quote: Niphty:
the first one, move the mouse looking for highlighted objects, applies to games like those made be sierra and others who followed suit....The reason in D&D that you rolled to see if someone finds something is because they CAN'T see it, there's no visual representation....Just because you put a visual thing down, doesn't mean they WILL see it....I'm sorry, but you can't expect people to enjoy something like that to where THEY have to find things.

Okay - I never said anything about moving the mouse around looking for highlighted objects. That is JUST for adventure games, not for RPGs. The idea is that the character visibly sees tracks in the ground where tracks are applicable. No one is going to leave tracks on asphalt unless they ARE noticeable ones made by mud or blood or something similar. We aren't looking at 2D scenes here that were pre drawn and you move a mouse around, nowadays we present the player with a moving world that presents to them all the visual details that 307200+ pixels can. We aren't using 64000 pixels anymore. There won't be any blotches on the screen, the reason we are suggesting this is because it's possible to do that nowadays without it being cumbersome and annoying - a la Sierra pixel hunts.

Furthermore - if the player is spending all his/her time looking up in the roof then it's quite possible that he/she won't see the tracks, but if the player knows that the game makes this possible, then he/she will look for the tracks, and will enjoy the tracks

Plus no one said they have to find things, this is where what we in the business call "clever design principles". If a player is not suited to the mode of play where they sit around looking for tracks, then don't make the tracks the only pathway to a solution. I mentioned before, TIME and TIME again that you cater as BEST as you *** **** well can for each type of player. Don't focus an RPG on the one style of play because that's not what the RPG genre is designed for. (sorry to sound frustrated in the last paragraph).

The Main idea of having these tracks is to cater for the kind of player that solves things in the more investigative manner. Thus allowing for a solution path for that type of player to get to where he/she needs to go without doing the normal - kill beast, search nearby chest for answer to entire plot.

quote: Niphty:

Now for the second one.. text based games. how many MUDs do you see people walking around going look this, look that, look these? There's a lot of people who are trying to find hidden passageways and such in games. Now, suppose you're walking and looking for these villan tracks. What, you're going to have a room description that reads "this is a quaint forest meadow with wide rolling hills in the distance, a peaceful babbling brook by your side, and oh yeah.. there's some evil villan footprints here leading to the west."? Is this how you plan on treating you characters to an "adventure"? If i recall correctly, i hated it when MUDs had things like "go down the path" and the path was some part of the room description sandwitched somewhere in 12 lines of fluffy room description! This forces people to wonder around looking at every room description typing go , go , etc ad infinitem!!! THAT is why we have stats, because no one simply wishes to walk around looking at ever blasted noun in your room description till they find the ONE thing you meant them to find. How fair is that? how FUN is that? wasn't that what we'd determined, the goal is to have FUN when playing our games? tell me how you would derive FUN from this.. cause if there's something i'm missing, i'm gonna go make this game myself and start marketing it right away!!!

Well don't use text based adventures to do this. The problem is, this thread is focussed more or less on the future of RPGs not the past. The past was just that, past - they used stats back then to solve the problems they had with not being able to show them the tracks without detracting from the gameplay. It's not a matter of having twelve lines of text, it's just bloody drawing some tracks on the ground, and you don't have to know or tell that the tracks are the evil villain's footprint, that's up to the player to decide. The character isn't going to know the evil villain's shoe size, or the shoe make. If the player decides to follow them, good for him! But he doesn't have to know where they lead, that's half the adventure in itself. You could be about to walk into the hands of a psycho ninja that'll kick your arse (although you wouldn't actually do that because that would throw the player into an impossible situation and reduce his faith in following the tracks later on if he/she does survive).

quote: Niphty:

Stats are there to make the player NOT have to spend countless hours trying to find things that are two pixels wide!!! And there's no gaurentee that if you TOLD THE PLAYER OUTRIGHT "go find the villan tracks in the forest meadow" that they would remember it or actually DO it, or even talk to the guy who's supposed to tell them this!!! Is it realistic to have this guy try to find the player? and regardless of where the player is just pop up at the same time in every game saying "no no, ninny, the evil guy's tracks are THAT way!" And this is realistic how?

