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jackYou are in a maze of twisty user interface features, all subtly related
Several of you have heard me expounding about designing an adventure game. I was thinking about it last weekend, before it got overtaken with other things. I probably won't actually do all this at this time, but
I love Monkey Island games. In fact, "like Monkey Island" is actually more accurate than "point-and-click adventure game" because the genre we all like not only has that style of game and interface, but that style of humour too.
Sonic's commented several times (both, I think, in put-down and in seriousness) that I ought to write one. The idea appeals to me because I get to do: much programming, much design, much puzzling and some art which fits the ideal proportions.
The only flaw is I wanted to write something open ended, like an action or puzzle time filler, that isn't this. But it's fun.
The twist I like, the defining feature
I think this idea is cool, though I don't know if everyone agrees. One big question for this sort of puzzle game is "can you die"? In Sierra games, if you do something stupid, you die, and you have to reload a saved game.
In other games, it's possible to get stuck by not doing something necessary and not dying then, but getting stuck at the end of the game because you needed it.
In Lucas Arts games, you can always progress from where you are, which is a lovely feature, part of their ethos, avoids frustration, means everything you do is positive,
The only trouble is, it gives hints. You have to be forced to acquire any item you need later, and sometimes it serves as a hint. Often you put something down or switch a lever and there's no option to pick it up again or switch it back -- that means what you did is not only possible, but correct at this time.
OK, enough preamble, the actual twist I like, the defining feature
There should be a flexible undo tree. For instance, say you go on a long quest to find a dragon, solving many puzzles. And you get there and you die because you don't have a sword to kill it. (I have a lovely little flow chart with "tree (| with three ^)" "dragon" "sword (| with -)" "upsidedown dragon with x eyes")
Along the top of the screen is a film-strip showing you all the scenes you visited. You can click on the first one, and are then replaying that scene. If you go a different way, all the other scenes go black and white to indicate that you've done them, but they're not part of the current time-line.
When you've *got* the sword, and got back to the beginning, the other scenes become active again, most exactly the same, but some might play out differently because you have the sword. For instance, click to go to the last scene, and now instead of choosing to "die" you have the option to "kill the dragon and win the game."
This is partly a way to make the idea more user-friendly. But I think it could be more than that -- there's a lot of potential for individual puzzles where you have to do things in the right order that is untapped because in current interfaces it's incredibly frustrating to have to keep starting over, and if all puzzles have to be physically reversible, it's rather implausible.
The details are very tricky to work out, but something simple along these lines would be entirely possible and I think cool.
Other features
Because 3-d graphics can be so nice, the development path of adventure games fell by the way-side, so there's lots of things it'd be nice to see one day:
* A flexible verb-interface, with the flexibility of Monkey Island's half-a-dozen verbs, but with the ease of use of a modern "don't need to move the mouse to the status bar" interface.
* Help line saying "click on verb to act" or "you are looking for a dragon"
* A good open-source adventure game other people can build on. There's lots of nearly this, but none *done*
* Non-canonical verbs. Loom had this -- instead of verbs you had spells. So one of these was "open" but others were "cause fear", etc. This creates more space for puzzles because you have more options. (A similar effect can be created with many utility items in inventory.)
* Nicer user-interface, eg. click again to short-cut walk-to and skip straight there.
* Break-down of objects, ability to say "talk to bartender" but also to access parts (eg. pockets, hair, etc) if it's part of a puzzle. Also slightly context-sensitive verbs, eg. "turn/unturn" or "screw/unscrew" depending.
Several of you have heard me expounding about designing an adventure game. I was thinking about it last weekend, before it got overtaken with other things. I probably won't actually do all this at this time, but
I love Monkey Island games. In fact, "like Monkey Island" is actually more accurate than "point-and-click adventure game" because the genre we all like not only has that style of game and interface, but that style of humour too.
Sonic's commented several times (both, I think, in put-down and in seriousness) that I ought to write one. The idea appeals to me because I get to do: much programming, much design, much puzzling and some art which fits the ideal proportions.
The only flaw is I wanted to write something open ended, like an action or puzzle time filler, that isn't this. But it's fun.
The twist I like, the defining feature
I think this idea is cool, though I don't know if everyone agrees. One big question for this sort of puzzle game is "can you die"? In Sierra games, if you do something stupid, you die, and you have to reload a saved game.
In other games, it's possible to get stuck by not doing something necessary and not dying then, but getting stuck at the end of the game because you needed it.
In Lucas Arts games, you can always progress from where you are, which is a lovely feature, part of their ethos, avoids frustration, means everything you do is positive,
The only trouble is, it gives hints. You have to be forced to acquire any item you need later, and sometimes it serves as a hint. Often you put something down or switch a lever and there's no option to pick it up again or switch it back -- that means what you did is not only possible, but correct at this time.
