Previously on RDD:
Another three course meal served up for you this month. And it had better tide you over for a while…
First an update on production, then a bit of game design theory, and then the unveiling of another exciting and unique feature to be found inside Resonance.
The State of the Game: From Concept to Acceptance in Six-Point-Zero Months
Well, here we are, six months into development. Am I where I’d like to be? Yes and no.
Yes, in that what we’ve produced so far is of a really high quality. It looks great, plays great, and now that I’ve finally started implementing audio, sounds great.
No, in that I’m way behind the original schedule that I had arbitrarily set for myself in my head.
I’m not going to estimate what percentage of the game is finished. That’s so hard to do, especially since there was a huge amount of work that had to be done (about two months of it) before we even had anything remotely playable. I’m also not going to hazard a guess at when the game will be done, because our rate of output goes through phases. This is a spare-time commitment for everyone involved, so we’re sometimes at life’s mercy when it comes to finding time to grind out code or art assets. In the first two weeks of November, for example, I was spending all my free time preparing for a presentation that I gave at a teacher’s workshop here in Okinawa. Pretty much nothing got done during that two week stretch.
As motivation and opportunity comes and goes, we keep pounding our keyboards (computer and piano) and pushing those pixels. It’ll get done. Eventually.
These six months of diary writing have been fun. I’ve enjoyed sharing insights on the development process with both of my readers. However, I think this is going to be the last formal Developer’s Diary for a while. I’m going to buckle down and grind this game into submission, create a nice publicity webpage, prepare a bundle of screenshots, decide on a release date, and then return to the Developer’s Diaries for the final few months of development. Once I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you’ll be the first to know! But there’s probably at least six more months of darkness between here and there.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t check back here regularly for six months. No, on the contrary, you should continue coming here every day and clicking on those Google ads on the sidebar! I kid. But I will be writing a few tidbits about the game and insights on development as I feel the inspiration, but they won’t be in the form of giant monthly-ish installments.
Speaking of which, this wouldn’t be a giant monthly-ish installment if it didn’t include some new info about the game! So enough of this “Oh game production takes a long time” whining. On to the fun!
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail. If it weren’t for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
I search my memory to think of a title connecting to penalties in games and that lame joke is the only thing I can come up with?
So, a long long time ago, in February, while Resonance was still an idea bouncing around in my head, I read an interesting article on the formerly avante-garde, now hum-drum (aside from Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation) Escapist Magazine. It was this article about how the lack of real consequence has taken the fun out games. The article focuses on RPGs, but got me thinking about my own adventure game designs. The article basically talks about how gamers have just gotten used to saving their games as if they were working on a critical document on a computer running Windows ME.
Consider the following pieces of sage advice. IGN.com warns Oblivion players: “You’ll want to save a lot … since things can quickly go wrong. The game occasionally autosaves, but you’ll need to stay conscious to save as often as possible.” […] The definitive BGII walkthrough on GameFAQs elaborates that there are three times the player should save: when you win a battle, when you rest and “everywhere else.”
And if you think about it. These games have started punishing players more for not saving frequently than for not playing the game well. And if you save every five minutes, the consequences for playing the game poorly are so light, that it doesn’t promote a desire in the player to play the game well.
Likewise, in a story based game, having consequences being acted upon your character rather than simply making you press the load button increases tension and builds a connection between the player and the character.
As an added downside of the save-reliant game, constantly having to open up a save menu takes you out of the game, which is a no no if you’re trying to immerse a player. Even a quick save key does this to an extent.
This got me thinking about adventure games. I believe that a great story is at the heart of all great adventure games, and to feel immersed in a story, you need to feel a connection to the characters. This can be achieved through competent writing, but it could also be reinforced through the gameplay, and this is being actively avoided by adventure game makers and players alike.
Most adventure game players will tell you that a true adventure game doesn’t rely on reflexes, timing, or dexterity. A pure adventure game will have no action sequences, challenging the mind rather than the fingers. Ok, fine. I can get behind that. I believe that a good brain-twisting (but logical) adventure game can be just as fun as any other action game, at least to the set of people who, like me, are into that sort of thing.
However, many adventure gamers have taken it further, often preaching that adventure games should have no death or “game over” sequences at all.
