I am posting to express some of my thoughts on game design and get some feedback as to what you think on the matter. I dont like the way most games are designed now and have been designed for years. For want of a better word i believe they lack fundamentalism. Current games attempt to simulate incredibly complex systems, at the current point in time we cannot even get close to an accurate simulation so "hacks" are used to give a semblance of the system without actually simulating it in any depth. The result is games with big and bad environments with no depth. I believe the game industry is getting ahead of itself, trying to produce stuff that current hardware and software systems cannot achieve. I ask what is wrong with taking a backward step and developing system that may not seem to reach the same heights but have more depth and generality. Instead of doing a large half arsed job, do a small good job. you may be wondering what the hell i am talking about. That is okay i wonder sometimes myself. Current games still exhibit the tradition "if this then that" behaviour. It is all based on special cases and it is obvious. If i get within a radius of x of this enemy he will talk to me with one of five prerecorded speeches which has no relevence to the situation. From a software engineering standpoint it can be done so much better. Game systems should be built like leggo with abstracted small stereotyped subsystems with much greater level of abstraction, so we soften the afore mentioned behaviour. In conclusion my point is i think we need to take a step back and start using the available computer cycles to develop systems that are more intuitive and have more depth and generality. We need to stop getting ahead of ourselves.

quote: Original post by schnootle
Current games attempt to simulate incredibly complex systemsthe system without actually simulating it in any depth.
[...]
Current games still exhibit the tradition "if this then that" behaviour. It is all based on special cases and it is obvious. If i get within a radius of x of this enemy he will talk to me with one of five prerecorded speeches which has no relevence to the situation.

That''s done so because the market wants it.
Everyone rather wants to see LOTR without any depth than a incredibly realistic chess game, where the AI opponent thinks "just like human".

Well, I see here a chance for us hobbyist game developers. Nobody dictates rules for us. We are free to produce original ideas, that adds depth and believablity to the games. All successful ideas anyway later will be accepted in the mainsteram.




Chaos - open source RPG

quote: Original post by schnootle
Current games attempt to simulate incredibly complex systems, at the current point in time we cannot even get close to an accurate simulation so "hacks" are used to give a semblance of the system without actually simulating it in any depth.

The result is games with big and bad environments with no depth.

Well, game''s are games, not simulations. What counts is how it looks for the players - how the results are achieved, no one really cares. But you seem to say that any other way than simulating the game world leads to bad environments, which I completely disagree with. Games are far more sophisticated nowadays than they were ten years ago - still the games made then were fun to play. Simulation does not necessarily lead to more fun.

quote: Current games still exhibit the tradition "if this then that" behaviour. It is all based on special cases and it is obvious. If i get within a radius of x of this enemy he will talk to me with one of five prerecorded speeches which has no relevence to the situation.

Humans think in patterns like "if I do than, than that will happen", so you''ll not get away from that. Players will learn that if they get too close to a monster, it will attack them. It''s not so much a matter of how the world mechanic is represented in the code, but how players experience it.

And how do you know the dialog has no meaning? There are some of those games out there, but such a statement is far too general.

quote: In conclusion my point is i think we need to take a step back and start using the available computer cycles to develop systems that are more intuitive and have more depth and generality. We need to stop getting ahead of ourselves.

I don''t think the game industry is getting ahead of itself. I think the process is called "evolution". Game designers try out new things (hopefully) that lead to new forms of games. Those features slowly creep into your experience with games and after a while we will not want to miss them. For example, I played Deus Ex 2 and wanted to re-play the first one. I was shocked at the differences in the game world (not graphics): Somehow everything felt far more static in the first part, than it did in the second. It''s not something I would have noticed if asked, yet direct comparison showed me how I had come to accept those litte things as normal. And frankly, as a player, I don''t care how such things are done, as long as they work and are fun.


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There are only 10 kinds of people: those that understand binary and those that don''t.

When computer technology advanced to the point when games like ff7 were possible on consoles, I often wondered why developers didnt make a game with the same type of graphics as some of the older games like ff6 chrono triger etc and make a game that was 5 mabe 10 times as long. To me rpgs are too short 40 hrs is not enough. I say this because I would probally never replay an rpg unless I had forgotten the majority of the story, not even with another character. But as long as people continue to like pretty things this will never happen and graphics will always dictate the amount of time available to invest in storylength and game play.

Youre new here I guess. Games are more about money than anything else at the comercial level (notice the word commercial). Liking what you do is just a pleasnt side effect.



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