Borderlands bits.
Posted by The Management in games on February 5, 2010
Borderlands became something of a media darling when it was released late last year, and it’s currently being supported with lots of downloadable content. I could never quite bring myself to finish it, though, but I got close, and I jotted down some of its pros and cons along the way.
Borderlands' relatively seamless character selection.
- The intro of Borderlands — complete with the song that accompanied the TV ads — is filled with personality. However, beyond its first 5 minutes, Borderlands quickly loses its ambiance and becomes a fairly sterile game. The cell shading is pretty enough, but the world is very repetitive and its denizens seem to be permanently nailed down to the ground. My guess is that this was a conscious decision to simplify NPC interactions a la Diablo, but it comes across a little drab and uninspired.
One of the game's more impressive boss battles.
- The character classes in Borderlands are all actual characters, i.e., playing the Sniper means playing as Mordecai, which is a clever way of instilling some immediate flavour to the roster.
- Each character possesses only a single ability that is activated with a dedicated button press. This actually works out quite well, with all the other skills being either passive, “always-on” on traits, or bonuses that are activated directly through the player’s actions, e.g., receiving a bonus to the rate of fire once a few enemies are killed in a short window of time.
- A few of the quests have some scripted events like a mining facility blowing up, but the majority are rather dull. For the most part, the quests involve killing individual targerts and collecting items, and come across almost randomly generated rather than designed.
- The stores found in the game all contain a special “sale” slot. The items in these slots are mid to high tier early on in the game, and are a nice bonus to the regular inventories. They’re also accompanied by timers that count down in real time, creating a pretty effective “get ‘em while they last!” feeling.
Stylized characters with stylized intros, definitely a far cry from the Borderlands' space marine like roots.
- Borderlands’ enemies are often susceptible to certain “elemental” modifiers (corrosive, incendiary, electric, etc.), and some even contain specific weak spots. These might not be immediately obvious as they’re not exactly glowing red spheres, but damage amounts clearly indicate that shooting an enemy from behind might yield better results than unloading into its armoured head.
- Much like in MMOs, enemies occupy distinct areas and are grouped together by their power levels. These levels are not tied to their appearance, though, so it’s not uncommon to encounter the same scrawny punk at level 5 and level 20.
- The health of the enemies, especially the bosses, can be bizarrely high. The only way to defeat some of the quest targets with my character build was to get them stuck on the map’s geometry so I could safely shoot ‘em for 10 minutes straight, often running out of ammo in the process.
- Ammo in general is plentiful, although inconsistently distributed. It’s pretty common to go for long stretches of time without any bullets for the character’s main weapons, something that made my comparatively weak but rechargeable alien weapon indisposable. Well, that is until I found an apparently cheap item that respawned ammo at a lightning fast pace.
The less said about the game's vehicles, the better...
- Randomly generated weapons are one of the game’s high points, consisting of multiple visual pieces, elemental modifiers, and even unique bullet behaviour, e.g., the shotgun fires multiple projectiles with each round, while the alien weaponary launches energy beams that travel in expanding sine waves.
Of course the weapons also contain various statistics such as base damage, rate of fire, clip size, range, and reload speed, but the game doesn’t visually indicate how these attributes are affected by the player’s own skills. This makes it very difficult to gauge a weapon’s usefulness just from its description, which is a pretty big issue considering how often new weapons are obtained.
- The “Save Your Life” mechanic kicks in whenever the character’s health if fully depleted. During these phases, the screen goes monochrome and the stationary player is given a few precious seconds to kill an enemy in order to be resurrected.
This works really well and makes intense firefights less frustrating, although it can also be a bit annoying when the character dies while killing the last enemy in the area. A simple timer that auto-resurrects the player if left unmolested for a few seconds would’ve solved the issue.
Framerates do matter.
Posted by The Management in design on January 6, 2010
A while ago I was reading up on Starblade, one of the first commercial polygon-based games. What really struck me about the game was just how smooth it was compared to its spiritual successor, Starfox (granted the above links are YouTube videos that don’t accurately reflect framerates, but the differences are still quite noticeable).
It’s an extreme case, but one that nicely demonstrates the importance of rendering speeds.
Despite having animations that consisted of only 2-3 frames, many classic games ran at 60fps. This granularity helped to smove out movement, including Mario's beloved jump.
Of course no one ever complains about games being too smooth, but the debate of 30fps vs. 60fps continues to pop up. What’s more, the 60fps side keeps losing ground, often to the argument that humans can’t really detect more than 30 frames in a single second.
