Well I understand what you mean know more as in they can ahve bases but worry about clothes later on and etc.
I thought you ment bases are bad and dont use them.
ImmeasurableHate wrote:
Well I understand what you mean know more as in they can ahve bases but worry about clothes later on and etc. They aren't necessary for the game to be fun. Trust me, you wouldn't even be arguing that you like bases if the majority of BYOND games you play didn't have them. I don't see 2D games with bases anywhere other than BYOND. | |
Ehh if its a mmo or an online game I prefer bases unless they have a wide variety to choose from.
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Lol i think byond is the only place you'll see with people this dedicated to make a base with clothes and everything -.- most game just has class with costumes and stuff everyone already ready. . .
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In my opinion graphics shouldn't be so important when first making a game. Worry about the core structure and use placeholders in the meantime. They can always be replaced.
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Complex Robot wrote:
I see. So it's a matter of not being willing/able to make an actual game. Yes. But, when you say it like that, whether you mean it or not, it sounds like you're saying it's a deliberate decision that people are making (it sounds like that in my post too). It's not that people are saying "well, I don't know how to make a real game so I'll just make a base icon and call it an open-world RP environment". In most cases, the BYOND users just don't know how game development works. It's like if someone asked you what the hardest part of building an airplane is. Unless you're an engineer who does build airplanes, you probably have no idea. You know it must be hard and there are some parts of it that might intuitively seem like they'd be difficult, but really you have no idea. At the same time, there might be parts that seem like they'd be difficult to do, but are actually easy (relatively speaking). For example, you might think that building the engines is the hardest part because they're so intricate and precise, but that might be the easiest part since the physics and technology are well-known and better understood because they have wider applications. BYOND has many users that look at game development the same way. Except where you know that you have no idea how to build an airplane, these people actually think they're making games. Coding the game is not the hard part. BYOND handles so much for you that coding the game should be easy. If you can think of a game that'd be difficult to code in DM, there's a very good chance that game just can't practically be made with BYOND. Graphics aren't the hard part. BYOND handles the entire graphical display for you, you just have to provide icons and assign them to objects. When you're coding things, features can depend on each other - this can make it hard to change how things work at a later time. With graphics you never have this problem. No functionality depends on what an icon looks like, so you can always go back and change the graphics later without consequence. What's left is the actual gameplay - what the game is about, what the players can do, what the point of the game is, and how people play. BYOND does so much for you that you can focus on gameplay almost immediately, but people get bogged down in the other details and rarely ever get to work on gameplay. Yut Put, Bravo1, and Oasiscircle (possibly) are the only people I've seen who seem to get this and actually develop games the right way. The problem is that BYOND has so many people doing things the wrong way, those people are bound to think they're doing it the right way (and it doesn't help that the staff has no presence in the game development side of things, so they can't say "here's how you should be using BYOND to make games..."). | |
lol I had fun reading this post..... lol, dress up game? gwahahahaha there are so many dress up games on y8.com rofl! Hello ladies and gentlemen! Want to play dress up games? Here is the link: http://www.bigmoneyarcade.com/ index.php?action=playgame&gameid=559
http://manamanatutu.deviantart.com/art/ Bleach-dress-up-game-174098451 http://www.y8.com/games/dress_up_naruto Seriously...if this is all about why you play Byond... why bother playing it if there are thousand out there? | |
Lugia319 wrote:
It's pretty much like this. I would normally agree with your assessment, but considering the types of games we're talking about, most don't have looks going for them either. At any rate, I think that a lot of games certainly could benefit from the "dress-up" mechanic. Roleplaying games are the biggest contenders in this category. Games that focus on acting out a character rather than moving around a brick with stats should rely on this sense of originality and freedom with your character. | |
Solomn Architect wrote:
Roleplaying games are the biggest contenders in this category. Games that focus on acting out a character rather than moving around a brick with stats should rely on this sense of originality and freedom with your character.Yes. The reason for a lot of clothing choices isn't because we can't do anything else. It's also more work for the artist than the programmer, who happen to be different people, so it's not like adding a bunch of clothes keeps the programmer from doing more "important" things. | |
In all honesty, I find that the better games, (Tetris, Super Robot Wars, Final Fantasy) don't really have customizable characters. They're good because the game is good, not because you can customize characters. These people that fixate on bases shoot themselves in the foot by working on something for 2 months and never actually making the game.
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A game can be "good" and have customizable characters. If gameplay isn't affected at all by what someone's wearing, the only problems it could cause is longer development for the artists. There are also some functional pieces like armor, which suits the role of a knight or guard. People respond to men in uniform.
In the end, it depends on the player's opinion of the game. Not directed to anyone in particular: If you're looking for a role-playing game where you can have style that only sometimes affects gameplay, that's fine, you're welcome into the community. If you're not, don't bother criticizing it. | |
I think the problem is, we are making the customizable clothes aspect the bad guy, when actually thats something that can make the RPG experience for the player a better one. Just like the title screen of a game doesn't make it, but a good one makes it better, the customizable clothes is something good to have if its "that" type of game. In the end lazy developers are just lazy developers. I don't say "bad" because bad programming and developing isn't necessarily a bad thing, its more of a learning curve that can make a dedicated programmer a better one. The problem is when one doesn't wish to put in the work or effort to better themselves.
