Journal Update
I got a bit sidetracked in December with the flu. Actually it went, flu (7 days), cough to follow, pink eye (3-5 days), and then a bacterial sinus infection that had to be treated with antibiotics. Fun. I haven't been sick in 4 years. I think fate decided to make up for that lapse.
Been working on bug fixes to the prologue so I can get it back into the hands of testers. It should go out today.
Also been playing Fallout 3 for the past few days, instead of modding. Just felt like playing something different for a while. It has been so long since I last played Fallout that most of the game feels new to me again. And I'm seeing stuff I didn't see before. I just enjoy playing all sorts of different games. I think sometimes I need a break from creating to just experience the joy of playing someone else's work for a while.
As for my campaign, once this latest update goes out to the beta testers, I'm wrapping up the prologue. Almost every resource I need for the next modules resides in my campaign folder. A bunch of stuff I want to use in the next modules, I don't have access to right now because those modules aren't yet associated with the campaign. I wanted to finish the prologue beta before I started adding all the new modules to the campaign.
So, tomorrow I should be able to add all these new modules into the campaign and start using campaign resources again, like scripts and many placeables. There's still a boatload of work to do on the areas...
Anyway, back to it. Enjoy your weekend peoples!
ColorsFade's Development Journal
Débuté par
ColorsFade
, févr. 20 2013 11:55
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#352
Posté 10 janvier 2014 - 02:20
Eguintir Eligard
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are you gonna release the prologue or what
#353
Posté 10 janvier 2014 - 02:55
ColorsFade
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I don't actually know Eguintir. It's still a 'maybe'. I'm gathering feedback.
I have one part to fix and it could be released.
It's very much a "prologue", however. Fairly short; 3-4 hours of game play.
If there's a demand to see it, I can release it.
I have one part to fix and it could be released.
It's very much a "prologue", however. Fairly short; 3-4 hours of game play.
If there's a demand to see it, I can release it.
#354
Posté 10 janvier 2014 - 07:11
Eguintir Eligard
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I demand to see it. The worst you could do is build a pre-existing following for your next chapters.
#355
Posté 13 janvier 2014 - 12:45
ColorsFade
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Journal Update
Updating the beta tonight. This is the last update. If the testers don't find any more major breaking stuff, I'll likely push to public release sometime after that.
It's very much a prologue. I mean, it's not a big adventure. It's a bit more than what you get in the OC, with the West Harbor fair and storming the lizard ruins with Bevell, but not by much.
Also finished playing through Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. It's been so long since I've played those games it was almost like playing anew.
I had a couple of takeaways from that, and this is part of why I like playing different games: experiencing content and seeing how devs do stuff.
First, I really have always enjoyed how the Fallout series concludes a game. I love the montage at the end, where they tell you what happened to the different people and factions based on your actions in the game. I am totally doing that for this mod. At the end of all the chapters, there will be a still-image montage of all the major players and what happens. Your actions will count.
Second, I really liked how some of the generic NPC's will say something relevant to the PC after you've done something to impact the game world. Like when you kill the leader of Fiends, Motor-Runner, the NPC's comment about that as you walk by. I LOVE that. I'm going to be doing that with the NPC dialog in Scornubel, with barkstrings. When you do something significant, when you complete a major quest that impacts the city in some way, the people will comment on it. It's just a nice touch and I really enjoy it. It makes you feel a little less like you're playing in a vacuum.
I also really liked the radio guys updating the world in Fallout 3. Three-Dog's updates are awesome. I love hearing him tell stories about the "Hero of the Wasteland". It's a great touch they added in for these games.
Overall... I like New Vegas more, but I feel it also falls flat in a key area. It's weird...
I feel like the introduction in New Vegas is better (it gets you right into the action quite a bit faster with what happens in Goodsprings, and I applaud the developers for the way they set the whole thing up), and I feel like the way it "guides" you through the first half of the game is outstanding.
One thing I like is that you have a very direct line of travel to progress through the first part of the game: heading south toward Primm, then east, then back up north to Novac and on until you hit Vegas. There's a lot of stuff to do along the way (Powder Gangers jail, ghouls at the test facility, etc) and you get introduced to the various factions, etc.
It's a great game... Right up until you get to The Strip I think New Vegas is the best Fallout game ever.
And then it sort of falls apart from there. It gets bogged down in an overabundance of run-around quests in the city itself (and the city is annoying with all its zoning), and it gets clouded by the whole faction design which makes it really ambiguous as to how you can achieve your end-goals. I had to find out via searching the web that the I couldn't make it end the way I wanted it to end.
