noddy wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:31 am
sure, their are ways to make the randomness part of the game and the nature of the game.
that rant is purely in these action adventure type things - that used to be linear with each encounter crafted around the known progression of the game.
looter games/rpg's are probably another that get away with reused content and randomisation - in theory a new set of armours/weapons is giving you the replayability.
Hah, I was just editing that in. 2d dungeon crawling type things...a few even come to mind but it gets dodgy because it works as often as it doesn't.
And the replayability becomes overstated in most of them because they still rely on the player interacting with items in a linear process. The player learns quickly the limits to what their able to do and how to play the game no matter what comes their way.
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The rant was right on the mark with the adventure types.
Last edited by NapLajoieonSteroids on Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
i may have mentioned this before (hard to remember) but i really feel their is a missing aspect of all gaming reviews and categorization.
the adult with a life who wants a game that is fun in 30-120 minute chunks with possibly large gaps between those chunks. Probably we arent a large enough demographic to care about :/
the kid who lives 12 hrs a day in their bedroom on a laptop is the one you (nor I) understand .. the one that loves the busy work, the walking simulators, the cut and pastes and retrying the same scenario 100 times with slightly different parameters.
had to refund titanfall 2 - it kept crashing out and the only solutions I found on the internet involved reinstalling the entire OS, which aint happening.
one nice thing about steam is they will refund any game that hasnt lasted 2 hrs for you.
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:35 am
And the replayability becomes overstated in most of them because they still rely on the player interacting with items in a linear process. The player learns quickly the limits to what their able to do and how to play the game no matter what comes their way.
ive really been struggling with RPG's started a bunch from my back catalog, have barely taken any of them past the tutorial stages.
noddy wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:43 am
i may have mentioned this before (hard to remember) but i really feel their is a missing aspect of all gaming reviews and categorization.
the adult with a life who wants a game that is fun in 30-120 minute chunks with possibly large gaps between those chunks. Probably we arent a large enough demographic to care about :/
the kid who lives 12 hrs a day in their bedroom on a laptop is the one you (nor I) understand .. the one that loves the busy work, the walking simulators, the cut and pastes and retrying the same scenario 100 times with slightly different parameters.
It may be a few years out of date now, but the data I researched suggested a category called "former gamers" is the largest video game market in the world. That is where the biggest profit can be drawn but it is also the hardest market to reach due to age, commitment...all the adult things.
So all they can do is cultivate "hardcore" gaming kids who will buy anything if given the opportunity for some easy money and hope it will effect future habits.
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I think it's also the whole lifestyle aspect. To write or talk about games attracts a lot of peripheral players in the industry and being a "game designer" is a lifestyle to them. And to live the lifestyle is to be attached to a laptop to unlock all the achievements on the checklist.
It colors a lot of the media.
Last edited by NapLajoieonSteroids on Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
noddy wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:06 am
the apartment dwelling, computer bound types are the "content producers" aswell, so it is a self reinforcing circle.
yep, and they all make the same text heavy, pixelated games where all the characters are very self-aware that they are in a game [so it's all about the meta-game] and they all suffer depression and you have to spend 18 hours preventing your character from killing himself.
It may be a few years out of date now, but the data I research suggested a category called "former gamers" is the largest video game market in the world. That is where the biggest profit can be drawn but it is also the hardest market to reach due to age, commitment...all the adult things.
got me thinking about how to exploit it, ermm i mean offer services too
noddy wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:31 am
i keep looking at unreal engine (and others) and trying to talk myself into a 6 month hack.
as of yet, other hobbies have made more sense and provided more creative outlet.
seems to me their is a 3rd option on the hand crafted versus random generated front - and thats GIS data.
microsoft flight simulator is the only one im aware of that uses this.
from landscapes to placements of stuff (via naturalist records) .. it seems an untapped world of content that just needs context and good mechanics.
I thought Pokemon GO uses it.
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I've no grasp of this stuff so this may not even make sense but I wonder how it could be applied to player performance to better fake emergent gameplay.
The way I understand it is that it maps spreadsheets. Anything you can put into a spreadsheet can then be generated as a map of that information.
So why not enemy behavior in regards to character/weapon/gear selection?
noddy wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:31 am
i keep looking at unreal engine (and others) and trying to talk myself into a 6 month hack.
as of yet, other hobbies have made more sense and provided more creative outlet.
seems to me their is a 3rd option on the hand crafted versus random generated front - and thats GIS data.
microsoft flight simulator is the only one im aware of that uses this.
from landscapes to placements of stuff (via naturalist records) .. it seems an untapped world of content that just needs context and good mechanics.
I thought Pokemon GO uses it.
===============
I've no grasp of this stuff so this may not even make sense but I wonder how it could be applied to player performance to better fake emergent gameplay.
The way I understand it is that it maps spreadsheets. Anything you can put into a spreadsheet can then be generated as a map of that information.
