How would you make a morality/character alignment system?
Okay, what function do morality/character alignment systems perform?
They usually control:
1. What powers the characters can get/have
2. What choices the player is capable of making
3. Other characters/enemies reactions to the player
4. What ending you get
http://www.giantbomb.com/moral-decisions/3015-93/ Continue reading
Rising Thunder, Pocket Rumble, Divekick, Rivals of Aether… what’s the point of all these “beginner-friendly” games? Traditional fighting games are overwhelming at first, but you have to keep PLAYING them to git gud. Playing these baby games won’t magically make you a KoF/GG/Melee champion.
How many games do we need to dumb-down (oh, I mean, “simplify”) mechanics for scrubs before we realize that they won’t learn no matter what. Also, enough with “we want to explore the strategic element”. You can do that with all these other games that don’t need some 1 or 2-button control scheme.
The point is, I can bust out divekick and get anyone off the street playing in seconds.
King of Fighters can be overwhelming to someone who only plays Street Fighter, Guilty Gear is overwhelming to anyone who hasn’t played an arc sys fighting game before. Playing Street Fighter won’t make you a champion in those games, but it will give you a leg up, and you’ll certainly be able to wreck anyone starting fresh in those games. I know I’ve picked up random fighting games and been able to fight on par with people experienced in them just using fundamentals.
Having a simpler game to learn allows beginners to focus on the few tools they need to win, like fireball/anti-air, like the basics of footsies, meter management, simple combos, and so on. That’s a game that needs to exist in my opinion. If you don’t have games with a greater accessibility teach people the basics of the harder games, then it becomes a lot harder to get people into those harder games.
I’ve gotten people to play traditional fighting games with me and tried to give them the introduction and they were like, “This is cool, but there’s way too much stuff for me.”
How many games do we need to dumb-down (oh, I mean, “simplify”) mechanics for scrubs before we realize that they won’t learn no matter what. Also, enough with “we want to explore the strategic element”. You can do that with all these other games that don’t need some 1 or 2-button control scheme.
People will learn. Releasing new games with simpler control schemes isn’t harming the games we already have. They’re not establishing a new competitive standard. The further point I made is that these games are unique and do things other fighting games aren’t necessarily doing, which by itself validates their existence.
Being bad at a game does not make you a scrub. It does not make sense to write people off as irredeemable when they could potentially learn. If nothing else, these games are a useful tool to me personally, for introducing people to traditional fighting games in person.
These games teach you more with all their additional mechanics. Why regress. If you feel overwhelmed, there’s always the early entries in a respective series (e.g. SFII).
Except SFII is still too complicated for a lot of people, and on top of that, has the worst input read algorithm next to SFI, making it hard to even play the game at a beginner level unless you’re better at special move inputs than you’d need to be in order to play a more complex recent game.
Depth comes at the price of complexity, and sometimes people need a scaffolded experience or they simply get overwhelmed. It’s a regular pattern, beginners have so much to take in all at once to even play the game, they go a ton of rounds fumbling with the few controls they know and mashing buttons.
Simpler games with more straightforward basic functions can help alleviate this and allow people to develop the basic skills to understand the more complex games. Otherwise fighting games become a genre with no entry point, and that’s dangerous.
And there’s also the part where you glorify sub-SFII games like Divekick and Pocket Fighter. These games aren’t really good for learning either, I don’t care how you spin it. How many people have played those games and then seriously taken up more complex fighters? Usually, people get serious about FGs are actually playing with other people (friends, tourneys). Or through their desire to improve. These types of 1 or 2-button games are just gimmicks that become boring after a short period. They might be worth mentioning because their simplicity lets you easily discuss more fundamental concepts in the genre, but that is about the extent to it. I mean, people don’t discuss level design in NSMBW because it’s obviously too difficult, so they stick to the simpler SMB, and that’s fine for educational purposes, but we can’t keep teaching 1+1=2 over and over, nor should we glorify the work of people who think that coming up with 1 (not even 1+1, but literally just 1, which is what Divekick and Pocket Fighter are) is some revolutionary new idea.
Basically, if someone comes out with a sub-SMB platformer (like an autorunner), we ignore it, correct? So why behave differently for fighting games or any other genre? That kind of started as one ask, but turned into another.
Maybe they’re not good for learning? I don’t know yet. I haven’t had a serious chance to test out teaching people through them. So far I’ve mostly just been going with 3rd strike because it’s free and online.
