[Episode 23] IMmies

[Voodoo]

http://image.colonyofgamers.com/imcast.png


Well, it's that time of year again - time to look back at 2009 and decide who's been naughty & who's been nice, and pay respects to those who are no more. We didn't want to do any actual GOTY awards, since CoG staff and users have already handled that ably, but we did want to talk about the year in games, so that's what we've done. Some genre specifics, pleasant surprises and disappointments are all covered, and then at the end we realize that we forgot to talk about MMO's. The level of regret on this point is... low. ;)

You'll also get to hear about some neat indie stuff, both web-based and downloadable, as we run through Emberwind (http://www.timetrap.se/emberwind/), Continuity (http://web.student.chalmers.se/groups/idp09-7/flashgame/) and Dreamside Maroon (http://sites.google.com/site/dreamsidemaroongame/Home). Our retro segment delves into the dungeons of the Sword of Fargoal (http://www.fargoal.com/home.html), a trip I highly recommend you take. (The direct link to the Windows zipfile, until they get their site back in order, is here (http://www.fargoal.com/downloads/SwordofFargoalPC.zip).) And I promised Jeremy I would link to Planet MULE (http://www.planetmule.com/), so now I have. Go... do the stuff one does on Planet MULE, after you're done listening to the show.

Looking back, it's actually been a pretty stellar year for PC gaming, and nobody in our group seems to be coming away disappointed. Let me take a moment to wish you and yours a lovely holiday season - we'll be back just before the New Year to ring it in right.

In the meantime, Immortal Machines presents... The IMmies (http://www.immortalmachines.com/public/podcast/IMmies.mp3)!

Hosted & Summarized by Eric [Ravenlock]
Participants are Jacob [MagGnome], Jeremy [Lord Don], Adam [Grifter] and returning special guest J Arcane!
Produced by Clayton [Voodoo]

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[MagGnome]

This episode was a lot of fun to put together. I wish I hadn't had to jump out early, but I'm glad I could make the first half.

[Vigil80]

Not finished with the episode yet, just getting to the second half.

I have to confess, the affection for games like Sword of Fargoal is alien to me. I'm not trying to say anything bad about those type of games. I just personally don't get it.

If you're talking about something as a quick time waster, that's one thing - although I don't do those very often either, as with my days it's either PC game time for reals or it isn't, no bite-sized bits. But to play for multiple hours? I just can't see myself putting aside Dragon Age, Sims 3, Fallout, and so on in order to spend some time with "Stick Man Adventures."

What's the allure?

[CappinCanuck]

Tsk tsk on the multiplayer hate, I hope you don't turn some people off having some competitive fun.

[Vigil80]

Tsk tsk on the multiplayer hate, I hope you don't turn some people off having some competitive fun.
if you're talking about the same segment I am - the segment that started with Demigod - I think they're absolutely right. It's happened with so many games, and turned me off of so many games, to the point that I will no longer play those kinds of games multiplayer, nor will I bother trying PvP in an environment like an MMO. There's that core group of players who boil all the fun off a game until only the math remains, and I can live without the frustration of trying to participate in that.

I can vouch for Endwar. I played it on the 360, and the voice controls are not a gimmick, they genuinely work well, and I sincerely hope to see it in future games. I feel like it didn't get the attention it warranted, though.

However, your suspicions about the gameplay itself are mostly correct. The controls are highly polished, but there is no campaign. You can either play it online (see above) or you can play what amounts to skirmishes against the AI. Still fun to try. Once they someday marry those controls to a really strong campaign/narrative, it will be a must-play.

Edit:
Also, do give Sims 3 a try. I'm tired of being the only person on CoG that plays it. :p

[CappinCanuck]

if you're talking about the same segment I am - the segment that started with Demigod - I think they're absolutely right. It's happened with so many games, and turned me off of so many games, to the point that I will no longer play those kinds of games multiplayer, nor will I bother trying PvP in an environment like an MMO. There's that core group of players who boil all the fun off a game until only the math remains, and I can live without the frustration of trying to participate in that.


Well, we are talking about the same segment but we have different opinions to approach it. I know exactly what you're talking about, and what was said in the episode. It's true, those types of gamers have an almost unreal malevolence and crudeness to them. I've gone to the upper echelon in about 6-8 games, evenly I play multiplayer typically exclusively and I play competitively; although never professionally.

