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Original post by Oluseyi
The downside to this is that it might take too long. Intro/tutorials should be brief (tutorial is a logical role for training camp, allowing the player to learn how to navigate and interact with game entities). The player could be plunged into the war experience, but carefully biased to supply all the shock value without making the beginning unnecessarily difficult.

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Perhaps if the player decides to play a second time, these missions can be skipped. I do think it would give an interesting perspective, though. The player starts out in training, and the leaders talk about how in a war, people die, etc. blah blah, and then they go through the field operations. It's all practice, by the book, focus on the objectives, serve the armed forces, nice clean aircraft carrier decks, etc. etc.

If the player chooses to be a pilot, one field operation could just be some dogfighting Top Gun style, where pilots are talking about their successes afterwards on deck, making it all one big game. Or ground troops capturing each other, maybe even joking around while you have your gun pointed at them.

When the actual entry into the war begins and the player sees what really happens for the first time, I think it would be effective for it to be a smack in the face. Any kind of pumping up the player gets from the safety and success of training (along with the seeming invincibility of their military, and all the feelings that go along with that) should be quelled rather quickly, and refine itself into becoming a set of skills needed to complete the real objectives, while still having to deal with the human aspect of it all.


[edited by - Waverider on March 27, 2003 12:00:16 PM]

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Original post by dede
You do realize that all of my examples are from REAL games...

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Of course. But mistakes have been made in the implementation of real games - many mistakes. And we learn from those mistakes. We learn what works, what doesn''t work, what almost works; we learn that we need extensive playtesting, because as robust as the game may seem when we play it "as intended", completely different things happen when users play it "as they want".

I can back up my assertions with real games too. Midtown Madness 2 had an extremely robust pathfinding system for both traffic and pedestrians, by embedding a lot of traffic information in the roads, by precomputing motion splines and by aggregating pedestrian behavior. How do I know this? I read the post mortem. Any game designer or developer worth his salt, aspiring or professional, should seek out and read post mortems on a wide variety of games, because of the gains in perspective that they present.

As many bad examples as we have, we also have some shining ones where things worked.

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Even tho we can cheat, the only acceptible way to cheat, is to make the game so linear, that neither the player nor the AI have a choice, they have to do things in order.

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No, I disagree. Besides, there''s nothing inherently wrong with linearity, and piecemeal linearity can be very effective for macro non-linearity (essentially creating a non-linear experience by assembling linear segments based on user actions). If you use linear templates rather than explicit realizations, then you can effectively pseudo-script action even in unforseen circumstances.

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Original post by Waverider
Perhaps if the player decides to play a second time, these missions can be skipped. I do think it would give an interesting perspective, though. The player starts out in training, and the leaders talk about how in a war, people die, etc. blah blah, and then they go through the field operations. It''s all practice, by the book, focus on the objectives, serve the armed forces, nice clean aircraft carrier decks, etc. etc.

If the player chooses to be a pilot, one field operation could just be some dogfighting Top Gun style, where pilots are talking about their successes afterwards on deck, making it all one big game. Or ground troops capturing each other, maybe even joking around while you have your gun pointed at them.

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It''s a great idea, but you have to remember that the game can''t afford to drag from the player perspective, or the gamer may get bored with the title and never get to see the shock phases. Fairly rapid progress into the "meat" of the game is necessary.

It''s like watching a movie with too much build-up (*cough* Phantom Menace, or Attack of the Clones *cough*). I still haven''t watched either of those movies through, though I''ve seen them both several times (if I start from the beginning I fall asleep, so I tend to start half to three-quarters of the way through).

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When the actual entry into the war begins and the player sees what really happens for the first time, I think it would be effective for it to be a smack in the face. Any kind of pumping up the player gets from the safety and success of training (along with the seeming invincibility of their military) should be quelled rather quickly, and refine itself into becoming a set of skills needed to complete the real objectives, while still having to deal with the human aspect of it all.

