed without ever taking away the player's control and a great example of this was the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smBbzwjfO-g&feature=related">opening sequence</a> that told of events normally shown through non-interactive cut-scenes.<br /><br />Half-life was released over ten years ago and there has not been many improvements since. In fact many games have actually not even started using the type of storytelling found in Another World and are still stuck at the level-to-cut scene-to-level-etc formula (While of course fine for some games, many could use the improvement).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gameplay<br /></span>Now yet another word needs to be defined in order to progress. When I say the word "gameplay" I will refer mechanics that have a goal. This means that mechanics on its own is not gameplay, but will become so when a goal is added to the mix. For instance, Mathematics is not a form of gameplay, but when a goal is added, such as <a target="_blank" href="http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/magic-square-game.html">solving a magic square</a>, gameplay is created! Since a game can be defined as something that contains gameplay, this is the reason why I said that calling some interactive works "games" can be misleading and counter productive. More on this soon.<br /><br />While gameplay are at the core of game making, it comes with a lot of baggage and makes certain meanings harder to realize in the medium. The most striking issue is the entire failure mechanism that is used in just about every game. You try a certain task, you fail and then have to repeat it. As described in <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/07/nothing-will-save-you.html">other</a> posts, this can be especially damaging in horror games, where repeating scenes seriously lessens the experience. This mechanism also impose limits on the player's rate of progress and effectively tells the player: "Either you complete this or you will not proceed!". Other baggage include the notion that <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/01/when-focusing-on-fun-fails.html">gameplay must be fun</a> and the need to constantly pose challenges. What I mean with the last point is that players assume that a game will always keep them occupied with some kind of obstacle to overcome. This leads to very little interactive content that is added for its intrinsic sake alone. Instead a game's interactive content almost always have some connection to the goals of the gameplay.<br /><br />If gameplay has all this baggage, why is it used? The answer is simply that gameplay provides the same function an exciting story does in a narrative. It is an efficient way of keeping the player/reader hooked and engaged for the duration of the work. Also worth noting is that when a game does not have gameplay that is engaging enough, it almost always falls back on the narrative to keep the player hooked (as is the case in many adventure games).<br /><br />To make myself clear here: I am not saying that gameplay is a bad thing. I am just saying that gameplay comes with certain issues and when applied to some meanings it leads to problems (such as the meaning to scare, which has been discussed extensively in this blog).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Problem</span><br />Now to the heart of this matter and a discussion on what is wrong with all this. As said above, my main stand point is that having focus on narrative and gameplay is holding back interactive media's potential. It is now time to explain why I think this is so.<br /><br />The main problem with a narrative is that it forces a linear experience and lessens the user interaction. It pressures that events should unfold, imposes a certain order on things and wants to keep a strict flow (e.g "prologue-middle-ending" and "character arcs") . These things work against the interactivity and freedom of the player. For instance, I have <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/08/puzzles-in-horror-games-part-3.html">previously discussed</a> how physics is very hard to add since players might mess things up and break the intended order of things set by the narrative.<br /><br /><a target="_blank" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-3LVHO8nIMHeRb0G0PRnQqpGEDv3u6_6sEh6FH-abtwVkrn_lm1E0oEHGzLA2YIkQm3mvETigqR1jUv9Uwu3OC-H4qshoWEmkB9hk-O6lnBpAXtesZndGWWvm_oLgWWk47aB9kxDEWUVT/s1600-h/gravitation-big.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 179px; height: 244px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-3LVHO8nIMHeRb0G0PRnQqpGEDv3u6_6sEh6FH-abtwVkrn_lm1E0oEHGzLA2YIkQm3mvETigqR1jUv9Uwu3OC-H4qshoWEmkB9hk-O6lnBpAXtesZndGWWvm_oLgWWk47aB9kxDEWUVT/s400/gravitation-big.