I'm a bit different. When I'm learning a game and meet those people, it just rolls right off -- I don't even think about it. That's really key. You can blame communities, the people, but it's really all on you and your attitude. When I get to the top ranks, my attitude translates into a smile, rather than anger, when I get matched to a new player. I could be getting my ass kicked left and right thanks to them, but I'll typically just smile and maybe let out a chuckle at how bad it is.

In my experience, people who you get frustrated with others are really on the same path. Those high levels are just closer to the end. It doesn't really matter in what way you get upset, but if you have the personality that gets upset by games in general, it does. If you're the type that doesn't get upset or frustrated, you're the type that won't get upset or frustrated with others, perhaps newer players, after you do learn.

I remember in my RA2 days. I went 250-8 in the first 2-3 months. Four of those losses were from teaming up with the same new guy, I guess we were all newbs some just stronger in RTSs, that took the losses really well - so I played more with him until he learned, losses be damned even on my beautiful record heh.

It's about who you play with. You'll encounter people like that all the time. If you play with people like myself or a good group, you'll emulate the attitude. After a while, you won't care either and others won't really bother you. Turtling and only playing with a couple guys you know, or not at all, isn't the answer. Applicable to all genres, whether RTSs, FPSs, anything.

Nobody should avoid playing multiplayer, just go about it the right way. I was speaking mostly to others who listen to the podcast, don't pick up the attitude of avoidance -- it's just a game, and I, like many others gamers whether high or low skilled, want you logging in and helping build online gaming communities.

[J Arcane]

Or you know, I could just play it the way I know will be fun, instead of wasting my time gambling on the pick up game lottery.

Go try to play CounterStrike online sometime. At best, you'll get a bunch of elitist assholes who've been playing 20 hours a day for the last 10 years and whom you will never have a chance of competing with. At worst you'll jump on and find nothing but rampant cheating, retarded mods that complete break the game, and racist, sexist assholes screeching into the mic like goddamn 8 year olds who just learned a new word.

I'm sorry, but that's not fun, and I'm not wasting my time slogging through a bunch of misery just to satisfy someone else's notion of how I should be playing the games I want to play.

I'll just play something else. I only have so much time in my life, and I don't care to devote much of any of it to a bunch of elitist jerks, cheating assholes, and game breakers.

[Vigil80]

Yours is an admirable attitude to have, Canuck. Perhaps I'm lacking the mental constitution, but rarely will I put up with it. Getting pwnt over and over and/or getting berated just aren't fun, and I have too many games to play - and ways to play - that are fun.

If it's a game I can get in on the ground floor with and/or I have a couple of buddies to get in with that will be dedicated, then I can get dedicated. Otherwise, probably not going to happen.

In fact, there's been exactly one game that I played competitive multiplayer on that didn't meet either of those two qualifications, which was the first Dawn of War. And that time was brief.

[Ravenlock]

Canuck, I wish I could be onboard with your perspective, but I can't. "They're on the same path, just further along"...? I have no desire to be on a path that leads me to bitch out some guy who just bought the game on day one for not knowing all the tricks already, calling him a fucking idiot and telling him outright to quit playing because the AI teammates are better than him. That's not an endgame I ever want to reach, thanks much.

There's no excuse for treating people who show up to play a game like a complete fucking asshole, and it's not just something that sometimes happens in games like Demigod, it's practically the only thing that ever happens in public games from what I've seen (and had corroborated for me by others). I'm not talking about friendly trash talking, which I will happily partake in, I'm talking about raw toxicity, explicitly intended to get people to STOP playing the game so they can get back to high-level play rather than deal with noobs. If that's their attitude I'm happy to oblige them, and stop playing the game. That's not an experience I'll engage in for free, let alone pay money for.

As for driving people away from fun multiplayer experiences, the entire point was to warn people that the multiplayer experience I had was in no way fun. If I had found a fun multiplayer experience there, I would have kept playing. I found assholes. As I said in the episode, it pains me because I think the gameplay of Demigod is excellent. But I frankly consider warning people away from their multiplayer community a public service.

Vigil - as for Fargoal, it's partly nostalgia, I'm sure, as I grew up messing with roguelike games and have tremendous affection for randomized dungeon crawls. It's also a fondness for simple gameplay. I'll also boot up SMB1 on the Virtual Console and do a speed run of World 1 from time to time, because it's fun and familiar; the gameplay mechanics are so tightly designed, and so well understood, that it's always comfortable and pleasant to go back to.

