Mature gaming

[ThetaOrionis01]

There is nothing new, all these dreams are already there...

 

I believe there are two 'smaller games' that is approaching what Darnoc says above, the one is 'Mount&Blade' (also mentioned on another thread on these forums)

It is not complete and you literally buy a beta version with the option to upgrade. As I could not get my credit card  to function on-line, I only played the trail version(which is the whole of they're marketing campaign), which mesmerized for a week at least, because I can see the potential there.

Its whole game engine has been developed by one guy, from scratch, graphics by his wife. It needs support in story and aesthetics, but should this man let go of what he has been living and breathing for however long to a publisher, sure he will be able to sleep better, but the game  would then stay a run-around-and-bash-it game. But sure the box it comes in will look pretty. Because the buzz surrounding it is priceless, and can not be artificially recreated.

 

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Mount & Blade has potential, I'd agree - but having potential and realising it are two very different things. Yes, M&B is great fun to play - for a while. Just about everyone I've spoken to who's bought the beta version got a little bored with it about a week or two after going past the demo levels - because there is nothing new to discover. Yes, you can build a bigger and better army - but in effect all the interactions remain the same, and they are extremely limited. The people I've spoken to are waiting for updates.

 

However, M&B has virtually no NPC interaction and hardly any dialogue (at least the pre-update version I have played) - so is it really comparable to the 'ideal' game mentioned above? And as I've said before, it's adding this dialogue to give the NPCs personalities, to create complex AI routines, that's very time-consuming. At the moment M&B also limits the player's choices - once choices are added, dialogue requirements increase exponentially as each choice leads to different outcomes, and different choices further down the line.

 

I think it's fantastic how much the designers of M&B (a husband and wife couple, I've read somewhere), have achieved, and it's an inspiration for would-be games designers - but equally it also shows just how much better it could be given more resources, how much more there needs to be done to realise the game's potential - and just what a huge task creating a game from scratch is.

[ThetaOrionis01]

Darnoc, for all your fancy words - have you ever worked on at least a quest mod to give us those believable characters and storyline you wish to see? From your posts, which seem somewhat dissociated from reality, I doubt it.

 

I could also ask if you ever tried to write a fantasy novel, create the world around it entirely on your own with all the details involved and then implant an intriguing story with believable characters into this story. Have you ever felt the power of creation? Being a writer is a little like being god. The difference between a good and a bad writer is that the good writer successfully brings his imagination to life in the minds of his readers. The good writer feels his world, feels the reality he creates. For him, what he writes is not just words, but the manifestation of a different reality, which exists in his mind and which will continue to exist in the minds of the readers, therefore becoming real.

 

If you have written stories, then you should know that heart of a believable world, characters story is believeable interaction between those very characters. You can invent languages, whole chronologies, but if the characters don't act like humans act, your story is nothing worth, despite all the funny little details. You cannot write a story without first understanding humans and how they intereact socially. This is the key to the minds of your readers.

 

You said it yourself: Hermits wouldn't be able to write a good story, because they lack the necessary experience of human relations.

 

No, I haven't worked on one single game up to date. I have written lots of stories, though, in which countless different social situations appear. And with everything, through training one does get better. We could put my skills to the test, so give me a quest to work on and we'll see...

 

Let's say it's a challenge. We both take on the same subject and try to create a quest out of it. So, I dare you to a quest-writing-competition ;)

 

I leave it to you to decide the subject. But if you don't want to, I can decide on one. Just thought that since it was you who brought the thing up, you would like to decide.

 

As for giving your 'life and soul' to creating games... time for a little reality check. Most of us have either jobs or full-time education which takes up a lot of our time.

 

Now about this "dissociatation from reality" you acuse me of: I have a life to, I have a full-time education. But I just set priorities. Writing my novel is the first priority, not college or money or anything else. It is a choice, which I have made. One I do not regret. I admit it consumes a lot of energy, trying to study and at the same time working at my novel all the time I can spare (and I mean "all the time I can spare", I work every free minute I can get). But one can manage, if one only wants to. Human will makes it possible. So don't come with "I have no time and energy". It is will which counts, the will to act. Do you have it?

