Okay, I had a short conversation about Punchout on Twitter fairly recently, I think with Jason Brown. It was after I watched the punchout vod from AGDQ. I played the original Punchout for myself, made it up to the third league, about halfway through.
Like, Punchout is weird. I don’t totally know what to make of it. On first glance, it appears to just be a glorified rhythm game with some puzzle elements thrown in. I remember seeing an explanation of all the different fighters’ weak points where punching them would yield a star, so at first glance it appears fairly obvious that to win you just gotta punch them when they won’t block or dodge, then punch them at the critical moment to get a star. But then it gets weirder.
For example, take the early game enemy Great Tiger. His ruby shimmers right before he does a big attack and if you punch him at that moment, you get a star. So the obvious strategy is just to punch him whenever that blinks, then use the star to uppercut him. This can let you win in 56 seconds, which is alright, not great. The actual fastest stretegy is to jab him, triggering him to counter jab you, then you wait and do a body blow just as he does to get a star. Do this 3 times in a row, do 2 uppercuts, then do the counterjab strategy again, wait a little for the ruby to blink, can jab him again, wait a bit longer for his ruby to blink again, then uppercut to knock him down. he’ll get up two more times, but can be uppercut on each of these to instantly knock him down.
That’s actually fairly complicated, there’s a lot going on there, and I honestly don’t entirely understand why the above strategy works, knowing the whole thing would require more knowledge of how Great Tiger’s whole AI is programmed, and I can’t find any documentation of that (or any other punchout AI, if you happen to know of or find this, forward it to me please, I know luke miller has some tutorials on youtube for speedrunning punchout, regular and blindfolded, I have not watched those yet).
A recent subject of research for me has been boss cycles and phases, specifically how to deal more damage on specific cycles, how bosses modulate the amount of damage they take, how players can use the mechanics under their control to deal more damage, and when they switch phases and cycles. I think it’s something I’ve overlooked until recently, and punchout seems like the ultimate game for this type of thing.
Punchout AI follows scripts over the course of the fight related to the timer, RNG, and internal variables. They have reactions to actions you take. They go down based on different amounts of damage in relation to different parts of their script and reactions. So there’s a lot more going on here than just a regular rhythm game. The issue perhaps is how well this is explained or telegraphed, but I don’t have any final conclusions on this stuff. I just think there’s a ton of potential research here.
How would you change the mechanics for melee so it would require less dexterity to play but still keep it’s depth?
There’s a lot of ways you could potentially do that. For one, you could fix the bug where the last frame of jumpsquat won’t count in determining whether you fulljump or shorthop. You could allow Shorthops to be bound to a button instead of needing to release within the jumpsquat time. You could extend the valid dash range during dash dancing, add an extra frame of leniency to backdashing. Make it so jumping during normal turnaround still has you turned around. A lot of small input leniency changes that Project M made. You could make shield directly cancel into up smash or up B instead of needing to cancel through jumpsquat first. You could probably make L canceling automatic, and not lose that much (I just resent the idea that such a thing is totally pointless, especially when you have characters like ice climbers, who are very difficult to L cancel against, and who have a valid use for L cancel in the L cancel desync). You could add a small buffer period, like 2-3 frames. You could make Meteor Cancels mashable. You could remove the restriction on IASA frames to not allow dodges or B moves out of them.
And that’s about it. Beyond that, you’re changing the options the characters have or how difficult they are to perform in a way that affects game balance (due to strong options being too easy), or the distribution of options players will pick (due to certain options being over-centralizing).
The resulting game would still take a massive amount of dexterity to perform at, but you can’t really pare it down any more without giving something up about the identity of the game, in some ways this already is compromising some of the identity of the game.
I like the undertale/zeboyd solution of having a static number of random encounters per area. Undertale has them occur after a static number of steps too.
I’m generally fine with random encounters, as long as they’re tuned well. The bigger issue with them is they basically give people unlimited resources to grind than their random nature, which is totally acceptable for this implementation in my view.
