Funny, I couldn't stand the WarWind games. I thought they were the most tedious RTS ever. The only redeeming features were its exciting setting - the factions were cool, the in-map critters were incredible, and the opening FMV was spectacular. As a game, I found it very annoying.

I've actually played (and still have copies of) about half of those Pxtl, I'll definately look over them again, and see if I can find any copies of the others at my local stores.

Quote:

Original post by Anonymous Poster I think that a LOT of games are killed by small design/implementation issues that i would guess might seems like a trivial issue during production. Walking speed for example, is a major major problem with a lot of games.

I almost always find something that i think would make a game much better. Which is why i wanna be a game designer :)

Talking about walking speed, i found a cheat in serious sam that allowed you to change it. The game seemed twice as fun when you could run twice as fast, but of course, the monsters weren't tweaked for this, so it generated new problems. But it made me wonder if the designers had played around with this at all? You have to walk those huge distances that slowly? I totally despised soul reaver 2 because of this too. You had to spend too much time just walking around. This could have been a problem with the scaling in the level design too though.

My all time favourite games:

Doom1\2 - The first one was strong on atmosphere. The sequel lost some of that but expanded the gameplay with an awsome new weapon and new enemies that did a lot of new things, like that archvile that could send you flying. At the core, a true shooter. Incredibly well balanced with more powerful enemies showing up as you got more powerful weapons that could blast about 100 of the guys you were fighting in the beginning in one blow. The levels were quite non-linear too. People are still competing over finishing the levels in the shortest possible ammount of time 11 years after its release. Still the best FPS, as in SHOOTER, in my book. Halflife is good because of completely different things than the shooting.

Halo - Finally a proper SHOOTER again! I thought halflife had killed those for good. Anyway, the offhand grenades, mellee attack, limited weapon carrying etc just blended together to perfection. Can't wait to get my hands around the sequel.

Stunts - Remeber that ancient driving game with the loops and stuff? The built-in track editor was easy to use and provided just about infinite variation and replayability, as if trying to squeeze another 1\10 second of your time on the original tracks wasn't enough.

Alien shooter - Pretty new actually. Indie game. It's well balanced just like doom. Kinda plays and looks like diablo with guns and without all the stats.

Utopia - One of the first city-building games i guess. You had to keep a colony fed with food, air, power, and living space. As if keeping those things at balance with your limited funds, there was the military aspect where you had to build a fleet of tanks and spaceships to wipe out an offscreen alien city. They'd attack you as well, so you had to build turrets and missiles to defend yourself.

Counterstrike - Very strategic and tactical when you get into it. Working as a team really pays off. Each round has several states of gameplay. As a CT, you'll probably rush to try to stop the T's at a chokepoint, and then run back to defend the bombspots. I mean, who the hell hasn't played this? :P

GTA - Talking mostly about the first one here. It was kinda like playing a board game in realtime. The goal was simply to make a million bucks iirc, and how you did that was up to you. You could steal a car and run over 10k people, or take jobs from payphones. And of course, you'd have to watch out for the cops all the way. I kinda dislike how the new GTA games forces you to do the missions.

Hi!

I have always been a fan of small shareware games, and I find most of those more amusing than large commercial titles. My point of view is also a bit biased, because I am from Finland, where 5-10 years ago, the shareware scene was booming. There were about 15-30 finnish shareware titles released every month and amongst those a bunch of real classics (in my opinion) rose. Here are my favorite games, most of them shareware games from finland, others commercial titles.

1) Triplane Turmoil. This is a "remake" of the classic WWI 2d flight "sim" sopwith. This is a very addicting game, especially for hotseat multiplaying. I'm very anxiously waiting for the sequel to come out (www.draconus.com)

2) GeneRally (www.generally.cjb.net). A great top-down racer, actually a remake of a mid-90's shareware title Slicks'n'Slides. Slicks actually made it to a commercial game released by some australian company, but it never made it big. These days, I prefer GeneRally, as it has a more "realistic" feel.

3) MineBombers. This has some elements of boulder dash and bomber man mixed into a great hotseater. This has also a sequel coming out some time soon(?). I hope it's as good as the first one.
(Can't remember the URL to this game, made by Skitso)

4) WinHoops. A mouse gesture game where you try to throw a basketball on your desktop. Damn it's hard, but really awarding. The fun thing about this game is that you get really better when practicing. Not just your fiction game character gaining stats, but YOU getting better handling the mouse. I recently wrote a clone of this game with a sauna-theme (no basketballs involved) for a 48hour programming contest. Check it out at http://www.saunalahti.fi/~laakkon1/linux/sauna.php (finnish only, sorry).