 

Well, perhaps I'm just a workaholic, lol :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

*rolls eyes*

 

Yes, I've been writing fantasy and creating worlds since I was a teenager. And as I write, the standards I set myself rise. It's a vicious circle that I admit to myself - nothing I write is ever good enough for me, because I feel that I could do better still. And so I re-write it, and re-write it, and re-write it.

 

As for a quest writing challenge - don't be so childish. If you think you can write a good quest, open up the Morrowind editor and create one. Release it and get feedback. Lead by example - create those fabulous storylines for others to experience and to judge.

 

I've been working on Iredior for around 3 years now - writing quests, teaching myself how to use the dialogue editor, teaching myself basic scripting to translate my quest ideas into something that can be played, and now helping to build the interiors where the quests are set. Plus learning the technical skills to pick up the pieces when due to another's incompetence our files were in such a mess that we were close to scrapping the whole project. Learning where to draw the line, learning to sacrifice ideas and making compromises for the sake of the rest standing a chance of being completed and possible to implement given the means at hand. Iredior is not going to be perfect, nor even as good as I would like it to be - because if I didn't draw the line somewhere and sacrificed some complexity, it would never be released.

 

So don't give me this crap about 'the will to act'.

 

You admit that you have never even made a mod - go ahead and try it. Then, perhaps, you will get an idea of the time and effort involved in making this uber-game you speak of. The storyline is only a fraction of it.

[Darnoc]

You haven't read my post closely enough, Theta ;)

 

Splitting work is an essential part of what I propose. Different people have diffferent talents, abilities. I have a talent for writing, other have talents for mathematics or art. Each must do what suits his abilities.

 

An uber-game will never be created if some persons try to do all the work themselves. An uber-game will be created, if a group of people split the work according to their abilities.

 

For example, I can write storylines or dialogues, but I have no talents whatsoever when it comes to design or programming. Someone else, on the other hand, is perhaps a good designer, but couldn't come up with one decent dialogue. Therefore we combine our forces and each of us does what he does best. I don't try to design or program, and the other guy doesn't try to mess with my storylines or dialogues.

 

Now if there's something I learned is that you can have the best graphics, the most wonderful design, but if your story is crap, your characters are unbelievable, then your whole game is worth nothing. On the other hand, you can have a game with lousy graphics, but with an intriguing story-line and deep charactes. Voilà, a great game has been born.

 

So the priority number one for a good game is the story, the dialogues and character development, especially when it is an RPG. All else is secondary, because it is your imagination that brings this game to life. And my imagination can even bring a 2D-world to life, if the story is interesting enough and I can believe that those characters are real.

 

because if I didn't draw the line somewhere and sacrificed some complexity, it would never be released.

 

Complexity begins with the idea. If the idea allows complexity, it won't be much of a problem, because then you have the right base and can build upon it. For example, you could base a whole storyline just on the question "What for an effect does society have on the development of a character?". Now with that kind of question you could create a really deep, interesting storyline, with lots of social-criticism in it.

 

Then you have to set the right priorities: The story is what is important, graphics, design etc. are only there to serve the story, the development of the characters. If that is clear from the beginning, you can actually begin to work on something without much of a compromise. Oh, and you mustn't lose your goal on the way. We had a question at the beginning, remember? And it is your goal to create a storyline which gives the player the freedom to answer this question in many different ways. Everything else must step back, is secondary.

 

You admit that you have never even made a mod - go ahead and try it. Then, perhaps, you will get an idea of the time and effort involved in making this uber-game you speak of. The storyline is only a fraction of it.

 

Maybe it only takes away a fraction of it, but it is the most important thing, as I have said above. By the way, in my opinion dialogues are included in the storyline and creating all the necessary dialogues takes away loads of time. I would never just create the story and leave dialogues to another person, no way, I'd have to do this myself.

 

Let's just say that I have many great ideas, even whole worked-out concepts for great mods and games. Problem is that you need to find other people with other talents, for example designing talents (which I have none at all). And then are the limitations of technology.

