thomasmahler's Forum Posts

  • Alrighty, I've started to accumulate a lot of that good / bad stuff on a new blog I created:

    http://www.thebananaplace.com

    Also, here's another entry in the craptastic series:

    http://www.gametrailers.com/player/user ... 69006.html

    This is a GREAT example of how you could mess up something that could've otherwise been a fun game thanks to a ton of design hick-ups. The thing that bugs me the most is this:

    Clarity - Konami has a thing with using whatever icons for something that could've been clear form the start, especially in the Castlevania series. I mean, seriously, if you pick up hearts, what do you usually think will happen in the game? Your regain health? (thinking that a heart probably relates to life?) - WRONG! That sorta stuff is all over the place in the Castlevania series.

    In Symphony of the Night and some other Castlevania Games, collecting hearts is the energy for your secondary weapon. So if you have a cross, it'll cost you 10 hearts to shoot it. Makes sense? No? They kept up with this tradition, so even the newest Castlevania games on the DS use hearts as the energy for using secondary weapons.

    And it gets even better: In Simon's Quest, hearts were used to represent money. So you wanna buy a new whip? That's 100 hearts right there.

    Why would you use hearts to represent money? You could've used a dollar sign and it would've been perfectly clear right from the start.

    And there's a lot of that shit happening in todays games as well. Be clear about the icons you use and don't expect me to figure out what the fuck you meant by collecting some arbitrary power up that doesn't give me an indication of what it's doing. The moment I have to guess is the moment I stop caring.

  • Okay, let's talk about this. Now, I fully understand if people complain when they buy games for 70 bucks and only get 5 hours of entertainment (Heavenly Sword got completely pounded because of this), but in todays day and age, how important is the game length to you, really?

    The reason I'm asking this is... I used to LOVE games like RPGs that take you a longer time to complete, I wouldn't stop playing until I've seen it all. I must've played Final Fantasy VII back then for at least 200 hours. Same with Final Fantasy Tactics. Dragon Quest IV and V. Fucking loved it.

    The thing is: I wouldn't do that today anymore. I have a full-time job and I don't have the time to invest 100 hours into any game, no matter how good it is. I also personally don't care about 'only' getting 5 hours of entertainment for 70 bucks if the 5 hours were goddamn freaking awesome (still, I do understand a kid being pissed if he gets a game like that for christmas and has explored it all 5 hours later - happened to me with Mario Kart 64 way back), but personally, today I prefer shorter games that get across their message in a shorter (a MUCH shorter) amount of time - but really deliver during that time.

    Now - how would you feel if you'd buy a game for 5 bucks and you could play through it in an hour, if you'd know exactly how the game works? Let's assume the game is quite revolutionary, breaking boundaries and delivers a compelling story - would you still be pissed? Say you buy a game on Steam today for 5 bucks, you start playing and 60-90 minutes later, you complete it and it was friggin' awesome - would you still feel like you've been robbed? How much would a really great (but short) experience be worth to you?

    Would you even buy the game if you'd read in reviews that you could play through it in an hour or would that turn you off (even if the game gets a 8/9 score)?

    I'm asking all this because I'm pretty sure we'll see shorter, story-based games being created by indies now and I'd fucking love that. But I'm not sure the market is ready for that if I look through the current sales data of console and handheld games. Your thoughts?

  • Ohhh Sorry, now that I re-read it, that statement was probably a little too radical. Now, what I mean is that you get more and more social competence the older you get. You'll have to carry more responsibility and so on - whereas teenagers still have to figure out a lot of that stuff, which makes them seem sorta stupid.

    But that's sort off off-topic here. There's a line that you can cross between being a cocky teenager and being an abusive, stupid son of a bitch and that kid has obviously crossed that line and then some.

  • I'd wait for the next release, which will feature a new control system.

  • Well, he should get mental treatment. Most teenagers are stupid as shit, but this takes it 5 steps too far.

  • The only thing that would have to be considered is that this style also SCREAMS for more animation phases than what we were used to back then - And more animation = more time = more money. Especially character animation would take a much longer time than the typical 16bit 2d stuff. That's why going with 3d and post processing the rendered sprites would make a hell of a lot of sense. Still, that guy said he often needed 30 hours for each of these paintings - 30 hours for one layout! Of course you could reuse a bit of stuff, but that's still not very efficient.

    Still, with todays tools and a good pipeline / workflow I don't see any reason why this stuff shouldn't be possible. The question is rather whether or not it's feasible for what one's going to do.

  • This is not a stupid request. I love node-based interfaces - if they're done right. Fusion if freakin fantastic in that regard and I'm pretty sure it could work for Construct as well and might even increase productivity.

    The problem I have with this is that it would be a huge architectural change and the current system isn't broken. It's just a different approach. And right now, there are other things to tackle - The biggest architectural change I'd like to see would be that we could deploy on different platforms, cause that would have the biggest direct effect on Construct.

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  • Yeah, I think the simple answer to your guilt is that you could learn more by reading that book that could probably even change your point of view on various things than 'wasting' your time with a task that's basically just repetitive and formulaic.

    Now, if you compare the book and the game again - what happens if you play the repetitive game with a girl you know? Would it change whether or not you'd feel guilty? The outcome of the book could be that you become smarter or that it would affect you in some deeper way, the outcome of playing a game with a girl could be sex / a relationship, whatever.

