In the average game, lets take Far Cry, it''s a nifty feature and fun to say "ooh, look, the terrain changed!".

But if implemented properly, and I emphasize ''properly'' - the ability to destroy anything in the game world, albeit with consequences, would turn the average shooter into a thinking man''s action game.

Simply tag any critical items or world objects as such, and should they be destroyed, end the game on the spot(or if you''re some sort of crazy super-designer, offer a secondary but much harder solution that relies less upon discretion). Instead of busting into a room and simply going crazy with a machine gun on all those zombies, you''d have to take the time to choose your targets and fire in controlled bursts. Instead of throwing grenades and rockets around like there is no tomorrow, you''d have to be careful not to drop a ceiling on your head. It''s an added element of danger, in a genre where the word is being redefined simply as ''more bigger tougher enemies''.

All-in-all, I''d see the ability to cut your own throat so easily the sort of feature that hardcore, skill-loving gamers would absolutely enjoy - but the average Counterstrike fanboy would write 10-page long rants about the shittiness of. Risky, yes. But worth it if you can tap into the right market.

- It''s a life''s work

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I like the idea of destructible objects and terrain in a game. It adds a sense of consequences to your actions. But there also have to be limits to this.


Important objects or people-
Basically, you can destroy (or kill) anything in the Game environment but some things will be vitally important for the mission. If they get destroyed then either the mission parameters will change (You destroy a fuel cell for one of the ships systems so you have to get a spare or start the emergency backup system). Or the mission will fail.


In game defenses-
Another option would be to put defenses around most of the vital parts of the ship so they don''t get destroyed as easily. Like in the event of an attack, the engine and life support systems get enveloped in force fields so you would have to REALLY try to destroy them. Or there could be automated defense systems that suppress weapons in critical areas (neither you or your enemies can use phases in the engine room but can still use a lead pipe as a club or a screwdriver to open an air-vent)

Also, instead of having a metal hull, use a powerful force field. The hull itself can''t be destroyed but the rooms inside are made of solid material (So the ship won''t be damaged by micro-meteors or some weapons but if the field generators get knocked out there will still be the inner hulls inside).

Also, if you attack people and destroy property randomly, the police could come after you to detain you (in a game environment, they could just fine you for damages and let you go).


In game physics-
If this is on a planet then there should be some way to keep the player from simply digging a hole from here straight into the enemies fortress (imagine: Instead of waging war against the armies of darkness and saving kingdoms, you dig a 40 mile tunnel from your hometown right into the main bosses cellar and pour poison into his wine), this could simply be a matter of the tunnel collapsing, the rock being too hard or the presence or poisonous gas.

Also, If the player tries to reach a "restricted" area. The enemy AI could hear the explosions or tremors they cause and come to investigate. Then they could either ambush them or set up a few machine guns on the exit side of the hole.


Cleanup-
In a sci-fi setting there could be numerous ways to handle this. The ship could have some sort of auto-repair function (either by simply "teleporting" damaged parts away and replacing them via a ship wide system or having a squad of inexpensive repair bots constantly picking up rubble, repairing the ship, carrying away wounded crew, etc).

Protecting the player-
Letting the player literally dig through walls to escape enemies is a great idea. Though there could also be some extra safeguards at their disposal
1. Give them a phone so they can call for help if needed. Then they would have to wait for a friend or some authority figure to pull them out of the hole, get them to a hospital, sell them extra ammo, or whatever.

2. The player can buy equipment like a parachute to protect from falls from tall buildings, buy a gas mask, On the ship, they could wear a hi-tech suit to protect them from the vacuum of space and perhaps an auto-piloted jet pack to return them to the ship and signal for a pickup.

3. How about something like a Borg Cube? The ship would have a force field that prevents air from leaking outside, every system would have multiple generators so that even if you blow up large portions of the ship there will likely be more to keep things running while things are getting patched up.

I think the player should be responsible for building in redundancies or fotifying critical areas of the ship. Maybe give them an escape pod as a silver bullet for when TSHTF, but don''t make it indestructable. It should be possible for a single mutineer or saboteur to cripple a ship if he manages to take the propulsion or life support systems offline.

Again, thanks for the feedback all. It really helps to hear people''s opinion on what they''d like to see and what level of responsibility they feel they can take.

I like the idea that players would be responsible for the situations they get themselves into and the exact configuration of their ship. This furthers the sense that "you''re your own individual" in the game, looking out for yourself and operating only with the safety net you give yourself.

