Author Topic: Bt's Corner  (Read 34769 times)

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Blackthorne

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #15 on: February 18, 2013, 10:31:03 PM »
Girl in the Tower, Acoustic, Shatner Style.  I'm so doing this.

Bt
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Blackthorne

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #16 on: February 18, 2013, 10:54:31 PM »
I would love to hear about e challenges of making a hybrid rpg / adventure game.  How you strike the balance of getting the right amount of rpg elements without disturbing the adventure feel. Also about what affect the rpg elements have on development and testing times

Well, it's definitely a balancing act, for sure.  Though I do find it fun - having attributes that may affect the outcomes of traditional adventure game elements.  For instance, there's multiple ways to solve situations depending upon what your skill is.  It makes the game a different play for each class, that's for sure.  Striking the balance is hard, because I enjoy the puzzles, exploration and conversations of adventure games - and I enjoy the character building, fighting and thought processing of the RPG.  For me, as a designer, it's the best of both world's really.

The RPG elements definitely affect testing time, sure - but we're also extra careful in our programming because of it as well.  It may keep Chuck and Shawn on their toes a bit more!

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Klytos

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #17 on: February 19, 2013, 12:22:03 AM »
Quote
I would love to hear about e challenges of making a hybrid rpg / adventure game.  How you strike the balance of getting the right amount of rpg elements without disturbing the adventure feel. Also about what affect the rpg elements have on development and testing times.

Hey mate, good to hear from you! I'll add to what Steve said, because I have done a lot of the work with the stats.

The main difference between this and a standard adventure game is that the stats effect the ability to do something. So for example, in one of the Kings Quest games you jump and grab the eagle. If that was in an stat driven game you might need a "jump" stat of 50 to grab the eagle or you'll fail. So it just adds another level to the game. From a design point of view, it's not too much more difficult to design in this way.

The difficulty, as BT said, is where to draw the line. We want to have an adventure game with RPG elements, not an RPG. We design the game as an adventure, we wrote the story first, then we overlay the stat side of things onto the story.

Another thing is not having too many stats to play with. We've got 10 stats in QFI, 5 of which are directly related to combat. The other five are specific activities. Athletics covers everything like jumping, climbing, throwing etc. Bluff, Stealth and Thievery are all for sneaky activities. Influence is how much influence you exert over other people. All these things are very much about driving the story forward, which is what we always want to do.

The other thing we've got in our game is hard caps on the stats. While most stats will go to 100, if you're not a rogue sub-class you won't be able to get Thievery above a certain level.

Honestly, most of it is just a gut feeling. We do what "we" would like to play!
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Goatmeal

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #18 on: February 19, 2013, 09:28:48 AM »
Yep.  You and me both, Colonel Kurtz.


But, it is requested of me by my loyal fans.  It shall be done.


Bt

Only if it's sung in Shatner style.

Just giving the peeps what they want...

"Girl...  In...  TheTower.
  I'm... Reaching.  Out.
  PleaseTellMe... What... ToDo.
  And.I.Think.  It's Going ToBe Aaaaaaaaa Long.  LONG.  Tie-um."

Blackthorne

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Bt's Corner - VLOG#2 - Girl In The Tower
« Reply #19 on: February 19, 2013, 11:38:28 AM »
This video is unfit for human consumption and therefore should not be viewed by anyone.

<a href="http://youtu.be/iYrS5HQ3Rrk" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://youtu.be/iYrS5HQ3Rrk</a>



Bt
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KuroShiro

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #20 on: February 19, 2013, 01:10:34 PM »
Oh god it's glorious.

s_d

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #21 on: February 19, 2013, 02:28:06 PM »
There... just aren't words, Bt...  ;D
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s_d

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #22 on: February 19, 2013, 02:34:06 PM »
DUDE!  You NEED to submit the video to Agustín on the ASYLUM Kickstarter for the "Backer's Spotlight" video:

Quote
Understandably, many are also wondering what to say. Basically: we want you to be yourself. We don’t want you to act as a marketing person — that is, don’t worry to talk about the campaign itself, or the need to have more backers, etc. That’s not the spirit. I will give you a few guidelines but, in reality, we have no rules for this. If you want to talk about anything that comes to mind, that’s fine! As long as you don’t appear naked or murder someone on screen, we’ll include it.

(backer's only post) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/agustincordes/asylum-kickstart-the-horror/posts/404672

It has to count... it's pure insanity, and I love it...
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SarahLiz

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #23 on: February 19, 2013, 04:06:55 PM »
Haha, that was pure awesomeness!  First marmite, now a concert!