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Absolutely.

played fallout:tactics? while this was a very linear game, i think it has a lot of characteristics u might desire. i thought this was a cool war game, and i think it does put out the message that war is nasty. characters are very valuable, and die due to poor intelligence, and lack of defense and tactics. this engine is designed for a fairly fast-paced and deadly combat, and lacks some features such as fatigue and moral.

as far as massive crazy emotional war goes, you would probably want to make a ww1 game with massive infaltry and maybe some mech combat. you would also need machine guns, and maybe mines. unfortunatly, youll find that the player and his units wont be able to leave the trenches or theyll get shot dead. youll find moral and fatigue easy to impliment, probably even starvation. sounds pretty boring and dumb -a lot like real war, would you want to do that, sit in a trench?

any other sort of combat, such as tactical swat combat, will probably not involve many men, and not enough corpses to make the player to get sick to his stomach, unless u have some crazy super-realistic graphics and sound happening.

i dont think there is anyway to make the player feel emotional about war, or attatched to and responsible for his men... unless it is an mmorpg. in an mmorpg, you will solve some of the AI issues, and you can have crazy first person combat, given that there arent any hand held machine-guns. (though that wouldnt be very realistic though...)

the only way to make the player feel the war is to make it a fps, and that basically elimiates any strategic gameplay. you could have the player start of in tactical, fps gameplay, and then get promoted, and move on to rts gameplay, and then maybe to politcal gameplay! in the case of a mmorpg, you could declare war on iraq! and bomb a buttload of iraqes. and u would know that there are a bunch of real players goin, damnit bush! or damnit saddam! or splat!!

I''ve played very few war-games but one I clicked onto was the Mega-Campaign of Steel Panthers:World at War. I bought the MC about Operation Barbarossa were you played the role of Hauptmann Webber commanding a battle group. A campaign started with a briefing that not only talked about what you were to do but also had supporting documents(pictures, maps, Hitler''s mad justifications of invading Russia.) Some of it quite chilling

Elements you can take from it
- You keep with a core group and you can do occasional upgrades
- for each scenario you can spend some points to buy extra/different equipment/troops. This takes the game from a purely tactical to a higher strategic level. Maybe have your AI reflect the two different levels
- you can have decisive, marginal defeats and victories and from that can decide what the next battle will be like. This means you need good scenario design tools with an ability to play-test
- Create a tree of scenarios that depend on DV, MV, MD, DD to give some strong replayability

Good Luck

ZoomBoy
I''m making a computer 2D iso-tile RPG that I am currently programming. It''s at http://www.geocities.com/jzoomiethomas/

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Original post by Oluseyi
A third option is to have promotion increasingly remove the player from the frontlines. The player could start out as a fresh graduate from officer training school, right on the battlefield. As the player recorded successes, promotions would put him/her in charge of larger and larger bodies of men and operations, increasingly distanced from the frontline. However, with the removal from conflict comes increased bureacratic responsibility - like burials. Traditional cinematic techniques like flashbacks and voiceovers could constantly "remind" the player of what war was like, driving home the point that war is not some glorious exercise but rather an unpleasant necessity.

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This was the path I was thinking of taking. Having the player start out small, with only a few forces at his disposal. This way the player will be much more intimate with the troops involved and it will feel more personal. As the game progresses, due to promotion and battle losses, he will be promoted to higher levels. If you ever watched the old tv mini-series "The North and the South" and would be very much like that. Indeed, since part of my game is set amongst a civil war, it''s very possible that the commanders you fight with as friends in the early missions, will be commanders you fight against in the latter missions.

I''ve even toyed with the idea of the player seeing the game interface in the first person. In other words, you walk around the headquarters or go in your mobile command vehicle in first person...seeing your command staff, and having face-to-face talks with your high ranking subordinate officers. To actually command the battle however, you get to your holographic C4 (Command, Control, Communications, Computer) center which acts as the interface between you and your AI commanders. The C4 center would also be a high tech version of older table and model representations (i.e. what you see on the computer screen with the 3d terrain and icons representing troops is what the player himself would be seeing viewing the C4 center).

