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Game Design #4 no saves action-RPG.

 
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Ketch
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:44 am    Post subject: Game Design #4 no saves action-RPG. Reply with quote

This idea sounds a bit like Majora's Mask without the irritating you must do X, then Y then Z structure and timelimit. Also it would probably need to be made so that each time you played you wouldn't need to keep repeating the same things ie. get the sword, get the magic bow, defeat the mini-boss. Or it would start to get really repetitive.

Imagine if you had to keep going to the edge of the game's world to defeat the 'boss'. But what if instead the tasks were centralised and you could see your main objectives from the start ie. the temple of the evil baddie that needs to be defeated is where the game starts (ie. just outside it). You look at the plinth and it says the "only the most warrior who has mastered the disciplines of wisdom, lore and combat can enter here!". The player is free to 'try' to enter the end-game but will find it too hard to bypass the traps and monsters (because they won't know the skills they need to use). The puzzles and quests that they would find elsewhere would be training versions of the real thing that would teach them how to navigate the game world.

Instead the dungeon master directs them to go to the little cave to start their journey.
There would probably need to be (hidden) warp points that would allow them to fly to different sections in a hurry.

It would probably be best to prototype it in 2d (like the original Zeldas /Dragon-Warriors) if someone were to try such a project.
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Lackey
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 1:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My one complaint about the description of this game offered in the article was how completely arbitrary all the challenges seemed. I'm all for the meta-game puzzle sort of elements, but I think there'd be some way to fit them together in the game world.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i think this might be a good time to mention that Szczepaniak's Grand Quest has already been made.

it's called myst.

(spoilers for those who havn't played.)

you start on an island. there are two characters, and four hidden world. one of the characters says, "you need to bring me red artifacts, and that other character is evil". the other one says, "that other character is evil, and you need to bring me blue artifacts". each of the four worlds connected to the island contains one red artifact and one blue artifact.

two of the worlds contain half of a clue that leads to a hiding place. the hiding place is on the island where you start. when you bring either of the characters the four artifacts of the appropriate color, the character will give you another clue, and say "use this to get me my final artifact. and by no means touch the green artifact!" the clue leads to a secret nook. in the nook is the last blue artifact, the last red artifact, and the green artifact.

if you bring either character the last artifact, that character is freed and you are trapped. if you touch the green artifact, however, you will meet a third character, who says "please, bring me a white artifact!" the clue you pieced together earlier reveals the hiding place of the white artifact. bring it to the third character and you will win.

if you know both clues, you can find the white artifact and the green artifact and win the game without ever leaving the island you start on and visiting the other worlds. it's only while exploring the other worlds for the red and blue artifacts, however, do you learn that the two characters are deceiving you and that you need to seek a third option.

note that myst is a game of incredibly arbitrary puzzles. in the sequel riven your actions make much more sense. however, you can't skip straight to the ending; you have to solve every puzzle to arrive there.
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Szczepaniak
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Firstly, thanks to Dessgeega for pointing out the Myst example, though sadly I only became aware of it after the article had been planned to be included. Still, we hoped it would cause discussion, and make people engage in debate about various things, including the seemingly endless string of cliches used in RPGs. Don't get me wrong, I love games like Suikoden1+2 and SoA, but I think the genre has literally limitless potential that is still untapped.

But yes, the basic idea is that knowledge would allow you to progress super fast and side step a variety of things. The hope is, there would never be any backtracking, or need to retread the same area too often. In fact, once you have some knowledge to progress further, why include a warp point? The player could simply reset their machine and wind at the begginning, which would be closer to the next goal, than the area where they were given the info about that goal. See? You're then thinking outside of the game. Like when Kojima put Meryl's codec on the game box.

The hope being, that once you have a certain piece of knowledge, you can head straight to the next section, from your starting point, without any need to acquire anything extra (you start with your sword, and most of the time, that is all you need). Actually, thinking about it, it's a lot like Groundhog's Day with Bill Murray, except without the 20 something hour time limit.

I did think about the skills idea, but the problem with that is you will always find a really hot player who can do things first time, without any prior skill or practice. The knowledge idea forces the player have acquire something tangible, sometimes even outside of the game world. (imagine the merchandising too! A cartoon series where at the end of an episode, they give a clue. Or a clue can be found at the bottom of a certain box of cereal.)


Lackey wrote:
My one complaint about the description of this game offered in the article was how completely arbitrary all the challenges seemed. I'm all for the meta-game puzzle sort of elements, but I think there'd be some way to fit them together in the game world.


Hmm, you raise an interesting point. I wasn't conciously thinking about this. The hope would be, that it only seems arbitrary now, because we haven't seen the full game. The castle, and the groto, and the enemy in the sea cave could all be linked. Perhaps the ex-owner of the castle was exiled to the cave, etc.

