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General: Out of Sight, Out of Mind III: ChinaJoy
News Discussion « General Discussion 9/17/09 5:47:41 PM
uhm, dude, I hate to tell you this, but lots of other sites give ChinaJoy a ton of coverage. Maybe your writing for the wrong site. ~nox |
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Look, Disney's treatment of Pixar is not that relevant here. Pixar was never about making anything but family friendly entertainment. I think the Disney/Miramax relationship is far more interesting. Now while it is true that Miramax under Disney made Pulp Fiction, Miramax (or the Weinsteins) already had a relationship with Tarantino. The question is would Disney have allowed Mirimax to green-light Reservoir Dogs if they had owned it back in '91?? On a completely different subject, I have always thought Kingdom Hearts would make a good MMO. |
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Dude, you rock! |
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A few questions(from those that played past 20 or very knowledgeable)
General Discussion « Aion 6/20/09 1:53:17 PM
FYI, there is also a Korean form of anime. I can't remember what the technical term for it is off hand. ~nox |
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Couple of points:
There is actually a cut scene at the beginning of the game which shows the "dream" you have while napping -- either of your future (Asmodian) or past (Elyos). It also gives a bit of the back story. It wasn't in the NA beta version, but it's in the Korean version, and I assume it will be there at launch.
In the version 1.2 client there is even _more_ character customization.
Play Asmodian, the peseants are even more insulting.
Flight, is really, really done well. Fly up really high, then hit the space bar to glide. Now glide close to the side of a canyon or something similar and you will find yourself being lifted up by the updraft! You can surf air currents in the this game. My jaw dropped the first time this happened to me. My only beef with flight is that there are so few places initially that you can fly in.
Unfortunately, the lame quests continue all through the game. Some, yes are really interesting. But many are just lame. The lamest, IMO, is just after you get your wings and become a deava, you are sent to a fort and told to go kill lobsters.
~nox
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Well, by the time Aion is available in NA, Blade and Soul may well be available in China. If it is, I would probably just switch to that game. Then there is always Aika, Canhel SUN ... Hmmm. It might be quite a while before I play another non-chinese game. |
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3 Things Jack Could Do Right: Part 3 (long)
General Discussion « Champions Online 10/15/08 8:50:26 PM
Originally posted by Hype
Heya Hype, thanx for reading through all my verbiage. Yeah, your right, most of this could be used in any MMO. I really believe that sandboxes, in some form, are the future of MMOs. Its just a question of how big of a market contraction (and resulting shakeout) will be necessary to get there. I hear what your saying about Champions. Honestly, I am neutral on the game so far (maybe if I get a an early beta invite I might change my mind :) Its just that I have been playing City of Heroes since I1 (and its still my favorite game out there) so it was natural to choose Champions as a setting for thinking about what MMOs could be. Maybe if Positron ever decides to make CoH 2 he could send me a tell... ~nox |
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Hi Dracain, thanx for your comments! Yes, I am definitely for simulation based game play. If there was anything I was trying to get across it is the need to get rid of the static world that MMOs seem to be built around. As for physics, I guess, the more comprehensive the physics engine, the better. I come at this from the perspective of an amateur game developer (although I have been coding for most of my adult life, I have never worked for a professional game shop. Wah.) and am not familiar with every physics package out there -- just the free ones! So I will take your word about DMM and euphoria. Honestly, though, they sound way cool. Anyhow, I tried to address physics specifically in part 3 (you can read it here if you haven't already). My main point is that physics, regardless of which engine is used, has to be central to the game play. It is physics, after all, that lets a super hero be super. I haven't had the chance to play The Force Unleashed yet. I don't own a console, so it may be while before I do. But from what I read, it seems like it embodies the type of combat I have in mind. ~nox
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i hope so. To me, its really hard to get a sense of a game from a video that someone shot of a screen while it was being played. Meh. One of these days I am going to be able to attend in person. |
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Read part 1 here Read part 2 here
Part 3: Make it Physical.
