Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Game Design: The Devil is in the Details
I discovered while fencing last night that my knee doesn't like my trying to bend it the opposite direction. As I came down badly on a failed lunge, I dropped my foil and collapsed to the floor, but fortunately the damage was minimal and I was able to leave under my own steam. I'm limping around a bit, and I'll no doubt be feeling it in the morning, but it looks like a minor injury.
I guess you could say I made a critical fumble on my attack check.
My opponent was quick to come to my aid and make sure I was okay (a question I didn't know the answer to myself for a couple of minutes). I thought (afterwards) that if this had been a REAL combat, with deadly rapiers instead of sporting foils, my blunder would probably have been lethal. Called shot to the head as I collapsed. Not very dramatic, or fun, but that's just how reality works sometimes.
When I was a kid, totally consumed by all things RPG, my definition of "fun" was more-or-less synonymous with "realism" and "details"... with allowances for the needs of heroic sword & sorcery genre conventions. I would get into heated arguments about how armor should be represented, because armor class in D&D just wasn't adequate. Or I'd dive into tables with elaborate results for critical hits. And admittedly, I had some fun playing a lot of games with those kinds of detailed results - whether it was for an arrows entry and exit from a troll, or an RPG-16's damage path through a soviet troop carrier (or a 2 1/2 ton truck, as the case often was in Twilight: 2000).
Unfortunately, that kind of detailed realism took a lot of time to calculate out by hand. But hey - on computer, that problem goes away! As I learned programming, I was thrilled by the number-crunching capability of the computer to do all that detailed, realistic stuff! My first (never completed) multiplayer RPG project involved two linked Commodore 64's via null-modem of 300 baud modems in a world with simple (custom) character graphics where I painstakingly tried to describe every single game object in the world via statistics. I bragged to friends that every single object in the game that could be picked up could be used as a weapon - from a wine bottle to a coil of rope. They weren't very effective weapons, but they would work.
I'm still kind of a geek for that level of detail, I confess. I've always been something of a sim-head. I loved the middle Ultimas, with all the detail given to objects in the game (and the ability to do what would later be termed "crafting" and participate in the economy). I drooled over articles about the design of Ultima Online, where the (eventually scrapped) systems were being designed for a living, breathing ecosystem and economy and... wow. All that stuff playing together - those realistic details - make for an intriguing, living, organic, fascinating, and potentially fun world to play with.
The problem is that realism and detail can be cumbersome, annoying, and undramatic. Too often, that sort of thing actually gets in the way of having a good time. Instead of playing with the world, the world plays with you, and the barrier of details seems opaque and frustrating. Much as a botched execution of the numerous factors involving a proper lunge pretty much ended my fun last night - sometimes it's just better to abstract that sort of thing out of the system.
Hit points, for example, are a horribly unrealistic system - yet they provide for a gradual measure of attrition and an early warning (kind of) of exceptional danger in an encounter. And while it's great to have a game where every object could be used as a weapon - will players really tromp around the dungeon wielding wine bottles and partially-full change-purses as weapons? Would it be worth the added complexity?
The trick of design (one which I have not mastered yet) is knowing what to abstract out, and what of those fun, realistic details to keep.
Labels: Game Design
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:01 AM (Permalink)
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I suspect I've probably said this before, but - one way to combine realism and gameplay needs for both individual and long-term battles could be to differentiate between wound-damage and stamina-damage. The two fighters slowly whittle each others stamina down through the fight by exchanging blows and only rarely (critical hit) inflict real lasting damage... but if you run out of stamina your opponent can just skewer you, fight over. And if you won, you bounce back to full stamina-health shortly after the fight. Which helps cut down on the need for potions and healing surges all over the place. :)
I haven't yet come up with a game well suited to using this mechanic, though... It's not actually very complicated but it's just enough removed from 'standard' that I wouldn't want to stick it in most casual rpgs.
I haven't yet come up with a game well suited to using this mechanic, though... It's not actually very complicated but it's just enough removed from 'standard' that I wouldn't want to stick it in most casual rpgs.
The trick of design (one which I have not mastered yet) is knowing what to abstract out, and what of those fun, realistic details to keep.
This last sentence is the most important in the post and you paved a good road to it!
I often wonder how people achieve the best results by using minimal resources - they have a talent to pick the absolutely necessary elements (pixels in a sprite, lines in a caricature, words in a novel etc.). When I put myself in their shoes I think that I would use at least twice the amount of stuff - and not necessarily hitting the sweet spots with it!
I used to complicate things and worry too much until I got to the point where I scrapped most of it and built anew. Yeah, yeah - "man has to fail to be successful" bla bla...
Nowadays I try to think/plan in advance as much as possible and decide on the best solution before I get to work.
How to do that? Go to the roots!
Try to find out what is absolutely necessary for the design!
Which elements do you want to put in?
What consequences would those elements bring to the table?
Do they prevent other elements or do they bring forward other possibilities?
Minimize, optimize as much as possible in advance!
And yes, hitpoints are horribly unrealistic - as is judging games with a percentage number - but the consumer understands these systems and using hitpoints for each limb may also have effects on your target audience.
