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Community => Adventure Related Talk & Chat => Topic started by: Andail on Wed 21/03/2012 09:29:06

Title: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Andail on Wed 21/03/2012 09:29:06
I’m currently designing a detective game (yes, after nearly a decade of little or no AGS-activity), and have thought a bit about how to implement deductive reasoning in the advancement of the game.

What models have you encountered that you really like?

Usually the player will see/hear the character draw his/her own conclusions based on finding or combining inventory items. This means that even highly “logic-propelled” games can be solved by trial-and-error clicking on stuff, until you’ve stumbled upon the proper trigger to forward the plot.

Puzzles in these games are typically confined to very isolated events (escaping a room) or finding hidden objects, while the reasoning itself takes place through protagonist monologues (“aha, that’s why the butler couldn’t have done it!”) or even entire cut-scenes.

I know some designers have explored a middle way by using notes and memories as inventory items; these items can be combined and examined to yield new clues. But how can I give the task of actually drawing the conclusions entirely to the player?

If the game universe was completely open, like some kind of ultimate GTA-like sandbox model, and every door could be lockpicked, every NPC interrogated, shadowed, threatened and eventually arrested and brought to jail, then all this wouldn’t be an issue. The game would simply end when the culprit was behind bars, and you’d be rewarded for it.
But with a finite number of locations and options, you still need to “steer” the player. How can you unlock a location based solely on the player’s own incentive to visit it? How can you give the player the opportunity to suspect a character, without telling him explicitly that the character in question is suspicious?

How can you give the player the opportunity to say “but Alice would never have tasted the poisoned T-bone steak, because Alice is a vegan!” without using memories or notes as inventory items (which could hypothetically be tried by just clicking around randomly)?
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: CaptainD on Wed 21/03/2012 10:06:06
It's a very good question.  Unfortunately at the moment, I'm not entirely sure what the answer is.  In KOTOR there was a section where you had to uncover the answer to a certain thing (think it was on Tatooine?) but I'm not sure that method would work for a full-length game.

The only way I've really seen done, which more or less works, is by for instance dialogue options coming up only when you have found the relevant clue.

For instance:

Q: How was Alice poisoned?
Possibility: She ate a T-bone steak with poison on it
?? other options

When you click on one without evidence:

"I don't have anything to back that up" etc

When you've found out that Alice is a vegan:

"That can't be right since Alice was a vegan"

Obviously that doesn't completely eliminate the trial and error element.  Without having free text input that could somehow be interpreted, I don't know how you could achieve what you're aiming for.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: HandsFree on Wed 21/03/2012 10:36:47
This was handled very effectively in Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper.
A bit hard to explain how it worked in detail but they used a deduction board and a timeline that you could manipulate.
Check the images on mobygames for instance (they don't allow linking I believe), or better check the game itself. :)
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Anian on Wed 21/03/2012 11:49:27
The Barn runner Bake sale game seemed to have a pretty tangled "who dunnit" plot...though I don't really like it when I have to have 10 pages of notes to keep up with what's going on, I'd like it more if there was some GUI that I can control and make notes (or a version of notes).

Quote from: Andail on Wed 21/03/2012 09:29:06Usually the player will see/hear the character draw his/her own conclusions based on finding or combining inventory items. This means that even highly “logic-propelled” games can be solved by trial-and-error clicking on stuff, until you’ve stumbled upon the proper trigger to forward the plot.
That's not really true, I mean even if you use a basic combo of WHO, WEAPON (or let's say HOW but somehow designed to be more interesting and less obvious) and TIME (or lack of alibi) and you put that in combo with say 5 suspects, 5 weapons and 5 times of day - that's kind of a lot to just guess, isn't it?

I'm really leaning more to traditional game solutions.
Giving the player freedom to make conclusions, requires you to give tools - timeline that can be marked (or is marked when and info is obtained). Also something like all suspects get a sheet with info you gather, in one or few sentences per info. And you mark the timeline yourself if there's some extra info.
Then a tool to inspect the body and clues (again just 4-5 would probably give enough complexity to make the guessing tedious), this of course depends on the technology that will be available depending on the plot setting.
Then you connect different information that can give you an animated insight (or just a few lines of text explaining the conclusion, it is still the player making the decision but they get rewarded for it. Of course you have to be carefull that the player figures out or knows something but cannot achieve a conclusion in game. That kills the imersion pretty quickly and adds frustration.

And also what CD mentioned, conversation opens up when you have new info or evidence.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: miguel on Wed 21/03/2012 12:12:05
Hi Andail, I've been reading a lot on the internet about writing for adventure games, there are even blogs and forums about it although they are more RPG oriented.

I liked the way Diskworld Noir allowed the notes you'd write on the notepad to be used on characters. GK3 used icons instead of notes that would be available or not depending on what the player knew about the plot.

In my opinion, the worst option is having 10 dialogue options like :1) What do you think about John Doe? 2) What do you think about Ronald Doe? 3) What do you think... and so on... I get really frustrated having to go all the options because I'll do it in a sequence and that means that for the next 10 minutes or so I'll be reading a lot of text and not exploring the game.

For what I've been reading, it all goes on the quality of the writing, if it's well done almost any way of doing it - works! Using NPC to work with the main player and feed him knowledge about puzzle situations is the most common way that game makers use.

So, for me:

a) relevant notes (notepad) that can be used with NPC's,objects, other notes;
b) team-work between the player and a friend(s) NPC;
c) do not put the player having to read 10 pieces of dialogue straight! Sometimes it even happens that you're given the chance to ask something about a character that you haven't really met yet;
d) the plot and quality of writing is 90% of a adventure game;

This said I also believe that the Detective Genre is the best suited for adventure games, and because I can't write a good interesting plot is the reason I don't try to make one myself on a more serious approach.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Victor6 on Wed 21/03/2012 12:19:20
Quote from: Andail on Wed 21/03/2012 09:29:06
Usually the player will see/hear the character draw his/her own conclusions based on finding or combining inventory items. This means that even highly “logic-propelled” games can be solved by trial-and-error clicking on stuff, until you’ve stumbled upon the proper trigger to forward the plot.

How about letting the player screw up? That'll cut down on the trail and error. You don't have to make it fatal, but allowing the player to combine two pieces of contradictory evidence in order to support their personal 'hunch' removes the classic adventure game safety net ('can't do that' 'I don't think this will work' 'I shouldn't do this now').

