Spring RTS Engine

Read these!

Discussion is welcome.


...also this

I read the first paragraph of your first link and was like:



So then I stopped.

Fascinating read, especially the second part. Still, i think that filtering is dangerous, it leads you to auto-discard great ideas, just because they are not archievable with current technology, the workforce accessible.

Therefore, dreaming on.

I think, Picasso, you have no filters

I only read the last link, which I believe is your blog if I remember correctly MidKnight. It was well written and interesting, and I think an accurate break-down of how some things in our world work.

Snoop and I have made it well known on the boards that we're not programmers and thus CT has gotten where it is today purely on force of will, and willing to accept what we can get. The kind and awesome contributions of others has been the only way we've gotten to a closer realization of what we'd like out of the game. My understanding is we're the first major spring game with an economy like we have, and I think that's because Knorke just had a really good idea. I remember when he announced it, Forb was like "oh my gosh, that's the way you should do mining!"

Likewise, I think ultimately there's more factors to what sort of filters someone has. I work in a bike shop, and it's just me and my manager. He's been there for about ten years, and really knows his stuff. I've been there for about a year and a half, and my manager tells me I'm one of the best mechanics he's ever hired. Despite that, sometimes I'll come to a decision that there's "nothing more I can do" on a job because all of the... "official", or "appropriate" approaches are exhausted. Then he'll look at it, and be like "wrap a piece of metal around there to hold it in place", and I'll blink and be like "oh, yeah. duh", and that'll be that.

Experience is the obvious factor here, something you touched on heavily. I think the biggest difference between these situations is the nature of the work. We both needed ideas (bike fix for me, hypothetical game mechanic designs for the examples in your blog), but we needed different ideas. The fix comes from a maintenance of things, not the creation of. Therefore, the more experienced have a lot more actual solutions, good ones probably, instead of just a lot of ways to "shoot an idea down."

Of course, you're probably primarily focused with the creation of ideas. This little post sort of evolved as it went, so I hope it is somewhat relevant

"If you think that having a story or believable characters is no more important to games than they are in pornos** get out."

Fuck off. Some of the best games I played had no story beyond "avoid missing ball for high score". Characters and story are a way to masturbate in the face of your audience with your own creative brilliance, having the balls to take the back seat and make everything about the player is a virtue.

hey midknight... give me a beam laser which obeys gravity and has a curved trajectory like a missile projectile can with the option of high/low trajectory without editing the engine.

without editing the engine?
then there is only one way!!!!1

lua can
-draw graphics
-get unit positions
-damage units
-read terrain
put it together
???
profit.

smoth wrote:hey midknight... give me a beam laser which obeys gravity and has a curved trajectory like a missile projectile can with the option of high/low trajectory without editing the engine.

Wellllllllllllll.............

KP has the connection.............

If you read more carefully, it's not:
"Everything is possible!"
But:
"Everything has a cost!"
And:
"Speak with your programmers, they know better than you what's doable."

KDR_11k wrote:"If you think that having a story or believable characters is no more important to games than they are in pornos** get out."

Fuck off. Some of the best games I played had no story beyond "avoid missing ball for high score". Characters and story are a way to masturbate in the face of your audience with your own creative brilliance, having the balls to take the back seat and make everything about the player is a virtue.

This.

The whole article sounds like wankery from some person who fancies themselves a genius but has never had to implement the hard part.

Yes, brainstorming - *true* brainstorming, where you don't discard anything, is an important part of the creative process.

But after you build a tree of ideas, you have to prune it down to a kernel of "what's the best cost/benefit of this idea?" What's the good parts that will pay out with the most fun for the least work?

knorke wrote:without editing the engine?
then there is only one way!!!!1

lua can
-draw graphics
-get unit positions
-damage units
-read terrain
put it together
???
profit.

Doesn't work with the plethora of weapon call stuff like hit by weapon what about shields? Oh didn't think about those did you?


A lot of these lua hacks end in you having to redo most of the existing functionality. So yeah

Also <3 pxtl

Doesn't work with the plethora of weapon call stuff like hit by weapon what about shields? Oh didn't think about those did you?

iirc you can call call-ins functions just like any other functions. lua can read/set a units shield status.

KDR_11k wrote:"If you think that having a story or believable characters is no more important to games than they are in pornos** get out."

Fuck off. Some of the best games I played had no story beyond "avoid missing ball for high score". Characters and story are a way to masturbate in the face of your audience with your own creative brilliance, having the balls to take the back seat and make everything about the player is a virtue.

I don't sympathize with either of those statements because they take extremes and express them to the exclusion of the opposing view. Their underlying concepts, however, are both valid in that a game can be improved either by the introduction of rigorous and high quality literary elements, or by the conscious exclusion of them. Characters and story can be supportive and player-centric, just as the spartan presentation of a "fully player driven experience" can be the dodge of a lazy developer or another vice.

I think a game with too strong a naration ceases to be a game. Final fantasy I am looking at you! I hate writers wanking on about how interesting their characters are. I've met tons of interesting people I don't want thier life story!