Already covered that first sentence, they aren't two pixels wide. It isn't even realistic to suggest that I'd tell the character to go find some tracks here. It's a ludicrous suggestion and totally detracts from gameplay. The tracks aren't going to be the focus and crux of a puzzle, they aren't even going to be a puzzle, finding tracks is a stupid puzzle - finding tracks and following them is a pathway - both literally and in terms of solving a situation that you put the character/player in.

*sigh* Such narrow vision. Think of future RPGs and possibilities Niphty, not of the past RPGs and taking their rigid structure and trying to implement this. These kind of ideas are new structures and require more thought than just putting them in an old RPG system. I can tell you it won't work - YOU can tell me it won't work, you've been doing that for the past few replies to the post.


And finally - if I were to take your stance on the topic of looking for tracks as a necessary task that an NPC has laid out for me and look at it in the old system - it's even damn worse. The player will sit around looking at a text screen going - "how the hell am I going to get my tracking skill up?" when they aren't a tracking type of player? They'll be even more frustrated than before. Things like this were never forced on players before and nor should they be. But in the old days, you could use tracking to find prey, or to perhaps find an alternate pathway. Basically - stats would be totally horrendous for this kind of situation, worse than visibly conveying them to the player. RPGs used to cater for many styles of play and they still will even without stats. It's not a matter of designing the stats system carefully - it's a matter of designing the puzzles and gameplay carefully.

And don't forget, the tracks are only an example, and no matter what the example is, it's a matter of doing it right - even with stats this is very important. You can't just blast away at an example because there may be flaws if you implement it "this way"...

Ugh - glad to get that all off my chest.

Edited by - Maitrek on July 14, 2000 3:38:22 AM

Oh yeah - now I got past Niphty I read pacman's post as well.

I think in most ways, pacman, you are right. Stats have never really been done right at all, I've said that there is a place for them in some styles of RPGs, but I've also been said that there is no place for the player to know them. I'll stand by this, because the character - for all his 60 Str - won't even begin to know how much 60 Str is until it's gone out and tried something. I keep hearing that the player likes to see advancement, but I ask you, does the player enjoy the advancement more than they enjoy the new ability to kick a rabbit's arse if all they could kill before was a grasshopper?

Now I think it is a good idea to make stats less of the importance in the game, make the player feel like he's accomplishing something, rather than trying to convey thru the character that he's accomplishing something. The character's strength isn't as important to the player as the character's actual achievements, and the more the PLAYER has to do with this, the more they feel involved in the game and *hopefully* the more they get out of it. (unless they have a perverse stats fetish)

And I really think there is something I need to clear up. I have never really considered skills to be bad, although some people seem to think skills are stats. When I refer to stats (and when I did right at the start when I made the original post) I meant the physical and mental stats such as Str, Wisdom, Constitution etc. Just in case anyone is wondering...

However - when you say that you are not the character is where I kind of disagree. Whilst it's sure good fun to pretend to be the character, and pretend to be happy at the end and all that stuff, and kind of roleplay a little shallow-like, I don't think that's a great stance to take. In computer role playing games, we are trying to convince the player as much as possible that he is the character.

CAREFUL - The player is the character - not the character is the player!

(oh I love the sound of that)

It's best to try and work from the player being inside the game and grow outwards from that, rather than think of the character being there and trying to link that up to the player. Sure - the player isn't really inside the game, but that's what we are aiming for in a way. Of course it isn't the player as he knows himself though - it's the player acting inside the game, but essentially the player and whatever desires the player has to be someone else that is the fuel for the fire. The problem with giving the player physical restrictions inside the game, and giving him a kind of body to begin with, is that can stop him acting out what he may want to do - and the player's ability to act is bad enough with the poor way in which we handle conversations in games already.


Edited by - Maitrek on July 14, 2000 1:37:49 AM

One message:
Niphty: <the player is the character>

Another message:
Niphty: <the problem? the character was you, you were the character>

Are you playing devil''s advocate Niphty?
Are you getting Landfishian tendencies to break something apart just so the other people take a long hard look at the innards of their ideas?

( Well it''s working, and I still agree 100% with Maitrek )

In FPS games, people don''t generally have skills. If you missed that railgun shot, it''s because you missed the railgun shot, not because your in-game character didn''t have enough skill to use a railgun properly.
It works fine in FPS games.

