Based on some discusions from this thread, I am expanding on an idea. Design a game to add features that reward players who play in an emmersive environment. An emmersive environment consists of the environment as intended by the designers to add realism and a sense of connection with the game. Examples include: a dark, shadow filled alley; a foggy road; a distorted body of water; a noisy bar a blinding bright snow field; an intricately painted surface; a quiet forest; etc, etc. My examples of emmersive environments focus on the primary senses available to gamers, sight and sound. Examples of a gamer defeating the emmersiveness of an environment include making their screen unbelievably bright/dark, playing with loud out of game music, improving or reducing screen clarity, disabling high quality graphics features, reducing in game sound effects, etc, etc. Rewarding the gamer for embracing the games intentions can be tricky. You want to allow some amount of customization for a game to be playable for any gamer. You want to allow some amount of customization for the player to be happy. Yet you want to curb the amount of customization from interfering with the game's overall design and intent. This requires some subtle manipulation of the game world to effectively punish players who over use customization, while not making it unplayable. Computers give us the power to do the few necessary calculations to achieve this without interrupting gameplay, and they should be utilized. Elaboration and examples Imagine a fantasy RPG. Imagine a shortcut through the city, seperating a powerful wizard from his current location and his tower. Imagine a dark alley prominently involved in this shortcut, and an aspiring you assasin waiting for a target. Now imagine that two seperate people are playing both characters online. What is the outcome? In today's typical multi-player computer environment, it follows that the assasin does his best to hide in the shadows. The wizard has his monitor brightness turned waaaay up and, before entering the alley, sees the assasin and shoots fire balls and lighting bolts at him until he is cooked medium well. In actuality, the well hid assasin should have some chance of a premptive strike on the wizard due simply to environmental factors. This can be achieved by adding a darkness value to the shadowed environment, and a hiding value and awareness value to any character. This hiding value will fluctuate from its base when compared with movement speed, environmental values, etc. Several quick calculations can be done to see if the assasin has properly hidden himself from the wizard. If he has not, then fine, he is visible and cooked. The fun begins when he has not been spotted. The assasin is not rendered in the wizard's player's screen, until some values change enough to make him visible. He is effectively completely invisible. The wizard is rewarded for playing in an emmersive envirnment, because he recognizes the darkness of the alley and realizes that it could easily be an ambush location, and does not enter. Someone playing with their brightness value higher than intended will not realise the possible ambush, and the punishment ensues with an increased chance of an assasination attempt. Another (quicker) example (hopefully now you see what I am trying to get at) involves sound. A player in a suspenseful quiet environment is rewarded for playing in that environment (i.e. not turning on external music) because they may hear the tell tale boot scrape of that fleeing foe. Visibility issues could be moderated from parital to full invisbility, while sound issues could be tweaked as well. Specifics depend on specific games, where as generalities can apply to gaming in general. I am looking for both feedback and additional examples/ideas. --OctDev The Tyr project is coming... [edited by - OctDev on July 31, 2002 9:07:33 PM]

damn right. it doesnt take much to make abuse non-rewarding. theres no end to the amount of useful details you could add which requre the player to pay proper attention.


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very good thought , that''s something i''ll remember

Any specific details you have thought of for any genre of game?

--OctDev

The Tyr project is coming...

Its nice to reward people for "not being cheap" as this is what is done a lot. Many people turn of their gamma on games simply because its to dark to properly do anything. If that is not a problem, then by all means make it dark. I personally am making a game that requires massive ammounts of number crunching. So much so that without the help of a calculator, nobody else I play with would ... be able to play. This design has been changed to a computer game(slowly) and many things have changed. All the rolls are done immediately and more are even added in. New stats can be made to make way for... new stats. Like you said, In a pnp rpg there might be a perception stat, with a check for seeing something hidden in a dark alley. In a computer game, its most likely adding some darkness(if its good) to the person in the alley, according to his hide stat, but thats it. They probably don't have a perception skill for the other person, and even if they did, they wouldn't keep the other person renderless(its now a word, if it wasn't before). I think a program in the right hands can do everything you want in a game(how long it takes is another matter, for those who expect a lot).