This forces the player to think, or waste hours of their time.

Of course, in order to be fair you'd need to let the player break up the combinations again, so they can start from scratch.

Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Andail on Wed 21/03/2012 12:21:10
I'm also not very fond of notes and memories and stuff, mainly because it's been used so much, and also because  it doesn't really feel intuitively right to me that the game should make notes for the player. I mean, either the player finds the information interesting, and notes it, or he doesn't, and forgets about it.
If the player isn't prepared to commit to that sort of mental labour, there are plenty of other game types :)
One option is an in-game note-writing function, like you say Anian, that the player is in control of.

Apart from this, I'm not really into a brand new game system or GUI, I'm rather into finding story-elements, situations and puzzles that rely on the player to solve, using their own intellect.

While the Sherlock Holmes game looks innovative and clever, it's not at all what I want for my own game. The problem is I guess I don't really know what I want :)
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: miguel on Wed 21/03/2012 12:39:32
I know what you're saying here, but the player's possible thought about a certain situation has to be programmed before.

Let's say you have the following note on Alice's (she's one of your suspects):
  Alice said she went to Tony's Pizza on Tuesday;

On John Carpenter notes you have:
  John Carpenter heard a discussion between Alice and a waiter, she was upset that the sauce tasted like meat;

You could use JC note on Alice's note to conclude that she is a vegan.

That is some kind of detective work, right? I can't see it done in any other way.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Snarky on Wed 21/03/2012 12:59:03
A return to game making, eh? Very cool. Good luck!

I mentioned this some time ago as an idea I had, where you use (imaginary) staged recreations of the crime as the game mechanic to make use of the clues you've found. So at various points in the game you'll be challenged to re-enact the crime, and you'll flash back and step into the shoes of the killer (represented, in my mind, as an unidentifiable shadow). You'll have to use the evidence you've gathered to prove what happened (e.g. scratches around a keyhole to show that a lock was picked). Or a snippet of testimony can be used to show e.g. that a window was actually open, not closed as is being assumed (so in the flashback, 'use testimony on window' would open the window).

It still relies on having most clues as inventory items in some form (though you can use dialog mazes to challenge the player on their understanding of things from time to time, like in Phoenix Wright), but I think it makes it a bit more dynamic. I think the Phoenix Wright games in general are a good example of how to represent detection and deduction in adventure games, though of course they use a very specific system.

It's always a question how much to make the act of deduction explicit in the gameplay, and how much to let it happen in the player's mind, and just have the character's actions reflect the conclusions of those deductions. The Vacuum is a great example of the latter, where you don't have to do anything in the game to indicate who you suspect of being a killer, you just keep it in mind as you play and as you decide who to tell what, and whether to hand someone a gun. But if the mystery is quite complex, I think you do need to represent the steps of logic within the game (either have the player perform them, or have the character explain them), because otherwise players might get completely lost so that nothing makes sense any more.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Khris on Wed 21/03/2012 13:02:30
This a really difficult topic. One problem I see right from the start is that if you pulled it off, only an actual Sherlock Holmes could solve it :)
Breaking it down, Sherlock has to gain knowledge in some way. The only question is, does the game keep track of that knowledge or does it accumulate exclusively in the player?

One idea I had was that there's less of a puzzle tree and more of a huge map of clues. Finding them increases confidence that suspect X or Y is the culprit.
At the end, allow the player to accuse anybody, but only show the good ending if they managed to accuse the actual culprit with >90% confidence or something.
Specifically, the player is supposed to take notes, and the confidence values are stored internally, not being displayed.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Anian on Wed 21/03/2012 13:58:32
Quote from: Khris on Wed 21/03/2012 13:02:30
This a really difficult topic. One problem I see right from the start is that if you pulled it off, only an actual Sherlock Holmes could solve it :)
Breaking it down, Sherlock has to gain knowledge in some way. The only question is, does the game keep track of that knowledge or does it accumulate exclusively in the player?
That is the problem, if you give the player complete choice of which notes to take or not and which conclusions you can make you get a complete open gameplay that you have no control of pace or the story really. The other thing is the player is lost and if a complete opus of info is not available, they'll feel uninformed and not sure if they have everything to solve a crime.

That's where the whole you are "insert famous detective name here" superpowers come in - whatever you put as part of the GUI is what makes the detective awesome, you limit the player so you can guide them, but also because you cannot really put everything in the game. Making things easier for the player is not lowering the difficulty, it's using a gameplay issue to make them believe they're a better detective.
Maybe a good parallel would be 2d fighting games, like Street Fighter or similar - you don't really make the player learn exactly how to lift a foot, get energy from or whatever, they learn how a button does something so a skill/move that someone must learn their whole life gets done - so in a detective game with a detective that solved a couple of cases before, somethings get concluded, and those things are not available to the player in real life (or most players).
Making the game difficult in spite of the help you give out, that's a challenge. I'm just saying that basically handicaping a player (especially when you want them to think they're Batman, Sherlock Holmes etc.) in order to keep the game from being too easy, is wrong.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Sane Co. on Wed 21/03/2012 14:16:00
On a totally unrelated topic, although it has to do with the beginning post.
I find that, in most detective games, what you say to the character doesn't influence your relationship with them. So I could say something totally negative, they'd be angry for a moment, and then they'd be their old selves again. Also in some detective games you're allowed to ask a question only once, or in a few others again and again and again. Laying off what I said earlier, you should allow the player to ask the question as many times as he wants, but the more he asks the question, the more irritated the witness becomes.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Vince Twelve on Wed 21/03/2012 15:56:03
Great topic, Andail!  After five years of futzing with such a system, I'm intimately familiar with the shortcomings of the "game records memories, player draws conclusions from those memories" format of mystery solving.  I do plenty of this in my game, where at times you have to realize that you need to bring up a certain memory in dialog.  I also have a lot of Phoenix Wright-inspired moments where the player is directly asked to figure out which memory connects x to y, like what Snarky was talking about.

A few ways I've found to improve this system:
-Make memories that aren't relevant to puzzles.  They also serve as a "the story so far" to remind players what's going on in the plot.  Granted this only serves to increase the number of memories that need to be randomly tried when the player is stuck.
-Obfuscate important information within the memories.  In my game you can click a memory to watch or replay the event surrounding the memory.  The memory might summarize an important part of the game, but have an important detail hidden in the background or in a seemingly innocent comment by a character.
-Punish the player for random choosing.  I actually don't do a lot of that, but you might be able to find a way to do so.
-Make every item in the game a potential memory.  That makes random combinations of everything in the game much harder!