5) All caveflying games. Caveflying is a genre that was very popular amongst finnish game developers in the mid-90's. Some classics emerged, such as Auts, V-Wing and others. I also recommend luola, a modernized caveflyer with the classic touch in the gameplay. Luola is written actually by a friend of mine, check it out at: http://www.saunalahti.fi/~laakkon1/linux/luola/index.php

6) Pirates! and Pirates! Gold. 'nuff said.

7) Big Red Racing and Ignition. Great arcade style racing games. Ignition was stunning at the time, with great looking software 3d and it ran on a P-100 (or even slower). Big Red Racing's forté is the wide variety of vehicles from heavy duty construction vehicles to minis to helicopters and boats.

8) Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. I've never played Team Fortress, which I might like too, but ET is a real kick-ass game, especially at a LAN Party with 10+ guys and computers in a small room just kickin' each others' ass. Team play is especially great in this game.

9) Tetris. I got addicted to tetris while playing it on my TI-85 during my math, physics, swedish and just about all other lessons I had.

10) Board games! My favorites are Risk and Settlers of Catan. They introduce a whole new aspect to playing. Sometimes incorporating ideas from board games make computer games a lot better (ever heard of Civilization?).

That's it. These games are definately worth checking out. I couldn't fit any more games in but maybe Soldat is still to be mentioned. As you can see, I am a great fan of hotseat multiplaying, an aspect that isn't there anymore (in large scale, anyway...).

EDIT: And oh yeah, playing a wide variety of games makes you a lot better game designer.

-Richardo.

Well this is how I think:
-If you have played lots of games in your life, and a couple recently(last 3 months) you might be a good designer, but that doesn't means you are.
-If you haven't played lots of games and none or just 1 recently and it's next to imposible for u to be a good designer.

About the titles, they are too many to count and I really didn't tried remember how many I played :p But roughly I could say, most snes games, a -50 of nes games, a -20 of sega genesis games, -20 of gameboy(meaning all gameboys) games, -10 atari games, -20 gamecube games, -20 playstation games, +700 freeware/open source/beta/freely aviable somehow pc games, and -10 commercial games(I don't have much money so I don't buy many games, and when I do, I try to be sure that they have replay value and stick to them), and like -100 game demos/shareware/trial.

When I pick a game I try to make sure it's worth playing, tought since I play lot's of freely aviable games there are times when I find things that would make some game designers go kill the bastard child who made the game. But that is why I play them a lot too, their creators aren't bound by dates or a target market. They make the game how they want and that opens the doors of creativity. Of course it's a must to play commercial games or at least demos so you know how the companies are doing it.

Quote:

Original post by kSquaredThe more kinds of books you read, the better a writer you can invariably become. Nobody learns English spontaneously. Similarly, the more kinds of games you play, the better your own can be.

Being a good writer also comes down to talent and imagination. I know a couple of people that could read hundreds of thousands of books and still not be able to write an engaging paragraph. I'm pretty sure that this translates even better to game design where there are many and varied players all thirsting after different flavours of game.
EDIT: Not that I disagree. I agree with the gist of the thread, and believe that the above quote does illustrate it well. It's just that there are two sides to the coin...

RichardoX , sounds like we have similar tastes. If you like Finnish cave flyers, check out Psygnosis Lander - they have it over on Underdogs. First and best adaptation of the medium into 3d - an excellent game, but really, really hard if you don't have a flightstick and throttle. I also loved Triplane's innovative 3-screen superlong split - its such a shame that there isn't really an appropriate platform for it - consoles are too low-res, and PCs just don't have the userbase of hotseat gaming (crowding around the keyboard is teh suck). I even have four PC gamepads, but only 4 games I have can support it - and one of them I coded myself.

Schultz, in general I found Sam to be a poorly-thought-out game. I'm never sure if the fact that the story, setting, and characters are completely unrelated was meant as a toung-in-cheek joke or was serious. At any rate, I found the gameplay terrible - it was so formulaic. It didn't matter how you entered a room, as most of the time a baddie would magically appear direcly behind you. It was completely impossible to play the game with any strategy. Combine that with the fact that one of the level-1 monsters (the skeletal goat) was worse than all the other monsters you run into at low level put together.