I don’t really know how well they work as an introduction tool. They’re still pretty new. I admit that I’ve barely gotten to play pocket fighter, and never with another person.
I think they’re worth a try. Maybe I’m wrong and they don’t translate into anything. How about we wait and see?
The other thing is, Divekick is absolutely 1+1. There’s a lot more going on in Divekick than in an autorunner. I know it looks simple to you. Even I thought the concept was kind of stupid when I first saw it, but after playing it with other people it clicked and became interesting. Divekick asks a lot more of the player than any autorunner does. There are a lot more “inferential judgments” going on. (totally coining that term on the spot here, might even throw it in the glossary)
It’s like footsies in a traditional fighting game, it doesn’t make any sense to you when you first start playing, so you just mash, then you wonder why the other guy is hitting you more. I know I’ve had many people get surprised when they actually sit down and play divekick with me and realize that there’s a lot more to it than they initially thought.
And Pocket Fighter is more complex than Divekick, so it probably has more complex strategy to it.
The other thing is, fighting games are way more complex than SMB. If you strip away SMB you have something that is barely a game, if you strip away fighting games, you still have something left that is arguably just as complex as SMB.
What are your influences in your work?
That’s complicated. There’s a lot. Between places I’ve been, things I’ve read, games I’ve played, and the experiences I’ve had. The following is not in strict chronological order.
Egoraptor’s sequelitis was an early influence. I wanted to make a game analysis channel with some friends because of him. It showed to me that there was a hidden layer to games that I didn’t really perceive. That’s what made those cartoons so successful I think. That’s why channels like NerdWriter or Every Frame a Painting are successful. It’s the basis of video essays. I had a similar experience early on in college with film theory. My storytelling professor told us about a scene from a film and he recontextualized the scene in a way that was incredible. He also broke down scenes from disney movies like 101 Dalmatians into all the staging and other elements going on in them, things that people see and perceive and pick up on, but don’t consciously examine why those elements are arranged.
Of course being on 4chan /v/ was a big deal. It’s a cesspool, but a bunch of intelligent people pass through and there’s no easier way to stay on top of what’s currently happening as well as get obscure content. I got introduced to extra credits, I found other blogs and resources on game design from amateurs, like Dagda-mor
http://dagda-mor.blogspot.com/
Running into icycalm and the ghetto forum was something that helped me figure out where I stood and develop my ideas, even though I’m not a fan of their practices and my current ideas don’t really derive from theirs in any way. The ghetto ended up introducing a ton of games to me that I wasn’t previously familiar with, and I was able to get good at fighting games and play a bunch of obscure ones thanks in part to them. Got into older games and got a ton of NES recommendations from one guy. Nobody there agreed with my views, and I had to figure out a coherent way of voicing my position, and iterate on my position to really argue with them. From threads on 4chan and other resources I started assembling my playlists of vidya skill videos. I also gained countless infographics, like that old one positioning narratology and ludology as juxtapositions, opposites.
Early Gather Your Party videos like the rise and fall of bunnyhopping as well as instig8’s videos were an influence in presentation formats. Video essays like that are rather common now.
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences
I read this a lot in high school and college. It probably helped my analytical thought process more than a lot of other things. In addition to it I read books on influential psychology, the “you are not so smart” blog, other resources on behavioral psychology as applied to human behavior, hypnosis, and neurolinguistic programming.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016632/A-Theory-of-Fun-10
This work more than any others of raph koster’s has influenced my view of fun in relation to games.
I also became familiar with speedruns and TAS, and originally I didn’t like speedruns, only TAS. I had negative experiences with rhythm games, super meat boy, and other really rote score-based games that I did not really get the appeal of speedruns. TAS was cool because it was like pure magic. I eventually came around, I’ve explained that elsewhere. Speedruns have helped me understand a lot of how games are put together, though my own investigations have helped too.
http://tasvideos.org/
http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Main_Page
Fighting games helped that, because they require you to know a lot about their systems. Thankfully Smash Bros Melee was well documented, helping me out with that game.
http://www.sirlin.net/
Sirlin helped out a lot, he’s done a ton of great and practical writing on games.
http://kayin.moe/
Kayin’s written some neat stuff, can be a dick over personal and game politics.
