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Original post by dwarfsoft Anyway... Would it help if the player was required to take their character around a threat slowly and quietly... Say, a sleeping troll for example.
I think that''s the key. When your game establishes that running in fighting is not a valid option and that stealth is required, things can get very tense. Combine this with a horror setting and traditional horror film trickery, and maybe you''d get real fear from a player.
I can''t get frightened at films or games but can understand why people might. With that in mind...
Two scary, tense games: Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid. The former because it''s horror and was designed like that. It uses all of the tricks perfectly. The latter because you can spend ages sneaking around but you''re always waiting for that one thing to go wrong. That one guard that see''s you. Tense indeed.
Imagine Metal Gear Silent. That would be some scary shit right there.
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First - Sandman... Damn you! We are trying to DISSUADE people from save-reload constantly... Death should be an EVENT, not a regular occurance.
Dwarf: I know, I know, and I agree, but that wasnt really the point of the example. Whether you allow save and reload or not, the opportunity still exists for the player to replay the game - but will the experience be so good second time around if the player knows where everything will be, and when it will appear? a small amount of randomisation can give more replayability and tension than a fixed script, with minimal extra effort on the part of the developer.
Going back to the original point of the post, which I think I completely missed anyway, () I think that part of the problem is that players like to see everything and do everything they can in a game, simply because it is there. And why not? After all, there must be a point in the evil swamp of doom (I am ignoring your copyright because I am sure it has been done before ) otherwise the designers wouldnt have put it there. Even if they get their arses thoroughly whipped while they are there, and end up going back after they have levelled up a bit, to try and get some payback. After all, there must be a treat of some sort at the end, and if they dont get to see ALL the game then they aren''t getting their moneys worth. Its the same sort of thing that makes players wander round quake maps for hours after they have killed everything, trying to find every last secret.
As for the troll, I wonder how many people would try murdering him in his sleep before bothering to try and creep past. The sort of mentality that prevails in games like diablo is that by not killing him, you are missing out on valuable XP....
Yeah, you can''t not have a reward in that area, because it would be totally unfair to the gamers who have to find everything you put in the game. If you design this so-called swamp of doom, you just wasted a good 2-weeks of development time if you don''t want the gamer to go there anyway. What you want to do, is scare the gamer so much that they don''t want to go there, and then put in circumstances that force them there, without it being obvious from the start. Lets take a good fantasy book. You know, the kind with a nice big map of the world in the begining? You study the map, and see the "forest of shadows" and the "mountains of dark storms" and you say to yourself, "I can''t wait to read about that place." Just because you can''t wait to read about it, doesn''t mean it isn''t scary when you find out the characters have to go somewhere. Sometimes, it''s scarier if you have to go somewhere you don''t know anything about. Think Alien when they''re checking out the planet for the first time. You know somethings going to jump out, it freaks you out. But then nothing happens. Until they are all back on the ship again and the movie is only half over, THEN you are scared. So just plain randomness, like in most rpgs, isn''t scary, and isn''t very effective at drawing the player into the gameworld. But including crazy stories about places in the game, maybe even places the gamer wont know much about (just enough to be scared) could work really well.
C''mon guys... give me some credit . As if I would have told the player that it would be beneficial to ''sneak past the troll'' if it wasn''t going to be beneficial... It would make me a liar
As for the murderous breed... my game doesn''t work on the same XP level. IF you are a murderous character... or a warrior, then you can expect that XP might be gained by slaying the said beast - but that wouldn''t mean jack to the priest or the thief (the theif would probably try and pick-pocket it Like in LOTR )
Oh... and about the "Swamp of Doom" (c)... Well.. the copyright was written originally because it was such an overused idea... hence why bother copyrighting it (for humor?)... But the creature name was almost mine aswell - The Cat on Red Dwarf used a similar word in a game of scrabble that meant "The sound a cat makes when its genitals are caught in a closing book".
I havn''t read all of this, but how about a game that learns, and remembers where you load and save, and if you get a chance to know where the monster is, and then reload, then the monster should get to know that you will come in such and such a way, etc.
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Original post by dwarfsoft If the player were to understand that an area of the map (ie, "the swamp of doom"[(c)Dwarfsoft 2001]) is going to absolutely spell disaster for them then they should fear it.
So now the player has been told that the ugly ''swamp of doom'' (c) is at (x,y) on the map and the nasty jhxkrqz[(c)Dwarfsoft 2001] people are likely to smite our hero back to the nether-realms which spawned them. Our hero is now likely to think ''ah, the game wants me to get into this slimy mudhole and do some smiting of my own''.