Meet Gravity Girl. She is beautiful. She is powerful. She wears a slinky costume that would turn Emma Peel green with envy. And, oh yeah, she can control gravity.
In City of Heroes, she would be a Gravity Controller. She would have a set of powers that provide a combination of immobilization (the control part) and damage, all vaguely based on the idea of controlling gravity. The most ludicrous of these is propel, in which a random object (a spool of cable, a desk, a barrel, etc) appears out of nowhere (I know she is not hiding them in THAT costume) and flies towards its target at high speed, doing serious damage when it connects.
Here is the idea. Let’s let Gravity Girl actually control gravity.
For this to be meaningful, we must have a simulated world that is defined by the interaction of physical forces, including the interaction between the objects that comprise the world. In other words, we need physics.
Take, for example, throwing a ball. In the real world, if you throw a ball, how fast and how far it goes is a function of the force you impart to it when you throw it. In addition, it doesn’t just stop because it exceeded its ‘range’, it falls because of the effect of gravity.
Our simulated world should work the same way. Throw a barrel, a crate or even a car and it should follow a trajectory defined by gravity and the amount of force initially imparted to it. Slide it along the floor and friction should cause it stop (if doesn’t hit someone or something else first).
But the physics of our simulated world should not be fixed. Heroes have superpowers which can modify or even reverse them. Cover the road with ice, and suddenly the friction coefficient (what causes a sliding object to eventually halt) goes to near zero. Or have Gravity Girl alter the force of gravity, and suddenly Captain Muscles can throw that car a lot farther then he could before.
Here is another example. Time, or rather the rate of change, is just another physical quantity. Imagine having a hero, let’s call him Time Lad, who can slow down, or even freeze time in small areas. Bomb blasts, falling buildings, that pesky nuclear reactor that’s always on the verge of a critical meltdown -- all of these situations could be handled by Time Lad in ways that just aren’t possible for other heroes.
Of course, just adding physics to the game is not enough. City of Heroes actually has a fairly good physics engine. They were one of the first MMO’s to implement the PhysX SDK. But without a simulated world created from dynamically interacting objects, all the physics engine is really good for is making pretty patterns when you walk through a pile of leaves.
Look again at our three heroes: Time Lad, Captain Muscles, and Gravity Girl. Each one has unique powers that he or she can use on their own or in tandem with another hero. Yes, either Time Lad or Gravity Girl could do crowd control while Captain Muscles pounds away at the bad guys. But they can also use their powers in unique ways based on the powers themselves, not on what role the developers have decided they should play within a group. Is Gravity Girl a defender? A controller? A tank? The answer should be none of the above. She is a superhero who can control gravity.
There is one more advantage to using physics in the ways we have been discussing. Most MMOs (including all the popular fantasy MMOs) reduce magic based characters to being ranged damage dealers. Even the pen and paper version of Champions, with its magic pools (groups of powers that can be selected one at a time), does not really capture magic very well. Yet what is magic but the ability to alter (or perhaps methodically twist) the laws of physics. Want to walk on the ceiling? Reverse the effect of gravity. Reinforce a door? Increase its mass 100 fold. With physics, we can finally have magic based characters that act ways that seem, well, magical.
Dr. Fate would be proud.
~nox |
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That I hope your axe is sharp, because you have been grinding it for a while now... |
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Why are they making Champions? a) to make money. b) Because Cryptic believes that they can make a better superhero game then CoX. By your logic, Blizzard should never have made WoW because their were already a ton of Fantasy based MMOs already on the market. Would someone please explain to me why people think City of Heroes is the be all and end all of comic book MMORPGs??? ~nox |
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3 Things Jack Could Do Right: Part 2 (long)
General Discussion « Champions Online 8/06/08 10:04:36 AM
Thanx!! I guess I will email him the whole thing once I have written part three. ~nox |
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3 Things Jack Could Do Right: Part 2 (long)
General Discussion « Champions Online 8/05/08 10:09:07 PM
Read part 1 here Read part 3 here
Part 2: Make it Objective. Let’s create a hero. We will call him Mr. Generic. What can he do? Well, he can fly, he’s like invulnerable and stuff and he’s super strong. Of course, heroes come in all flavors, including no power heroes like Batman. But super strength is so central to so many heroes that any game that tries to simulate the comic book experience has to do super strength well.