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Customizable clothing is one of many features that people make a big deal out of. You could make this same kind of post about title screens, or character creation screens, or generic anime MMORPG interfaces. The problem isn't that games have these features or that people add these things first, the problem is that people often blow these features way out of proportion and let them take waaaaay more development time than they should. It takes one line of code to add an overlay and another line to remove it. Adding clothing overlays to your base icon should take less than five minutes. Still, people find a way to drag these things out and you can find games that have been in development for a long time, but only have these basic, insignificant features.
These are all features that games need but people don't know how to budget their time. Either they don't realize there are more important tasks or they think these tasks are the most important ones. Somehow, people find ways to spend a lot of time on a game without making a lot of progress. I can't figure out how games like Eternia and Spirit Age have been in development for so long and are so incomplete, but a game like Epic has been more playable, more fun, and has had more content after just a month or two. Not to single these games out, they're just the most prevalent examples, but it clearly shows that developers can get *much* better results if they budget their time differently. | |
Lugia319 wrote:
In all honesty, I find that the better games, (Tetris, Super Robot Wars, Final Fantasy) don't really have customizable characters. They're good because the game is good, not because you can customize characters. These people that fixate on bases shoot themselves in the foot by working on something for 2 months and never actually making the game. I got a better game.... BARBIE DRESS UPS!!! Trololol! seriously....why play the game if the purpose is just dressing up yourselves? RPG Is not all about fashion, it's the story, the features... THE CORE! | |
Scyrus123 wrote:
I got a better game.... BARBIE DRESS UPS!!! Trololol! seriously....why play the game if the purpose is just dressing up yourselves? RPG Is not all about fashion, it's the story, the features... THE CORE! While I agree with you in the respect that Role Playing Games are supposed to revolve around the story being told, you have to understand that players should have a clear way of individualizing themselves from everyone else. If you truly want people to Role Play, then you must incorporate elements into the game that may not necessarily be in-line with the Core. People try to glorify the fact that, "A games mechanics make it fun! Not the looks or extra's!" which is a completely ludicrous statement. Strip down your game to it's very "Core" and you'll end up with nothing more than a Text-Based MUD with a few verbs, doing little more than being an overly-complicated calculator. My point is that a game will work exactly the same if you use a generic male/female player sprite for every character and differentiate them with a little name floating above their heads. However that one extra detail to being able to customize what a character wears can be a factor in it's success, because players inherently want to stand out. They want to make something that they find appealing to their taste. Will people still play the former? Yes. Does the ability to "dress-up" your character make or break your entire project? Short answer, No. Long answer, Not unless your project is a dress-up game. | |
Solomn Architect wrote:
Scyrus123 wrote: That's logic already, no need to mention it.. What we are talking here is the main topic... Players just love dressing up their characters like a doll.. but when some killer kills them... they kept on complaining bullshit... What I meant was, if you want to feel the game completely, play and have fun, don't just dress up and after collecting all of the fuckin dresses already...then you quit?! fuckin manners | |
Solomn Architect wrote:
My point is that a game will work exactly the same if you use a generic male/female player sprite for every character and differentiate them with a little name floating above their heads. However that one extra detail to being able to customize what a character wears can be a factor in it's success, because players inherently want to stand out. They want to make something that they find appealing to their taste. As I said before, the problem isn't that people add this feature to their games, the problem is that people think it's a significant feature and blow it out of proportion. It should take less than five minutes to implement it (you're just adding and removing overlays) but instead it's something people spend months on. The people who focus on base icons tend to be people who have no clue how to budget their time when working on a game and this widespread obsession with base icons wrongly confirms their incorrect approach to game development. If BYOND had only one game developer who spent six months on a game and only had a base icon and a sample map made and every other BYOND game developer was much more productive, that lone base icon developer would look around and realize they were doing something wrong. Since BYOND has lots of "game developers" who post their base icons and title screens and never make significant progress on their games, all of these people see others making games the same way and think they must be doing it right - what are the odds that 1,000 teenage first-time game developers could be wrong about how to develop computer games? Pretty darn good! | |
Scyrus123 wrote:
What I meant was, if you want to feel the game completely, play and have fun, don't just dress up and after collecting all of the fuckin dresses already...then you quit?! fuckin manners We're not talking about what the players are doing. If a player wants to stand around and dress up their character, that's their way of Roleplaying and you can't really criticize them for doing that, especially if their character is Obsessive Compulsive about their outfit or whatnot. If a player chooses to dress-up their character, they're obviously having fun with it. The point of a game is to entertain the player, not have them play the game exactly how you want them to. I think that's also part of the problem. "Developers" are making games for themselves when they should be making games for the players. Forum_Account wrote: [...] what are the odds that 1,000 teenage first-time game developers could be wrong about how to develop computer games? Pretty darn good! No one can really argue with any points in your last post. They're all pretty much true. | |
The man with the biggest gun is more confident than the man with a smaller one...Same goes for base icons. :P
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I see. So it's a matter of not being willing/able to make an actual game.
ImmeasurableHate wrote:
Well, that's fine. It's just that they can make the gameplay and make it fun before adding clothing and dress-up options, because it's quite easy to add.
VixiV wrote:
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
What I've learned from this discussion is that you need to really go out there, take the risk and put the effort in to make a game. I, myself, am trying to learn to be able to follow through in a project and maintain motivation the whole way. This discussion has been helpful.