Games are games meant to be played. Not <monster encountered> <cutscene>gameplay<cutscene><pretentious story scroll><cutscene>wander map.

The characters need to be there but the story is a secondary character. If I want a good story, there are CENTURIES of authors.

Imho, Portal showed us how it's done: you never had to *wait* for dialogue. GlaDOS spoke in short, amusing quips that built her character and put a smile on your face, but never forced you to *wait* while she blabbed away. No cutscenes, no scripted moments - you keep playing while she voice-overs her commentary.

Iirc, Starcraft often was similar - sometimes the game *stopped* for character commentary, but often the character commentary kept rolling through the game.

I can't remember where I found it, but there was an amusing article about playing with modern young gamers - gamers for whom FMV cutscenes *aren't* a novelty.

The kid was playing GTA4 and had no idea who Roman Bellic was. Because the character existed through cutscenes and phone-calls that anybody intent on actually *playing* would skip.

I don't regard that as strong narration, I regard it as heavy handed writing misapplied. Cutscenes, particularly cutscenes rendered in a different way than the rest of the game, are often disruptive though not always.

I wouldn't say a good story is a secondary element, but that it requires a lot of integration with the art elements and some flexibility. In text, much of good writing involves laying out visual concepts - in a game, this can be shouldered by the artists and effects in part. However, the potential utility of plot direction, instruction, and dialogue remains. Not all titles use writing well, of course.

No More Heroes uses in engine cutscenes and sporadic dialogue to familiarize the player with the character and emphasize the insanity inherent in the situations of play to great benefit. Even the phone call before the first major fight furthers the experience, making the distant backer a sort of collaborator and providing some supporting motivation. Portal and Portal 2 primarily deliver dialogue on the fly without disrupting play - adding to the general active pace as well as introducing both oppositional and collaborative entities to what are, primarily, puzzle games.

Contrast those with some sections of Ocarina Of Time, where a mute protagonist and a collection of poorly characterized and sporadically placed non-player characters often leaves the player wandering in a repetitive or featureless area. Talking with characters leads to in game cutscenes as in No More Heroes, but they're functionally similar to looking at stationary sign and do little to connect the player to the world in general. The instructional writing, included through Navi, is one of the more aggravating elements of the title - it is involuntary, invasive and out of place as much as it is functional - and it is because the world as a whole uses the story and the tools of storytelling poorly and inconsistently.

Many games have less invasive stories but I hate silent characters... Hl portal. One of the best things about games like dn3d was that you were always wondering what crazy stuff. The dude was going to say. But we didn't need his life story.

Hell I like the cutscenes in bayonetta as they set the mood in a comical fashion. But take something like actually following the story most "RPGs" where you move from talking head to talking head.. Screw that! Which is why I like oblivion etc because I just blow people off and do my thing unless I want to help them. I completed more side quests than the actual story :p. It should BE ROLEPLAYING not chose your own adventure book.

Portal has fun details they are good abience and mood but it is terribly linear.

Which brings me to shogo.. Did you help your brother or side against him? Me I ripped rio ishikawa's leg off if that tells you my story choice..

actually i like stories, if they are good. if they are good, they give you a choice, sometimes moar choices then most players can handle = "Planescape, systemshock2.."


What i hate is storys were you are a fixxed character already at start (and nobody tells you), and you walk through those lines like through a gap-text, and mind it, not even a good fascinating gap test, moar like a dual choice test (good||evil/bananaz||punishment)...

Smoth, you only hate stories, because in games you notice way moar how bad most writers are, when it comes to handling dynamic situations. Also most of those storywriters, wanted to do a moviescript and just ventured into the wrong media.

Hl2, warcraft 3.. good stories are possible. But they need a good game to support them, only excellent stories could survive on there own, but those then- dont need a game. I can sit there, reading the book, forgetting about the interaction for moments, dont even missing it. Such qualitys are rare- and have not been seen in the last five years.

smoth wrote:Many games have less invasive stories but I hate silent characters... Hl portal. One of the best things about games like dn3d was that you were always wondering what crazy stuff. The dude was going to say. But we didn't need his life story.

Hell I like the cutscenes in bayonetta as they set the mood in a comical fashion. But take something like actually following the story most "RPGs" where you move from talking head to talking head.. Screw that! Which is why I like oblivion etc because I just blow people off and do my thing unless I want to help them. I completed more side quests than the actual story :p. It should BE ROLEPLAYING not chose your own adventure book.

Portal has fun details they are good abience and mood but it is terribly linear.

Which brings me to shogo.. Did you help your brother or side against him? Me I ripped rio ishikawa's leg off if that tells you my story choice..

Ha, ha, ha, happy leg ripping.

Bayonetta was great! It was a lot of fun running around chopping up "angels" in that game.

Woman finish your quest to make me a sandwich! Legend states that the bread of wheat and tuna of delicious are located in the cabinets of storing. You may not suceed at first but keep crafting, you eventually get a sandwich