OK, enough preamble, the actual twist I like, the defining feature
There should be a flexible undo tree. For instance, say you go on a long quest to find a dragon, solving many puzzles. And you get there and you die because you don't have a sword to kill it. (I have a lovely little flow chart with "tree (| with three ^)" "dragon" "sword (| with -)" "upsidedown dragon with x eyes")
Along the top of the screen is a film-strip showing you all the scenes you visited. You can click on the first one, and are then replaying that scene. If you go a different way, all the other scenes go black and white to indicate that you've done them, but they're not part of the current time-line.
When you've *got* the sword, and got back to the beginning, the other scenes become active again, most exactly the same, but some might play out differently because you have the sword. For instance, click to go to the last scene, and now instead of choosing to "die" you have the option to "kill the dragon and win the game."
This is partly a way to make the idea more user-friendly. But I think it could be more than that -- there's a lot of potential for individual puzzles where you have to do things in the right order that is untapped because in current interfaces it's incredibly frustrating to have to keep starting over, and if all puzzles have to be physically reversible, it's rather implausible.
The details are very tricky to work out, but something simple along these lines would be entirely possible and I think cool.
Other features
Because 3-d graphics can be so nice, the development path of adventure games fell by the way-side, so there's lots of things it'd be nice to see one day:
* A flexible verb-interface, with the flexibility of Monkey Island's half-a-dozen verbs, but with the ease of use of a modern "don't need to move the mouse to the status bar" interface.
* Help line saying "click on verb to act" or "you are looking for a dragon"
* A good open-source adventure game other people can build on. There's lots of nearly this, but none *done*
* Non-canonical verbs. Loom had this -- instead of verbs you had spells. So one of these was "open" but others were "cause fear", etc. This creates more space for puzzles because you have more options. (A similar effect can be created with many utility items in inventory.)
* Nicer user-interface, eg. click again to short-cut walk-to and skip straight there.
* Break-down of objects, ability to say "talk to bartender" but also to access parts (eg. pockets, hair, etc) if it's part of a puzzle. Also slightly context-sensitive verbs, eg. "turn/unturn" or "screw/unscrew" depending.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 01:05 pm (UTC)So you can kill the dragon and marry the princess or marry the dragon and eat the princess.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 01:15 pm (UTC)This time I was going for something more traditional. I was instinctively going for ending, but different orders of proceeding (like sub quests can be done in a variety of interlocking orders) but a small number of related endings is attractive.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 01:25 pm (UTC)The classic way of doing 'non linearity' in games today is to allow the character to be good or evil by giving them the choice to be Mother Teresa or Hitler, with nothing in between. Generally if you do any 'evil' thing in the game you get the 'evil' ending.
The other cheap way of doing it is to make everything you did throughout the game irrelevant, but give you two or three possible paths right at the end of the game.
Or there is the 'you've completed the game so start playing again but this time you have some extra equipment / stats / something' that lets you complete it in a different way.
I think it's still good to have things that are slightly different based on the order you do them, even if it's only minor it will cause discussion about the game, and people will want to go back and do the game the other way.
Have you played Chrono Trigger? That had a variety of 'if you do things in this different order...' stuff, and various ways of ending the game (some of which were only really available if you had already completed the game).
Have you played Chrono Trigger?
Date: 2007-09-14 01:34 pm (UTC)Re: Have you played Chrono Trigger?
Date: 2007-09-14 01:35 pm (UTC)It may give you some ideas.
Re: Have you played Chrono Trigger?
Date: 2007-09-14 01:41 pm (UTC)Non-linearity and time-travel aren't directly what I'm interested in, but are very related, so I want to see how it fits.
Re: Have you played Chrono Trigger?
Date: 2007-09-14 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 01:37 pm (UTC)Yeah, I heard about that. It's a shame, though it's something.
Actually good/evil would work quite well here. You're basically exploring an event tree, trying to reach the good endings perched out amongst the twigs.
So say there's often a variety of actions you can take, that add good/evil (or some other axes[1]). And there's a number of choke points where what happens is dependent on that.
So you can play through a chunk of the game exploring and taking the direct route by zapping people in the way with lightning, and then get to point where you need to be this good for the this choice, or that evil for that choice, and then you can go back and find the more elegant solutions that give you the morality you want.
[1] As in, more than one axis, not as in more than one axe, though both can be good or evil :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 01:48 pm (UTC)I guess that's it. There's some fun in having a game where you play a totally depraved psychotic character, but a more realistic scenario is where you're willing to be evil to get what you want (eg. kill guards rather than subdue them to get somewhere), but it's harder to do that just give a couple of random evil moments.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 01:59 pm (UTC)The problem is that generally it's best to be at the extreme of good or bad. In the films doing an evil act seems to have enormous consequences for a jedi, but in the games you can be perfect white then lop the head off some unarmed moon princess because she has a particularly shiny light sabre crystal, and to regain your perfect light side status you just have to feed 3 stray cats1.
1 err... not that I recently killed any moon princesses...
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 01:15 pm (UTC)Oo-er.
eat the princess.
Oo-er.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 01:25 pm (UTC)