However, in the example you give... Both players would be played differently by me. I would not hide in the dark alley, I would probably hide 1). In his tower 2). In plain view 3). Use a decoy in the alley and perhaps other trickery... On the other hand as the Wizard I would do other things as well. 1). Shoot a fireball into the dark alley anyhow(providing I can, its legal(or easy to weasle out of) and I have enough to waste 2). Use teleportation spells, illusion spells, invisibility spells, rope trick(dnd spell, I can hide in another dimension, totally safe, for hours... with a window box to see outside) 3). Most likely there aren't many spells that could be done, but I would try to think of something(maybe a light spell on the alley, light is cheap) to make the assassin think I know he is there, without me knowing he is anywhere... This all assumes many rules, but leaves out many others. A properly played mid-level wizard should be deadly(or rather is usually deadly)

edit: I forgot to mention, if you could monitor the system activies in any way(turning up of sound... use of devices) then by all means use every way for them not to cheat/cheap their way out of things. *flashback to Metal Gear Solid* "Don't use an automatic, I will know it... and then the game will be over" or something like that. Its easier with consoles, but still possible with computers... if not all, you could at least stop all but the most persistant.

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"

[edited by - kingruss on August 3, 2002 5:18:22 AM]

What about monitors which are dark? My monitor is rediculusly dark and I often ajust the physcial brightness on the monitor up just to get a white background white. Or when they have external speakers with volume control. My laptop speakers are *loud*, and I often have them at the lowwest setting to stop from deafening my self. And the fact that I crack the internal volume up to max, then moderate using the external volume controls (much faster, just the press of a button ot the turn of a dial)

OctDev: The two examples you gave were good, but I strongly disagree with the last statement made by KingRuss. DO NOT punish people for doing things like turning up volume or contrast. Instead, make it so that it doesnt give them any advantage, like making one that is hiding not be drawn. On my monitor I have brightness and contrast at 100%, and I usually still have to set in-game gamma to full and the gamma on my video gard to 200%. Some people have old monitors, or are in environemnts where contrast is low (I used to have my monitor in front of 3 windows, and the sun in the background makes the contrast of the image on the monitor not so much compared to the contrast between the monitor and the sun). I love games that make you have to listen. When I played firearms (teamplay first person tactical halflife mod), I always used the stealth skill to make my own footsteps almost silent so I could hear others around me easier. It was fun to be able to actually sneak around and hide prone in a corner to listen for enemies to run past so I could make the run for their spawn to capture the objective.

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It depends on how you think about it. If there is a listening stat and you wouldn''t hear it otherwise, and if you fail the noise isn''t heard that is fine. I was merely speaking of games where the noise is ALWAYS there and turning up your speaker volume ruins the challenge of hearing them(although some people would argue that its like listening for them, you can''t actually turn of the volume in your ears). Perhaps a limit on how high the volume could go in such a case. I say this because the volume/gamma works both ways. If you make your perception roll, the person gets rendered, but you just scan the alley and miss him(except you have gamma up, and that change makes you able to see him) doesn''t seem right in my book. I am sure there is a happy medium.

imagine the scene, a brightly lit street at night, in one ally there is pitch black. you turn up your brightness to reveal... pitch grey.

creating a ''dark engine'' to sabotage shadows and lower the contrast (or create 100% unlit areas) then higher brightness would only wash things out, not amplify them.

as for sound, you can detect what the system volume is, but people often have a wheel on the speaker they can also turn up and this (as far as i know) is unreadable. worrying about volume is both futile and meaningless, the solution to sound is to increase the IMPORTANCE of subtle sounds like footsteps.

players may then turn up the volume, but if you have extra background sound in-game (like machinery) that will be louder too, offering no advantage. no reward or punishment there is there?

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