I was pretty disappointed, for instance, that I couldn't take over the Lucky 38 *AND* win the war for the NCR. Really? Why can't I make those two things happen? That felt the designers really restricted the possibilities. You can support the NCR, Mr. House, the Legion, or an independent Vegas. Well WTF? Why does the NCR want Vegas? They want the dam. Why can't I work out a deal to put myself in charge of Vegas and the Lucky 38, but make sure the NCR is the region's defense system? It just kinda... blew.
Anyway, I decided this time playing through I'd shoot for an independent Vegas. Never done that option before. It was slightly disappointing And the final battle with the Legion was anti-climactic.
All of which is a great education in game design. It reinforces, to me, my ideas about how I should build my campaign and the build-up of events that has to happen, and how things need to escalate and build until the climax.
New Vegas starts off building really well, then lulls when you get the Vegas, and becomes an utter disappointment by the time you reach the end. And that's just not very cool.
Anyway, I ramble. They are still massively fun games, despite any complaints I an enumerating here.
But it's time to get back to designing my campaign. Scornubel awaits.
Updating the beta tonight. This is the last update. If the testers don't find any more major breaking stuff, I'll likely push to public release sometime after that.
It's very much a prologue. I mean, it's not a big adventure. It's a bit more than what you get in the OC, with the West Harbor fair and storming the lizard ruins with Bevell, but not by much.
Also finished playing through Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. It's been so long since I've played those games it was almost like playing anew.
I had a couple of takeaways from that, and this is part of why I like playing different games: experiencing content and seeing how devs do stuff.
First, I really have always enjoyed how the Fallout series concludes a game. I love the montage at the end, where they tell you what happened to the different people and factions based on your actions in the game. I am totally doing that for this mod. At the end of all the chapters, there will be a still-image montage of all the major players and what happens. Your actions will count.
Second, I really liked how some of the generic NPC's will say something relevant to the PC after you've done something to impact the game world. Like when you kill the leader of Fiends, Motor-Runner, the NPC's comment about that as you walk by. I LOVE that. I'm going to be doing that with the NPC dialog in Scornubel, with barkstrings. When you do something significant, when you complete a major quest that impacts the city in some way, the people will comment on it. It's just a nice touch and I really enjoy it. It makes you feel a little less like you're playing in a vacuum.
I also really liked the radio guys updating the world in Fallout 3. Three-Dog's updates are awesome. I love hearing him tell stories about the "Hero of the Wasteland". It's a great touch they added in for these games.
Overall... I like New Vegas more, but I feel it also falls flat in a key area. It's weird...
I feel like the introduction in New Vegas is better (it gets you right into the action quite a bit faster with what happens in Goodsprings, and I applaud the developers for the way they set the whole thing up), and I feel like the way it "guides" you through the first half of the game is outstanding.
One thing I like is that you have a very direct line of travel to progress through the first part of the game: heading south toward Primm, then east, then back up north to Novac and on until you hit Vegas. There's a lot of stuff to do along the way (Powder Gangers jail, ghouls at the test facility, etc) and you get introduced to the various factions, etc.
It's a great game... Right up until you get to The Strip I think New Vegas is the best Fallout game ever.
And then it sort of falls apart from there. It gets bogged down in an overabundance of run-around quests in the city itself (and the city is annoying with all its zoning), and it gets clouded by the whole faction design which makes it really ambiguous as to how you can achieve your end-goals. I had to find out via searching the web that the I couldn't make it end the way I wanted it to end.
I was pretty disappointed, for instance, that I couldn't take over the Lucky 38 *AND* win the war for the NCR. Really? Why can't I make those two things happen? That felt the designers really restricted the possibilities. You can support the NCR, Mr. House, the Legion, or an independent Vegas. Well WTF? Why does the NCR want Vegas? They want the dam. Why can't I work out a deal to put myself in charge of Vegas and the Lucky 38, but make sure the NCR is the region's defense system? It just kinda... blew.
Anyway, I decided this time playing through I'd shoot for an independent Vegas. Never done that option before. It was slightly disappointing And the final battle with the Legion was anti-climactic.
All of which is a great education in game design. It reinforces, to me, my ideas about how I should build my campaign and the build-up of events that has to happen, and how things need to escalate and build until the climax.
New Vegas starts off building really well, then lulls when you get the Vegas, and becomes an utter disappointment by the time you reach the end. And that's just not very cool.
Anyway, I ramble. They are still massively fun games, despite any complaints I an enumerating here.
But it's time to get back to designing my campaign. Scornubel awaits.
#356
Posté 13 janvier 2014 - 02:14
andysks
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ColorsFade wrote...
I had a couple of takeaways from that, and this is part of why I like playing different games: experiencing content and seeing how devs do stuff.
