Arcen Games

General Category => Stars Beyond Reach... This World Is Mine => Stars Beyond Reach Beta Discussion => Topic started by: tombik on July 20, 2015, 05:27:44 am

Title: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: tombik on July 20, 2015, 05:27:44 am
I completed Tidalis and killed one overlord in AVWW, tried bionic dues for 5 hour, a skyward collapse for 2 hour, and the biggest common bugging thing between all for me was this.

Humor in tooltips. Every single tooltip includes some witty comment, making tips hard to remember, hard to read, and not efficient screen-space wise. It also kills the mood for me sometimes. I know you are not supposed to feel like the ultimate mastermind in Tidalis for example, but I like things nice, neat, well documented, and summarized.

As an example for this I can give the Pistol tooltip in Bionic Dues. I dont know what does it say except that it is mindlessly long. I am okay with wall of texts when they are needed, but when they are not needed, it really feels not polished.

This is not a problem with Stars Beyond Reach, yet. But since I know that documentation and tutorials will be implemented, I just want to remark on this:

I like your style, your chracteristics, your humor etc. But please dont do it in documentation and tutorials. It does not enhance the experience, it only makes the game more gamey, basically kills the mood for me. I would like to have more cold-factually accurate and really summarized sentences, which does not leave me the need for reading the same tooltip 3 times at least.

I am not trying to be offensive, and I know this is a topic highly subjective. Still, I think this is what beta testers do: Whining about things you may not consider even worthwhile.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Shrugging Khan on July 20, 2015, 09:03:29 am
Quote from: tombik on July 20, 2015, 05:27:44 am
makes the game more gamey, basically kills the mood for me.

This is one my biggest gripes with recent Arcen games. AIW, back in the day, was a fairly immersive experience of struggling against the AIs. But later games just adopted this mood of..."it's a game, lol". Which doesn't make them bad games, mind you. But it does take something away.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Traveller on July 20, 2015, 02:16:19 pm
Yeah, I've got pretty strong feelings about this too.  For example I absolutely couldn't stand the humor in GalCiv II (partially because it was so hamfisted); I think that game would have been way better if they'd played it straight.  Actually I'm thinking back at all the different space-ish 4x-ish games I've played, and humor always seems to break character or rub me the wrong way.

TLF's bugs me less, but still bugs me...partially because of the way it pushes its way into the interface.  Spoken disease notifications for example.  At high speeds it seems like the computer never actually stops talking about funny disease blurbs.  Low volume, plus log messages that don't actually function as subtitles, means that to this day I still can't figure out some of what she says even though she says it all the time.  Even still, having a comedy narrator kind of feels like watching a movie with that weird uncle who won't stop pointing out how funny the movie is.

For space games, Alpha Centauri nailed humor for me because it was generally dark, dry, societal, and very very limited.

AVWW1 seemed generally alright for me.  Humor was mostly in the tutorial messages and I'm okay with that, largely because it helped set them apart as "this is out of character".  That and the difficulty messages, I snickered at the platforming difficulty "I have no desire to be The Guy".  Difficulty messages have a long and storied history of humor in gaming.  The oddball achievement description for the lava escape worked really well, because it was just so out of place.


Trying to think deeper about why stuff bugs me...I feel like putting humor into the interface takes away a lot of the player's autonomy of tone and intent.  Writing too much story of any kind into the interface itself would do the same thing though.  Europa Universalis IV is guilty of the same thing right now as well--sign a treaty giving someone right of passage through your lands, and the interface says how nice it is they can go kill themselves on someone else's borders!  Well, no, if you've got a long term alliance and actually want to see them succeed, it feels really jarring.

If something's funny, as a player I'd rather have to find the funny myself.  See: Tropico.  Being a comically petty dictator is pretty hilarious, but if you want to play it absolutely straight, (in the first game at least) it doesn't force a comedic interpretation on you.  Hell, even Tropico 2 (which was a ridiculous pirate simulator) tried really hard to play it as straight as possible in the interface, which actually made it more successful as comedy in my opinion. 

So...yeah.  Situations are funny, societies are funny, but neither of them really needs that funny to be in the text itself.  If Lasers VII technology is almost exactly like Lasers VI with a slightly different label stuck on it, you don't need to hang the world's biggest lampshade on it in the research text (GalCiv 2).  That's a job for LPers.  And if someone's on their tenth playthrough, it's a lot easier for them to take something that's written deadly-serious and re-interpret it as parody, than it is for them to take something already written as parody and find something else interesting in it.


So uh...sorry, ramble over.  I didn't realize I had such an issue with this.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Aklyon on July 20, 2015, 02:26:05 pm
I think the humor in tooltips is fine, although I can see why others would disagree.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Shrugging Khan on July 20, 2015, 02:48:46 pm
One simple aspect is probably this: No matter what it is, chances are it's funny just about one single time.

A less simple aspect is the following: Once the game acknowledges that it's merely a game, immersion in the theme is automatically impossible. The gamier a game is, the more arbitrary the rules are (this is mitigated by exotic themes, which is why sci-fi games like AIW can get away with more than earthbound ones like SBR), the more it keeps treating itself as a set of arbitrary rules rather than as an immersive experience...the more I have to ask: Why even give it a theme? Why not just make it a game of numbers and abstract icons?
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: tombik on July 20, 2015, 04:27:14 pm
Quote from: Shrugging Khan on July 20, 2015, 02:48:46 pm
Why even give it a theme? Why not just make it a game of numbers and abstract icons?