Fargoal scratches those itches simultaneously for me - it's something "new" because I never played it back when it actually was, but feels familiar in a great way because of my history with the genre. I can pick it up and play it for 20 minutes, exploring a random dungeon level and trying not to die (and there IS challenge there), and then save my game to come back to it later. Since it's on the iPhone which is always in my pocket, it's a great "I've got time for a quick game" choice for me.

Thanks for coming in and commenting, guys - it's good to know people are enjoying the podcast and it's generating some discussion. :)

[MagGnome]

Also, do give Sims 3 a try. I'm tired of being the only person on CoG that plays it. :p

I'd like to pick that game up eventually, when my backlog isn't so massive. Who knows when that will be though.


As for multiplayer gaming, I tend to avoid it. I'd much rather play single player, with few exceptions. I even prefer to play most RTS games in skirmish mode. I do enjoy playing Sins of a Solar Empire with friends, but that game is one of the few that I actually enjoy going online in.

[Voodoo]

I feel that it is well known that PUGs are most often a terrible idea, no matter what platform you game on. If you are going to game multiplayer, it is best to do with friends, which is how I roll.

I do find myself playing multiplayer less these days only because I have much shorter time blocks with which to game. My availability does not allow for large blocks of contiguous multiplayer gaming outside of my monthly LANs.

This results in my present case of focused single player gaming, even in games that would greatly benefit from playing with others (L4D2 & Borderlands). Unfortunately, my available time blocks do not allow otherwise as of late.

[CappinCanuck]

Canuck, I wish I could be onboard with your perspective, but I can't.

<snip>

Thanks for coming in and commenting, guys - it's good to know people are enjoying the podcast and it's generating some discussion. :)

Nah, we're on the same page actually. If it bothers you and you get frustrated or upset by it, you shouldn't play, just like you said. I just didn't say it explicitly because I noted the opposite reaction -- if it doesn't, you're doing it right.

You're right about the people, though. The top ranks, but pretty much throughout as well, is full of some angry scum of the earth, but the ratio is not all that different than real life. They come out of the woodwork a bit thanks to the anonymity of the internet :).

But, for those out there who can laugh a bit at the people taking games so seriously -- keep on playing, players! Multiplayer has always been part of PC gaming for me, bigger than most probably, give us competitors some more credit.

Happy to generate some discussion too. My posts typically get glossed over :D.

[MagGnome]

Happy to generate some discussion too. My posts typically get glossed over :D.

Aww, now you know that's not true! I really appreciated your help and feedback in my new computer thread.

[Ian Eller]

Heyo. I know this is, like, ten days overdue, but I still feel obliged to post this.

Thanks for the Dreamside Maroon plug :) I'm delighted that you guys caught the Little Prince vibe--that was one of our biggest inspirations, along with Harold and the Purple Crayon, and later on Flower.

However, more importantly (at least to me), as the author of the Poetry submenu I feel it is necessary to justify myself.

Shortly before we finished up the game, a tester mentioned that she disliked the poetry pop-ups mid-game; it was distracting. So, I created the Poetry menu with the initial intention of allowing the player to turn off the pop-ups--obviously, that functionality is something you probably made use of. Then, I realized that it was somewhat silly to let all of the work our writer(s) went through just disappear, so I added the poetry log, in the same vein that many games include the ability to re-view cutscenes. Also, we feel that the poetry is relatively important to the game's overall design; a huge portion of Dreamside Maroon is the atmosphere, and we felt that the poetry helps add a sense of storybook whimsy (again, sort of emulating the Little Prince).

I can understand that this would come off as pretentious, as poetry is naturally a more conceited artistic medium than most (e.g., Today I Die). However, we actually went through a lot of work to try and tone down the pretentiousness of the poetry; believe me, it could have been worse.

That's my long-winded justification of the Poetry submenu.
Thanks for listening :)

[Ravenlock]

Well hey, Ian! I'm really glad you found the episode, and have a lot of respect for your showing up to explain the reasoning behind the Poetry section. Hearing you walk through the design steps that led to its inclusion, it does make more sense for it to be there, though obviously the player doesn't have that insight when they're playing through the game. ;)

I do think that the poetry pop-ups midgame (which actually I left on, and I'm not sure whether I noticed you could turn them off) added to the atmosphere of the experience - and probably also added to the Le Petit Prince vibe a little bit more - though I personally would have preferred them to connect more concretely to some sort of cohesive story, even a minimalist one. That's obviously a totally subjective thing, though.

While I've got you here, I do have to ask why there isn't a "view your vine" feature after the completion of each level. I was really expecting and looking forward to the ability to survey my creation as I was building up my vine, and I was disappointed that it wasn't in there (though I suppose the ability to walk around the moon - spoilers! :p - and look down at it at the end was a good consolation prize). Did the idea for having that not come up? Or was it decided against for some reason?