Recently, Spooks was featured on popular casual gaming site Jay is Games alongside 5 Days a Stranger. Both games include a few places in which you can prompt a game over. Here are some comments from that site:
You know what really bugs me? There’s two cases of it here.
You’re playing an adventure game, going about your own business for a half hour while you play…
And then boom, game over. Start over from the very beginning, or quit entirely? I wouldn’t mind so much if it was made clear that it was a good idea to save frequently.
There’s often no way to die in adventure games, so players may purposefully pick a “dumb” option just to see what happens. If this option kills them, with no sort of “undo” ability, a ways into an otherwise harmless game… that’s not good design. Either warn the player beforehand, whether with a blatant message or simply by making a dangerous game where the player will learn that death can happen early on, or let the player go back a step when they die so they don’t have to start over.
For those of us who grew up on Secret of Monkey Island, Loom and the like, adventure games are about exploring and often humor.
Both Spooks & 5 days sort of give off the same vibe as those games, so it’s kind of alarming when you just give something a shot, and lose 1-5 hours of your time.
I’m not sure how 5 days gives off a Monkey Island vibe, but the general idea is there.
And here, I have a problem. Sure, death scenes are not necessary to a game by any stretch of the imagination. However, if the character can never truly be in danger and at the mercy of the player’s actions, the game is missing an opportunity to promote a relationship between a player and his characters.
What I can understand is the aversion to unfair failure conditions in adventure games. I’ll say right now that there are failure conditions — ways to die or otherwise fail the game — in Resonance. However, before you storm off and swear never to buy my game, read the rest of this diary!
All failure conditions in Resonance will follow three guidelines. I think that it’s a lack of adherence to these guidelines in the past *cough*Sierra*cough* that fuels the players’ general distaste for deaths in the adventure game genre as a whole.
1) Adequate communication of peril – If a player walks into a room and is beheaded, it’s unfair. If a character tells the player not to walk into that room or he’ll be beheaded, that should help the player avoid that doorway.
This silly example aside, it should be clear to the player when he is in danger of causing a failure condition so that he can make appropriate decisions to avoid it. Also, knowing that peril is near creates tension, and tension is fun!
- 2) Appropriate penalization for failure – Steel Battalion for the XBox has an interesting penalty system. You can spend multiple hours building your fighting mecha and winning in-game money by taking it through tournaments, but if your machine is destroyed before you hit the eject button to prevent your character’s fiery demise, all your save files will be wiped and you’ll be forced to start again from nothing. This is too much.
In a game that I’ve just made up to serve as a straw man, if your character touches the fence labeled “Danger: High Voltage Fence. Do not touch or you will die!” the player is reduced to a pile of ashes, and after a couple descending notes from a trombone, the player is standing in front of that same sparking fence.
These examples are on two extremes. One too strict, and one not even a real penalty. A penalty has to be felt, but not make the player quit the game out of frustration.
- 3) No mad dash for the reload button This ties in with the last one since in most adventure games, the penalty for failure is a forced reload/restart, but hey, three is a better number than two, so let’s explore this one in more depth.
I’m a staunch believer in letting the player save and continue a game from any point. But as discussed by the above mentioned Escapist article, saving anywhere can be used by the player as a replacement for actually attempting to play the game well, and as a result, lowers the players immersion.
A system of penalties for players actions that doesn’t force them to go running back to their last save after failing in the game should be implemented. Many games give you a limited number of tries or “lives” before forcing you to restart/reload. Why can’t something like this be implemented in an adventure game in a way that doesn’t feel like a cheesy feature leak from an action-platformer game?
With these guidelines in mind, I set out to implement a system that allowed failure in Resonance which is intended to penalize the player while not making him go running for the reload button.
The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?
Very early in the game, you’re presented with a situation full of tension. You’re being pursued and you’re holed up in a small room. You need to find a way to escape before your pursuer breaks through the door and finds you. Everything you need to get out safely is in this room, but it requires some thought.
I’m a fair designer, so there’s more than enough time to figure out what you need to do to escape, but there’s a little trick slipped in there designed to make most players fail on their first attempt. Yes, it’s mean, but this is the beginning of the game, and I’m trying to introduce this new gameplay element.
