Comments on: What Works And Why: Sauron’s Army

By: Travis Gallion

Travis Gallion — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 08:27:44 +0000

Welp, this just got me to go back and finally play more of this game. I stopped at some point and never picked it up again. Specifically being able to controll the uruks is something I didn’t get to yet, and now really really want to get to! Thanks for that! Back to the ps4 version!

By: ToastyKen

ToastyKen — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 08:29:52 +0000

This actually reminds me a bit of Jason Rohrer’s Inside a Star-Filled Sky, in the way that you can manipulate your enemies to your advantage. :)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 05:15:09 +0000

Building on the idea of converting amusing characters to work for you- I think that while it might be a challenge to give unique and interesting personalities to the many people who inhabit Heat Signature’s universe, I don’t think you’d need to. After all, it’s the ships that are the real stars (figuratively speaking, of course!). Every time one is spawned, they’re generated with a plethora of individual quirks that surely rival all but the most feathered of hats.

Compared to your pod, which everybody starts with, almost nobody will ever find a ship that’s exactly the same as one of the ones you find. Also unlike your pod, a capital ship can have battle scars. Every corridor terminating in twisted metal and the coldness of space has a story behind it.

Even as it is now, when I think about the stuff I want to try when you finally release Heat Signature, stealing a ship and seeing just how many quests I can use it to complete before it’s reduced to a rapidly expanding cloud of debris is first among my thoughts.

Whatever you decide to do, there’s definitely a lot of scope for giving ships more character, even if it’s something as simple as a randomly generated name that pops up when you step out of the airlock.

At that point, you’re no longer stepping onto a ship that looks like a flying T, you’re boarding the Saint Ghandi’s Retribution, Flagship of Faction X.

By: Jason L

Jason L — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 00:48:30 +0000

Yeah, fractal design is best design. If you can get decisions to influence each other across multiple scales or a scale spectrum, you’re probably on to something. It often leads to time delay as well, creating narratives – the rebellious province because of a foolish charge a hundred years prior, the informant who won’t work for you because you carelessly shot their friend in the second mission.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:56:01 +0000

It seems to me that the excitement that comes from Shadow of Mordor’s higher level strategies is the way that enacting them scales down to the minutia of your minute-by-minute play. Your basic core gameplay loop contains actions that impact your immediate short term outcomes, but also set up future options for you as well. Having a small arsenal of choices to make at any given time, with outcomes that scale cleanly from “right now”, through “this mission”, to “anticipated future missions”, is really cool. I think what makes this possible in Mordor is that you know that you’re going to have to face off against future orc captains, and the game gives you tools with which to build appropriate strategies. To make this sort of gameplay work in Heat Signature, you’d not only need the tools (like hacking ships to change their missions), but also have to be able to think farther ahead than just the one mission. Though, you might be able to get around this by changing the scale of missions so that they have more than one component?

By: Jabberwok

Jabberwok — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:29:09 +0000

A lot of things about this game intrigue me, but I was initially put off by some of the controversy about them lifting elements or even code from Assassin’s Creed (the climbing mechanic did look freakishly similar to the AC2 climbing in the video I saw). Also, I’m just not a big fan of LOtR. Still, sounds interesting.

By: Ferdinand

Ferdinand — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:44:47 +0000

i imagine the simplest method would be transferring your current mission to the ship you’ve boarded?
i would love to try that. setting a ship on an assasination and then following them, and maybe helping a tiny bit would be really fun!

(and very reminiscent of power struggles in shadow of mordor)

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 17:06:54 +0000

Ha! Yeah, they put all this effort into making these guys distinctive and interesting, then they actually follow through with a way to make you engage with and care about them more.

A lot of its lessons probably require a richer universe than I have the capacity to make for Heat Signature, but it’s definitely an education in the fun of turning things to your side and making them work for you – something I was already a fan of.

Hacking a ship’s computer to change its mission might be doable. Have to find clean and simple ways to make that kind of stuff viable and interesting without requiring masses of supporting work, though, so who knows if that’ll work out.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 14:45:45 +0000

The first thing I thought when I first started reading up on this at RPS was “Tom Francis should nick some of these ideas for Heat Signature.” Generating quests according to faction politics and as a means to gather information on targets seems right up your alley. I also like how making what are ostensibly enemies into a player accessible resource ecosystem really increases your investment in the game world.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 12:30:11 +0000

Thanks. Yes!

By: LTK

LTK — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 12:16:21 +0000

Interesting write-up. Is this “What works and why” going to be a returning thing?