Alternatively, keeping it arbitrary might stop people from randomly guessing a solution, and also give the world an alien feel.

I'm almost tempted to create a kind of short demo of this using a NES Zelda editor (they have them for PC!), but then again, I'm often busy, and plan to do many things I never get around to.

So, erm... yeah. Discuss.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

the fun thing is, as mentioned in the piece we printed, the original zelda could be played this way with a bit of balancing and the removal of that "ones without triforce can not enter" guy. the concept intrigues me!
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Ketch
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Szczepaniak wrote:
. See? You're then thinking outside of the game. Like when Kojima put Meryl's codec on the game box.

So, erm... yeah. Discuss.


I don't get what is so good about the codec is on the back of the box, it had been done tons of times before (copy protection > read word 3 page 15 paragraph 2). Only the way MGS did it was more of a joke.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 7:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

made it really inconvenient for people who rented the game or bought it used, too.
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 10:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What's good about the codec thing is that it was a perfect little piece of metagaming. At a time when copy protection had gone digital, when you now had a piece of hardware devoted to holding saves so you'd never have to bother with password systems again, and when everyone was doing their damndest to immerse you in this new 3D thing (remember how Good it looked!) and make you forget you were gaming and not living out a fantasy, that codec number came along and made you pause, physically, to dig out the box.
Or even better, to run around in the game for a while, moving Snake through one of those exploratory circular routes found only in video games, searching for the one trigger that provides you with the answer, but growing more and more certain with each pass that you've missed something vital, and eventually getting fed up and angry with the programmers for obviously Breaking the Game, then checking gamefaqs and being faced with the peculiar emotion that goes along with falling for a completely obvious con. And being unable to use an excuse of poor programming or graphic design or hit detection or anything else we like to blame our videogame failures on, but having to own up to the fact that you just didn't get an easy, very physically real instruction, and that a video game tricked you in real life. Or at least that's sort of what I went through.

PS: I just realized that we may be in the last years in which a gamer is forced to use their imagination to creatively fill in the gaps, at least graphically. I wonder, in 10 or 15 years, if when you show a kid a NES game he'll be able to comprehend the simplicity of it? See also: They ruined Legos and I made better X-Wings in 1989 than they ever will, no matter how many specialized pieces they manufacture.
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 10:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

simplicio wrote:
See also: They ruined Legos and I made better X-Wings in 1989 than they ever will, no matter how many specialized pieces they manufacture.


that's a really fantastic cognitive connection, actually.
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Ketch
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 2:03 pm    Post subject: How about the opposite? Reply with quote

A game which saves *everything* that you do and cannot be reset to the beginning. ie. it is a persistant game. This would work best on a cartridge based system with a battery backed up disk. (That way no-one but the hardcore-technophiles would be able to reset it) (until they brought out an Action-Replay). The problem is I can't think of how this would actually tie-in with gameplay, so that it wasn't just a NEAT gimmick.

I suppose it would allow you to make a sad-game where you would be able to miss one-off opportunities, and characters that die would really be gone from the game. But this still seems a bit gimmicky.
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SuperWes
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 2:24 pm    Post subject: Re: How about the opposite? Reply with quote

Ketch wrote:
A game which saves *everything* that you do and cannot be reset to the beginning. ie. it is a persistant game. This would work best on a cartridge based system with a battery backed up disk. (That way no-one but the hardcore-technophiles would be able to reset it) (until they brought out an Action-Replay). The problem is I can't think of how this would actually tie-in with gameplay, so that it wasn't just a NEAT gimmick.

I suppose it would allow you to make a sad-game where you would be able to miss one-off opportunities, and characters that die would really be gone from the game. But this still seems a bit gimmicky.


The closest thing I can think of to this would be Animal Crossing (and MMO games, but those are more like jobs so they don't count). It takes place in real time and everything you do keeps the world going. If you don't play the game in months it will become overgrown with weeds and the residents will start moving away and not move back until you start playing regularly again. You have to save your game every time you play or else they punish you by making you wade through pages of text that increase in length every time you quit without saving.

The DS version will probably save everything on-the-fly.

-Wes
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There's also Way of the Samurai. You can only hard-save the game if you leave the pass or beat the game. You can quick-save at certain points, but it's more like that pausing feature we see in many GBA games now. If you die, you lose whatever swords you are carrying forever. The game's so short, though, that it's not quite going for the same thing.
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 6:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another is Neverwinter Nights. Well, not out of the box, but people did make persistent worlds. It was really cool stuff too because it was not quite like an MMO everywhere you went (although many were like that). I was involved in a few that were more similar to chat rooms that only had a few quests going on because the only ones there were to do were created on the fly by the Dungeon Masters.