I spent the last two days on a marathon play for the beta version of Elder Scrolls Online. It is one of, if not the most favorite series of games for me. I enjoyed playing it, but all the time all I could think was: "Ah, nice thing they did there." Or, "Good job on this dialogue!". I think, since the moment we started modding, it is imposible to play a game from a JUST player prespective
. I was reading a while ago, that the developers of Project Eternity, Pillars of Eternity now, were writting on their own journal their experiences while playing Arcanum. So I guess, no matter how experiences the game maker, he will always play some games to get inspiration, and have fun of course.
#357
Posté 13 janvier 2014 - 02:36
kamal_
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Making one of the Project Eternity devs play Arcanum and broadcast the play sessions was one of the kickstarter stretch goal rewards.andysks wrote...
I was reading a while ago, that the developers of Project Eternity, Pillars of Eternity now, were writting on their own journal their experiences while playing Arcanum. So I guess, no matter how experiences the game maker, he will always play some games to get inspiration, and have fun of course.
#358
Posté 13 janvier 2014 - 03:11
andysks
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I knew there was something fishy there . It was fun though!
. It was fun though!
#359
Posté 13 janvier 2014 - 06:00
OfficerDonNZ
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If memory serves Fallout: New Vegas was done by Obsidian which explains why it goes off the rails a bit. All of Obsidian's games thus far have some sort of fault some more so than others.
Pillars of Eternity will prove interesting as they don't have a publisher breathing down their necks. Still I'm a cynical bugger given Obsidian's track record (or lack thereof) so my hopes for Pillars of Eternity isn't that high.
Pillars of Eternity will prove interesting as they don't have a publisher breathing down their necks. Still I'm a cynical bugger given Obsidian's track record (or lack thereof) so my hopes for Pillars of Eternity isn't that high.
#360
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Posté 13 janvier 2014 - 01:55
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The companions are better in New Vegas and I do rather like wiping out all the casinos for daring to tell me I can't have any guns or eating people ! With my play throughs Mr House always dies because he's creepy and I either go for independent or NCR as I'm not too happy about the Legion's attitude although they do do a good line in machetes. But it would be nice to have your own raider controlled drug fuelled Vegas with the NCR protecting the electricity.
I've busy with Bioshock 1 & 2 and Dishonoured and I'm thoroughly enjoying playing first person games at the moment as I really like all the 3D stuff and wild walkmeshes. It's a shame NWN2 hasn't got better camera controls as it would make it a lot better not to mention more exciting if you couldn't see around the corner.
I might go for an all out action machine gunning lunatic cyber soldier one next but I haven't made my mind up.. Any suggestions ?
I've busy with Bioshock 1 & 2 and Dishonoured and I'm thoroughly enjoying playing first person games at the moment as I really like all the 3D stuff and wild walkmeshes. It's a shame NWN2 hasn't got better camera controls as it would make it a lot better not to mention more exciting if you couldn't see around the corner.
I might go for an all out action machine gunning lunatic cyber soldier one next but I haven't made my mind up.. Any suggestions ?
#361
Posté 13 janvier 2014 - 03:18
ColorsFade
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Iveforgotmypassword wrote...
The companions are better in New Vegas and I do rather like wiping out all the casinos for daring to tell me I can't have any guns or eating people ! With my play throughs Mr House always dies because he's creepy and I either go for independent or NCR as I'm not too happy about the Legion's attitude although they do do a good line in machetes. But it would be nice to have your own raider controlled drug fuelled Vegas with the NCR protecting the electricity.
Yeah, I can never get myself to even contemplate siding with the Legion. As soon as I see one of those poor slaves carrying a huge burden on their back, I just want to mow down the entire Fort.
Iveforgotmypassword wrote...
But it would be nice to have your own raider controlled drug fuelled Vegas with the NCR protecting the electricity.
And that, really, is my biggest gripe about the whole ending. The first time I played the game, I saw two very distrinct main story arcs going on:
1) NCR vs Legion control for the damn and electricity resources
2) Mr. House vs You/Benny/Other Casinos for control of the Strip.
If the developers would have built it that way, it would have been much better IMO. I would have loved it if the moral dilemma would have been: Who do you put in control of the Strip? Mr. House? One of the other Casino leaders? Yourself? That would have been neat. And satisfying...
Iveforgotmypassword wrote...
I might go for an all out action machine gunning lunatic cyber soldier one next but I haven't made my mind up.. Any suggestions ?
No suggestions from me.
One of the things I like about New Vegas vs. Fallout 3 is that each game takes a different approach as to what the "best" or "optimal" weapons are. In Fallout 3 it is clearly energy weapons. But in New Vegas, guns rule. In Fallout 3 I find myself opting for more VATS perks, and in New Vegas I opt for more perks that allow me to carry more and handle ammunition (Hand Loader, for example). So they are both unique in those terms and I really like that.