 

I am not a technical person, technology never interested me much. I was always more interested in humans. In my opinion, a good game is an interactive book, a book where the player decides how the story goes. Now I have stories, but I lack the necessary technological skills. Aquiring them will use time, time I simply don't want to waste. Call it lack of will. I could do it, but I'm too impatient. I want to write stories, create worlds in my mind, not bother with technical details. Better is to find people with the necessary skills, who are actually interested in such things and then I give them what I write and they convert it into an actual game.

 

But let's get on with the practical details.

 

Being intrigued by the challenge, I will write a whole storyline, including all dialouges and quests. Then I will post it and we will see if anyone is interested into converting it into a mod.

 

Let us begin with what is at hand: Morrowind. I already had an idea for quite some time. Remember the Talos Cult of the legionaires? They wanted to murder the Emperor. Now I want to expand this. There is a whole group of rebels, even some high officers, who wish to kill the Emperor and turn the Empire into a Republic. The player will get the job to infiltrate this group and to betray it to the authorities. One has then several choices:

 

1. Infiltrate, betray and assasinate their leaders. You'll get a medal from the Emperor or something like this for "saving the Empire".

 

2. Declare your loyality and join the rebels. This will open a whole new set of quests for you, depending on your choices this may end in a civil war. It will also include a plot concerning an independance movement of the Dumner, which will ally itself with the Rebels (also depending on your choices).

 

3. Declare your loyality, but don't do it openly. You will act as a mole in the Blade's organization. If you play your cards right, you might even get a chance to assassinate the Emperor. Or you might start an open rebellion, the garrisons and even some officers joining the rebels. This could lead to a civil war, even involving strife between the different Dumner houses (Hlaahu will side with Empire, Redoran with Rebels).

 

The end also depends on your choices. As Nerevarine you might lead Morrowind to independance. But you could also become the new Emperor. Or you could help converting the Empire into a Republic.

 

As you can see, I have already quite developed this idea. I will work on it and come back once I've got something more detailed (dialogues, quests etc.).

[ThetaOrionis01]

Lol, just stop talking and make it into a mod! Recruit a team if you can't be bothered acquiring the skills you need, and get it done! :D

 

A bit of friendly advice before you start - acquaint yourself with the way the dialogue editor works, and learn at least the basics of the scripting language. If you don't, I predict that the dialogue you write will only be half of what's needed.

 

 

The question is of course - if you feel you can do a great quest, and if you are unhappy with the games on offer on the market - why haven't you created such a mod already? Rather than post a lengthy manifesto you could simply have shown everyone how it could and should be done.

 

Remember that it's always easier to promise people the moon on a stick than to actually deliver said moon and stick. :laugh2:

[loveme4whoiam]

Remember that it's always easier to promise people the moon on a stick than to actually deliver said moon and stick. laugh.gif

 

And so it is. However, which is more glorious, to deliver said moon and stick or to deliver a picture of the moon on a stick? :D

 

This has really turned into a slugging match hasn't it? :P You both make bloody good cases, and i agree with both - a storyline is essential to a good game, but making a mod or game is a massive commitment that requires great deals of time, and indeed judgement in deciding what can and should be sacrificed in order to get the game actually done.

 

This thread has drifted off topic a bit, but I guess that's okay since its an area thats still interesting. Do developers have the time to get great plots written for their games and, more importantly, do they have the freedom from publishing bodies/marketing devils to stick to them even if it means delays in production? One the first question, I think yes. On the second, I'm thinking no.

 

I guess thats where modders and indie gamers have it easy in this respect, as you actually can take as long as you want, assuming you can deal with the baying fans posting "W3n 1s teh b3Ta 4 M3M0d c0m1ng o0t??" every other day :P

 

I have a question for those who've made or are making long-awaited mods that have had a long developemtn time - is it/will it be worth it?

[ThetaOrionis01]

Remember that it's always easier to promise people the moon on a stick than to actually deliver said moon and stick. laugh.gif

 

And so it is. However, which is more glorious, to deliver said moon and stick or to deliver a picture of the moon on a stick? :D

 

This has really turned into a slugging match hasn't it? :P You both make bloody good cases, and i agree with both - a storyline is essential to a good game, but making a mod or game is a massive commitment that requires great deals of time, and indeed judgement in deciding what can and should be sacrificed in order to get the game actually done.