The problem is that a strength based hero -- in Champions, what used to be called a brick -- doesn’t just beat villains to a pulp, he smashes walls, crushes cars, lifts buses, tosses around heavy crates like they were tennis balls, etc. All of this means that there must be walls, cars, buses, and crates for him (or her) to interact with.
In practical terms, the only way to realize this is to make a world completely composed of discreet objects. Every wall, floor, door, desk, cabinet, or anything else must be its own object capable of being both moved and destroyed.
Of course, objects are more then blocks that can be picked up and tossed around. Objects need have properties which define how they respond to their environment. Fire a bullet at window, for example, and it should shatter. Fire a bullet at a steel door and it should leave a dent. Fire a bullet at a tank of explosive gas and you should get a nice explosion.
Heat and cold is another area where material properties become important. Heat glass and it should melt. Freeze it and it should become opaque from condensation. Heat rubber and it should burn (producing lots of smoke). Freeze it and it should shatter. Bricks, concrete, and metal should basically be impervious to both fire and freezing.
I am not sure I agree with the idea that everything should become a block of ice the moment it gets cold, but this should at least be possible if something stays cold enough for long enough.
Material properties are important because how objects react to their environment determines how a hero’s powers affect their world. Heat, cold, explosions, and radiation should all have very different effects, and a battle with energy blasts should be very different from a hero trying to ram a villain through a cinderblock wall.
This has a payoff for more then strength based heroes. Because everything, including, buildings, is built from objects, destroying the central supports in a tower could, for instance, send the entire structure crashing down. Alternatively, removing the battery from a bomb might be enough to deactivate it.
DC Universe Online is already doing this, at least to some extent. So far it looks like a good start, but it’s unclear how far they will take it. They have already said you can freeze a villain and then toss him around like any other object. But if he hits a brick wall, will he shatter?
Of course the code to implement this can get very complex, very quickly. If the state of each object needs to be checked and possibly changed every frame, that is lot of calculations. Some simplification should be possible, however, and in the case of explosions, only a very rough approximation is either necessary or possible.
However, I believe the effort to implement objects would be well worth the extra work and processing cycles. Objects are the key to letting a player become a comic book hero. For without them, Superman is just another tank-mage.
~nox |
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?Now that the developers have added real numbers into the power selection screens, I think the need for constant re-specification has gone way down. Take an energy blaster for example. If you are trying to choose between power blast and power burst, you can now see exactly how much damage each power will do. No more relying on sometimes erroneous descriptions like 'short range high damage attack'. In a sense there has been purchasable respecs for while, in that you could always buy the necessary influence from some third party to acquire a respec recipe at the market. If this means taking a bit of business away from the influence peddlers, then I am all for it. I just hope they use the extra cash to do something useful, like doing a complete overhaul of the game engine. ~nox |
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I think vehicles are necessary in any superhero MMO. Its amazing that CoH/V has gotten by without having them for so long. ~nox |
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Read part 2 here Read part 3 here Introduction: After reading through the ‘screw the pooch’ thread, I decided to take a more positive viewpoint and think about what features Jack could implement in Champions that would result in a better, more immersive game. None of these ideas is easy, as each would require a significant amount coding above what would be required to create a baseline, City of Heroes, type game. They would, however, help to create an environment where players feel more like superheroes and less like they were playing WoW or EQ2.
As a side note, I have not read everything about champions (or maybe even most things) so it’s possible they are trying to do some of this already. That said, here goes:
Part 1: Make it Dynamic
Heroes impact their world, so the world needs to react to heroes. Being a hero is all about saving the day (or neighborhood, or city, or world …) which means not only that there needs to be something to save, but also that something bad has to happen when things go pear shaped.