Perhaps the other issue is that you gotta walk to trigger them which is time consuming. Zeboyd also made the right move here, adding a menu option to deliberately trigger a random encounter. Chrono Trigger and Tales games have a great implementation too, especially the Tales games, which get their implementation from Zelda 2. Chrono Trigger all being static encounters prevents the lame states of having to walk for an unspecified thing to happen, and prevents the scenario of just doing 10-20 random encounters through the menu then walking through an empty area. Tales has the enemies respawn when the screen is switched, so it prevents the chrono trigger scenario of clearing an area then it’s just empty. Tales also has movement patterns for the enemies, and randomly generated enemies on the overworld, and you can shoot these enemies to freeze them and go around them too, so it’s a mini gameplay challenge to bypass enemies.
The Pokeradar in some Pokemon games is also really cool, showing you which patches of grass have encounters.
The key thing is making it so their time moving through areas is populated with encounters inbetween, sometimes allowing the player to have a say over which encounters they go through, but not allowing them to bypass all of them easily.
I mean, random encounters aren’t critically unfair most of the time in most games, and don’t have very strong potential to be unfair because for some reason it occurred to designers a billion years ago to generate them relative to a step counter, rather than just flat-out random chance each step.
re: random encounters. I was mostly asking in the sense, do you think they do a good job of testing the players planning/strategy? E.g. I’ve left a town, have I planned accordingly, brought in potions/items, created a well-rounded party, have enough tactical skill to defeat all the monsters I encounter? I mean, I can think of any games that do this well b/c you can usually just backtrack or in cases like Pkmn, just avoid tall grass. But that’s what I was getting at (in some hypothetical game).
Okay, testing planning/strategy is actually a tricky topic. It kind of comes down to, how much should long term choices affect the outcome of a scenario? In my opinion, testing planning/strategy isn’t really that important, especially in singleplayer games, because the feedback loop, the iteration loop, is so long that it doesn’t really make sense to have players lose an hour from now because they messed up in this moment for something they can’t readily see they messed up until an hour from now.
This question isn’t really about random encounters at all, this is about any type of game where you set a loadout and venture out into the wilderness. Slight randomness, not knowing what you might run into, can promote building flexibly, so you are prepared for a lot of scenarios instead of just dumping all in. Though good encounter design can do this too.
I don’t think backtracking ruins this, because backtracking typically means going back through more monsters instead of pressing on ahead, unless you expend resources to get like, escape rope or something.
Though one scenario that comes to mind out of the blue is that situation in the FOE video where they forgot to buy warp rope. Instead of screwing the player for not having something, always give them an option to come out on top, but maybe it’s a trickier option than otherwise afforded. Suddenly realizing you fucked up a long time ago can be a funny situation, but if you have no form of recourse, then it sucks.
On that note, that video is hilarious, here it is:
Do you think that the whole “2D is more precise than 3D” argument/meme that gets brought up primarily by nostalgic old guards has any truth to it? Tbh, having grown up with 3D games, I find 3D Mario much more precise and easier to control than any of the 2D Marios (except the New games). Granted the old 2D Marios had slippery movement and looser controls, but the point stands, that it kind of depends on which one you developed your muscle memory with. Plus, with all the scary-precise speedruns, I don’t think the argument holds much salt. I’ve never even seen anyone specifiy just what they mean by “precision” other than “I find 3D Mario difficult b/c I’m an old man, therefore 2D games are more precise”.
Precision is vague here. Does it mean that in 2d you’re able to more reliably replicate scenarios involving fine movement, or does it mean allowing one to express a greater degree of precision in operation? In 2d games, there are less variables involved in their operation. Especially old 2d games on pixel based platforms, because there literally was no unit of movement smaller than a pixel (even though a lot of these calculated movement in subpixels, the environments didn’t have subpixels anywhere, so it generally didn’t matter), where the same is not true for say super meat boy or Ori and the Blind Forest, where units of measurement can be infinitely subdivided.