However, I think what you're talking about, making the player demonstrate that he has made a mental connection or figured out a clue by just acting out that suspicion (by going to and searching a suspicious characters' home, or by slapping the cuffs on a person who you know to be lying about their alibi) is much more compelling from a gameplay standpoint.  Just take out all interface-driven mental work (or have an open note-taking system of some sort, but don't make this into a game-play element) and instead put extra work into broadening the number of ways the player can interact with the game world. 

Of course, giving the game the depth needed to make this work is a tall order.  And the tallest of the tall orders is getting dialog working in a way that doesn't telegraph answers to the player by having a small set of dialog options displayed to the player.  The Short-term memory system in Resonance where you can take any item in the game world, make it a short-term memory, and then use that in dialog with any character would help with this a lot.  In fact, I've realized that this system would have worked a lot better in a more intimate crime-scene investigation game rather than in an epic adventure.

I do agree with the notion that such a system takes away the designer's control over pacing and plot.  Having a system where the player can act out their suspicions could lead to a very short case for the observant player.  Such a game would be great if it could randomly generate cases, though!
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Ilyich on Wed 21/03/2012 16:00:37
One of the problems with making the players 'think for themselves' in games is that while in real life there is a single universal set of rules that every human being is more or less familiar with, every game has it's own inner logic. And figuring out how each particular game works is an additional challange. You're not only interacting with the enviroments, but with the designer of the game. So it's sometimes necessary to push the player in the right direction and hold his hand - not to make the game easier, but for the player and the designer to be on the same wavelength.

I have no idea how to implement deductive reasoning without the use of notes or keywords, but to make the player think for himself more, you have to give him some freedom within the game. Here are some of the ways to do it:

- Text input - googling, searching through phonebooks [for the address of the hotel from where the matchbox comes from] or even answering questions like "Who is the murderer?" is a nice way to make the player pay more attention and maybe even write notes. It also makes trial-and-error a bit tougher.

- Non-linearity, choices and time limit (The Last Express did that quite interestingly) - for example, after inspecting a crimescene you have to make a choice - going to the house of suspect A or suspect B. If you've made the right decision you'll get some additional clues. This obviously requires a lot more work and can lead to dead-end situations, though.

- Allowing to pick up useless items. I remember collecting a full inventory of mugs and plates in the beginning of "Dreamweb". I think it was a very interesting, although slightly crazy, approach, especially given the bad case of kleptomania that every point-n-click gamer suffers from.  :D But that way you have to decide for yourself what's useful and what's not, what is a clue, and what is just a red herring. It's a bit extreme, but can be a fun gimmick for a small game. :)

I love Snarky's idea of reenacting the crime - it's pretty unconventional and as such will force you to think at least slightly differently to the usual "What do I use on what?" scheme.

Also, some RPGs made good use of trials (I think Neverwinter Nights 2 had a great courtroom sequence), which rely on long strings of arguments and the fact that you have only one attempt to prove that someone's guilty or not.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Narushima on Wed 21/03/2012 16:38:13
To me what has worked the best is one of the old Tex Murphy games. You'd go around talking to people, noting things down to make connections and then you'd go and ask somebody else about something you had noted.
That way it was really all about your reasoning power and it felt quite rewarding when you finally got something right and could confront somebody with solid evidence.

So giving the player thr opportunity to input any text seems to me like a good idea. To test that you could always play some text adventures (or interactive fiction, as some call it), which are all about that. Make it Good (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=jdrbw1htq4ah8q57) is very good, for example.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Darth Mandarb on Wed 21/03/2012 17:03:09
One of the things I miss about games from back in the day was they were freakin' hard!!

Games today seem to practically walk you through them.

I was, a few years back, working on a murder/mystery game (on a train) set in the late 1940s.  I gave the player a notepad and pencil and it was up to them to take their own notes to solve the murder.  I didn't hold their hand at all.  They had to draw their own conclusions, discover objects/clues, take their own notes, follow their own gut.

This mechanic works very well until you get to interacting with NPCs.   Because there's just no way for the player to just "say whatever" and have the computer reply to it (well there is, but I didn't feel like programming the AI for it!).

So I solved that by using this method: There were countless items scattered through-out the train; some were clues, some were objects that could you make use of, and some were just fluff added in to give the game more substance.  If the player character picked up something that was flagged as a "clue" it would then be added to the "talking points" (but they'd have no idea it was a clue flag, that was invisible to the player).

For example; if you talked to the conductor but hadn't interacted in any way with the wrench on the floor, you don't have any questions about the wrench in the dialog tree.  However, if you notice the wrench (look at, pick up, etc. basically you just need to "notice" it in some way), and then talk to the conductor, you will be able to ask about it.  (this has been done before I'm sure)

It makes the game incredibly difficult, yes.  But that's what I was going for.  No "hints" or anything like that.  I loved the concept/idea that you could play for an hour and have accomplished nothing if you didn't pay attention and make an effort to actually use your brain.

I also added in an invisible "friendship" meter to all characters you will interact with and based on how you treat them it may help/hurt you later in the game.  For example if you treat Mr. Smith rudely, later on he won't be so willing to help you (but some characters respond differently, some might see politeness as weakness, etc). 

I also made the murder victim, culprit and weapon different every time you play to make the game VERY replay-able. 

I digress... :)
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Yoke 2.0 on Wed 21/03/2012 17:33:18
I've given this some thought in connection with other projects and my favourite solution so far is "the logic train".
The player has several pieces of evidence, a person and a goal (this does not have to be the whodunnit. it could be a smaller goal) Then the player needs to arrange a chain of information tidbits to form a chain from the person to the goal. If achieved that chain will become a new object that can be used in new chains.

I don't have a problem with "spoon feeding" the important pieces of information to the player, but if you want to make that even more interactive without the player actually resorting to pen and paper I think it's hard to get away from a transcript of sorts. This will enable the player to go back andreview previous conversations and discover clues that might not have seemed important at first. If you add an "HTML" function to the transcript where each sentence is a link that you can "bookmark" you will certainly get a bigger challenge for the player.

However making a single sentence a link will impose new limitations as it requires the characters to give information more or less outright instead of letting it bleed through in a more subtle way.

