Humor In Tooltips

[Gwmngilfen]

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

[Aklyon]

I'd also agree with kasnavada, I think he summarized it better than I did.

[keith.lamothe]

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.

[tombik]

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

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.

[kasnavada]

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.

[Aklyon]

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 .

[tombik]

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 

[kasnavada]

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...

[tombik]

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.

[x4000]

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!

[crazyroosterman]

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.

[Aklyon]

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?

[crazyroosterman]

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)

[Aklyon]

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.

[crazyroosterman]

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)