What do you think about games where the player loses the ability to utilize the user interface because of gameplay events or poor decisions. Some examples I''ve seen: Minimap loss - Westwood''s C&C style games often caused you to lose the ability to send units quickly over the map as well as quickly see the field if you lost certain structures. Control Confusion - Phantasy Star Online caused your button functions to become randomized each second as a result of being hit by enemies which had "confusion" as their special attack. Paralysis - PSO again caused the player to not be able to access interface shortcuts for things like healing. You could still heal, but it was slow and very inefficient to bring up a series of menus to do so. What do you think? When, if ever, is it okay to cause UI loss? If you''d cause UI loss, how would you handle it? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

I like those ideas in games. I think something like if the game has say a map of the playing field if your comunications center is damaged so should the map...Maybe with static etc etc so you can sorta see it depending on the amount of damage.
And perhaps even if the game has the orders for HQ come through with sound you could even have that become distorted.

Cheers
Adam

I think that effects like this, that hamper the user interface in some way, are a perfect method to create more immersion. It also creates an instant change of strategy. Even the football team that''s 15-0 can lose a game when their star quarterback is injured and has to leave the field.

It makes players feel less like a gamer, a god, the one in control, and more like the general (C&C), the character that''s being physically/mentally attacked (PSO).

That''s what I think some games (not all) should try to achieve: make the player forget that he''s the player.

Some flight/space sims do this well by disabling different guages, status indicators and controls as your craft takes damage. Personally, I've always liked this type of feature.

Heh, I just remembered the first game I ever played that had something like this: Robot Tank for the atari 2600. You were a tank battling another tank in a psuedo first person mode, but when you were hit you didn't automatically die. Your radar could go, meaning you had to find the enemy visually. Or the visual display could go, leaving only the radar to track down the enemy. Also, the treads could be damaged rendering your tank immobile. I remember the feeling of growing panic as each part of the tank was destroyed, until you were stuck in a dark, crippled shell waiting just to be hit...

[edited by - R0B0T0 on August 3, 2002 11:22:48 AM]

"Your cloning tanks have been destroyed. Quicksave disabled."
"Oh shit!!"

In my game I have various aspects of UI loss that I''m implmenting, the radar system, the early warning system for incoming attacks, the player to player message system, with more still being written up.

The radar system is very much like the C&C, to a certain level of damage it can display the game universe, but increasing static can make it almost useless up to the point where it blanks out.

The early warning system for incoming attacks allows players to arrange their fleets to fend off incoming attacks. This system either works, or doesn''t, I''m still coming up with ideas for its damaged/semi-working states.

The player to player message system is text based, so the way implemented static was to scramble the messages, eg..

"They''re preparing for an attack, get defense in top sector"
could become:
"&*%&^% preparing for (*& $^(*&%^, *&^%$ defense in $*(&£$ sector"

Gotta be careful not to hit a feedback loop. You don''t want a bad decision making the game so much harder that further failures are very likely. That way you have a slippery slope that doesn''t allow for recovery. This to me was the single fault of the Civilisation range of games - once a Civ managed to get the upper hand over you, each loss of yours is not only a loss in terms of material, but a loss in terms of potential, making it impossible to recover unless they make a horrific error of judgement.

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Another (old) example of this kind of gameplay was in Star Raiders on the Atari 8-bit. When your ship took damage, it could potentially disable certain systems. Shields, sensors, etc.

Whenever you made a jump to hyperspace, you had to keep your ship on course by keeping the crosshairs lined up with the center of the screen (as everything shook about). This was all fine and dandy until your navigation system was disabled -- at which point you''d lose the indicator for the center of the screen and would have to eyeball it.

These are the kinds of features people will remember long after they''ve forgotten the rest of your game...

hmmm... well, like in c&c style games where you could lose use of the map, wouldn''t it be logical to assume that someone printed off a copy of the radar data, so that you could see the map, but not enemy locations? Think about it, having a copy of a map could provide a great tactical advantage, even if you didn''t know where the enemy was. Even when you had radar, you could only see where you units had been.

Maybe instead of getting rid of the entire minimap, why not make it so that units that scout take down the data about the area around them, relay it to the command center, and ave them append the map data, but at a cost of a slightly less accurate minimap.

It remembers me of SILENT SERVICE II on Amiga (a submarine simulation during WW2). When you were underwater you didn''t know exactly the enemy positions but there was a system which tried to guess the possible positions using previous known data.