Celia Wagar's CritPoints

What are the problems majority of MMOs have and how could you fix them?

May 18, 2015August 14, 2017Celia Wagar5 Comments

The majority of the systems in MMOs revolve around combat when you get down to it, and the combat sucks. It sucks because it’s a DPS efficiency race. They don’t really integrate movement or counterplay. If DPS is a major term in your game, you’re doing something wrong. Damage per second shouldn’t be a major factor. It’s a major factor because the two combatants are standing around, and strategies don’t really counter each other. It’s not a question of whether you will do damage, you pretty much inevitably will. It’s a question of what rotation of spells/abilities will do the most damage and reduce the opponent’s damage the most. You move during boss raids because the bosses have AOEs announced in advance which you step out of. It’s a lame existence.

Look at Dark Souls in comparison, in a lot of ways it feels like it’s an MMO even though it’s smaller scale. I think that a lot of elements of dark souls’ combat could be scaled up, and a bigger world could be made. The primary engineering problem is client server communication. As I understand it, the reason MMOs are constructed as they are is because handling more variables is extremely intensive on such a massive scale. Dark Souls keeps the scale down, and the connections are peer to peer with all data held client-side, so the server has a minimal load in comparison (it only provides matchmaking services essentially). I’ve asked about why MMOs don’t do action combat more or have weak facsimilies of action combat and the answers I get are usually that action combat is too network intensive to reasonably handle.

I imagine that issues there could be solved with instancing, to prevent having to communicate all the data to everyone, and having the clients bear more of the load for PvE, in line with how Monster Hunter handles some of those interactions. In Monster Hunter, smaller monsters are each handled locally with the host player remembering how much HP they all have, so they will not be synced between sessions, each individual player fights the monsters in their own session. This means you can’t really enact group tactics on the smaller monsters, but the bigger ones will be in sync and they count for more. The trouble with having clients handle more of the load peer to peer is that if you pass data to the client, it’s in the hands of the enemy. The more you trust with the client, the more the client can abuse the game with things like Cheat Engine. This is why there are so many cheaters in dark souls because there’s no data authentication in any of the souls games. The server isn’t involved enough to double check everything is legitimate. In Dark Souls, this doesn’t matter so much, because there’s no competition to be top of the server, and nobody can really obtain anything via cheating that normal players can’t. There’s a definite cap on how close to the top you can be and at worst individual sessions are ruined.

I’m not gonna go over how to make a good combat system, there’s a billion and one ways to do that that I’ve talked about to no end.

What I feel deserves more attention is other game types. It’s kind of inevitable that mining/farming/crafting will be involved at some level, and it would pay to have those roles be involved instead of being about waiting until bars fill up. Star Citizen and Star Wars Galaxies seemed to have solutions to those, like in star citizen, apparently miners are expected to fly through asteroid fields to harvest materials, making it risky and dangerous. The Star Wars Galaxies crafting and profession systems are so complex it’s difficult to sum them up here. Raph Koster did a good summary on his blog, www.raphkoster.com/2015/04/27/did-star-wars-galaxies-fail/ This one links to the other posts explaining how the different systems worked.

The other thing is, I think we should reconsider how all MMOs are basically hamster wheels, how you’re always working to earn something so you can kill monsters slightly faster, how everything is just a number going up or a progress bar, metaphorically speaking. Comparing Dark Souls to WoW made me consider that. In MMOs there’s such a large volume of shit and it’s so hard to access it, that not everyone is really expected to ever do everything. In Dark Souls or Bloodborne, it’s practically expected that everyone has or can get everything, and people willingly stay at a lower level than necessary because that’s where everyone else is. Not to mention that the game is designed so nobody can get excessive bonuses or benefit too much from bringing extra consumables to a fight (at least, in bloodborne). It’s something people come back to because they enjoy it more than because they have an investment in it.

That and there’s probably more ideas you could do for MMOish gameplay. I might cover that in a future article or something.

Anything I missed? I feel like I forgot something or didn’t cover everything here, but I can’t remember what else there is.

Tripping on Air: Why Game Journalists Can’t Describe Games

May 18, 2015July 25, 2023Celia WagarLeave a comment

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Super Smash Brothers Melee. The first time I played a game on console was the original Super Smash Bros. on N64 at a friend’s house. He warned another friend who had the game not to invite me over, because I’d do nothing but play Smash Bros. I’ve probably spent more time playing Melee and Smash Bros in general than any other game I own, and what initially drew me in about Smash versus other games was the solidity of the combat. I felt like I was making deliberate choices that had a weight to them. In other games, like Zelda, I waved the sword around and it was pretty cool, but I had this craving for the solid feeling that Smash Bros. combat provided. The topic coming up is a bit personal for me, so please bear with my gushing for at least the next part. Recently, Destructoid published an opinion piece titled: “I’m going to miss tripping in Super Smash Bros. 4” written by Jonathan Holmes. Articles like this leave me disappointed, both out of an admiration for my favorite game, and a love for games in general.

My Time With Smash

To be plain, Brawl was a disappointment for me. When I first played it, I wasn’t into competitive gaming. I had never played Street Fighter or any other traditional fighting game before, or ever owned a non-Nintendo video game system. I’d been fighting online, trying to tell people based on the footage we had that it wouldn’t end the Smash series, it would just be different and we’d still have everything we loved about Smash Bros. in it. I checked Sakurai’s updates on the Smash Dojo every day, frequently staying up to three in the morning to see what was new, but actually playing the game for myself, I felt something was deeply off about the way controlling the characters felt, especially the ones that carried over from Melee.

Despite my initial impressions, I stuck it out. I played the game constantly with my little brother and anyone else I could get to play with me. I unlocked every character on the first night I had it. I beat the story mode on the hardest difficulty with my brother’s help. I went through the event mode matches and eventually unlocked all the stages. I picked up a completely new character, Snake, and learned how to play the game fairly well. I played with items on high. Yet I felt like there was something ineffably wrong about Brawl that I couldn’t put into words. All I could tell at the time was that Brawl was “slow” and “floaty.” I felt there was this disconnect between what I did, and the actions on the screen, and weird unexplainable things would happen at a whim, like attacks connecting weirdly, sliding across the stage from the ledge, or suddenly being launched higher than normal. No matter the character, I found it was easier to win by playing the game in a boring and safe style than actually trying to attack and take stocks off the other players – as if the only way to win was to suck all the fun out of the game for everyone else playing. After a few months of non-stop play, I moved back to Melee, and without any sort of coordination or discussion so did all my friends in the surrounding area. We didn’t need to be experts to feel that something was wrong.

When I first heard from an online friend about how he was replacing textures in his copy of Brawl, my immediate question was, “Is there a mod that makes it like Melee?” He didn’t have an answer for me, but that lead me to finding Brawl+, one of the earlier Brawl mods, and later Project M. I know a bit more about the game now than I used to, and I can finally put into words that feeling of unease I got from Brawl, and all the factors that contributed to that. That’s part of why the aforementioned article disappoints me, because the struggle of Melee‘s competitive scene and fanbase fighting to stay alive and overcome its lackluster successor for thirteen years has meant so much to me. I’ve had fun times playing and learning from other people about these games I love – it means a lot. It is a direct result of the Smash scene’s survival. Without the scene, it would be nearly impossible to find other dedicated Smash players.

Why is Holmes Tripping?

It’s easy to point out ways in which Jonathan Holmes was wrong. Pointing out the ways is exactly what he wants you to do. It’s why the article exists and, intentional or not on his part, everyone upset by it is indirectly paying into his pockets. Further, it allows him (and by extension, other journalists) to continue playing the expert, while the rest of us are stuck characterized as the routinely angry and incorrect mob. By taking offense at articles like this, commenters are forced to accept the message in the form of an argument – the message being that there is a controversy over tripping in Brawl and that Smash fans are separated into two big groups of “casual” and “hardcore” players that hate each other. Through repeatedly bringing in traffic using controversy in the form of opinion articles, reviews, and biased reporting, journalists are able to establish themselves as an asset to their publishers and as “experts” to their readers.

An article like his is frankly more than a little bit rude, and the author knew it before he published it. Jonathan Holmes went into a giddy glee on Twitter about how he made so many people mad and continued to jeer at them. After all, they’re the rabble and he’s the author. It’s expected that any sort of controversial opinion on the internet will attract an inarticulate raging backlash, thereby he is able to claim moral superiority by pointing out how horrible his detractors clearly are, further illustrating how right he is.

