One 'problem' I have with adventure games is that the enviroment somehow doesn't always seem alive:
There are few characters to interact with even if the game takes place in a big city or country. Characters stay at one location for the duration of the game, and traffic is non-existent.
One of the games I first realized this was true was the first Monkey Island game. Melee Island is so empty. But there where in game explanations, so it was explained. Still, it didn't feel alive to me. (I still loved the game, so it wasn't that big of a problem).
You could ofcourse introduce far more characters to the game, but adventure gamers have learned that every character in a game must have something useful to attribute, so you must talk to them all. ::)
If you have multiple characters who don't have anything useful to say, and just some who do, the player might get frustrated, and how can the player know which characters do have something useful to say.
So basically my question is, how can you make the world of an adventure game more 'alive' without making it boring/frustrating while doing it?
To make non-alive things alive one would need a decent amount of electricity. Watch classical educational movie, Frankenstein if you need some help.
- Make characters walk around the screen a bit
- Just place characters you can't have a discussion with, but just say one random sentence of text ("Sometimes I dream about cheese") It won't interfere with gameplay.
- Don't draw things all clean. Cities have junk lieing everywhere, which can really add to the atmosphere, or the feeling of a busy area.
- Have an animated background ie. the wind blowing through something, traffic driving and people walking out of reach.
- Ambient background sound. A city will seem much more alive if you can hear cars driving around, dogs barking, etc.
The downtown area in Space Quest V is probably a good example of all this.
Sound effects! Plus there's many options in AGS to do nifty things with them nowadays. Also ambient sound effects, don't forget to check out those kind of functions. Good sounds effects really help imo. They can give a good sense of much more happening.
But I will stick to my guns; The day someone makes an adventure game with an uncountable number of NPC's should win an award. I too dislike empty adventure game cities. But thats just me ;)
I wrote an article about atmosphere in adventure games a long time ago. Here it is:
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Creating (a believable) atmosphere in adventure games can be a very hard thing to do sometimes. But there are some key things that can boost the atmopshere in your game, and once you know them, they are easy to apply.
Each item is labeled with a number and a plus. E.g. "+5"
+1 (min) Means that this will help the game a little.
+5 (max) means that this will improve the game ALOT.
1: Animated Backgrounds +2
Lots of places in real life are not still life. Trees wave in the wind, lights flicker on and off, doors open and close, and some things are shiny. Having a blank slate of a background can be okay in most places, but making it animated can make it awesome.
E.g. trees blowing, grass moving, water rushing, dirt blowing, lights flickering, fans moving, etc.
2: Animated Objects +2
Self-Explanatory. Interacting with objects in the world, and then having then animate, makes the world seem so much more alive.
E.g. Doors opening/closing, cabinets opening/closing, turning on machines, turning on lights, using computers, using tvs, picking up phones, etc.
3: Animated Characters
3-1: Actions +3
All player actions should be animated. The animations don't have to be a smooth 10 frame animation. They can be simple, but having 1 frame is 10x better than nothing, and have 2 frames is twice as good as one frame. And having 3 frames will make it seem very smooth and believable.
E.g. The character animates for: picking up items, reaching up high, reaching down low, falling down, sitting, opening objects, using objects, etc.
3-2: Speaking +4
People don't just open and close their mouths while speaking to each other; they make gestures. People cross their arms, kick the ground, wave their hands, shrug their shoulders, or put their hands in their pockets.
3-3: Idle +2
People do not just stand idlely on the side of a path waiting for you to trade an object with them. As funny as it may sound, PEOPLE DO THINGS. Nobody stands around doing nothing unless they have a specific reason. But if you can think up a reason for why someone is standing there doing nothing, then that's good, and you're all set.
But you have to make the character animated, no matter where he's standing. NOBODY just stands or sits somewhere and stares straight all day, unless they have a serious problem. People turn their heads, change their postures, move their legs, and other stuff.
4: Sound Ambience +3
Unless the location the player is in literally has dead silence, you need to have some kind of background noise. For city scenes you can have crowd noises. For outdoor scenes you could have the wind blowing or animal noises. For ocean scenes you can have the waves hitting the rocks or sliding up onshore. For indoor scenes you could have the sound of machinery humming or something.
5: Sound Actions +2
Every individual action the player can preform should have some kind of sound. The sound can be loud or subtle, but opening doors, picking up objects, walking around, using computers, etc. should all produce a sound effect.
6: Music +5
In my experience, the difference between a good game, and the difference between an unforgettable game is most often times the music. Great music can stick with the player forever, and improve the atmosphere ALOT. Don't underestimate the use of music in a game.
7: Writing +4
The things people say, or the things people do can be the base for the whole atmosphere. If a serious game suddenly breaks the 4th wall, the atmosphere can be destroyed. If characters do things or say things that are totally ridiculous (and usually the author doesn't know it), then the atmosphere can be destroyed.
