Makes sense in all cases. Thanks.
---
Shepherds are the best beasts, but Labs are a close second.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2013 3:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Mysteries of the Ancients Considerations
Hi Charles,
If a game is well designed that shouldn't really matter too much. Even
though a developer might know where every item and monster is in the
game that doesn't necessarily mean achieving those items will be easy
or free of challenges. Most of the classic Atari games were extremely
challenging even though they were pretty much the same from game to
game.
For example, let's look at the original Montezuma's Revenge by Parker
Brothers for the Atari 2600. It didn't change much from game to game
because all the enemies, weapons, and special items were in the same
place from game to game. However, there were two things that made it
challenging and gave it a lot of replay value. First, over time the
enemy skulls, snakes, and spiders would slowly get faster and faster
forcing you to react faster to their movements and attacks. Second,
after level 7 or so you could not kill any of the enemies. You
literally jumped over them or died trying. So combine the speed with
the fact skulls, snakes, and spiders were basically invincible after
level 7 it got to be extremely challenging to keep going passed a
certain point.
To add to that remember that you had to gather up torches to light
certain rooms that were dark. Well, after level 11 the entire level
was blacked out, with no torches, and if you didn't have any torches
left over from a prior level you were basically playing the game
blind. That too added a totally unheard of amount of challenge to the
game above and beyond what was usual for Atari games at the time.
So when you see how that game was designed it doesn't really matter if
the developer knows where everything is or not. He or she has just as
much chance of getting all the jewels, swords, coins, etc as the
people who buy the game. There are no special advantages in a case
like that.
As far as generating random levels I suppose its possible, but not
sure I want to do something like that. While it would certainly make
it more replayible as every game would essentially be different the
problem is it is difficult to debug a game when it is always changing
from game to game. So if there is a bug reported by an end user how
many games would a developer have to play to attempt to reproduce that
bug when it happens completely at random in the first place?
Cheers!
On 5/2/13, Charles Rivard <wee1s...@fidnet.com> wrote:
Speaking of a level editor, if you create a temple, what would be the
replay
value for the creator? You know where everything is before you even play
it. A thought: Could there be something like a computer generated
temple?
This might seem like an odd question, but it's just a thought.
---
Shepherds are the best beasts, but Labs are a close second.
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