True Tom. In the old SNES game Super Punch-Out! for instance, some of the
fighters would telegraph some of their special punches with visual actions
that were accompanied by small sound effects. Oftentimes there was a certain
pattern to these cues and it was possible to know what he was about to do
and when the best time was to try to dodge. The boxer Dragon Chan, to pick
one at random, had an attack where he would jump onto the ropes and launch a
karate kick at you. You knew he was about to do this because he would make a
little noise that almost sounded like oops, then give two hiyahs! You knew
that on the second hiyah! he would launch his attack, which was pretty much
guaranteed to down you if it hit you, so you had to duck.
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
thy micturations are to me
as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
GroupI implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I
don't!
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Ward
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 4:57 PM
To: Gamers Discussion list
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] game taste was: Re: regarding temporal disturbance
Hi Dark,
Hmm...I honestly haven't thought of things quite that way, but you are
right. While I have been working on Montezuma's Revenge and Mysteries
of the Ancients I have always strived to aim for mainstream game
mechanics and have been trying to adapt them to an audio only
environment. In many ways that has not worked out too well, because
those game mechanics either require some working vision to work
properly or I end up making them overly simplistic in order to make
them accessible. As you pointed out what ultimately needs to happen as
old school developers like myself who are use to mainstream game
mechanics really need to throw out the rule book and think of what
would be good for an audio only environment. That, of course, requires
a bit of thought and planning as we are thinking up an entirely new
set of game mechanics that are specific to an audio only environment.
For one thing I do like your suggestion of enemies telegraphing their
actions or intentions and then being able to block it. I can easily
see that being quite useful for a hand-to-hand fighting game like
Double Dragon where a thug would make various swishing or swooshing
sounds before a kick, chop, or punch. That would give you enough time
to block the attack and then attempt to get in a kick, chop, or punch
of your own. As you stated in a normal mainstream game there is no
need to telegraph an enemy opponent's moves because a sighted person
can see the kick, punch, or chop coming and can dodge out of the way
or block it. Adding some sort of sound to indicate that particular
attack is coming helps give an audio player the same advantage to
dodge or block the attack.
I don't know how much work it would require to do something like this
for MOTA at this late stage of development, but I do see ways of
making that work. Right now when the centaurs attack it is a single
sound of them pulling the bow string back and then firing the arrow.
If I had separate sounds I could use the sound of the bow string as a
queue that the arrow was coming. The player could react to the bow
string by ducking down, jumping out of the way, or blocking an arrow
with a shield. This would make it far more strategic because while
doing those actions you would still have to shoot them and not get
turned into a human porcupine yourself.
Cheers!
On 5/19/14, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote:
Hi Tom.
I do agree access is an issue, but what I find quite interesting is that
many of the very successful audio games have introduced features which
incorporate elements of the audio experience into the game, rather than
directly trying to adapt mainstream games verbatim.
For all swamp borrows from various fps elements, there is a lot in the
game
that wouldn't exist without the audio. For example zombi footsteps, the
need
of using rythm to create head shots, even aspects of the mouse targeting
system.
Audio packman, (as I've said before), is for me a much more intresting
play
experience than graphical packman, it lacks the total maze overview and
management of several elements at once, ie, being able to see where
packman
and all the ghosts are at all times and tracking movements accordingly.
however audio packman instead introduces an exporation and area navigation
mechanic, as well as a good degree of split second timing.
The same could be said for shades of doom and enemies like the silent
walkers or use of audio nav elements to create hazards.
This is one reason why it is likely a lot of mainstream gamers got
interested in Papasangre from somethinelse, sinse their games represent a
lot of use of audio elements for direct challenge, for instance having
floor
sections that when walked over will mean the enemies come to get the
player
by noise, or hazards created by things that are harder to hear.
I wonder therefore if a good way to considder game design, rather than the
method in the past of trying to recreate as much of mainstream games as
possible, might be to work on what might create a good game in audio.
For example, we have mentioned before the problem of judgement vs reaction
and of showing realistic enemy attacks in a side scrolling game.
Suppose however, rather than trying to directly model the idea of the
player
having to avoid attacks, we introduce audio factors which mean the player
must use his/her judgement to counter them.
So imagine a 1D side scroller ala superliam (or even one with climbable
ladders like mota).
The player is armed with a sword and shield, and has two buttons, one to
attack with the sword, one to block with the shield. Enemies will either
initiate a melee attack, which must be parried with the sword, or a
projectile attack which must be blocked with the shield. EAch of these
attacks is telegraphed, ie, the player hears it coming, however the speed
of
it landing will depend upon the distance from the enemy, meaning the
player
must estimate a specific time interval from hearing the sound of the enemy
launching the attack and of either parrying or shielding, I'm thinking
somehting similar to Jim's golf game though with different sounds). In
addition of course, the player is more likely to hit the enemy when the
enemy is not attacking. Then of course, if each attack type has specific
sounds there are possibilities such as arrows flying out of walls, or even
fire balls out of pits which the player needs to shield against (we'll
assume it's a magic shield).
In a mainstream game, this sort of thing wouldn't work, sinse the player
always has access to what the enemy is doing, indeed the original prince
of
persia was cryticised for using soemthing similar, (though slightly
simpler). It is also absolutely obsurd that any mainstream game would
telegraph it's attacks before launching them unless for a very specific
reason.
This would however be a case where audio could be used to create a simple
judgement based combat system which would contribute significantly to the
playability of the game where as simply having attack sounds the player
needs to instantly react to would not.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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