Hi. How can we make a special atmosphere for the player so...player would know that he''s sitting near his computer & playing this game...but all his thoughts & emotions will be in the game, he will feel the game world... I think that the first thing is a non-stoping levels (well...no levels at all - the game will be a 1 great level) 2. A beautiful game physics (the player must feel the world) that lets him control almost all his movements... 3. Music & sound... How can we make this all looking good (each of them)? Nail [Nail Studio]

1, Hard to do but see Half Life as a good example,
2, See Halo (drool)
3, See Half Life again? :-)

As Mr Cup always says,
''I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.''

quote: Original post by Nail

Hi.
How can we make a special atmosphere for the player so...player would know that he''s sitting near his computer & playing this game...but all his thoughts & emotions will be in the game, he will feel the game world...
I think that the first thing is a non-stoping levels (well...no levels at all - the game will be a 1 great level)
2. A beautiful game physics (the player must feel the world) that lets him control almost all his movements...
3. Music & sound...
How can we make this all looking good (each of them)?

Nail [Nail Studio]

Hi Nail,
Man could you ask a more difficult question?

A bunch of us have been playing Diablo II... and I have to say that a good portion of the time I do feel immersed in the game. The action is fast and from level to level of the dungeon there are surprises... and I love it. I haven''t been bit by the D2 bug like I was with the original Diablo ( I played around 72 hours straight

Music and sound make up a large part of this immerse affect. Using D2 again... When you slay a monster they each have a sound effect associated with them, the treasure that they drop has unique sounds as well. An example is when you kill a monster that is holding a ring, when you slay the monster the ring drops to the ground making a distinct sound.... to me that is immersion... I''m not listening to the dog bark across the street or to the click of the mouse button... I''m listening to the sounds of the game... my eyes are fixed on the screen (in fear of missing my health drop to 0)...

To me game play outweighs the graphics (D2''s graphics engine is somewhat dated, by today’s standards). The game play is what immerses players. I always go back to Zork.
Zork was totally immersive…. A few of my friends and I would sit around the old C=64 taking turns typing and mapping the world that we were in. The was text based, zero graphics and yet, we played it for hours on end… the game play is what brought us in…




Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

To say the truth, I havn''t played Diablo (1 or 2), but now... after such an impressive words...
So...
I think that you told a great thing about Zork.
I''ve played such a game (MUD - if u know)
It''s a good idea - how can they make these games interesting without any sound and graphics? May be - the thing is in the network cooperations (btw - if it is so - then we can value the priority of a good AI in the games)

When i was fist playing Q1 - single player i had been in a game (about 30% only . But - playing Q2 multiplayer made me look to the monitor for hours. While playing the same with bots i did have an equal expirience.

What concerns MUSIC - any suggestions? Do u think that music is needed in the games at all - i think that sometimes it can disturb u. At other hand it is very hard to make a music that everybody likes.



Nail [Nail Studio]

Hmmm.... a couple things I think.

To capture a player''s thoughts? You need one of two things. Gripping story or gripping action. Or perhaps a combination of the two. This is the easy part. Most good games do this well.

To capture a player''s emotions? You need a lot of things.
1) NPCs (or other "P"Cs) that you care about (difficult to do in FPS, RTS, or the like)
2) Good music
3) An even more gripping story, one that draws a player in (via NPCs?) and holds them there, toying with their every emotion.

That''s hard. Few games have ever done that to me. No FPS has accomplished that, AFAIK.

Of course, all of this has to be presented well, in such a manner that the player suspends disbelief and accepts the world which you have presented him/her. I think Diablo II does this really well, as mentionned above.

So, first you have to get them to enter the world that you give them, and then you have to keep them there. If you can do that, you should have a sucessful game.

I think that to achieve this, you need to have a wide variety of different NPC''s that may appeal to the PC. Then record how often they visit each NPC and how often they actually talk and whatever. See what they talk about and stuff like that. Then, do somehting EVIL! Take that NPC away from the PC somehow! Then the PC is really going to be peeved!

Maybe you could take an NPC that the PC doesn''t like away, and get another NPC that the PC doesnt like to ask them to go and rescue them. See if the PC does it. I expect that this experiment would be void, as linearity in games tends to MAKE PC''s go and do the quest. Hmm.. But anyway, after you have results from that, get the NPC that the PC DOES Like to ask them to do it. See how quickly it gets done then! I think that this would be a nice experiment, provided that the PC is informed that the test ground is Non-linear and they are not required to do anything. Give them an initial option of helping the dis-liked NPC or doing something slightly better/more fun.

I am beginning to Rant, so I shall leave it there


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

dwarfsoft, that idea ROCKS.I''ll have a database that''ll record how often an NPC is visited, and if it reaches a certain value something mean will happen, and the player will have to help the NPC.And even if he saves the NPC, at some point there''ll be a possibility of the NPC getting killed (say, at visits >100) by some bad guy...hehehe.But of course this will only happen with one or two NPCs, not all ! And definetly not the ones that are *essential* to the game.It''ll be the kind of NPCs that are very useful, though (like a trainer/mentor).Hehehehe...

Error #78FU : No mouse driver installed.Click left mouse button to continue...

That is a point about seeing WHY they are going to the NPC, but I think you can put it down to these things: Make sure they are not going there to get any items or to do anything other than talk. In the Diabloish environments, count the gossips. Have some NPC''s tell you that others are bitching about you, that way the PC will NOT like them.

Have the NPC that they like (most likely of the opposite sex ) give the player compliments and get them to start taking an interest in the PC. If you have flirting between PC->NPC the PC is obviously going to keep coming back to see what will happen.

Now about that *essential* NPC thing... In my game there is NO one specific essential NPC, because the game is based about action and reaction, one less NPC makes the story go off at a tangent. Non-linearity would definitely tie in with this idea.

Just thinking though, maybe you could put the player in a situation and at a point where they KNOW they are going to die, a party of NPC''s comes in and saves them. That would definitely get them friendly with the band .

When I was talking about frequency visits, I was not talking about like in Diablo II where you go to Charsi to repair or to Ormus for a heal, I was talking about when the PC is Seeing what the NPC has to say. With the conversation system that we are trying to come up with (over at NPCAI) you could see how many questions the PC asked and what kind of things the PC and NPC say to each other. This way you would also be able to tell if they were being sarcastic or whatever (we are talking about a predefined structure in sentence construction, so ambiguities would just have to be avoided by the PC... We''re programmers, we have a RIGHT to be lazy ). You could simply make a count of certain subjects that have been conversed about, then you could narrow that down to >100 talks about "Idle Chit-chat" and woohay!

Enough of a rant for me now


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)