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

[Flatfingers]

Couldn't be happier about the direction this took. Bravo!

[zespri]

I voted full-sized. I understand that some players are compelled to do 100% of the "content", I do. And I understand that this can be a real problem. However I really like the idea, "if I can see it, I can go there", and I like realism.

I'm trying to see if there is something that we can do that can make this work.

Can we do something like this:
- Firstly we acknowledge, that the building are not meant to be explored all 100%
- Secondly, create a clever algorithm, that can mark, N% (< 50%, say 30%) of the building as CORE, and the rest as FADE. If the game has achievements, or something, only CORE exploration would count, the FADE would be extracurricular. You still can find some good stuff in FADE, but there is a guaranty, that there are no bosses there or unique stuff, so you can safely skip it.

If make enough stress on the fact that these spaces are vast and no ones lifetime is enough to explore them all, if you make them feel like they fade in to the surroundings (not visually, but conceptually), then you can have interestingly looking layouts, but you are not bogged down by the need to go in every nook and cranny.

Do you think this might work? I'm no game designer and I know that even game designers have ideas that don't work out.  

[Ozymandiaz]

I would go for 2 or 1. I kinda like 2 because any game that is too much like RL might as well just be RL (well, maybe a bit exaggerated), and I got no problem with some artistic freedom this way. Option 1 is also OK, but I never did like that closed door I might/might not be able to get through at a later date .

As for option 3, while it is pretty neat, it will eventually become booring to go through offcie number 1561

[pierre dupon]

How are you making building exploration - which I imagine working best with a top-down 2D view - work with your new side-scrolling approach? Are you going to switch views when you enter a building? Or are you doing the (IMO rather lame) thing other games do where you have really small enclosed areas within which you can move about 4 steps?

edit: looking forward to the beta, this game has intrigued me from the start.

[x4000]

Couldn't be happier about the direction this took. Bravo!

Glad you like it!

I voted full-sized. I understand that some players are compelled to do 100% of the "content", I do. And I understand that this can be a real problem. However I really like the idea, "if I can see it, I can go there", and I like realism.

I'm trying to see if there is something that we can do that can make this work.

Can we do something like this:
- Firstly we acknowledge, that the building are not meant to be explored all 100%
- Secondly, create a clever algorithm, that can mark, N% (< 50%, say 30%) of the building as CORE, and the rest as FADE. If the game has achievements, or something, only CORE exploration would count, the FADE would be extracurricular. You still can find some good stuff in FADE, but there is a guaranty, that there are no bosses there or unique stuff, so you can safely skip it.

If make enough stress on the fact that these spaces are vast and no ones lifetime is enough to explore them all, if you make them feel like they fade in to the surroundings (not visually, but conceptually), then you can have interestingly looking layouts, but you are not bogged down by the need to go in every nook and cranny.

Do you think this might work? I'm no game designer and I know that even game designers have ideas that don't work out. 

It's... something that could work, but I'm not in love with it for one simple reason: players don't read.  If I put in a mechanic like that, I'm basically guaranteed to have an endless stream of complaints about how buildings are too large, or "what does the fade on rooms mean, and why is there never good stuff there," etc.  But, it is an interesting concept to be able to force yourself into collapsed rooms if you really feel like it... that's on the "maybe" list for later, at any rate.

I would note that having the reality-splintered buildings have some interior structural damage actually does seem realistic to me in a way, so having a variety of sizes of buildings and varieties of amounts of collapsed-ness seems good to me.  At any rate, in terms of your seeming core worry that the layouts get less interesting-looking with the stuff that is destroyed, we're actually still showing the destroyed stuff on the map, and it just gets redded-out.  So it's generating the full building, but some of the rooms are just considered a solid block of rubble that you can't get into. 

And it tends to make for more interesting layouts, because rather than the shortest route to Room B just being the door from Room A, sometimes room A is collapsed and you have to use the vents or whatever to get to room B.  Normal human buildings in real life aren't made to be maze-like in the main -- most are made so that wherever you are in the building, there is a short and obvious path to anywhere else in the building.  That's... less than conducive to fun exploration, if you think about it.