Niphty''s argument is: this will not work in RPGs because people want to do stuff they can''t do in real life.
Well, you can''t shoot a railgun in real life either, much less splat someone to little bits with it. I think that''s where the difference lies. Following tracks is not an easy business, ever. But lets say there IS a tracking skill in the game. Lets say tracks are also represented visually. Now lets say you found a way to make these tracks more visible, the higher your tracking skill is.
Isn''t that a good compromise between the two extremes?



Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

On players and characters:

There are generally two elements in an RPG (this is obvious) the player and the character. The Character is the sum of everything that is the player''s role in the game, capable of perfoming actions distinctly impossible for the player to perform, since the player isn''t in the game. The Player, however, isn''t the character either. The player has the benefit of knowledge, control, and rationality, the player makes up the logical and personality of the character entirely.

This symbiotic creature is known as the Player-character. This seems obvious, but too many people use these terms interchangably.

In order for a game to be convincing, you must account for BOTH aspects of the playercharacter... but make sure you don''t blur the line between them. Hence the controversy over Intelligence attributes, why quantify a character''s intelligence when it so obviously the domain of the PLAYER? The answer: It depends on the game you''re trying to make, just like everything else in game design.

You''d be a fool to rely entirely on statistics to guide the player through the game. You''d also be a fool to rely on the player''s intuition. In fact, you''d be a fool to do entirely anything!

[a few minutes later, in a galaxy far, far away]
The Anonymous post has convinced me that this next bit is important.

The following question has been asked and answered a few times so far in this thread, but never really in a satisfying way ( to my own personal ideas ):

What are stats for?

After 8 pages of messages for and against, I think I've finally figured out why we have them, and what they are for.

Role-playing games are designed to allow the player to take on any role that the world to play in supports. The idea is to let the player be whatever he/she wants to be, for the duration of the game.

Now, as the Anonymous Poster said above, some of the skills needed to play the game are inherent in human beings. We rely on the player having powers of perception and deduction, in order to make sense of our game, understand the story, and understand the obstacles.
However, some skills are either completely fictional ( magic ), or are skills most people nowadays haven't a clue about ( blacksmithing ), or are just simply specialist skills that most people will not acquire to any significant degree.

That leaves you with these two ( extreme ) options:
- Design the game, so that anyone with even only a tiny skill set is able to finish it. This can mean: make it really easy ( Niphty's example of "hover the mouse everywhere until you find the highlighted object" ), or attempting to cater to or train all possible modern skill sets ( like learning to play with the mouse in Quake3 ). It also leads to the "player character" having much the same ( or less ) skills as the player.
- Design the game, so that no special player skill is needed, it's all emulated by the PC. This is how most RPGs up to now have done it. If the player character can follow animal tracks, it does. If it can kill a dragon, it does. Some player interaction is needed, but not to a level where player skill really makes a difference, and certainly not up to the degree of a FPS.

Now, as I hinted in my last post, I think we have to strike a balance between the two.
One one extreme you've made an adventure game, the other is an action game. In a role-playing game, you want to have some player skill, but not so much that the player can be easily frustrated by his own inability to control the player character up to an effective point. Too much and it degrades to a clickfest ( diablo ) or an FPS with stats ( I think Deus Ex falls into this category, but I've never played it ).
Too little and its "find the three pixels that are supposed to be the key" or "try every possible command until you find the one that works".

Neither option is optimal.


So, to the whole point of this message:
What are stats for?
To support the player to play any role he/she wants, without having to worry about his/her own personal skills. Leave the player to choose the role she likes, not the one she's good at.
Use internal stats to "buffer" player inabilities upto the point where he/she has at least an average chance of completing the game in any role she chooses.


Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

Edited by - MadKeithV on July 14, 2000 4:12:34 AM

Keith, please justify an Intelligence Attribute. Magic aside, since I don''t think the two are all that related, magic IS supposed to be a spiritual thing primarily. Why have one? I''ve never once had information given to me in an RPG because I didn''t know something my character did, and never once have I NOT done something because my character wouldn''t know what to do yet.

An intelligence attribute? NEVER.

