Sevenar
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Posts posted by Sevenar
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The point is that everyone has seen an axe and knows what an axe does. There are going to be places in a TWO game where a frustrating puzzle might lead someone to the common conclusion that brute force will succeed where wits have failed. The key to providing an enjoyable game experience is to demand the absolute least amount of disbelief-suspension in interactions with the game environment.
Case in point: Say our heroes are locked in a room and the key lies only within the grasp of a mouse who must be befriended to further the story, or something like that. We don't want the Tin Man to just hack a hole through the wall, but the way the game goes about preventing that makes a big difference in the whole gameplaying experience. You can take the irritating way out--flash a message that says "You can't do that here" when Tin Man tries to use his axe on the wall--but that breaks the immersion. He's there, he has his axe, and he has room to swing it. Denying actions arbitrarily is lazy design. The better solution to the problem is to let the player attempt the easy way out--start hacking--only to find out the wood is so thick that it will take thirty actual minutes of game time in order to cut a hole big enough for them to escape. Both methods accomplish the same goal--force the player to search for the preferred solution instead of the brute-force method--but one keeps you "in the game" while the other reminds you that you're just like a train on a rail--you can't go anywhere the designers don't want you to, even if it's what everyone would do in real life in the same situation.
To sum up, if you have to keep a player in a narrow area, make the fences as invisible to the player as possible.
In my opinion, of course.
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More random thoughts...
-- Puzzles that can be solved by a "pick the right text response" list have been done to death. (cf. Monkey Island series) Keep the player in the dark about what will happen, and it's more enjoyable. Example: Instead of giving the player a list of preset responses when faced with a puzzle branch, only give them a list of ways to respond: instead of a) "I'll help"
"Get lost!" c) "Can I have an apple?" only give the player a list of stances: a) Agreeable Dismissive c) Insulting d) Cowering. The reason this is done is because people rarely ever would say the exact same thing as the character's list of canned responses, but they know how they feel towards the situation and can pick that response. Then they watch the game unfold as the character appears to respond to player command. It's a subtle difference, but it keeps players "inside" the game as much as possible.-- Explain obvious game constraints early. Otherwise, players will complain that the game is "unrealistic" no matter how steeped in fantasy it is. Case in point, the no-killing rule. Players will inevitably want to take the Tin Man and have him go on a bloody axe rampage. So you indulge them--once. You have a cutscene where the Woodsman is confronted with an enemy who could obviously be easily dispatched with a good axe whack. So he steps up and hacks off the bad guy's arm, which falls bloodlessly to the ground. Good guys rejoice--until bad guy picks up arm off ground, applies Magic Glue, sticks it back on, and gets on with menacing our heroes again. Game play resumes but with the axe relegated to tool instead of Dominating Anti-Everything Stick. Perhaps he can chop trees to fence bad guy in, or something similar.
-- What you really need to track these kind of things is a flowcharting program like Visio.
-- Make sure you have agreements in place ahead of time to use the same voice actors as the film.
-- Remember that the world of Oz is surreal and fantastic--let players do physically impossible things to solve problems. Anyone can "find five oilcans, oil Tin Man, have him axe a pathway through the evil hedge maze", so how about things like "use one charge of your magic pencil to draw a door on the wall, allowing you to escape", "go to wizard merchant and buy a Kloo--a hovering question mark which will magically solve your next puzzle before vanishing as an exclamation point", "use shovel on puddle to make Mud Pie Stew, which has all sorts of interesting properties, none of which have anything to do with eating it", and so on...weird is better!
-- Don't just take a game people have played before, slap a new skin on it and call it a new experience. Truly find something that is unique that you can implement in the game. This lack of innovation is what dooms most movie/media tie-in games. "Oh wow! It's a Superman game!" "No, it's basically just Super Mario World using a Superman icon. Thanks for buying a game you already own, though!" Tetris was a very simple game--but it was different and that made it stand out.
