Poll about exploration: blocked passages, full realism, or game-ified buildings?

[ShinseiTom]

You mentioned it up above, but is there any technical reason you couldn't allow the players to choose the level of destruction when they start the game?

Most people seem to like 1 or 3, which can be opposite ends of a "building destruction" function you seem to already have built.  Would it be too difficult to allow the players, at the beginning of a new game, to set how far-gone the world is?

Also, a reason I sometimes don't like huge realistic buildings/worlds with every room searchable in other games is because things are usually hand-crafted and set, and that special item might be in that specific room, and missing it means missing the item completely.  I'm an extreme compulsive 100% searcher in some games too, but I feel I have a reason to in Oblivion, NWN, or Baldur's Gate as there might be a unique weapon or item only in that one place I didn't search.
A procedural game can get around that.  I'm not sure how you'll do your "treasure", but I'd imagine that if you add a "unique" weapon that only appears in office buildings but the player somehow "misses" it in one building, it would appear in another at some point in time.  Say the player got the weapon from the new instance.  Then, since it's unique, if they or anyone else ever somehow runs into the old instance(s) they can't see it or the item would be simply erased from the game.  In that case, the player got a unique weapon, didn't necessarily have to go everywhere/do everything, but still has a decent chance or finding the weapon anyway.

Players who like the huge realistic buildings can have the satisfaction of knowing if they can see it, they can go all the way through it without the pressure of needing to, while those that want to lower the number of rooms themselves with the destruction algorithm (age) setting can 100% all buildings easier.


Anyway, these are just my ramblings.  Whatever you decide will be fine, as I don't care gamebreakingly much. I'm just excited the game is coming along 

[x4000]

Well, there's not a technical reason that I can't have it both ways, but I intend to have absolutely nothing to configure before starting a new world if at all possible.  If you're having to make decisions like that before starting your world, then that's counter to the design I'm trying to go for where you can play the entire time in one world if you want.  Plus it's that much more of a barrier to entry for a new player, etc ("level of destruction of buildings?  WTF does that mean?" in a lot of cases, I'm sure).

The other reasons center around balance: if I'm just including extra rooms with nothing of interest in them, then people who want the huge buildings will complain because that makes their exploration 90% more boring to have 90% more rooms with nothing of interest in them.  That makes the unique items that much harder to find, for instance -- making a bigger haystack to put the needle in.  I can't fathom how that would be fun.

So instead we now have a lot more goodies that we have to suddenly seed into this building, which means that balance is affected rather dramatically no matter how we do it.  That's kind of why I see this as a cheat or easter egg sort of thing, a "haha isn't this neat to see once" sort of thing rather than actually the way people would want to play for very long.

Also, a reason I sometimes don't like huge realistic buildings/worlds with every room searchable in other games is because things are usually hand-crafted and set, and that special item might be in that specific room, and missing it means missing the item completely.  I'm an extreme compulsive 100% searcher in some games too, but I feel I have a reason to in Oblivion, NWN, or Baldur's Gate as there might be a unique weapon or item only in that one place I didn't search.
A procedural game can get around that.  I'm not sure how you'll do your "treasure", but I'd imagine that if you add a "unique" weapon that only appears in office buildings but the player somehow "misses" it in one building, it would appear in another at some point in time.  Say the player got the weapon from the new instance.  Then, since it's unique, if they or anyone else ever somehow runs into the old instance(s) they can't see it or the item would be simply erased from the game.  In that case, the player got a unique weapon, didn't necessarily have to go everywhere/do everything, but still has a decent chance or finding the weapon anyway.

I really think that applies here as well as anywhere.  If you've gone through 30 rooms out of 1300 in some overly massive building, and you're fatigued and ready to move on, then you're faced with a problem.  There may or may not be something REALLY AWESOME in those other 1270 rooms, but if you leave you'll never know.  If you go into some other building and just search 30 out of its 400 rooms, you're maybe slightly more likely to find a thing of interest, but still not all that likely.  Most things that you'd want to find are hidden in corner map nodes, not just along the main paths, so if you're just walking around on your merry way you're going to miss that sort of thing.