So why not enemy behavior in regards to character/weapon/gear selection?
yes, pokemon go aswell, i forgot that - it uses local weather and road maps to generate what critters are available.
their is just so much GIS information now, you could hook any in game system to any gis data source - the real time ones being the most interesting for that task because the game can change as the world changes.
realtime temperature feeds could change the aggresiveness of NPC animals, the linkages dont have to be as direct as pokemon go, which spawns water creatures if its raining.
noddy wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:31 am
i keep looking at unreal engine (and others) and trying to talk myself into a 6 month hack.
as of yet, other hobbies have made more sense and provided more creative outlet.
seems to me their is a 3rd option on the hand crafted versus random generated front - and thats GIS data.
microsoft flight simulator is the only one im aware of that uses this.
from landscapes to placements of stuff (via naturalist records) .. it seems an untapped world of content that just needs context and good mechanics.
I thought Pokemon GO uses it.
===============
I've no grasp of this stuff so this may not even make sense but I wonder how it could be applied to player performance to better fake emergent gameplay.
The way I understand it is that it maps spreadsheets. Anything you can put into a spreadsheet can then be generated as a map of that information.
So why not enemy behavior in regards to character/weapon/gear selection?
yes, pokemon go aswell, i forgot that - it uses local weather and road maps to generate what critters are available.
their is just so much GIS information now, you could hook any in game system to any gis data source - the real time ones being the most interesting for that task because the game can change as the world changes.
realtime temperature feeds could change the aggresiveness of NPC animals, the linkages dont have to be as direct as pokemon go, which spawns water creatures if its raining.
How would realtime data be handled against gametime waiting?
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:45 pm
How would realtime data be handled against gametime waiting?
this would have to be an always online, central server thing , with the central server doing all the lookups on the data and sending cached optimised packets out to the clients, with fallovers on dependancy failures.
the trigger for all this was me looking at games like red dead 2 - impossible for a single developer, but with all the realworld data we have it would be possible for a single developer to get terrain, biology and botany, weather, all the things we have on GIS now all mapped out with many variations and then interpret that however you like.
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:45 pm
How would realtime data be handled against gametime waiting?
this would have to be an always online, central server thing , with the central server doing all the lookups on the data and sending cached optimised packets out to the clients, with fallovers on dependancy failures.
the trigger for all this was me looking at games like red dead 2 - impossible for a single developer, but with all the realworld data we have it would be possible for a single developer to get terrain, biology and botany, weather, all the things we have on GIS now all mapped out with many variations and then interpret that however you like.
I don't think GIS data has the fidelity you would need to create a AAA experience. Current procedural content generation systems are pretty incredible but to get the sort of fidelity you see in RDR2 or Cyberpunk 2077 would require laborious hand-tuning and hand-crafting of assets. You are onto something, though, and it might not be long until such data can be easily converted (automatically or semi-automatically) into high-quality game environments.
I wonder if tools exist to convert such data into low-poly stylistic environments. It should be doable.
their is plenty of smoothing algorithms around to reduce the impact of the low granularity - their is also plenty of potential for adding procedural perlin type things to fake low level detail that isnt there.
I wasnt aiming at AAA - I was aiming at interesting low budget, small team indie
part of the appeal would be people enjoying their own area and the ability to travel to far flung places - the right mix of procedural and real data could make that much more massive , yet also more coherant, than was possible for either hand made or procedurally generated.
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Mon May 03, 2021 4:39 am
Speaking of aiming, as it seems we all have different things in mind, any tools or methods which help to create more open scenarios sounds good...
for me, that doesn't even necessarily need 3d open world space.
yeh, their is a mindboggling amount of datasets, any conceivable type of game could use them
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:35 am
And the replayability becomes overstated in most of them because they still rely on the player interacting with items in a linear process. The player learns quickly the limits to what their able to do and how to play the game no matter what comes their way.
ive really been struggling with RPG's started a bunch from my back catalog, have barely taken any of them past the tutorial stages.
Very understandable. The future of RPGs is in virtual reality, otherwise no one knows what to do outside of that anymore.
RPGs always sound like a good idea until you have to actually sit through them.
Maybe the golden age for that stuff was the 80s? And since then some of those ideas have been stripped mined and put to use in other games, like how everything has rpg mechanics now.
There's also the tinfoil answer that all rpgs are game theory trainers started by the CIA.
It goes something like:
Rand/CIA->U.of Chicago game theory push->former student "makes" the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons which spreads rapidly and opens up the market for tabletop games->tabletop to video games.
The minute policy shifted to where ever, the interest&quality of these things collapsed.
as much as anything its probably getting older and seeing the spreadsheet in them so badly i cant detach myself from that - i know it will be some min/max excercise that I will achieve through mindless repetition or internet searches.
a kid can grab a lump of wood and pretend its a plane, or a gun, or a spaceship - and that level of imagination is required for a great many of the games.
We are lost in the minutiae of Red Dead 2 and I have a greater feeling of dread and doom than the characters do.
*Spoilers below for anyone still interested in playing*
I haven't said anything yet but I've no interest in playing through the epilogue as the protagonist from the original game. I think that's gonna be the cut off, no matter how spectacular or interesting or how it completes he game. Our relation to him is totally different than someone who played through RDR1; and as it opens up the original map of that game, or at least many of its locations, that doesn't really have anything to do with the story we know.
The way its going now, it's going to take us several more months just to get to the Chapter Six ending.
in my endless search for mindless games that load fast and play fast, Prodeus is a bit of a winner.
it gets boring if you play for more than 20-30 minutes but thats also why its great - when im in the mood i fire it up and play a level, or a death, then go and do something productive.