Yeah this is a better summary to what I was trying to say. Thank you.

I know that this stance may hurt feelings, since the overenthusiasm clearly shows that they really care about their stuff, but sometimes... Less is more.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: wwwhhattt on July 21, 2015, 02:04:30 am
I don't mind the humour, but it does need a huge amount of variety to stop it from becoming stale.
The only parts of SBR I've noticed with this problem are first encounters - "I'm sure that wont be a problem" - and diseases - "I blame the Evucks, even if they had nothing to do with it". They'd be much more effective if there were other lines, or if they only happened occasionally.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Mánagarmr on July 21, 2015, 08:52:36 am
Humor in tooltips and tutorials feels a touch out of place. Those things are there to help you, as the player, to learn the game and receive information. If you want to convey humor, you do this through dialogue.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Aklyon on July 21, 2015, 05:04:11 pm
Quote from: Mánagarmr on July 21, 2015, 08:52:36 am
Humor in tooltips and tutorials feels a touch out of place. Those things are there to help you, as the player, to learn the game and receive information. If you want to convey humor, you do this through dialogue.
Arcen rarely ever has dialogue though. There was some in Valley2 at the beginning, but most of it that I saw was boss lines.

All the AI War dialogue (besides the intro scroll on the main menu) is hidden until you trigger it through minor factions and optional to read anyway, and SBR in its current pre-diplomatic state has no dialogue to speak of (that I've seen) outside of the sayings you get for deciphering languages.
So instead, you get the humor spread out all over the place, and perhaps too often. I still think 'This will sink in the water, sir' is more amusing than 'Cannot place here' would be, though :)
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Bluddy on July 21, 2015, 05:57:29 pm
Coming out of lurking mode to post this.

This is a big problem in almost every Arcen game. Arcen don't seem to understand the importance of maintaining the suspension of disbelief as much as possible, or at least they don't consider it of high enough importance.

Tooltips already break the 4th wall. How can you have information about various elements of the game if not from the game devs? However, tooltips that just give you the information you need allow you to smooth over the 4th wall. You get the information, consume it, and are still within the world of the game. Tooltips that scream, "yoo-hoo! we're here and you're playing our game, remember?" are jolting. It can't ever be more than a flat game if you don't allow the player to get lost in the world.

It's ok to have a narrator who jokes with the player, a la Dungeon Keeper or Startopia. The narrator exists in the world of the game, and you expect his snide British remarks. Dungeons of Dredmore is another good example. Here, the game quickly makes it known that everything will be funny, down to the tooltips. As you play, you imagine yourself in a Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett-like version of a roguelike, where everything is whimsical and silly. The downside of this approach is that you begin to expect real humor, and jokes that fall flat ruin the experience somewhat. Also, you don't take anything in this particular world very seriously -- it's all just silly stuff, and the devs are OK with that.

The important thing is to maintain a sense of cohesion and tone, and to know what world you want the player to enter. If it's a serious world of war and survival, adding humor is dangerous to that atmosphere (though it can be done to a limited degree). Certainly tooltips should not feature anonymous devs suddenly stepping in and having a conversation with the player.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Aklyon on July 21, 2015, 06:56:59 pm
I think I'm looking at it from a different view than the rest of the thread then. (To be fair, I'm not exactly the most critical person about games, or entertainment in general. I do that to less fun things instead.) While you can overdo it (GalCiv2 as far as I know, is the clearest example of 'Too many repetitive techs does not mean make every weapon tech discovery text a joke'), I just don't worry about them that much, they're tooltips.

Except in some cases (like Metroid Prime for example, or other kinds of diegetic interface (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DiegeticInterface) or minimal UI setups), the necessary interface to make it work as a game and not a motion picture is going to break the fourth wall regardless of immersive efforts, so I don't care whats going on in it as long as its effective. Effective plus humor aftterwards? Even better, but not required.
The game and the game world are separable things in most cases to me and do not have to blend together in a big pool of immersion if that would make it harder to play; one has a variety of necessary information, menus, options, and/or jokes, the other has story, enviroments, worldbuilding, dialogue, and if the theme supports it, the occasional IC joke.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Shrugging Khan on July 22, 2015, 03:01:35 am
Quote from: Aklyon on July 21, 2015, 06:56:59 pm
[...]
Boo! Shun the non-immersionist!  :P
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: kasnavada on July 22, 2015, 04:47:35 am
Actually the tooltip humor in SBR is really fine for me, and completely in-character.

I mean from the videos, we're supposed to be some kind of leader helped by a computer AI... and it's got a dubious humor, has quite a temper at best. I feel like the UI is what this particular companion is telling me. Maybe the videos needs to be in the game for this feeling to be conveyed properly ?

"It will sink into water" in particular sounds particularly great to me, it changes from every other "Me Am Serious Game" out there and they're usual "Cannot place here" which barely explains stuff. I mean I'm playing a game here, not working, and it's fine with me if the universe ain't serious. I loved deadpool, for example, even if the game itself is average, his comments breaking the 4th wall all the time are immersive and completely in-character. Not to mention the spreech box.