But I also want to be sensitive to newcomers, especially those who might get in over their heads in an open ended realm. I think a happy medium would be a difficulty setting, whereby on easy, essential systems would be impossible to destroy. So on easy the reactor, comm gear and lifepod would be "encased in a fused energy shell which absorbes damage" or whatever. It would sort of be like the little black boxes on airliners, and would exist only on Easy.

For Medium and Hard difficulty settings, you''re on your own. If you get a hull breach that destroys your comms and life support, and you didn''t stock the repair resources or take the skills / hire the crew to use them, you simply die.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

I think if you don''t give them a silver bullet you introduce a new problem. Either players will just be constantly saving in case they make a mistake or you won''t allow that and they''ll kill themselves by accident or somebody will kill them and they won''t understand what happened and then they''ll be frustrated. It obviously depends on your setup, but it is a real issue. Will the game be playable and fun, not just cool? Personally, I think it would be cool but I don''t know how much it would generally add to the game, because anything that actually has a significant effect on the environment is just destroying it, which is just silly on a space ship, especially if it''s your own. Even it a building, if you can run around with grades and a rocket launcher that actually destroy the building, you either turn it into a puzzle game because the player constantly has to analyze every more, or a slug fest where all the player does is destroy everything like in Rampage. I guess I''m just saying you have to be really careful, but it would only have a benefit in very specific situations, I think.

tj963

Just because the environment is destructable does not mean that the player will necessarily want to destroy it. It could take a lot of resources to destroy it.

For isntance, in "UFO: enemy unknown", nearly all parts of the environment were destructable. It was however, difficult to carry enough explosives to render the entire play area into a smoking crater.

Also they thoughfully made the player''s plane indestructable so you can''t get stranded in a random location

It certainly proved interesting. In some scenarios it was desirable to just blow everything up, but it had a lot of drawbacks, i.e. civillian / friendly casualties and destroying salvageable items.

But it made the game very fun, if you got really annoyed with the aliens it was always possbile to throw a load of blaster bombs in and totally trash the place

Mark

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Original post by tj963
I think if you don''t give them a silver bullet you introduce a new problem. Either players will just be constantly saving in case they make a mistake or you won''t allow that and they''ll kill themselves by accident or somebody will kill them and they won''t understand what happened and then they''ll be frustrated.

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tj963 makes a good point. This game will need a very gentle learning curve. I''ve been following your design process and seeing some of the "innards" of the idea, and I''m not sure I''d be able to play this game effectively. At any given time you''ve got angry crew members, incompetent crew members, hurt or dead crew members, failing equipments, broken equipment, awkward navigation issues, challenging repair and maintenance tasks, God-knows-how-many different kinds of aliens, legal trouble, Seigers, psionic mind control, rogue AI hackers, human hackers, alien hackers, mutineers, overhead, profit margins, navigating/flying/driving/walking/talking NPCs, and a deadline for this shipment of medical supplies that you have to meet while fighting off pirates with one laser turret manned by Jimmy the new guy. Damn, that''s a lot of game.

Maybe the tutorial session could take the form of an internship or tour of duty as a first mate. The NPC captain would always know how to handle the scripted events, but he''d let you take a crack at it first. The mission would get you some easy money, but not as much as you might have made on your own, so you don''t miss out by skipping it.

quote:

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Original post by tj963
Even it a building, if you can run around with grades and a rocket launcher that actually destroy the building, you either turn it into a puzzle game because the player constantly has to analyze every more, or a slug fest where all the player does is destroy everything like in Rampage. I guess I''m just saying you have to be really careful, but it would only have a benefit in very specific situations, I think.

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About the puzzle game aspect: Is this a bad aspect for an RPG with RTS combat? In RPGs and RTS games we''re constantly looking at the terrain and seeing how we can use it to our advantage, if nothing more than closing a door to a cell and firing through the bars (in Diablo, to kill the Butcher ) to looking for the next chokepoint. In RTS games, if you set aside all the technical problems for a moment (with AI & terrain analysis), don''t you want a game map that''s strategically rich, and one which you can influence.

The specific situations I can see apply to these cases: Boarding an enemy ship, repelling boarders, infiltrating a base, escaping from imprisonment, many kinds of rescue missions and dealing with environmental puzzles that arise from disasters, be you on a ship, base or in ancient ruins.

But you''re right, not having a silver bullet if you fail in any of these cases is a big deal. However, with the way games have been designed over the last 10 years, I am often at a loss as to what level of responsibility players can assume. Most games have become linear mission-based affairs where we trade control of our actions for security in knowing that the game world will only challenge us a certain way.