Oh no! The player has failed, the pursuer catches him. The scene is frightening. Seriously, it made the composer’s son cry when he watched his father working on the sound effects for the scene. I’m quite proud. Err… not of making a kid cry… of making the scene adequately scary…
So the player has been caught, the scene fades to black, and then a little GUI element slides down from the upper right hand side of the screen. On this display, a little number is displayed in green: 30. This is the player’s “point” display. Five points are ticked off the counter, lowering the player’s points to 25. And then a button resembling the rewind button on a CD player appears.
When the player clicks on this rewind button, the whole frightening scene plays back in reverse. Rewinding quickly all the way to the point where the player entered the room and allowing him to try the scenario again.
You cannot reload after a failure until after you’ve already rewound the game, and since quitting and loading a saved game will take few extra seconds, you might as well play. Yes, reloading will allow you to keep those five points that you lost when you failed, but points are not hard to come by in Resonance.
Many actions that you take will net you a point or two. A number of optional puzzles have also been implemented to give you bunch of extra points and other rewards. Furthermore, your point counter maxes out at 99, and there are no rewards for having lots of points left at the end of the game, so you might as well use the points that you’ve accumulated, otherwise, the counter will just sit at 99 for most of the game while you waste time reloading.
In this way, there is a small penalty for failure: the loss of points. Repeated failure will cause a larger penalty: the depletion of points and forced reload. And players wont have to go running to the reload interface every time the slip up or feel like they have to be saving every five minutes lest they be beheaded when they walk through that next door.
The rewinding also integrates itself into the story, camouflaging itself the same way that the GUI’s design does. This prevents it from feeling like something tacked on, and allows it to enhance the gameplay experience.
Again, if the player would prefer to reload, and ignore the rewinding option, he’s free to do so. The game then becomes just like most adventure games that have included the possibility of reaching a game over. At least, in my game, the deaths or failures all have adequate warning and are all the result of actions that would logically lead to such a result.
There’s only one possible downside that I can see to this system, and I’ll leave an open question here to the readers. What happens if someone saves over their only save file during a timed event without enough time to successfully complete their goal and without enough points for a rewind? They would then have to restart the game from the beginning.
Granted the above hypothetical situation would be pretty rare, and that the player would have to be pretty stupid to save over his only save file without enough points for a rewind when there’s obviously danger in the air, but I would feel bad leaving even the possibility that I could strand my players out in the cold without a save. Thoughts? Comments? Lay them on me good readers.
Next time on RDD:
Maybe you could autosave in a non-over-writable file at a few major points so that this situation wouldn’t require completely starting over. Personally, I hate having to manage tons of save files to ensure I can go sufficiently far back in the game if I really screwed up several hours ago. A system that would not demand several save files would be better from my perspective although I’m not sure how this could be done well. In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, I seem to remember occasionally screwing myself in the way that you mentioned, but then again, I wasn’t stupid enough to have only one save file.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:33That’s a good idea. Perhaps just having one autosave file set aside that cannot be overwritten by any means other that walking into a room where a potential danger lies. Or maybe I should make the auto save a little further back, so that there’s a little bigger penalty for being really dumb!
November 28th, 2007 at 8:41Just wanted to say that the story about the composers son is totally true! He told me “not again!” and started crying. Decided to never work on that scene again by daylight.
November 29th, 2007 at 0:46Oh, and not commenting, doesn’t mean I didn’t blog ya… BTW, seems like a brilliant tension building idea!
December 2nd, 2007 at 23:02First of all, I very much like like your ideas (or perhaps rather your one compound idea) – they sound as though they could be quite good additions to your game. ^_^
I’m especially fond of the fact that there are (if I understood correctly) more points available to be collected than the counter will allow – if not for that I (personally) would probably be inclined to reload anyway, just to save those precious points. ^^;
As you have it, it sounds as though it should work quite well.
As to your request for comments, I would like to add to what Eric said above: Instead of having one automatically-overwritten autosave file, why not provide multiple, autosaves? I would envisage them as being inviolable, unless the situation that generates them is approached again; that is, if a player reloads an older saved game or starts a new game, and then once again approaches that point. That semi-safety net (the degree of safety offered being related, of course, to the distance between autosaves and their proximity to danger) should hopefully reduce player saving, and thus, hopefully, reduce any loss of immersion from it.