Worst was the fact that the saving system was quicksave instead of checkpoints. I feel so cheap hitting the qsave key before going around every corner, but the game was unplayable if you didn't do that. If you have that kind of insta-death gameplay, Halo-style checkpoints are a must.

Oh, and about Halo - halo is a very unoriginal, unremarkable game except for one thing: they took ever annoying stupid FPS feature that pissed off players and found a way to get rid of it. Ammo rationing? Guns are plentiful, and you can't hoard 'cause you can carry only a handful. Also solved the "shitty starting weapon" problem, while still giving you fun stuff to pick up. Co-op? Your teammate is automatically teleported to meet you when you hit the next checkpoint, so they won't get lost, and you respawn at the last one if you die, avoiding the doom "respawn at level start" or console "wait until the other player dies" idiotic methods of co-op gaming. Health? No stupid backtracknig for health. You just wait a few seconds for your shields to come back.

They just covered all the bases perfectly.


Anyhow, some very original console games you might have missed. They're not my favourites, but they're very good games for the PS1 that can give you some exciting ideas. Plus, they often turn up in $5 bargain bins and these days a PS1 will run you $30CAN.

-Destrega: an isometric fighting game with a wonderfully complex fireball spell system. You have an energy bar with enough power for 3 shots that recuperates quickly. Each button represents one attack type, Tidu, Este, or Fo - Fast, Strong, or Spray. By hitting the other buttons rapidly, you can burn energy to "modify" the core attack. So hitting "Este" then "Fo" fires a spray of "power" attacks, alternetly hitting "Fo" and "Este" takes your regular spray attack and makes it bigger and the projectiles more difficult to deflect. Combine that with a solid system of dodging, dashing, shielding, and other tricks makes a unique game. It also has one of the most amusingly bad "sexy" characters, who when "breathing heavily" looks like her breasts are pointing up and down.

-BallBlazer Champions: a common bin game, imagine a Kart game reformatted into 1-on-1 soccer match. The game makes some odd design decisions - controls are extremely inertial, making it very difficult to aim correctly - but the game adds a "snap" button that quickly allows you to target the opponent. The graphics are very nice for the PS1, and the various maps are incredibly inventive. The weapons are pretty much what you'd expect - chainguns, missiles, mines, and my fave, teh "ball caller". The game can be very frustrating because of its sluggish control, but in the end is solid and very unique fun. Its not hard, and its cheap, so pick it up and play through the singleplayer game on an afternoon. Quick recommendation: you might want to take a look at the control window, the default controls are the stupid "hold this button to strafe" instead of L/R strafing. Plus, it has the LucasArts classic 64/Atari game included as an easteregg.

-Gridrunner. I can't recommend this bargain bin game enough, and I see it everywhere. The game is very, very odd and kinda ugly. Its a top-view maze 1-on-1 maze game. One player is "it" the other is an unnamed position I call "runner". The map is full of flags that can be switched to a player's colour - the game ends when a set number of flags (depends on the map) are your colour. Only the "runner" may switch flags. Fundamentally, the game is tag - to stop being "it" you have to touch your opponent. To fight, you have a variety of weapons including a stun gun, homing slowdown missiles, a teleporter, mines, and a bridge-building action (instead of jump) - but all of these take energy, which must be hunted down on the map. The maps are incredible, with demented systems of ice, teleporters, catapults, speedboosters, conveyor belts, and other fun features that used to be plentiful in games but have gone out of fashion in the gaming world.

-Evil Zone. I wouldn't think that an incredibly rigidly structured fighting game would be good... and in many ways it isn't. But it is very inventive, and I find it fun on an odd mood. The game was quite obviously designed for the PC, even though it never made it there - it only has two attack buttons (like a PC pad) and it uses no "rolls" that are the bane of PC gaming. All of the attacks are long-ranged fireballs in the like, using simple combinations of "forward+attack" or "forward+attack+attack". Usually the "attack+attack" moves are secondary, less useful moves, so players quickly learn to think carefully and avoid button mashing. The characters are awesome - the game is a veritable "Battle Of The Stereotypes" - there's the school girl, the Ultraman look-alike, the creepy little girl, the big oaf - they're all oddly developed in their TV-episodic "story" modes. Another odd feature is that the game has _tons_ of scripted movie-style moves - both a plus and a minus, for the same reasons as in Final Fantasy (Oooooh, that was cool... for the first couple of times - now its just long.

