this is why most games suck. i''m speaking specifically of rpgs, but in a broader contex all other games as well. it''s just objective after objective until you "beat the game." nothing changes. player-initiated events satisfy some goal that the game decided you needed to achieve. there is rarely free enterprise in gaming, and if there is it is almost always a gimmick. instead it''s on to kill the next thing and gain some strength points or some bullshit. i would like to see more dynamic changes over time in games. something where your past determines your present and your present determines your future. the gains and losses of one''s actions should be tangable.. if you''re hit over the bare head with a club, you go down. if you''re shot with an arrow, you need medical attention. if you''re shot with two arrows, you''re fucked. you should have the ability to reason with your AI counterparts. you should be able to pick a fight, or talk your way out of one. and if you use a flamethrower indoors the building is gonna catch on fire and there''s a moderate chance that you''ll kill yourself. this is crucial people. the gaming industry has hit a brick wall, and they just keep throwing rocks at it. what they need to do is make a door. as far as i''m concerned, this should be the next step for the gaming industry. for this, ai and interface must improve dramatically, but it''s entirely doable.

most of your points are true except the doable part

I''m making a guess that your not a programmer and domn''t understand what goes into AI or rendering, its alot harder than you think. Also whats the point of giving a player a flamethrower if using it would kill him? It just wouldn''t be fun.

i understand the basic structures of programming well enough to know that, given enough time, what i envision is definently doable. rendering shouldn''t be an issue either, given the leaps in technology. by the time a game like this becomes reality, entry-level computers will more likely resemble today''s highest end machines.

and it''s not that the flame thrower is going to kill you, just that it can if you aren''t careful with it. use a different weapon indoors. of course, a game like this would likely include difficulty options (not just a setting), and then you could turn the structural fire damage off or something.

I agree that the game industry has gotten lazy, but some, in fact, a lot of those things take a lot of extra work...

The other problem is that not everyone (I think) feels the same way. People don''t want to be killed in a game just because they were hit twice by arrows. Sure, you could make it so that (in turn-based RPGs) you had a massive evasion stat but with only 3HP, and (in real-time RPGs like Zelda) you were pretty much cooked unless you could dodge everything.

For the environment-interaction? You''d be suprised how difficult that is. It can be done, but the problem is (especially with console games) how to save what you''ve done... exactly how would a save file be created if I torched every other tree and killed the blacksmith''s daughter? Be a pretty massive file.

Along the same lines, how would the game story be mapped out? If I had killed the blacksmith''s daughter, then would I no longer be able to use the armory, or would there be more dire conseqences? Would the whole village come out and hunt me down? Would I become a rogue? This is where MMORPGs come in and make things interesting.

But if someone does make something with the characteristics you envision, then I''ll definitely be one to buy it.

Yes... VB6 is here to steal your minds. Very slowly.

The reason the game industry has gotten lazy is because of the growth of the "casual" gamers.


In my opinion....sorry, off topic!

Yeah, me too. The problem is that all the concerns voiced here are very valid. One that I don''t see is the unfortunate consequences of having so much freedom. How would you debug such a game? Can you guarantee that you won''t be able to dig a hole so deep you can''t climb out of it? How about you get to an island and use all your rockets blowing up the bridges to where you are? Then what? What if you save a game right after you destroy the key to the last level?

One of the great draws of video games is that there''s always a way to solve the puzzle. Everything you are faced with is there for a reason. If you find yourself in a dungeon full of slowly rising water, you can count on finding a secret door, or getting rescued, or learning that you have some kind of super power. In the world you describe, you''d drown 99% of the time. After all, James Bond''s escapes wouldn''t be remarkable unless a hundred other spies had been killed that way. I don''t want to be one of those spies.

And don''t give me that crap about "Well, then you''ll just have to use common sense." If you build a game in which logic applies and my character can do anything that I could do in real life, then you''ve got The Matrix. If I see a small handhold or a rope or a vine that could get me out of trouble, and my guy can''t grab or climb it, then I''m in an irrational world. If I don''t have every advantage of capability, then I shouldn''t have to face every consequence of judgement.

If you''re going to make a world in which I can be hurt by the heat from my flamethrower, but I can''t use my belt to climb a tree, then you''re stacking the deck against me. If I can destroy buildings, but can''t repair or construct them, then I''m a force of entropy, and will inevitably destroy the world. If I can be killed my a single arrow, but can''t crawl under a wagon, I''m a sitting duck. This idea has to go 100%, or else be carefully balanced. Right now, that balance comes in the form of HP, limited destructability of terrain, and scripted puzzles.