About tooltips giving "information" and "breaking the fourth wall"... All games require some level of abstraction in the first place, otherwise it's called "real life". Second, there is no reason why the UI has no place in the game itself. An example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBkuG-q98S4
Around 3 minutes in. The character (you), in universe, has the same screen you have. Some other games (DEUS EX for example) justify the interface in game.

So... for me, humor in tooltips and UI has its place as long as there is a reason for it, and... there actually is for SBR. Videos, diseases, item names are also absurd. I'm waiting for what diplomacy offers here, once there we might see a coherent whole.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: tombik on July 22, 2015, 02:24:05 pm
I am not saying that current level of humour in SBR is extreme, but I know that tutorials and more tooltips etc is upcoming, so I said this to express my opinion prematurely (before it is too late).

And yes, trying to deal with crime, diseases, wars, terraforming and humour in the mentioned videos are incompatible for me. If I want humour, turn based strategy is not a good genre to play, at least that is what I am used to. Deadpool is a good example, but Deadpool is already funny by definition. For me, extraterrestrial city building is not that hilarious, no matter how stupid your population here.

By the way, the population in the videos are waaaay more stupid than in the game, dont u think.

Still, this is a matter of personal taste. The thing which is not a personal taste is inefficiently long humour in tooltips, and even worse, tutorials.

To make my point clearer, I wont object humour in game, even though I personally may not like it. What I am specifically objecting is, humour in mentioned texts, which are supposed to make things easier. I dont read tooltips to have fun, I read them to understand what I am doing, then have fun with the game itself. What I am meaning by efficiency is this.

No matter how hard they try to make tooltips , tutorial texts hilarious, game always be the main source of fun. Tooltips should be written keeping this in mind. For me, they lost some purpose of them in Arcen's other games for the sake of being funny at the same time, that is why I started this thread.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: kasnavada on July 23, 2015, 04:23:23 am
Quote
And yes, trying to deal with crime, diseases, wars, terraforming and humour in the mentioned videos are incompatible for me. If I want humour, turn based strategy is not a good genre to play, at least that is what I am used to. Deadpool is a good example, but Deadpool is already funny by definition. For me, extraterrestrial city building is not that hilarious, no matter how stupid your population here.

Then, yes, huge difference of opinion. IRL things classified as horrible are horrible. In a fiction ? Everything can range from horrible to funniest thing ever. Not to everyone, I agree, but still.

So... no, for me, not of those are incompatible with humour nor fun, and neither either extraterritorial city building. Disease, death and fun reminds me of theme hospital =), but the tropico series, as you mentioned, basically has the same elements mix fun and rather horrible stuff. Like one great french comedian said : "On peut rire de tout, mais pas avec tout le monde" which I'd translate as "everything can be laughed at, but not with everyone".

I got absolutely no problem with tooltips having jokes, because basically, it fits the lore & theme. And... no, I don't think my population is smarter than what's shown in the videos. I mean, placing them in front of a TV pacifies them, and not doing so means they kill / wound themselves for no other reason than boredom.

I don't think it makes the game "inefficient", however, it makes the game different, unique, and allows people to search for Easter eggs. As long as the meaning behind the tooltip is conveyed properly ("It will sink, sir" and "cannot be placed in water" have the exact same obvious meaning), humor can and should be there if it fits the theme, and from the videos and other "fluff" things in the game, we've had, it does. SBR does not seem to take itself too seriously, from what is in the game currently. Maybe that'll change with diplomacy when it's in the game =).

Quote
No matter how hard they try to make tooltips , tutorial texts hilarious, game always be the main source of fun. Tooltips should be written keeping this in mind.

I disagree with that. UI is part of the game, if the game is supposed to be hilarious, then the UI / tooltip must also be. Nothing kills fun as well as a bland functionnal "Cannot place thing" message in the middle of funny things, rather than "Nope, blocks of concrete don't float". As long as the message relayed by the tooltip is conveyed properly of course - if the meaning is lost, I'd agree. But, the humor in arcen games is rather light and is written respecting that point.

Tooltips should be written so they provide "tooltip information" properly. Whether it's comprising jokes or not is dependant on what the game's feeling is supposed to be. And, it's possible to do both if the theme fit, so why not do so ?
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Gwmngilfen on July 23, 2015, 08:06:56 am
I'm with kasnavada on this one - he's summarised it well, so I won't repeat, but an overall +1 to that post.

However, I do agree that they get very samey after a while. Tooltips aren't too bad - I don't *have* to read the whole tooltip every time I hover over it, but some of the audio gets grating after the 470th time. You could level the same argument at bland tooltips/audio though - I likewise loved SMAC, and it's humour, but the constant soft voice of "Alien lifeform detected" led me to a planet-cleansing spree at one point.

So, humour is good, but perhaps we should crowdsource a collection of random humour elements, as was done for the inventions, diseases, etc ;)
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Aklyon on July 23, 2015, 08:11:37 am
I'd also agree with kasnavada, I think he summarized it better than I did.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: keith.lamothe on July 23, 2015, 10:38:57 am
Thanks for the thoughts here. I'll try to remember that a joke in a tooltip is a bit like my eight-year-old's approach to jokes: if it's worth telling once, it's worth telling ten times a day, right?

