Infamous Quests
The Games => Quest for Infamy => Topic started by: Blackthorne on July 30, 2012, 08:18:37 PM
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So, you know - I love writing. I like making worlds come to life with just the words, and I like seeing where things go. It's even more fun when your writing is brought to life by collaborating with an amazingly talented group of people!
So, I'm writing more and more of the intricate bits of Quest For Infamy these days. The wide swath and overall plot and picture of QFI has been set for a long time, but now filling in the blanks - character interactions, quests, and especially puzzles are being filled in.
What kind of puzzles do you enjoy in an adventure game?
Bt
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Item combinations are always fun, provided they aren't ridiculously obscure. And I like the idea of boss monsters that you have to solve a puzzle or two to beat. And honestly, it wouldn't be a good retro Sierra style adventure game without a solid maze. ;)
Dialog puzzles are probably my single least favorite. Telltale has thoroughly killed them for me. That said, however, I did enjoy the exploratory dialog of the QFG games, especially in QFG1 and 2, where smart inquiries based on subtle dialog clues earned you points.
Also, if I had my druthers, I'd love to see a parser option for dialog, a la AGDI's QFG2VGA or LSL7. ;)
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parsers suck...to program. ;)
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Love a good maze too,
love bartering/haggling puzzles
Love having to take items a long way before you use them, collecting pieces to a puzzle (ie treasure map in MI2) always nice when you need a whole bunch of things for one puzzle like an extension of the beast's head/markus' blood.
love versions of classic games, see machinarium...
That's all I can think of for now
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I would love to see a parser system in QFI, it's tough to program but you can allow some really wacky stuff with it.
I see you're going with a QFG4 style combat system, was that your first pick or are you considering others?
*Addendum:
PC only, or are you looking to put this on a console as well? The movement would port nicely to a controller, but you might have problems with pixel hunting.
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I would love to see a parser system in QFI, it's tough to program but you can allow some really wacky stuff with it.
Yeah - I don't want to implement a full parser in the game, but I've been thinking of some puzzles that might require a parser. Not sure yet, though.
I see you're going with a QFG4 style combat system, was that your first pick or are you considering others?
Well - honestly, we were trying to think of ideas for a combat system - and though it might seem a little like QFGIV, there's definitely elements of games we played growing up in there - like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat.
PC only, or are you looking to put this on a console as well? The movement would port nicely to a controller, but you might have problems with pixel hunting.
Licensing for consoles, like Xbox, is ridiculously cost prohibative for a little group like us - but there's this new console on the horizon, OUYA, which is powered by Android. I'm definitely looking into publishing the game on that platform.
Also, good to see you around these parts, sir!
Bt
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I only really see the parser system working for spells/incantations (like what would have been KQ3Gold) or passwords, no need to type 'Look at tree' that's what the bleeding point n click is for.
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Yeah, passwords or word puzzles, etc.
Bt
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My interest in the parser would only be for dialog. The absolute BEST part of the QFG dialog was using context clues to figure out the right things to ask to further the conversation and gain important information. The point-and-click dialog tree format just absolutely ruins that sense of discovery. Playing QFG2VGA with the dialog trees on completely breaks the flow of dialog information in that game. Thank god they included the option to do parser-only dialog. That's what I was talking about--not a full parser for all interactions. But there are definite gameplay and immersion benefits to be gained, in my opinion, from doing parser dialog.
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Love having to take items a long way before you use them...
"Here's your fish!" -- SQ6
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Investigational puzzles/gameplay is probably something I tend to enjoy the most. Talking with various characters in a logical order, picking the right topics and making decisions about what to do/where to go next based on what you know and progressing bit by bit with every right action. Gabriel Knight kind of things, basically.
I also like when adventure games use the basic game mechanics for puzzles. For example, the ability to walk around in most classic adventures (QFGs excluded) is pretty much useless gameplay-wise. Which is why it can be nice to encounter the parts where you have to navigate the player precisely, like stepping on some plates in a correct order or run through traps etc.