Sean Malstrom has made me think about how fun, arcadey action oriented games might not only be popular, but in the financial best interest of companies.
http://sethhearthstone.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/of-an-eclectic-dialectic/
zeboyd published a bunch of nice stuff on RPGs
http://zeboyd.com/2013/09/10/why-games-like-the-wonderful-101-are-a-poor-fit-for-the-gaming-press/
Radiator has interesting notes on level design, this one in particular
http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2012/07/thief-1s-assassins-and-environmental.html
This is a larger compilation by Hamish Todd, who also independently published interesting articles on gama sutra and even kotaku
http://www.critical-distance.com/2013/10/02/the-art-of-level-design-analysis/
Reading Kirbykid’s writings and disagreeing with a large chunk of them and other stuff has been a big influence on getting me in the right place. Used to participate in google hangout sessions with him and other people affiliated with him. I worked with him on the starseed observatory, but regrettably never contributed a piece to it. I felt like I kind of missed out, because I did have a unique idea for it.
http://critical-gaming.com/
Raph continues to write cool stuff on his blog
http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/20/narrative-is-not-a-game-mechanic/
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCC5F89938410209E
I don’t know how I found all this stuff, it just comes to me, and I have a lot more stuff I could cite, but I won’t.
Do you think companies should try to innovate controllers or keep the standard DualShocker format?
Dual analog format.
I assume you’re asking because this video was just put out:
I think the dual analog controller is the best controller for the majority of third person games. The trouble with innovating in controllers is you need to come up with one standard that works for a ton of games. In the arcade days, they could and did make controllers unique to every individual game.
What I think needs innovation is the mouse/keyboard, but it’s also the hardest space to sustainably innovate in. Console creators can set controller standards when they make a new console to whatever they want them to be and customers have to comply. PCs have a ton of peripherals, but apart from joysticks like flight sticks, few have really caught on enough to sustain more than niche genres. You can’t even really assume players have extra mouse buttons like a lot of gamer mice have. (I have a Zowie FK, it has 2 extra buttons on both sides, I don’t get a lot of use out of them and am frankly not even used to using them as a result)
If you’ve tried playing a dark souls game on PC, you’d know how weird it can be. The mouse is like the face buttons on a controller, but you only have 3 buttons instead of 4, and one of them isn’t that easily accessible. You need to sacrifice directional control to get more than 2-3 buttons over on the keyboard side. The total number of directly accessible buttons goes down on PC relative to console, so it’s harder to have a large number of directly actionable commands in FPS games. As a result we don’t have FPS weapons that have 6 different attacks, we have 3 different FPS weapons with 2 attacks each. Back on dark souls, it’s really easy to light attack and heavy attack, but functions like blocking and parrying get put on weird keys, especially considering they need to be held or pushed actively to really be effective.
Games with less emphasis on camera movement and more on direct access to face buttons naturally don’t work at all on PC, like DMC4.
Though…
Of course this only works because he abandoned the mouse, and it’s far from an ideal layout.
I think for controlling the types of games that are most popular today, 3rd person 3d and 2d games where the character is like a rigged up pawn that moves through space playing premade animations on top of its rig, current dual analog controllers are best. To make new types of games though, we might have to branch out.
A friend pointed out to me that VR might actually be helpful there for third person games, because it can free up the right analog stick, allowing more attention to be devoted to the face buttons while you can look around your character in third person. Definitely not consistent with the VR immersion dream, but I reluctantly admit that VR might have some uses.
The further problem with innovating in controllers is, you gotta make a game that uses it fully, like Wii Sports, not tacked on.
What do you think of the Portal games?
They’re puzzle games with all their edges shaved off so they communicate to you indirectly the best way to solve the puzzle.
Every puzzle in portal is playtested and adjusted to the point that playtesters no longer get stuck.
The amount of playtesting and adjustment and willingness to abandon ideas in the name of clarity is admirable, but the end result is a bunch of puzzles that I think weren’t made to be all that hard.
Portal 2 especially gets stuck, and can’t make players get stuck, because it had to introduce so many different new mechanics, like the 3 types of paint, the excursion funnels, aerial faith plates, the new laser redirection cubes. It had to take all of these very slowly and slow down every time a new one was introduced, so it wasn’t able to delivery harder puzzles that players might get stuck on.