Not really. And to some extent it's actually worse the better the joke is, because it's more of a pity to see it get old and tired.

I think most of the humor in SBR thus far is Chris's, with a few lines from me. I was the main offender in Bionic.

Anyway, good to hear this before we put in tutorial/etc info; hopefully Chris bears this in mind.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: tombik on July 23, 2015, 12:42:00 pm
Quote from: keith.lamothe on July 23, 2015, 10:38:57 am
Thanks for the thoughts here. I'll try to remember that a joke in a tooltip is a bit like my eight-year-old's approach to jokes: if it's worth telling once, it's worth telling ten times a day, right?

Not really. And to some extent it's actually worse the better the joke is, because it's more of a pity to see it get old and tired.

I think most of the humor in SBR thus far is Chris's, with a few lines from me. I was the main offender in Bionic.

Anyway, good to hear this before we put in tutorial/etc info; hopefully Chris bears this in mind.

Thanks for caring about my opinion :)

Quote from: kasnavada on July 23, 2015, 04:23:23 am
but the tropico series, as you mentioned, basically has the same elements mix fun and rather horrible stuff.

The difference in Tropico series is, where the humor actually comes from. The jokes are made by the characters like my favourite Penultimo, but we dont see explicitly the talking style of Kalypso's people there. Humor is really well internalized in Tropico, including the setup.

I am all pro having that kind of immersive humor in game.

But again, not in tooltips. (There is no humour in tooltips as well in Tropico btw) Remember, not everyone is a native speaker to english or as smart as some others, so sometimes two similar looking sentences can convey the meaning with different levels of efficiency. And the main thing here should be conveying the meaning as best as possible. Since you cant play a game and have fun which you cant grasp what you are doing, no matter how fun the tooltips are. And there is also the basic numerical efficiency, factually correct sentences are generally shorter than the specifically funny ones.

But as you said, if there is no meaning lost,  I also am okay with that.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: kasnavada on July 23, 2015, 02:53:12 pm
Quote
But again, not in tooltips. (There is no humour in tooltips as well in Tropico btw)

Which is... kind of my point, actually. Tropico's voices over, mission greetings and so on are fun. Tropico's gameplay ? IMO it's meant to convey that managing an island is serious business, especially when you're a dictator. You're starving and killing people with little to no second thoughts, and so on. I think that's what the people at Kalypso want you to play and experience. A "pseudo" reality where everything is funny and bright... as long as you don't scratch the paint. And, for me at least, it worked.

Now, if SBR is going to the same direction, I agree with you. If it's meant not to take that road... A little humor now and then helps no matter where it is. No clue here where Arcen's heading.

I'm going to bash Keith (sorry). But that's one of the issues with Bionic dues. Personnally I don't see it as a coherent whole: very serious math skillz needed to optimize bots, funny comments / behaviour on bots, and very serious positionning and planification in combat phases. The "whole" being on a background of "WAR against overwhelming forces or get annihilated". But "overwhelming dumbot"... yeah. Sorry. Or the one that can't shoot because it's "afraid to be alone". By themselves it's fine if the entire game was "fun-oriented" but the art style, gameplay and end game boss bots ain't funny.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Aklyon on July 23, 2015, 03:30:52 pm
Quote from: kasnavada on July 23, 2015, 02:53:12 pm
Quote
But again, not in tooltips. (There is no humour in tooltips as well in Tropico btw)

Which is... kind of my point, actually. Tropico's voices over, mission greetings and so on are fun. Tropico's gameplay ? IMO it's meant to convey that managing an island is serious business, especially when you're a dictator. You're starving and killing people with little to no second thoughts, and so on. I think that's what the people at Kalypso want you to play and experience. A "pseudo" reality where everything is funny and bright... as long as you don't scratch the paint. And, for me at least, it worked.
Also depending on how you place your builders, they might put things off perpetually in favor of closer projects despite prioritization ::).
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: tombik on July 23, 2015, 03:45:32 pm
Quote from: Aklyon on July 23, 2015, 03:30:52 pm
Quote from: kasnavada on July 23, 2015, 02:53:12 pm
Quote
But again, not in tooltips. (There is no humour in tooltips as well in Tropico btw)

Which is... kind of my point, actually. Tropico's voices over, mission greetings and so on are fun. Tropico's gameplay ? IMO it's meant to convey that managing an island is serious business, especially when you're a dictator. You're starving and killing people with little to no second thoughts, and so on. I think that's what the people at Kalypso want you to play and experience. A "pseudo" reality where everything is funny and bright... as long as you don't scratch the paint. And, for me at least, it worked.
Also depending on how you place your builders, they might put things off perpetually in favor of closer projects despite prioritization ::).

It is a bit off topic, but building Garages first helps  ;)
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: kasnavada on July 23, 2015, 07:14:14 pm
I think I had too many times where stuff didn't build ever. Somehow the builders supposed to build that were chosen from the farthest part of the island or something...

Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: tombik on July 28, 2015, 03:17:34 pm
Just started trying Shattered Haven...