You cannot simulate player character intelligence with your computer in any satisfying way anyway.

In fact, I wouldn't simulate any physical property of the character, I'd only use internal stats to shore up the necessary skills that the player seems to be lacking.



Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

Edited by - MadKeithV on July 15, 2000 4:36:58 AM

quote: Original post by MadKeithV

An intelligence attribute? NEVER.

You cannot simulate player character intelligence with your computer in any satisfying way anyway.

In fact, I would simulate any physical property of the character, I''d only use internal stats to shore up the necessary skills that the player seems to be lacking.



Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

Ok, i''m gonna do this backwards. I''m gonna bash the new stuff first, then the old stuff, cause the new stuff is fresher in my mind, and i''ll go back and reread Maitrek''s post and crush him in a bit.

Ok, so let me get this straight. The player is the INTELLIGENCE of the character, and the character has physical attributes that are different from the player''s.. eh? So you''re in favor of wiping out intelligence and wisdom or whatever else.. in favor of having the player be the intelligence of the character? that i could see happening. The reason we have intel was because it was easier to do things in D&D.. and i admit it''s not exactly needed today. HOWEVER.. we STILL cannot simulate a true environment or world.. PERIOD. That''s our biggest problem to overcome. If you want to make me the character, then i had better be able to pick up and examine every scrap of paper, pens, pencils, notebooks, fresh hot mutant guts, etc! Everything in the world should be tangible to me. If it''s a desk, i want to hit it and see a slice mark in the wood. If it''s a chair i want to pick it up and throw it at someone. THAT is when i don''t think stats are totally nessicary. HOWEVER.. intelligence might be the player, but strength is still in the character. SKILLS are also important here, because you can''t play a role without having access to things you can''t normally do, or wouldn''t normally do!
At this point, there''s a big question.. are you willing to program a database to span 4 CD''s to make every wall, every peice of paper.. a real object? none of this fake painted on bullshit. as Maitrek said "we''ve moved beyond that".. and that statement is SUCH a lie. we''re no further today than we were a couple years ago, we''ve merely got more processing power to display more details! MORE PIXELS.. SO WHAT?! the key becomes 10 pixels large!!! OH BABY! What if i have my monitor in 640x480? will i see a key three times the size of one i''d see at 1024x768? No doubt in a smaller resolution you''ll see things much differently, so do you plan to FORCE people to use one screen resolution?! How is this good for the player, again?

Regardless of what you say, you''ve proven nothing. I can talk about the future too! LOOK, WE''LL HAVE VR ONE DAY SO LET''S PROGRAM FOR IT NOW! will i ever make money with this? NO. why? because the industry is not in the future.. it is in the NOW, the present, the HERE time. Not the THERE! simple as that.

quote:
Maitrek:
Plus no one said they have to find things, this is where what we in the business call "clever design principles". If a player is not suited to the mode of play where they sit around looking for tracks, then don''t make the tracks the only pathway to a solution. I mentioned before, TIME and TIME again that you cater as BEST as you *** **** well can for each type of player. Don''t focus an RPG on the one style of play because that''s not what the RPG genre is designed for. (sorry to sound frustrated in the last paragraph).

Yeah, so? we''ve all heard of this, but you''ll either end up with a short, useless game kinda like Baldur''s Gate, or you''ll end up spending the rest of your life programming 100 puzzles to be solved in 100 different ways each. That''s 10000 pathways to program, it''ll take a while! The reason people have made a single solution is because the solution fits the genre! And adventure game, you adventure! You find tracks and such!
And if you don''t plan on highlighting objects the character can pick up, do you plan on allowing them to pick up and manipulate EVERYTHING. good luck, god-wannabe!
As for not highlighting thing.. well, how do you expect the player to FIND something if you DON''T? You expect them to have a click fest trying to move any and every thing? or will other NPC characters give them all the things they''ll need? The more options you give a person, the harder you make it for them to complete one of the options without starting another one of the options and getting confused about how to finish either one! For instance, if i were to open a safe with two key locks, and i had a key and a lockpick.. the key i got from "find the key" route and the lockpick i got from "get the lockpick" route, i might try the key and the lockpick, and you might not have expected that.. what then, oh masterful one?!