I would go for 2 or 1. I kinda like 2 because any game that is too much like RL might as well just be RL (well, maybe a bit exaggerated), and I got no problem with some artistic freedom this way. Option 1 is also OK, but I never did like that closed door I might/might not be able to get through at a later date .

Well, not locked or just "this door doesn't open."  It will literally have like rocks spilling out of a broken door, so it's pretty clear that the room inside no longer exists.

How are you making building exploration - which I imagine working best with a top-down 2D view - work with your new side-scrolling approach? Are you going to switch views when you enter a building? Or are you doing the (IMO rather lame) thing other games do where you have really small enclosed areas within which you can move about 4 steps?

The sole bit of top-down perspective in the game is the world map.  The interiors are side-view same as anything else.  If you've played the game maniac mansion, then you have a pretty good idea of how we're doing the rooms in this game.  For that matter, a great many 3D games (Silent Hill, etc) do a similar "each room is an enclosed playspace" thing, just in 3D.  That said, there are few rooms where you can only go about 4 steps, and in the case of, say, overlord castles, the rooms can be pretty massive -- as big as exterior or underground areas, potentially.  Think of how "rooms" are built in Mario castles, for instance.

For this reason, since the last video the speed of transitions between chunks has been increased dramatically throughout the game.

edit: looking forward to the beta, this game has intrigued me from the start.

Thanks!

[ShinseiTom]

I was going to remark on most of what was said before, but I saw you decided what to do.  It sounds pretty cool, and definitely sounds fun.  I've always been fond of the huge random-like dungeons in other games and this will take it to the next level.  But as one last parting shot:

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.

But, the same general thing could be said about Terraria and Minecraft.  I was going to mention them before, but I simply don't get that feeling in those games.  I'll search a cave and go down most of the easier ways, but if I remember missing a few openings, I can let it go.  Yes, maybe they go off into other mega caves where I'd get tons of iron and diamond and maybe find a dungeon and/or find lots of chests, but I'm perfectly content to skip these possibilities because -I can always find more-.

This applies to your game too as far as I can tell. If you don't want to spend as much time in the building, fine, you can find another one later on and spend more time if you want then, or less, or whatever.  If you WANT to spend the time to search them all, you can.  If you don't, you don't need too.


I'm not trying to change your mind anymore (as I like what you came up with  , and it sidesteps many of the issues), but those are my feelings on that subject.  Terraria is a little different from Minecraft (as it has definite world boundaries), but with players transferable across worlds it comes to the same thing.  I lose at least some of my compulsiveness in huge procedural/random worlds, plus if I miss it there's a good chance that my friends won't.  I always play with 4-5 other people, and we're usually all playing in around the same area together helping each other and exploring together.  So that massive cave system I found switches from impossibly difficult to explore to "Hey you guys, come help me out" 

...Actually, thinking about it, how is this all going to work in multiplayer?  Is it all going to be exactly the same?  Increased loot or anything?  If I missed this somewhere (or just outright forgot), direct me to it and I'll read through it, as this aspect of the game interests me more than the single-player stuff.  I'll play it alone some, but I really want to play this with friends.

[x4000]

But, the same general thing could be said about Terraria and Minecraft.  I was going to mention them before, but I simply don't get that feeling in those games.  I'll search a cave and go down most of the easier ways, but if I remember missing a few openings, I can let it go.  Yes, maybe they go off into other mega caves where I'd get tons of iron and diamond and maybe find a dungeon and/or find lots of chests, but I'm perfectly content to skip these possibilities because -I can always find more-.

Huh!  That's actually... a really good point.  I don't tend to feel that way in caves in Minecraft, either.  Though too much caving to find some diamond will get me really weary of the caves for a while, which I guess is one counterpoint.  But... interesting.

This applies to your game too as far as I can tell. If you don't want to spend as much time in the building, fine, you can find another one later on and spend more time if you want then, or less, or whatever.  If you WANT to spend the time to search them all, you can.  If you don't, you don't need too.

Yeah, I think that's really true.  For caves you really want to find the gem veins, but for aboveground stuff most of it is less rare.  We'll see.

...Actually, thinking about it, how is this all going to work in multiplayer?  Is it all going to be exactly the same?  Increased loot or anything?  If I missed this somewhere (or just outright forgot), direct me to it and I'll read through it, as this aspect of the game interests me more than the single-player stuff.  I'll play it alone some, but I really want to play this with friends.

