I downloaded The Adventures of Fatman at Underdogs and was overjoyed to discover that the audio commentary was actually in the game file rather than the audio pack (I suppose because the speech file only contains audio for dialog that is also written). Anyway, I listened to it all yesterday and really enjoyed it, even more than I enjoyed the game itself.
Anyway, for a long time I've been thinking of adding a similar feature to my game Shadowplay, as an option available after finishing the game (the game writes to a file in the game dir upon completion and then checks for it at startup to decide whether or not to show the "special features" option in the startup menu). I'm imagining something that is not just a "production commentary" like that on a dvd but more like "interactive footnotes". Theres a huge amount of fact in Shadowplay and just as much fiction, and I want to somehow educate the player in which is which - where the ideas came from, what's actually true and what is not, and what all the little references are hinting at. If you read Alan Moore's From Hell, you'll know how many pages of notes he had at the end, documenting his sources and revealing the liberties he took with historical events. This is more or less what I want to do - except it's in a game, not a book.
I've had a lot of ideas for how it could be done. The easiest option was to do a digital book available in the special features menu, where the story was broken down, either in acts or into topics. But I'd rather have something that ran parallel to playing the game. I feel that an "audio commentary" (more likely text-only) for each room lacks focus - especially in a game where all rooms are re-used throughout the entire story. But then I started thinking about this old educational game from Sierra - Pepper's Adventures in Time. It had this very cool "Truth" icon that you could click on all the objects, and the game would tell you if a character or a background element was based on fact, if it was fiction, or perhaps anachronistic.
This is the way I'm currently going. A special "footnote"-icon that unlocks during a second playthrough. Obviously not everything will be commented on, but this fits in with my "intelligent hotspot" feature (more on that another time) where the cursor only lights up if the task needs to be performed to proceed in the game. Obviously, when the footnote-cursor is selected, it lights up on all hotspots that have commentary attached to them.
I'm very happy with this concept. This leaves one problem though. How to comment on dialog and on cutscenes? Should I add comments in parentheses to each dialog line, which are displayed only if commentary is turned on? That IS a solution, but it's not very pretty. Any ideas?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on these things. Does anyone have a better solution to the whole commentary/footnote feature than those presented here? Would you even bother reading the commentary if YOU were playing the game? Tell me what you think.
Hm, I don't know.
I haven't heard the audio commentary in AOF, but I doubt I'm going to replay a whole game just to educate myself.
I love getting new information from games, though, but I feel that it should be done in a less artificial manner - that is, the information should come to me through playing, and the best option is that I'd need this information to finish the game.
Myself, I just added a simple .txt file "Donna trivia:contains spoilers" in which I dwell upon several things based on factual events, etc. (Much like Dave did in "Bestowers" folder) I think it's up to the player to read it after finishing the game and go and find more information on some subjects elsewhere.
Awakening interest in getting some knowledge is more important than providing this knowledge, in my opinion.
I suppose it's just me then. I can't get enough of the behind-the-scenes stuff.
You are of course right that the information should come through playing. And obviously you'll learn a LOT just by playing the game. But for plot reasons there's a good blend of fact and fiction. I wanted the annotations to clear up any confusion about what's factual (I guess very few people actually believe that King Ludwig was a werewolf, but there are gray areas where you just bend the truth a little to fit your story).
I agree that some kind of txt or html document would probably be the most simple solution, but I'd also like to award the player somehow for completing the game, so I might do it as text displayed within the game engine. Of course that would leave a problem with linking to external websites, but still, I feel that this information should be something you unlock by playing. Just like the production sketches in the CSI game.
i agree with the Gothic Garage. Or maybe the Gold Mund confuses me.
How can a developer tell the player background information about a game or the story behind the production of a game while the player is playing?
i haven't seen the Fatman commentary but when i heard about it i wanted to kick Mike in the face cause it was an awesome idea that i wish i thought of first!
in case no one knows about it, MillsJRoss rereleased Ace Quest with commentary through a new gui that you can pop up and read about the scene.
Also a good idea.
I love learning about what happened behind the scenes and learning about what went on behind the scenes of things my friends have done in the AGS community is even better. I get to see how they tackled problems or developed an idea.
Hey, Erikk, didn't want to cause any more confusion in your poor psyche...
I just concentrated on the issue of "interesting facts", like GK historical references - they were all (most of them) a part of the gameplay, which I think is the best idea, whereas the players could pursue the tropes that interested them on their own. As for the "behind the scenes" info - well, personally I just cannot imagine one having something interesting to say about each room of a large game - maybe because I haven't heard the AOF commentary.
Probably each one has its own view on how GarageGothic's idea could work... I am imagining how "additional" info would serve in my game (either during gameplay or for a second passage) and how it could emerge people more... However, for the technical side, I am not sure what could be the best way to do it... I know this is not the tech forum, but making such code "public domain" would be nice...
And sorry for being so off-topic, but I couldn't resist:
Goldmund! Quit the forums for a while and get on finishing Donna! Now!!!! :)
Man, I love commentaries. I eat those things up like popcorn. I'm extremely glad to hear the Underdogs Fatman still has the behind the scenes stuff, and I'd love to see more commentaries on other people's games. But yeah, I hope you'd also be talking about the design process rather than just pointing out what's fact and what's fiction.
Commentaries were the reason I bought a DVD player, once of the reasons I own 600+ DVDs, and one of the main reasons I want to play Adventures of Fatman so bad.
I just finished downloading it (From eMule, so I have the entire CD), now just to get the sound to work...
also, i really want to make a little movie of different parts of the creation process
if anyone's seen the Liam Lynch DVD to Fake Songs it would be something like that only more kitties and more technical explination and more nudity
Ok, so apparently people are interested in the making-of stuff but not the annotations I had in mind. At least that saves me a lot of time, not having to keep track of where I found all the info. And I was going to do the behind-the-scenes thing anyway, with commentary and production art.
I think the current idea (the Pepper's Adventures in Time rip-off) will work very well for this, because it allows me to comment on characters, hidden references in the background and such on a per-hotspot basis rather than commenting the whole room.
Hey hey hey! Don't get so easily influenced, maybe those who weren't interested might get interested and even fascinated if you do it in some amazingly good way! Remember that it's a new idea (footnotes) and maybe we have to get taste of it before actually judging...
and i was confused anyways
but now i get you, i'd be interested in reading a text that went deeper into your story, i was just confused when you likened it to Fatman
Is the audio commentary for Fatman on the CD version?