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Yeah, I agree--I know most of the Sierra navigation puzzles are much derided nowadays, but I never had much of an issue with them. I think the main problem was that they were either a little too pixel-huntingly difficult (SQ2 Maze), OR the player was forced to do them OVER AND OVER AND OVER (KQ3 mountain.) KQ6 did it well, when you had to walk on the correct floor tiles to get through that one trap in the labyrinth. I could see something like that being cool if it was a one-off situation.
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One of my favourite puzzles was in the text adventure Hollywood Hijinx. You had a broken lift that was not going all the way to the floor above. You had to place a bucket that was operated by some form of lever, You need to fill a bucket of water that had a hole in it and place it on the lever which held the lift in place. You could then exit that location and find a way to climb on top of the elevator, once the water emptied out of the bucket the water was released and the lift went up. Looking back it was a fairly simple solution but I liked it cos you at first assumed the hole in the bucket was going to be a problem to be fixed but it ended up being the ideal solution to another problem. Funny the things you remember from gaming of years gone by.
I also enjoyed the riddles in one of the camelot games, that was a lot of fun.
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I also enjoyed the riddles in one of the camelot games, that was a lot of fun.
I think riddles are the bane of adventure game puzzles, frankly. Too often, they rely on knowledge of obscure turns of phrase, which are often culture specific. The ones in Conquest for Camelot were really bad about that, as I recall. I've actually never even seen them all answered in any walkthrough. I always had to restore several times and hope that I got a random set of five that I could actually answer or were answered in a walkthrough. If the clues can't be found in-game, or possibly in a manual, it has no business being there.
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If you hadn't pirated Camelot you'd have known the answers were all in the manual. :)
I thought KQ3 and CoC were the two best examples of copy protection being made part of the game well.
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I know a ton of the puzzles are in the manual, which I DO have (via replacementdocs.com to go with my pirated copy ;)), but I didn't realize all the riddle answers were as well.
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I think riddles are the bane of adventure game puzzles, frankly. Too often, they rely on knowledge of obscure turns of phrase, which are often culture specific. The ones in Conquest for Camelot were really bad about that, as I recall. I've actually never even seen them all answered in any walkthrough. I always had to restore several times and hope that I got a random set of five that I could actually answer or were answered in a walkthrough. If the clues can't be found in-game, or possibly in a manual, it has no business being there.
I loved the riddles in camelot, I spent weeks figuring them out, writing them down, asking my mom and dad.. I got there eventually and it was an awesome reward to get on top of the Tor after all Arthur had been through... Man that was an awesome game. I might have to play it tomorrow!!
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I love those puzzles that are inventory based. Combining items, being able to look or turn them in your inventory and maybe catch a clue. A good example is in Skyrim, you find a claw and your not really sure what it's for until you find a door with a bunch of glyphs on it and the claw shape for the key hole. The answer for the glyphs is on the claw itself which you can view in your inventory once you turn it around. Simple but fun to figure out.
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I liked the attempt at dungeon puzzles in Skyrim--the first time or two we used a claw key was cool, but unfortunately they never came up with anything else. They just used that same puzzle, along with the rotating-statues-to-match-the-symbols-on-the-walls puzzles over and over again. I'd have loved to have seen a few physics based puzzles in that game, for example. The game has the ability to lift and carry items and then drop and stack them wherever you please--THAT would have been a great ability to use to solve weight-based mechanisms or some other such kind of puzzles. But they never did anything with it--the ability to lift and stack items is just a random ability that is completely useless in the context of the rest of the game.
Ahem, anyway--end of Skyrim rant. ;)
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So I was trying to sleep, but thinking about puzzles and I think I got a good one for you:
Roehm has to survive a night in the forest / swamp - some storm or other is coming and has to bed down for the night.
Basically he would have to build a shelter out of stuff in the forest before it becomes night time, so he'd need to chop down a couple of branches, get some hefty ferns, some vines to tie it all together. He'd need to light a fire somehow and maybe even set some sort of booby trap for a monster or some other creature, rambo style with whittled spikes on a tree branch. What you think?
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Nice one, SF! :)
This one was inspired by Lamb:
Roehm needs to enter a cave BUT he finds out that he'll need a counterbalance of 6 kilograms to raise a gate which blocks cave's entrance while he only has items which weight 1, 3 and 5 kilos. So he puts the lightest and the heaviest items he carries on mechanism and enters the cave. Inside he realises that he'll need one of the items he left (sword, for example) to proceed, so he takes some useless item which weights 2 kilos (boulder?) from the cave. He leaves items weighting 1, 2 and 3 kilos and gets his sword so he can finish his quest inside the cave.