Again, thanks for listening and coming over to talk about your project - and obviously, bravo for putting out something unique and interesting to talk about, regardless of any snarkiness we might have sent its way. :) If there's another project you're working on in the future that you'd like to talk up, be sure to let us know.

[Ian Eller]

Thanks for the reply, Eric :D

So, yeah, I actually meant to include an explanation for the absence of a camera swipe of the vine, but apparently I care more about my own code than my teammates' ;p

Anway, initially, we did have the camera pan along the vine at the game's end; you can see it in action at 3:02 in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXvxddd_f8E
However, it was nixed for two reasons.

First of all, although it's damn good for the first 3D camera any of us had ever programmed, the one in DSM isn't perfect (then again, few cameras are). It has a habit of going through geometry, both of the vine and island variety. Due to this, we added a repulsor to each node of the vine that would push the camera away if it ever got too close; this created an issue with both the over-the-shoulder view, and the vine swipe. Of course, we could turn off the repulsors--that's how we got the over-the-shoulder camera to remain in the game--but if we turned it off for the vine swipe, we ran the risk of having it blunder through whatever object it wanted. Although perhaps tolerable to a certain degree, having the player's suspension of disbelief destroyed at the apex of the experience is less than desirable.

Secondly, for a vine of any considerable length, we found out there were two options: Either the vine swipe would take FOREVER, or the camera would have to move so fast it felt more like a nauseating roller-coaster than nostalgic reminiscence. Also, DSM isn't a terribly long game, as you pointed out. Even if you light every lantern, it takes about 30 minutes at most. Which is our target time, so that's cool. But I digress. The goal is the moon, and we figured that, having just gone through a relatively short game and having the entire experience fresh in their memories, the player wouldn't be super stoked to have to go through it all over again, only this time without any input; they'd rather just revel in the completion of their journey. Finally, the game does include the option to zoom the camera out at any time. I'm pretty sure nothing about it is ever mentioned in-game, which is our bad, and a bug we're in the process of fixing prevents it from working when Aster is standing on the tip of the vine, but you can inspect your vine from afar whenever you want using the mouse. Just, make sure Aster isn't on the vine tip.

So, that's how we got there. I actually just talked to the guy who did the code for the vine swipe, and after listening to your podcast he's considering adding in a shorter vine swipe as per your recommendations.

Also, completely unrelated: Kudos to you guys for paying close enough attention to the music to notice that it changes!! There are four things that cause the music in the game to change. First, every lantern you light dynamically adds to or subtracts from a layer in the song; depending on the order you light them, the game will sound slightly different. The other three points are more obvious--the start of the second 'level', the start of the final push to the moon, and the credits.

Thanks again :D

[Ravenlock]

You know, hearing you talk about the camera issues and thinking about it a bit more, I almost think that a user-controlled free roaming camera enabled when the level is completed would probably be a pretty good middle ground.

Just kick the user into a free-flight cam that allows them to view the structure from any point and angle that they want (within the bounds of your skybox, obviously) and have a "press <whatever> to continue" prompt to let them know that the level is over. That way if they don't want to waste time, they can immediately get to the next level, and if they want to admire their work, they can do so from whatever position they like without you needing to worry about camera tricks.

Less cinematic, certainly, and maybe less atmospheric in some respects, but probably just as satisfying to the vine creator with less hassle for everyone involved.

Just a thought to pass along - I didn't know about the camera zoom, I'll give that a shot and see how it works. :)

EDIT: Having watched that Youtube video, I actually think being able to WASD+mouse control the camera while that credit sequence rolls would be pretty awesome. It would take some tweaking to speed and responsiveness in order to maintain the relaxed feeling of the game, I'm sure, but I'm kind of jazzed about the idea.

[MagGnome]

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to respond to some of our questions/comments on the game, Ian! I really enjoyed reading the behind the scenes perspective that you shared with us. :)

[Ian Eller]

Eric:
That WASD+mouse idea is really cool! Honestly, none of us thought about that. I'm pretty sure the vine swipe code is still in the game, and I don't think that adding in camera controls during that segment would be too difficult. I will pass that idea along 100%.

Jacob:
Any time! I love sharing the DSM story--I'm a whore for the game, I can't lie.
I think all four of the Terraced guys could write a different paperback, from different perspectives, about the design process, to be honest.