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
If you find yourself in a dungeon full of slowly rising water, you can count on finding a secret door, or getting rescued, or learning that you have some kind of super power. In the world you describe, you''d drown 99% of the time.

wrong. in most games there is one way to do things. but there should be multiple ways of doing almost everything. and really, what fun is a game is there is no chance of anything bad happening to your character?

quote: And don''t give me that crap about "Well, then you''ll just have to use common sense."

look, if a player is careless enough to use a flamethrower indoors, then he or she should suffer the consequences. good players, hell, even subpar players should be able to avoid common pitfalls like this. if they consistently fall victim to stupid mistakes, then i say fuck ''em. let them play super mario brothers. i don''t want to make the video game equivalent of a big budget hollywood movie that goes nowhere.

quote: If you''re going to make a world in which I can be hurt by the heat from my flamethrower, but I can''t use my belt to climb a tree, then you''re stacking the deck against me. If I can destroy buildings, but can''t repair or construct them, then I''m a force of entropy, and will inevitably destroy the world. If I can be killed my a single arrow, but can''t crawl under a wagon, I''m a sitting duck. This idea has to go 100%, or else be carefully balanced. Right now, that balance comes in the form of HP, limited destructability of terrain, and scripted puzzles.

of course i''m going 100% with this. that''s why nobody wants to fully agree with me, because you''re all stuck in your little boxes thinking about how this is going to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the gaming world. oh, and we have to worry about production schedules, and if it''s marketable. fuck that. i want to make art . i want to craft an emotional and challenging experience, not to lead gerbils through a maze.

The problem with this idea is that right now the animation would be a bottleneck. You'd need better than the best AI and IK done so far to control your animation unless you want to spend the rest of your life animating skeletons and associating them with in-game actions. You can duck under a wagon a billion different ways, and each one would need to look correct and have correct collision detection etc.

Next, you'd probably be limited by CPU(for the next 15 years) since you'd need to simulate the entire world at the same time to have it be believable. Otherwise, the computer-controlled villain on the other side of the world and his cohorts half-way between you and him wouldn't be able to do their job. The villain needs to be able to make his death ray satellite and be able to shoot any point in the world at any time (and the PC needs to store the state of every board, nail, etc to know which parts of which buildings get damaged, where to show fire, etc).

To make the world even somewhat believable, you'd need to have an AI that understands the context of its situation and can choose from many of the available actions (like ducking under a wagon 100 different ways when you're shooting at it - no single person would take all billion ways into consideration so that reduces the load somewhat) and pick one to execute. Don't forget, every NPC has to do this constantly since they'd be interacting with eachother and the PCs, so you need to be able to run complex and cpu-hungry AI on every creature in the world at the same time.

For a single room, it might be possible. For a house, MAYBE (with a _LOT_ of work). For a city, state/province, country, or the entire world? Try again later

[edited by - extrarius on February 5, 2004 12:49:32 PM]

Regardless of what a CPU can do (which is both a lot and very little at all), it still takes a team of developers to make the game. List 5 or 6 features that should be in a game sounds easy. And in fact it is. Ever pick up a game that listed about 5 or 6 features on the back of the box, in a way that implied that there were 8 billion more features, but when you played it, realized that there were only 5 or 6 features? That''s because single features by themselves are usually easy, but getting enough of them that people don''t complain about what isn''t included is impossible for developers to create in a limited amount of time. As Iron Chef of Carnage said, "This idea has to go 100%, or else be carefully balanced." And the things that are balanced are which features to include, and the properties and depth to each of them. It''s just not doable. Not until we have sophisticated methods to let computers autogenerate a bajillion details. Too many things need to be hand-designed and hand-crafted right now for these grand ideas to be feasible.

quote: Original post by syn_apse
fuck that. i want to make art . i want to craft an emotional and challenging experience, not to lead gerbils through a maze.

That is why you fail.

Video games are games first and art second.

I think you also underestimate today''s games. Games like Morrowind, Deus Ex, B.C., and Fable are already trying the things you recommend. The reason why they don''t fully succeed is not for lack of talent, but lack of technology. Just wait ten years.