For the most part, the plan at present is to have it be exactly the same.  The reason for it is that if you've got two players, you can afford to go up a higher level and get better stuff, or cover more ground in caves, etc, more quickly.  So there's a natural tendency to get things faster, and we don't want to accelerate that too much.  But, we haven't done any playtesting on that yet, so it will depend on how things look once we've got people running around MP servers more in beta.

For more details on co-op here in general: http://www.co-optimus.com/article/5546/a-valley-without-wind-announces-co-op-part-minecraft-part-mmorpg.html

And they had a brief followup article, too, on co-optimus.

[Hearteater]

To me it is a matter of item-density, not rooms.  If I have 1000 room building to search, or a 100 room building to search, if there is one item per 5 rooms, it's pretty much the same.  I get X loot after spending Y time searching.  It sounds like you were suggesting loot was per building, so a 1000 room building vs a 100 room building would have 1/10th the item density.

But as long as item density is set to a rewarding value, I'll search a mega-building long enough to build up whatever supplies I need and then move on towards my actual goals.  Building size isn't all that critical unless a building has a one-of I need to find somewhere in it (a boss for example).  Then I think I'd be a little ticked to search 1300 rooms for some evil boss guy quietly reading a book in the bathroom.

That said, I like the broken down buildings.

[x4000]

To me it is a matter of item-density, not rooms.  If I have 1000 room building to search, or a 100 room building to search, if there is one item per 5 rooms, it's pretty much the same.  I get X loot after spending Y time searching.  It sounds like you were suggesting loot was per building, so a 1000 room building vs a 100 room building would have 1/10th the item density.

That is a great way to phrase it -- and yeah, that was more or less what I was suggesting, is that loot is by-building.

But as long as item density is set to a rewarding value, I'll search a mega-building long enough to build up whatever supplies I need and then move on towards my actual goals.  Building size isn't all that critical unless a building has a one-of I need to find somewhere in it (a boss for example).  Then I think I'd be a little ticked to search 1300 rooms for some evil boss guy quietly reading a book in the bathroom.

Right, that's what I'm describing.  A given building constitutes a "dungeon," and there's a certain desired density of stuff per dungeon.  Common loot would be having an unrelated-to-the-building-size density, but when you're looking for some special crafting component that is more rare, or you're trying to knock off the lone boss (or pair of bosses, in some case) that might be in there... that does get more problematic.  But some of that even could be solved with the dungeon map, we'll see; I'm experimenting with how much I want players to have to explore blind, and how much they should be able to get some advanced intel by proximity.

With some advance intel, having oversized buildings becomes less of an issue because players know where to go -- in that sense, if there was a way to do efficient search patterns through a building of 1300 rooms such that you could find the 15 rooms that are of interest to you, that actually could be an interesting way to handle that desire for mega-buildings while keeping the game fun (and adding yet another player activity).

That said, I like the broken down buildings.

Yeah, me too.  I think that, no matter what, there's going to be a lot of collapsed rooms around.  It's just too thematically fitting to not do, and various players have been reminding me to make sure buildings are damaged for months now.  I don't really want to do this any one way, where you know that all buildings are 70% ruined and so even a massive hotel isn't that big.  I think that's where some advance-scouting stuff could come into play, especially a bit later in the game after the player has gotten used to the basic mechanics.  It's an interesting thing that I'm putting on my mental backburner for now, at any rate.  I really like the idea of not having to walk all over the freaking earth, going "nope, nothing in this bathroom either!" in 100 bathrooms whether it's all in one building or not.

The more I work on the adventure mechanics of this game, the more and more RTS ideas (like scouting) keep trickling in there.  That's really interesting, and it's actually working out really well so far.   Keith already has it so that the NPCs can do some advance scouting of regions themselves for you, so that you don't have to pop into every region ("Is the overlord here?" etc).  So we'll see where that goes.

[zespri]

players don't read.

There might be a way to convey this idea by other means than just line in the manual... Anyway, you know what you are doing =)

[x4000]

players don't read.