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Nice one, SF! :)
This one was inspired by Lamb:
Roehm needs to enter a cave BUT he finds out that he'll need a counterbalance of 6 kilograms to raise a gate which blocks cave's entrance while he only has items which weight 1, 3 and 5 kilos. So he puts the lightest and the heaviest items he carries on mechanism and enters the cave. Inside he realises that he'll need one of the items he left (sword, for example) to proceed, so he takes some useless item which weights 2 kilos (boulder?) from the cave. He leaves items weighting 1, 2 and 3 kilos and gets his sword so he can finish his quest inside the cave.
Good one, Dr Slash!
Reminds me of the Datacorder puzzle from SQ6. I happened to have liked it, but not sure how many else did. It was more a variation of the common "GAMES Magazine" type of logic puzzle:
"Six people came to dinner. Each brought a different desert and wore a different colored coat. Who brought and wore what? (1) John doesn't like fudge that the person with the brown coat brought..."
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a good minigame would go with the game
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I think that the best puzzles are ones that are organic to the game. Ones that are more problem solving than puzzle solving. Not just some arbitrary obstacle. I can't think of a single time that, say, a slider puzzle didn't break immersion.
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Love having to take items a long way before you use them, collecting pieces to a puzzle (ie treasure map in MI2) always nice when you need a whole bunch of things for one puzzle like an extension of the beast's head/markus' blood.
I particularly like when items have more than one use in puzzles. Sure, there's more "challenge" in having to find another item to solve that puzzle, but if you've got a knife in your inventory, why not just use it to cut everything that needs cutting? Why not vacuum up five different things at different times? Why throw away an item just because it came in handy? When you get locked inside the cell you just rescued someone from, you'll wish you'd kept the key hidden on your person.
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Love having to take items a long way before you use them, collecting pieces to a puzzle (ie treasure map in MI2) always nice when you need a whole bunch of things for one puzzle like an extension of the beast's head/markus' blood.
I particularly like when items have more than one use in puzzles. Sure, there's more "challenge" in having to find another item to solve that puzzle, but if you've got a knife in your inventory, why not just use it to cut everything that needs cutting? Why not vacuum up five different things at different times? Why throw away an item just because it came in handy? When you get locked inside the cell you just rescued someone from, you'll wish you'd kept the key hidden on your person.
I agree with the logic of this--however, it can become a problem from a gameplay standpoint. Whenever I've played games where the same item gets used multiple times for different puzzle solutions, I've always come away from it feeling like the developers just got lazy and weren't being creative enough. A number of Telltale games in particular have suffered from this problem. I think there's a sweet spot when it comes to adventure game puzzle logic--you want the solution to be logical enough to make sense, but to be just obscure enough that it isn't apparent right away. That's often a lot easier said than done. :)
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I love those puzzles that are inventory based. Combining items, being able to look or turn them in your inventory and maybe catch a clue. A good example is in Skyrim, you find a claw and your not really sure what it's for until you find a door with a bunch of glyphs on it and the claw shape for the key hole. The answer for the glyphs is on the claw itself which you can view in your inventory once you turn it around. Simple but fun to figure out.
I know what you mean, I remember a fairly simple puzzle in Curse of Monkey Island where one of the pirate barbers you had to recruit wouldn't except a challenge from you unless you insulted him. I remember choosing the various insults in the dialogue options, going through my inventory for ages before noticing the glove. And then the light bulb went on in my head and I thought "You have to insult him". I can see how that particular one skipped by a few people, but it was still a joy to discover.
So yes, inventory type puzzles are among my favourites in adventure games. The only issues I have is when the inventory items take a huge step away from logical use. Whilst I understand that using items in unusual ways is a huge part of adventure games, we have all had those moments where we have solved a puzzle by just clicking on items at random, only to solve it and we think "HOW THE HECK WERE WE SUPPOSE TO WORK THAT OUT".