Why did Holmes choose to talk about tripping? Why did he elect to do this during Evo, for a game that fans raised $90,000 for cancer research just to get into Evo? Smash Bros. has other random elements that are disruptive to competitive play, like random items and stage hazards, so why would he choose to focus on the one element that is mandatory, and has no function other than disrupting how one plays the game? Especially an element that he describes as discouraging people from playing the game, or playing the game in a more static and defensive way? He chooses to highlight how allegedly no one can tell the difference between Brawl and Melee unless there is a direct comparison, despite it having no real relevance to tripping. This serves to aid his later conclusion that Melee players are control freaks. Is this article really about tripping, or is it his vendetta against competitive Smash players? Especially when he closes it by telling people who don’t want to deal with unfairness to go play Checkers, a game that he calls boring.

Holmes isn’t acting as a player of Smash, he talks as if he’s an observer, looking in from the outside. He’s someone watching other people play the game and telling them that their way of playing it is boring, as if he knows what goes through the heads of tournament players. The commentators do a really great job explaining things like players reading their opponents, attempting to keep composure when they’re losing, or taking measures in and out of matches to keep their psychological momentum up or kill their opponent’s momentum. As an observer, Holmes doesn’t understand what goes into playing the game. Of course, the people who are good at the game can’t possibly be good because they enjoy (watching) the game like Holmes does, it’s because they’re impatient control freaks.

This isn’t something he would ask of Street Fighter. This isn’t something he would ask of Starcraft. One of the magic things about Melee in the time before Brawl was how it brought people together. It has a relatively low entry level compared to other fighting games, yet had a depth to it that dedicated players could learn about and improve through. This gave Smash Bros Melee. a strong lasting appeal, because it is so easy to get into the game, yet you could do so much with it, and it never gets stale. Jonathan Holmes doesn’t want a game for everyone, he sees others playing the game in a controlled way and finds it offensive. He wants Smash Bros. to have a nonsense feature that he wouldn’t ask of any other game, because he doesn’t actually care how Smash Bros. plays, or whether it’s a fun game at all. He said himself he or any “average” player can barely tell the difference between Melee and Brawl by looking at them.

Again he sounds like an observer, using a visual demonstration to try to get his point across, and vague statements like “hang time” to describe characters moving slower, rather than facts about the exact differences. The differences between Melee and Brawl are something you can feel, especially because Brawl has input delays and buffers. This can’t be seen in footage of the game, but can be felt by anyone playing it. Just like how an HDTV with high input latency looks fine to anyone watching, but if you try to play a game on it, you suddenly feel the intense sluggishness between your controller and the screen. Since the differences aren’t obvious, the series should stop being geared towards a balanced play style, and instead towards one based on playing the game and interacting with opponents as little as possible, trying to edge them out in the long run, because he doesn’t mind that as long as those pesky fans of the game go away.

Genre Blindness

The points brought up in Holmes’s article reflect a failure on his part to understand the games he criticizes, and rely on the general audience not being knowledgeable enough on the topic to simply dismiss him, while still having an audience knowledgeable and opinionated enough on the topic to combat him. This is common in games discussion and criticism. Most people operating as journalists and academics aren’t experts on games. It’s unlikely that they’re even fairly good at games. There are regular signs that journalists simply don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to games with a significant depth to them (as is routine for most competitive multiplayer games) and that they struggle with games above the average level of difficulty, frequently resorting to use of an easy mode, or simply reviewing the game incomplete and marking it down for its “difficulty” or “inaccessibility.” A recent example of this was Revision 3’s review of Metal Gear Rising, where it is notable that all of their gameplay footage included the auto assist indicator in the upper left corner that only appears on easy mode. It’s worth contrasting this with the interview Platinum Games recently conducted with Saurian Dash. In this interview, Saur is able to explain how the game works on a fundamental level that all of the journalists reviewing the game simply passed up on.

Zeboyd Games posted an article on their blog titled, “Why Games Like The Wonderful 101 are a Poor Fit for the Gaming Press,” addressing the common trend of skill-intensive games with a deeper mechanical underpinning being dismissed by the press because the press simply doesn’t have enough time to get good enough to understand how those games work. Penny Arcade Report’s Ben Kuchera chose to write a piece on Wonderful 101 with Robert Boyd’s article in mind, coming to the conclusion that the game’s depth and complexity were more alienating than inviting, and that this in itself was inherently a point against it. In numerous reviews of DmC: Devil May Cry it was brought up how the game was made “more accessible” but still had the same deep fighting system. Despite a legion of legitimate complaints related to game features such as the framerate, lack of hard lock as an input modifier, and broken style meter, gaming press chose to dismiss the majority of these complaints as the fans complaining about Dante’s hair color or simply whining because they can’t handle the game being changed. Such a disconnect between critics and readers is common, as demonstrated by a study conducted on Metacritic by Xentax that scores users will give a game and the opinions of critics have next to no causal link.

Word From the Experts

Jonathan Holmes cites Smash Bros. experts too, but only to deride them as being control freaks upset about something that is, in his view, extremely minor to the game. This is because he lacks the ability and experience to understand how this particular change, increased landing lag, ripples up and affects the other game elements. Gaming journalists cannot envision how the parts of a game fit together and affect one another, they can at best address the basic features the game possesses and render some vague judgment based on how the game feels. In Holmes’s article on tripping, he attributed the static and defensive style of play popular in Brawl to tripping, when landing lag and shield stun actually have a much larger influence on that.

In fighting games, a large component of the game is the ability to beat out your opponent’s move by throwing out your own first, or to punish it by attacking them when they miss. Stronger moves tend to take longer to start up and recover, so they are easier to punish and harder to land on your opponent. I’m sure everyone here has had the experience of your opponent messing up a rest with Jigglypuff and being caught sleeping, allowing you to punish it with the strongest move you have. The longer the recovery time of attacks, the more severely opponents can punish you for attacking. All the Smash games have relatively quick attacks, but Smash 64 and Melee had lower landing lag, allowing you to attack sooner, and your opponent could only punish you with moves that were of a certain strength, and only if they were capable of predicting and reacting to your attack’s recovery.

In Brawl and Smash 4, increased landing lag means that not only is it easier for your opponents to punish your attacks on reaction, but that they can use stronger punishing moves on you. This means that there is an imbalance between the risks and rewards of attacking. If every move is relatively fast to come out, but can be punished hard for missing, then people will naturally avoid attacking except with their weakest and safest attacks. Look to the grand finals of the Smash Invitational Tournament at E3 for an example of that. Shields also play a role in this, because when the duration of the stun on a shield is lower, then the defender has more advantage time on block to punish the person that just attacked them, and even lower commitment attacks become punishable from a shield where they might otherwise be safe. What Jonathan Holmes dismisses as the obsessive ramblings of control freaks is an easily overlooked but important factor that will literally define how the entire game is played.

It is worth contrasting the opinions of Mew2King and Armada here with those of professional Street Fighter players in response to the new version of Street Fighter 4. In a recent interview, six of Japan’s top players discussed the changes in Ultra Street Fighter 4. It’s not a surprise that the number of frames in advantage time comes up frequently in this discussion. Games are displayed in successive series of animation frames, and these frames serve as a convenient standard timer for discussing the duration of things like attacks and stun. Advantage time is how fast you recover from your attack versus how fast your opponent recovers from the stun of being hit by it. Changes of as little as one frame of advantage time for a character were enough for these experts to re-evaluate changes in ranking, power level, and play style.

If you check the average fighting game review, they’re able to inform you of the big new features the developers added with this iteration, like the typical Ultra Street Fighter 4 review being able to describe how focus attacks work, and the new delayed wakeup system, and some superfluous side features like the combo trials, and describe the general vague feeling of the game, but they’re incapable of really describing why that fighting game is better or worse than any other fighting game. They lack the ability to process the way the game is put together and work out the strategies and game dynamics inherent in the play of it.

This isn’t a skill that is exclusive to the best players in the world, even average level players of these games are typically capable of discussing these things, because the deep nature of these games require players to understand how the whole system works in order to beat others, or play the game well on the higher difficulties. After all, I was able to explain how much the landing lag influences the game, and I’m no top player. A typical forum for a competitive game of any type will usually have a great deal of discussion about how even the smallest elements of the game influence how the entire thing works. Seth Killian was able to write about information like the mental game of Street Fighter long before people had access to home console versions of the games to test on, and he has never been a world class player.

Game journalists lack knowledge or capability of this type both for specific genres and for games as a whole, leading to erroneous notions like throws being cheap, professional players only being good for memorizing combos in games like Street Fighter, or playing out from a static “How to win at Smash Bros.” cookbook based entirely on reflexes and dexterity rather than the mental game of understanding and predicting your opponent, while also trying to keep composure and momentum going. The commentators did an excellent job explaining to unaware viewers, but to some degree you have to play and see for yourself. There are whole elements of the game that most people will never see or experience because they don’t think about it or try it out, and those elements frequently get relegated to obscure articles in niche communities.

