RPG collaboration

Well we all laughed at FV's strategy game colloboration Velox et Astrum, but take a look at this. You may have heard of the RPG series known as ``Broken Sword''. And a small team of ~15 people managed to make a sequel to Broken Sword 2.

http://brokensword25.com/news/news.htm

Just think what we can accomplish instead of making poitnless spam threads.

>>78
the goal in question is up to the developer. but if your primary goal is "history-making," you have left out broader considerations about the audience, and narrower considerations about the message. you haven't explicitly decided what you want your user to feel, and neither do you have the creative vectors of theme, motif, metaphor, etc. you are probably ending up with a very empty game -- one that is neither fun, nor remarkable, but yes, allows you to make changes to it. which is something the player do everyday in the most mundane of tasks. so why should they be playing your game? what is the purpose of this medium in the first place?

>>81
Message? In a game? Whose blog have you been reading? And I'm having trouble believing that a game needs some kind of masturbatory plot to be fun.

the games that are most fun are the ones in which you choose your own plot

It's been said before that /v/ cannot agree on anything, but if they were willing to compromise, they would make the best game ever. Obviously, they are not.

Seems that adding /prog/ to the mix didn't help matters.

Fact: You can either have one good plot in a game with minimal impact from the player, or you can let the player do anything but have no plot at all. You can compromise between the two, but you cannot attain both extremes at once. Which you prefer is a matter of taste, and none of us can agree on which one. So, I propose we try to work out a compromise between "good plot" and "player impact". The extremists on both sides will refuse to join in, but we should be able to complete it without them, and will probably be better off without them.

why is this thread still here?
go away

If you want to make a plot-focused game, make that. If not, make that. There will be some people who will contribute to the first game, and some that will contribute to the second game. In the end, what matters is not what kind of game that you are making, but that you are making a game at all.

>>84
but if they were willing to compromise, they would make the best game ever
I highly doubt this. I find that the best games are masterminded by either a principal developer, or really tight collaborations of homosexual proportions.

How about a sort of roguelike party based strategy melee combat?

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has an "arena" option, where a bunch of AI monsters fight another bunch of AI monsters to the death.

Modify this to a bunch of player controlled characters fight a bunch of AI controlled monsters.  Instead of 25 levels of dungeon, with branches and extensive player levelling, you have two levels of dungeon, one to get equipment, another which is the "fighting pit".

Monsters would be generated based on player character stats.

Player would (perhaps) have X points to build his team of characters.

>>26
What about that fake programming contest that a shitload of people made components of an application for each 'stage' of the competition, unaware that they were working together to create a crazy screensaver.

Useless thread is useless. Why are we talking storyline? Let /v/ handle that. Someone come up with a decent game mechanic, so /prog/ can actually start coding something.

>>90
Someone come up with a decent game mechanic
I think that would be /tg/'s job.

>>91
Yeah, /v/ is only good for 2D (and sometimes 3D) graphic design.

>>90
Prolonged discussion on /v/ is impossible.

>>92
implying that /v/ is good for anything

hilariousreactionimage.tar.bz2

>>88 came up with a decent game mechanic.  And most of the programing has been done.  Just rip their huge code apart, take the tiny bits you need, write and add the considerable amount we need.

>>39
what are you talking about, the SICP VN has all of them*.

*Although the ``battle system'' consists mainly of pressing `next'.

I prefer reverse engineering for the typical purpose of cheating in games (specifically, Source engine games -- have a gander at gamedeception's forums to see all the shit they're up to in CSS/TF2).  You learn a great deal and get to have some fun in the end as a result.

Suggested reading: Reversing: The Hacker's Guide to Reverse Engineering

My only other interest is procedural geometry, which isn't quite on the level of Mat Dickie's all-encompassing expertise necessary to design quality enterprise-class titles.

>>96
If anything, /prog/ should work on the SICP VN. We already have a few screenshots of what it should look like.

Here's my story idea:

Knights vs. Samurai.

The samurai all have special moves that can cleave a knight in half, with the following additions:  If the move is used for the first time it works at full power, the subsequent times it depends on the tide of the battle.  If the tide is against the samurai, the effectiveness is decreased (because the knights have figured out how it works), in the other case it is fully effective (since the knights fear it and can't think straight).

>>97
cheating
fun
Does not compute.