"I am not afraid of that menu anymore...."

Seriously? In a horror game? I would have preferred a cold Main Menu button over this.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 03, 2015, 01:09:49 pm
I just wanted to note that I've read this, and a lot of good points have been made.  I don't want to lose humor entirely, but I definitely get the whole immersion-breaking thing, as well as the "if it's funny once, it must be funny 10 times a day" thing that's inherent in anything that gets repeated too much.

I've been playing Prototype 2 over the weekend, and even things that are in some specific genre of speech (like military speak) can just be painfully over-done.  "Tango is Oscar Mike!"  Them calling my character Tango constantly is bad enough, but everything is Oscar Mike it seems, and I am that more than anything else.  A few times and it's great.  But I think I'm hearing Tango about twice a minute sometimes, and Oscar Mike at least once every 3-4 minutes sometimes.  That's way too excessive.

I'm glad that folks like the "That will sink, sir" type of humor.  It's very deadpan, and I do hope to keep that sort of thing.  Honestly I do really like writing self-serious stuff like AI War, and Valley 1 was pretty bleak in the main, too.  So I certainly don't have an issue doing that, as it's more my default mode. 

It can be hard to inhabit a world that is too depressing (thematically) for years, though, so I try to inject some humor.  Of course, that gets injected over time and what you see is it more concentrated.  Sorry about that joke in the menu on Shattered Haven; that was me taking a personal outlet of that sort, and I shouldn't have done that.

Incidentally, at no point in this game or TLF do we break the 4th wall.  You are being directly addressed sometimes, but always by your computer adviser.

I suppose that one good thing to note is that if there are pieces of humor that are being unintentionally overused, or which are just falling flat, then it's something you can always mantis.

Thanks for all the thoughts!
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: crazyroosterman on August 03, 2015, 02:21:18 pm
personally I don't have anything against having humour in the game but having it in tooltips seems a bit pointless and waste of resources seeing as how a fellow is usually register it once might get a an amused snort of some kind and then after just get read for the info that it gives and nothing else.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Aklyon on August 03, 2015, 02:37:34 pm
Quote from: crazyroosterman on August 03, 2015, 02:21:18 pm
personally I don't have anything against having humour in the game but having it in tooltips seems a bit pointless and waste of resources seeing as how a fellow is usually register it once might get a an amused snort of some kind and then after just get read for the info that it gives and nothing else.
Isn't this why the ship description is at the bottom of AI War's brick of tooltip for ships?
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: crazyroosterman on August 03, 2015, 04:30:38 pm
Quote from: Aklyon on August 03, 2015, 02:37:34 pm
Quote from: crazyroosterman on August 03, 2015, 02:21:18 pm
personally I don't have anything against having humour in the game but having it in tooltips seems a bit pointless and waste of resources seeing as how a fellow is usually register it once might get a an amused snort of some kind and then after just get read for the info that it gives and nothing else.
Isn't this why the ship description is at the bottom of AI War's brick of tooltip for ships?
I'm sorry but I don't really follow you? I haven't really played ai war.(unless you consider playing less than a quarter of one game in the demo actually playing a lot of it)
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Aklyon on August 03, 2015, 05:40:22 pm
Quote from: crazyroosterman on August 03, 2015, 04:30:38 pm
Quote from: Aklyon on August 03, 2015, 02:37:34 pm
Quote from: crazyroosterman on August 03, 2015, 02:21:18 pm
personally I don't have anything against having humour in the game but having it in tooltips seems a bit pointless and waste of resources seeing as how a fellow is usually register it once might get a an amused snort of some kind and then after just get read for the info that it gives and nothing else.
Isn't this why the ship description is at the bottom of AI War's brick of tooltip for ships?
I'm sorry but I don't really follow you? I haven't really played ai war.(unless you consider playing less than a quarter of one game in the demo actually playing a lot of it)
The tooltips are pretty big, but its all info. The actual ship description is stuck in the bottom of the thing and occasionally is slightly entertaining, more often the case with more recent ships than older ones.

So you can skip the description if you want since its last, basically.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: crazyroosterman on August 03, 2015, 06:18:32 pm
Quote from: Aklyon on August 03, 2015, 05:40:22 pm
Quote from: crazyroosterman on August 03, 2015, 04:30:38 pm
Quote from: Aklyon on August 03, 2015, 02:37:34 pm
Quote from: crazyroosterman on August 03, 2015, 02:21:18 pm
personally I don't have anything against having humour in the game but having it in tooltips seems a bit pointless and waste of resources seeing as how a fellow is usually register it once might get a an amused snort of some kind and then after just get read for the info that it gives and nothing else.
Isn't this why the ship description is at the bottom of AI War's brick of tooltip for ships?
I'm sorry but I don't really follow you? I haven't really played ai war.(unless you consider playing less than a quarter of one game in the demo actually playing a lot of it)
The tooltips are pretty big, but its all info. The actual ship description is stuck in the bottom of the thing and occasionally is slightly entertaining, more often the case with more recent ships than older ones.