 

This thread has drifted off topic a bit, but I guess that's okay since its an area thats still interesting. Do developers have the time to get great plots written for their games and, more importantly, do they have the freedom from publishing bodies/marketing devils to stick to them even if it means delays in production? One the first question, I think yes. On the second, I'm thinking no.

 

I guess thats where modders and indie gamers have it easy in this respect, as you actually can take as long as you want, assuming you can deal with the baying fans posting "W3n 1s teh b3Ta 4 M3M0d c0m1ng o0t??" every other day :P

 

I have a question for those who've made or are making long-awaited mods that have had a long developemtn time - is it/will it be worth it?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Lol, if this thread has turned into a slanging match it's because I am extremely wary of charlatans, and of those who have grandiose ambitions yet speak from a position of complete ignorance.

 

It's one thing to get carried away by flights of fancy and beautiful daydreams when someone promises you the earth - or Middle-earth, for that matter... :/ - and quite another thing to try to translate those promises into reality. And this translation to reality - this is where the daydreamers get weeded out. Because it's bloody hard work, it's attention to minute detail, it's having to compromise. And such compromise has nothing to do with Darnoc's naive lack of understanding of the process:

 

Then you have to set the right priorities: The story is what is important, graphics, design etc. are only there to serve the story, the development of the characters. If that is clear from the beginning, you can actually begin to work on something without much of a compromise. Oh, and you mustn't lose your goal on the way. We had a question at the beginning, remember? And it is your goal to create a storyline which gives the player the freedom to answer this question in many different ways. Everything else must step back, is secondary.

 

It has to do with resource management. If you want to have a certain effect in your game, can your game engine handle it? Can the players' computers handle it? Does your team have the manpower and the skills to implement it? If you don't have access to the source code, as in a game mod, is the feature you need supported? If not, can you work around it somehow? Can you implement it in the time available? These are the compromises forced upon you in the real world.

 

 

It's all well and good to say that all you need is a good storyline (and I postulate again that to have a great storyline in a computer game you don't need a good writer, you need a good games designer) - but you also need the people to translate this storyline into reality, and to do so you have to be able to assemble and motivate and organise a team. Speak to any large modding project, and ask them about their staffing. Let's face it - unless someone else pays for your food, the roof over your head, your internet connection etc not caring about money is a luxury few of us can afford. So your proposed game - with no financial reward at the end - will rely on volunteers. Yes, it is possible to find groups of highly motivated volunteers who will see a project through when they commit to it, but you also have to accept that there are limits to the time they can devote to a project.

Try to work out how many manhours developing a game demands!

 

 

As I said, I've been working on Iredior for around 3 years now, and most of that time has been spent on dialogue and quest development. Try to imagine the sheer volume of dialogue you'll need if you want the NPCs to react to every possible player choice. If you want the player to begin to care about NPCs, you not only have to give the NPCs a personality to care about, you also have to develop this personality in response to the player's behaviour. And, if you want to be realistic, in response to how the player interacts with other NPCs. You have to keep track of the developing relationships. And, more importantly, you have to work out all possibilities in advance, because you cannot force an emotional response from the player. Yes, you can force them to speak to NPC X if they want to do quest Y, but their emotional response - whether they like X, loathe X, feel forry for X etc is something that will vary from player to player.

 

Yes, you can limit their choices in game. You can give them a rude dialogue option or a friendly one, you can update a variable according to the response and use the variable to determine how the NPC responds to the player in future. But friendly and rude are only two options among a wide spectrum of behaviour. To mimic realistic behaviour, you would then also have to take into account other factors. Perhaps the player previously insulted the NPC's mother, or stole the NPC's brother's favourite pair of shoes. Factor this in, and the number of dialogue choices you'll need to have available for your NPC to respond realistically escalates. Then multiply this by the number of NPCs the player can interact with.

 

You could, in theory, already make a mod with NPCs who respond realistically to the player's actions using the TESCS. In practice, the detail required is overwhelming.

 

I suspect that it isn't lack of ideas, or lack of plots which leads to poor NPC characterisation in games - it's lack of time and resources. The restrictions that nasty thing called 'reality' imposes.