The Fault of Game Reviews

It’s easy to take the last segment as an indictment of a typical journalist’s ability to understand fighting games or action games with advanced techniques, rather the typical journalist’s inability to describe is only more obvious with those types of game because what they fail to understand about the game is better documented and more obvious to the players. What should be noted is that the style of game reviews is uniform across all games. They are failing to describe all games for the same reasons, it’s just easier to point out with games that rely on their mechanical systems to make an impression, rather than their story. The reviewer will typically summarize the theme of the game, the major mechanics used by the player, and a general statement on the “experience” of playing the game.

Some academics have criticized this, claiming it is shallow, and we need more criticism of games and less mere reviews. These academics are correct, but more frequently than not what they mean by “criticism” of the game isn’t discussion of how the mechanics operate to create a fun, interactive experience, but rather analysis of the cultural significance of the game, how interactive functions are used for a narrative resonance, or the message the game is supposed to convey. Yet the problem remains that when I read the typical game review, I have no ability to tell from their writing whether the game is good or not and I am forced to rely on my friends or longer segments of gameplay footage to help give me an idea how the game actually works, and feels to play. Describing gameplay in an explicit way that people can understand is hard and not well explored, so critics and academics tend to fall back on elements of film or literature theory that have dissolved into the public consciousness, and vague opinions on whether the game feels nice or not. This is part of why there is a general trend of the gaming press highly praising works with large narrative content.

Being reviewers, it’s expected that they’re experts on judging games. Apart from the fact that they’re writing on a big-name game sites (and everyone else isn’t), what places their opinion above anyone else’s? As more incidents of reviewers panning a game because they didn’t “get it,” and bias in review scores come out, it becomes increasingly obvious that reviewers are unskilled, and that this lack of skill and background knowledge is limiting their ability to act as what their job title implies they are – people who are capable of delivering insights about the quality of a game because of their above average knowledge of games. Issues with frequent bias have lead to a call for more objective games reporting, leading to things like Objective Game Reviews, journalists such as Jim Sterling, and a PAX panel, attempting to lampoon the idea that a game can be reviewed on the basis of its components, while minimizing the reviewer’s personal preferences, because every reviewer’s experience is subjective and therefore inevitably biased. So they indirectly claim that objective or non-biased reviews can’t exist, and aren’t a thing consumers want, reviews can only be a person’s individual reaction to a game, therefore all reviews are fallible and you might as well continue to read theirs.

Despite this, reviews profess themselves and inevitably serve as consumer guides, attempting to inform consumers which games are worth their time and which should be avoided. Criticisms that reviewers are incompetent tend to be met with defenses that they beat whatever token hard game is being bandied around at that time, and don’t translate to an improvement in the quality of their writing that would be correlated with skill in both performing well at games and understanding their functioning well enough to review them. Rather than limiting one’s ability to relate to an audience of “average” gamers, being skilled at games means being able to spell out to consumers what the strong aspects of a game are with more accuracy than an unskilled reviewer. This is something that gaming journalists will attempt to dismiss because it removes their credibility and because them getting good at games isn’t going to happen. Anyone who is good at games is usually too busy enjoying them or doesn’t have the right connections to get into journalism.

If games truly couldn’t be judged as good or bad, then the only reasonable alternative format would be to describe them unambiguously enough that a reader could determine if the game is likely to be something they are interested in, rather than the reviewer vaguely attempting to sum up how much it bored them. At least in that scenario complex games wouldn’t get the shaft because reviewers deduct points for them being “inscrutable,” as Ben Kuchera put it. The trouble with this is of course that game reviewers would still need to actually be able to describe how the game works objectively on a level below the obvious surface features in order to allow people to understand the game’s operation well enough to judge for themselves whether they will like it. This approach is harder to put into short simple words, and thereby harder to market and make money off of, unattractive for both journalism sites and the game publishers that fund them, despite being more useful for everyone involved. That, and game reviewers would need to be good at games.

Taking Apart Stealth

May 18, 2015April 5, 2021Celia Wagar7 Comments

Games are composed of rules. One of the goals of the game designer is to create sets of rules that work together in order to create dynamic and deep gameplay. This means gameplay with many possible non-redundant outcomes, strategies, or states, where the player is capable of planning around each element of the design and the design also attempts to thwart the player while opening up more ways for the player to interact with the design and overcome it.

This is a deconstruction of the basic elements of stealth games, arranged in an order of basic complexity up to high complexity. Each level is the number of discrete elements present. These elements are all listed at the end. A game with 12 of these elements could be said to be a, “level 12 stealth game” (though of course this is an arbitrary scheme and shouldn’t be taken as a definitive statement on a game’s quality). The early levels are mostly linear in their progression, building on each other in what I feel is a natural order of progression. Later levels are ordered more or less arbitrarily, as those elements are not really a part of the core stealth experience, but are supplemental, and frequently combined in different ways across games. In general, the core concept of stealth games is enemy units not having an automatic or universal awareness of the player’s location and the manipulation of enemy hostilities and behaviors at a distance.

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Level design in particular is also a huge part of stealth games, and can range from guard placement, patrols, and environmental features. The lack of many of these elements can be compensated for with good level design, such as making unchanging guard patrols extend far through the level, and having the level be fairly open so guards sweep every area. This can allow guards to detect the bodies of downed guards, which they would never see in a game where their patrol pattern didn’t overlap where the guard was taken out. Adding different combinations of lighting and sound-producing floor surfaces in a level can dramatically change an encounter with even simpler AI types. There are many more ways to use level design in stealth games to create interesting possibilities, but that is unfortunately not the focus of this article.

In a stealth game, the goal of good AI is not just to be hard, but to challenge the player in a way that brings out variation and requires the player to think to succeed, usually by countering one of the player’s options or strategies. In order to do that, each of these levels imposes upon the player another distinct AI strategy they must deal with, but also gives them a means to gain an advantage over their enemies. For AI in general to improve, this type of discrete behavioral method and game design philosophy is what will have to be employed. Good AI is built on many distinct parts working well together, and good game design is built on challenging the player in a way that opens up variation while also forcing them to play well.

This list serves as a mirror for what it means to improve a game’s artificial intelligence, and on a broader level, what it means to improve a game’s challenges. Games exist as challenges because we enjoy being challenged. The quality of the challenge isn’t just that it’s hard, but in the particular methods by which it is hard. This is best expressed by the term “Depth.” The definition of depth I use is the range of different possible differentiated scenarios that can occur in a game related to succeeding or failing. Difficulty creates depth by differentiating scenarios from one another. You don’t win by just doing anything in a difficult game. You have to do the right things at the right times to succeed. Too much difficulty can limit depth, making the game a process of memorization and execution.

Each entry in the list will recite all the previous entries, with modifications in bold.

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Level 1: Guards are in fixed positions. If they see you, they attack you until you are dead or they are disabled.

Featured in: Nearly all games, definitely all stealth games.

Level 2: Guards move around in fixed patrols. If they see you, they attack you until you are dead or they are disabled.

Featured in: Same.

Level 3: Guards move around in fixed patrols. If they see you, they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing, but will remain in position around that area until a timer runs out then return to their original patrols

Featured in: Thief (2014), Dishonored (both AIs had a habit of standing around looking dumb)

Level 4: Guards move around in fixed patrols. If they see you, they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they return to their original patrols

Featured in: Metal Gear Solid, Thief, Mark of the Ninja, most stealth games.

Level 5: Guards move around in fixed patrols. If they see you, they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they return to their original patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look at the source of the disturbance.

Featured in: Thief (2014), Dishonored (again, tendency to stand around)

Level 6: Guards move around in fixed patrols. If they see you, they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to their original patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance.

Featured in: Metal Gear Solid 2 and beyond, Thief 2, Mark of the Ninja, most stealth games

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Level 7: Guards move around in fixed patrols. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to their original patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance.

Featured in: Most stealth games have detection based on distance, and to some degree lighting.

Level 8: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance.

Featured in: Games with this feature are rare, I cannot name any. Deus Ex Human Revolution had alerted guards return to changed patrols in some circumstances.

Level 9: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time.

Featured in: Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Monaco, Hitman.

Level 10: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase.

Featured in: Thief, Metal Gear Solid 2 onward, Mark of the Ninja, Monaco, Hitman, and most others (amusingly, not the original deus ex)

Level 11: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. The bodies of guards can be moved from their locations.

Featured in: Dishonored, Thief, Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Deus Ex, Mark of the Ninja,

Level 12: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards.

Featured in: Was going to be featured in Dishonored, but removed. No other I know of, maybe Splinter Cell.

Level 13: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards.

Featured in: Metal Gear Solid (“Whose footprints are these?”), the Dark Mod (guards can notice certain stolen items, and remember if doors were open/closed from the last time checked), Thief (2014) (same as dark mod).

Level 14: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards.

Featured in: MGS series from 2 onwards, Thief, Monaco, Not the Elder Scrolls games or Mark of the Ninja.