Bioshock... I played part of the very first one, and then didn't finish it. It was pretty fun and pretty creepy. I was a big fan of the original System Shock and System Shock 2. Both of those games scared the bejesus out of me. Someday I'll go back and play Bioshock and finish it, because it is really well done.
#362
Posté 13 janvier 2014 - 06:34
Eguintir Eligard
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So the prologue is out now or any minute now?
#363
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Posté 13 janvier 2014 - 06:56
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Sniper rifles and shotguns for me in both Fallouts but I tend to run out of ammo and resort to more brutal methods. Although I did make a mod for Fallout 3 which was an underground friendly raider area that had a lot of ammo for sale, doctors that were drug addiction specialists, crafting benches plus ingredients and a mega drug that gave all sorts of bonuses.
It was going to have a story about the wonder drug and a recruitable companion but I really couldn't handle the conversation writing as it's very confusing unlike NWN2 which flows very well. So it remains to this day as a safe haven for personal wasteland shopping. The walkmesh is pretty hard to do too but it's very satisfying to make things on all sorts of levels in one area.
Good luck if you plan to release your prologue.
It was going to have a story about the wonder drug and a recruitable companion but I really couldn't handle the conversation writing as it's very confusing unlike NWN2 which flows very well. So it remains to this day as a safe haven for personal wasteland shopping. The walkmesh is pretty hard to do too but it's very satisfying to make things on all sorts of levels in one area.
Good luck if you plan to release your prologue.
#364
Posté 14 janvier 2014 - 12:33
ColorsFade
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Eguintir Eligard wrote...
So the prologue is out now or any minute now?
Beta. Last stage. I'm having issues with Dropbox updating a file so the testers can go through one more pass. I really only need a couple small things tested, but this update is critical.
Soon. Before the end of the month for sure.
#365
Posté 14 janvier 2014 - 12:38
ColorsFade
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Iveforgotmypassword wrote...
Sniper rifles and shotguns for me in both Fallouts but I tend to run out of ammo and resort to more brutal methods. .
Wow, really? I had more ammunition at the end that I knew what to do with. I had two machine guns with over 1,000 rounds each, the 50 cal with a truckload of ammo, thh 40mm grenade lanucher, Ratslayer, That Gun, and a sawed off shotgun (with Pulse Rounds, perfect for single-takedowns of 'bots).
Ammo was a problem only the very first time I played the game and wasn't sure what I was doing. Then I took the Scrounger perk and figured out how to manage my inventory better (on Hardcore). Pack Rat and Strong Back and other such perks, along with companions, help me carry a load of stuff to trade in. Then I just hit every vendor I can frequently and always buy the ammo available. Before I knew it I had tons of ammo.
I don't know how much of a difference, mathematically, the Scrounger perk has over the course of an entire game, but it seems to make a dramatic difference to me. And being able to pack everything I find is a big deal. I'll find a dozen guns, repair them with like models, and have 100% condition guns by the time I meet a vendor. Trade them for ammo and away you go.
Iveforgotmypassword wrote...
Good luck if you plan to release your prologue.
Thanks. If I can get Dropbox working with this last file...
I want to get this released so I can move forward.
#366
Posté 14 janvier 2014 - 02:31
Eguintir Eligard
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Start a new thread for the release for help and comments and we can feedback for the future chapters.
Modifié par Eguintir Eligard, 14 janvier 2014 - 02:32 .
#367
Posté 14 janvier 2014 - 06:22
ColorsFade
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Eguintir Eligard wrote...
Start a new thread for the release for help and comments and we can feedback for the future chapters.
Oh, no question Eligard. I will do that when the time comes.
I got dropbox working again tonight. Goign to send out an email to beta testers tomorrow. Prologue is 4-5 hours of play, and only a couple things I really wanted to see tested again are early in the mod. If all goes well, you'll see it soon.
It's nothing to get excited about, IMO, but it does setup the larger game world to come. And that is something I think players can get excited about.
#368
Posté 21 janvier 2014 - 05:06
ColorsFade
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Journal Entry
Beta Update: I am still waiting feedback from testers on the final beta pass. When done, the prologue will get published. In the meantime, I'm busy writing quests and such. Still loads of areas to create, but I needed to take a break from that for a while.
Rant
This is going to be a long post. Probably too long, But there are lessons here, for myself, that I really want to remember, and some ranting I want to do just to blow off steam.