December 13th, 2007 at 7:42Thanks for the great comments Thaumaturge!
As I finally lock down the save system in design and code, I’ll definitely consider all the options suggested to me. Your suggestion sounds like a great way to compromise between the player never being in danger and the player constantly having to worry about saving. Thanks!
December 14th, 2007 at 10:46(It looks as though my previous reply hasn’t gone through – if it in fact has, and I am repeating it, then I apologise. ^^; )
‘Tis my pleasure – I’m glad to have been of service. ^_^
December 28th, 2007 at 12:22Personally, I’m confused as to what this “rewind points” system is achieving. Isn’t it essentially the same as the old save / load method? The player is still interrupting the story to go back and do something over. In fact, your method sounds more intrusive – as if the game was automatically asking you to reload after making a mistake.
I also think that points really belong in arcade games and shoot-’em-ups. It sounds like you’ve created a detailed, realistic story with high emotional stakes – wouldn’t a points counter just spoil that atmosphere?
I appreciate that you’re trying to make a player’s actions have consequences that count, which I think is a wonderful idea, but wouldn’t it be better to have those consequences play out in the story rather than on an external scoreboard? There are several adventure games out there in which solving – or failing to solve – one puzzle one way has in-story repercussions further along (“Zack McCracken” and “Fate of Atlantis” are both good examples of this).
Sorry if I sound very opinionated – everything about “Resonance” so far sounds fantastic. I’m truly impressed by what you and your team are doing, and I’m only offering my 2 cents because this points system would seriously dissuade me from purchasing and playing what otherwise sounds like an amazing game.
Best of luck!
January 2nd, 2008 at 23:29Thanks for the comments Matt! I definitely appreciate your direct criticism. I hope that I can adequately defend my design choices here. If I can’t, let me know, and I may have to go back to the drawing board.
You are right that this system is, in essence, the same creature as a save/load system, interrupting the game with a meta-game action in order to repeat a section of the game. However, this system is intended to work in a way similar to that familiar system, but apply penalty to the player for a different set of actions.
I want to have the possibility of the character’s death always on the table for the reasons stated above. I want the player to feel the tension associated with peril. So, with death a possibility, the game usually forces the player to take a very pro-active approach to saving, doing so every few minutes just to be safe. In this way, a death is punishing the players who don’t save often more than those who do. I don’t agree with this philosophy and was hoping to find a way around it. I’d rather punish for poor gameplay than poor saving habits.
This system allows the player to die a limited number of times before having to resort to the old reload. It also gives the non-active saver a chance to save (perhaps immediately after dying once). Also, players that have been playing the game well, solving alternative puzzles, being more thorough in their exploration of the world, will have amassed more points and therefore, will have more chances to pass the danger before exhausting their rewinds.
Furthermore, the rewind system fits more organically into the story than the usual save/reload system, which really sits above the game in an outer layer of meta-game actions. So, combined with having to use the rewind less than you would have to save the game in the absence of a rewind system, it adds up to less of an impact to the player’s immersion.
As for the point system. I agree that points are much better relegated to action/arcade titles. In fact, even in those types of games, I’m highly unconcerned about score, focusing more on just getting through the game itself. The point counter is relatively unobtrusive (I suppose I could even make an option to turn it off…) and isn’t really a “point counter” in the usual sense. As mentioned above, it only counts up to 99 and there are an abundance of points to be had. If you get 99 points, the counter will just stay there until you use the points for a rewind. It’s more of a stock than a counter, and since there’s no penalty for low points (other than having fewer chances at rewinding a section) and no reward for high points (no better ending, no high score list), you might as well use them.
As for making the player’s actions have consequences later in the game via plot and character interactions, you’ll definitely find a lot of that in this game. It’s death that becomes tricky. If you kill off one of the main characters early in the game… it’s tough for me to write what the rest of the game is going to be. Stuff like failing to catch the bad guy’s henchmen in order to get the bad guy’s location out of him is possible in the game. It just leaves you with another puzzle to solve in a separate story branch to figure out where that darn bad guy is. These things have in-game consequences. It’s only when you decide to walk into that electrified puddle of water that we have to involve the meta-game rewind or save/load features.