Getting stuck for a while isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a puzzle game, as long as the player has something to work off of. I think the Witness (or professor layton or antichamber) is a good parallel here. The Witness presented a ton of hard puzzles that had me thinking for a while and actually deducing things, or leaving and coming back later when I had an idea what to do. The Witness also gave me multiple puzzles to try out that might all lead to progress instead of just one, and made progress to the final area dependent on only solving a certain number of puzzles, only lighting up a certain number of lights instead of all of them. Portal has a linear progression system, so if you get stuck, you can’t do anything but continue to be stuck.
Portal 1 was able to deliver on harder puzzles with its challenge chambers that had a number of different ways to challenge the player, from simple speedrun, to limited portals, to a remixed version of the chamber that made it a bit harder, restricted the basic solution.
Portal 2 didn’t have this for some reason and left it up to their community, either modders or the eventual perpetual testing initiative. Also portal 2 was way more limited in where you could place portals, which simultaneously limited alternate solutions, and made the answers to puzzles more obvious. Also the sections connecting the chambers sucked, they were like pixel hunts frequently.
In this way, similar to shovel knight, portal is very much a scaffolded learning experience that was afraid to really push the boundaries once all of its concepts were established and that kinda sucks. Someone once asked me years ago what game I’d recommend to someone who wanted to get into gaming, and I said portal, because it was a game anyone could beat.
Thoughts on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for the NES? Many people see this title as a prime example on how not to design a videogame.
I tried it out. Didn’t really get what was going on at first, some townspeople seemed to damage me, there were explosions. Then I turned into Mr Hyde and punched some people then died. Decided to read the manual, since a lot of games from that time period explained things in the manual.
http://legendsoflocalization.com/media/avgn/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/dr-jekyll-nes-manual.pdf
Became pretty obvious. The idea is that Dr Jekyll is trying to go to the church (by moving right). The different townspeople have different behaviors that can hurt you, like if they rush at you, sling rocks at you, or leave bombs when you walk over them.
When you lose all your stress meter you become Mr Hyde and can only go back to being Dr Jekyll by defeating enemies in a scrolling shooter type of thing. You can move during this scrolling shooter, which accelerates the rate at which you move left in addition to avoiding enemies and obstacles. If you reach the end of the scrolling shooter, you lose the game. You can never completely stop your progress in the shooter and when you die, it’s game over. So you need to play really well to both avoid dying and get back to Dr. Jekyll, which is where you make progress towards winning.
Interestingly, the enemies in the scrolling shooter are set up so they’ll almost always hit you if you stay on the rightmost part of the screen (the part where your movement is slowest), so either you need to take them out before they can hit you there, or move out of the rightmost edge, speeding up the rate at which you approach
My biggest criticism is the framerate is shit. Like, really shit. 15-20FPS shit. And the Jekyll portion is rather uninteresting. There’s no platforming, a lot of enemy types are samey, and the guys that leave bombs behind suck because the hitbox is way bigger than the bomb.
Dogs interestingly will come at you from the front, then after they pass you, double back, and then once they’ve passed you again, double back again. Cats have a more boring behavior, walking from behind you, but not catching up with you, then doubling back until they touch the edge of the screen and just going straight across the screen. Birds shit on you. There’s diggers that pop dirt out of the ground which spreads randomly, so you just pray it doesn’t hit you. Villagers can behave a bit more unpredictably.
What I’d say is, it’s an inspired game with an interesting concept, attempting to make progress versus trying to avoid making progress when progress is inevitable and going slow is risky. The enemy design in the Hyde level is reasonably interesting. Jekyll has his moments. Yeah, the rules aren’t telegraphed amazingly, but it’s also not completely obtuse.
Have a speedrun, dude goes into Hyde mode at about 17:00. It’s honestly really impressive. A ton of people accused him of cheating in the comments, but I can believe it.
Why is Katamari Damacy the best collect-a-thon?
Because it introduces interesting choices into the process of collection, and makes it arcadey and non-persistent. Instead of slowly building up tons of tiny chits you need to manditorily scrounge across the level, you’re given a massive number of objects and allowed to take whichever ones you want, progression will not be barred by not collecting everything. Katamari fundamentally changes the game from visiting every single node to attempting to weigh the value of each node and the nodes around it. Katamari is the traveling salesman problem on steroids.
Collectathons are typically subsidiaries of adventure games. They usually have a large number of collectables that are placed all over levels, that when collected get added to a persistent count of how many collectables you have. These are then later traded for access to areas, different collectables, or character abilities (which may grant access to new areas). These collectibles are positioned to basically lead you by the nose through every part of the level.