And that is completely untrue.
It’s an inherently flawed statement as humans are not digital machines. The human brain is always on, always receiving input. Light hits our eyes as a wave, and the information it carries is almost instantly transmitted to the Visual Cortex. The brain analyzes this data, focusing on changes brought on by motion and fluctuations in intensity. Displacement is interpolated via motion blur and identical input is discarded to avoid extraneous processing.
The “decoded” image is further analyzed by various parts of the brain, but the overall process — as complex as it is — is quite fast and versatile. Much faster than 30fps. Faster than 60fps, in fact.
So where does the myth of 30fps come from? Well, film and TV for the most part, but the framerates of those media are not analogous to those of videogames. Others have written extensively about the topic, so I won’t go too deep into it. What I’d like to talk about, though, is why high framerates are important to games.
The Unreal Tournament series has been known for letting its players set very high FPS benchmarks.
As a preface, different titles obviously have different requirements, and some suffer more from a low FPS than others. Also, the reasons for Insomniac’s decision to move away from their 60fps standard were completely understandable, if a little painful to accept.
With that said, here’s why I think high framerates are important:
1). Granularity
The framerate of a game is usually directly tied to the processing of its logic. As a result, action games that run at 30fps cannot have the same granularity of movement as those that run at 60fps. This might not matter much for turn-based strategy titles, but it makes an awful lot of shmups technically impossible to do at lower framerates.
2). Input Lag
Games are inherently an interactive medium, and as such the response times for input need to be virtually instant. On the hardware side this is rarely an issue, but a stuttering framerate can reduce the response times and greatly detract from the overall experience (especially in “twitch” titles).
3). Consistency
30fps isn’t bad, but what most people fail to realize is that it’s often the “ceiling” measurement, i.e., the best case scenario. Unlike TV and film, games are dynamic, and the processing required to render any given scene can fluctuate quite significantly. As a result, 30fps games actually tend to run at a rate of 20-30fps. These sort of inconsistencies can be very difficult to avoid, but they’re much less noticeable with higher benchmarks.
Motion blur at its finest.
4). Motion Blur
Motion blur is the biggest reason TV and film get away with smaller framerates. The phenomenon of motion blur relies on the human brain’s ability to stitch together a series of blurred images into a single, smooth animation. Until fairly recently, games had absolutely no motion blurring, and even these days it doesn’t have quite the same effect. The reason for this is that post-process blurring is not always accurate, and in many cases purposely exaggerated to create a distinctive visual effect.
To properly accommodate for all these factors, a high framerate is a must. And when it’s there, it creates a certain synchronization between the player and the game; a smooth flow that more developers should strive to achieve.
The elegance of Continuity.
Posted by The Management in design, games on December 12, 2009
Every once in a while, I check out a batch of interesting-looking Flash games. Most of them lose their charm after a few minutes, but here and there an occasional gem crops up. Continuity is one of these gems.
The game’s gotten plenty of publicity so it doesn’t really need my attention, but I did want to talk a bit about its execution. Combining platforming with a tile sliding puzzle is a clever genre-mashup, but it’s Continuity’s overall package that grabbed my attention.
The first level contains only closed off tiles, with one tile cleverly serving as the controls layout, and the other taking the role of filler to keep the tile sliding mechanic consistent.
The visuals are sparse and abstract, but also very clean. Two music tracks accompany the action, one in the platforming section and one in the tile sliding section, and a quite a few sound effects are used for feedback. Level progression follows a nice, gradual curve, and every time a new concept is introduced (e.g., switching tiles in mid-jump or using multiple keys), the complexity of the layout is scaled back.
And then there’s the interface.
When I first saw screenshots of Continuity, I was half-dreading switching from keyboard controls to mouse controls every time I wanted to move one of the tiles. I pictured dragging the cursor to the appropriate square, clicking the mouse button (or worse yet, holding it and physically sliding the tile), watching the tile glide to its destination, moving the cursor back to the tile with my character, once again clicking the mouse button, and finally going back to the keyboard-controlled platforming.
The empty spot is in the center, and any of its 4 adjacent tiles can be slid into its position at the touch of a button.
But no, Continuity surprised me with yet another elegant design decision. The spacebar toggles between the platforming and the tile sliding, while the arrow keys control all movement. This includes the player avatar during the platforming sections, and the tile sliding during the puzzle sections.
The platforming is fairly straightforward with the left and right arrows dictating direction, and the up arrow serving as the jump button. Keys and doors are also picked up/activated automatically, removing the need for any extra input.