Obviously, there are flaws, and it’s not a perfect system. But I think that for players like me, who get lost in stories and wind up only saving right before I quit a game, this will be a much better system. For those, like potentially yourself, who don’t like the system, you can ignore it all together. If you die, just reload your last save. The rewind won’t be a mandatory thing. The old save/load system is there as well. Don’t let this dissuade you from trying the game out!
Let me know if any of this isn’t floating your boat yet!
January 3rd, 2008 at 14:17[…] As this will apparently be the last developer’s diary on Resonance for the next few months, I thought I’d let you lot know. Oh, and also had the weird feeling it would be wise to remind you that Resonance will soon be a highly innovative, beautifully 2D, shockingly interesting and apparently highly polished adventure for the PC sporting dozens of weird inventories. You might also want to check these rather related Gnome’s Lair posts too: […]
January 17th, 2008 at 22:12Hi Vince,
Thanks for responding to my comments in depth and with such good grace! I appreciate the absolutely colossal amount of effort that everyone on your team is putting into this game, and it’s all too easy for someone like me to shout comments from the sidelines. You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into this system, and I’m sure that will come across in the final product.
As long as the rewind option is only automatically cued *after* a *fatal* event, and if – as you say – the save / restore system is still in place, then I think I could be at peace with the rewind system, even I chose personally not to use it.
I would strongly suggest, however, that the rewind is *never* called up automatically, and that the points counter only visible if the player makes it visible, or maybe only when they access the rewind interface. You might even allow the player to disable the rewind mode entirely.
I see what you’re saying about the rewind option being more “organic” to the story, but I think I disagree. After all, you’re still engaging with a UI in order to interrupt gameplay and restart it at a different point. Some people (me included) might even find the fact that it’s prompted *automatically* after you die to be invasive. It would never be *truly* organic unless it was a geniune part of the story – e.g. if your player character was Hiro Nakamura from “Heroes” and actually possessed the ability to rewind time. (Now there’s a thought …) I guess my point is, since I’d have to interrupt gameplay either way, I’d rather interrupt it with a system with which I’m already familiar.
I’m also not sure you’re really punishing poor gameplaying, since – if the points are so easy to earn – it might almost be as easy to blunder into a mistake and rewind as it would be to blunder into a mistake and reload. Adversely, if the points *were* hard to come by, then you’d be unfairly punishing players who were quicker to overcome their obstacles. However, this is more a matter of personal perspective and gameplaying technique.
Ultimately, as long as you leave the option in the player’s hands, then that’s all that matters. I think it was the “automatic” and “always visible” part of the idea that really bugged me – anything that robs me of the decision to play the game the way *I’d* like to play it. (Like most gamers, I’m immensely selfish that way :)
I should take a brief moment to add that everything else you’ve mentioned – multiple puzzle solutions, in-game consequences – plus the graphics and story I’ve seen / read about so far – all sound absolutely amazing, and I can’t wait to see this game completed.
Best of continuing luck!
January 19th, 2008 at 21:45Ok, I’ve been thinking about this. I’m considering adding an option when you start a new game to choose how you want to play:
1) Classic mode. This is just like the usual adventure. If you die, you must start from your last save. There is no point system.
2) Safe or “Rewind” mode. If you die, the game will allow you to rewind an unlimited number of times until you get it right. Players will not need to save except when exiting the game (though they may still save at any time). There is no point system.
3) Limited Rewind or “Rewind Challenge” mode. In this mode, the point system is implemented, accumulating points when you achieve certain tasks in the game. If you die, you must spend a certain amount of points to rewind the game and try again. If you run out of points, you must restore from a saved game. The player may still save at any point during the game. (Though I may possibly disable saving during the critical scenes during which death is a possibility.)
I think having these three choices at the beginning of the game will benefit everyone, and each player can find a mode that fits their playing style. What do you think, Matt?
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:39[…] Most people have probably missed the exchange that’s been going on between myself and a mysterious masked man named Matt over in the comment section of Dev Diary 6. He brought up some very valid points about the rewinding system I’ve implemented in Resonance, and through this conversation with him, I’ve come to realize a better way to handle things to please more players. […]
January 23rd, 2008 at 22:29Hi Vince,
I think those three modes sound like a fantastic option. It gives the player plenty of choice over how they’d prefer to play the game, yet incorporates all the aspects of the “Rewind” mode that you were keen to see implemented.