3d games can be considered a lot like top down 2d games in most instances, except they place the camera behind the character. Then you have analog movement, due to the analog stick, which is polar coordinate movement with very large number of angles and intensities. Compared to an 8 way 1 intensity control scheme, this is a lot harder to manage. Even games like Super Smash Bros, that are basically side scrolling 2d games, have a lot of analog information in their handling that can’t be precisely recreated when you use the wiimote’s dpad. Lining up down to the pixel in a game like link to the past or the original zelda is a lot easier than the same in link between worlds due to the simpler input scheme. The smallest unit of difference is a lot smaller in LBW, both in terms of position and angle.
The other trouble is that it’s harder to judge position in 3d versus 2d because of the camera angle and use of perspective. In real life we have additional senses to help us out like proprioception and vestibular sense, but watching a screen, it can be tricky to determine how an input will move you relative to the position of the camera and the character’s position and orientation in space, much like learning to drive a car (thought there is also kinetic feedback helping you here too). In 2d games, position is absolute and much easier to determine. If you want to jump from one platform to another, you can directly measure the distance of your maximum jump, or visualize your jump arc on the screen. In 3d, you can’t really do that. What might be the correct distance at one angle, would change if the camera pulls out, or is oriented higher or lower. Your brain needs to make more complex calculations to judge the distance in perspective versus mere distance across the screen. I noticed this playing ratchet and clank recently. Normal jumps are like leaps of faith.
I think what started this trend is Campster’s video on Sonic, which didn’t use the word precision and is fairly clear in the way it is spoken.
At 8:00 and 15:45 he talks about platforming controls in 2d versus 3d. (his comparison of doom’s health meter to contra’s lives is totally erroneous though, that’s down to a difference in attack types and both could be designed to work the opposite way)
His talk about leniency in 3d games is kind of accurate, a lot of 3d games use snap-to mechanics for environmental interaction where a lot of 2d ones don’t, but more likely is that there’s simply been a rise in the popularity of those types of mechanics than 3d games implicitly requiring them. Like for example, if you want a character to catch a ledge, you’ll probably make a box near the top of the character’s head that causes them to snap to the ledge if they’re falling, like what’s found in smash bros, mirror’s edge, tomb raider, ratchet and clank, mario 64. You get things like grind rails in sonic, kirby air ride, tony hawk, ratchet and clank which use this as well.
Playing ratchet and clank recently I found that in the process of running around on platforms I would narrowly fall off a lot and get saved by the ledge grab. But meanwhile in dark souls there’s no such mechanic and I’m able to do things like run across the anor londo rafters much more easily than the equivalent would be in ratchet and clank. Similar happened to me in Link Between Worlds in Rosso’s Ore Mine, where they have some thin planks laid out to walk over. That would be trivial in a 2d game with 8-way control where your movement is perfectly aligned to the thing you were moving over, but in link between worlds it’s really tricky to hold the same direction steady, especially as the character moves up or down in height through perspective, in part because of the strength of the circle pad’s resistive spring.
Another thing worth noting is how in Link Between Worlds, projectile items like the hookshot or bow and arrow snap to the 8 cardinal/ordinal directions when held. In the original games you weren’t allowed to hold them and position yourself at all, In LBW, you can do it with almost all your items. The world is still largely aligned to a grid, so this allows you to reliably aim in the most useful directions. You can still aim at off angles if you’re careful in tapping the button, though that might only be true with sword beams. This type of concession is absolutely necessary for the game because of the angles you typically aim.
Lock-on isn’t a totally necessary concession for behind the shoulder 3d perspective games, I’ve certainly played devil may cry and dark souls at times without lockon by manually aiming attacks. The real trouble is the camera needs to be manually operated at the same time and you don’t have enough fingers to do that. OoT didn’t have any camera controls besides lock-on (neither do many later 3d zelda).
Then of course you get Marble Blast 3d, which Campster brings up, that doesn’t have snap-to mechanics of any kind. Though personally I’d compare to Super Monkey Ball, which was also made by Sega, and involves going fast. Both games don’t have any of that input leniency as a concession to it being more difficult to precisely angle yourself in 3d, and Super Monkey Ball doesn’t even have camera controls.
So what’s the difference between these examples of moving across narrow platforms I brought up, Ratchet and Clank, Dark Souls, Link Between Worlds, and Super Monkey Ball? Why is it easier in some of them and more difficult than others? I’m not really sure honestly.