The level of seriousness/funniness should be maintained in a game, and kept consistent, otherwise the player will lose his sense of disbelief.
Atmosphere in games comes down to 3 things:
GRAPHICS: Animations, characters, objects, backgrounds
AUDIO: Sound effects, ambience, music
WRITING: Story, dialogue, etc.
Either of the items/sub-items can improve the atmosphere in their own way, or on the contrary, destroy it.
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While I agree that music is important, I wouldn't rate music +5. Animated backgrounds and idle actions, yes, they'd deserve between +4/+5. Music is a great vehicle for atmosphere, but I wouldn't say that it makes a game more alive. Music is "outside" the game, it doesn't belong to the game world, while action animations are "inside" the world.
Music is a stylistic device.
Only this morning I was chased by an angry doberman, and no soundtrack appeared out of nowhere to make this chase a more dramatic thing.
Quote from: Ghost on Tue 27/11/2007 19:48:26
Only this morning I was chased by an angry doberman, and no soundtrack appeared out of nowhere to make this chase a more dramatic thing.
Yes, but while being chassed I bet you had more than 100 sfx playing at the same time. Wind (different every sec), car horns, tyres, the dog barks, your feet, etc. Try implimenting that in a game! Damn difficult. Music is there to cover up for all those things that can't be done in every single screen/level.
This was one of the things I really liked about KotoR. The streets were bustling with people, but talking to a random citizen didn't yield much besides some generic response.
It's a good compromise between empty streets and leaving the player with too many choices.
(The best in fact, IMO.)
The technical side isn't that hard either. Something similar to the Virtual theatre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Theatre) engine should be perfectly possible with AGS.
One could even generate random characters, using a few sets of clothing and heads, putting it together using RawDraw & ViewFrame.
Btw, I believe that's exactly what they did in Monkey I; the variety of pirates was made of only a few parts.
Quote from: Nikolas on Tue 27/11/2007 22:30:46
Yes, but while being chassed I bet you had more than 100 sfx playing at the same time. Wind (different every sec), car horns, tyres, the dog barks, your feet, etc. Try implimenting that in a game! Damn difficult. Music is there to cover up for all those things that can't be done in every single screen/level.
You're right there... I did not want to downplay the role of music. But still it is a feature that somehow sits outside the game's world. It enhanced the GAME. It doesn't make the game itself more alive. I find it a bit hard to put words around it... But for quite a while adventure games *had* no sound and still managed to come over quite "alive", with people milling around in the background, with little details like falling leaves. All that adds to the game's WORLD. Music is chosen by the designer to provide additional mood and atmosphere, YES, but it's not really part of the WORLD. Because a world doesn't have a soundtrack. (Sometimes I wish it had. I can *so* imagine to catch a train at the very last second accompanied by that superb solo from The Jellice Ball...)
I like good music in a game, and I'd be among the first to admit that I'd rate a game higher if it has a good soundtrack. But I understood the original question was on the lines of how to add "life" to the game's world, not the game itself.
Quote from: KhrisMUC on Tue 27/11/2007 22:36:32
This was one of the things I really liked about KotoR. The streets were bustling with people, but talking to a random citizen didn't yield much besides some generic response.
It's a good compromise between empty streets and leaving the player with too many choices.
I liked that too, except I would've rather had the people doing something besides just walking or standing still in a stiff action-figure pose. Or maybe I just needed to wait 4 more years and play something like Assassin's Creed (which I have not played, by the way).
To me, music can make or break a game. Case in point, Pleurgburg. Imagine that game without music. That's what I had to do before I got my own set of speakers. And it was difficult keep playing. Yes music is outside the game, but if done right, it plays on your emotions, making you feels what the character feels. And if you feel empathy towards the character, then the whole experience feels more alive. Or at least that's how I felt. I think we had a virtual theatre type game in AGS, wasn't "warthogs" like that?. Personally I didn't like it. A character in a novel or other un-interactive media is as much a product of his environment as his own inner character. Besides, it makes plotting harder to understand. One of the great adventure game plot devices, is when you have visited, a character many times, and then they turn up somewhere else. Of course a reasonable explanation is needed, but if done right, it adds tension.
I kind of disagree with the music too. If I had in front of me a static forest background with a music, or a forest background where a river flows, leaves are blown by the wind, clouds move in the sky, where the river, wind, birds and bees can be heard but without music, this would certainly looks more lively than a static room with music. Music is good to vehiculate emotions, but sound is better to simulate life. Spooky music or complete silence with mysterious footsteps and creepy cracking noises in an haunted mansion?
It somehow reminds me of Knytt, which combined both, entering a new environment would trigger a short music to immediately put you in the environment's mood then the music would fade and the water, echo, wind and drops would do their job.
