Project Shock Progress Report: Incubation

ID:89969
 
Jan 17 2010, 1:37 pm (Edited on Jan 17 2010, 2:07 pm)
Keywords: design
One thing I had forgotten about events that force me away from working on my game is that they open up room for a very important part of the creative process: incubation.

Because there's no screenshot today, I'm helping to break the monotony with the early work of William Wegman

In other words, the longer one comes to code a project, the more solid the wall of ideas about them, and in little time at all they find themselves trapped within this concept. Take some time away from coding, the walls become a bit looser, and you're given the opportunity to consider if this is really where you wanted to be.

As far as coding this week is concerned...

Quite minimal, but not non-existent.

I did get some work done in terms of adding the framework for abilities.

It's looking like it's going go be easier than I thought to add a whole slew of them on the grounds that, via modular programming, I can use inheritance to create - for example - a ton of projectile-spawning abilities.

Of course, I could extend this out to anything. Want turrets that shoot bananas? obj/turret/bananashooter where the code is extensible enough to support any kind of projectile.

Fruits of Incubation
  1. No grinds for me, thanks.
    At this point, I'm thinking in terms of progression. I had shoehorned in the idea of "grind prestige, earn abilities" but I don't like it.

    Where most online RPGs require you grind x number of hours to unlock ability y, I think I would rather have a model where you simply need to demonstrate proficiency in using an existing ability to be granted the next ability in that line.

    Is my text boring you? No doubt! Here's some more of the early work of William Wegman!

  2. There should be no such thing as griefing
    It's true that there will exist players who log into a game deliberately to be a pain in the ass in a medium where you can't reach out and punch them, however, the thing about a virtual environment is that you can often design the game in such a way that any behavior is supported.

    Take, for example, how readily EVE Online accommodated Goonfleet. Oh, hello Gloonfleet, you seem to believe you have broken our game? Guess again! working as intended, and we love you for it.

    Along these lines, I had been entertaining the idea of "citizens" versus "renegades." A lot of players, when given access to a compelling virtual world, want to undermine it. Perhaps it's releasing the stress of being in a world where they're compelled to obey, or exploring their creative boundaries. Other players want to build in this compelling world. Up until now, no game has really accommodated this well.

    Lets support both player types. A genuine order versus entropy scenario. There is where the battle lines are drawn, and there will be an implicit balance in place to keep the battle fair.
So, there's some pretty impressive checks my mouth wrote myself just now. I'm closer than I think. It's fair to suggest that this may have been what I've always wanted to do because of how close I am.

Lest you think I completely fossilized, I should mention that I'm drawing some inspiration from this at the moment as I work on my game. Well animated anime hotties? Alas, no. The other thing this anime does uniquely: explore the ramifications of environmental manipulation.

That is to say, in much the same way that artist might say that they merely removed the interfering chunks of stone that were obscuring the statue in the slab of marble, I'm learning little by little what parts I want to keep and what parts I want to remove.
Jan 17 2010, 2:11 pm
I don't understand the Eve Online scenario at all. Maybe I would have a better understanding if I played the game.
Jan 17 2010, 3:14 pm (Edited on Jan 17 2010, 3:51 pm)
C_Dawg_S wrote:
I don't understand the Eve Online scenario at all. Maybe I would have a better understanding if I played the game.

To put it in terms of other MMORPGs, there were multiple guildmasters in control of an alliance of guilds and they had a lot of stuff they grinded (some would say exploited to get) over the years that gave them an unbeatable advantage that let them control an area.

One of those guildmasters gets bored, contacts the members of another alliance, and schemes with them to bring the whole alliance down from the inside by simply disbanding it. (He also moved a whole lot of assets over to the other alliance.) The way the game is built, you don't get to resecure an area for a long time, so this giant alliance was suddenly good and screwed.

All of a sudden, the whole question of why you should even bother to accumulate this crap when you can just back-stab your way to victory reared it's ugly head... but, by and large, the players didn't care. EVE Online had become this big boring stalemate and now, at last, there was a sign of flux, something worth fighting over.

EVE Online's developers have always had this stance that backstabbing is completely supported within the game mechanics, so despite that this event was something that that would have considered a nasty break in other games, it was good and official there.

So, in terms of game balance, it's interesting to consider that drama can be an even more important virtual world component than a well-balanced game. What can a griefer do when the game is designed with such a perspective that griefing actually plays right into its hands?
Jan 17 2010, 5:37 pm
If you're using Haruhi Suzumiya as an example of ramifications of environmental manipulation, you might want to check out Serial Experiments Lain. I reckon it'll give you some kind of insight.
Jan 17 2010, 5:56 pm
Tiberath wrote:
If you're using Haruhi Suzumiya as an example of ramifications of environmental manipulation, you might want to check out Serial Experiments Lain. I reckon it'll give you some kind of insight.

Sounds interesting! I'll be sure to keep an eye out for it.