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So yes, inventory type puzzles are among my favourites in adventure games. The only issues I have is when the inventory items take a huge step away from logical use. Whilst I understand that using items in unusual ways is a huge part of adventure games, we have all had those moments where we have solved a puzzle by just clicking on items at random, only to solve it and we think "HOW THE HECK WERE WE SUPPOSE TO WORK THAT OUT".
EXACTLY! That was my point in the other thread here (or at least the point I was trying to make).
By providing gentle hints, nudges or clues -- but not full-out blatant answers -- the judicious game designer can make the results that much more enjoyable. It will provide a sense of accomplishment ("I figured it out!"), not frustration ("How was I supposed to know that?" / "How was I expected to do that?") or disappointment ("Oh, the game just telegraphed/flat-out told me what I needed to do...").
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Yeah - striking that balance is something I try to consider at every step with the work that I'm doing. It's difficult, at times - what can appear to make sense to you may not to someone else. That's why working with my team, running things by them, bouncing ideas around.... it's a part of the process I really enjoy.
I always liked puzzles that include a lot of different game play elements - talking to characters to get information and clues, searching for items - combining items and interacting with the environment.
Bt
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I always liked puzzles that include a lot of different game play elements - talking to characters to get information and clues, searching for items - combining items and interacting with the environment.
And that is what makes the challenges organic to the narrative and more of the nature problem solving instead of some random non sequitur unrealistic puzzles.
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The unique RPG-like branching character class paths give you a pretty fantastic opportunity to categorize puzzles into "bins" appropriate for both the class type and player style.
For example, arcade sequences neatly fit the Brigand's style. Dialogue puzzles would be Rogueish, as they'd be a form of confidence artistry. Riddle/mathematics puzzles and minigames dovetail well into the sorcery of the Mage's path.
I enjoy all of the above (arcade probably the least). Inventory puzzles are a staple and should be part of all of the above. Especially satisfying (and howlingly frustrating), as mentioned by others, are the very long-running collection quests in which random shit A and random shit Z finally come together at a very late stage to combine into a grand plot advancement. Hence, I would say that a McGuffin style item puzzle is best for one of those, since reserving such a combining for practical item could be a bit punishing for a player who has forgotten to pick up a piece very early on, and loses the opportunity to do so. Nothing restoring and replaying dozens of tedious sequences, which while difficult and rewarding the first time, become a chore in successive runs. However, if you are constructing the Fine McGuffin of Power out of the mystical Three Pieces, you're unlikely to try to advance without first finding all three.
I, so far, found the structure of the inventory puzzles in the demo (that I've seen! I've not played through all paths completely yet). If that's the flavor and tenor you're going for, then by increasing the scope and magnitude of the overall finished product sevenfold, I'm certainly pleased to have put myself in the dungeon :D
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Conquests of Camelot was one of my favorite Sierra games... despite it's flaws, it made a lasting impression on me. Actually, I enjoyed it a good bit more than certain KQs. The riddles were a large part of that; challenging and rewarding to solve. Once completed, each riddle made me feel as if I'd unlocked a little bit of additional understanding of the world and mythology Christy Marx had built for me. Now, she and Peter had an enormous quantity of real information to tap into, and they certainly did so. Bt has the enviable position of inventing an entire world history of the realm (or, as much as is needed for the game, with various threads sticking out hear and there, to be added on to if time/budget/success permits). He'll need to come up with that depth of history and try to make it as real/plausible as it possibly can be for a medieval high-fantasy setting, which to me sounds simultaneously awesome and daunting.
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I agree that Conquest of Camelot was a fantastic game back in the day! The puzzles, riddles, and copy protection via the book were well thought out. It was a tough game imo. I never got much satisfaction from that final fight with the saracen as i was weak from poison. Back on track, So far the puzzles have been pretty good. The comedy writing in particular strikes my sense of humor. As i understand it the games story is mostly complete i may be wrong about this. Puzzle wise as long as there isnt some tedious friggin maze or path to trek thru i will be happy.(like the cliffs in KQ3 from the house.) A time based quest would have merit and be challenging.(there is already one in the demo) Also well thought out logic puzzles is a staple in old school adventure games. Just don't have pixel or click hunts as i like to call them.