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Some random thoughts:
-- The meta-dynamic of fantasy role-play is quite simple: explore, confront, loot. (otherwise known as "Find them, kill them, take their stuff.") No matter how pretty you make it, there are obvious bad guys who have to go, and the incentive for doing so is usually more efficient ways to eliminate the next group. Very simple, so you can spend development time to dress it up quite a bit. This is why fantasy RPGs abound while others (sci-fi/superhero/western, etc.) have more limited, niche markets. Sci-fi usually lacks a believable loot model (i.e., we found them, we killed them, but unless we have a really contrived economy, their stuff doesn't really have any immediate value like a treasure chest full of gold and magic swords.) Superhero games have forced-motivation problems, and so on.
-- The only reason for MMOs is player interaction, of which the majority is combat-related, either cooperative or player vs player. Other tasks are ancillary at best. You can be a resource farmer/service merchant in World of Warcraft, but without the demand generated by the combat side, business will be slow. There's great call for Tailors to make Cloth armor for spellcasters, but little for the decorative shirts they can also create.
-- The Oz universe may make for good stories, but it may not be very adaptable for gaming. Since it's not really set up to be a combat arena, we're pretty much left with the puzzle-type Myst/Zelda games. (Which are fine if you're into that sort of thing, but they typically have very low replayability. That translates into having to make the thing long so people feel like they got their money's worth when they complete it. Too short = rip-off.)
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I use ACID Pro. I like the free VSTs called Crystal (lots of good mood/special effects presets for movie scoring) and Alpha.
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Heck, we're all New Users to one feature or another...
Consider me entered, too.
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If memory serves, you can use VST alongside SoundFonts. Most of the VSTs I've seen are synthesizers, but there are patch-players, too. Never used DXI, so I can't help you there.
If you're going to record while playing back other tracks in realtime, I strongly suggest you use a sound card's ASIO drivers, otherwise, there will probably be unbearable lag. I use my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS ASIO driver in ACID and Vegas, works just fine.
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If you're using a PC, I suggest ACID. Then look for free VST instruments on the net to supplement the loops and synths included.
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If you happen to be in the Astoria/Queens area this Saturday, the Museum of the Moving Image is hosting the 2005 Machinima Festival from 11am to 6pm. Ordinarily, this would have nothing to do with Animation:Master, except that two of my films made the cut this year as Official Selections, and each of them has at least one scene I had to use A:M to complete.
Cheers,
Reece
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I'm not a lawyer, but I've read a bit on the subject over the years. Here's some things you can do to keep the similarities down:
1) Alter the insignia on the uniforms. Give them hats, whatever.
2) Change the names a LOT. Sound-alikes are a bad idea. If you want a "Data" character, call him "Info" or "Diskdrive". Play on the names, too. Parody Picard's hyphenated first name by calling your guy "Jean-Luc-Marc-Mathieu Piccup-Truc" or something similarly blatant.
3) Add crazy stuff to the hull of the starship so that there is no chance it could ever be mistaken for the Enterprise. Lawn chairs, steer horns, maybe even an outhouse. Give it a paint job, too--maybe flames down the sides or neon glow-tubes and spinners. Have it bounce through space on some hydraulic lifters, perhaps.
4) Change the character's voices completely. Make the Captain have a really cheesy French accent. Have the Riker character speak like a pirate all the time--give him an eyepatch and a parrot. "Yarh! I be feelin' like a sandwich!"
5) Do NOT use any of the music. Weird Al Yankovic can write all the parody lyrics he likes, but he still has to get clearance to use the tunes.
Good luck,
Sev
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John, you are the man! Thanks!
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I've been looking for a model of a panda bear for a website project. Anyone have one they'd be willing to let me use? I thought there was one on the A:M disc, but I can't find it, and the old "Panda on Fire" project isn't up on the FTP mirror anymore. (If an actual panda isn't available, a regular bear may be ok, I'll just have to re-texture it.)
Thanks!
Sev
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The IceFields file.
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I'm hoping I can get there for at least one day--to bug the guys at the Hash booth, at least!
D*C 2003 is where I first saw A:M...and bought it.
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Will: Yeah, I realize that the computations involved would make hundreds of individual SimCloth droplets unwieldy at best (nigh-impossible at worst.) Plus, they don't exhibit Blobby behavior like merging together, either.