quote:
Maitrek:
Well don''t use text based adventures to do this. The problem is, this thread is focussed more or less on the future of RPGs not the past. The past was just that, past - they used stats back then to solve the problems they had with not being able to show them the tracks without detracting from the gameplay. It''s not a matter of having twelve lines of text, it''s just bloody drawing some tracks on the ground, and you don''t have to know or tell that the tracks are the evil villain''s footprint, that''s up to the player to decide. The character isn''t going to know the evil villain''s shoe size, or the shoe make. If the player decides to follow them, good for him! But he doesn''t have to know where they lead, that''s half the adventure in itself. You could be about to walk into the hands of a psycho ninja that''ll kick your arse (although you wouldn''t actually do that because that would throw the player into an impossible situation and reduce his faith in following the tracks later on if he/she does survive).

Uhmm.. one second here.. Keith said "I think I can program this, a little text-adventure example anyway, in a reasonable amount of time." Wait, do i see the words TEXT-ADVENTURE in there? Maitrek, learn when something''s meant for you, please. obivously you should be telling keith to move forwards, not in the past! because we ALL know text adventures are the wave of the past! I know about 5000 individuals who would kill you for saying that. KILL YOU! MUDs are very much a thing of today, if you don''t know, then you need to get your snobby nose outta the "3d" gutter!

quote:
*sigh* Such narrow vision. Think of future RPGs and possibilities Niphty, not of the past RPGs and taking their rigid structure and trying to implement this. These kind of ideas are new structures and require more thought than just putting them in an old RPG system. I can tell you it won''t work - YOU can tell me it won''t work, you''ve been doing that for the past few replies to the post.

Try such a realist. I know the state of the industry, i know where the industry is headed, and i know that you won''t be there at this rate. I have a company devoted to game creation, do you? My JOB is to know what''s going on, what''s going to go on in the future, and to try to predict, design, and plan based entirely on the facts at hand. You can say "i want to change the industry to make this happen" but good luck! I bet you''ve never even tried to find out about skeletal animation and skin creation/warping to fit all different characters! How much are you up to date on 3d programming routines and algorithms? Have you a 3d engine which will make this whole wannabe world of yours suddenly appear before my eyes?! And are you working to create something that the next generation of 2 ghz, 128 meg ram, geForce 8, 50 gig, DVD-RAM using computer owner? if so, maybe you should take a step back and work on what''s here, what''s now.. AND what''s in the past. If you fail to support my video card, which is a thing of the PAST as you put it, then you lose a huge customer base! Do you plan on not supporting RIVA128? Voodoo2? what about all those people, eh? you think they''re less worthy of playing your games simply because they''re not ''IN THE FUTURE'' with you? You''re a ridiculous arrogant bastard with no concern for anything but his own ideals. Landfish is at least somewhatly grounded in reality, and he''s trying to get something that could be made here and now, not tomorrow. Cause people who want to make things tomorrow are constantly saying "i''ll start work on this tomorrow" and tomorrow never COMES! because technology is here and now, not tomorrow.. because tomorrow is another day, and there''s no telling WHAT tomorrow will hold. I suppose you''ve already started programming dual-monitor output into your game to support nVidia''s new MX chipset, eh? what, you''ve never heard of MX? and you say you''re all about the future?!

J

Whoa...you guys...we''re all friends here, right?

To start off, Keith I agree about the balance thing.
However, I''d like to do a quick nit-picking with what you said, about the stats being internal. Why do they have to be internal?

I think it''s also correct that the player is the brains of the operation, because puzzles wouldn''t be that fun if you only had to click on your char''s head to solve them. However, in order to compensate for the player''s lack of knowledge of the world, and since the char is the playing piece of the player in this world, the char can make up for knowledge that the player would have no way of knowing. This could be special skills, or a certain dialect, or whatever.

Maitrek, I''m glad you agree that stats haven''t been done right. So why do you still insist that they are bad, and the bane of all good design? It''s good to innovate, but why reinvent the wheel when you have a great system sitting in front of you, waiting to be MADE great.

Also, this P/C relationship thing is really a perspective issue. I see it like this: the char is the player''s playing piece in the world it lives in. The char is the player''s persona here, nothing more.