>>100
Really? Never played a game that wasn't fun without cheating? I call bullshit

>>101
The only way cheating would be fun is satiating some ridiculous mental complex.

For a few examples:

I deserve more than other people simply because I'm me and others aren't.

I'm going to trick others into thinking I'm actually good so they reward me with admiration and the praise I so deserve.

I'm having "fun," where the definition of fun is ruining another's experience.

None of this appeals to me. Your bullshit call means nothing to me. I can't think of a single game that would be better with cheating. There are some that are so hard that it's necessary to contend with the game, but the solution there is to simply not buy and play those games because they're not really fun anyway; cheating or not.

In a multiplayer context, it's even less fun.

>>102
As an afterthought, I define cheating as something that gives the player a tangible benefit over some other player.

Cosmetic cheats like g_saberrealisticcombat in Jedi Outcast - and this is a horrible example because it actually does make the game more fun by making lightsabers do what you expect - are more in the vein of things that are not cheats. I take no issue with costumes and texture hacks as long as they award no tangible benefit.

There's also the "I'm breaking your rules, and you can't do shit about it. Nah nah nahnah nah" complex that I forgot to mention.

>I deserve more than other people simply because I'm me and others aren't.
I deserve more than other people simply because I'm better then you.
After all there is no reason you couldn't use the same cheat?  The field would be equal.
If there is a reason i'm smarter or more knowledgeable if i can use it and i use that knowledge to game the system.
If is some ethical limit you cannot overcome you're conform to the system's creator game rules.
The game is my game and i play to win and have the most fun. Game doesn't mean i have to be a "normal player".

_____________________________________
http://bayimg.com/image/iafhbaacj.jpg
«Stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere, we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men. »

>>103
I define cheating as something that gives the player a tangible benefit over some other player.
By your definition, being more skillful or prior experience would be cheating ;)

If we want to talk about cheating in video games, I would suggest that without external modification, this is impossible. Before someone starts complaining,  a game is defined by it's rules and in a video game, this would be the game code itself.

Naturally, House rules are a separate matter altogether.

For a game that I consider to be not much fun without "cheating"( here we will define the more usual definition of cheating i.e. Doing things that you are ordinarily not supposed to be able to do), I'd say GTA. I was thoroughly disappointed by the first 3D version and all subsequent releases and quite frankly found it more fun to go on rampages as a stripper with a katana, driving a go-kart.

>>102
My point in posting >>101, is that if you have never played a game in which cheating was more fun than the normal game, then you either have very low threshold for fun, have led a sheltered life in regards to the game you play (possibly aggressively filtering each of the games you play to make sure they meet your expectations) or that you had very little to no expectations to begin with.

>>106
What game have you played that was more fun when cheating? If you enjoy the game more when you skip large portions of it and don't have to try, you must have a very low threshold for fun.

>>107
What game have you played that was more fun when cheating?
How about the Sims? That game is way more fun if you just use it as an experimentation ground for weird ideas than playing it "as the creators intended".
If you enjoy the game more when you skip large portions of it and don't have to try, you must have a very low threshold for fun.
This is only true, if you plan to use the cheats to play the normal game. Making your own fun in a boring game is a separate matter altogether.

>>106
"Very low threshold for fun"? What does that even mean? How would you define or measure a threshold for fun? Regardless, I've been playing video games since 1990, when I was 3. "Sheltered" is not a good way to describe my gaming habits.

>>105
I never enjoyed the Grand Theft series either. To me, it's extremely boring to do the thing you describe. There's nothing satisfying about rampaging around as a stripper with a katana driving a go-kart. Perhaps the first couple times, but personally, I can't see that being fun for more than 30 minutes.

However, it seems that I'm a minority in this respect; the Grand Theft series sells like hotcakes and people tell me that I'm missing out even though I've actually played it and find it to be no more satisfying.

>>109
"Very low threshold for fun"?
The phrase I meant to use was "easily amused", but that's what happens when you've been watching some political show

There's nothing satisfying about rampaging around as a stripper with a katana driving a go-kart. Perhaps the first couple times, but personally, I can't see that being fun for more than 30 minutes.

I'm never going to suggest that it will be fun for large amounts of time (in a particular game anyway), but the principle of taking a shitty game and trying to make it more fun through experimentation is something I still enjoy doing.