My best guess is that it has something to do with the camera angle for most of these. Ratchet and clank has really poor camera controls and the angle faces so far forwards that it’s difficult to see where you stand. When you jump in many places, the camera will go so high up you can’t see the ground under you. This makes the ground appear like a sliver so it can be tough to see where you are on the surface. In Super Monkey Ball, approaching an edge has the camera tilt higher over the monkey so you can see the ground better. In Dark Souls, the camera tends to stick at a high or low angle more readily when positioned, and has a smooth automatic takeover when you are determined to walk in a specific direction. I already took a guess at LBW, it’s likely a different case than the others here.
In Ratchet and Clank there are additional concessions in the form of a soft-lock on your shots, indicated by an icon that appears when you aim close enough to an enemy, causing your projectiles to home in on that enemy. Most console shooters have some form of auto-aim, in the form of bullet magnetism, sticky reticules, or so on.
Mirror’s Edge uses snap-to for a large number of environmental interactions, vaulting, catching ledges, wallrunning, wallclimbing, springboarding, and so on. 2d games like megaman X or Zero or ZX actually don’t use snap-to for things like walljumping, they require you to press into the wall, but that’s not feasible in 3d, you need to use a snap-to range because you can be angled differently relative to the wall, applying force/momentum differently, where in 2d you always orients into the wall.
The oldest example of snap-to mechanics I can think of is the ladders in donkey kong (or megaman I guess). The ones in donkey kong are extremely rigid, where megaman’s are much more flexible. To say the least, they exist in 2d and 3d, and nearly all environmental interaction requires them on some level.
Yeah, it can be harder to move through 3d environments because judging distance and angle of movement is less easy, because the input device itself is more complicated, because cameras need to be carefully controlled too, and they alter the angle of movement when reoriented.
I guess the short answer is, yeah, 2d games are easier to move precisely in than 3d games.
Why is it that collision boxes still have to be boxes and not other shapes that would better conform to the body of sprite?
Simple collisions like squares or circles on a 2d plane are extremely cheap and processor efficient. You could arbitrarily draw shapes on a 2d plane and compare if they overlap if you wanted to, but this costs more processing power per-frame.
The thing is, modern CPUs are actually powerful enough to do this. Game Maker games support arbitrarily shaped collision bodies. This is many times more expensive than rectangle collisions, but modern CPUs can totally handle it. The trouble is that it’s also a lot more time consuming to produce, and less consistent.
When you place rectangles, you can compare each frame to the last frame to see if they match up. You can reuse the rectangles even. You can easily scale something down if it sticks out too much, you can check exactly how high up a hitbox is and whether it will hit or miss another hitbox. That, and there’s a ton of weird shit that happens when hitboxes are too close to the model, like gaps between characters’ limbs, bits of the characters’ hittable area that stick out slightly too much. Tons and tons of glitches in all sorts of games are caused by having more complex hitboxes than necessary, which allow the characters to push through things, or miss by being too close or triggering a certain animation at the right time.
The basic idea is, if you keep it simple enough, then it’s a lot easier to build, debug, and results in less weird hitbox shit happening, like multihit combos (think chun li’s lightning legs) randomly dropping because the hit character moves slightly differently for a frame, or the edges of the character are drawn inconsistently between frames.
SFIV was known throughout its lifetime for having tons of ridiculous hitbox oddities that nobody could explain. SFV is keeping it simple, moving the boxes as little as possible, and it’s resulted in a vastly more consistent game to play and understand. I don’t think all games should go for this approach. I like games with highly articulated hitboxes, like smash bros, but it’s best to keep it consistent in most cases. And even smash uses more general hitboxes for stage collision.
What is the difference, if any, between gameplay depth and meaningful complexity?
I use them as synonyms personally.
Possibility space is essentially raw complexity, it’s all the possible states and outcomes, even the pointless and redundant ones.
Depth is what you get when you cull the possibility space for only the relevant and non-redundant states. It’s the complexity that’s left over.