Katamari is not really related to collectathons at all, it’s more closely related to those flash games where you eat things smaller than you and avoid things bigger than you. There isn’t a definitive name for this genre, because there aren’t really many games in it. One suggested name is eat and grow. Katamari is fundamentally about evaluating, “am I bigger than this thing?” and, “how many things smaller than me can I currently absorb?”
Usually eat and grow games focus exclusively on the “Am I bigger than this thing?” part. Growth is relative to how big of an object you’re eating, so you want to eat the biggest thing that isn’t so big you die, or eat a ton of smaller things to make up in volume. In Katamari, you don’t die if you hit an object larger than yourself, though you might lose some objects from your ball. Katamari is less life or death than other eat and grow games in this way, but it makes up for it by adding a timer. You’re given a specific size goal to shoot for, and you have a limited time to do it. This means that the whole game is about opportunity cost. You need to constantly be absorbing objects smaller than you, and moving to areas with progressively bigger objects to succeed in Katamari. By adding the timer, they make the objects you absorb count. You can’t take your time absorbing everything, you need to prioritize.
On top of that, katamari has some wacky controls. You use both analog sticks to roll the ball, to rotate it, to dash. You can slowly climb up walls of a certain scale relative to you. They also include live objects that may chase you, move independently, or run away. And building the katamari lopsided will have it roll lopsided. These all add additional considerations on top of the core idea. Plus themed levels.
It will never be as appropriate to link a speedrun ever again. This is how the game was literally meant to be played (except of course for quitting out of the levels when you get a big enough ball).
https://www.twitch.tv/doughyguy92/v/42497199
How come sometimes your interactions display some serious abrasiveness, bordering on straight-up antagonism, but other times you make me want to puke with your humbleness, modesty, and general submissiveness?
Because I’m an asshole that tries to play honest to the best of my ability?
I want to shake things up, I want to be aggressive and push the border a bit, but I also know that these are just arguments on the net. I’m trying to prove a point honestly. I know where I’m fallible. I know where other possibilities might be true. I have a habit of using weasel words, as defined by wikipedia, in real life all the time whenever someone asks me about something when I can imagine one small exception case where my answer might not be true. “You should do this” “Maybe.” I’ve seen other internet assholes who are completely dogmatic, and I want to know the truth. Dogma and absolute conviction prevents one from growing. I know the limits of my knowledge, I want to own up to my mistakes. I try to take in new evidence and change my beliefs based upon them when it is reasonable, but I also try to defend believing in what I believe. These factors are somewhat contradictory, but I don’t think I’d be where I am if I didn’t have both of these things in my personality. I want to crush people, I want to prove I’m the best, but I also want to learn and grow stronger. Both of these drives are connected for me, and it applies to a lot of stuff I do. One takes aggression, the other requires humility. Sometimes I push it too far on the aggressive side, and I gotta work on it.
When I first started at street fighter, my training partner remarked that the way I played was super split, I’d switch between offense and defense like crazy, going for insane pressure one moment, then backing off and refusing to do anything but capitalize on each little mistake the next, and I’d switch the instant either one of those failed. Dunno how related that is, but it’s a funny story.
re: attitude. Well, what I was referring to was how you get all belligerent when it comes to arguing about games for which you’ve got very passionate opinions, but then you do things like apologizing to a fucking ANON on your blog, an anon who couldn’t muster more than a generic insult (though maybe that is why that person is an anon, because he isn’t capable of amounting to anything greater than subhuman chatter). In the past you’ve chided your readers about using insults and ad hominems, but the problem is that proving you’ve got a point is futile. No one will listen because no one WANTS to listen. Come on man, everyone knows the ultimate use of the internet is to confirm what you already believe! Really, though, there’s no use trying to convince people because the overwhelming majority don’t want to reason, they just want to confirm. Even in history, all ideologies and paradigm shifts even science) were communicated to the masses by demagogues (see: NdT or Dawkins for modern-day examples). But people don’t just want to confirm, they also want to follow. They want to feel like a part of something. I mean, look at how a worthless chump like clam has garnered a following. I mean, yeah, his following baically amounts to a few dozen losers from 4chan, but still. Look at the more popular game pundits. Why is DocSeuss popular in spite of being so wrong about so much? What about the various journalists or dudes like Blow/Fish or CliffyB? Insults are only ad hominem when that’s ALL you’ve got. Using them to compliment your arguments is fine, maybe even essential if you’re going to convince anyone of anything (or at least persuade them to follow a cause, if not convince them of reason). I mean, people are so quick to call you an autist for whatever, but you absolutely refuse to fire away at the concept of immersion. What does that prove? Nothing and your relative popularity reflects this. People appreciate a person whose willing to not just stand for his cause, but all fight and attack for it. Apologizing to anons is not part of that.
lol, you serious? Why are you asking me this anonymously, dude?