 

Perhaps the next generation of computer games will feature 'radiant dialogue' and make the desired level of NPC interaction possible - we shall see.

 

I've been involved in 2 long-term mods - MEMod and Iredior. My experiences with MEMod have, as I said, made me wary of grandiose words. You may remember the hype in public - what you might not know about is the brushing aside of any realistic concerns. Yes! MEMod is going to have dense, dark forests! Erm... how are we going to have those forests when the engine cannot support that many polys or alphamaps per cell? This neglect of reality in favour of daydreams and megalomaniac ambition caused those of us who actually had to try to find a way to make this all come true considerable headaches. Some of us worked extremely hard behind the scenes to get this to work, buckled down and got on with the work, despairing at every new promise that was being made in public. Like I said... the moon on a stick. Would the reality of MEMod have been anything like the grandiose visions being thrown around the forums? Probably not. It would have been a fantastic mod, with a stunning level of attention to detail - but it would have been limited by the very real constraints of the available engine, and the available manpower. Was it worth the time I spent on it, and the grief that was part of it? Yes. I met some fantastic people, and I learnt a lot - even if a lot of the lessons were salutary. Being part of this dream was something special - even though we were denied the chance to make at least the essence of this dream become reality.

 

 

Iredior is a much smaller project, and from the beginning we decided to keep the hype down. It has allowed us to work in peace, at our own pace. This pace was sometimes slow, sometimes we had setbacks which nearly killed off our motivation, and the project. As it is, we are now working to try to get a version of Iredior released sometime before Oblivion is out. If there is one thing I have learnt from Iredior it is that it's far too easy to get carried away. Size-wise, Iredior is not that big. Yet there are approximately 300 NPCs, there are new joinable factions, each with its own quests... all because in our initial enthusiasm we underestimated the time it would take to do such a mod justice.

Was it worth it? For me, personally, yes. It allowed me to use my creativity, it forced me into learning new skills, it made use of my existing skills. From a point of view of personal development, I would not call the time spent on Iredior wasted. Yes, Iredior could be better, given more time (and more people working on it). Whether other people will consider the effort that has gone into Iredior worthwhile is for them to judge.

 

At least I don't think with Iredior we've promised people the moon on a stick! :)

[Malchik]

Theta perhaps I should have mentioned that the moon was what supplied the green cheese in Iredior's albino rat quest. They'll all have to make do with a ratmeat kebab.

 

I can only echo Theta. I helped out a little in Iredior in providing dialogue and ideas for dialogue in a number of quests. And each time you think of a piece of dialogue where there is a choice to be made then the dialogue splits into two alternative strands and can go on splitting. What at first seem simple quests can have 15 or more pages of dialogue and if you are putting in a fair number of quests developing this becomes very time consuming indeed.

 

Now I am trying to mod interiors and finding it hard work. It is not something I have done before but I am slowly learning. But I am a busy individual and that combined with inexperience makes me slow. However willing volunteers may be they cannot move faster than their skills and time available lets them.

 

So many mods were started and died or were issued incomplete because those who volunteered did not understand the extent of a commitment they were making. Do not therefore offer any comments on how grand your mod will be but start it in humility and hope. And if you are lucky SOME of your vision may make it into the final result.

[loveme4whoiam]

So many mods were started and died or were issued incomplete because those who volunteered did not understand the extent of a commitment they were making. Do not therefore offer any comments on how grand your mod will be but start it in humility and hope. And if you are lucky SOME of your vision may make it into the final result.

 

God that's depressing. You'd think creative vision and sheer force of will would be enough, wouldn't you :D

 

Needless to say, for some time before and especially while this discussion's been going on I've been entertaining thoughts of beginning my own mod project. I've almost decided which game engine to use, and I've been hammering out how to do character interaction within it. Of course, partly it is academic at this point since I have zero experience with modelling, animation, scripting... all that stuff that you need to know, and Theta said, to pick up the pieces when someone else drops the ball.