    We're just always comparing the outcome of the things we're doing is what I'm saying. Let's take the uber-addiction that is World of Warcraft - I'm pretty sure that most of the 'druggies' that are hooked on WoW don't keep playing the game after they reached the level cap because the quests are still so much fun or because they really still feel the urgent need to get the bracelet that'll add +2 to strength - I'm pretty sure they keep playing cause there are a lot of cool people that are playing with them that are in the same ballpark as they are.

    So, would you still feel more guilty if you'd prefer a game where you'd have fun and where you'd socialize to a book with an intriguing story? I'm not sure it's about the complexity of the game, rather, it's about the outcome and what we hope to gain.

  • I just bought a super simple game on the Xbox Live Community Game Store:

    Subscribe to Construct videos now

    That game is fucking addictive! It's addictive because of the same reason Harvest Moon is addictive - you're basically doing labor, but you're getting more and more cash and you can invest the cash in getting shit done faster, improving yourself.

    Simple premise, AWESOME time-waster. If you have an Xbox, buy this game.

  • A puzzle platformer that's black and green and is a love story. hahaha! Trying to emulate the old black and green monitors, with wavy lines and screen flickers. This is just a small test program I made to see how I should tweak the warping and controls and stuff.

    Wow Ashley I think I'm blind! And also, Mipey I like what I see!

    Wow, that so reminds me of:

    <img src="http://www.serienoldies.de/images6/la_linea_main.jpg">

  • Since we're at Adventure Games now - Let's put this into the room: How could you make another Monkey Island Sequel work?

    The problem with games that keep you guessing where you can only get through thanks to trial and error is that today we just have better things to do. I've been playing a lot of the Eric Chahi games for research and it's painfully obvious that this stuff so wouldn't work today anymore. At least not in the same way it did back then.

    I even made the experiment to let a friend of mine play Heart of Darkness. He still liked the graphics (even though it's 11 years old now and someone saying that the graphics are nice is a rare thing if you throw a PSOne game into the PS2), but after dying about 10 times in a row without any further indication on how to solve a puzzle, he lost all his motivation and wanted to do something else - and rightly so.

    It's the same with all the Lucas Arts Games back then. Man, did I love wasting 3 days thinking about a puzzle back then. But you can bet your ass that I wouldn't do the same thing today. If the puzzles aren't completely intriguing and make sense ('Discworld' was another contender for the "WHAT IN 3 HOLY FUCKS WERE THEY THINKING?! price for obscure puzzles), I'll just get a Walkthrough or do something else instead. We have the internet, everyone can do amazing stuff today in his free time, I can't even remember when I was being bored the last time - so don't waste my time on puzzles that I only find out by surprise.

    I'd love to see another Monkey Island done well. I imagine that it'd be a lot more cinematic than the other games. Heck, todays realtime graphics could help creating a totally amazing art direction for that game, but it definitely wouldn't work if you'd just ship another Monkey Island 2 - you'd have to completely re-invent the game-design while keeping its charm alive, in my opinion.

  • Oh yeah, this thread is not about bashing bad old 8bit games - not solely, that is But you definitely watch this stuff and get something out of it. Like: Why in the world did they put the Weapon Animation into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde if it doesn't do ANYTHING?

    A lot of times, a great game can be seriously fucked up by a simple design flaw. It's like a magician making a mistake on stage - make one mistake and it's over, you lost me.

    I start things like that with simple, obvious examples because it's easy to point out a million flaws in these games - yet, someone once sat down, designed and created it and thought it's a good idea to release it to the public. Now, of course it's totally unfair to judge a game 20 years after it's release, but since a lot of the people here will design a game for the first time (me included), it's good to learn from those early mistakes as soon as possible.

    Personally, if we have to judge Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I think the whole premise has not been concepted very well. I don't clearly see why this game should be fun in any way - it's very confusing, the enemies are just annoying, there's virtually no gratification, it's extremely easy to die, the graphics are fugly (you can even design things properly if you have the 8bit hardware limitations), etc. etc. - I think you can easily shoot it down as not being thought out properly form the beginning.

  • Okay.

    I currently have 0 ideas of how Cutscenes could be done in Construct.

    How would I create the cutscenes? Is there any way to do this stuff in Construct right now? I could take the hard route and rebuild scenes in After Effects and load them in as AVI, but that's kinda bogus.

    What if I want to take away the control of the character? So, I'd stop the player input and let the character do something pre-defined and afterwards the character would be able to take control of the character again. But how to pre-define anything? Can I somehow record and save what I've been doing?

    How would you guys approach this?

    Let's brainstorm on how cutscene creation could be handled in Construct!

    Tons of questions, would be cool if you guys could lead me into the right direction.

  • Here's another one that's really fucking bad:

    The infamous Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde on the NES:

  • And here's the positive counterpart of the craptastic thread. Guess it makes sense to have both in here, so we have examples of bad and good games in one place.

    Let's also use this thread to highlight hidden gems.

    1) Here's a game I found quite interesting, but never played myself:

    Subscribe to Construct videos now

    'Future Wars' was created and programmed by Paul Cuisset and designed by Eric Chahi.

    In general, I think there have been a couple of very interesting experimental games back in the 80's up to the mid 90's - then things got really complex and you needed a bigger team to ship a competitive game. What a shame - but it's good to see some of that stuff is coming back now with the digital distribution channels and thanks to tools like Construct.