>>110
What prevents you from experimenting in the absence of cheating? Games in the vein of the Grand Theft series give the player a remarkable amount of freedom.

I don't really see how or why cheating needs to be a factor, but in a single player context, I would have no problem with your attitude. I can even see how that might be fun.

Also, "easily amused" is a weasel phrase that could be used by any party to express their opinions. While this isn't wikipedia^[1][2], and /prog/ is generally worse^[3], we could at least try.

¹ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
² - http://dis.4chan.org/prog/
³ - http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1260618337/

>>97-san here

It's not so much cheating to get off somehow in the game, it's just the whole take-shit-apart thing (yes, I do usually use this to troll, but I try to keep it creative). 

I've done the same to Y! Live and Stickam.com flash applets, which both had huge client-side exploits that would let one pretty much takeover the applet for stuff like opening arbitrary URLs on clients, or funnier, embed 0x0 flash videos in the chat buffer that would repeat something I found funny.  For example, you'd have like 3 black guys all huddled around a computer talking up the babes and breaking down haters, and all of a sudden at maximum volume you hear from their speakers, "YA'LL NIGGAS COOKIN? YA'LL NIGGAS COOKIN? YA'LL NIGGAS COOKIN? ...", from the great Chapelle. 

It's more of a destructive impulse, but finding exploits that few-to-little people have touched is fun in itself.

>>112
Out of curiosity, >>112-san, how would one go about leaning how to find exploits in Flash files?

>>111
I don't really see how or why cheating needs to be a factor
It doesn't. In certain games, especially games like SimCity, a little cheating makes experimentation easier to start with. The other option is to play the game wisely and conservatively and to keep a "starting point" save file, but sometimes that just seems like busy work.

but in a single player context
Yes, this is the important factor. In a multi-player game, I would either play the game according to the rules, or else we would all bend them.

>>97
My only other interest is procedural geometry, which isn't quite on the level of Mat Dickie's all-encompassing expertise necessary to design quality enterprise-class titles.
I am extremely interested in this as well. I've been experimenting with this in my spare time actually. Do you know of any books or research papers on the subject?

The only game I know of that really uses this (aside from water/terrain, i.e. glorified tessellation) is Spore, but when you play it for a bit you realize how extremely limited the skeletal structure is of the creatures you build. And of course the buildings, vehicles, etc. were not really procedural; just highly compressed, due to being assembled with a very tailored (and very limited) modeller. Every one of the thousands of buildings that shipped with the game was hand-crafted by some drone at EA. Spore was very disappointing in this respect.

The advantages in procedural generation has always been the unique look of randomly generated objects. You just can't do this if you hand-craft everything. I feel like with some good libraries for generating primitives and moulding geometry, and a simple scripting language incorporating randomness to create high-level constructs, you could generate quite unique looking scenes.

>>55
We are going with this idea. Use C with opengl. I expect the binaries in my office by next week.

>>55
deconstruct
Sorry, that is not a word.  Please try again.

>>117
This is what people who don't read and define the English language by whatever is in their spellchecker actually believe.


deconstruct de`con*struct" (d[-e]`k[u^]n*str[u^]kt"), v. t.
 To interpret (a text or an artwork) by the method of
 deconstruction.
 [WordNet 1.5]
 
    -- From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

>>84
You can compromise between the two, but you cannot attain both extremes at once.
That's the thing; what one could do is basically write the story with several branches so that the user can Choose His Own Adventure, but for a sufficiently expanded storyline it would then be more profitable to just create more games. However, procedurally generating stuff shouldn't be impossible, just very very hard. After all, one could argue that the universe is generated procedurally with a certain set of rules and an initial state.

>>87
really tight collaborations of homosexual proportions
I wouldn't really mind that.

>>97,115
I'm not sure how much that fits into "procedural geometry", but have you taken a look at Dwarf Fortress?? I don't think the source code is widely available, but it generates worlds (along with civilizations, history and historical figures and events), quite nicely at that.


As for a game collaboration over the Internet, I think that could only work if all the team members are sufficiently motivated. One requirement of that would be that everyone agreed to virtually all aspects of the game, and so I believe a way to make this work would be to form several small groups each working on a different game.
Though considering how well Pragueriders compromise with others and how long their attention span is, I wouldn't get my hopes high.

COLLABORATE WITH MY ANUS