So you can skip the description if you want since its last, basically.
ahh I see sorry I was being a dummy that's pretty neat not that style would work exactly with this game since this game doesn't have ships/units not that it really needs that since the flavour part of the description is easy to ignore.(the closest thing this game has to units or ships....so far at least if Chris doesn't change mind about that like most things)
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: tombik on August 03, 2015, 07:46:02 pm
Quote from: x4000 on August 03, 2015, 01:09:49 pm

Thanks for all the thoughts!

Thanks for making your game better so that we can enjoy it more :)
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 04, 2015, 08:50:05 am
Quote from: tombik on August 03, 2015, 07:46:02 pm
Quote from: x4000 on August 03, 2015, 01:09:49 pm

Thanks for all the thoughts!

Thanks for making your game better so that we can enjoy it more :)

I try! :)
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Misery on August 05, 2015, 07:33:06 am
Okay, true to form for me, I kinda go against what seems to be the popular idea here.

The way I see it, too many games take themselves WAY too seriously.  The big AAA games are almost always like this, and what's worse, this is often followed by a REALLY TERRIBLE STORY.   JRPGs, to me, being by far the worst offenders here. Though, basically anything can do it.  And everything is all drama and emo and blah blah blah.... ugh.  I tired of it a very long time ago.

So for me, something like BD that had alot of humor in it is a breath of fresh air.  Finally, something that doesnt take itself super seriously.   And considering that most games cant give me suspension of disbelief to begin with (due to the afore-mentioned bad storylines and game mechanics that then go against established story ideas WAY too hard), this bit really doesnt affect me much.   I'm alot more likely to want to read something funny in a game rather than.... anything else.  Really, it's gotten to the point where for gaming as a whole, I now just outright dislike storylines entirely.  I like my shmups, which often dont HAVE a story.  Or if they do, it's something like:  "Blast off and destroy the evil Bydo empire!!! EXPLOSIONS LASER KABOOM!!!" and that's the entire thing.  It's so much better than listening to characters drone on and on and on and on and on while being as dramatic as possible or while being really cliche'd, or both.  All to try to suspend disbelief in a game where hiding behind cover for 5 seconds heals freaking gunshot wounds.  I just... I cant take that seriously, I really cant. 

So anything other than that really is a very welcomed break from the normal crap.  And these days, I really just dont get interested in the storylines for things otherwise and will often not have the foggiest clue what the story for a game even is.   There are occaisional exceptions, but they're rare.


I forgot where else I was going with this.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 09:50:50 am
As with most things in life, I think that the ideal is a good balance.

If you look at Breaking Bad, for instance, that show is really dark.  But there are some absolutely hilarious parts in there, too.  Sometimes something is hilarious and tragic or badass at the same time, and you don't know whether to laugh, curl up, or cheer.  On the other hand, the show is never silly, and nobody is ever addressing the cameraman or the viewer or anything.  That sort of thing works for The Office or Things We Do In The Shadows, but not for something we're supposed to take more seriously.

Obviously it's possible to go way too far either direction, but I think that the overall success of the atmosphere of any sort of creative work is how it fits together as a whole.  Blanket statements just really don't work, because there's no truly general case.  But it's easier by far to point to lots of examples that don't work (to whatever degree), rather than those that work super well, because of course the former are the vast majority of any sort of creative work.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: kasnavada on August 05, 2015, 02:07:17 pm
Quote
nobody is ever addressing the cameraman or the viewer or anything

DEADPOOL
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Captain Jack on August 05, 2015, 03:01:28 pm
Quote from: kasnavada on August 05, 2015, 02:07:17 pm
Quote
nobody is ever addressing the cameraman or the viewer or anything

DEADPOOL
...is not a character in Breaking Bad.  ;D
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:11:28 pm
Quote from: Watashiwa on August 05, 2015, 03:01:28 pm
Quote from: kasnavada on August 05, 2015, 02:07:17 pm
Quote
nobody is ever addressing the cameraman or the viewer or anything

DEADPOOL
...is not a character in Breaking Bad.  ;D

No, he was totally in the background in that support group in the "Problem Dog" episode!
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: keith.lamothe on August 05, 2015, 03:13:40 pm
That's the kind of character you want on the screen, so you know he's there in front of you. As opposed to busting through the fourth wall behind you.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:14:49 pm
I don't even know what wall that would actually be.  8th wall?
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Captain Jack on August 05, 2015, 03:26:06 pm
Quote from: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:11:28 pm
Quote from: Watashiwa on August 05, 2015, 03:01:28 pm
Quote from: kasnavada on August 05, 2015, 02:07:17 pm
Quote
nobody is ever addressing the cameraman or the viewer or anything

DEADPOOL
...is not a character in Breaking Bad.  ;D

No, he was totally in the background in that support group in the "Problem Dog" episode!
OBJECTION! That's a cameo or a sight gag, not a character within the universe of the show!

Quote from: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:14:49 pm
I don't even know what wall that would actually be.  8th wall?
Still 4th wall, but they're using quantum mechanics come at you from behind you instead of in front of you.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:29:08 pm
I would primarily object on the grounds that I was full of it, but sight gag or cameo also works. ;)
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: kasnavada on August 05, 2015, 03:31:41 pm
Quote from: keith.lamothe on August 05, 2015, 03:13:40 pm
That's the kind of character you want on the screen, so you know he's there in front of you. As opposed to busting through the fourth wall behind you.