Level 15: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. Alerting enemies will change the concentration of enemies in the larger area of the level from being more distributed to being more focused on the location where alert occurred. Guards across the level will be more investigative and easier to provoke. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards.

Featured in: Monaco, no others I’m aware of.

Level 16: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards will react to louder sounds more quickly, and have a larger delay in reacting to smaller stimulus. Actions such as takedowns or other near silent things can now generate noise without making them impossible to use near multiple guards. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards.

Featured in: It’s a subtle distinction, some form of this is in most stealth games, like a gunshot instantly alerting, where footsteps are just investigation.

Level 17: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. I enjoy a cold shower on occasion. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards will react to louder sounds more quickly, and have a larger delay in reacting to smaller stimulus. Actions such as takedowns or other near silent things can now generate noise without making them impossible to use near multiple guards. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards. When in alert mode, guards will coordinate to trap the player by blocking off avenues of escape based on a projection of the player’s route. Guards can be mislead by doubling back or changing route when out of sight.

Featured in: No game I am aware of. Edit: Assassin’s Creed

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Level 18: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards will react to louder sounds more quickly, and have a larger delay in reacting to smaller stimulus. Actions such as takedowns or other near silent things can now generate noise without making them impossible to use near multiple guards. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards have a persistent memory of the state an object was in when it was last examined, and will react to that object being in an altered state. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards. When in alert mode, guards will coordinate to trap the player by blocking off avenues of escape based on a projection of the player’s route. Guards can be mislead by doubling back or changing route when out of sight.

Featured in: The Dark Mod and nothing else.

Level 19: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Entering an area where guards cannot follow will trigger them to flush that area out, such as by using ranged attacks against players that are high up and grenades or gas against players in vents. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards will react to louder sounds more quickly, and have a larger delay in reacting to smaller stimulus. Actions such as takedowns or other near silent things can now generate noise without making them impossible to use near multiple guards. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards have a persistent memory of the state an object was in when it was last examined, and will react to that object being in an altered state. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards. When in alert mode, guards will coordinate to trap the player by blocking off avenues of escape based on a projection of the player’s route. Guards can be mislead by doubling back or changing route when out of sight.

Featured in: Deus Ex Human Revolution (grenades in vents), Mark of the Ninja (looking into vents and shooting into them), Dishonored/Thief (2014) (throwing rocks or shooting at characters unreachable with melee).

Level 20: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. Entering an area where guards cannot follow will trigger them to flush that area out, such as by using ranged attacks against players that are high up and grenades or gas against players in vents. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards will react to louder sounds more quickly, and have a larger delay in reacting to smaller stimulus. Actions such as takedowns or other near silent things can now generate noise without making them impossible to use near multiple guards. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards have a persistent memory of the state an object was in when it was last examined, and will react to that object being in an altered state. Guards can notice broken passive security measures and reset them to their initial state. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards. When in alert mode, guards will coordinate to trap the player by blocking off avenues of escape based on a projection of the player’s route. Guards can be mislead by doubling back or changing route when out of sight.

Featured in: The Dark Mod/Thief fan missions (relighting torches), Monaco.

Level 21: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. When investigating, guards will occasionally detect the position of the player directly when their senses cannot otherwise detect the player, leading them to investigate in the player’s general direction. Entering an area where guards cannot follow will trigger them to flush that area out, such as by using ranged attacks against players that are high up and grenades or gas against players in vents. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards will react to louder sounds more quickly, and have a larger delay in reacting to smaller stimulus. Actions such as takedowns or other near silent things can now generate noise without making them impossible to use near multiple guards. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Clowns appear in the player’s dreams while they sleep. Guards have a persistent memory of the state an object was in when it was last examined, and will react to that object being in an altered state. Guards can notice broken passive security measures and reset them to their initial state. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of missing guards. When in alert mode, guards will coordinate to trap the player by blocking off avenues of escape based on a projection of the player’s route. Guards can be mislead by doubling back or changing route when out of sight.

Featured in: Thief 1 and 2 (it’s cheating, but it does help keep the enemies on the player’s tail and makes evading them as you get back into their unaware state more interesting, especially if tuned well).

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Level 22: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. When investigating, guards will occasionally detect the position of the player directly when their senses cannot otherwise detect the player, leading them to investigate in the player’s general direction. Entering an area where guards cannot follow will trigger them to flush that area out, such as by using ranged attacks against players that are high up and grenades or gas against players in vents. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards will react to louder sounds more quickly, and have a larger delay in reacting to smaller stimulus. Actions such as takedowns or other near silent things can now generate noise without making them impossible to use near multiple guards. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards have a persistent memory of the state an object was in when it was last examined, and will react to that object being in an altered state. Guards can notice broken passive security measures and reset them to their initial state. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of guards identified as missing from their patrol. When in alert mode, guards will coordinate to trap the player by blocking off avenues of escape based on a projection of the player’s route. Guards can be mislead by doubling back or changing route when out of sight. The player can disguise themselves as an enemy, avoiding hostility except when performing suspicious actions.

Featured in: Hitman, Monaco, Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3

Level 23: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. When investigating, guards will occasionally detect the position of the player directly when their senses cannot otherwise detect the player, leading them to investigate in the player’s general direction. Entering an area where guards cannot follow will trigger them to flush that area out, such as by using ranged attacks against players that are high up and grenades or gas against players in vents. Occasionally frogs appear in your soup. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards will react to louder sounds more quickly, and have a larger delay in reacting to smaller stimulus. Actions such as takedowns or other near silent things can now generate noise without making them impossible to use near multiple guards. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards have a persistent memory of the state an object was in when it was last examined, and will react to that object being in an altered state. Guards can notice broken passive security measures and reset them to their initial state. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of guards identified as missing from their patrol. When in alert mode, guards will coordinate to trap the player by blocking off avenues of escape based on a projection of the player’s route. Guards can be mislead by doubling back or changing route when out of sight. The player can disguise themselves as an enemy, avoiding hostility except when performing suspicious actions. Different disguises are allowed different ranges of action without provoking hostility, in addition to being functional in different areas of the level.

Featured in: Only Hitman has a full implementation

Level 24: Guards move around in fixed patrols that occasionally change up. They see you based on your distance from them and lighting, spotting you faster up close in bright light, and upon spotting you they attack you until you are dead, they disengage, or they are disabled. If one of them spots you then the alert is localized to that particular guard until that information is passed along to others. Incapacitating that guard will prevent the spread of alert status among other guards. If you enter an area where they cannot see you, they will stop pursuing directly and begin following a projected path of where you might have moved to based on your last location, until a timer runs out, then they enter investigation phase around your last known location, then another timer runs out and they return to changed patrols. When investigating, guards will occasionally detect the position of the player directly when their senses cannot otherwise detect the player, leading them to investigate in the player’s general direction. Guards aware of the player will take a formation to avoid the player sneaking up on them. Entering an area where guards cannot follow will trigger them to flush that area out, such as by using ranged attacks against players that are high up and grenades or gas against players in vents. Certain triggers like partial sightings, sound, bodies, or other things will trigger an investigation phase where they will look around the source of the disturbance. Guards will react to louder sounds more quickly, and have a larger delay in reacting to smaller stimulus. Actions such as takedowns or other near silent things can now generate noise without making them impossible to use near multiple guards. Guards can recognize signs of the player’s passing (such as footsteps on some terrain or misplaced items) and track them to the player. Guards have a persistent memory of the state an object was in when it was last examined, and will react to that object being in an altered state. Guards can notice broken passive security measures and reset them to their initial state. Guards that spot you will call in for help, leading to increased patrols in the future, and more enemies to deal with in a short period of time. Guards can be killed or knocked unconscious, both attract guard attention, killed guards trigger an alert phase, unconscious guards wake up eventually or can be woken up by other guards and trigger an investigation phase. Guards dynamically create patrol routes in response to missing guards or changes in the environment. Guards investigate around for the bodies of guards identified as missing from their patrol. When in alert mode, guards will coordinate to trap the player by blocking off avenues of escape based on a projection of the player’s route. Guards can be mislead by doubling back or changing route when out of sight. The player can disguise themselves as an enemy, avoiding hostility except when performing suspicious actions. Different disguises are allowed different ranges of action without provoking hostility, in addition to being functional in different areas of the level.