Thus, the problem that is faced is how to relevantly warn a player where they should NOT go, without actually driving them to the aforementioned place.
Q. Dwarfsoft, What is the purpose of this "swamp of dread" . Why is it dangerous and what is the purpose of trying to make the player worried by what it contains?
Is it to have it as part of the plot, ie. if the containment barrier of the T-Rex pen is broken there will be big trouble. ?
Is it to make them worried by it until they have the powers to deal with the threat.. ie. a cloak of invisibility which allows them to sneak through the "Super mutant" fortress, but doesn''t give them the power to destroy the threat. Ie. They have to be careful not go give their position away with noise / footprints in water...
If you want to make them fear something, maybe have it affect things that they care about.. ie. it will eat their friends, break their prized Minigun...
In the context of RPG''s and FPS''s I think the best way to inspire fear is mainly through NPC AI. What you need to do is limit the players senses, and then add some(very few) NPCs who have AI that would make them hunt the player. I think this is a technique used all the time in movies and books... If the player is being hunted, he needs to look around every corner; he needs to pay close attention. I liked the idea someone made about the monsters playing with the player before they kill him. Perhaps sometimes the player would know about the hunter, sometimes not. But you could give clues like footprints and whatnot.
If the player senses or feels that someone or something is watching him, he will be more tense, and, when this monster finally jumps out and attacks him, he will be genuinely scared.
As for implementation... For starters, you could simply have the monster follow the player and decide whether or not to attack. This would mean that the monster might watch the player pass 5 feet infront of him without attacking just to inspire fear.
Anyone ever played the original Alone in the Dark? Aside from being based on the writings of H P Lovecraft, which are unsettling enough by themselves and a must read for any self respecting game developer, it demonstrates some of the best ways to scare a player in a supernatural game.
Warning:this post contains examples which will act as spoilers.
In my opinion, the best way to scare a player is this: Have them enter an area which could be dangerous, then check it over for danger thoroughly, and satisfy themselves that is is safe. Then they get settled in, and suddenly something happens to make that location become dangerous. This can be as blatant as having the player leave a companion there, and return minutes later to find them slain or vanished, or as subtle as returning and finding an object moved slightly, a window open, a lamp lit or extinguished, or a book previously closed opened at a certain page, by an unseen intruder who may or may not be still there, hiding. The room suddenly becomes dangerous, and the player is startled by this. Previously the situation was known: This room is definitely safe, all the others aren''t. Suddenly everything is unknown, and all rooms must now be suspect. It is the fear of the unknown which is the most powerful kind, especially the very suddenly unknown.
An example of this (*SPOILER ALERT*) is on the second floor landing of the Derceto mansion in AITD. Carnby, the hero, walks down a flight of stairs, through a visibly empty room, and out onto the landing. From here he proceeds into another room, and all of a sudden he is being silently followed by a zombie from the very room he just passed through. The shock is further increased by a special overhead camera angle as this happens, which has a very claustrophobic, confining effect.
Furthermore, there is another exit from this room, leading into a very dangerous area. If the player runs into this area and encounters an unstoppable monster, he will immediately attempt to retreat to the last room - which is suddenly occupied by the zombie following him. The zombie is extremely easy to kill, but the shock of its being there is enough to miss a heartbeat.
Another example (*EVEN BIGGER SPOILER*)is near the end of the game Blade Runner. It is a non linear game, so you may have to play several times to find this scene. It is the scene of McCoys realisation that he may be a replicant. Up to this point, he was a detective, with a comfy appartment, a dog, a squad car or "spinner", and the right to carry a gun and hunt down suspects. Being a law enforcer, he had authority. The situation was safe. All of a sudden, he returns home one night after hunting reps to find his dog gone and a stranger living in his appartment, who is now the legal owner. There is no record of his ever having lived there. His dog has disappeared, he has no job and is accused of being a replicant and attacked if he contacts his former colleagues. He has lost his car and has no transport, and the police patrols in the streets, formerly providing back up, now shoot at him on sight, and he has no choice but to flee into the radioactive sludge of the Los Angeles sewer system (circa 2017). The situation has quite definitely changed to "unknown and dangerous" I don''t know about you lot, but when I played that bit of the game, it was quite scary.
"If you go into enough detail, everything becomes circular reasoning." - Captain Insanity
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Thanks to all the goblins over in our little 