Which, in turn, leads to that same sort of incentive to at least glance in all the rooms.  And if there are too many rooms, that gets un-fun very fast.

[c4sc4]

Yes, in-game any entrances show on the minimap as green when you (or another player) have been through them or red when you have not.  You can also leave magical markers for yourself if you want to, though in the main that should not be too important.

Oh awesome, we do get glow sticks. I was going to make some comment about how we should get glow sticks to mark rooms we've cleared (I've been watching some SWAT 4 Let's Plays recently) but I didn't think that would be an actual thing.

[x4000]

Yeah, magic spraypaint has been in the plans since the start.

[Cyborg]

I voted for full realism mainly because I have never seen it done before. 

I understand why it wouldn't be fun, but I would hope there might be some way to either make it fun or put it in the settlement area of the game for us to play/build with.

[x4000]

I voted for full realism mainly because I have never seen it done before. 

Yeah... point taken.  But sometimes there is a reason something hasn't been done.   Anyway, I'll leave that as an easter egg at worst.

I understand why it wouldn't be fun, but I would hope there might be some way to either make it fun or put it in the settlement area of the game for us to play/build with.

I think that if this was a Haunted Castle type of game where it's all about exploring one huge and really varied castle, that's one thing.  But there's a limit to how much can be procedurally packed into one building while still making thousands upon thousands of other buildings in a massive world.  But... we'll see.  This is one of those things that I can always come back and do more with later if ideas abound.

[chemical_art]

I voted 3 with similar reasons to cyborg.

But in addition to it being a new idea I want it due to the realism. Exploring abandoned buildings is boring since there is mostly junk. Well, yeah. That is the stuff they don't they show in movies that involve post apocolyptic building searching. I know this is a terrible argument but that is my current sentiment.

It may very well be axed because it simply can't be fun. I certainly don't want you to waste time trying to make a boring thing fun when instead you can make a fun thing really fun***. But at the same time if you want to make this concession of realism then moving to option 2 doesn't seem so bad. Is there not a way, for example, to leave many buildings with one hallway but to on occasion allow more? So that you may have many game-isc buildings, but some can be larger to allow variation?


***Using a derivative of Occam razor: If it isn't fun, why is it there? And can another method be done instead for whatever purpose buildings do?

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I honestly think this is more of a public-BETA question than anything, but my opinion is, make it seem epic, but block off unnecessary fluff.  You are trying to make an epic-world-like game and yeah, you did say if we can see it, we can go there but also, just because I can see the peak of Mt Rushmore, doesn't necessarily mean I can (or should) go there.  I hope you get what I mean by that, but I think we will forgive you if you block off 12,000 boring rooms in this game .  As "interesting" as searching that many rooms sounds, I think I'll take the condensed version any day .

King

[Mánagarmr]

I actually prefer full size buildings, but for the sake of playability, I went with option 1.

[Nalgas]

Huh.  Looks like I'm the lone "I don't care" so far.  Whatever works that's fun is ok with me.  As long as there's enough variation in building types and exploration rewards that it doesn't feel too tedious or repetitive, I'm not too picky, so I can live with whatever feels better with the rest of the world and gameplay elements (which I obviously haven't gotten to try out yet).

The things that do tend to bug me with exploring areas like that are when it's unnecessarily difficult to keep track of where you've already been and when there are ridiculous amounts of backtracking involved, usually as a result of large numbers of long, branching, but ultimately very linear pathways, especially when they're plastered with too many enemies and not enough other interesting stuff along the way.  The combination of that kind of layout and poor mapping (for the player) can get pretty frustrating when you end up going back and forth down the same halls for the 13th time in a row for absolutely no benefit other than getting to one tiny room in a corner that turns out to have nothing worthwhile in it anyway.

A good visual representation of the map and what the player's already done along with a reasonable level of interconnectedness allowing multiple routes goes a long way to preventing that, though, and it sounds like you're already on top of that, so I'm not too worried.