Back on the main subject, pedestrians could walk in the streets, but if we push that idea further, one could create a system similar to Grand Theft Auto where time keep going on, nights and days cycle, so does weather but the activities you can do in the game remain the same most of the time. As long puzzles and important characters remain accessibles 99% of the time, an adventure game could take place in an urban or populated area where every 2 minutes spend make the clock advances by 1 hour. Parked cars cycles as the clock progress. Stores could close at precise hours, characters you met somewhere could be seen at work, shopping, relaxing in a bar or called on the phone at different moments of the day. Each day could have a different weather, generating different reactions from the pedestrians. Headlines on newspapers and TV stations could change too.
Pushed to the extreme, this idea could be extended to seasons as well. Let's say every 30 days a new season begins, there would have a 5 days gradual transition, trees would gradually lose their leaves for autumn, water would freeze, snow would slowly stack on the ground for winter and melt for spring, flowers would bloom for summer, snow and wind would replace the rain, fog and thunderstorms. Clothes, characters' and animals' activities would changes according to the seasons. On certain days there could be festivities, with decorations appearing in the trees and windows... It would be insanely difficult to implement, but even for a 1-5 rooms game, it would make a pretty unique gaming experience.
In fact, even without the 2 minutes = 1 hour cycle, with such care on the little details, a game spreading over several days or seasons would certainly look alive.
Examples of games that did a good job to seems alive:
Knytt and Knytt Stories (Animals and critters stroll around, leaves are blown in the wind, emphasis is put on sound effects rather than music)
Gold Rush (people leave their houses and walk around the streets minding their own business, carts rolls in the streets)
Yahtzee's cancelled Poseidon 12 (24 hours cycle, people can be seen in different part of the station as the hours cycle)
And of course it's impossible to forget Quest For Glory 2 (night and day cycle, people walk down the alleys minding their own business, store closes at night, the player is greet by merchants when he walks close to them, every days has its own activities and events associated to it...)
I don't mind if you really do prefer vivid sound effects or whatever to music, but I think the theoretical explanation of music being "outside the game" is BS. Pixel art isn't real. 3D graphics isn't real either. And as much as you want to believe that the "forest" sounds in a game or radio play are naturalistic, sound designers don't really give a damn about how things really sound, only about how you expect them to sound--so the forest sounds are the sounds of an imaginary sound-forest simulation, not the sounds of a real forest. No matter how hard you wish you could avoid it, everything we do when making a film, a radio play, a novel, or a game, is artificial, not real. And trying to mimick reality down to the last detail is not necessarily the most effective way of crafting the illusion of reality or relevance.
I can't help but loving the environments where there's actually presence insted of the usual. I remember playing the Big Red Adventure which until this day is one of the best games I've played, and it had this scene of the red square filled with random people as one character called the mob or something, all lined up to enter a museum or such. So inspired by that I designed my own marketsquare of Kinsasha full of people divided into 2 non-player characters, one of which had at least 15 poeople as its image. I think it brings the game alive to see everyone there, even if there's no real interaction. And seriously, after the game is done, it's not that hard to draw one or two more people, just standing and talking or walking around. Them talking to each other might be a nice addition or might even give the player something to laugh at, if it was funny. Here's what I think is the most important thing for lively games, really.
Quote from: Blueskirt on Wed 28/11/2007 02:55:06
As long puzzles and important characters remain accessibles 99% of the time, an adventure game could take place in an urban or populated area where every 2 minutes spend make the clock advances by 1 hour. Parked cars cycles as the clock progress. Stores could close at precise hours, characters you met somewhere could be seen at work, shopping, relaxing in a bar or called on the phone at different moments of the day. Each day could have a different weather, generating different reactions from the pedestrians. Headlines on newspapers and TV stations could change too.
Pushed to the extreme, this idea could be extended to seasons as well. Let's say every 30 days a new season begins, there would have a 5 days gradual transition, trees would gradually lose their leaves for autumn, water would freeze, snow would slowly stack on the ground for winter and melt for spring, flowers would bloom for summer, snow and wind would replace the rain, fog and thunderstorms. Clothes, characters' and animals' activities would changes according to the seasons. On certain days there could be festivities, with decorations appearing in the trees and windows... It would be insanely difficult to implement, but even for a 1-5 rooms game, it would make a pretty unique gaming experience.
Sounds exactly like Shenmue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenmue) to me.
I always wanted to make a game set over a short period of continuously running time. The protagonist is supposed to accomplish something by the end, but can only do it by being in certain places at certain times because of how the game world is constantly changing. I think change is the way to make a game feel more alive, I always love it in adventures when you come back to the same place but somehow its different. I don't necessarily mean things like 'this person will only appear when you obtain this unconnected item', but more of a 'after returning from completing this task, you notice the bar is now open and many of the NPCs are now sitting in there', (or, in a fairly old game of mine, the protagonist travels through a teleporter and finds himself in a future version of his town where everything is deserted and falling apart, and the central part of the town is now a graveyard).