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426985788006385778" border="0" /></a>Despite of this, there is currently a focus in games industry to combine gameplay and narrative. Perfecting this art seems to be some kind of holy grail. However, gameplay will never smoothly be part of a narrative and as <a target="_blank" href="http://braid-game.com/news/?p=385">noted by Jonathan Blow</a> there is an inherent conflict between the two. Gameplay wants to give the player a challenge and sets up goals that needs to be overcome. A narrative wants to move things forward and is often highly dependent upon time and space. Simplified one can say that gameplay tells players to stay where they are and experiment, narrative presses the player onwards and wants them to obey commands.<br /><br />This sort of conflict is highly obvious in games. Some examples are: making use of quick time events to fit certain events of the narrative (that does not work with gameplay), providing very linear paths and simplifying the mechanics. The end product is that either you focus on the narrative or you focus on the gameplay, making it impossible to be strong in both. This effectively weakens the amount of meaning that can be put into this combination and is why the market is filled with so many shooters and hack-and-slash games. Other types of meanings are simply not possible to pull off in this system.<br /><br />Increasing focus on the narrative eventually creates a non-interactive medium. There are some very nice examples of narrative heavy games in Interactive Fiction (such as <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photopia">Photopia</a>), but they all heavily cut down on the ability to control and interact (because of the problems listed above).<br /><br />Gameplay by itself can also be used to created meaning and has been done so in games such as <a target="_blank" href="http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/gravitation/">Gravitation</a>. Again Jonathan Blow describes the problem in the <a target="_blank" href="http://braid-game.com/news/?p=385">lecture linked to</a> above: when the mechanics are fitted for a certain meaning they might not work as a game and the slightest change will change the meaning. Obviously this approach works for some types of meaning (as in Gravitation), but it is very limited, especially if the game is supposed to engaging as well.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Interactive Experience<br /></span><a target="_blank" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh04yj2YhhyCJreJeMuijrSrV-VZmEhtVMW1xnZ0DupdN7-ap4GCUo7m0rxxSFluLo9X9Xe4dazUXO7NgpzDkMrsR0-Mhk0AvLSUKniljb_HAfDOhYG36zkT6cb7HJvpbj1vGF4UUOjgBFS/s1600-h/mw2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 154px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh04yj2YhhyCJreJeMuijrSrV-VZmEhtVMW1xnZ0DupdN7-ap4GCUo7m0rxxSFluLo9X9Xe4dazUXO7NgpzDkMrsR0-Mhk0AvLSUKniljb_HAfDOhYG36zkT6cb7HJvpbj1vGF4UUOjgBFS/s400/mw2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426986931139704290" border="0" /></a>I am quite convinced (for reasons stated above) that there is a vast new world to explore if the interaction is in focus, instead of gameplay and narrative. Doing this is probably the only way to get away from having a majority of games that are just based on killing stuff. I am not against games with violence, but I think it is quite sad how overrepresented they are. Just check check the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heYpWp1vXlw">Game of the Year 2009 nominees</a> from Gamespot - only two out of ten nominees did not have violence as the core experience. The two remaining on that list does not evoke much hope though, one of them is a car game and the other <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims">Sims 3</a> (although it was quite original 10 years ago). There really needs to be some change to this!<br /><br />The first step is to get rid of the idea that a challenge is needed, at least in the way it works in today's games. This is why I said at the start that "game" is a bad word. Not only does it imply gameplay, but it also gives the idea that playing should be about winning. Because of this both user and creator have preconceptions of what a game experience is like. A user picking up a game will assume that there will be obstacles awaiting and the goal will be to overcome them. The creator will also assume that this is what the user wants and we got ourselves an "evil spiral".<br /><br />Instead of having every challenge as a performance test, one can let the user just experience it. For example, navigating through dark tunnels can be creepy even if failure is not possible. All other media works this way and I do not see how the addition of interaction changes it. Just think about all of the horror games that does not have any player death in them and still manage to be scary (as discussed <a target="_blank" href="http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/06/history-of-violence-part-2.html">here</a>). Just like when reading a book or watching a movie, there is a form of role playing going on and interactive works can use this as well.