.map file relation to EoC geography?

Very good points, Shane. I always liked the speeds and distances in I-War, even the time acceleration readout to let you know that this trip should actually be taking 8 times as long, helped me to feel the distances. In EoC they increased the speeds hugely, which makes everything, as you say seem smaller. So they added lots and lots of places to see. Problem was that those places weren't very interesting places to see, regardless.

The long travel times has been tried before. A friend of mine play tested a MMORPG set in space called Fargate for its developers before release. It tanked. I never tried it so I don't speak from personal experience here, but one of the reasons cited for failure was that the player had to sit for long periods of time (real time, not simulated time) and wait for their ship to go from A to B. Usually, B was just as uninteresting as A so, who cared. Whether the anticipation, or sense of consequences was there or not, the reward was too lame to justify any of it.

Consequence and player investment can influence emotional tone of locale, but I don't think they define it entirely. The shorthand of convention that can tell a player what kind of emotion to feel is an immediately processed impression regardless of the intensity of that emotion (Valence vs. Magnitude). Alot of this joy coming from personal investment and involvement derives from the player and what they bring to the game istelf, rather than something that the game istelf can provide by itself. Call it 'gameplay styles' if you like. Some people care, others don't.

Games that don't allow saves when the player wants them is, in my view cruel and frustrating, but that probably has to do with my style of gameplay vs. the styles of other players who abuse the save function. I would still like to see saves at stations available to players. Players who constantly smack the quicksave hotkey are usually in a rush to 'beat the game' without any loss of time just so they can get through it and on to the next thing. Games that allow this frequent saving aren't inherently without consequences or emotional impact on the player...but the impact of those emotional moments are limited to the one time you get exposed...not the second. I'm a high absorption type, so I've been scared almost to the point of jumping out of my chair during some games I've played, much to my delight (I count these as 'successful' gaming moments). Second time 'round, it just isn't the same. If you, as a player character 'die' at this moment, the frustration of having to replay a long approach, go through some cutscenes, beat a difficult attack off, before getting to the same point is frustration that takes away from successful game moments.

Games are so artificial, there is no true consequence we can apply that will make a player apporach their gameplay with earnest investment, unless we can fry their motherboard completely every time their character dies (kind of pointless, though, if you ask me). One possibility for this would be to limit the number of saves per mission, or to rate the players performance afterward based on the number of saves used to complete it (completed mission without any saves = "heroic"; completed with 30 saves = "suck-ass cowardly wimp" or something equally insulting).

--
Hot4Darmat

Second time 'round, it just isn't the same. If you, as a player character 'die' at this moment, the frustration of having to replay a long approach, go through some cutscenes, beat a difficult attack off, before getting to the same point is frustration that takes away from successful game moments.

I agree with that completely. This approach would be frustrating in a plot/mission-driven environment. I'd coupled my non-save/slow-speed direction with heavy RPG elements so that, upon dying, the player has to start a new character/ship in a free-form universe where missions are generic and plot is very muted. There would then be no chance of replaying an entire game and being held up at one specific point... each game is somewhat different. (Think Role-playing game with ships as character equipment.)

Added to that the stuff I posted at INA about mission installments (campaigns). I think it would succeed.

I need to just build the damn thing and stop pestering everyone, don't I? I tend to procrastinate in the guise of planning.

I think I'll give it a whirl.

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

I would never be one to argue that gameplay is not critical, but I also have to admit that movies do a good job of setting mood despite the person watching getting no choices at all. I think we can separate out the elements we have to work with, and use some even if we don’t use all. Color, sound, music, models, scripts, cutscenes, and gameplay are all items that have been mentioned.

As far as building a new set of “short hand� for the kinds of “feelings� we want – I think a key part of making it work is picking some elements and using them in a consistent manner. Like the music that plays in Jaws just before each shark attack. The movie builds a connection for you. I think one of the things that makes a graveyard so spooky – is that spooky things keep happening in graveyards!

So to make a pirate cove a dangerous tension filled place – pirate coves must be 1. distinctive and 2. dangerous.

I think it is worth talking a moment about functional distinctiveness: A market can be signaled in a bunch a ways, but at the root it will not seem a market unless you can buy stuff. And an underworld bar is much seedier if you can find a pilot to do illegal stuff. Or perhaps a junk yard can really have ships and parts laying around for you to purchase.

One advantage of working the functional angle is that it becomes easier to build the world in both a sensible fashion, and an automatic fashion. Perhaps seedy entertainment stations attract fences where you can purchase cheap parts, but also thugs who might rob you. These two items together give you a reason to visit, and a reason for fear, in a way that random pirate attacks do not.

EoC did have some of these ideas in traffic scripts. Sometimes police raids happened. Sometimes people tried to pirate you. But most of the time, these things happened without sound so you never knew what was going on. Or didn’t notice till your ship took a hit. Just getting some speech into those traffic scripts could be a large help.


-Gtrout

I love these discussions, and the points made here have been valid and all very good. I'll try to refrain from getting too long winded, so mostly I'll just say that I like the points made, and feel that they should be archived somewhere safe in some "game design theory" place (aside from the POG archive/book that I think Second Chance is working on still).

Yes, to make an area convey a real sense to the player of its mood, its function should match its form. Scary things should happen in scary looking places, seedy things should happen in seedy looking places, etc. I agree totally. I guess I was just trying to say that, even before the function occurs, the tone of a given environment is set almost instantly and subconsciously (in movies anyway) using that shorthand. Graveyards convey spookiness to the viewer even before the spooky things start happening. The emotional tone is 'primed' so to speak before events are set in motion. We can go a long way to doing this in space sims as well, with a little (or sometimes alot of) effort.

Just me yammmering on again...

--
Hot4Darmat

they should be archived somewhere safe

How about we try to build a few. Just a handful of places. Perhaps not all the gameplay stuff, which can be complex. Focus on the other elements and see just how well they work. How far can you get?

Granted each different mod will want to implement something in a different way, but there is bound to be some overlap. And it never hurts to see an idea in action. I mean if it really is visual models that make the most difference, then hours could be lost working up unique sounds - or vice versa. It would give some guidence as to where the effort is best spent.

Once the elements begin to be constructed - they can be mixed and matched - and people can say - oh yeah, that works for me.

Do you guys have a vote as to what area you would like to model first? Hot4 has several good ideas on a ship graveyard. Shane has some great bits for seedy mining places. Maybe we should do 3, low brow, high brow, and scary place? I could whip up some code to place and activate simple triggers pretty quickly. And place a few sounds. Custom code is quick, if not very reusable.

Somehow I am thinking I am going to be suprised at the final answer to how the parts fit together. Remember the start of EoC where you fly out your storm petral, and some thugs try to take it from you? I think that was meant to convey how dangerous the Badlands are (but that there are good people too).

Contrast with StarWars - "A wretched hive of scum and villany" which proves true when Luke gets into a fight just for standing next to the wrong person.

Both scenes have a kind of random violence (like would be coded with POG). But somehow the second scene was more effective at getting across the danger feeling. I don't have the tape, so I can't really go back to examine the music.



-Gtrout

I think one way to solve the game-save problem is to have 'save locations'. e.g. al friendly stations can give you 'one' save point, baring your home base, of course. This would encourage players to use them stratigacally...get more friendly stations and at the same time not get the fustration of not having same games at all. However, With EoC you have 'auto-dock-to-station' thing, which means one only has to get away from the enemies and into the badlands to save the game. This is a good balence, atm i wouldnt change it. I always panic when i get by an LDSI whilst nothing works and I have no sensors lol.

Jwk...comander of =HEMP HUNGRY MONKEY=
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=310