 

The previous two posts have made me stop and think properly, weighing up whether, in the long run, I'd have the staying power to follow something like this through to the end. On the one side, I'm in a surprising position this year in that I've got plenty of time on my hands (not at Uni yet and only a couple of exams come summer), no major economic worries, and at least two friends studying Computer Games Programming have said they'd like to pitch in. On the other, this is a hell of a big commitment, and do I really want to spend literally years of my life on this project?

 

This thread has been of supreme use to me, and I'd like to thank Theta, Malchik and Darnoc for trading shots like this as it's been a remarkable thought-starter (:/ ) for me.

 

Anyway, the topic at hand having nothing to do with what I've just said, I'll turn back to it. I'm interested in what Theta said here:

 

and I postulate again that to have a great storyline in a computer game you don't need a good writer, you need a good games designer

 

Surely you need both a good writer and a good designer? Without one the other is a bit superfluous really, leading to a game with either a fantastic story with crummy gameplay, or decent gaming but let down by unconvincing characters and dialogue. As it stands, the games industry has been coasting along producing the latter type for years now, much to long in my opinion.

 

Considering that creating large amounts of good dialogue requires a big team, surely established development houses are set up to deal with the labour demands? With the astronomical budgets companies have these days it can't be that hard to find competent writers.

 

So if we are saying that modders can't create complex storylined games because of the manpower needs, and developers can't create them because there might be a commercial risk involved, who is going to innovate? Seems to me like we've come up against a brick wall here :/

[Mercbird]

suspect that it isn't lack of ideas, or lack of plots which leads to poor NPC characterisation in games - it's lack of time and resources. The restrictions that nasty thing called 'reality' imposes.

 

You have to take your hat of to Bethsoft that they have taken three going om four years with Oblivion, and withstood the forces of reality. It is exactly the lack of resources that produced the sad bug infested reality of Vampire, but you can see the original dream there.Theta, I only sugested M&B is approaching said ideal, the developer is certainly living and breathing the thing, and it needs as you say a cr*pload of dialogue. Interestingly I found that my characters who where playing it safe were boring, the ones who lost everything all the time were fun...masochistic , huh.

That he has managed to make it supply him with food is beyond comprehension. I've never managed to make the things I love into a career. And have always envied the ones who do.

 

(and I postulate again that to have a great storyline in a computer game you don't need a good writer, you need a good games designer)

 

Would a games designer not be where dreamer/writer meets the programmer, if so the breed already exist! If seemingly few in number.

 

I dont think this is a slugfest, just a good debate. Same thing using different words.

 

PS I have three dialog tutorials and figuring out dialogue is a male without a father, seeing as Malchick can admit to lack of skills, I'll join in. I do a hell of a job on interiors, eye for detail I have! And I like them matching the exterior.

[Darnoc]

and I postulate again that to have a great storyline in a computer game you don't need a good writer, you need a good games designer

 

*Rolls eyes* Why is it then that even I can come up with better storylines than most games have them? Hm, perhaps most people creating games never stopped to worry that creating a game is not all about good technology and programming, but mostly about soul, as with any piece of art.

 

I suspect that it isn't lack of ideas, or lack of plots which leads to poor NPC characterisation in games - it's lack of time and resources. The restrictions that nasty thing called 'reality' imposes.

 

Tolkien worked fifteen years on Lord of the Rings. He worked his whole life on the Silmarillion and never quite finished it. Edgar Allan Poe worked ten years on The Raven. There are loads of other examples.

 

You see, reality can't stop you if you really want to do it. If you want to create something truly extraordinary and I mean really want, you will accomplish this by every means necessary, even if it takes years after years, blood, sweat, energy, your life, whatever.

 

I am also aware about the tons of different dialogue branches that will have to implented, the thousands of multiple choices there will have to be, each leading to a somewhat "alternate universe". Actually, I was aware of this from the beginning, I even believe that most games have not enough available choices.

 

I am aware that it is hard work without any real payment in the end, only the satisfaction of an artist who has created art. I have written hundreds of pages of which I know that they will never be published, so I am quite familiar with the amount of work such projects take. It never bothered me anyway, since I do not write to make money or to become famous, I write for the sake of writing, of creating.

 

Lol, just stop talking and make it into a mod!

 

The work has already begun... Let's just say, I'll call again once I have something to show. And then we'll continue this conversation.