He can do both =).
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Captain Jack on August 05, 2015, 03:43:20 pm
Quote from: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:29:08 pm
I would primarily object on the grounds that I was full of it, but sight gag or cameo also works. ;)
Yeah, but taking it seriously and running with it is much funnier. Plus, Phoenix Wright joke.  :o
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:44:02 pm
Quote from: Watashiwa on August 05, 2015, 03:43:20 pm
Quote from: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:29:08 pm
I would primarily object on the grounds that I was full of it, but sight gag or cameo also works. ;)
Yeah, but taking it seriously and running with it is much funnier. Plus, Phoenix Wright joke.  :o

Ooh!  I should have caught that joke.  Facepalm. :D
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Captain Jack on August 05, 2015, 03:52:47 pm
Didn't want to throw in the picture because it's huge.
(http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/memebases-my-little-brony/images/e/e0/Objection.png/revision/latest?cb=20140123035541)

You play many of them?
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:55:30 pm
Haha, nice.  You know, I never did really play them at all.  My wife played the first two or three, I think.  I saw her playing them some, but it just wasn't my thing.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Captain Jack on August 05, 2015, 04:13:39 pm
Quote from: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 03:55:30 pm
Haha, nice.  You know, I never did really play them at all.  My wife played the first two or three, I think.  I saw her playing them some, but it just wasn't my thing.
They were neat. Most people probably didn't realize they were playing a visual novel until someone else told them. I'll admit that Etrian Odyssey wound up being my favorite DS game series; something about cartography alongside a RPG just works. Come to think of it, there were a lot of neat RPGs by Atlus that I really liked.

You?
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 04:19:53 pm
Huh!  I never thought of them as a VN before.  That's funny.

My taste in RPGs is pretty limited, so you'd probably have better luck with Keith on that.  When it comes to JPRGs, I'm mostly into classic Squaresoft stuff.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Captain Jack on August 05, 2015, 04:38:10 pm
Quote from: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 04:19:53 pm
Huh!  I never thought of them as a VN before.  That's funny.
See?

Classic Square huh. Funny how things turned out there. :-X Did you prefer the action-y side or turnbased?
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 04:43:22 pm
Quote from: Watashiwa on August 05, 2015, 04:38:10 pm
Classic Square huh. Funny how things turned out there. :-X Did you prefer the action-y side or turnbased?

Yeah, funny how it turned out. :(

I preferred "most anything before FF7" by them.  And then I liked FFT and FFTA, too.  Secret of Mana has mechanics that are more fun, but FF6 and Chrono Trigger are my favorite games of all time (tied).  FF1 has a special place in my heart since it was my first JRPG and I spent so many hours of my youth playing it.  FF2 and FF3 were kind of meh, same with FF5 actually, and FF4 was quite good.  I also enjoyed Secret of Evermore and Earthbound, not that the latter was Square.  Final Fantasy Adventure was... okay.

I also played all the later games, MMOs aside, some to completion and most not.  FFX was really fun mechanically and the story was good in parts.  FFXII was pretty fun mechanically, mostly, and the atmosphere was pretty all right.  And... yeah.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Captain Jack on August 05, 2015, 04:55:53 pm
Quote from: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 04:43:22 pm
Quote from: Watashiwa on August 05, 2015, 04:38:10 pm
Classic Square huh. Funny how things turned out there. :-X Did you prefer the action-y side or turnbased?

Yeah, funny how it turned out. :(

I preferred "most anything before FF7" by them.  And then I liked FFT and FFTA, too.  Secret of Mana has mechanics that are more fun, but FF6 and Chrono Trigger are my favorite games of all time (tied).  FF1 has a special place in my heart since it was my first JRPG and I spent so many hours of my youth playing it.  FF2 and FF3 were kind of meh, same with FF5 actually, and FF4 was quite good.  I also enjoyed Secret of Evermore and Earthbound, not that the latter was Square.  Final Fantasy Adventure was... okay.

I also played all the later games, MMOs aside, some to completion and most not.  FFX was really fun mechanically and the story was good in parts.  FFXII was pretty fun mechanically, mostly, and the atmosphere was pretty all right.  And... yeah.
My condolences for your loss.  ::)

Dragon Warrior was my first non-Pokemon JRPG. Ironically, I'm pretty sure I finished Final Fantasy 1's GBA port and still haven't finished DW1.

Chrono Trigger... man, Square and Enix did good work together. And then Squaresoft ran with Cross and the director retroactively rewrote the ending of Trigger to be the way he wanted it to be (and was overruled on). At least the team is in a better place now, they left after Xenogears and the company they started is owned by Nintendo.

Somewhat amusingly, FFXII had a nightmarish dev cycle. The FFT guy was in control, then he was part of a committee working on it, then the game went over budget and off schedule, then he left the company... it's why the game gets really political and dark in places and then is, well,  not in most of it. (Small confession, I like Tactics Ogre (PSP) better than I like any incarnation of FFT. Put way too many hours into FFTA though.)

You mentioned you followed the romhacking scene ages ago. You ever play the fan translation of Seiken Dentetsu 3?
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 05:09:02 pm
Ah, yeah, I liked Dragon Warrior as well.  DW4 I played a fair bit of.