It's more of a question of what limitations you can live with and how much writing and programming you are willing to do.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Snarky on Wed 21/03/2012 18:07:38
miguel said he thinks the detective genre is the best suited for adventure games. I wonder about that.

If we're thinking about the classic "whodunit" mysteries (police procedurals and other, more psychological/sociological sub-genres are a bit different), I think the big hook is the surprising revelation of the killer (or whatever type of criminal is being chased); that moment of insight when you suddenly see everything differently. It isn't (always) quite a twist ending, but it has a lot of the same appeal. This stuff is like crack for our brains, it's the same principle psychologists invoke to explain why we find jokes funny.

The flipside is that if you see the revelation coming, the experience is kind of underwhelming. That's not to say that you should never be able to guess the solution (it wouldn't be an interesting challenge if you have no chance of seeing through the author's misdirection; it'd just become an arbitrary flip-a-coin-to-pick-the-killer moment), but if you do it should also come in a flash of insight, not as the long-foreseen outcome of a steadily building pile of evidence. And once you know, the story is essentially over; it's just a matter of wrapping up all the loose ends as efficiently as possible.

That works in books and film because of the separation between the detective and the audience. In a classic mystery, where a genius detective cracks the case, we never have access to the sleuth's thoughts about the investigation, because then the reveal wouldn't come as a surprise.

But if you're playing an adventure game where you are the detective, you'll generally work out the solution at the same pace as the character (and when either of you falls behind, the effect is usually frustrating). So either the whole case has to rest on a single "a-ha!" clue (which is hard to engineer and may make the rest of the game seem pointless), or you'll work it out gradually and not get that sweet, sweet eureka moment.

What I think is the real secret to the success of the Phoenix Wright games isn't the clever game mechanic, the comedy or any of that. It's that the cases have a pretty deep structure, with several twists to be unraveled, each one (mostly) non-obvious enough to give you one of those revelatory jolts when the pieces fall into place. Gemini Rue, the Blackwell games, and I - would guess - most other successful detective mystery adventures do this to some extent as well.

So to sum up a long post: adventure game mysteries have to be structured a bit differently than in books or films, to account for the player's active involvement in the investigation and solution. Relying on one "big question" to drive the story may not work, because player's actually have to solve it, but  still have to be surprised for the thing to be any fun. A series of smaller mysteries that each function as a puzzle (i.e. you have to make one particular mental connection) is more promising, and the challenge is to weave them together in such a way as to create a coherent story and overall case.

Quote from: Darth Mandarb on Wed 21/03/2012 17:03:09
I also made the murder victim, culprit and weapon different every time you play to make the game VERY replay-able. 

I have a hard time seeing how you'd avoid the whole thing becoming arbitrary this way. As outlined above, I think the appeal of solving the mystery is realizing "Of course that's how it has to be! It couldn't have been any other way. It all makes sense now!" If you're designing the game so that any solution could be the right one, how do you make it seem like the actual solution is the only one possible? (I realize you change the clues and details a bit depending on the randomly chosen configuration, but story-wise most of it has to be outcome-independent, right?)
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Ryan Timothy B on Wed 21/03/2012 18:50:01
AGS isn't exactly robust enough for something this complex. Don't get me wrong, it can be done, it's just not as elegant. You'd have to create a struct for each character in the game that addresses all the possible clues, hints, current knowledge etc. Then with a universal struct for common things that are shared with every character, like stress, mood, etc.

Then depending on the hints and such that you can gather from looking at a photograph, or a doorknob, etc. you may need to make individual structs for each of those as well.

I would definitely prefer to tackle a game like this with C# style scripting instead of AGS script. But doing so would require writing all your own functions that AGS already takes care of for you.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: RickJ on Wed 21/03/2012 22:18:08
Wow, what an interesting discussion and many great ideas.

Snarky's idea about enactment sounds really interesting.  I guess it would all be taking place in th PC's mind so the reenactment world would only be composed of elements he experienced or investigated in the real world. 

I thought about making a Fact Based Dialog system a couple of years ago.  It's has come things in common to ideas mentioned by Darth, Khris, and Vince.   The basic idea is that each character has a collection of knowledge represented by one or more "facts".  The player can't ask about things which he doesn't know about.   For example if the coroner hasn't determined that the murder weapon was a knife the the PC can't ask a suspect if he owns a knife.  So until the coroner tells the PC "it was a knife" then the PC doesn't know to ask about it.   This is very much like what Darth describes.

I also thought of having confidence levels as Khris describes where each fact could have a confidence level of +/- 100%.   This could be used to trigger events or enable actions in the game world. The player wouldn't necessarily see this value but could possibly be made aware of it through comments of other characters such  as "Are you sure about that?" or "... sounds like you can take that to the bank!).

It would also be possible for NPC's to exchange facts via dialog (either on or off screen).  So when the NPC asks an informant about a knife the first time he might not know anything.  Now the informant knows about a knife and so could ask around about it.  When asked about it later in the game he may have new information.   

I imagined that it would be possible to instruct two characters to have a conversation about a specific topic or a random topic.  Options could be selected randomly or by keyword and facts would be exchanged.  Having this capability would allow the game world to operate in a sort of autonomous or chaotic fashion where it wouldn't be predetermined which facts the characters would have or what they would talk about at any given time. 

It would be also be possible to tell NPC's falsehoods or disinformation that they could share with other NPCs  would would share or react to.   For example PC could tell informant "Put the word out on the street that the police know where the knife is hidden...".  When the killer finds this out he goes to retrieve the knife.  If the PC is following the right suspect he will be led to the weapon.   
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens on Wed 21/03/2012 23:13:50
Well, I haven't read anything beyond Andail's initial post, but here are some things I think are cool in some of the games I've played.

In the otherwise odious adventure game Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, there were a few cool deductive sequences where you found a location by following visual clues.  In the two traditional 2d Sherlock Holmes adventures (which were great), you had a functioning chemistry set you would use at key points to study gathered evidence by, for example, using acid to erode some rust blotting out a name or a chemical mixture to reveal the hidden words in a letter.

Another thing I REALLY LIKED was the corpse investigation sequence in LA Noire.  While it wasn't as robust as I would like, and while the conclusions were largely made for you once you 'revealed' the information, I think it's a great step forward for immersion.  Instead of the character automatically interpreting the evidence, I'd rather you were allowed to do so via some kind of interactive response system that allowed you to piece clues or ideas together to form answers (kind of like the notebook in Blackwell Legacy).