I spent way too much time with NWN. I was a beta tester for tons of persistent worlds, some much better than others.
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Ketch
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 7:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You are still relying on Key/ Lock design, except the keys are knowledge based.
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 9:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ketch wrote:
You are still relying on Key/ Lock design, except the keys are knowledge based.

And?

-Wes
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Szczepaniak
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ketch wrote:
You are still relying on Key/ Lock design, except now the keys are knowledge based.


Good lord, that is an ingenius summary. I should have put that in the article somewhere!!! Very Happy

I'm not being sarcastic, you are absolutely spot on, and I love how concise the above sentence is. It took me umpteen pages to say what you did in a sentence. Though I would hope that my long descriptions helped people to develop the world in their mind.

Though I take it you meant it more as a criticism?

I wasn't trying to be a revolutionary (those ideas I'm saving until I can make enough money off them to retire, move to Brazil, and open a tobacco plantation), I just thought it an interesting way to evolve the RPG/ActionAdventure genre in some way.

The whole concept of such RPG/AA games is open to such adaption and development, I am very surprised they have been locked into the same mould for so many years.

Just look at the difference between Shadowrun (SNES), FF7 and Morrowind (Myst as well I guess, though I've never played it). So many takes on a common idea. Hell, even the GTA series I would class as an adaption of the RPG concept.
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Ketch
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 12:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Szczepaniak wrote:
Ketch wrote:
You are still relying on Key/ Lock design, except now the keys are knowledge based.


Good lord, that is an ingenius summary. I should have put that in the article somewhere!!! Very Happy

Though I take it you meant it more as a criticism?

. Hell, even the GTA series I would class as an adaption of the RPG concept.


Yes, isn't the whole concept of "level" based games about breaking through barriers/challenges to open 'doors' to new areas ie. if you defeat the enemies you can get to the next level, reopen the pass and you can get to the mountains.

Whereas in GTA you can go anywhere, but what if you combined a GTA approach with a fantasy world, that way you could kill the end character at any time - if you knew how to get there.

To add a bit more depth, you could have several other levels that would need to be done (to gain the knowledge keys) ie. temples of strength, wisdom, love etc.


Edit: P.S

The adventure game YAGWAD (Yet Another Game With A Dragon) Very Happy has this knowledge = key feature with respect to the end, it uses a combination of items in a certain order to unlock the ending location, and you don't need any other items (than what you have) to win the game. So you don't need to pick up gold or silver, or mega-weapons of dragon-slayingness or gain X.P or influence NPCs.
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Ketch
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 6:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

God: I can't let this idea go undiscussed.
How about having it so that the player starts the game with all the abilities that he needs to win? That way s/he won't need to collect the bow of death! One good way to do this would be to have Psycho-kinetic powers, so the player can push, pull, throw items, levitate, fireball etc.

Another way would be to have the player use bits of the scenery / plant-life / animals as ammunition, deku-stick anyone?

Edit: and another way to give the player lots of abilities straight off the bat would be to make it a POP/ICO style platform-adventure, with the player able to interact with and use the scenery in clever ways.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 12:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Or how about all the hero needs to win is the ability to swing a sword.

!!!
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 5:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ketch wrote:
Whereas in GTA you can go anywhere, but what if you combined a GTA approach with a fantasy world, that way you could kill the end character at any time - if you knew how to get there.

To add a bit more depth, you could have several other levels that would need to be done (to gain the knowledge keys) ie. temples of strength, wisdom, love etc.


Brings to mind the Wasteland/Fallout games. They did a good job (I think) of balancing reward for random exploration and reward for following the obvious path. It's not so exaggerated that the games can be beaten by completing the final objective only, but previous knowledge (especially of locations) is highly advantageous. You can most emphatically kill damned near anyone as soon as you have the firepower. It's living through it that's tricky, especially if you aren't out to kill every other critter in the room.
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Spoiler Warning. (scroll down)















Ketch wrote:

It's not so exaggerated that the games can be beaten by completing the final objective only

Well, you sort of can in FO/FO2. Check out the speed runs! Whee!
Fallout 1 in 9 minutes, 19 seconds
Fallout 2 in 17 minutes, 51 seconds

Of course without sploits and cheaty reloads and insane luck, it will take longer than this.




Ketch wrote:
It's living through it that's tricky, especially if you aren't out to kill every other critter in the room.

"Diplo-path" - In FO/FO2, you can just max Intelligence, Charisma, Speech and waltz through/around most of the game. Both can be won without even firing a single shot.
The End Boss in FO2 requires a lot of luck and probably several reloads before winning "pacifistically", but it can be done.
Random Encounters are a problem, you might just pretend they don't count against being a non-combat character and go ahead and fight. Or max Agility and run.
Run away! Run away! (and/or rely on your companions. but they suck unless micromanaged- try getting Dogmeat past all the forcefields in FO.)
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