Featured in: Only the Batman Arkham games

Each of these elements in order are:

Spotting you and attacking
Moving around in patrols
losing you when you break line of vision with them
following you after losing sight of you with an imperfect knowledge of your location
stimulus demanding their attention
investigating around stimulus
spotting you based on lighting conditions and distance
changing patrols in response to events
calling in additional guards
the ability to kill or knock guards unconscious, leaving bodies behind.
moving guard bodies once incapacitated
dynamic patrol route creation
environmental player tracking
local versus universal awareness of the player on the part of the AI
Global guard coordination across a level, permanent alert status.
scaled reaction times relative to the loudness of a sound or other stimulus.
trapping the player through multi-guard coordination
Memory of environment
Flushing out safe spots
Resetting security
Psychic searches
The ability to use disguises
Disguises based on level of access
Covering other guards’ backs

No game currently has all the items on this list, and some of the items listed don’t exist in any game I know of. Is there any feature on here that you think I’m missing? Are all of these items actually represented in one game or another? Please leave it below in the comments. If it’s distinct from the elements presented, then I’ll add it in.

5 Games, 5 Jumps

May 18, 2015May 17, 2025Celia Wagar2 Comments

Objects in real life may always jump or bounce in a perfect curve, but in games the designer is free to imagine many different ways for characters to jump around. To allow players greater control over their character, many games incorporate the idea that by pressing the button longer, the character will jump higher. Despite the concept being rather simple, different game designers have implemented this mechanic in a massive number of ways. It’s worth paying attention to how they did it because each method serves the game it comes from to a different end and gives the player a distinct feeling that they associate with that game. That and it’s interesting how programmers can come to so many different solutions for what a layperson might not ever consciously notice is different.

A short introduction to game physics

In case you didn’t pay attention in physics class, here’s a quick and dirty explanation of how jumping tends to work in video games. I’ll try to keep the math simple so everyone can follow along. There are four basic numbers you need to keep in mind, the initial jumping velocity (or the force of the jump when it starts), the current velocity (which is how fast the character is going in that moment of time), the character’s position (which is how high up the character is), and how strong the gravity is.

Game time is calculated in something called frames. A frame is the shortest length of time across which something can occur. Most good games run at 60 frames per second, including all the ones in this article, meaning they change what’s onscreen 60 times every second. Every frame the character’s position has the character’s current velocity added to it, meaning they move the distance specified by the velocity. Then the current velocity has the gravity subtracted from it, meaning that if you were moving up, you’re now moving a little less fast up this frame, and a little less next frame until eventually you’re not moving up at all, and instead you’re falling faster and faster.

The initial jump velocity and the gravity are constant, meaning they do not change. When a jump is started, the character’s current velocity is set to the initial jump velocity. Then the character is moved by that velocity every frame, while gravity eventually makes it so that velocity is negative, bringing the character back down again. Together these things create a parabolic curve, which you might remember from algebra class. This smooth curve can be seen in games with simple jumps that don’t let you control their height at all, like Castlevania 1 and 2, Donkey Kong Arcade, or Metal Slug.

With that out of the way, lets get into these jumps.

Megaman

Megaman’s jump is a great introduction to multi-height jump physics because it works in a very simple way. If the A button is held, then you go up, when it is released you immediately go down. Your velocity is set to a slight negative the instant you release! Notable is that Megaman’s jump still has gravity applied to it, so if it’s held down all the way, he’ll jump in a smooth arc, slowing down as he goes up, and speeding up as he comes down. If you’re close to the top of Megaman’s jump arc, releasing the button does nothing, so you always get a smooth curve at the top of his jump, even if it’s a sharp transition otherwise.

Megaman’s jump is useful in his games because players need to jump and shoot enemies that come at Megaman from precise heights. Because his momentum instantly reverses when he starts falling, it can appear very twitchy, but it also lets him do jumps without worrying about going too high or too far at the apex. Similarly this ties into the feeling of the character: Megaman has no acceleration or deceleration, so the control over him is very direct. It’s only fitting that this should be mirrored in his jump.

Mario

Mario’s jump is actually a surprisingly complex solution. Going into writing this article, I expected it to have a constant speed upwards, then you run out of jump time and gravity pulls him back down until he hits terminal velocity for a neat little curve at the top of the jump and that’s that. What actually happens is, while Mario is jumping and A is held down, he has a significantly lower gravity than when he is falling, so he is slowly losing momentum on the way up. When you release A or he runs out of upwards momentum, this heavier gravity kicks in and he suddenly gains a lot of downwards momentum.

In addition to this, Mario has different strengths of jump and gravities depending on how fast he’s going. When he’s going at mid-speed, like when walking, his jumping power stays the same, but the gravity applied to him both as he rises and as he falls are reduced. While walking Mario can jump slightly higher due to this reduced gravity. When he’s going at top speed, like when running, his initial jumping force is increased, as is the gravity applied to him as he rises and falls. This leads to him being able to jump even higher, but rising and falling at a quicker speed as well.

The most natural consequence of this behavior is that players have fairly precise control over how high they jump, yet the jump appears close to a smooth parabolic curve, working well for the level of precision that the developers wanted to give players, but also meshing with Mario’s sense of acceleration and lower friction on the ground than Megaman. Having higher rising and falling speeds while running gives players a trade-off between easy, consistent control and moving faster while jumping to higher heights.

You can see the specifics on Mario’s Physics here.

Sonic

In Sonic smooth movement and a sense of speed were a priority. They programmed the jump to work completely normal, with an initial velocity that gets pulled down by gravity in a normal parabolic arc as long as the jump button is held down. Where it gets interesting is if you release the jump button before you reach the top of the jump arc.

If the jump button is released when sonic is traveling upwards, it will brake his velocity to a small upwards velocity, so sonic is still traveling upwards but at a slower rate. Eventually gravity brings sonic back down. This means that his movement is in a smooth arc no matter how long the button is held. Because Sonic continues moving up when jump is let go of, it appears he flows smoothly from moving upwards into moving downwards.

You can find more information on Sonic Physics here.

Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. uses a completely different solution from all of the above games. Instead of controlling your jump height by holding the button longer in the air, it’s controlled by holding it longer on the ground.
When you press jump in Super Smash Bros., your character actually enters a short squatting animation before they jump. The animation is so short, most people don’t notice it. There are only two jump heights in Smash Bros., which fans call the Short Hop and Full Jump. Which one you get is determined by whether you release the button before or after the jump squat animation. The difference between them is purely how much initial velocity is put into the jump.

Smash Bros. has an interesting solution to the jumping height problem, and it works well for Smash because by freeing up the button while characters are in the air, players can better control what attacks their character is doing and which way they’re moving simultaneously to jumping. That and it still feels to the average person that they’re holding the button into the jump and putting more or less force into each jump. It has the side effect of always creating a perfectly smooth jump arc.

King of Fighters

King of Fighters has a very similar solution to Smash Bros., press up to jump and release it before the pre-jump frames end to do a short hop instead of a full jump. King of Fighters has less pre-jump frames than Smash Bros., so it pulls a sneaky trick to differentiate between Short Hops and Full Jumps: A few frames into the air you can release the up direction and you will still get the Short Hop. The velocity difference between the Short Hop and Full Jump is so small that these frames blend right in.

In King of Fighters XIII this was changed slightly, the pre-jump frames were increased and short hopping is based purely on them. This means KoF XIII jumps feel a bit more “sticky” than its predecessors and it takes slightly longer to get into the air.

King of Fighters having the jump style it does is tremendously helpful to it as a fighting game, it allows people to aggress more safely in the air than in games like Street Fighter where they normally have a huge risk of being anti-aired. It’s helpful to have the stick or directional pad released so people can do special attacks and command normals in the air.

Short Hopping in King of Fighters created a whole new way to mix people up on the ground, because to beat Short Hops, it was best to use standing punches. Then crouching kicks would go under the standing punches to hit the opponent’s legs, but they’d also go under anyone Short Hopping over. This creates a loop like rock paper scissors. This really shook up the standard fighting game formula and became a trademark of SNK fighting games.

In Summary

Between these different jumps are a diverse range of solutions to a common problem, each expressing the identity of the game and playing into its overall design. I hope this offers an insight into the process behind how your favorite game was tuned to feel the way it does and gives you a reason to look a bit deeper at how a game creates the kinaesthetic feeling that defines it, or for what purpose it may do so.

What is Art? Why are Games Art?

April 27, 2015August 14, 2017Celia WagarLeave a comment

(editor’s note: Another old writing on this topic, relatively close to my current opinion, but a lot of the wording here is hopelessly confused)

One definition of art that is used a lot is that it is the conveyance of information in non-literal terms (I’d add to this that it must be arranged, not natural, because if it is natural then it is your interpretation of natural information, not conveyance of information). The quality of this information is determined by its depth, not necessarily content. Games are a form of art, however we get them confused with other forms of art. Games convey information about themselves, not all in literal terms, all games do. With art we tend to get lost in thinking that the message behind art is a literal thing that is being told to you. It isn’t. A more accurate summation would be that art conveys information, not just a message. A picture conveys visual information. The message is its content. A common practice among painters is to focus on the details of important areas, like the portrait in life drawing and to not add a lot of detail to areas that are unimportant, such as the feet, or the background (in life drawing, curtains are frequently used to intentionally create a background with less detail to add).