I'd like to say the interrogations in LA Noire were likewise rewarding but they tended to be random and unbalanced and often relied on luck or spending an experience point just to get over with.  I'd prefer interrogations that let you work with your clues more dynamically without having sudden negative results.

The ability to closely examine and dismantle certain things coupled with the ability to combine and refine your own thoughts in a notebook-style interface would make for a pretty engaging investigative experience.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: miguel on Thu 22/03/2012 00:14:49
This is really a good topic, looks like everybody thought about this at least once since started to use AGS or other game engine.

Do you guys remember the game Captain Blood? The way the player could talk to aliens through a set of icons that meant something? I remember being hard but really rewarding. It was like learning a new language. I can see all that we've been talking about done through a similar system, where you would build sentences and thoughts in a sequence by arranging icons that could be ideas, places, objects... Any ideas on this?
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Victor6 on Thu 22/03/2012 00:26:05
Quote from: miguel on Thu 22/03/2012 00:14:49
Do you guys remember the game Captain Blood? The way the player could talk to aliens through a set of icons that meant something? I remember being hard but really rewarding. It was like learning a new language. I can see all that we've been talking about done through a similar system, where you would build sentences and thoughts in a sequence by arranging icons that could be ideas, places, objects... Any ideas on this?

Not strictly an idea, but something that's worth a look;- The auto translators used by some MMO's \ Online games. Yes, the text versions are generally awful, and a massive troll magnet, however I think PSO used icon based communication with custom arrangements to get around the multilingual user base, and lack of console keyboards.

Same concept, only the 'aliens' are just on the other side of the planet.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Ali on Thu 22/03/2012 00:28:37
Along similar lines is the unfinished but stunning game Rorschach (http://www.collectingsmiles.com/rorschach/) in which the player's only inventory is 3 clue slots which can be filled up and used on different characters in conversations. Rather like Resonance's Short Term Memory, I imagine, and very effective.

I should also say, I'm a huge fan of notebooks in Discworld Noir and the Blackwell Games. With the 'Azile' puzzle in Noir I worked out the mystery, then had to get Lewton to work it out. I loved that because it was so unlike solving mysteries in other character-based adventures.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Ryan Timothy B on Thu 22/03/2012 03:32:49
QuoteRather like Resonance's Short Term Memory
I agree with Vince that his idea for the short term memory would have been much better suited with a detective game. But I dislike the limitations with his current system (not that I've played the game, just watched the videos). Looking at a broken door should automatically add the memory, then when you are talking to a repair man or something you can ask him about the broken door.

I shouldn't just be able to grab random items like a chair and such and drag it into the short term memory. At least that is how it looked on a few of the videos, perhaps I'm wrong and it automatically gets added to the long term? I do like the idea of being in control of what you add to your memory, but it leads to walking back and fourth going "damn, I forgot to add that broken door to my short term memory".

A little hand holding by automatically adding things that are or possibly are important to the case into your memory system would be the best solution, otherwise you're running back and forth to go back to the murder investigation to add the odd shaped blood pattern into your short term memory so you can compare it with something that belongs to the accused.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens on Thu 22/03/2012 03:56:43
Having it automatically add all relevant points of interest would take away 100% of the challenge of investigating.  Then you'd literally have spoilers in your ltm/stm inventory that you'd randomly use on people constantly until it worked, like a ring of keys and a locked door.  Either that or so much clutter that you can't make sense of anything.

No, this is not good.

Vince's method is the most sensible one because it relies on the player to choose what is a point of interest or a topic for conversation and then store it (like the image of a dead body, for instance).  While the game technically allows you to memorize virtually everything in a room, most of these items understandably are going to give replies like 'That doesn't sound important/useful' when discussed, but it's there for people who are obsessed with the potential of every detail. 
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Ryan Timothy B on Thu 22/03/2012 04:09:48
That's the difference between a casual detective game and a game that requires you to be completely alert and intelligent and terribly patient. Or persistent by going back and forth and adding every item to your memory until you find the right memory.

For a detective game it wouldn't clutter your memory. They are clues that become larger clues. Or clues that have no lead at all and become removed when you discover they have no connection to anything (how that's done, I'm not sure yet).

When you see the odd shaped blood pattern, it adds the memory. Then when you look at the man's gym bag with a red stained bottom, it does not add that in your memory; otherwise the player would automatically know the gym bag is important. The only way you can make the connection is to drag the blood stain memory onto the gym bag and voila, the blood stained gym bag is added into your memory. In following you lose the odd shaped blood stain because it isn't relevant anymore now that you know the connection.

If I see a stab wound on the dead body, I shouldn't have to drag that into my memory. I of course know as the player that a stab wound needs to be investigated to find out who has a knife. Not having me walk around and realize once I see a man with a knife that I actually needed to drag that stab wound into my memory or I can't talk to him.

Edit: I actually remember being stuck in Blackwell Legacy a few times with having the clues right there in my notebook. There were a few times that I didn't know which clue to combine on what, or which to ask about. Having the clues automatically added don't actually solve the puzzles for you. You need to make many connections that slowly lead you to the full picture.

Now I have no issue with being able to add things that don't appear to have any relation to the case/problem into your memory, but into a different miscellaneous category. For instance, you need to get into the victims safe. The combination is in his office. Three sport shirts hanging on the wall with different numbers on them. That's the combination. Now it automatically adding that to your memory would definitely give the clue away, since it isn't obvious that it's a clue.

But in an instance like that, would you even need to add them into your memory? Depends if the safe is automatically opened when you drag the shirts onto it OR if you have to manually turn the knob instead.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: miguel on Thu 22/03/2012 11:46:08
The difference I see is not it being a casual game or a more "serious" one. The difference is in what clever coding is there.
What if you see the gym bag first? Does the player gets that into his STM? Wouldn't the player be allowed to ask about it to the owner? Is the player never allowed to see the bag first? What "freedom" is given to the player?

We are all talking about a system here that can deal with all the objects/thoughts/suspects/locations in a way that would "feel" the least linear as possible.
There are two approaches, 1, you let the player collect all the evidence in a room (even if its a chair like someone mentioned) and therefore is able to combine them and create thoughts and ultimately deductions. This approach feels fair to me.
2, you carefully choose what the player is able to collect, you lead the player, sometimes even mislead the player for narrative sake, but the obvious skill is to trick the player into thinking he's in charge.