Oh well. I was just trying to think "outside the box" with the SimCloth thing. Maybe someone with more experience could use the cloth effect for some other unusual application no one else has thought of yet.
The rain looked realistic, but the video was kind of dark on my PC, so I couldn't see any bounce or deflection of the streaks in your example. I'll take your word for it, though.
Regards,
Sev
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Just some ideas off the top of my head (which may or may not work):
--City sections, squares perhaps, with a rotoscope render of the next section on each of the boundaries. Keeps the city in manageable chunks, but the rotoscope/matte painting idea might not produce good results except at the point where the camera made the render.
--Some sort of Level-of-Detail proxy? One model with just decaled-boxes for long range shots and flyovers, one with the full-detail buildings.
--Inhabitants. 'Nuff said.
--Country-specific prop sets. Traffic signs, police uniforms/cars, etc.
--Every road/sidewalk to have a 2 built-in antiparallel paths to constrain a car/pedestrian model to. (so you can have 2-way traffic easier...)
--Royalty-free use.
--maybe a pose-slider wind system for direction and magnitude of wind forces for flags, chimney smoke, etc. (?) (0/100% = north, 25% = east, 50% = south, 75% = west, etc.)
--at least 1 side have a sea/water coast of some sort.
That's all I can think of at the moment...
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One more, with transparent drops...
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And here's the project file for it.
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Here's a slightly better version. I tweaked the shapes of the deflector and the "water" drops.
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Sure, but like I said, it's a five-minute job so don't expect anything miraculous!
Probably need to tweak the Friction params on the SimCloth to make it more real-looking.
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Just a mirror of the Water splashing thread on the main A:M forum, to allow me to post a QuickTime.
This is a really fast and crude demo, but the blue patches are just small 2x2 grids and the cyan objects are spheres with the tops & bottoms truncated (have to do that, otherwise SimCloth tells you it's unsolvable.) Obviously, the model & SimCloth parameters would have to be tweaked to allow the "drops" to deform more naturally, but it looks like the idea of using SimCloth to simulate water might just be doable after all.
Regards,
Sev
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I wonder...if you constrained the nulls for the vanes to the nose of a spaceship, and put some Lag on them, couldn't they be made to turn automatically when you turned the ship?
Just a thought...
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I'll see if I can't find it again. I got it off of either yayap.com or halomods.com, I've forgotten which. Maybe halomaps.com.
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Lazlo: You've got a couple of good starts, you just need some polish. In the juggling story, you need to give Mike some sort of goal that good juggling would help him achieve (win a talent contest, impress a girl, whatever) and stretch out the good side of magic juggling balls a little more. As it stands, he really has no motivation that the audience would know about. If we know why he wants to juggle, and what's in it for him if he succeeds, we feel happy for him when he finally gets the magic balls. Then we squirm with him as we find out they're more trouble than they're worth, and stay focused as he finally finds a way to both get rid of them and reach his goal without them.
There's all sorts of funny stuff you could try to work in. Perhaps he has to hide his juggling from his boss/girlfriend/VIP by standing in a doorway and juggling them one-handed around the corner, perhaps having to bounce them against a wall, which leads him to come up with some fast story to explain away the thump-thump-thump... All sorts of stuff to try.
In the Apartment sketch, there needs to be something minor wrong with the bathroom, too. Just something small to foreshadow bigger problems to come. Perhaps some loose tiles, no medicine cabinet, whatever, it just has to be small and something a person would easily concede if the rest of the deal was good. In a comedy sketch like this, you want to build from minor problems to major ones to keep the audience both laughing and interested to find out "what could go wrong next?"
Keep at it! Sevenar's First Rule of Screenwriting: All first drafts suck. There are no exceptions. It's not being able to write that makes you successful, it's being able to re-write that makes all the difference.
Good luck!
Reece
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I'll take a shot at a couple of them.
Do you mind if I pass this along to some friends outside the A:M Community? I know several amateur voice actors, a couple of whom are actually quite good...but I would understand if you wanted to just "keep it in the family", so to speak.
Humming the Scarecrow song,
Reece
Game Design Drafts
in TWO Game
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That's because VW once gave away iPods to New Beetle owners as a promotional item...