I've got a spot in my game where there's a bunch of bookshelves, and I basically need the player to look through the bookshelves for hints on how to continue their progress. But, I don't want to make it a tedious ordeal of bumping into each shelf, see if it says anything besides "Nope, nothing interesting here.", then bump into the next shelf...
I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas for a better way to handle this? I mean, I could put a little symbol or something in front of bookshelves with interesting content, or I could make them stand out visually, maybe a lighter color or something.
Then there's the issue of what exactly do you put in these shelves. If only one bookshelf in the whole library has anything interesting to say, its not much fun.
ID:152241
 Aug 6 2007, 8:53 pm
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Aug 6 2007, 9:19 pm
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Dession
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Have a slight variation of the book cases with interesting information, each bookcase a different variation so the player never knows what to expect but if he looks close enough he'll see the truth.
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Not all bookshelves have interesting things on them, that is just a fact. When I go into a library, I don't search through every single book, I do a quick scan and see if anything interests me, if I don't, I move on.
In Fable you had to check every single bookcase, if you found something, the game would announce that you did, such as a book, hair cut design or tattoo design. If you didn't, the game didn't even say anything. I like the way that works, because if you didn't find anything you are interested in, why even bother letting you know that? It works like that in many RPGs across different systems. After some time passes, you can check the bookcases again, to see if anything new has popped up, sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. I would go two ways with this, either the first way, havening standard bookcases with interesting stuff in them. The second way I could see it working is, have a percent for the player to find something interesting, you can check a bookcase, and, based on some sort of procedure, decides if you found anything, and if so, was it of any use. | |
You either have to go the way of showing the player that there is something, or expecting them to search the library.
In the latter case, you could have a sort of 'warmer, colder' thing where as you get closer to a bookcase with something interesting, it says 'these books are kind of interesting' or 'these books are dull' or 'this is almost exactly what you need!' or whatever. Otherwise, I'd have the books in different colours or something, depending on their topic, so history books are one colour, magic books are another, and that plot specific book is in the cobwebby corner of the library. Because they're always old books, aren't they? You game also looks kind of like the Exile series, particularly the dead trees and inside the cave. | |
Hazman wrote:
You game also looks kind of like the Exile series, particularly the dead trees and inside the cave. I liked the Exile graphics style so I mimicked it when I did my own graphics. That's where the 13-state autojoining idea came from too. (At least the mention of caves tells me you at least played it that far...) | |
This is why libraries use card catalogs. ;) Give the player a way to search the entire collection from a reference, and pick out index cards that pertain to the game. Perhaps a little pop-up giving a list of interesting books. They can choose an item from the list, which would cause an indicator icon to appear over the bookshelf that contains the book. A simple info icon could point out the reference spot, like the old circle (i) used by most libraries and information booths.
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You could put some interesting content in some books that isn't relevent to the task at hand, but adds some flavor to the game, like a short history of the player's environment, a joke book, a guide to raising unicorns, etc., instead of "Nothing here!"
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It adds atmosphere to the game. The player doesn't have to read it, but it's better to make it feel more like a real library, rather than have it say "Nothing here!" I think it would make the game feel more immersive.
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Foomer wrote:
Then there's the issue of what exactly do you put in these shelves. If only one bookshelf in the whole library has anything interesting to say, its not much fun. Maybe something like. "The pages are torn and faded, but from what you can make out it reads ....." Therefore giving you a reason for having such a short amount of information in a whole book, and giving you reason to have lots of little places to look. | |
Have a few book shelfs with info on em, but make em false leads, this way at least the few things you find out go somwhere u know
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I don't like the idea of only certain bookcases having something of interest in them. The books should differ from library to library, but not from shelve to shelve. Use a keyword search, that would search through the library's resources for the book you want to find.
I found this to be quite interesting, as players can actually search for a hint they need, rather than randomly receiving one. Say, searching "kill witch" would actually output "Pour water on her.", and "secret door" could be "Pull the candelabrum behind the Golden Throne.". Otherwise, the hint players receive would be random, and also wouldn't require them to think(another spawn of keyword searching). Presumably, you could also add flavor to this, by naming certain books throughout the game. Then the players could come back to the library and search for those books, making it another thing to do in-game. | |
Revenant Jesus wrote:
I don't agree with that, why should they care if it isn't anything they should be interested in? Because it is fun reading stuff. When I played MYST I read entirely through all the books in that, even though lots of the stuff was useless from a game-progress point of view. And only a few of the books could be read since most were burned, but I still thought it would have been cool if I could have read through all the other books too; they were just fun to read. | |
Ah man if you liked Myst you'd love Uru. They've basically written one 4-6 page book for every D'Ni king who ever lived, and loads of info about what certain Ages were for etc.
I basically ignored it all the first time I played which I now (having read the Myst series of books) immensely regret. I liked the random books in Morrowind and Oblivion as well. Basically, adding loads of random stories and world information makes the game fun. If you need help writing it all, just ask around. Or, commission books in-game - have a reward for writing the best book on a certain cave or creaky mansion (especially good if the mansion itself has some interactivity like a pseudo-quest or something). | |
Hazman wrote:
I liked the random books in Morrowind and Oblivion as well. Basically, adding loads of random stories and world information makes the game fun. If you need help writing it all, just ask around. My game, if we're still talking about it, is single-player. So having players write stuff about it wouldn't really work. There's also the issue that the text area can only handle about 5 lines worth of text the length of this input area where I'm typing here. So any books being read would have to be pretty short. Only about a paragraph. Although it wouldn't hurt to have a bunch of little short books to read through. Little shreds of stories leaving you wondering what the rest of the book was about. Of course, if I could actually get some people who wanted to write some short novels for my game, it wouldn't be all that hard to convert the whole game window into a text area while they're reading. | |
If it fits into the rest of your game you could use a browser window with the background as a photo or drawing of an open book or parchment or something.
I'm sure people would be happy to contribute their experiences of your game as short books, you could easily set up an online database or something and just nab them off of the internet for an ever growing library if you wanted. | |
I've been a proponent of including things that are irrelevant to the player's progress for some time now, because they add life to the game. If the game is supposed to seem like it could exist somewhere. In reality, everything wouldn't be oriented towards the player's goal, and things would exist outside of this scope, so things completely irrelevant to what's going on would and should exist. This is especially true in RPGs, but should be included in a lot of different genres as well.
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