In layman’s terms, we know that games are better as they get more complex, but we also know that some games are complex on a surface level, but end up being simple in execution. Like, you have to sort through a ton of variables, but the actual sorting algorithm is simple, despite being time consuming.
Games need to become more complex overall to have more meaningful complexity, however the way in which they’re constructed can lead to a more complex game that isn’t more meaningfully complex.
The enemy of depth is optimization and redundancy.
I read about this on Shoryuken, and in part brought up the KI combo system on twitter recently because I read it. Reminds me of the L cancel trainer in 20XX and 20XX TE, but it lacks the feedback indicating you did the input correctly.
In this case I guess they genuinely managed to decrease execution difficulty without any penalty to the decision-making game. I can’t honestly think of a downside to this. Good on them. It only really works with a combo system like Killer Instinct’s of course, but it’s a clever move. Perhaps the only trouble with it is the way that the same button can do auto-doubles and linkers back to back, makes it a bit less clear what’s going to happen when you press a button.
It also begs the question of why players shouldn’t play with this on all the time. I don’t have an answer there.
I still think better singleplayer content that teaches people the game is still the best method of bringing people in. If you give people the tools to bootstrap their way up, similar to having a mentor on hand, then you can get them into the game. Otherwise it takes dedication, research, and putting your nose to the grindstone a bit.
(In regards to KI) the mode can mess up manual timing. Manuals can replace Auto doubles in Combos. It can also screw with other characters combo traits. Manuals need a certain amount of time connect or else they become an auto double, topping it off any linker placed after a manual must be the Same strength or weaker. (Heavy manuals make Light mid and heavy linkers, light manuals make light linkers only) The heavier the manual the tighter the timing and the easier it is to react. Though the upside is 1-frame link manuals have 1-frame break windows
Uh, reading this over, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t affect manual timing at all. Like, if you want to do a manual after a linker, I’m pretty sure you’re capable of doing that with this system, because it’s just a matter of linking the manual, rather than canceling the linker with it. I don’t really see how the manual restriction makes a difference here, because this system doesn’t affect the timing or framedata of any of the moves. I mean, your rhythm might be different pressing the buttons, but otherwise manual timing should be the same relative to the move.
The only real drawback of this system that I can see is that if you have more than 1 linker or ender on any given button, you can only use the one they chose for assist mode, which is especially important for enders, because the enders have all different functions, like damage, corner carry, ground bounce, meter building, etc. Not sure, but I also think you can’t use Shadow moves, which are useful for extending combos, and can be used at any point in the combo, not just as a linker.
Though I don’t play KI, so I really don’t know. I’m basing what I say off the guides I’ve read.
Can you give examples of gritty serious games whose art style you enjoy, as well as cutesy colorful ones?
Does Zelda Twilight Princess count as gritty and serious? Despite my misgivings about it, the art direction of the twilight realm enemies, wolf link, midna, and the palettes used across the game were pretty great.
Shadow of the Colossus is also pretty great all around for art direction of the Colossi, Wander, Mono, and many of the structures in the environment (as well as the larger landmasses, though they can be pretty ugly up close.)
Metroid Prime has one of the best art directions of any game, which is part of why the graphics have held up so long, mostly thanks to Andrew Jones. Even the shapes used to construct the environmental structures are extremely identifiable to this day.
MGS has always had a solid art direction. I think MGS1 had the most distinct visual style though. Shadow Moses has extremely iconic areas all throughout, and snake’s design is great too. Plus the bosses.
Deus Ex Human Revolution really nailed the future aesthetic, and I think its hallways and doors are generally really identifiable. The guns stand out too, as well as the particular musculature of the augments, the way they look like kevlar muscles essentially.
Bioshock was solidly put together too, art deco was a great pick for it.
Legacy of Kain has good character design, and that’s about it.
Remember Me had a solid artistic direction in a lot of ways, even if it was a really boring game overall.
For cutesy stuff, Touhou has laughably horrible drawings, but I guess the designs themselves are pretty good, they look nice when drawn by practically anyone else.
The Wind Waker look was certainly inspired.
I like Platinum in Blazblue even if I’m not a big fan of the art direction overall.