On a smaller scale its nice to change the NPC reactions, so different conversation topics or comments as the player progresses through the game, based on what the player (or NPC) has experienced. You could also try and put in smaller subplots between NPCs, and generally hide things in the game for the player to discover, to make the game seem bigger and like there's more going on in the world than just the central character and their story.
Quote from: OneDollar on Wed 28/11/2007 15:53:28
On a smaller scale its nice to change the NPC reactions, so different conversation topics or comments as the player progresses through the game, based on what the player (or NPC) has experienced. You could also try and put in smaller subplots between NPCs, and generally hide things in the game for the player to discover, to make the game seem bigger and like there's more going on in the world than just the central character and their story.
In other words, make the story better, not the technology. Those good princibles in any work of fiction, interactive or otherwise
Quote from: OneDollar on Wed 28/11/2007 15:53:28
I always wanted to make a game set over a short period of continuously running time. The protagonist is supposed to accomplish something by the end, but can only do it by being in certain places at certain times because of how the game world is constantly changing.
Aware of The Last Express (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Express)?
Quote from: OneDollar on Wed 28/11/2007 15:53:28
I always wanted to make a game set over a short period of continuously running time. The protagonist is supposed to accomplish something by the end, but can only do it by being in certain places at certain times because of how the game world is constantly changing.
That really sounds like Warthogs.
Quote from: EldKatt on Wed 28/11/2007 16:47:32
Quote from: OneDollar on Wed 28/11/2007 15:53:28
I always wanted to make a game set over a short period of continuously running time. The protagonist is supposed to accomplish something by the end, but can only do it by being in certain places at certain times because of how the game world is constantly changing.
Aware of The Last Express (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Express)?
There's also the great-looking Orion Burger (awesome with a walkthrough):
(http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/4093/99056978mm0.jpg)
(http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/2899/16788662cq0.jpg)
Quote from: EldKatt on Wed 28/11/2007 16:47:32
Aware of The Last Express (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Express)?
Yeah, I think I read a pretty positive review of it on Home of the Underdogs, its something I'd be interested in playing but not buying ;)
Quote from: Mr. Buckéthead on Wed 28/11/2007 16:54:37
That really sounds like Warthogs.
Its on my list of games to play when I have time, which probably won't be for a while. Was that made with the Character Control mod, I'm not sure how I'd go about giving lots of NPCs their own lives in AGS.
Quote from: ildu on Wed 28/11/2007 18:18:23
There's also the great-looking Orion Burger (awesome with a walkthrough):
Looks interesting, I'll have to read up on that one sometime
The idea seems to be a fairly popular one, still if it ain't broke, rip it off, right?
I'm a big fan of ideas like this. For my game I've been trying to stuff in all sorts of things that you can do that have nothing to do with the actual story, like get a cup of coffee or turn on a fan, or things that make the enviroment seem alive, like a flickering vending machine and animating NPC's. For a relatively small effort, the payoff can be huge. I always hate it when you have only 2 or 3 things to look at in a room.
And thanks for that suggestion about the Last Express. I had never heard about it, so I checked out the demo. Really fun game, I love how they used rotoscoping for the characters. Just too bad only half the animations are actually continuous.
I always liked well written Journals/Diaries in games. It's surprisingly how a few words can make you imagine many things..
Technically it wasn't rotoscoping, it was more like real life cel shading. They gave the actors these wicked makeup jobs, then processed the images to make them look "cel"-ish. I just downloaded the demo, and yes it looks awesome. I think the reason they didn't use all the frames, is well it would have been impossible to fit all the frames on one cd. And disc switching ala riven can throw ME out of a gameworld.
Making games seem alive isn't a new theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lure_of_the_Temptress
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Theatre
Other games have tried the Day/Night stuff, too.
Like most things, it's down to putting enough in. The bigger the game, the more effort required.
Quote from: lo_res_man on Sat 01/12/2007 02:07:14
Technically it wasn't rotoscoping, it was more like real life cel shading.
Yeah true, especially on the hair you can clearly see the poster edges filter from photoshop. :) And good point about the size, it hadn't occured to me.
I'm very interested in the Virtual Theatre engine, not just for the AI but there are also some great graphical features in it like the dynamic walkcycles, the non-blocking conversations and the way they render shadows on characters and objects.
Actually they processed the images to conserve only outlines, in black and white, and then coloured them by hand. So it's more like half-automated rotoscoping.
Quote from: ildu on Wed 28/11/2007 18:18:23
There's also the great-looking Orion Burger (awesome with a walkthrough):
Aha, I have that game, I just need to work out how to get it to load on Microsoft XP though. ;)