I think you’re just trolling at this point. They’re more popular than me because they’ve actively worked to expand their traffic by being on more popular platforms and linking their work elsewhere. I’m not trying at that and, as is typical of me, I’m not going to until I can put my best foot forward.
Think from the perspective of that anon: If I just attack him or dismiss him, what’ll he think? He’s going to dismiss me and that’s one less reader, one less chance for input, one less person. I want to know what his issue is, and attacking him won’t get to that. I want to play to win, not to validate my point. Winning means genuinely convincing people, which is a lot harder and more roundabout than merely proving my point. Winning means saying you’re sorry sometimes. It doesn’t look like winning, it doesn’t look like dominance, but it accomplishes things. It’s seeking power instead of the appearance of power.
Ok, my asks sounded kind of rant-y and demagogue-y, but you should get the point. Apologizing to idiots and being unwilling to add a bit of flair to your writing won’t help you in asserting your dominance and taking down frauds.
I’ll apologize all I want. If someone has a problem with my writing, if they think I’m coming off as an asshole, that’s at least partially my fault. Maybe they have a point, maybe I am being an asshole, but they can’t always vocalize that. It’s up to me to figure out how to make my writing work for people, and part of that is working with them even if they’re being a dick to me. I have a very small audience of people who actually like my stuff, then a small audience outside that of people who know of my stuff and reject it. And if their reason for rejecting it is my tone, is my presentation format, that can be fixed.
I’m not here to assert dominance, I’m not here to directly take down frauds (though frauds may be taken down indirectly). That’s not playing to win. That’s not how you actually convince people. I’ll take the submissive angle, I’ll learn from my mistakes, because I want to know the truth and I want to convince people. I know there’s a lot of opposition, I know my ideas and my personality aren’t popular.
The problem with demagogues is they lack the ability to convince people who are opposed to them, and to grow stronger from incorporating feedback. It’s shutting out a large portion of your potential audience if you simply reject people who reject you, as well as shutting out what may be legitimate ideas.
Becoming a stronger person in part means owning up to your faults and not being so willing to push forward that you’re blind to your mistakes. It means considering the other side’s opinions and second guessing your own positions.
That’s been a stumbling block for me as a person. It’s still something I’m not always consistent at, but it’s how I got to where I am. I’m not going to back down from that.
So stick with me, because I’m not going to budge on this issue.
How do you approach critiquing control schemes? Do you often change control settings? Do you think certain control schemes like motion or touch are inherently bad or is it just that most devs don’t design around them and instead try and retrofit them to established designs? (Or dumb down established designs to fit those control schemes.) What about playing fighting games with keyboards/hitboxes or playing shooters with analog controls?
I change control settings for a lot of first person shooters, like I recently changed the melee attack button in overwatch to F instead of V. I frequently switch crouch to control instead of C. I rebound the jump button in Dark Souls 2 to be the same as the dodge/run button.
I frequently use xpadder to bind screenshot keys to my controller in various games, or so I can play non-FPS games on PC that lack proper controller support, or don’t let me double bind buttons.
Critiquing control schemes is generally about figuring out the best way to map buttons so that none of the buttons interfere with the use of any of the other buttons or inputs on the controller, and maintains a suitable controller metaphor.
For example, Dark Souls maps its attack buttons to the shoulders, which is rather unconventional, because it wants you to move the camera as you move around and attack, and because it maintains the left hand/right hand metaphor set up in the equipment menu.
Conventional action games map their attack buttons to the face because it’s more readily accessible, and because their levels generally have wide open arenas for fighting instead of more careful level design that the camera can get caught on (except MGR, and the camera suffered there), so they don’t need to worry as much about the player having active control over the camera.
Nioh is inspired by dark souls and has very similar gameplay, but does not maintain this same control scheme, in part because it has no 2 hand metaphor for its weapons, and because it has a new stance system metaphor. Stances are changed using the R1 button as a modifier, then pressing a face button. R1 is a shoulder, making it perfect as a modifier button, because it does not conflict with the face buttons, where the reverse would not be true. It’s hard to use face buttons as modifiers for other face buttons, except pressing two buttons at a time. You could use a single button for this like DMC does, but the R1 here has a function for regaining Ki too, so you don’t always want to switch stances.