Both can work but the first one seems more fair to the player.   
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Ali on Thu 22/03/2012 12:15:43
Quote from: Ryan Timothy on Thu 22/03/2012 04:09:48
If I see a stab wound on the dead body, I shouldn't have to drag that into my memory. I of course know as the player that a stab wound needs to be investigated to find out who has a knife. Not having me walk around and realize once I see a man with a knife that I actually needed to drag that stab wound into my memory or I can't talk to him.

Surely that's what the distinction between Short Term and Long Term Memory is for in Resonance? Not having played it, I can't say how well it's implemented. But I do think that you should be able to drag a nondescript chair into your memory, because in a mystery or detective story you never know what seemingly innocent objects may hold clues.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Anian on Thu 22/03/2012 12:27:56
Quote from: ProgZmax on Thu 22/03/2012 03:56:43
Having it automatically add all relevant points of interest would take away 100% of the challenge of investigating.  Then you'd literally have spoilers in your ltm/stm inventory that you'd randomly use on people constantly until it worked, like a ring of keys and a locked door.  Either that or so much clutter that you can't make sense of anything.

No, this is not good.

Vince's method is the most sensible one because it relies on the player to choose what is a point of interest or a topic for conversation and then store it (like the image of a dead body, for instance).  While the game technically allows you to memorize virtually everything in a room, most of these items understandably are going to give replies like 'That doesn't sound important/useful' when discussed, but it's there for people who are obsessed with the potential of every detail. 
Well actually, guessing by every combination may be true in usual puzzles, but in a detective game (the part of solving a crime, not some puzzles to widen the gameplay) it's not really like that. Automatically connecting information snippets to some degree won't make it that much easier if you have a lot of combinations. Let's say you need to also solve a crime that has multiple steps (they usually have) like getting poison, getting alibi that turns out to be false etc. - it's a lot of informations that need to be directed to the player in some form of another.

I do agree that the memory gameplay Vince uses seems interesting and would fit in a detective game, maybe add in Blackwell notes system combinations, a timeline set up that you can mark up (to help the player out and make it more of a game then writing on paper) and also a semi clue gathering system with a basic forensic kit or analysis (maybe also a coroner NPC to give some extra info). And then you have a nice combo of things. Actually might be easier to make the memory system and the combining clues all notes, with the amount of stuff you can analyze (I really don't know how they solved that in Resonance without a lot of work or limitations.
...that might be rather hard to fit in a game though.

What I do know is that regardless of how interesting something might be, I really hate to read (and especially if I have to stare at it and reread it a lot) on screen, especially in a game. I think it also shows lack of imagination in the design of gameplay.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Ryan Timothy B on Thu 22/03/2012 13:54:55
Perhaps a memory system as Resonance has is the completely wrong approach then. If the 'room' was the crime scene and you need to interrogate someone about an object in the room. Maybe being able to pull up the whole room, similar to Resonance style, would be best?

If the dresser hasn't been examined yet, the room snapshot shows the dresser as a black and white blur. Because you haven't examined it enough to remember it. Etc.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Yoke 2.0 on Thu 22/03/2012 17:12:47
In a modern (official police) setting the crime technicians would go through the room and supply you with a list of interesting finds. With a rogue investigator or Sherlock Holmes, who are their own CSI, you would have to relate to the fact that you can't investigate every single item due to time and due to the fact that you might not even get access to them without breaking in.
So either you outsource the work of determining which items are interesting and wich are filler, or you have to justify what items you want to look closer at.
If you want the game to be really, really, REALLY hard I guess you could have the possibility of investigating everything but having to relate to time units of some kind.

Based on the assumption that it's a detective ADVENTURE game and not a puzzle game:
- You have an inventory where everything you have seen and heard are added automatically.
- You have to combine two, three or more items to get to a theory. With enough items in each combination it will be near impossible to solve it by trying random combinations. And as I mentioned earlier these theories could go on to be building blocks in constructing new theories.

I also like the idea of reenactment as a central point of solving a case. Maybe as a screen where each time you reach a theory that pertains to the case, that action is added to the screen. That way you will have a visual clue as to what information you have and what information you are missing.

Dang... I want to make this game now...  :=
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Vince Twelve on Thu 22/03/2012 17:24:52
I will freely admit that a drawback of Resonance's system is that once you realize that something is important, like meeting a locksmith and then realizing that he could help you with that locked door (note: this does NOT happen in Resonance), you sometimes have to travel through a couple screens to go get that door, add it to your short-term memory, and then walk back to the locksmith and use it on him.  (In practice, though, you're never that far from the map screen which takes you anywhere in the game, so it's not a long backtrack.)

However, the alternative is having those items automatically pop up in your notebook/inventory, thus letting you know that it's important before you know why it's important.  This also makes choosing all the possibilities (brute forcing the solution) much easier.  You've already got your collection of important clues, you just have to guess which one applies to your current situation, or try all of them until you get it.

A better system of handling might be having some way of the player remembering all the places he's been and being able to choose any item from those places at any time without backtracking to them.  Like a photo album of all the room backgrounds you've seen, allowing you to choose any hotspot within those rooms as a topic of conversation with any character.  Same effect as Resonance, without the backtracking.  But a potentially overwhelming interface as you flip through all the places you've been.

Also, Snarky, why haven't you made that game yet?! :)
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Ryan Timothy B on Thu 22/03/2012 17:53:09
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Thu 22/03/2012 17:24:52
A better system of handling might be having some way of the player remembering all the places he's been and being able to choose any item from those places at any time without backtracking to them.  Like a photo album of all the room backgrounds you've seen, allowing you to choose any hotspot within those rooms as a topic of conversation with any character.  Same effect as Resonance, without the backtracking.  But a potentially overwhelming interface as you flip through all the places you've been.

Just as I wrote above but worded much much nicer.   :=

Also I would like to think this method would be much easier to implement than the short term memory. You wouldn't need an icon for every object/hotspot in the room. It would draw the room and the objects in them as a smaller snapshot of the room. Only having blurry and grayed out images for the stuff that you haven't actually examined yourself yet (which can even be scripting by drawing it offset at a light opacity to create the blur - or just pre render it). Since how do you ask someone about something you haven't examined yet.