The tile puzzle uses the arrow keys as well, but in a slightly different fashion. At any one time, there are a maximum of 4 tiles that can slide into the single empty slot. If the player wants to fill the gap with a tile that’s underneath it, he simply presses up and the tile slides into its position. This creates a new empty gap, and the arrow keys get re-mapped to its adjacent tiles.
Some of the later levels employ rather complex tile-edges that make for numerous valid combinations.
It’s an interface that’s custom made for the requirements of the puzzle section, and it’s very intuitive. The player never has to select the tile he wants to manipulate either, which speeds things up quite considerably. This is especially important since Continuity’s gameplay requires lots of tile sliding.
I don’t think a lot of people take notice of such things, but that’s the way it should be; if it works well, it shouldn’t really stick out. It did for me, though, and it made me spend a lot more time with the game than I do with typical Flash offerings.
Then again Continuity has the polish and depth that many similar titles lack, so that shouldn’t be too surprising.
Heroes of Might & Magic II bits.
Posted by The Management in games on December 7, 2009
It’s difficult listing all the notable parts of HoMM II as it’s a game that hearkens back to a design philosophy that’s rarely found these days: depth through complexity. It’s also not considered the best entry in the series — that vote usually goes to HoMM III — but that’s partly why I wanted to give the second game a quick overview.
The bits:
- HoMM II is a turn-based strategy game with 6 distinct factions. Each faction has its own town/castle type with a unique set of structures. Most of these serve the same purpose, namely purchasing creatures, but some buildings are unique to each faction.
Virtually every corner of every map is filled with lush scenery and useful hotspots.
- Gold and 6 different resources (wood, ore, mercury, sulfur, gems and crystals) are necessary to purchase and upgrade the various buildings and creatures.
- Heroes are recruited in towns/castles and are required to explore the overworld map and lead creatures into battle. Each hero starts off with a handful of creatures and the specializations of his faction, e.g., barbarians begin with a high attack rating and the pathfinding skill.
- Heroes can gain levels increasing their 4 basic stats, equip artifacts, learn magic spells, gain temporary bonuses and learn and master passive skills. Some of these can carry over through the game’s campaign(s), but even on small maps all these elements provide a steady stream of upgrades.
- Overworld maps contain a fog-of-war mechanic, come in a variety of sizes, and include an absolute plethora of objects. Some of these are purely aesthetic or used as collidable scenery, but others are integral to the gameplay.
There are collectible goods (artifacts and resources), single-use locations (witch’s huts that teach passive skills and tombs that can be plundered), mines (gold/mineral dispensers that provide a set amount of goods in each turn), multi-use locations (teleporters and marketplaces where minerals can be traded), reusable locations (wells that refill magic points and special hotspots that grant a boost to luck/morale for the next battle), and re-fillable locations (creature recruitment centers and mills that can provide random resources every 7 turns).
On top of these, terrain types also affect hero movement, and special-purpose locations such as password-protected gateways serve additional gameplay functions. All these objects provide an incentive for the player to explore as much land as possible, but — and maybe more importantly — also give him something to do in the areas he has already conquered.
- Obelisks that are scattered around the maps reveal a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Once fully exposed, this image shows the location of a secret and powerful artifact that can be dug out from the ground.
- Every 7 turns, towns/castles and creature dispensers get new recruits. However, once in a while a plague will strike and no new recruits will become available (worse yet, creatures that were previously available but were not purchased will shrink in numbers). Conversely, specific creatures can randomly experience a growth spurt. Whenever this happens, their base recruitment numbers will double, and stacks of these creatures will randomly appear on the overworld map.
- As a CD-based game, HoMM II includes a CD-Audio soundtrack, with an option to use a midi one. A third alternative also exists which uses the CD-Audio with operatic vocals layered on top, giving the game a very distinct score.
Those bone dragons are going down!
- The actual combat of HoMM II is also turn based, with each creature taking its turn based on its speed statistic. The heroes don’t attack directly (aside from casting spells), but their statistics are also appended to those of the creatures, effectively boosting their performance. A lot of the creatures also have unique abilities such as infinite counterattacks, recharging hit points, a chance to cancel magical attacks, etc. Unlike the sequels, HoMM II doesn’t clearly inform the player of these abilities and it takes a lot of practice to get familiar with them.
- Magic plays a crucial part in the overall gameplay, both in combat and on the overworld map. Being able to scout ahead and teleport around the playing field, or boosting your strongest units while damaging entrenched archers, is vital to the player’s success.