This last sentence is the most important in the post and you paved a good road to it!
I often wonder how people achieve the best results by using minimal resources - they have a talent to pick the absolutely necessary elements (pixels in a sprite, lines in a caricature, words in a novel etc.). When I put myself in their shoes I think that I would use at least twice the amount of stuff - and not necessarily hitting the sweet spots with it!
I used to complicate things and worry too much until I got to the point where I scrapped most of it and built anew. Yeah, yeah - "man has to fail to be successful" bla bla...
Nowadays I try to think/plan in advance as much as possible and decide on the best solution before I get to work.
How to do that? Go to the roots!
Try to find out what is absolutely necessary for the design!
Which elements do you want to put in?
What consequences would those elements bring to the table?
Do they prevent other elements or do they bring forward other possibilities?
Minimize, optimize as much as possible in advance!
And yes, hitpoints are horribly unrealistic - as is judging games with a percentage number - but the consumer understands these systems and using hitpoints for each limb may also have effects on your target audience.
@whiner - Curiously enough... have you seen / played the Hero System (for example, Champions)? There are actually three values in that system - Body, Stamina, and Stun. Most damage --- since it was originally designed to simulate superhero combat --- is heavy on Stun (which is non-lethal and recovers quickly) on light on Body (lethal) damage. Stamina is used by the character to fuel actions.
It was quite a bit more detailed than most systems when it came out (it was originally printed in 1981), but seemed to strike a happy medium for detail / realism (well, faithfulness to the genre) / abstraction for me and worked pretty well. It was some of the other aspects of the gaming system that eventually made me give it up.
Although keeping track of stamina usage in a pen & paper RPG was probably a little too tedious --- that's not a problem in a CRPG.
@calibrator - one of my favorite quotes (I have it posted on the wall of my home office) is from Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." I heard it from Steve Taylor a few years ago, and it stuck with me. It's a battle for me - constantly - because I keep finding some games stripped down to being TOO "simple" and bare-bones in their gameplay-critical details. I love having some meat! But instead, all I get are pretty detailed graphics...
But I'm one of those dorks who used to memorize weapon tables to min / max my weapon selection.
It was quite a bit more detailed than most systems when it came out (it was originally printed in 1981), but seemed to strike a happy medium for detail / realism (well, faithfulness to the genre) / abstraction for me and worked pretty well. It was some of the other aspects of the gaming system that eventually made me give it up.
Although keeping track of stamina usage in a pen & paper RPG was probably a little too tedious --- that's not a problem in a CRPG.
@calibrator - one of my favorite quotes (I have it posted on the wall of my home office) is from Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." I heard it from Steve Taylor a few years ago, and it stuck with me. It's a battle for me - constantly - because I keep finding some games stripped down to being TOO "simple" and bare-bones in their gameplay-critical details. I love having some meat! But instead, all I get are pretty detailed graphics...
But I'm one of those dorks who used to memorize weapon tables to min / max my weapon selection.
What do you think of Fallout 3's choice of battle? You can do realtime or choose targets and let things happen. It's really interesting to have multiple ways to attack a character in the same game...
Shamus Young had a post about the hitpoints convention a while back that had a similar solution to the whole stamina-then-health idea. Very interesting read.
And I might add that the drain-stamina-before-inflicting-damage has already been used in sci-fi games like Starcraft or Halo, where you have regenerative shields on some or all characters.
And I might add that the drain-stamina-before-inflicting-damage has already been used in sci-fi games like Starcraft or Halo, where you have regenerative shields on some or all characters.
Whiner: You may wish to check out Unlimited Saga (for PS2), or at least check out one of the FAQs on the battle system from GameFAQs, since it has a rather similar system to what you just suggested.
It's not a very well-liked game, seeing as how it's rather low-budget (despite being from Squaresoft) and overall tosses a lot of RPG convention out of the window but that might make it easier to find the game for cheap.
It's not a very well-liked game, seeing as how it's rather low-budget (despite being from Squaresoft) and overall tosses a lot of RPG convention out of the window but that might make it easier to find the game for cheap.
# posted by 
: November 05, 2008 6:51 PM
: November 05, 2008 6:51 PM
Having fenced for 14 years and taught for eight, I understand why a stamina then health damage system would seem reasonable, but that's really just an artifact of it being a sports encounter, where neither has the inclination or the ability to hurt the other. In a more realistic situation, one or both are coming with intent, and there is going to be a result (injury) of some sort immediately. So what a more realistic simulation would be is to have a set of simultaneous skill/ability rolls (strength, speed, skill, experience, etc), and then the results of all those combine into some sort of resolution, probably an injury. Which would drastically decrease one or more abilities, such that I'd guess the fight would be over in at most 5 such clashes. Stamina is only a factor if you're, say, grappling, or if both sides refuse to commit.
Problem is, there's not a lot of "game" in such a system. It's over almost instantly, with no decisions to be made. Anything you lay on top of that is either going to be unrealistic (but probably more fun!) or as complicated as learning to fight/fence in the first place. which, good job on returning to!