There might be a way to convey this idea by other means than just line in the manual... Anyway, you know what you are doing =)

I don't plan to have the manual be required at all; I mean that, in-game, players tend not to read.  That's less true of players of AI War, but as a general rule of software design it's been my experience that many users don't read what's on the screen.  This was really prevalent in my prior job in business software.

[zespri]

players don't read.

There might be a way to convey this idea by other means than just line in the manual... Anyway, you know what you are doing =)

I don't plan to have the manual be required at all; I mean that, in-game, players tend not to read.  That's less true of players of AI War, but as a general rule of software design it's been my experience that many users don't read what's on the screen.  This was really prevalent in my prior job in business software.

Fair enough.

[x4000]

And I honestly don't mean that as a slur on users, to be clear -- I'm guilty of it fairly often myself.  But it's one of those things where the user has their own agenda, and if they think they already understand how something works then they don't bother to read about it.  And once they realize they actually didn't know how that thing works, then it's a problem if they no longer have any way to find out how it really works (or if they assume it's a bug or design flaw, etc).

[Echo35]

Blocked passages always feel like a horrble gimmick to me and are immediately noticeable. What's that? Want to open that door? Too bad, I dunno, there's a chair in the way or something.

[Professor Paul1290]

I went with option three as personally I prefer larger buildings even if it isn't practical or necessary to explore all of them.

There is the problem of actually filling the rooms and having enough interesting things to find, but I don't think they all need to be used for anything significant or have that many good things to find. I think if there are ways to provide the player with some idea of where certain items and types of items are then players can use that to narrow down their search.

When you go into your average building you don't search every single room to find what you want. Most buildings or facilities start with a room where you are provided with some information as to where you should be going in order to get to your destination. In an office or school there will be a list of floors and room numbers catagorizing rooms by purpose, in the case of an inn or hotel then there will be information regarding who is, or in this case was, using which room, and so on and so forth. This can apply to entry into abandoned buildings or less than legal entry into buildings that are operating, it seems reasonable that a thief or looter would have some idea of where the valuable goodies are before trying to brute force search through an entire building and places that are more likely to contain such valuables, like vaults or storage areas, would be good places to start searching.

If you have some idea of what you are looking for and where it might be you can eliminate much the need to brute force search each and every room. Things like old documents regarding the contents of a building and which rooms they are in (floors 32-35 belonged to a certain department), clues seen from outside the building (why are all those vines growing out of that one window?), information regarding what the room was used for (there is a safe in the basement), information from NPCs (I hid some valuable X somewhere on the third floor of that building), tendencies of certain items to be in certain kinds of rooms eventually learned from experience (items of this kind tend to be found in these kinds of rooms), and things like that can be used to narrow down the player's search according to what they are looking for.

Say for example you know that magical item X causes certain things to happen to the area around it, maybe it emits light, attracts bats, makes vines grow out of it, or something like that. That's something you can use to attempt to locate it. If I see bats flying around a certain window or door, light coming out of it at night, or vines growing out of it, then I would be entering the building with some idea of where to look for something nice. There may be other goodies in the same building, but I don't have any info on them and if the building is to big for me to be practical to search every room within a reasonable time frame then that in itself would keep me from attempting to go for such goodies, at least until I know more about their whereabouts.
If I'm looking for tools then I would look in a room that would have housed tools. I enter a building and see from the sign that the workshop is in the the second basement, so I go down to the second basement to find the tools. Again, there may be other goodies in the building, but unless the building is small enough for me to search all the way through I'll have to make the call whether or not to stay look them or clues about where they might be.
Say for example I need a certain substance from a certain creature that I know needs an easy source of water to make its home. I would then be looking for places with water, such as bathrooms, mechanical rooms, boiler rooms, and the like. If such a creature is consistently placed in such rooms then the player can eventually learn where to look first when seeking them out.
What if I find that a school has a chemistry lab. That chemistry lab may have some nice ingredients for crafting and would be something I would prioritize as I search the building for any good loot. Again, if certain ingredients, in this case certain chemicals, consistently appeared and/or are more likely to appear in such rooms then the player can use that to find what they are looking for.

I think it would be interesting if finding information about what a building may contain and where the interesting loot might be can be a part of the game.