> The goal of good handling code isn’t to maintain a “correct” simulation, it’s to provide a fun game. It sucks to miss a jump by three centimeters.
That statement really resonated with me. I'm currently playing Battlefield 3 on the Xbox and the number of times I've died because I went to duck into a doorway to avoid enemy fire, only to get halted because the door frame has a 3cm ledge that my battle hardened soldier has difficulty stepping over.
It's amazing how a seemingly trivial issue can really drive up the frustration with a game and take away from it's enjoyment.
Reminds me of games with lag compensation. It has been observed that players missing their shots due to lag get incredibly frustrated.
The best way to deal with this is to use the latency of the shooter to predict what their bullet would of hit at the time they fired on their screen. This just cleverly shifts the lag from the shooter to the target, but players getting hit by lag compensated shots will rarely notice or care; certainly not as much as a shooter would when their shots miss.
It is honestly baffling to me that DICE has not addressed the "need to press the jump button to get over curbs and small rocks" issue since even their very first game, an issue ironically even more prevalent now with the added details afforded by advancing hardware. I do appreciate the leaps (hah) they've made with their vaulting system, but it too has its own frustrations.
Continuing my theme of posting relevant google tech talks, here is Soren Johnson, the lead designer and AI programmer on Sid Meier's Civilisation, discussing this very subject with specific reference to the evolution of civ's AI over the years. Extremely enlightening, whether you are a gamer or not.
"Artificial intelligence is crucial to any strategy game, providing a compelling opponent for solo play. While many of the challenges of AI development are technical, significant design challenges exist as well. Can the AI behave like a human? Should it? Should the game design be adjusted to accommodate the limitations of the AI? How do we make the AI fun? Should the AI cheat? If so, how much? Do we even want the AI to win? This session suggests some possible answers to these questions using the "Civilization" series as a case study. Ultimately, developers must choose between a "good" AI and a "fun" one, with an understanding of the trade-offs inherent when deciding between the two."
There was a bit I'm reminded of in the write-up on the Crash Bandicoot series,[1] where they mention 'Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment.[2] Essentially, fail enough times at a given point, and it gets a little bit easier (sloppier timings, more power-ups nearby, etc) until you get past it.
"Good player, bad player, everyone loved Crash games. They never realized it is because they were all playing a slightly different game, balanced for their specific needs."
Reminds me a lot of what I'm sure was a Mariokart64 behaviour - that the powerups you received were directly proportional to your race position, giving everyone behind you much better options to ruin your day.
Yeah, Mario Kart is infamous for it's rubber banding. It's possibly a case study in going too far - it's prominent to the point that almost all players notice it. And it's frustrating to get spammed with blue shells when you're in the lead and not be able to do anything about it. Ideally, as the article says, you'd never notice.
I bought the game to see how you implemented that. The game is 99 cents. Before the second(!) level, I am asked to buy a blade. Turns out
a) I have to buy money to buy a blade (WTF?! Either you charge for the game or the in-app purchases)
b) I cannot close the buying menu without buying anything
c) It is completely unclear to me how the practice blade is different from a "real" blade
You talk about how you detect players' intentions. My intention was to buy a game for 99 cents. Not for 10 bucks.
So far the biggest mistake I believe I've made is not cheating to help players win. I made a brutally difficult simulation game.
We have tons of players quit simply because the game is too hard. Because you are 1 person versus 31 other people, there is only 1 winner, and 31 losers.
People don't like this.
Compare this to our competitors, and they make losses not exist, and otherwise "cheat" the experience so everyone is above average.
The worst player in the games, looks like he is the best.
There has to be a happy medium somewhere, and I am the ruthless simulation side of it for now. (Trying to figure out how to change...)
Think rubber banding, part of the fun for the player is thinking they have a chance. Either by splitting up the players into leagues based skill levels (star craft 2), or fudge the game slightly (or significantly in mario kart's case)
That sounds like a neat game, but there is zero information on the website. I went ahead and signed up anyway just to see what it's about, but I would not have if I wasn't such a football nut.
How is the game played? Is it like fantasy football? It there a screenshot of what the game looks like? Are real teams and players in the game? You should consider answering these questions on the home page.