[freykin]

I voted for either 1 or 2 is fine, though I can see cases where gigantic building might be appropriate every now and then, as the aforementioned overlord keeps.

Really looking forward to this, I've enjoyed your updates and blog posts about the development cycle immensely.

As for games having locked doors and such, I have to admit, in the Silent Hill series I breathed a sigh of relief whenever I found a broken lock, as it meant I didn't have to go in there.  Especially when the radio was going nuts as I checked the door.

[x4000]

I have to admit, in the Silent Hill series I breathed a sigh of relief whenever I found a broken lock, as it meant I didn't have to go in there.  Especially when the radio was going nuts as I checked the door.

This.  In Silent Hill, I don't think it's unrealistic that someone like James Sunderland can't bust down a door to begin with.  But going along with that, he must be as relieved as I am when he doesn't have to go through into yet another horrific apartment.  Or worse.  Out of context of those games, though, and what they were emotionally accomplishing, I think that mechanic is really cheap and lame.  But in those games: brilliant.

"There was a hole here.  It's gone now." *shivers*

[x4000]

In terms of the rest of the recent comments, by the way: lots of general head-nodding on my part.  I don't have anything in particular to add, and I don't think that getting into an enormous game design debate would be hugely productive as a use of my time right today, but I think there are a lot of great points.

Just as an FYI, here's what I've implemented so far, as a big part of my work yesterday:

1. In most buildings, there are at least a few rooms that are considered destroyed and thus blocked off.

2. The first item fits to the theme of the game, which is great, but it also makes for little hidey-holes that didn't exist prior to this: being able to go through the vent ducts to get to a room that is otherwise inaccessible, for instance.  Previously I'd planned on doing that with locked doors, and I still will, but the rule of a locked door is that a key or switch exists somewhere that can open it.

3. In terms of the amount of destruction in each building type, originally I'd made that a linear thing so each type was always similarly destroyed -- but thanks to comments on here I was reminded how lame that is, and now it varies widely.  SO, with that, you'll find buildings that range from "everything but the lobby is practically destroyed" to "there's still 30-90 rooms to explore."

4. Overall, at the moment there's not tending to be more than about 100 rooms to explore even in the largest buildings, and I think that's going to be the way to keep things for the most part.  THAT said, I think that the minority desire here for some full-out buildings might be best served not by an easter egg or cheat or alternate game mode, but by a special sort of region/building later on.  If there are some buildings that are always massive but which are optional to the main gameplay (but with special side rewards of their own), then I think that's a great way to have that mechanic without it overwhelming the rest of the game.  Kind of like how I'm segmenting out all the platform-y stuff into the lava flats region, and most of the creepy stuff into the "the deep" region.

5. And definitely I hear ya on the maps.  I'll post screenshots of them, and probably video, on the next diary.  I'm pleased with what I cooked up in terms of my external procedural dungeon design program, but now I'll just have to figure out a way to make that function in the game itself, given how many draw calls that takes at the moment.



And in general I think that handles this topic, to be honest: the majority of buildings need to not be incredi-massive, but they should still feel big, but they should also feel destroyed in order to fit with the post-apocalyptic theme.  But at the same time, since we can do incredi-massive buildings, and it hasn't been done before, that really does seem worth doing.  So hence some sort of new building, probably in a new region type that you don't encounter right away in the game, is born.  I like it!  Thanks for all the help and thoughts as I worked through this, that really sped things along and came out with a better initial result than I otherwise would have.

[SRombauts]

Oh oh, I love this idea of thematic regions, with specific contents and challenges: this could become a real feature of this game, as well as a way to solve design issues!

[x4000]

Oh oh, I love this idea of thematic regions, with specific contents and challenges: this could become a real feature of this game, as well as a way to solve design issues!

Oh, it's already a major feature of the game, though I've not talked about it hugely much I guess.  But yeah: lots of region-specific mechanics, aside from regions-specific monsters, graphics, building types, etc, etc, etc...