-Carnage Heart. You won't find this one - its kinda rare, for good reasons. Robot design and _programming_ as a video game. Like armored core, you buy parts and build robots, but a team this time. Then you program them. An interesting feature: different processors have different clockspeeds and memory spaces available for your program. The programming is a cute 2d grid based graphical language.

-The Misadventures of Tronne Bonne. A bastard child of the Megaman series, this game is the only single-player one I've listed - its a mix between RPG (you level up your Lego-man looking Servbots and upgrade your vehicle), behind-view shooter, and puzzler from hell. The game is frequently very tedious (the level-up process for Servbots is remniscient of the old Summer Games titles), but the puzzles are unparalleled.

-Future Cop: LAPD. I think there's a PC port - an unremarkable top-view maze shooter with a remarkable multiplayer deathmatch-strategy mode. In multiplay, the map is full of neutral turrets and bases that you have to "tag" to claim... as you tag more and destroy more enemy turrets and structures, you gain money to buy support vehicles and whatnot. Kind of a "1-click-strategy" approach. It gets old pretty fast, but its an exciting and interesting way to make super-simple action-RTS.

-Critical Depth. Twisted Metal's long-forgotten little sister. This game is friggin' awesome. The catch is that it is ludicrously complicated. The control scheme is obscene, with each button mapping to 2 different controls (doubltap quickturn to strafe, shield to deflector, brake to reverse, thrust to afterburner), TM-style "special moves", an energy bar, a weapon inventory, a variety of vehicles to choose from, and an incredibly intricate and fun playmode. The principle is this: you pilot subs around in a 3d underwater environment. You and a hodge-podge of other submersible treasure hunters are tracking down "powerpods" - big glowy spheres on the map. There are 5 on each map, and they appear on radar. If they are in a player's posession, then that fact is displayed on radar as well. Each powerpod gives you a QuakeRune-like ability (damage, speed, resist, etc) - which almost makes up for the fact that each powerpod you have also makes you more of a target. Once you gether all 5, you go to a portal to exit the level. This game has so much potential - it belongs on the internet, not trapped with only 2 players and a horde of bots like the PS1 provides. The soundtrack is an excellent epic synth/orchestral mix that is obviously of naval and pirate movies. In general, it makes up for its bewildering controls and stat-bar oriented combat with its wonderful power-pod based objective.

I don't know why, but the PS1 was by far the best platform for really, really risk-taking inventive games.

Well, in answer to the original post, I don't think it's "just" how many games one plays, or even how much they play, it's how they approach the games they play. When I play games, I don't (hell I can't) just play them for enjoyment anymore. I pick them apart, I disect them, I think why would someone do such and such, and how does it affect my experience. I come up with positive, and negative reasons behind decisions that I agree, or disagree with. I think of solutions to what I may "think" was a bad design choice.

Experience with different games, and playing as much as you can certainly helps, but it doesn't suddenly mean one can design games. Knowing the why, the reasons, and having the forethought when designing (which comes mostly from experience), is what sets the Designers by nature from the designers by title. In fact I think the title is throw around way too loosely now.

The relationship between the two (playing/designing) is necessary, but I think the person who is able to also learn from the games they play (and not just this sucks or this is cool) will have a better chance understanding the reasons behind the choices they make when designings omething on their own.

It is rather true that even though there is a strong relationship between gaming experience and design, it by no means encompasses all thats involved. Even with that ammount of experience its still a good idea to test the market for particular combinations and design mixtures.

pxtl: I agree about WarWinds to some degree, the AI was completely retarded, i swear it was all just a pre-made script instead of a real AI. Multiplayer also left something to be desired, but i really did like the atmosphere and idea's that it had.

Hi all - just watching Enter The Dragon when this question popped into my head that might be relevant to this post.

Is it just playing games that makes you a good designer? If you had two people, one of whom had played everything under the sun, but did little else; versus someone who had spent less (albeit still a reasonable) time playing games, but also had spent time reading, in museums etc etc, learning about philosophy, anthropology, any-other-ology you fancy, and just generally being interested in anything life can throw at you - who do you think would be able to bring the greatest influence / impact on game design? I was thinking about this in relation to working conditions as well - is it good that your folks are never being exposed to other stimuli other than games themselves?

Jim.