As mentioned earlier, I've been playing Fallout: New Vegas. I haven't played that game since it came out, but had a lot of fond memories of it, and just wanted to play something different; something other than AD&D. I also wanted to play it so I could pay attention to dialog and quests. It may be a first-person shooter, but a lot of the game play elements, like the dialog trees, are universal to all games, and I wanted to pay close attention to how they were doing certain things.
One thing I didn't do the first time I played the game was play through all the DLC expansions. I did play through Old World Blues when it came out, but very quickly and I didn't really savor it. This time I decided to play through all the DLC content and really explore and see what the expansions were about.
For the most part, the expansions were really disappointing.
If you've never played these games or these expansions, I apologize, dear reader. I'll do my best to put my complaints and criticisms in the context of making mods with NWN2 engine.
Lonesome Road
I couldn't be more disappointed with Lonesome Road. It is a very bad expansion - maybe the worst I've ever played. I have never, in all my years playing games, been more disappointed in the dialog for a video game. The Ulysses character's dialog that pops up throughout the expansion is so terrible, so poorly written, so purposefully cryptic and vague that it seems as if it was written by a collection of stoned-out-of-their-mind hipsters lounging in some second-tier coffee bar. It's just terrible dialog. There's no other way to put it. And because it is so terrible, and because the history of this particular place is only knowable through the dialog, it ruins a very important aspect of this expansion.
And that's a great - GREAT - reminder to me while building my campaign: When I write dialog, I want it to be CLEAR to the reader. The reader shouldn't have to sift through a cloud of vagaries and break open a super-secret hipster decoding ring in order to understand the intent of a dialog with an NPC.
There are other flaws with expansion, but the dialog was what stuck out the worst to me. It provides the greatest lesson. Without clear dialog the expansion loses its appeal almost immediately. Bad writing can ruin all your other great achievements - good level design, fun encounters - very quickly.
Dead Money
That's how I feel after playing this expansion. It's dead money. It's largely a waste of time and cash.
It's a neat setup idea: a casino in some remote part of America that never opened, because right before it does, the bombs go off and the world falls into nuclear winter. And entire self-sufficient tourist town is now yours to explore. Your goal is to plumb the depths of the casino and rob it blind.
Only, the developers elected to go a completely different way with the story. And it sucked.
The casino itself sits up high on a hill, and elicits thoughts of the film, "The House on Haunted Hill" (1959 or 1999, take your pick). Had the expansion went in that direction, it could have been very, very cool. In fact,I don't even understand why it didn't go that way. The Fallout world had already established the existence of ghouls and horrific creatures. It would have made total sense to populate the casino proper with a bunch of ghouls and foul creatures, some boss overlords, maybe the casino owner himself still living, as a ghoul, protecting his hoard, warding off all-comers who attempt to try and steal his treasure... and we could have had holotapes and computer records tell the story of what happened to the guests in the days following the war, how some of them became ghouls while others morphed into more horrific creatures, the horrible deaths and killings that ensued. Maybe there was something in the walls of the casino, a chemical that was inserted to help protect it from the potential nuclear war that was comin, but since it was an untested chemical, it instead went horrigly wrong, and ghoulified a bunch of the tenants, while others became victims of their violence and hunger.
But the expansion never goes there.
The most annoying aspect of the expansion is the collar on the neck of you and your companions. It beeps as you get too close to certain electrical devices that emit radio signals. As you stay within range of these devices, your collar beeps faster, until it explodes and you die, along with your companions (because, conveniently, you're all in this together).
This makes exploration very slow and tedious (and just plain un-fun). Your collar starts beeping, so you back away. You attempt to enter a room again, beeping, look around frantically for the source, back away. This can go on for a long time, since the developers often wanted to be VERY CLEVER with the placement of the eletronic devices. Oh, those developers! They're so sneaky!
But it's just annoying.
Lesson Learned: Avoid annoying baloney. Any "plot device" that creates unnecessary annoyance to the player needs to be removed or re-thought. You could clearly see the influence that System Shock and Bioshock had on the Dead Money expansion. But those games knew how to make those devices integral to the game without annoying the hell out of the player. Here, they are just dumb.
And like the other expansions, this one has other problems (mostly with story and plot, although much of the level design of the initial town is equally horrible). You also get completely stripped of your gear at the start, which is another annoyance. But the plot device of the beeping collars was the most egregious problem that stuck out to me.
Honest Hearts
I liked this expansion a bit. It's a brand new looking level design, Zion National Park, complete with neat ravines and rock formations. And it is used well almost immediately. I liked that the PC's first quest is broken up: you are given a simple acquisition quest (find these things), but they are not all in one place. So it gives you a chance to explore a little bit. You can choose where to go first, second, etc., in any order you like. I very much like that approach to quests like this, and it was a good reminder to myself to craft certain future quests in this manner. It gives the player a feeling of freedom and I think that's a good thing in any game world.