I don’t think Motion and Touch are inherently bad, I just think they’re good at different things than conventional interfaces, and most games made with those control schemes don’t leverage what they’re capable of. Wii Sports is the best selling Wii game because it literally could not exist in any form but motion controls. You can’t really do games like Bowling and Golf nearly the same way. 99% of the other games on the system didn’t deliver in anything close to the same way.
As for touch, it’s a similar deal. Touch doesn’t do a lot that can’t be done by other means. Most games on the DS didn’t really take advantage of touch, and that’s fine because the DS had capable regular controls and capable regular games.
So what does touch do better than conventional controls? What’s a game you couldn’t control as well if you reverted it to standard controls? The World Ends With You is my first answer. In that game, you need to move the character in battle by picking them up and dragging them. You control and differentiate different commands in battle through how they’re activated, and a lot of those are gestures that not only specify what action you’re using, but where you’re using it and how.
http://twewy.wikia.com/wiki/Psych
You can tap to fire off bullets to specific areas, you can slash to launch enemies or create pillars at points, scratch to produce an effect on the scratched area, drag to pull objects, circle enemies, and more.
And the combat system ended up being pretty cool/dynamic in the end.
In a traditional control system, you can’t control things so far away from the character that precisely, or move the character as quickly and slowly. With a mouse, it’s harder to draw gestures precisely, or trace/draw paths that aren’t straight.
Touch interfaces also have the benefit of multitouch, but I can’t think of a good example that uses that.
As for the difference in input methods for fighters versus shooters, I think there’s a very different and weird thing going on between these. In fighting games, almost any input method is basically as good as any other input method. There isn’t a lot of difference for arcade fighting games. People have seen success using anything with enough separate digital inputs for the directions and all the buttons basically. Evo has been won on pad, and recently at that with Luffy. In traditional fighting games, controllers are mostly seen as a preferential thing with very minor advantages across controller types.
In shooters, there’s a very clear best way to play, and it’s keyboard and mouse. Mostly the mouse. The reason this differs from fighting games is, shooters take analog input, not digital input, and there are very clearly different things possible across different types of analog input. Some games aren’t possible unless you have enough buttons, the difference here is that some games aren’t possible no matter how many buttons you add. It’s not something that can be linearly scaled up.
Nothing but mouse allows as fast speed or fine modulation of aiming on an infinite canvas.
Similarly, you can’t play Smash as well unless you have an analog stick, because it has actual analog inputs you can’t replicate otherwise (like DI, dashing vs walking, etc)
Digital input methods seem to scale well, analog tends to be more specialized.
What do you think of Superhot?
Basically the same thing as super bunnyhop. It’s an interesting experiment without enough content. There could stand to be more weapons, more enemy variety, more levels.
Also less bullshit between levels.
Cool experience otherwise.
I’ve read your reasoning for disliking Super Meat Boy dozens of times, could you tell me why it doesn’t apply to SUPERHOT?
More options in every given encounter. You can move in a lot more directions, you have tools that can be used a bunch of different ways. All your weapons can be thrown, enemy weapons can be picked up, bullets can be dodged, there’s cover in the environment, katanas can slash through bullets.
I mean, I like Hotline Miami for much the same reason, and have stated such before.
Super Hot isn’t repeating the same few actions until you get it, there’s enough variation that you can perform levels significantly differently in many cases, unlike super meat boy.
Here’s the elevator level done really efficiently:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/super%20hot%20elevator.webm
Here’s a guy beating the elevator level without firing a single bullet:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/Super%20Hot%20pacifist%20elevator.webm
Elevator with a katana.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/super%20hot%20elevator%20katana.webm
Here’s a guy beating the ballroom with only a katana:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/super%20hot%20ballroom%20katana.webm
and another efficient path through a level
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/Super%20Hot%20Superplay.webm
My big complaint with the game was, there wasn’t enough content, and they didn’t go as crazy in the level design as they could have gone. The hotswap ability was great, but they only barely introduced it before the game was over. Hotline Miami was able to go a lot crazier with its level design before they wrapped up, like the hot and heavy level was awesome.
I’d give superhot like a 7/10 for that reason.
Celia Wagar's CritPoints 