Darkstalkers was pretty much a masterpiece.
Ghost Trick was cool as well.
Guilty Gear Xrd is so cartoony it’s practically on the cutesy side, especially for May, elphelt and ramlethal (when’s bridget?)
Jet Set Radio is pretty great.
The new Kid Icarus did a great job reinventing the style of the original game.
Kirby’s had solid art direction and spriting in a number of their games. The enemy designs are great too. Especially love Canvas Curse.
Megaman Classic designs are a favorite for me. (Though I think Zero/ZX really revolutionized it)
Loved the Splatoon designs since I first saw them. Lots of spunk, but very cute and I love spats.
Skullgirls has a distinct visual style and great animation all around.
The World Ends with You has a nice style for itself, drawing from graffiti and the modern vector look with nice costume design.
What mechanics do you think Platinum could use for their upcoming TMNT game?
I guess not weapon switching, since the turtles are pretty set in their weapon preferences. Maybe they could experiment with tag team stuff, a la sengoku basara or four swords adventure? Could take some inspiration from Ninja Gaiden perhaps, using projectiles to link juggle combos, guard breaking moves strategically sprinkled around each turtle’s moveset, and blocking + dodge out of block + counter attack out of blockstun? Also more command moves, less combo chains because I always ask for this and never quite get it.
I think they should avoid witch time, blade mode, wicked weave/vehicle finisher, and try something new. The main character/support character damage system from W101 would make sense here, only take real damage on the main character selected, other characters can get stunned and need to be picked up. All four characters could have separate health bars, maybe regen health akin to marvel or skullgirls when swapped out to keep people switching.
Maybe you can’t cancel, but you can switch in turtles at any time, while the previous one finishes their attack, which is effectively like a cancel. Allow some moves to be canceled late in their animations into shuriken to link combos together, have a lot of launchers be weak ones midcombo on some chains, so you gotta land some tight links to have it work.
We’ll see what they actually end up doing in like a year.
Different mobility systems accomplish different things. Mirror’s edge has a great mobility system relative to the level design of the game, much like Mario 64 does for those levels, Tribes needs a large hilly landscape to really work out, where Quake/Half Life/unreal tournament has one that works for nearly anything.
Everything well designed in games is a microcosm of the trends that create depth. It’s about how many elements of the system remain relevant and non-redundant.
Also interesting to note is the way that movement mechanics can have synergy with other mechanics, like in the case of FPS games, shooting. Mirror’s Edge, Quake, and Half Life all have very poor synergy with shooting, because they all require you to aim your mouse precisely to move fast, either because mouse movement itself controls your speed, or because you need to look at environmental objects, like walls, or the cursor’s position is affected by the movements. If you want to move fast in these games, you need to make a choice between moving fast or shooting accurately, though you can switch very quickly and in half life/quake’s case, you can make occasional shots without losing speed. Unreal Tournament and Tribes by contrast have very strong synergy between advanced movement and shooting. Unreal Tournament allows you to dodge in 4 directions regardless of your mouse orientation, so you can usually dodge around in the middle of a fight without requiring you to stop aiming. In Tribes, you carry your momentum forwards, leaving you totally free to aim while moving fast. Gunz is another good example of this, with movement controls similar to UT, allowing players to focus their fire on their opponents most of the time, especially true given the weapon of choice is shotgun, which gives you a bit of time between shots to look away for advanced movement purposes. Imagine Quake bunnyhops with UT dodges. Fast elegant cross-map movement with viable dodging during firefights. Someone should make that combination, I’m amazed Toxikk didn’t see the opportunity.
Smash Bros Melee, and especially Project M, have an awesome system of interlocking relationships between their movement techniques. Everything has different levels of commitment, range, speed, utility, leaving a ton of tradeoffs. Project M has a few techniques like reverse aerial rush and B-reverse that fill in some gaps Melee left behind. Though crawling is just plain fucked up, especially on Sheik who has an even lower crouch than in Melee.
I’m hoping to make a video on Mirror’s Edge’s movement system in depth in the near future, that should illustrate a bit of what I’m talking about.
Celia Wagar's CritPoints 