Since I''m a big fan of strategy games, especially games like Civilization, I don''t mind getting in over my head. I might put 10-20 hours into a game only to find that I''m a backward nation with spears amidst jetfighters. I take the loss and start over, but RPG players may not be so forgiving if the same thing happens to them.

I think after the Easy level, as long as I make it clear to the player what situations cause dangers like this, I can put them in control of managing those situations and give them the items and whatnot to do so.


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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:

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Original post by markr
Just because the environment is destructable does not mean that the player will necessarily want to destroy it. It could take a lot of resources to destroy it.

For isntance, in "UFO: enemy unknown", nearly all parts of the environment were destructable. It was however, difficult to carry enough explosives to render the entire play area into a smoking crater.

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Very good point. When players and enemy AI are moving through environments, two things will act against wanton destruction: Uncontrollable side-effects, such as building collapse or hull decompression; and the reason why you came there in the first place. If you''re boarding a ship to rescue prisoners, you can torch the mainframes and blast holes through interior panels all you like, so long as you don''t breech the brig or engine room.

quote:

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Also they thoughfully made the player''s plane indestructable so you can''t get stranded in a random location

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And they could have made it destructable if you could call in replacements, and do things to make it difficult for the enemy to destroy it in the first place (such as touch & go deployment, or guns on the plane, or combat air patrol, whatever).

quote:

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But it made the game very fun, if you got really annoyed with the aliens it was always possbile to throw a load of blaster bombs in and totally trash the place

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How many times have you wanted to blast through a door after looking throughout the level for the d*mn key?!

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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
This game will need a very gentle learning curve. I''ve been following your design process and seeing some of the "innards" of the idea, and I''m not sure I''d be able to play this game effectively.

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I definitely agree that this kind of game would need a very good tutorial and a way to get into the game simply. What I''m ideally going for is the RPG equivalent of a Civilization or Alpha Centauri. In those games, you start out simply, then grow into complexity. I have no intention of hitting you with everything at once. I''ve given up on too many complex games because they''ve demanded that I master the manual before I take even a single spin around the block (Battlecruiser, anyone?)

quote:

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At any given time you''ve got angry crew members, incompetent crew members, hurt or dead crew members, failing equipments, broken equipment, awkward navigation issues, challenging repair and maintenance tasks, God-knows-how-many different kinds of aliens, legal trouble, Seigers, psionic mind control, rogue AI hackers, human hackers, alien hackers, mutineers, overhead, profit margins, navigating/flying/driving/walking/talking NPCs, and a deadline for this shipment of medical supplies that you have to meet while fighting off pirates with one laser turret manned by Jimmy the new guy. Damn, that''s a lot of game.

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If it''s any consolation, by the time you see all of this, you''re cruising toward godliness. Keep in mind that you can load up on the complexity if and only if it''s in managable phases. X-Com on the drawing board looked like squad combat, destructable terrain, fighter interdiction versus UFOs, item management, stat management, multiple base building, multiple base defense, national popularity management, financial management, research, trade in black market goods, item creation, story development, and management of an invisible supercharacter named Harvey. And don''t even get me started on Master of Magic...

Everything is in the execution. If all of those elements had hit the player at once, the game would have been a blip on our collective radar. But because they got the mix right there are players who still fire up X-Com YEARS after its heyday.

I''m not saying that I know I''m making the next X-Com or Civilization. What I''m saying is that such games are becoming more and more rare, and I see new gamers coming through knowing nothing more than the mission-based rope-a-dope. "Go here. Kill this. Good boy, here''s a cookie."

I may be adding too much, but I''m trying to keep things very focused (for an open-ended game) under one governing paradigm that allows you to start out small and end up big. I think players will not only be able to handle it but enjoy if the complexity is phased in, and only to the degree that the player chooses.

quote:

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Maybe the tutorial session could take the form of an internship or tour of duty as a first mate. The NPC captain would always know how to handle the scripted events, but he''d let you take a crack at it first. The mission would get you some easy money, but not as much as you might have made on your own, so you don''t miss out by skipping it.

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This is my thoughts exactly, with the tutorial casting you as the son of a merchant. You start out just managing your character, get used to interacting with the crew, then try out the various minigames at consoles. Your dad teaches you about what is what. You get set piece scripted encounters that introduce you to combat, stealth and trade, ultimately culminating in you dealing with a mutiny aboard the ship.

Be ye not afraid! I''m a gamer too, and I wouldn''t want a ton of unmanagable factors dumped on me anymore than you!


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Just waiting for the mothership...