This definition is convenient because rules out a lot of things, such as assembly instructions, factual textbooks, strategy guides, and Microsoft Word, unless their design is in some way conveying a sense of aesthetic. It is also inclusive of a lot of things that people might not necessarily consider art, such as advertising, product design, games, and other “artful” things. I like this definition because it gives words to help explain a lot of things I have personally regarded as art for a long time while also accurately separating that which I consider creative work, but not necessarily art. Worth noting is that I personally have a very broad definition of information, broader than most people use the word for, so bear with me a little.

We frequently call advertising a form of art, but we wouldn’t call nutritional information art, or an instruction booklet. This is primarily because advertising is built on not conveying information in literal terms, and the latter are. as advertising evolved, it became more and more artlike, opposed to its early incarnations, which were closer to informing the customer of the product’s features similar to an instruction pamphlet. Modern commercials frequently have no details on the product, and just tons of branding, like logos, actors, feelings, stories, music, and more. Contrast a Coca Cola commercial to a Pepsi commercial, then to an older style infomercial.

What we need to understand about art is that information is not strictly verbal. Games are the art of interaction, puzzles are the art of cognition, paintings are the art of visual data. The “Message” of games is the way they are played. The type of interaction they seek to create. This is why the genres of games are divided the way they are. Genre distinctions exist to tell us the category of message. Whether the message is good or not depends on its depth. The thing however is that we mistake merely having a message for being quality artwork.

It could be argued that the depth of a piece of artwork is in how many layers there are between the surface and its ultimate message and how difficult it is to fully comprehend the piece. I do not entirely agree with this, but it brings up interesting parallels to the nature of depth in games. Imagine that the true message of a game is the best way to play it. Imagine that the true message is the expression of all the mechanics in synchronization. The true message of Street Fighter is conveyed in bouts by the best players of all time. The message of the game isn’t exactly its components nearly as much as how the player interacts with them. It isn’t art based on the quality of the code, but on the quality of the thinking that the player is expected to generate.

This is why objectives are necessary in games, because unless we set objectives, we are not compelled to think. This is why painters appreciate paintings more than anyone else, because they deconstruct it and reassemble it. They want to know what went into this painting. In games, we deconstruct them because we want to win, and the game is structured to force us to deconstruct them in order to do that. When a game has a lot of layers to it, it makes deconstruction more difficult. A game without an objective is a story without a focus. It’s not even a story, it’s just an account of disconnected events. It’s closer to a security camera feed than a film. Games without objectives cease to be games. Incidentally, they lose the message, because without an objective, there is no longer a type of thinking being conveyed, no longer that masterful way of playing. No longer a mode of play being conveyed at all. It is interactive, but without focus, there is no longer motivation to deal with it, unless you construct objectives from it (obvious example to give is Minecraft). It’s not a game, it is a toy. I am not going to go into the art of toys, I do not understand the art of toys except for their potential to be games.

The things we typically associate with difficulty in a game, like lethality and time windows, are not necessarily the true difficulty of the game, they are there to make us deconstruct and reassemble the game, that is the actual challenge. This is why it is very very easy to make a hard game, but very very hard to make a truly challenging one. The flash game titled The World’s Hardest Game is dull because every one of us has already beaten it, same for many other indie games billing themselves as hard, like Super Meat Boy. These aren’t games about understanding or interacting, they’re games about going through the motions until you happen to succeed. Just because you fail a lot on the way to your objective does not mean that you are playing a challenging game, only a hard one.

I believe games are art because they convey non-literal information in the form of their method of play. The method of play is itself an aesthetic that is distinct from its graphical representation. The design of the game conveys itself in non-literal terms. This means that it doesn’t outright describe itself to you, you must understand it implicitly through its means of conveyance. The information conveyed by the game is its strategies, the pace of the gameplay, the model of the actions you perform, the type of thinking required to solve it, the “feeling” of the actions involved, the spaces you traverse and their internal model contrasted with their visual appearance.

I think that by mentioning games like Okami, Journey, Flow, and Flower, people are fall into a trap along the lines of thinking music, painting, movies, etc are art, but games are not. What game would you recommend to a person who only thought paintings were art? A game that looks like a painting! No, that’s only reinforcing the idea that paintings are art. If this game is very artistic because it looks like a painting then you are implicitly admitting that games are not art, only things which stick to the categories we’ve accepted as art culturally are.

An example a friend gave to me was, “Is a hospital art because paintings are hung up in it?” No, a hospital exists for a literal purpose, not to convey non-literal information. Hospitals without paintings are not art, and hospitals with paintings are not necessarily art either. Redesigning the entire hospital to look like a house from Dr. Seuss or something doesn’t mean all hospitals are now art because that one has an artful design. In the case of such a hospital, the hospital itself would not be art nearly so much as the building that houses the hospital is. A hospital is not art until its methods of being a hospital itself are artful. Attaching objects that we accept as art to non-art objects does not make them art by proximity. Okami, as a game, is art because of the nature of its interactivity, not merely because it has a Sumi-e filter on everything. Dwarf Fortress is art despite being composed entirely of ASCII characters, the barest form of visual representation possible. Nearly all games are a form of art because nearly all games convey some form of nonliteral information. To call them art by association is to limit what games are and can be.

Grind and How to Eliminate It

April 23, 2015August 14, 2017Celia WagarLeave a comment

Grinding is something that nearly every game player is familiar with at one point or another. Grinding is best known from JRPGs and MMOs, and is almost universally reviled.

First, I’m gonna define what grinding is so we can all be clear on terms. Grinding is the repetition of a relatively simple series of actions that do not directly advance the game.

In an article on Critical Gaming, KirbyKid explores what grinding is by attempting to come up with examples of grinding, and ultimately concluded that as long as players are having fun and voluntarily choosing to play there isn’t really any such thing as grinding, and I kind of have to disagree, because I think his examples weren’t really on point.

The first example he gives is repeating Mario levels, and then he argues about how this isn’t grinding, and largely his point is correct. Having mario levels repeat themselves, beating each level twice, isn’t really grinding. But imagine that there were a block in mario that generated a coin every time you pounded it and never stopped (or at least had a very large number of coins). Now imagine stopping and getting a ton of extra lives from that block. You’re no longer progressing in the game or engaging in the game, you are staying in the same place and pressing A for a long time. Grinding is a cessation of progress. A modern example of this, in New Super Mario Bros. no less, is returning to the first level and abusing the giant mushroom to get a ton of 1ups. The result is players repeating the same section ad infinitum until they have enough 1ups. The old infinite life trick on a turtle shell is only vaguely more tolerable because you don’t have to actually stick around for it. A lot of people did similar in Oblivion by making spells that did nothing and binding their keyboard to cast them forever while they did something else and their skill levels rose.

The issue with Kirby Kid’s example is that even with repeated levels, you are still making progress as you play those levels, unlike repeating 1-1 over and over to get extra lives.

A big reason I quit Disgaea is because of institutionalized grinding. I reached a certain stage and realized that to get any further, I’d have to go back and repeat prior stages until my characters’ levels were high enough to continue. Then my items all had levels too, and I had to grind to beat each of their levels. The entire game is built around forcing the player to sink as much time as possible into it. Then the sequels gave you the option to restart from scratch with better base stats. It’s one thing to provide a lot of content, but to require close to mindless repetition in order to access it all is positively painful.

Dark Souls was a huge step up from its predecessor Demon’s Souls because it eliminated a lot of the grind based elements. One of the things demon’s souls players still have nightmares about is grinding for pure bladestone. Dark Souls by contrast seriously eased up on absurd random drops, and gave the player some of the rarest random drop items guaranteed. The big grind issue in dark souls is only really present for people who play online and even then those who lose at online. In dark souls to play online you need humanity, which is an item that is dropped by sewer rats (and gained by defeating an enemy in online play or assisting someone with a boss). This means that to play online consistently, you need to go back to the depths every so often and kill rats and hope they drop humanity. This can be mitigated somewhat. Drop rates on humanity in the last patch were multiplied by 20, and you can use humanity, enter human form, and wear various items to increase your drop rate further. Also an option is to skip beating the boss of the depths, the gaping dragon, allowing black phantoms to invade you while you are farming. All in all this is a step up from the prior method of online play which required you to beat a boss every time you wanted network functions enabled, but it’s stull pretty tedious.

One of the Castlevania series’ advantages after going the Metroidvania route is that they never forced the player to grind in order to beat the game. The level progression enables the player to keep up their health and damage output as they progress through the game and never really fall behind the enemies, meaning that they will never need to grind. The big trouble is though that these games included random item drops, which boiled down to exiting and re-entering rooms to kill the same monster over and over again for hours on end to get rare items, including weapons. Order of Ecclesia eventually solved this problem by having new weapons (in that game represented by glyphs) obtainable by absorbing them when enemies cast spells or at specific hidden locations. It still had randomly dropping items, but these were less required than ever.