Having this first person mode would dramatically affect the attachment level of troops, and could make for some very interesting effects especially if your command position was about to be overrun because you were very close to enemy positions.

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Original quote by Oluseyi
In film, the traditional tactic is to interleave highly visceral, taut and suspenseful action sequences with introspective/emotional/informative scenes, but hardly are these delivered from a single perspective. In a game, the player usually wants to feel attached to his/her avatar and experience/perceive things as the avatar logically would, which limits the amount of jumping around we can do with the camera for storytelling purposes. In essence, we want a Band of Brothers meets Cast Away meets Medal of Honor, framed in a strategic context so we can present a cohesive story without detracting too much from the game.

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That's why I've been leaning towards the first person element as a commander. Imagine for a second that you have a 1st person briefing with your subordinate commanders, you wish them God speed, and then you duck into the command headquarters to actually communicate with and interface with the Commanders. So once you get into the C4 room, it switches to a 3rd person perspective with the more traditional 3d map and icons representing troops.

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Original quote by Waverider
The horror of war doesn't need to be portrayed in the immediate action, but can be portrayed in the chatter among the troops, the briefings, news clips, etc. or even occasional interactions in the game (ground operations, taking hold of a city, seeing children and women running, maybe even towards you for help or to curse at you, whatever the reason may be)

What does the enemy do when they are confused and desperate? What if you are losing? It isn't just about completing the mission. You're doing a job. You're doing your duty. And people will die.

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Battle chatter and reports from the Commanders in the field will be paramount to conveying this feeling. The reason I wanted an avatar representing the player on the board was to remove the notion that the player was a "god" controlling his forces through an impersonal means. By placing this avatar on the battlefield, it removes this disconnection, and makes a more immediate impact.

I also wanted to convey the sense of confusion and despair that can accompany war by getting messages and reports back from the Commanders that his forces are in dire straits. I'd also like after each battle to have a "taps" session in which the troops are mustered, and roll call is played. In the narrative portion of the game, you'll get to see diaries from the troops, as well as see letters that you write to the families of the deceased. You will also get to read reports of valorous actions, and perhaps award medals to soldiers.

The "inbetween" time should be important. Visiting the MASH hospitals, talking with civilian leaders, listening to the news and hearing what your Commanders have to say should all be very important. Perhaps wlking to the command tent, you see makeshift graves for soldiers, or pass by the troops in charge of transporting the dead in bodybags to the airlift fields. In other words, show all those gritty aspects of war that you never see in games.

Making a game like this would be a HUGE undertaking, since it's the combination of a strategy game with first person elements. The narrative portion probably shouldn't be too hard, but the first person capabilities might be stretching it a bit. But if possible, I think it would make for an amazing game.

[edited by - dauntless on March 27, 2003 1:46:59 PM]

One positive aspect of the in-between times could be handling promotions - particularly if you start with a small squad and have the opportunity to promote the survivors. And just going around talking to the troops between battles would probably have a positive effect on morale.

Actually, just having the troops carry over from one mission to the next can make a difference - they''re not just cannon fodder for this battle; they''re a resource you may need for the next fight.

On those lines, the option to retreat needs some serious thought - it probably shouldn''t be enough just to cross the edge of the map (in fact, maps probably shouldn''t have hard edges) - there''s the problem of enemy pursuit and of where you retreat to...

Also the question of what happens when the C4 building is under threat - you probably want an option to abandon the larger battle and FPS your way out of trouble - at least if you''re allowing any first person. This relates closely to the question of what happens when you lose your avatar. It probably shouldn''t be game over - after all, even if the General dies, the army can still win the battle. Maybe you come back for the next battle as a reinforcement lower down the command tree. Of course, this assumes that the game actually reacts to the outcomes of battles rather than C&C-style linear paths (even in Tiberian Sun I don''t really get a sense that my actions affect the outcome of the conflict - though, obviously, there are a few missions which link more strongly than just "pass/fail").