Like a poster that shows a hint. Or a safe that you have yet to know if it's even locked. Then once it's opened, the photo of that room would show an opened safe. That way you can drag the opened safe to someone for new clues.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens on Thu 22/03/2012 20:27:57
QuoteWhat I do know is that regardless of how interesting something might be, I really hate to read (and especially if I have to stare at it and reread it a lot) on screen, especially in a game. I think it also shows lack of imagination in the design of gameplay.

Are you actually saying that you hate reading?  You hate journal entries, descriptions, short in-game books, that sort of thing?


Quote
However, the alternative is having those items automatically pop up in your notebook/inventory, thus letting you know that it's important before you know why it's important.  This also makes choosing all the possibilities (brute forcing the solution) much easier.  You've already got your collection of important clues, you just have to guess which one applies to your current situation, or try all of them until you get it.

And this is why I stand by manually gathering what you as a player consider to be important clues to be the most human, the most realistic, method of play.  As the investigator you're not supplied with a perfect list of everything unless you have other people doing your work FOR you (and is that any fun?) and you are also not supplied with perfect understanding of what has happened, so perhaps you will collect something as a clue which seems valuable but is a red herring, forcing you to revisit the crime scene and dig deeper or visit the evidence locker at the station and re-examine the evidence from a new angle.  This is real detective work.  

It seems to me like some of you would prefer to be handheld like so many modern gamers so there's no chance of slip-ups, mistakes, backtracking or delays, like you'd rather play 'Andail's Detective Story: The Movie Videogame' instead of 'Andail's Detective Story:  The Adventure Game' where everything is streamlined to the point that everything flows at breakneak cinematic pace with nothing left to chance.

Frankly, I find games like that to be a waste of my resources and this is precisely why I revisit older adventure games rather than buy many new ones.  I cannot stand being hand-held and coddled through a game I paid for.  Don't misunderstand, I also despise deliberately convoluted and obtrusive gameplay elements but, if faced with a choice between the two, I will always side with a more challenging game that relies on my wits to solve it than a game that does everything but wipe your bottom.

To summarize:  clue gathering should be a manual process for an investigative game.  It should take some time and energy from the player, but reward them for that time and energy with insights, backstory, further clues, and so on.  A notebook, in-game computer, or other means of storing clues for correlation should be included, as well as a kit (where applicable) for studying hard evidence, whether it's using your computer to analyze voice patterns, thumbprints, or pull up criminal records and case files or the means to process certain evidence with reasonable realism and accuracy (like a portable lab kit the hero keeps in a suitcase in their car).  These more portable devices limit the delays and nagging sensation of constantly backtracking to the player's home/place of work for thorough lab testing while still requiring it on occasion for items that cannot be reasonably studied (like actually processing bloodwork/hair/skin samples for dna).  These major 'visits' to the home/police station/whatever could be conducted as an 'end of day' event where the current data is gathered and sent in to be processed.  Meanwhile, this frees up the player to use their personal toolkit during the course of the day to do most of the light lifting while the evidence begins to provide the player with clues to work with.  One could always include an option for the player's boss/partner/confidant/(or the player themselves) to offer some cryptic but helpful clues once they begin processing the evidence and clues if they've somehow stumbled onto the wrong track or missed something entirely at a crime scene.  Worst case scenario, a difficulty level could determine whether or not other investigators catch clues you miss and pass them on to you as the game progresses.  This to me would be a sensible and strong approach to an investigative type game that rewards insight and study while limiting a lot of senseless backtracking.



Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Snarky on Thu 22/03/2012 22:21:32
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Thu 22/03/2012 17:24:52
I will freely admit that a drawback of Resonance's system is that once you realize that something is important, like meeting a locksmith and then realizing that he could help you with that locked door (note: this does NOT happen in Resonance), you sometimes have to travel through a couple screens to go get that door, add it to your short-term memory, and then walk back to the locksmith and use it on him.  (In practice, though, you're never that far from the map screen which takes you anywhere in the game, so it's not a long backtrack.)

The only point at which I thought it was tedious (in the part of the game I played) was when controlling multiple characters, needed a certain STM as well as a LTM only one of them had, and had to have them work together to enter the screen to pick up the STM. (I'm sure you know the bit I mean.) That took quite a bit of back-and-forth just to be able to mention something I knew I wanted to say.

QuoteAlso, Snarky, why haven't you made that game yet?! :)

Because it would take effort. [yawn smiley not found]
Also, it turns out to be pretty hard to come up with a good, twisty and non-obvious locked room murder mystery. OSD is more my level.

ProgZmax, yes, an adventure game should generally feature mental challenges of some kind, but they don't have to be realistic representations of all the things that would actually be difficult about that situation if it happened. It's OK to have a game where you play a spaceship captain but don't have to compute trajectories and fuel consumption, analyze sensor signals etc., and it's OK to have a game where you play a detective but don't have to go through every step of a real investigation.

And unlike real life, in a game there should always be a solution, you should always have a chance of finding it, and there should always be hints about how to do it. Because the important thing about games is that they are fun, and real life isn't always fun (even if you are a detective or an astronaut).

That doesn't mean the game can't be difficult. There are other (and, I would argue, more creative) ways to make things difficult than force you to do everything manually and explicitly make every little decision yourself. Ultimately, the difficulty is determined by the tasks it does involve, not all the tasks it doesn't involve.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens on Thu 22/03/2012 22:51:23
I think my last paragraph pretty much said that.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Snarky on Thu 22/03/2012 23:25:12
Really? You don't think what you said was more... the opposite?

Quote from: ProgZmax on Thu 22/03/2012 20:27:57
clue gathering should be a manual process for an investigative game.  It should take some time and energy from the player, but reward them for that time and energy with insights, backstory, further clues, and so on.  A notebook, in-game computer, or other means of storing clues for correlation should be included, as well as a kit (where applicable) for studying hard evidence, whether it's using your computer to analyze voice patterns, thumbprints, or pull up criminal records and case files or the means to process certain evidence with reasonable realism and accuracy (like a portable lab kit the hero keeps in a suitcase in their car).

Quote from: Snarky on Thu 22/03/2012 22:21:32
There are other (and, I would argue, more creative) ways to make things difficult than force you to do everything manually and explicitly make every little decision yourself. Ultimately, the difficulty is determined by the tasks it does involve, not all the tasks it doesn't involve.

You seem to be saying that the only good detective adventure game is something that offers a reasonably realistic simulation of a real investigation.