<br /><br />Another way of overcoming the need of challenges is to have learning as a goal (discussed in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4171/staying_power_rethinking_feedback_.php">a recent Gamastura article</a>). An extreme example of this would be a "game" where players could skip a level at any time but was required to reach a certain degree of understanding in order to grasp later levels. Note that this would be far from what is expected of a game and I think many users would be very confused by the approach. This is another example why I think the word "game" simple does not fit (and is even greatly misleading!) for some interactive works.<br /><br />As for skipping narrative, this does not mean that games cannot have stories. Instead it means that we need to rethink how stories are told. Many (sometimes most!) events in a narrative are there in order to express some kind of meaning. For instance, in a story about polar explorers some events might be needed in order to show how hostile and unforgiving the land at the poles are. In an interactive work, this can be accomplished through interaction with the environment, thus making these parts of the narrative unnecessary. What I am trying to get at here is that instead of replicating what is described in written form or shown on film, the focus should be on the meaning and how it is best expressed in an interactive format. I am convinced that goals like "creating a cinematic experience" are dead ends in terms of evolving the interactive medium.<br /><br />Of course there is a still room for a narrative, but trying to copy the way it works in non-interactive media is wrong. The experience should be adjusted according to how the user interacts, instead of trying to control the user's interaction in accordance to the narrative.<br /><br />I am not saying that gameplay and narrative should be skipped altogether. In some types of interactive works it might even be best to focus on them! But in order to be able to explore other kinds of meanings in the interactive medium, they cannot always be in focus. It is also important that we let go of some of the preconceptions that exist, both when "playing" and creating an interactive work. If not, we will miss out on a lot of rich and valuable experiences!<br /><br />Some "games" like <a target="_blank" href="http://www.molleindustria.org/everydaythesamedream/everydaythesamedream.html">Everyday the same dream</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://tale-of-tales.com/Fatale/">Fatale </a>and <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Esther">Dear Esther</a> have begun experimenting with this sort of thinking, but I believe they are just barely scratching the surface of what is possible. This is especially true when it comes to using the power of interactivity, which the work listed are quite sparse with. Also, most works of this type have a certain avant-garde feel to them and I think it possible, and quite necessary, to use this way of thinking to create more mainstream works as well.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our efforts</span><br />The above not only outlines a direction in which I think that "games" should evolve. It also describes a lot of the thinking we have had when designing Amnesia. As our project have progressed, we have moved more and more away from gameplay and narrative, instead focusing on the meaning we want to express. This does not mean that Amnesia will be absent of both gameplay and narrative though. It just means that they have been far from the focus during development. The goal (and meaning) with Amnesia is to create a disturbing atmosphere and expose players to concepts about the nature of human evil. All of the game's design has been built around enhancing these things.<br /><br />Gameplay wise, we have never really thought about how we want to challenge the player, instead it has been all about creating a certain atmosphere and evoking emotions. No puzzle have been thrown in just to drag out on the playtime or just to pose an extra challenge. We have been very careful to make sure that puzzles have relevance to the story and the feelings we want to convey. The is also true for other gameplay elements, for instance how enemy encounters are handled.<br /><br />There is a narrative in Amnesia (two separate actually), but instead of making an effort to have certain events at certain times, we have left it up to the player to explore and experience the story. In Penumbra we tried to make sure that the player could not miss certain plot elements, but we are taking a more "relaxed" attitude with this in Amnesia. The game is meant to be explored at a gentle pace and for the clues found to be carefully considered. We think this approach is more interesting instead of just spoon feeding all important information to the player. A vital aspect of the game is for the player to take a stance against things that are revealed and this is deeply connected with the way the game is played.<br /><br />We are not suggesting that Amnesia is going to be a giant leap in the evolution of the interactive media, but believe that this way of thinking is a step the right direction. It remains to be seen if the finished game will benefit from it, but at least we are giving it a try!Blog Pr 3http://www.blogger.com/profile/06556876047700425651noreply@blogger.com0