The classic deal in every JRPG or MMO conceived is that the entire game has become less about overcoming challenges and more about making your numbers go up. This is why people raid, this is why people battle monsters outside of town for hours on end. The reason for this being popular or people subjecting themselves to this arduous process at all is detailed in my skinner box and sunk cost fallacy essay.

The reason this is bad should be obvious, it’s dull and unengaging. It doesn’t require anything beyond minimal interaction or thought from players. Even in a game with a combat system that has depth, grinding boils down to a tedious repetitive process.

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga are great examples of this. They have perhaps the best and most strategic combat systems of any JRPG, but they also practically mandate grinding to succeed, which makes them a lot more annoying to play, which is why on some of the DS titles, I ended up using experience multipliers on new game+ so that I could focus on playing the game instead of wasting time on grinding I had already done.

The next question to ask is, what can be done about grinding? There are a few possible solutions. These include, tying experience gains to plot events, having a finite number of enemies, having anti-grinding algorithms for experience gain, having ability gain be attached to player performance instead of random drops, decreasing level caps, and creating combat systems that enable a low level player to defeat a high level enemy with enough skill.

Tying experience to plot events is something that was done by the original Deus Ex and Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. You gain experience when you finish quests, side quests, or complete objectives. What this means is the player is only capable of gaining experience in proportion to how far along they are in the plot and they cannot farm enemies for experience, and now have no real motivation to do so.

Finite enemies is very similar to tying experience to plot events. This can provide a more direct reward for combat and can similarly prevent infinite grinding. However without regulation it can lead to grinding just the same. On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness is a great example of finite enemies done right. Every enemy encounter is given care and instead of grinding, it turns into a game where the player actively looks forward to finding new battles. Players are forced into enough battles to ensure their stats are never particularly low, and it’s impossible to grind your way up and destroy the difficulty.

Anti-grind algorithms would be something along the lines of scaling exp drops in proportion to how strong a character should be at a given point in the story. A diagetic rationale for this would be that a character does not gain much by facing the same enemies over and over again, nor enemies below their skill level. By regulating experience more directly like this, it can limit the effectiveness of grinding and generally keep characters on track with where they should be. Underleveled? Defeat monsters way stronger than you for scaled up experience so you’ll be on track in no time. Overleveled? You’ll earn less and less to prevent you from getting too much of an edge. The big trouble with this method is that it takes a lot of effort to balance on the part of the designers, but difficulty is always hard to balance.

Random drops are a big feature in a lot of RPGs with respawning enemies, and frequently players are required to kill the same enemy for long periods of time to farm a resource or obtain a rare weapon. In general I think systems like this are best left out, attach rare weapons to bosses, or secret locations or puzzles. Don’t waste player’s time, give them real nonrepetitive goals. Dark Souls did this by having every unique item and a lot of rare non-unique weapons be tied to a specific location instead of forcing the player to grind for them. There is no item in the game that requires players to grind in order to get it, and that is a good thing.

Level caps should probably be decreased across the board. High level caps are not inherently good nor bad, but it’s better to have fewer levels and make them count than long gradual progression, which almost seems to demand lazy filler level design and grinding to fill out (see Disgaea).

EDIT: Add Ys solution example with enemy quota.

The final thing that can be done is creating battle systems that enable players to win even when locked to level 1. Examples of games that do this are Dark Souls, Castlevania, and The World Ends With You (notable for people frequently doing level 1 runs). The primary thing that creates a game like this is the ability to avoid damage via rock paper scissors type systems. It’s possible to beat all these games without taking damage. An alternative to this is keeping lethality levels consistent throughout the game (such as in legend of zelda which almost never has an attack that knocks off more than 2 hearts). This can help deal with grinding by largely making it unnecessary. If you do not need to grind to win, then it frequently creates a more natural level progression. Dark Souls in particular is notable for penalizing high level players (200 and above roughly) by preventing them from easily invading and being invaded by other players due to how the matchmaking system works (in demon’s souls matchmaking would fail completely).

Not all of these systems are suitable for every game, but between them they can help empower games to be more capable and interesting while also being less repetitive. Grind based games have always had the particular flaw that the player is not really asked to improve nearly so much as their character improves for them and the game actively conspires to force the player to sit through the same content rather than allowing them to keep moving onto new content. It means making battle systems that are themselves engaging rather than the (dying) trend of trying to sell an RPG on story alone.

RNG, How it Can Hurt, How it Can Help

April 22, 2015August 14, 2017Celia WagarLeave a comment

The mighty random number god is the almighty entity that damns, that saves. In games there have always been the use of random numbers. Even since the days of the egyptians, people rolled blocks to generate random numbers. People have flipped coins, and more recently grabbed numbers off the system clock and a dozen other places and mixed that into something with no predictable pattern.

The first question we’ve gotta ask is, “why?” Why do people use random elements in the first place? I believe this reason is unpredictability. If things are certain, then why bother testing them? People enjoy uncertainty. If you played monopoly or candyland and just picked numbers to move, it would be dull. If you just said put the coin down on the table and said heads, it would be dull. Rock paper scissors and derivative games are interesting because both players are not aware of what the other player has chosen. What makes games interesting is on a fundamental level, uncertainty.

I hate RNGs. My reason for this is that RNGs remove control from a player on the most fundamental level that it is possible to remove control. I believe that games should be fair. Fair means to me that the player is given means to control their situation equally to every other player. There may be systems that act outside the player, but those can be learned and taken advantage of, but an RNG is something that throws that to the wind. Random or pseudorandom numbers by definition cannot be taken advantage of. They are unlearnable, prognostication is not a skill that a player can be expected to develop (and if it was, then it kind of indicates that the number wasn’t random in the first place). The general idea here is, you cannot get better at predicting random numbers.

People can be rock paper scissors champions, but you can never become a coin toss champion. Predicting what people will do is a skill that can absolutely be developed. People aren’t random, but people are complex and constantly evolving. People can be predicted, but people are uncertain. You can never be totally sure what the other person is going to do. They always ostensibly have the option of choosing something different. This is what keeps competition interesting. Competition is in part how well you can perform and how well you can read minds. RNG kills this. The only thing you can do to control the RNG is attempting to cut it out.

In the original counter strike, the bullet spray patterns were static, meaning they moved the same way each time. What this meant was that someone could memorize the pattern and move their gun to counteract the wide and shaky spray pattern. This is what counter strike players actually did. Then counter strike source came along and implemented tighter but randomized spray patterns. This, along with complaints over the physics are the reason counter strike source is disdained by the CS community. The RNG stole their control.

In a way, what we need is both predictability, and uncertainty. We need to know deterministically what the outcome of both player’s actions are, but we can’t know for certain what will be decided. We must be given means to evaluate future outcomes, but not know them for certain. RNG prevents evaluation. You cannot evaluate, cannot guess at the random. You can only do things and pray they work.

A friend of mine coined a term, “intelligent uncertainty”, and I think it entirely accurately describes the phenomena. We are uncertain of what will happen until it does, but we can learn to predict it better and better.

RNG can sometimes play nicely with other components, but only when it’s carefully regulated. Poker for example takes a lot of the luck out of the draw and places it back into player’s hands. It does this by making the game a lot more about bluffs and betting strategies than just winning hands.

Project M had a great fix for Luigi’s misfire which used to activate randomly. Now it can be stored and released when you need it, but you have to keep using Luigi Missile to get it. It will show up randomly within every six times the move is used, and when it does, it becomes optional whether to use it then or store it for a use later. Using it of course means you have to retry 1-6 times to get it back again.

Items have been an issue of contention in smash bros ever since they were introduced, but frankly, I think the easy fix for them is just to make them spawn in regular places at regular times and announce what item it will be before it spawns, like having a ghost item appear there before it can be picked up and used. With regulation, items could go from breaking games to just being another element players use. Items like the quad damage, haste, regeneration, flight, invisibility, battle suit, personal teleporter, medkit, and mega health are perfectly acceptable in Quake 3, and items could have a place in Smash with more regulation.

Randomness is way more acceptable with peach and game and watch. Peach’s turnips have a random chance of producing stitch-face, a really powerful turnip. Game and Watch’s hammer has a random chance of a number of different effects occurring. The big deal here is peach can only pull a bunch of similar objects with similar functions from the ground, and to do so, she needs to use a highly telegraphed and interruptable move. Game and watch’s attack generally doesn’t matter if he doesn’t hit his opponent. He still needs to play well to hit which was the point in the first place. It’s not an advantage or disadvantage being given out at random here, they’re both functions of the character. They are decisions the players actively undertake, knowing what their chances are.