It might also provide a little extra replayability for those who want to take on the challenge of solving the game in different modes.
Thanks so much for listening to my comments, and I only hope that they’ve been constructive and helpful. I love the new screenshots and I’m very excited to see how “Resonance” develops!
All the best!
January 28th, 2008 at 3:09I’m still not 100% comfortable with this “limited rewind” concept. I appreciate where the idea comes from, but if the points are meaningless unless a rewind is necessary, is losing them a true punishment? I’d rather prefer there be, say, 150 rewind points out there, and a message at the end saying “You earned X of 150 points.” Perhaps a comment of “Try to do better next time” or “Congratulations, you earned all the points!” to give a sense of worth to them.
Otherwise, I might suggest a “scorecard” concept, where a mark is placed every time a rewind is needed. It could work sort of like golf, where the fewer marks on the card, the better. Maybe a small reward like an unlockable if no marks are made in a certain room. Just an alternative thought.
September 22nd, 2009 at 16:29There will be a message at the end telling you how many total points you picked up, and maybe some high-score board? Put that in the To Be Decided column.
I like the golf idea. Perhaps on the infinite rewind play style, I can tell them how many times they rewound.
Also, there will be some unlockable rewards/achievements for doing certain things or doing other things well. So, I’ll have fun with that. Good suggestions! Got me thinking!
September 25th, 2009 at 14:59An idea: how about having a reward at the end of the game that’s exclusive to players who opt to play with the “Limited Rewind” feature enabled? This reward wouldn’t be something that’s essential (nor would it adversely affect players who don’t receive the reward)… just a nice little bonus to promote using the rewind system and to encourage playing/replaying the game at a harder difficulty level for the added challenge.
You could even have several different rewards granted, depending on how many points the player used up over the course of the game. For example:
Used over 100 points: No reward
Used between 99 – 50 points: Mediocre reward
Used between 49 – 10 points: Pretty cool reward
Used between 9 – 1 points: Awesome reward
Didn’t use any points: Ultimate reward
Think in terms of the “Achievements” in games on Steam. The difference here being that the player would actually receive something cool for putting in the effort required to reach the achievement. This provides an incentive for people who may otherwise not use the rewind system to give it a try. So, what’s the reward? Well, it could be something as simple as an additional scene (maybe an extended ending?) at the conclusion of the game.
This way, traditional save/restore players aren’t going to miss anything important in the plot by not getting a reward. But if those same players hear that there’s an added challenge (and subsequent reward) by playing with the rewind system enabled, then it might encourage them to give it a try for added replay value.
It also gives the concept of “game points” an ultimate purpose. The points aren’t just there to aid the rewind system; they simultaneously work towards another goal at the end of the game. Additionally, tying the “points” to some kind of endgame reward would have the side-effect of making players far more careful in regards to dying, potentially adding even more tension in those scary scenes! In fact, in “Limited Rewind” mode, I’d probably also suggest making it so that using the traditional restore button (even once) would negate the possibility of earning a reward altogether, since it would effectively allow players to cheat the points system by resetting the variables when they restore.
Anyhow, just some ideas!
November 12th, 2009 at 1:53Thanks Chris! Definitely some good ideas!
I’ve thought about varying awards at the end of the game, but I have one philosophical issue with them. If the player knows that they’re going to get a better reward by not ever having to rewind, then they’re going to resort to saving often and loading when they die rather than using the rewind feature at all. I’d like the rewind to be an aid to the player, so they can focus on the game and not worry about saving every few minutes.
One possible solution would be to remove the ability to save except when quitting the game and then erase the save file when continuing, but that would prevent people from replaying their favorite parts of the game, and could potentially lead to people having to start over if the game or computer crashes for whatever reason.
So, I’ve thought over it and still can’t quite figure out exactly what I’m going to do with them. Perhaps it could be something simple like an extra picture at the end or revealing how many points total they collected and how many they lost for a total score. Higher totals get a picture of a character giving them thumbs up or something. Thus, it’s an extra bonus, but not worth restoring and replaying large chunks of the game over.
Thanks! I’m still considering my options!
November 12th, 2009 at 13:02