Definitely would be nice to be able to design your own missions once you reached high enough rank - sit down with a campaign map and a set of objectives and decide how to apportion your forces, what order to tackle the various objectives in, and which force to accompany yourself.

Might be an idea to have some missions (probably outside the civil war - or possibly leading up to it) more along the "peacekeeper" lines - where your troops massively outgun and outtech the opposition, and zero friendly casualties (excluding friendly fire) sounds plausible. Also gives you more opportunity to get to know your forces (and the controls) before the civil war sets in and everything turns nasty. Sort of training missions I guess, but possibly without the full on controlled tutorial aspect. Another possible mission set would be "War games" - essentially a scenario editor where you get to assign the forces available to the two or more sides of the exercise and the troops then practice warfare under "friendly" conditions...

Dauntless,

I wouldn''t pursue first-person perspective so rigidly. I think that some scenes have more impact in third-person (showing your avatar saluting a brigade of soldiers, burying a soldier or kissing a deceased soldier''s mom on the cheek) - though third-person perspectives should be carefully cultivated to make the exact appearance of your avatar obscure enough not to suggest any particular ethnicity, etc.

Also, traditional FPS involves a movable camera; many of the first-person scenes and seqences I can think of would benefit from a static camera POV (C4 interface, for example, would probably be better served in a traditional computer screen fashion).

Oluseyi-
The FP POV was just something I was toying with, but I worried that it''d add an entire new layer of complexity to deal with. It''d be nice, but on a practical scale, I don''t know if it''d be worth the extra effort. A 3rd person POV could do many things just as well like you said, but getting away from the static camera of traditional RTS games (i.e. the bird''s eye view of the battlefield) is not just more intuitive for players, but switching to a floating/roaming camera would I imagine entail a whole slew of technical complexities on the programming side (I could be wrong though, as I have very little knowledge of graphics programming....though I am ever so slowly chugging through Norman Lin''s book, "Beginning Linux 3d programming").

I did however always envision the player as being a Commander that was actually on the battlefield (or in an orbiting warship) rather than as some sort of detached being controlling his troops. I came up with the concept of the Avatar to enforce this, but if you have the notion that the camera through which you see the world is somehow "detached" from the player....I don''t know if it will have the same emotive or visceral impact. But seeing dead bodies, graveyards, burnt out vehicles, and homeless civilians from a tactical level (whether it be 1st person or 3rd person) would have a powerful effect.

I just thought it''d be very interesting to look at the C4 war screen (the bird''s eye view of the battlefield), disengage it, then look around your command headquarters. Being able to hear the actual battles of war not from your Commander''s communication devices, but with your own ears. And if the enemy is very close, maybe even spot them on the horizon. I had originally thought of this "detachable" camera so that you could zoom in at a tactical level to some of your engagements. Again, at a programming level, I''m not sure how diffucult this would be since my original thinking was storing world data at the Cluster level, rather than the individual unit level (I''ve since changed my mind).

rmsgrey-
I''ve been thinking about the retreat option myself. In fact, one of the functions (actually I think of them as "goals") I''ve come up with is Fallback. This is opposed to other goals like Rally, Regroup, and Resupply. Falling back when given to high ranking Commanders wil begin the orderly retreat under covering fire as well as taking appropriate physical cover to accede the ground to oncoming enemy forces. This is in contrast to a morale failure of "rout", in which your forces essentially panic and fallback in a disorganized fashion (they will not only fail to respond to orders, but will also be easier targets due to their lack of coordination).

Designing missions is a tricky subject. In the multiplayer campaign, this is simply how the game is played....essentially you''re given a carte blanche to act and see fit with your troops as you desire (and you also start out at a higher rank). For the singleplayer game though....I''m not sure. Being a somewhat linear storyline, this may be very hard to pull off, though I was thinking about giving the illusion of having mission design. Still, I''m not sure how to implement this exactly. Since the player for a good part of the game will be at a relatively low rank (roughly speaking, in command of a battalion), he won''t have access to things like economic infrastructures and can only make equipment requests (he''s not guaranteed of getting them).