Maitrek, you said yourself that the character is not the player. So why do you want to limit the character''s abilities by the skill of the player? The character him/herself should not be affected in any way by the player, but the behaviors and actions should be. These are what the player really is, the character''s actions and behaviors. And it is the character that can or cannot do what the player wants to do.

Ok this post is really long, I think I''ll stop now.

-------------------------------------------
"What's the story with your face, son?!?"

Okay - this is mainly directed towards niphty, as he so graciously took time out to try and knock me as a person rather than develop ideas on a post. Which I am majorly guilty of doing myself, but now that I''ve seen someone else do it I realise the futility of it all. Because I don''t want to waste too much of my time arguing with people (Niphty) when I could be spending time thinking of how to implement things, I''ll keep this short.

I''ll choose to work backwards thru your post, the same way you went back from what was freshest to least fresh.

quote: Niphty:

Try such a realist. I know the state of the industry, i know where the industry is headed, and i know that you won''t be there at this rate. I have a company devoted to game creation, do you? My JOB is to know what''s going on, what''s going to go on in the future, and to try to predict, design, and plan based entirely on the facts at hand. You can say "i want to change the industry to make this happen" but good luck! I bet you''ve never even tried to find out about skeletal animation and skin creation/warping to fit all different characters! How much are you up to date on 3d programming routines and algorithms? Have you a 3d engine which will make this whole wannabe world of yours suddenly appear before my eyes?! And are you working to create something that the next generation of 2 ghz, 128 meg ram, geForce 8, 50 gig, DVD-RAM using computer owner? if so, maybe you should take a step back and work on what''s here, what''s now.. AND what''s in the past. If you fail to support my video card, which is a thing of the PAST as you put it, then you lose a huge customer base! Do you plan on not supporting RIVA128? Voodoo2? what about all those people, eh? you think they''re less worthy of playing your games simply because they''re not ''IN THE FUTURE'' with you? You''re a ridiculous arrogant bastard with no concern for anything but his own ideals. Landfish is at least somewhatly grounded in reality, and he''s trying to get something that could be made here and now, not tomorrow. Cause people who want to make things tomorrow are constantly saying "i''ll start work on this tomorrow" and tomorrow never COMES! because technology is here and now, not tomorrow.. because tomorrow is another day, and there''s no telling WHAT tomorrow will hold. I suppose you''ve already started programming dual-monitor output into your game to support nVidia''s new MX chipset, eh? what, you''ve never heard of MX? and you say you''re all about the future?!

I''ve been programming for ten years of my short life. First of all, the 3D engines of today do not even start to give credit to what we should be doing with today''s technology. Alot more could be achieved than you may realise we just aren''t aiming high enough, so we aren''t achieveing high enough. Secondly, I know alot about all the buzz-"algorithms" in the state of the industry and 3D programming, I AM chiefly a programmer. Design comes a distant second, always has, always will. Thirdly, how long does the average GOOD game take to produce? About 15-25 months? How many people are going to have Voodoo 2s (which already are totally outdated and extremely hard to play on as it is - I should know, I OWN one) by then? Almost no one - Voodoo 2s will belong on "retro" gaming PCs where people play Quake 2 and Half Life - that''s not to say that I don''t WANT to allow everyone to play the game, and it''s not that I''d ever view anyone as unworthy of playing a game - it''s just an unfortunate case that I cannot support them and I would have to lower the standard of the game for them to play, which is a very difficult compromise to make for me personally. Obviously it''s a compromise you like to make because it allows you to reach the bigger market and let you see more $$$ (which is what it''s all about RIGHT?! (wrong)) in your pocket. Fourthly - no - I don''t have a *company* devoted to games - I have a TEAM.

quote: Niphty :

Uhmm.. one second here.. Keith said "I think I can program this, a little text-adventure example anyway, in a reasonable amount of time." Wait, do i see the words TEXT-ADVENTURE in there? Maitrek, learn when something''s meant for you, please. obivously you should be telling keith to move forwards, not in the past! because we ALL know text adventures are the wave of the past! I know about 5000 individuals who would kill you for saying that. KILL YOU! MUDs are very much a thing of today, if you don''t know, then you need to get your snobby nose outta the "3d" gutter!

