I agree. I think if you took this too far the game could be very frustrating to play. I think if you do this you have to make whatever strange features you put in actually give the player more options. If all it does is make the player confused, sure you made something cool but it's going to be a huge pain to actually play. By giving the player more options, I mean the player can easily understand how the strange universe you've made works (or after initially being clueless, the player can learn how it works after a short time of play). Once the player knows how it works, the player can use the anomolous physics to his/her advantage. This would actually make the game more fun to play.

It's not really the same thing, but the only example I can really think of right now is Max Payne. Max Payne can slow down time. Actually another example is that Prince of Persia game (I think) where you can go back in time. Imagine if you gave the player all kinds of strange power over space and time. That would be awesome, especially if you could make challenging enemies. It would be fun because the player would have all these different ways of defeating enemies/progressing through the game.

I'm with onyxflame and EvilProgrammer. What's the point of all this surrealism and non-determinism? How does it enhance gameplay? How does it make the game a more pleasurable experience?

Torturing your users is a common sign of poor design, and is a Twinkie Denial Condition in my book. Unless this fits into the game world in a higher-order deterministic fashion, it's merely an annoyance.

The main thing, is that you can form stratagies which would just not be possible in normal games (eg. hiding in time, or hiding a grenade 10 seconds in the future).

What i was thinking about implementing this, is to do soemthing along the lines of:

When something (player, object, ect), hits a temporal wall. it causes another instance of what is in the rift to be made. in that new rift, there is every object that was there at the time (Object->madetime > x). The 5th and 6th dimentions (speed of time, and current time) are randomly altered as a result of "quantum instability"

When two rifts temporally collide (they are in the same spot on the 6th dimention), they form into one rift, which inherits its current 5th dimention form one if its parents. (it also has all the objects from its parents).

Havoing the forth dimention allows for some nice things. (but its very hard to visualize, which is a bit -- )

Of course, the 4th dimention would be made by the malfunctioning ???? that caused all this, so you would have all sorts of inconsistancies (like the 4d distance to a point changine over time)

Moving in the forth dimention could be experienced by seeing a lot of pure white rooms, between seeing random rooms (they are in an order, that order just changes from time to time) and a randomly changing location (the actual rooms would be 6d, they are just nearly static on the 4th dimention.)

Everytime someone comes though a "portall" (which connects the rooms up in the 4th dimention), the location (in all dimentions, including 4th) changes. (which would explain the different entry points, different orders, ect).

Maybe the world could be some sort of hypercube, which is connected together both using the 4th dimention and not (being the same, in the 4th dimention). Different parts of the world could be totally cut off in normal space. (requiring the use of the fourth dimention to get there).

I would say that i would like this idea (with the extra dimentions or without).

From,
Nice coder.

I think the non-deterministic game idea is great in theory, just it hasn't (to my knowledge) been done well yet. It isn't a well known technique and so situations where it works haven't been sorted out yet.

If done badly it would subtract from gameplay, but I am sure if done right it would be cool. Everything within reason and in small amounts. The best way to use a new technology or idea is a little in the right places, like the stokes of an artists brush - everything working together in harmony.

You could compare it to the addition of teleporters into first person shooters (I'm thinking Quake as an example). Just because they could didn't mean that they used it extensively. Of course there were the maps made by others that overused them (multiple teleporters all over the place), but the levels and maps made by ID used them in small amounts which worked well.

Quote:

Original post by Nice Coder THere should also be a 4th dimentional element, where different parts of the "universe" exist in different timezones, wit hdifferent rates of time.

I've also considered temporal distortion, but it would be extremely limited if any sort of multiplayer aspect was to be incorporated in the game. Good ideas, though.

Quote:

Original post by Oluseyi I'm with onyxflame and EvilProgrammer. What's the point of all this surrealism and non-determinism? How does it enhance gameplay? How does it make the game a more pleasurable experience? Torturing your users is a common sign of poor design, and is a Twinkie Denial Condition in my book. Unless this fits into the game world in a higher-order deterministic fashion, it's merely an annoyance.

The original idea was to simulate insanity or other mental problems, even something as simple as forgetting things or getting lost in a forest. The world itself (in the objective sense, if there is such a thing) could really deterministic and linear, but the character would see the world in a distorted manner.

The effect would be quite subtle most of the time. A room that should have been on the left side of the corridor was actually on the right. The distance between two rooms slighty smaller than if first seemed. The world doesn't really change, but the character didn't see it right the first time (or this time).

And the character can affect this. In order to prevent from getting lost in a forest, he can buy a compass and buy or draw a map, for instance. Or he could have a skill for not getting lost (some sort of survival skill). And note that I'm using the word character here, as it is the character who gets lost, not the player. Of course the player can get lost too, but the non-determinism is there to enforce the fact that the character can get lost too. (I'm talking about getting lost here, but the same works with the other aforementioned issues of sanity, memory loss etc.)

In addition to this, the world itself can be twisted by dark magicks and what preternatural forces have you. All sorts of magickal portals are clearly the traditional approach.

One example scenario would be as follows: there is an old, cursed tower somewhere in the middle of the infamous swamps of oblivion. No one has dared to enter the tower in centuries and out of fear, the people of G'gos, the nearby village, have started to sacrifice virgins to Saduvraal, the unholy god of obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Despite the warnings, the player decides to enter the tower. As the player's character enters the tower, the door closes all of a sudden and maniacal laughter and wailing floods the surroundings. Now he has the options to climb up the stairs (towards the top of the tower), down the stairs (into the basement), or open the door and leave (or so it would seem). However, since the tower is cursed, the door will lead into a random floor of the tower. Similarly, because of the curse, there is no top or bottom level, but going up the stairs of the "top" floor will lead in the down-going stairs of the "bottom" floor and vice versa. The longer the character stays in the tower the less sane he will remain, making it more likely that the order of the floors change (which doesn't happen in the "objective" reality, but in the character's subjective interpretation of what he sees; as far as the player is concerned, the game reality might as well change). The tower's floors are filled with the reanimated corpses of the previous unlucky visitors of the tower, wailing and trying to find their way out at any cost; but also with clues how to break the curse by chanting the hymn of the quasi-omnipotent frog-eating maniacs at dawn, after which the character can get out of the tower (and hopefully regain his lost sanity).

The game world is represented as one seemingly continuous area, so that moving around in the tower does not include lengthy pauses and fades in and out as the character is transferred about. That is where the immersion will come from; the player might not even notice at first that things are not as they should. In my opinion, that is partly what real horror is about, making the player suspect his own sanity (only temporarily, hopefully). Maybe in this scenario the situation is too obvious to make such a drastic effect.

Now I apologize to those who found the story of the scenario offensive (either because of its inanity, its clichés, or otherwise); it was supposed to be an example scenario of a quasi-horror game in which the non-determinism and non-linearity have a purpose and add to the immersion of the game. Opinions?

The main point is that the non-linearism and non-determinism are not the main point. They rather add flavour to the game, maybe an optional mission or two (like the tower example).

(Edit: fixed quote)

[Edited by - Grim on October 26, 2004 3:47:22 AM]