...hey, let's see what else he'll do...??   ;) :P


Jerminator

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #24 on: February 19, 2013, 08:30:25 PM »
Steve, you amaze me man. You got skills.

Lambonius

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #25 on: February 19, 2013, 09:23:32 PM »
I've tried to come up with an appropriate response to this video all day.  I think the fact that I'm still stumped about it speaks greater volumes than any measly joke I could make.

Oh, also--my suggestion for the next Bt musical humiliation video is for him to ad lib lyrics to well-known Sierra instrumental themes.  GO!  ;)
Lambonius...Rarely has our moderating team encountered a forumite as consistently unpleasant as you, and you've burned through far more chances than you deserved. A person really has to try hard to be so obnoxious that they're banned from AG, but you've managed it and then some.

Blackthorne

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #26 on: February 19, 2013, 11:10:28 PM »
Thanks guys.  See what I do for y'all?  Heh.  It was fun.


Bt
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Intendant S

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #27 on: February 20, 2013, 12:31:56 AM »
Dude, that was epically awesome.  Or maybe it was awesomely epic.  Either way, it's going up on my Facebook page!
"Too much spirit can be a dangerous thing. Tends to... infect others."

Blackthorne

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #28 on: February 21, 2013, 12:29:46 PM »
Blarrach.

So today, I'm going over the QFI script, adding and deleting things, as I often do, and I decided to work on a few puzzles in the game.

I love adventure game puzzles.  Some are so creative, others aren't - and some are just really damn frustrating.  Some of the later ones in games were lame copy protection manual hunts and such....

So trying to find and figure out the kinds of puzzles I want is, in and of itself, a challenge!  We've got a lot of people/object quests and hunts - I enjoy those.  Finding out details about things you are searching for by talking to people and exploring the environment.  I also like object/logic puzzles... I have a few of those.  I even enjoy combining old mathematical puzzles with graphical puzzles....

What are some of your favorite kinds of puzzles in Adventure games - any memorable ones from games in the past you like?


Bt
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Lambonius

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Re: Bt's Corner
« Reply #29 on: February 21, 2013, 12:45:36 PM »
I always liked the multi-part information gathering puzzles that would span the entire lengths of some adventure games--and then you'd get to a point at the end where you had to put all of that accumulated knowledge to use somehow, and it was usually pretty satisfying.

There are two that come to mind instantly, both from Lucasart's Indiana Jones adventure games.  The first was in Last Crusade, where you had to gather knowledge about the appearance of the Grail by cross-referencing information gained from in-game inscriptions that described its shape and material with a painting that you view later on in the game that told you whether or not the Grail glowed.  If you hadn't done these things earlier in the game, choosing the correct Grail at the end was something of a crapshoot.  But it was a really interesting and fun way for you to "figure out" its appearance.  I loved the fact that Indy would respond "Now THAT'S the cup of a carpenter!" regardless of which Grail you looked at, as if to taunt you with the movie's ridiculously simple "solution" to this dilemma. 

Now, if you've played the game, you remember the fact that the catacomb inscriptions pointed you to the hard copy Grail Diary that came with the game, adding a copy protection element to all this--but that aspect could easily be removed by just having the inscriptions themselves give you the information that you otherwise had to look up.  The idea of accumulating that "research" throughout the course of the game with archeological detective work was really satisfying, in my opinion.  And it was made even better by the fact that every step of that process was entirely optional.  You could still finish the game without doing any of it--you just had to rely on luck in your Grail choice.  The game even let you replay the Grail Temple part over and over, so you could just eventually use process of elimination to get the right one.

The second great archeological research type puzzle from the Indiana Jones games was the many uses of the Lost Dialogue of Plato in Fate of Atlantis.  I particularly liked the Wits Path, where you had to use the clues in the Dialogue to create a makeshift orichalcum detector (you'd just find one lying around in the other two paths.)  And the increasingly cryptic stone disc combinations required to access later areas of the game were also really nicely implemented.  I loved the fact that it wasn't completely clear with you--you had to interpret the language a bit to figure out the right combinations.  And then the last one where the text had the clue about "contrary minds" and you had to do all of the combinations backwards--amazing.

We should have shit like that in our game.
Lambonius...Rarely has our moderating team encountered a forumite as consistently unpleasant as you, and you've burned through far more chances than you deserved. A person really has to try hard to be so obnoxious that they're banned from AG, but you've managed it and then some.