Where it goes wrong (only a little bit) is with some "moral" choices you have to make with one tribe. What you're essentially given is a Kobayashi Maru: the No-Win scenario. Either choice that you make for this particular tribe is going to result in a less-than-satisfying result. And I don't like that.
I, like Captain Kirk, don't believe in the no-win scenario. I find it absurd. It gives the player the illusion of choice, as if what the player chooses will make a difference in the lives of the NPC's. But it really doesn't, because the end is going to be unsatisfying one way or another.
It was a good reminder to me: If you are going to give the player a chance to influence the game world and the outcome of certain NPC's, there should be a clear path to a very satisfying result. It may not be an easy path, and the player may fail to reach it, but that path should EXIST for the player to take.
Old World Blues
By far the best expansion of the bunch. This is how you do an expansion to an existing game like Fallout: New Vegas.
You're sent to a completely new area, which is big, has really varying design and level layout, and you are given a lot of quests. Some of it is the main quest, and a lot of side quests. There's a BUNCH of new enemies, and you are given new tools for fighting them. None of your gear is stripped from you at the start, so you can use your old toys, but very quickly you will see the benefit of using some of the new toys against your new enemies.
In addition, you basically start at your "stronghold", and many of the side quests involve "upgrading" your stronghold.
There's a lot to explore, and a lot of loot, and the whole main quest is fun. The enemies are tough but not impossible, and exploring the new world space is dangerous and challening, sometimes frightening (I jumped out of my seat a few times), but not so difficult that you don't want to explore.
It's just a perfect expansion.
By the time you reach the conclusion, you've acquired some really neat loot. And you're given a device that will transport you back and forth, between this expansion world, and thew New Vegas world proper. So you can keep returning to your stronghold and using it.
It's a great, great addition to thew Fallout: New Vegas world and I can't imagine playing the game without it. It's that good.
Conclusion
My takeaway from playing through all this content is pretty simple: whatever I do with my campaign, the primary, overriding goal should be to make it fun for the player. Nothing should be invented without giving serious thought to how it affects the player's fun factor. A beeping bomb collar might sound like a good idea in a design session, but in practice it was annoying and un-fun.
I'm aiming squarely at fun.
Beta Update: I am still waiting feedback from testers on the final beta pass. When done, the prologue will get published. In the meantime, I'm busy writing quests and such. Still loads of areas to create, but I needed to take a break from that for a while.
Rant
This is going to be a long post. Probably too long, But there are lessons here, for myself, that I really want to remember, and some ranting I want to do just to blow off steam.
As mentioned earlier, I've been playing Fallout: New Vegas. I haven't played that game since it came out, but had a lot of fond memories of it, and just wanted to play something different; something other than AD&D. I also wanted to play it so I could pay attention to dialog and quests. It may be a first-person shooter, but a lot of the game play elements, like the dialog trees, are universal to all games, and I wanted to pay close attention to how they were doing certain things.
One thing I didn't do the first time I played the game was play through all the DLC expansions. I did play through Old World Blues when it came out, but very quickly and I didn't really savor it. This time I decided to play through all the DLC content and really explore and see what the expansions were about.
For the most part, the expansions were really disappointing.
If you've never played these games or these expansions, I apologize, dear reader. I'll do my best to put my complaints and criticisms in the context of making mods with NWN2 engine.
Lonesome Road
I couldn't be more disappointed with Lonesome Road. It is a very bad expansion - maybe the worst I've ever played. I have never, in all my years playing games, been more disappointed in the dialog for a video game. The Ulysses character's dialog that pops up throughout the expansion is so terrible, so poorly written, so purposefully cryptic and vague that it seems as if it was written by a collection of stoned-out-of-their-mind hipsters lounging in some second-tier coffee bar. It's just terrible dialog. There's no other way to put it. And because it is so terrible, and because the history of this particular place is only knowable through the dialog, it ruins a very important aspect of this expansion.
And that's a great - GREAT - reminder to me while building my campaign: When I write dialog, I want it to be CLEAR to the reader. The reader shouldn't have to sift through a cloud of vagaries and break open a super-secret hipster decoding ring in order to understand the intent of a dialog with an NPC.
There are other flaws with expansion, but the dialog was what stuck out the worst to me. It provides the greatest lesson. Without clear dialog the expansion loses its appeal almost immediately. Bad writing can ruin all your other great achievements - good level design, fun encounters - very quickly.
Dead Money
That's how I feel after playing this expansion. It's dead money. It's largely a waste of time and cash.
It's a neat setup idea: a casino in some remote part of America that never opened, because right before it does, the bombs go off and the world falls into nuclear winter. And entire self-sufficient tourist town is now yours to explore. Your goal is to plumb the depths of the casino and rob it blind.
