Comments on: My ‘Enemies As Weapons’ Game Idea

By: Brodie

Brodie — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:13:53 +0000

I didn’t respawn!

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 08:17:06 +0000

They talk a bit about this in the interview that’s going up later today. The trouble is that art is the most expensive thing for me to produce by myself, and I seem to be particularly bad at environmental art.

A persistent voice in your ear like GLaDOS would definitely give me some scope for explaining things I can’t effectively depict. But I’d need a twist on it. GLaDOS works because her motives aren’t clear, but the usual Female Voice In Your Earpiece cliche is getting super old now.

Narration is one idea I’ve been toying with. I’m going to need tutorial messages, and it’d be a fun challenge to work those into a brooding noir narration. The main problem is that currently, the plan is not to force too much of the hero’s character on you. I want you to decide whether the guy’s laconic, surly or friendly. Harder to do if I write a bunch of your innermost thoughts for you – but not impossible.

By: DanPryce

DanPryce — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 23:15:46 +0000

Valve probably asked themselves the same question with Portal – weave the story within those puzzles. Granted, a lot of that was GLaDOS subtley expositing, but there are visual ways you can get story across. Like the bits behind the walls in Portal, with the ‘there is no cake’ scribblings; audiences pick up on environmental clues like that and they build their understanding of the story. Plus, a newspaper clipping never goes amiss.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:31:01 +0000

Don’t you respawn? I respawned. The most easily fixable problem I had with it was that you hit spikes a fraction of a second after the next screen loads, if you’re still holding the movement key. It’s the one time in gaming I longed for a low wall to block my progress.

By: Brodie

Brodie — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:56:14 +0000

I know the game (Fib) was written in 48 hours, but would it have really taken that long to make it do something besides sit there forever upon player death?

By: Jaz

Jaz — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:05:55 +0000

“I’m starting to wonder if there’s another type of content I can use to link a bunch of puzzles, or a more efficient way to convey story without visually depicting a lot of non-interactive events.”

Full. Motion. Videooooooooo.

By: Bret

Bret — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:38:34 +0000

Sounds interesting.

Man. Game’s changed a lot in the making. But it has more facepunching now, so all to the good.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:48:13 +0000

The backend is feasible, but the tricky part is the specifics of how you depict the generated story. If you write and script a number of predefined events, players will notice when they come up again and switch off. If you make them very abstract, like The Sims’ pictoral thought bubbles, it’s hard to care and sometimes hard to even understand.

I do want some elements to be systematic like that, though. If there are major characters, I want to decide how they’ll treat you if they hate you, and how they’ll treat you if they like you, then just let your behaviour determine which state they end up in.

I think there’s mileage, and game potential, in the idea that secret agent missions tend to revolve around an important object or event with at least two interested parties. A VIP to be killed or protected, data to be stolen or destroyed, etc. If I can account for both eventualities, I can both let you choose who to work for, and let you fail your mission without requiring a restart.

By: LeSwordfish

LeSwordfish — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:30:05 +0000

I wouldnt particularly like that, if the writings good, as, you know, taken as read, i’d really dislike the idea that i’d be missing out on some of it.

By: Lack 26

Lack 26 — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:37:05 +0000

Would a randomly generated story be possible? Wait, don’t punch me into the ground for being a big silly just yet.

The story is split into separate events, each event can then lead to several other types of events, sort of like a flow-chart. Eventually you’d be able to cycle through to a new case beginning if you solve the case, or, if a character got killed then that would disable certain outcomes and options in a case or you may open up new options by making a mole/snout/acquaintance/ally/girl-friend/enemy (all given a humourous random name, of course).

It would require a fair bit of writing, but if you keep the story light and not particularly word heavy then you could probably get away with writing just a couple of case archetypes and then working on the options within a case.

That’s the basis of the idea anyway.