I'm saying that a game is a game, it doesn't have to represent all aspects of reality (the Indiana Jones games are really crappy archeology-simulators), and what matters is the gameplay it does include, not all the things the game designer could have had you do but decided not to make part of the game. LA Noire and Apollo Justice make you read the body language of suspects/witnesses during interrogation/cross-examination. Does that mean all other detective adventures need to do the same? WHY NOT? It's an important part of investigating, isn't it?

Having to manually filter relevant evidence from all the irrelevant information is the same. Yes, it's something investigators have to do. Yes, you can make it part of the gameplay. But you don't have to.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: SSH on Fri 23/03/2012 04:14:34
Of course, you could take the Cluedo approach and let the objects one finds be eliminatory, and only once you have eliminated everyone else can you know who the murderer (and weapon, place if you like :) ) is. Now, the key thing with Cluedo games in real life is that if you want to win, you need to calculate second-hand what clues OTHER people are seeing. Now, if you could work out a way to do something similar in a single-player game, it woudl start to get interesting. I think there was an adventure-ish game version of Cluedo that did the first part, actually.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Dave Gilbert on Fri 23/03/2012 12:53:28
The main issue I've faced with systems like this is that often the player will come to the right conclusions before the character will, and then get very annoyed with the character. If, say, you know that Jenny could not have eaten that steak because she is a vegan, you can't just go up to Jenny and confront her with it. No, you have to go jump through a hoop (or in the case of Blackwell, use the "Jenny" clue with the "vegan" clue) so your character can come to that conclusion as well, and THEN you can confront her with it.

The first two Blackwell games suffered from this problem a lot, and is something you once complained about yourself, Andail.  "Painful", I think you called it. :)  I think I eased the problem in Deception by creating "clue combining" puzzles that could never be solved any other way. Say, your current case involves a pet shop. You don't know which one, but you've got a list of all the pet shops in the city. Then you uncover a set of initials.  Use the "pet shops" clue with the "initials" clue and you cross reference them, finding a pet shop that matches that set of initials. The player would never have found the name of the pet shop without using that system, so it becomes a help rather than a hindrance.  

I'm sure there are other ways to improve this, but this seems to be the proper direction. At least for Blackwell.
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Anian on Fri 23/03/2012 13:25:08
Quote from: ProgZmax on Thu 22/03/2012 20:27:57
QuoteWhat I do know is that regardless of how interesting something might be, I really hate to read (and especially if I have to stare at it and reread it a lot) on screen, especially in a game. I think it also shows lack of imagination in the design of gameplay.
Are you actually saying that you hate reading?  You hate journal entries, descriptions, short in-game books, that sort of thing?
Heh, I accidentally left out "on screen". I don't hate reading in general, just the staring at the screen/monitor/lcd to read.

But again, I disagree with you to some extent, gameplay has changed a lot in recent times, and yes most of it is streamlined very severely (especially AAA FPSs), but AGS games are usually less demanding on graphics for example and offer to make some kind of middle ground, where the game is not hard because interface is fidgety but because the design is put that way. I wouldn't call stuff like backtracking something that was a good idea to make the game harder. When a side scroller starts you of with 2 lives instead of say 3, I wouldn't say that it's more fun, yes it is probably more challenging, but in an adventure game for example, it'd make things annoying really quickly.

I don't mind being stumped by a puzzle, I do however hate some old design rules that just make interacting with the game world harder than it needs to be. Now you might prefer that because you're used to it, but I think it breaks the immersion more than a finely streamlined gameplay would.

@Gilbert: actually I only got that situation once or twice as well while playing Blackwell games (can't remember which episodes), the rest of it seemed to be ok though, but that's just showing that balance is hard to find (maybe even impossible).
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Andail on Fri 23/03/2012 13:54:27
Thanks a lot for all your valuable input!

Quote from: Dave Gilbert on Fri 23/03/2012 12:53:28

The first two Blackwell games suffered from this problem a lot, and is something you once complained about yourself, Andail.  "Painful", I think you called it. :)  

Ha ha, yeah I remember that :) It was a clever little mystery, but it was painful because the protagonist could not express what you as a player had already realized, until she had combined the proper clues. It's one thing if you don't play an intellectual character, but when she's a detective you don't want to feel dumbed down.

The ambition expressed in this thread can be summarised to:
1. The player should not be able to advance the game without understanding it.
2. If the player understands the game, he shouldn't have to wait for the protagonist to catch up.

But I guess it's not really possible to provide a perfectly player-driven gameplay without implementing a) special tools, like the deduction board in Sherlock Holmes, b) some sort of text parser, or c) have all locations and objects turn into notes or memories (which can then be combined near-infinitely).  Being a fan of simplistic controls, I'm not sure I'm in favour of either of those.

I even have hopes of releasing this on phones or pads in the future, and want a very simple GUI. Otherwise I was actually considering having a supporter character, like a Watson or something, with whom you could discuss the case as you progress. The discussion topics would be typed in via a text parser by the player, and "Watson" would ask you what kind of conclusion you would draw from certain facts and circumstances.
However, I'm scrapping parsers now, and also my game doesn't really have room for a side-kick...
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: miguel on Fri 23/03/2012 15:13:04
Why not replace text input for icons?
This is what I have in mind:

Room: a room that has objects (some are clues) and NPC;

Phase One: exploring: the player will examine objects and/or the NPC looking for clues, every item that he examines will be stored has an icon; this way having the object or not isn't important because the player has the knowledge of it; if the player is actually on a "action" room then he'll need some physical key (example) but will have figure it out;

Phase Two: dialogue: the player can talk with the NPC and use the icons he found on the exploring phase; the conversation output should deliver more icons that represent locations, different characters or objects; the player then gains the knowledge of some new evidence for example;

Phase Three: Conclusion: a sort of inventory where the player can mix icons and draw some more conclusions (icons);

Eliminating items that were sorted out has obsolete would make the icon count manageable;

On Phase Two: the dialogue would allow the player some basic start-ups like an icon representing a generic location, so that he could start with the location icon and then add the key icon: he'll be asking if the NPC knows or knew where the key is/was or any story driven importance of the objects being discussed;

I know it can be done with text input but some people may prefer icons (me).

Any thoughts on this?  
Title: Re: On detective games; how to let the players draw conclusions
Post by: Ali on Fri 23/03/2012 15:21:25
For me, icons would only work in a very evidence/forensic based scenario. For a character/dialogue-based mystery it would be very difficult. I can't imagine how ideas like 'Jenny's veganism' could be represented effectively as icons.