Only, the developers elected to go a completely different way with the story. And it sucked.
The casino itself sits up high on a hill, and elicits thoughts of the film, "The House on Haunted Hill" (1959 or 1999, take your pick). Had the expansion went in that direction, it could have been very, very cool. In fact,I don't even understand why it didn't go that way. The Fallout world had already established the existence of ghouls and horrific creatures. It would have made total sense to populate the casino proper with a bunch of ghouls and foul creatures, some boss overlords, maybe the casino owner himself still living, as a ghoul, protecting his hoard, warding off all-comers who attempt to try and steal his treasure... and we could have had holotapes and computer records tell the story of what happened to the guests in the days following the war, how some of them became ghouls while others morphed into more horrific creatures, the horrible deaths and killings that ensued. Maybe there was something in the walls of the casino, a chemical that was inserted to help protect it from the potential nuclear war that was comin, but since it was an untested chemical, it instead went horrigly wrong, and ghoulified a bunch of the tenants, while others became victims of their violence and hunger.
But the expansion never goes there.
The most annoying aspect of the expansion is the collar on the neck of you and your companions. It beeps as you get too close to certain electrical devices that emit radio signals. As you stay within range of these devices, your collar beeps faster, until it explodes and you die, along with your companions (because, conveniently, you're all in this together).
This makes exploration very slow and tedious (and just plain un-fun). Your collar starts beeping, so you back away. You attempt to enter a room again, beeping, look around frantically for the source, back away. This can go on for a long time, since the developers often wanted to be VERY CLEVER with the placement of the eletronic devices. Oh, those developers! They're so sneaky!
But it's just annoying.
Lesson Learned: Avoid annoying baloney. Any "plot device" that creates unnecessary annoyance to the player needs to be removed or re-thought. You could clearly see the influence that System Shock and Bioshock had on the Dead Money expansion. But those games knew how to make those devices integral to the game without annoying the hell out of the player. Here, they are just dumb.
And like the other expansions, this one has other problems (mostly with story and plot, although much of the level design of the initial town is equally horrible). You also get completely stripped of your gear at the start, which is another annoyance. But the plot device of the beeping collars was the most egregious problem that stuck out to me.
Honest Hearts
I liked this expansion a bit. It's a brand new looking level design, Zion National Park, complete with neat ravines and rock formations. And it is used well almost immediately. I liked that the PC's first quest is broken up: you are given a simple acquisition quest (find these things), but they are not all in one place. So it gives you a chance to explore a little bit. You can choose where to go first, second, etc., in any order you like. I very much like that approach to quests like this, and it was a good reminder to myself to craft certain future quests in this manner. It gives the player a feeling of freedom and I think that's a good thing in any game world.
Where it goes wrong (only a little bit) is with some "moral" choices you have to make with one tribe. What you're essentially given is a Kobayashi Maru: the No-Win scenario. Either choice that you make for this particular tribe is going to result in a less-than-satisfying result. And I don't like that.
I, like Captain Kirk, don't believe in the no-win scenario. I find it absurd. It gives the player the illusion of choice, as if what the player chooses will make a difference in the lives of the NPC's. But it really doesn't, because the end is going to be unsatisfying one way or another.
It was a good reminder to me: If you are going to give the player a chance to influence the game world and the outcome of certain NPC's, there should be a clear path to a very satisfying result. It may not be an easy path, and the player may fail to reach it, but that path should EXIST for the player to take.
Old World Blues
By far the best expansion of the bunch. This is how you do an expansion to an existing game like Fallout: New Vegas.
You're sent to a completely new area, which is big, has really varying design and level layout, and you are given a lot of quests. Some of it is the main quest, and a lot of side quests. There's a BUNCH of new enemies, and you are given new tools for fighting them. None of your gear is stripped from you at the start, so you can use your old toys, but very quickly you will see the benefit of using some of the new toys against your new enemies.
In addition, you basically start at your "stronghold", and many of the side quests involve "upgrading" your stronghold.
There's a lot to explore, and a lot of loot, and the whole main quest is fun. The enemies are tough but not impossible, and exploring the new world space is dangerous and challening, sometimes frightening (I jumped out of my seat a few times), but not so difficult that you don't want to explore.
It's just a perfect expansion.
By the time you reach the conclusion, you've acquired some really neat loot. And you're given a device that will transport you back and forth, between this expansion world, and thew New Vegas world proper. So you can keep returning to your stronghold and using it.
It's a great, great addition to thew Fallout: New Vegas world and I can't imagine playing the game without it. It's that good.