When you went on from the post originally, you generalised the idea as if it were to only be implemented in a text adventure - whether you meant this or not, I am sorry for having obviously aggravated you with my response which assumed from what I read that u meant the idea was ridiculous as a generalisation. I agree that it shouldn''t be done in text adventures - at least not very well - and I said that, I agreed - don''t use text adventures for this. However I made a complete mistake by arguing vehemently to make the point that it should still be done, and is still a viable idea.

Kieth is assumedly not going to join a long line of text-rpg coders and his ideas are generally in concurrence with mine thus I place him as not existing the past. And I am prepared to be killed by 5000 individuals who are not part of the market I am trying to reach. MUDs are a place for social interaction even if you aren''t being yourself (although I went to a MUD once and got killed in the newbie bar - very social places indeed ) and sure, they are games, they are RPGs, but it''s not what I''m aiming to do. I''m aiming to sell a game on the market that takes RPGs a step forward where the technology can support it as well as the players can support it. Also - yes - I like 3D, in fact I''m almost going to marry 3D for my love of it. It offers a level of immersion that really works with alot of people because you can take possession of a person and see the world for what it is, the imagination is kinda taken away by this, but that makes it more like it''s really there. John Carmack saw this when making Catacombs Abyss and he totally revolutionised the market by using 3D. Sure - some might argue that the market nowadays is alot of remakes of the same formula, but it still had that effect.

I am personally not aiming to revolutionise anything. More like evolutionise, we have to take steps forward, one at a time. And I''m not aiming to have every single damn thing in my game a usable item, I''m aiming to take a step forward by trying out new ideas, working with them, testing them, throwing out crap ones - RATHER than throw them out before they are even tried. Half the things I talk about here may get thrown out, but it''s not like I won''t try them out. If the game proudction process doesn''t involve trying things out, then nothing will ever happen.

quote: Niphty :

Yeah, so? we''ve all heard of this, but you''ll either end up with a short, useless game kinda like Baldur''s Gate, or you''ll end up spending the rest of your life programming 100 puzzles to be solved in 100 different ways each. That''s 10000 pathways to program, it''ll take a while! The reason people have made a single solution is because the solution fits the genre! And adventure game, you adventure! You find tracks and such!
And if you don''t plan on highlighting objects the character can pick up, do you plan on allowing them to pick up and manipulate EVERYTHING. good luck, god-wannabe!
As for not highlighting thing.. well, how do you expect the player to FIND something if you DON''T? You expect them to have a click fest trying to move any and every thing? or will other NPC characters give them all the things they''ll need? The more options you give a person, the harder you make it for them to complete one of the options without starting another one of the options and getting confused about how to finish either one! For instance, if i were to open a safe with two key locks, and i had a key and a lockpick.. the key i got from "find the key" route and the lockpick i got from "get the lockpick" route, i might try the key and the lockpick, and you might not have expected that.. what then, oh masterful one?!

This isn''t about adventure games, it''s about RPGs. The problem with RPGs, is they play like an adventure game with stats. Which isn''t what they are, because that basically means you play the ONE role only, and it doesn''t change no matter how many times you play it, it''s always the same cause it''s still linear. Which is something of an issue either way. Non-linearity and linearity have been discussed numerous times in other threads and it''s difficult to persuade anyone either way. So I''ll skip an argument here cause I think this is supposed to be about stats (I think...).

I think that if I can see one person talk to another person about playing my game and I see them discuss totally different approaches to "puzzles" in the game, then I''d be happy. And it doesn''t take 100 different solutions to a particular puzzle. And programming them isn''t a matter of spending one nights work sitting down nutting out one solution trying to iron out all the bugs in it. A stable world base should cope with what u want to add to it. And with your example, why should there be any problem there - the two locks could be programmed to be independant of each other and the door could be dependant on both. Almost like a inverse kinematics system - but in a totally different context.

And thankyou for pointing out at the start of the reply that you desired to "crush me in a bit" it really reflects well on what you are trying to add to this post. Read that old reply from me again, do you see "snobby" in there or "ridiculous arrogant bastard"?

Personal attacks really have no place here. This is the games industry, not politics Take it easy. I am sad to see what you have degraded this to (plus the cute little sad smiley was irresistable)