Hi.
This is a good thread. It gives us at VGA things to think about with our
own projects. Without spoiling too much we definitely have been trying
to keep the game play really simple. I'm actually concerned that people
may find our first game to be too simple and wonder why we really
expected people to want to play it. But in actually the game is pretty
complex, it's sort of like an iOS device, simplified complexity. At the
same time, I think you'd have to make sure the game is, as others are
saying, keeping the player engaged, so they want to keep coming back for
more. I think replay value itself applies here too, we've talked about
that on here before. We hope not to make all of our games menu driven,
that would be a bit tedious just from a coder standpoint, messing with
the same kind of code all the time for various projects. But at the same
time, what's really wrong with the menu driven platform? There are lots
of really cool menu driven games out there. So we thought we would try
to make a menu driven game that would take advantage of what we could
think of that the menu driven platform provides. One prime example is
useful for beginner users. We have built in a menu specific f1 keyboard
shortcut that opens our documentation up to the specific portion that
covers what the menu you were in when you hit f1 does. That's a little
easier to do when the player is in a specific menu as is the case most
of the time in our yet to be released project. Also, if it were some
sort of realtime simulation game, this would have to pause the game if
we did manage to make it activity specific, so if you imagine trying to
bring this functionality over to shades of doom, I guess you would have
to figure out maybe you need help navigation around in a room if you
press f1 while your character is standing in a room. The game would have
to pause if you press f1 so no monster can come butcher you while you're
innocently trying to read help files with the game puttering along in
the background. With menus, the game is always paused when it presents
you with menus anyway so it makes a little easier sense. We have tried
to make the speech really good quality and very responsive. This we
thought was another way to make menus more useful. If it's really fast
to arrow through the menu in search of the desired option that would be
a help. Anyway, I feel like I've been rambling on long enough here, but
this is a good thread, I'm watching closely.
should we finally get to the point where we may try to develop games with me
On 5/20/2014 12:40 AM, Cara Quinn wrote:
Thomas, excellent points!
Some of the simplest concepts can be extraordinarily difficult to translate
into audio with any sense of simplicity and intuitiveness.
For example, I believe Dark has alluded to this in the past; the concept of
displaying the height of an object in a game with pitch is fine and has been
used many times before. What about if one does not wish to use pitch so that
the object's sound remains consistent? What then?
This is where some very innovative approaches need to come in.
You're right. Designing a great game is one thing but designing it to be great
in audio is a whole other level of accomplishment!
Thanks,
Cara :)
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On May 19, 2014, at 12:53 AM, Thomas Ward <thomasward1...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Eleanor,
I agree. A good game, an especially well designed game, has a good
balance between simple mechanics but complexity and depth. That is
hard to achieve. It is for that reason game developers go back to the
well per se to try and replicate the same thing they have done before
hoping of repeating the success of their previous hit title.
Unfortunately, for us, since we are trying to worry about
accessibility as well as fun and challenge it makes the problem more
complex for the developer. Sighted mainstream game developers have
managed to come up with reasonably simplistic but complex game
mechanics that have worked well in a number of classic titles for the
Atari, NES, Super NES, etc that wouldn't necessarily work so well in
an audio equivalent. Adapting those mechanics to be accessible is the
real trick here.
Cheers!
On 5/15/14, Eleanor <elea...@7128.com> wrote:
This is an interesting discussion. I can see that you need to have a
balance between popularity and individual preference as both Cara and
Dark indicate, and that the game needs to be simple to play, but have
depth and complexity to make it a good game.
But there another component that I have been looking for and admittedly
have not found, and that is an engaging game mechanism. The way in which
you play the game has to suck you in and keep you coming back for more.
It can't be too simple nor too frustrating. The really fun games
increase in difficulty slowly as you progress through the game until you
are scrambling to complete a level and are really invested in doing so.
Part of the lack of different kinds of games is that it is difficult to
find a new mechanism, so many developers fall back on the ones that have
worked in the past - thus the sequel games of any game that made a name
for itself.
Another problem with the story type games is that there is not a good
tool for building your interactive story that leads you to different
scenes depending on the choices you make. It is hard to do the
connections and dependencies by hand in an intricate story with lots of
alternatives at each decision point.
Oh well, that's why we are interested in doing this - it is a challenge.
Eleanor Robinson
7-128 Software
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