Conclusion
My takeaway from playing through all this content is pretty simple: whatever I do with my campaign, the primary, overriding goal should be to make it fun for the player. Nothing should be invented without giving serious thought to how it affects the player's fun factor. A beeping bomb collar might sound like a good idea in a design session, but in practice it was annoying and un-fun.
I'm aiming squarely at fun.
#369
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Posté 21 janvier 2014 - 08:23
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
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Fun is what games should be about and some people take things too seriously which is rather worrying but sod them and keep on aiming where you are !
I've never bought any DLC for any game because I don't approve of it and believe a game should be sold complete, however by the time I get around to buying games they normally come with it included. I'm eagerly awaiting Far Cry 3 and Deus Ex Human Revolution which should arrive by Saturday as I've gone FPS mad at the moment.
I've never bought any DLC for any game because I don't approve of it and believe a game should be sold complete, however by the time I get around to buying games they normally come with it included. I'm eagerly awaiting Far Cry 3 and Deus Ex Human Revolution which should arrive by Saturday as I've gone FPS mad at the moment.
#370
Posté 21 janvier 2014 - 09:58
Dann-J
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I consider the following criteria essential for something to qualify as a 'game':
- It should have rules of some sort (even if the player chooses to break them)
- It should be challenging in some way (which is not the same thing as 'difficult')
- It should be fun
Your average group of five-year-olds can manage to create games that meet all those criteria (usually with the emphasis on the third point). It shouldn't be difficult for older people to do so - but far too often, even professional game developers fail to meet at least one of those criteria.
Perhaps all games should be play-tested by five-year-olds before being released? The feedback would certainly be honest!
- It should have rules of some sort (even if the player chooses to break them)
- It should be challenging in some way (which is not the same thing as 'difficult')
- It should be fun
Your average group of five-year-olds can manage to create games that meet all those criteria (usually with the emphasis on the third point). It shouldn't be difficult for older people to do so - but far too often, even professional game developers fail to meet at least one of those criteria.
Perhaps all games should be play-tested by five-year-olds before being released? The feedback would certainly be honest!
#371
Posté 21 janvier 2014 - 11:11
MokahTGS
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DannJ wrote...
Perhaps all games should be play-tested by five-year-olds before being released? The feedback would certainly be honest!
Most current MMOs are tested as such.
#372
Posté 25 janvier 2014 - 05:43
ColorsFade
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Slight delay. My laptop (and only machine) died. Fortunately, almost everything was backed up on Dropbox. A large module was not, but my techie brother-in-law helped me recover it. Just waiting on a new machine to arrive. What timing eh?
#373
Posté 25 janvier 2014 - 07:01
andysks
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Well, that's just... *%#! up right? You have my sympathies. I know how it feels to lose work. If you still missing files I got the version you sent me, which I guess is the final of the prologue? In any case, I hope you'll get back to it with the same passion despite the unfortunate incident.
#374
Posté 25 janvier 2014 - 08:12
PJ156
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MokahTGS wrote...
DannJ wrote...
Perhaps all games should be play-tested by five-year-olds before being released? The feedback would certainly be honest!
Most current MMOs are tested as such.
I though most MMO's were made for five year olds?
PJ
#375
Posté 25 janvier 2014 - 09:47
andysks
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[/quote]
I though most MMO's were made for five year olds?
PJ[/quote]
Word. I had hopes for Neverwinter online, only to see it on a stream and nearly vomit. I mean, what's with that line directing you to the quest location. Like it's not enough that everything is highlighted on our minimap these days...
Then I had really big hopes for Elder Scrolls. But pay/month... not thank you. Also, after playing the beta: Yes, good MMO. Better than most to be honest. But doesn't capture anything even near the feeling of Morrowind or Oblivion.
But what do you expect, as said, these games are not meant for people who have played the early Elder Scrolls. It is meant for the ones who only played Skyrim and when they see a gameplay video on youtube on Baldurs Gate or Morrowind, they can only comment on the bad graphics. Blasphemy.
I though most MMO's were made for five year olds?
PJ[/quote]
Word. I had hopes for Neverwinter online, only to see it on a stream and nearly vomit. I mean, what's with that line directing you to the quest location. Like it's not enough that everything is highlighted on our minimap these days...
Then I had really big hopes for Elder Scrolls. But pay/month... not thank you. Also, after playing the beta: Yes, good MMO. Better than most to be honest. But doesn't capture anything even near the feeling of Morrowind or Oblivion.
But what do you expect, as said, these games are not meant for people who have played the early Elder Scrolls. It is meant for the ones who only played Skyrim and when they see a gameplay video on youtube on Baldurs Gate or Morrowind, they can only comment on the bad graphics. Blasphemy.