Back in the early 90's when platform games were all the rage I was always confused as to how a platform game that looked great could get a bad score in the magazines I read. For example the SNES game Blues Brothers looked better than a lot of other platformers and it sounded like it had similar mechanics to Mario Bros. So how could it possibly get a low score? I think this article might be the answer to that question.
Another 'cheating' method used in games is to keep the player in a state of flow. For example, in a fighting game combos could become increasingly easier so that the player stays in the zone.
Developers really need to understand their users and implement these cheats intelligently or they create frustrations of their own.
As an example, I played a football game that obviously had some type of tackling assistance. When I dove to tackle someone, my defenseman wouldn't dive to the spot I was aiming at, but instead try to orient himself to the ball carrier. The developers probably thought that this was helping people with their "misaimed" tackles, but it was actually causing me to miss them. When I dive, I'm aiming for a spot where I think the runner will be, not where he is at the moment I hit the button.
I've seen these types of things enough that I'd approach the idea of implementing a cheat much more cautiously than other features.
A lot of which is probably what makes us old-timers complain about how easy games are these days. I don't think i ever finished battletoads!
On the flip side, someone once commented that games should have a "toddler mode" where anything the player does just adds up more points and won't kill you. Obviously wouldn't work for every game, but I thought it was a brilliant idea.
Meh, I'm an old-timer and you know what? I don't long for the days where a minor fuckup had you redo a large slab of exactly the same damn thing over and over. There are so many games out there to enjoy these days that there's no point in wasting time to defeat an artifically difficult situation. "Yeah! I defeated Marioclone 239b level 23! I am the man!" just doesn't cut it anymore - bragging rights about mere timesinks are a thing of the past.
Sure, some difficulty is nice, but be careful of the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia.
I think most current games already strike a good balance with the use of ratings, bonus quests and achievements. Basically anybody is able to complete the game by simply spending 8-40 hours playing, but getting a perfect rating, completing all the hidden quests and completing all the achievements will take the same sort of skill and dedication that those fabled games of old required.
As an old-timer with a job and a family I really appreciate being able to enjoy and make progress in games despite only having a couple of hours a week to play.
> A lot of which is probably what makes us old-timers complain about how easy games are these days.
Still there are some who buck the general trend. And I'm not only talking about indie games like Spelunky, but also (among all things!) several games for the oh-so-family-friendly Wii: Donkey Kong, Super Mario, and even Mario Kart on the higher difficulty settings.
It is interesting how games differ from sports or academic contests. In sports, losing is OK because it makes you work harder to become stronger or smarter. In games, losing (or winning) is almost pointless because getting better at the game doesn't make you better at anything else in your life; so the value is in feeding some emotional or anesthetic aspect.
That probably only applies to single player games. You can compare single player games to movies: you can't "lose" in a movie. Multi-player games are more like sports, in which case losing has a different meaning.
Also interesting is this deconstruction of Super Mario World's camera logic. I never noticed so much thought was put into something as trivial sounding as camera movement.
Cool. I just bought the game to support the author in taking the time to write this article. I think we all remember early video games when being pixel perfect in landing a jump was enough to pull our hair out.
I've only done a small amount of Android development, but I recall the stock firmware on the Galaxy S to be somewhat buggy with respect to game development. Things would work, but then crash unexpectedly. The solution was to blacklist that firmware version, so that you didn't get a huge pile of bad reviews due to the crashing.
I might not be remembering the details exactly, it was about a year ago I was working on this stuff.
[+] [-] tobtoh|14 years ago|reply
That statement really resonated with me. I'm currently playing Battlefield 3 on the Xbox and the number of times I've died because I went to duck into a doorway to avoid enemy fire, only to get halted because the door frame has a 3cm ledge that my battle hardened soldier has difficulty stepping over.
It's amazing how a seemingly trivial issue can really drive up the frustration with a game and take away from it's enjoyment.
[+] [-] pantaloons|14 years ago|reply
The best way to deal with this is to use the latency of the shooter to predict what their bullet would of hit at the time they fired on their screen. This just cleverly shifts the lag from the shooter to the target, but players getting hit by lag compensated shots will rarely notice or care; certainly not as much as a shooter would when their shots miss.