-WiLL
Problem is, there's not a lot of "game" in such a system. It's over almost instantly, with no decisions to be made. Anything you lay on top of that is either going to be unrealistic (but probably more fun!) or as complicated as learning to fight/fence in the first place. which, good job on returning to!
-WiLL
# posted by : November 05, 2008 10:10 PM
: November 05, 2008 10:10 PM
WiLL pretty much nailed it, IMHO.
Everything boils down to fun or trouble (for some people trouble IS fun, of course).
Abstraction helps here, too: Do you really need this element for the game to succeed? Should a battle take 20 minutes? Which method does the game use to select the attack method? Combos?
Combat systems are indeed very difficult to design and it takes a lot of belief to impose something on the players, thinking that it will resonate with them.
An example for an IMHO great system that failed in the market is the heart of the PS1 fighting game "Bushido Blade":
http://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation/bushido-blade
In this game it is very much possible to kill your opponent with a single strike to the head - no power-bars (which are simply a visualization of hitpoints) here!
This evolution branch died quickly and the one of the Streetfighter/Tekken-ilk thrived, which is less realistic but obviously more fun for the mainstream customer.
Everything boils down to fun or trouble (for some people trouble IS fun, of course).
Abstraction helps here, too: Do you really need this element for the game to succeed? Should a battle take 20 minutes? Which method does the game use to select the attack method? Combos?
Combat systems are indeed very difficult to design and it takes a lot of belief to impose something on the players, thinking that it will resonate with them.
An example for an IMHO great system that failed in the market is the heart of the PS1 fighting game "Bushido Blade":
http://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation/bushido-blade
In this game it is very much possible to kill your opponent with a single strike to the head - no power-bars (which are simply a visualization of hitpoints) here!
This evolution branch died quickly and the one of the Streetfighter/Tekken-ilk thrived, which is less realistic but obviously more fun for the mainstream customer.
I loved Bushido Blade. So I am one of those weird fringe gamers who the game was designed for, I guess. I guess that tells you I no longer have mainstream tastes...
Reality is very easy actually. But, as all of you have pointed out, it is not fun. Not much fun at all. And the reason is not that it takes too long, but that it has a lack of predictable things to measure.
It is not stamina, not health, not skill, not the environment, not your equipment...no, it's not any of those things. It is all of those things at each moment.
Combat can last a long time if both combatants are equal. It can last a millisecond if there is a large gap in capabilities. And it can also only last seconds if someone makes a fatal mistake...which people do.
No, that is not very fun. And it is not fun because there is a severe lack of predictable response. Nothing for the "player" to 100% calculate. The real world is about preparation, not execution. Mushashi under stood this in the 16th Century. We instinctively understand it now, even though who have no experience in the real world no that its not the fight that determines the outcome in as much as it is the training for the fight.
I have to disagree with Will, stamina does plan a HUGE factor in combatives. In fact, all of our standard RPG elements are all represented. Men and women who train every day for real world combat have to have incredible stamina, strength, agility, skill (not only theoretical but practical), and their awareness.
And one more wondering comment point if I may: It's no the lack of "commitment" to injure that separates "sport" combatives from real world combatives Will, it's the rules.
cl
It is not stamina, not health, not skill, not the environment, not your equipment...no, it's not any of those things. It is all of those things at each moment.
Combat can last a long time if both combatants are equal. It can last a millisecond if there is a large gap in capabilities. And it can also only last seconds if someone makes a fatal mistake...which people do.
No, that is not very fun. And it is not fun because there is a severe lack of predictable response. Nothing for the "player" to 100% calculate. The real world is about preparation, not execution. Mushashi under stood this in the 16th Century. We instinctively understand it now, even though who have no experience in the real world no that its not the fight that determines the outcome in as much as it is the training for the fight.
I have to disagree with Will, stamina does plan a HUGE factor in combatives. In fact, all of our standard RPG elements are all represented. Men and women who train every day for real world combat have to have incredible stamina, strength, agility, skill (not only theoretical but practical), and their awareness.
And one more wondering comment point if I may: It's no the lack of "commitment" to injure that separates "sport" combatives from real world combatives Will, it's the rules.
cl
I've been playing Dwarf Fortress lately. It's not really an RPG, though it has similar elements. But, among many other things, I love the fact that there are no hit points. An injury is always specific (and when a dwarf loses an arm or an eye, he may survive, but they'll never grow back).
Combine this with the wonderful emotional effects (dwarves get depressed at seeing their friends killed,... or even at running out of booze), and the characters seem very real, despite the ASCII graphics. The dwarves are actual characters, not just statistics, and it's surprising how attached you can get to them.
This emotional attachment (for the player) is not just due to the lack of 'hit points,' of course. But that does help, since that whole concept is so artificial.
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Combine this with the wonderful emotional effects (dwarves get depressed at seeing their friends killed,... or even at running out of booze), and the characters seem very real, despite the ASCII graphics. The dwarves are actual characters, not just statistics, and it's surprising how attached you can get to them.
This emotional attachment (for the player) is not just due to the lack of 'hit points,' of course. But that does help, since that whole concept is so artificial.
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