How did they rewrite the ending of CT in CC?  I played CC, most of it, once and a long time ago.  I was not really a fan.  It seemed to me to be just entirely separate from CT in any important ways.

That's nuts on FFXII, that sounds like quite the challenge to put it mildly.  That would explain the wild fluctuations in tone, though.  I didn't really mind those changes, because they felt natural enough in the context of a long epic story, but still.

I did play Seiken Dentetsu 3!  I failed to ever really love it as much as SoM/2, but I could definitely see where it was a technical improvement in particular.  The story just didn't grab me as well, I guess.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Captain Jack on August 05, 2015, 06:04:09 pm
DW 4 was neat. I think I roadblocked in front of the final boss for one reason or another. Have a save file sitting somewhere, should really just sit down and finish the game.

From what I understand, the director of CC wanted to emphasize how changing history for any reason could blow up in your face, and have the ending hit the main cast hard. The rest of the project leads, and CT had its cheerfully melancholic ending. Come CC... well, while they're never really upfront about it...
Chrono, Marle and Lucca die five years after CT after their kingdom is overthrown by an empire that didn't exist in the original timeline. Who knew that teaching a neighboring mayor kindness via time travel would have the side effect of turning his quiet little country into a conquering empire.  >:( Oh, and then Robo dies during the storyline. "Now deleting Prometheus".

There's more to it than that, but it involves a bit-part villain (Dalton from Zeal) inspiring said village to conquer Guardia, and that was only proven in the DS remake of CT after being suspected for years, so... yeah. Kind of a wallbanger.

CC had bigger problems though. It wanted to be bigger that CT in every way, so it had 40+ playable characters, of which maybe 8 were in any way memorable, useful or unique past what stupid accent and verbal tic they were assigned. It wanted to have a bigger scope, so it dealt with big themes and theoretical concepts... poorly. That could just be the translation, but Japanese is a language designed to be open-ended and contextual. GREAT music though.

XII was kind of a waste, really. Yasumi Matsuno's major artistic inspiration is the ethnic cleansing in 1990s Yugoslav Wars. So all his stuff is really political and shows the effects of armed conflict on people who are near it, whether or not they're directly involved. There are supernatural entities benefiting from the conflict, but the implication is that the only ones who COULD benefit from wanton slaughter and misery for its own sake would have to be demonic in nature. His Ogre Battle series ran with it, and Tactics Ogre impressed Square so much that they hired him away from Quest, and later bought the company outright. He made Vagrant Story and FFT, both of which are highly acclaimed but didn't set the charts on fire, and then FFXII happened, which had problems.

I think it's telling that he's working on a smartphone game with an American company now.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Traveller on August 05, 2015, 07:21:22 pm
After many years I've settled on FF4 as being my favorite of the FF games.  Pretty solid story, and after all the games that came after it, _not_ being able to customize and cheese out my party is pretty cool.  Also, swapping lots of characters in and out of the party for story reasons and having the party actually feel different means that story and gameplay are joined for once.  Five character party--yes please.

Chrono Cross I wanted to like, its story did feel pretty compelling, but I hated the combat system badly.  Felt boring and time consuming, and the early game was so bad at it that I couldn't get anyone else to get to the later parts.  It's also the game that made me hate thief classes: stealable items were so valuable and so omnipresent that it felt mandatory to have one of the like...two? thieves in your party for every boss. 

Secret of Mana...I agree seems like the strongest, and even though I liked SD3 it somehow didn't keep the epic feel.  I couldn't really identify with the characters, balance was waaaay off (looking at you, Kevin), and the leveling system was a distraction.  Evermore gets more hate than it deserves, the writing was for younger audiences but it was still solid.

Star Ocean 1 was really, really good, and was also entirely inaccessible to western audiences until pretty darn recently.  I'm sad that I can't play it on real hardware; it's one of a tiny number of games that my SNES flash cart can't handle.

Need to force myself to play FFT one of these days. The early game difficulty was a big turnoff, I liked FFTA though.  Similarly I need to force myself to actually finish Ogre Battle, every time I try I wind up halfway through with a party that just doesn't feel like it can go the distance.

Could someone recommend a good DW game after 4?
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: x4000 on August 05, 2015, 08:20:55 pm
Very interesting read!  And wow, I had no idea there were that many playable characters in CC, that's nuts.  That's also quite crazy for the ending that was changed.  Then again, it doesn't really bother me because I don't see it as having one timeline and one ending anyway.  There were 13 to begin with, if I recall.  Not all serious, but still.  I'd also like to add that I really liked Dalton as a bit part villain.  He's no Ultros, but I thought he was pretty nifty.

Star Ocean 1 is one that I've meant to play, too.
Title: Re: Humor In Tooltips
Post by: Captain Jack on August 05, 2015, 08:22:50 pm
Dragon Quest V DS. Best game in the franchise, probably the most influential JRPG ever. IX is also good, but is a game for the fans, works best when you recognize the references.

VII is a personal favorite, as is III. Wait for the 3DS port of the former if it ever leaves Japan, the official English translation is not pretty on PS1. GBC III is fine.