Another example is the 50% miss chance against units on higher terrain in Starcraft, though I am not fond of this particular example (editor’s note: fuck this example, halve the fucking damage, or deterministically make every other shot miss please). What it can create is a gamble where one can pass units through certain locations at a high risk.

Relationships and Dimensionality

April 21, 2015August 14, 2017Celia WagarLeave a comment

The basis of depth in a game isn’t how complex it is, it is the means by which those complexities interact. The interplay between elements.

This is highly related to our concepts of dimensions. Spatial dimensions overlap and envelope each over and creates depth between them. Even our language mirrors this thought process, such as saying a character is two dimensional, flat or a narrative is deep. Depth as a narrative term comes from the literal meaning of the word depth.

Depth in games should be about adding new layers to games, new means by which the player must interpret them to succeed.

The most basic demonstration possible is to imagine a 1d game, a game where you are on a line. In a game such as this, if you encounter an obstacle. You have no real way to go around it, only through it. Collisions occur when your position is the same as another object.

Now imagine that there are two of these lines, one vertical and one horizontal, and they both operate independently on this principle. This is an added complexity, but it is not really depth. Now imagine that collisions only occur when your position is the same as objects on both axises. Beyond that, that whenever you shift on one axis, the other changes. In accordance with the shift, the prior object is no longer in your way. This is now effectively a 2d game, it has another dimension added to it. It is now possible to go around objects instead of going through them. This could be represented as a flat picture now instead of just 2 lines. But then, how do you get around objects which do not have an opening somewhere for you to go through?

Imagine there being a third line, and objects on that line can only be collided with if you are in the same position as them. Then, you can tie that into the prior two lines, and bind them all together, creating three dimensional space.

Beyond this, imagine that there were another dimension, and that analogous to the prior ones, as you moved through this dimension, objects in the other dimensions seem to shift around you. One such dimension already exists, and it’s time. The difference between time and other dimensions is that it cannot be seen, as our methods of seeing are themselves subject to time, and that collisions cannot occur with time, time passes whether we want it to or not.

Imagine another such dimension, it’s a bit hard to think about, because we don’t actually have another spatial dimension. Imagine that as you travel through this dimension, space and objects around you warp and change. One obvious metaphor for this could be color or temperature. Imagine that you could only see objects if they were the same temperature or color as you, and that you could only collide with them if you were the same color or temperature as them.

Perhaps this idea could itself be used as the basis of a game?

Competitive Games: RPS and Efficiency Races

April 14, 2015August 14, 2017Celia WagarLeave a comment

In general, as I look at competitive games, I see two big styles emerge, that which I call efficiency races, and rock, paper, scissors. I believe that good competitive games are a blend of both, but that RPS should generally take priority over efficiency races.

A classic quote from Sid Meier, creator of civilization, “A [good] game is a series of interesting choices.” An interesting choice is a choice that has advantages and drawbacks so as to make it not explicitly better than any other choice the player has, except in the context of a specific situation. Ideally players must carefully evaluate their situation and make the right choice to come out on top.

By contrast efficiency races are not about making interesting choices nearly so much as perfect performance. Racing games are inherently efficiency races most of the time. There is a definitive path to victory and may woe befall all those who do not copy it as perfectly as possible. The issue with efficiency race style games is they end up with brain dead gameplay. In a shooter styled as an efficiency race, the game becomes, who can fire first and hit most consistently, without any other sort of mitigating factors.

Without RPS interactions, a multiplayer game cannot have strategy, comebacks are only possible by the lead player screwing up, or an external comeback mechanic forcing that player out of the lead, like the blue shells or lightning in Mario Kart.

Having a mix of RPS and efficiency race styles of play is generally speaking ideal, because it enables a depth of interaction, while giving players a basis to make their predictions on. When they know how much payoff their opponent gets from particular options, they can see what their opponent is biased to pick. Things based purely on efficiency (like tricky to perform execution based techniques) are often looked down upon by outsiders but they help create a sense of progression in the game and enables a whole range of interesting choices to be made that couldn’t otherwise that are balanced on the basis of how tricky they are to perform.

Quake 3 is an example of a great mix of efficiency and RPS. Quake 3 is a game about map control. In any other game this would be camping the best powerups, but in Quake 3’s speed prevents effective camping from ever being too viable. Essentially map control consists of grabbing power ups, like the red armor, yellow armor, and megahealth, so that you get an advantage over the opponent in battle. Beyond this, Quake champions watch the clock to determine when these power ups Respawn so they can be there when it happens to keep their advantage up. Quake is a massive battle of information. Metagame tactics include delaying when you pick up a power up to change the timing of that power up so it is harder for the enemy to pick it up and monitoring the timings of the power ups so you can predict where the enemy will want to go in the future.

Another example is in fighting games, where you have efficiency in the maximum combo punish you can pull off when you hit your opponent, and RPS in trying to hit them at all.

Fun Movement Systems

April 14, 2015August 14, 2017Celia WagarLeave a comment

(terribly simple old essay on movement systems, doesn’t really examine what should go into one, just recounts different existing ones)

The thrill of moving fast is awesome. The fluidity and flow of fast movement can be pretty incredible. One thing I’d personally like to see from more games is nice movement systems.

I’m usually in support of rock paper scissors style stuff and interesting choices, but with movement you can’t totally do that. Fast movement is typically just about efficiency, either you’re faster or you’re not, it’s a pretty linear progression. So what can you do to make moving fast interesting? My answer is making it hard to solve. Give players a challenge to figure out new pathways and the perfect methods, give them means to drag themselves forward. Make the game such that it’s paced as fast as they can handle. Whenever they can handle one level of speed, always leave options dangling in front of them to make it faster.

What players really enjoy in games based on movement are when they feel like they have transcended the system. Gunz was a game that allowed players to air dash and run on walls. When players mastered it, the game allowed them to soar.

Throughout history, all the best skill based movement systems have been the result of glitches, such as bunny hopping, snaking, wave dashing, butterfly canceling, skiing. These weren’t exactly anticipated by the designers in every case and they ended up kinda dominating the games they cropped up in, ruining: a lot of the balance. But the question we have to ask is, which is more important, balance, or ascending to a higher level of game? I think that we should recognize how these techniques arose and strive to integrate them into our games to make them greater than before, to introduce new elements of skill and strategy. If it breaks the balance, rebalance it around the new elements, make the new elements more accessible without compromising them.
When I first started snaking in Mario Kart DS, I saw the courses in a new way. It created new paths and forced me to think about the course in new ways and to plan differently. Instead of the trade off between going in a straight line and turning, I had all sorts of new things I had to manage, the angle of my hop, the way the road bent and how wide it was, how fast I could mash left and right, and frankly, I’d rather have a game with all of these things to think about and work with than a balanced one. Snakers broke the game and left a more interesting one in its place.

In Quake 3 derived movement systems the movement mode of choice is strafe jumping. This consists of moving your mouse back and forth like a whip to try to maximize your acceleration on every jump. I’ll explain why and how this works in the next paragraph, but to put it simply, this enables people to move very fast sometimes and makes building and managing momentum as big a part of the game as the shooting and map control.

I confess that I don’t have a complete understanding of strafe jumping (ammended in a later essay (Ammended again in a later later essay)), but from what I know, it’s based on abusing rounding errors. In a lot of older games programmers made the mistake of having the forward button make you move a certain velocity forward and the strafe button make you move a certain velocity to the side. The trouble with systems like this is if you press both forward and strafe buttons at once you move that entire velocity both forward and sideways, which anyone who took physics realizes creates a larger velocity vector than either speed individually. Id however knew better than this and used trigonometry to calculate the velocity at diagonal movement angles. Then they decided to round all non-round results up. This means that every time the velocity is not an integer, it gets rounded to one. Trigonometry almost always results in irrational numbers being produced as results. The goal of strafe jumping is really to force the engine to recalculate and therefore reround your momentum as frequently as possible. This is what produces the acceleration. There are a few things I still do not understand about it yet which I am working on learning, but I believe this is the reason strafe jumping exists and why it works.

What movement systems should strive to do is enable the player to move faster, move in new ways and give them more to manage for doing it. If they can be tied into interesting choices, like rocket jumps and losing health, then do it.

Tribes Ascend (regrettably the only Tribes I have played) has an amazing movement system based on skiing. By skiing you can use slopes to build velocity and slide around then soar through the air. To make matters more interesting, your fired projectiles inherit your velocity, affecting their trajectory. Tribes as a result is a game about building velocity, retaining it, and constantly watching the terrain to keep up speed. It’s about moving to avoid enemy shots and going fast as possible. To win you need to determine where the enemy is gonna move in the future, how they’ll accelerate, how far to lead your shot to connect it, adjust for your inherited velocity, and keep track of which hill you’ll ski down next.

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