[+] [-] digitallimit0|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonnieCache|14 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI
"Artificial intelligence is crucial to any strategy game, providing a compelling opponent for solo play. While many of the challenges of AI development are technical, significant design challenges exist as well. Can the AI behave like a human? Should it? Should the game design be adjusted to accommodate the limitations of the AI? How do we make the AI fun? Should the AI cheat? If so, how much? Do we even want the AI to win? This session suggests some possible answers to these questions using the "Civilization" series as a case study. Ultimately, developers must choose between a "good" AI and a "fun" one, with an understanding of the trade-offs inherent when deciding between the two."
[+] [-] shabble|14 years ago|reply
"Good player, bad player, everyone loved Crash games. They never realized it is because they were all playing a slightly different game, balanced for their specific needs."
Reminds me a lot of what I'm sure was a Mariokart64 behaviour - that the powerups you received were directly proportional to your race position, giving everyone behind you much better options to ruin your day.
[1] http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games-archive/
[2] http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/07/making-crash-ban...
[+] [-] v21|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exolab|14 years ago|reply
a) I have to buy money to buy a blade (WTF?! Either you charge for the game or the in-app purchases) b) I cannot close the buying menu without buying anything c) It is completely unclear to me how the practice blade is different from a "real" blade
You talk about how you detect players' intentions. My intention was to buy a game for 99 cents. Not for 10 bucks.
Seriously...
[+] [-] exolab|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndyNemmity|14 years ago|reply
So far the biggest mistake I believe I've made is not cheating to help players win. I made a brutally difficult simulation game.
We have tons of players quit simply because the game is too hard. Because you are 1 person versus 31 other people, there is only 1 winner, and 31 losers.
People don't like this.
Compare this to our competitors, and they make losses not exist, and otherwise "cheat" the experience so everyone is above average.
The worst player in the games, looks like he is the best.
There has to be a happy medium somewhere, and I am the ruthless simulation side of it for now. (Trying to figure out how to change...)
[+] [-] mey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jm4|14 years ago|reply
How is the game played? Is it like fantasy football? It there a screenshot of what the game looks like? Are real teams and players in the game? You should consider answering these questions on the home page.
[+] [-] narag|14 years ago|reply
A very weak player will likely lose the first two or three matches in a row, but then have a real chance against some other weak player.
[+] [-] andrewfelix|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teamonkey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffem|14 years ago|reply
As an example, I played a football game that obviously had some type of tackling assistance. When I dove to tackle someone, my defenseman wouldn't dive to the spot I was aiming at, but instead try to orient himself to the ball carrier. The developers probably thought that this was helping people with their "misaimed" tackles, but it was actually causing me to miss them. When I dive, I'm aiming for a spot where I think the runner will be, not where he is at the moment I hit the button.
I've seen these types of things enough that I'd approach the idea of implementing a cheat much more cautiously than other features.
[+] [-] latch|14 years ago|reply
On the flip side, someone once commented that games should have a "toddler mode" where anything the player does just adds up more points and won't kill you. Obviously wouldn't work for every game, but I thought it was a brilliant idea.
[+] [-] wmf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|14 years ago|reply
Sure, some difficulty is nice, but be careful of the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia.
[+] [-] dagw|14 years ago|reply
As an old-timer with a job and a family I really appreciate being able to enjoy and make progress in games despite only having a couple of hours a week to play.
[+] [-] eru|14 years ago|reply
Still there are some who buck the general trend. And I'm not only talking about indie games like Spelunky, but also (among all things!) several games for the oh-so-family-friendly Wii: Donkey Kong, Super Mario, and even Mario Kart on the higher difficulty settings.
[+] [-] gujk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wlievens|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megablast|14 years ago|reply
Sports, there is no way to adjust those results. If you lose a game, you lose. There is no fudging anyone can do to avoid that.
You are setting up a strawman.
[+] [-] tstyle|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesu|14 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCIMPYM0AQg
[+] [-] eru|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bprater|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xxdiamondxx|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyarkles|14 years ago|reply
I might not be remembering the details exactly, it was about a year ago I was working on this stuff.