Put another way, without a world in balance (or, more dramatically, on the brink of utter destruction) there is no reason to have a bunch of guys in spandex running around causing mayhem.
So let’s start with the balance. Comics are mythology made modern. At its heart is the idea that world is a battle ground for two opposed, colossal, equally balanced forces. Order and Chaos, Good and Evil, Light and Dark, call it what you will. What we want is a world that can change in response to this battle.
Here is an example:
When a hero takes down a villain, rounds up a group of thugs, or saves some innocent grandma, the level of crime in an area should go down. As crime decreases, neighborhoods become cleaner, new buildings go up, wealth increases. When heroes sit on their collective butts (or fail) then just the opposite should occur.
This is what happens in any simulation game. The game world is not static, but over time changes in response to the actions of the players. Formally, what this means is that the game world is the result of an agent based simulation. Every NPC is an actor or agent, with a set rules that define how that NPC interacts with the world, including other actors.
In other words, a sandbox.
Here is another example. Thugs randomly spawn in area, more if the area is decrepit, less if the area is posh. As the number of thugs increase, the chance of a supervillain spawning also increases. Once a supervillain spawns, he (or she) will exert control over the local thugs, in the process making them more efficient (thugs will no longer fight each other, police will become corrupt, etc.). The supervillain may take control of a nearby building turning it first into a hideout, and then gradually building it up into a major base. If left unchecked, it’s going take a very high powered hero (or team of superheroes) to get the situation under control.
Included in the simulation should be anything that could have a significant ripple effect on the rest of the environment. Here I am thinking of things like the power grid (remember the New York Blackout of 1977), financial networks (no bucks, no Buck Rodgers or giant robots or satellite lasers …) and, of course, a hyper advanced version of the internet (maybe with holographic data access).
Done right, it should be possible to (like Oracle) fight crime without ever leaving your virtual apartment.
Think about it. Want to take out a villain’s base? Well you could go in with powers blazing. Or you could hack into their computer system. Or you could take out the block’s transformer and make them hope they have back-up generators. Or you could just freeze all their bank accounts.
OK, that’s it for this one. Next post we will talk about the building blocks of a dynamic environment: objects.
~nox |
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Well, this just my opinion, but the graphics in the video look 10x better then what Champions has posted at the moment. Then again, I am not a big fan of the pseudo cell-shaded look. ~nox |
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Well, If you are talking about CoH/CoV, I am not sure what strategy you are referring too. Basically you just set up your attack chains and then execute one power after the next until everything is dead (uhm, 'arrested'). Even for controllers, you just make sure to do a group hold before your individual attacks and holds. Or if you have a pet, then just let your pet run wild and buff your pet. The closest thing I can recall to actual strategy during combat was when I was soloing a kinetics defender and had to choose between getting an extra siphon power in, using siphon speed, or throwing an attack. Kinetics has so many combat options that it is sometimes impossible to fit everything in, especially if you are using transference as a ghetto hold. The strategy in CoH is in choosing and slotting your powers. Once in combat, pretty much the only choice that might affect the outcome of a fight is whether to use an inspiration or not. IMO, anything they can do to make combat less mechanical is a good thing. Using combinations and terrain effects is definitely one option. However, when it comes to full out Tekken style combat in a networked game, the serious fly in the ointment is lag. Maybe with creative use of instanced combat you can get around that problem, but I don't think the solution is obvious. BTW, CoH is already pretty joypad friendly. I have been using one for a while. I find it's lot easier on my wrists then hitting the num keys all the time. ~nox |
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When it comes to game development, the game apple never seems to fall too far from the developers tree. Not sure why this is, but my guess is that it comes down to institutional memory and culture, not intent. That is, I don't think Jack is setting out to remake CoX, but it will happen anyway. If you think of game development as answering a set of fundamental questions, moreover, a set of questions that does not change no matter what type game is being developed, then it's not surprising that same group of people will always come up with the same answers. ~nox |
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