The branching paths of the main campaign.
Ah, the Necromancer's castle. One of my favourite tactics is to send out a scout with expert necromancy and a group of missile-throwing liches, and watch the defeated armies rise up as my new skeleton minions.
HoMM II has a very steep learning curve that’s practically unimaginable these days, but in many ways it’s this barrier and that makes it such an entertaining title. It might not be impeccably balanced for competitive play, but the sheer amount of variables that must be juggled at any given moment create an experience where the player is constantly adapting and strategizing.
With each move, an overabundance of options need to be weighed; immediate tactics have to be balanced with long term plans. The economy, map control, build orders, hero progression, proper use of units, etc., are all vital to coming out on the winning side, and each turn is different from the last.
The micromanagement of HoMM II gives Civilization a run for its money, but the upside to all these elements is that the game is practically filled with “emergent” gameplay. Creating map chokepoints, playing keepaway with AI heroes, slowly wearing down the opposition through superior use of resources, etc., all fall into a metagame that’s not immediately obvious — or even consciously designed — but one that’s created simply as a result of having so many ingredients in the pot.
It’s a methodology that’s largely avoided these days, but its end results are unique and very addictive.
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How I got art for my game, part 4.
Posted by The Management in art, projects on November 20, 2009
First of all, we finally have a brand new site! It’s where all future Tribes of Mexica updates will go, but since I started these art posts here, I figured I’d finish off the series with one more entry.
In part 3, I finally got a background and all the necessary character artwork, but there were still plenty of missing assets that had to go into the prototype.
Our controls/tips screen used stock controller/button images supplied by Microsoft. These were edited a bit and given unique backgrounds to better fit the style of the game.
I asked my younger brother (who’s a graphic designer) to do some menu backgrounds and a custom font for us. Larabie Fonts is a good place to snag these or look for templates, so I didn’t expect it to be a huge amount of work. I gave my brother $100 and figured he’d be done in a day or two, but then the requirements kept on piling up.
Button icons, a tutorial screen, custom battle messages, etc.; none of these had to be done from scratch as there were plenty of references, but the quantity of UI elements grew to be far more than a weekend of work could cover. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I gave my brother another $100 for all this extra work.
Some spell icons...
We also needed some icons for the spells and status effects, so I asked Alice (who did our cover) to help with these illustrations. I also liked the Street Fighter esque health bars my brother did as they gave Tribes of Mexica a fighting game vibe, so I requested a few portraits to accompany them.
In total there were 12 spell icons, 12 status effect icons and 8 portraits, with a bit of palette-swapping/layering to cut down on the work. Alice was quite comfortable with this and we paid her $200 for all the images.
Finally, we needed some spell effects. Initially we wanted to have the same studio that did the character art to also create the spell animations, but they were too busy. We asked some other artists that we knew if they’d be interested, but they either didn’t have the time or were not well suited for the task. In the end, I posted another ad on ConceptArt.
...and some enemy portraits.
Out of all the responses, I chose to go with Rafa? Kwa?ny. Rafa? seemed like a good fit as he had some impressive CG animations and was willing to do the work for $200. I paid him a $75 advance and we talked over the details of all the spells, but then he simply disappeared. I e-mailed him a few times but never got a response, so I filed complaint with PayPal. Eventually PayPal “recovered” $0.53 of the $75.00 and promptly closed the case.
With just a few days left until the deadline of the DreamBuildPlay competition, we had to scramble to come up with an alternate solution. We bit the bullet and implemented some particle effects which I didn’t think there was time to do, and I paid my brother another $100 to create some static images for this system. This was the part of the game that got the least amount of polish, but I was still quite happy with the end results.
On top of all this, I also messed around with a bunch of art stuff myself. I trimmed, cropped and resized some of the UI pieces, and — having previously asked for our background to be split into multiple layers — created 7 different arenas from one template.
4 of the 7 backgrounds in our prototype which were all based on a single template.
This was done by moving, flipping, scaling and cloning individual layers and altering the level/colour balances of the entire image. These edits were somewhat noticeable if you took a closer look at the final backgrounds, but they were not the focus of the game and the rough spots were worth the extra variety.
Overall we created Tribes of Mexica on a shoestring budget, and the artists involved contributed partly because they were interested in the experience and the project’s visual themes. I wouldn’t necessarily count on the same level of support in the future if we couldn’t raise a bit more money, but it was definitely a positive experience that helped to frame our approach for dealing with contract work.
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