About pause button in adventure games

[javixblack]

Hello everyone! I want to tell you some than I really HATE when I'm playing an adventure game, and I want yo know if I'm the only who think like this or not, and what do you think about it.
Well, as you know, the adventure games are strongly based, in addition to puzzles, in story. And, in most cases, to tell us a story, the game are uses of texts, and in most cases, that texts are dialogs. Well, sometimes, that dialogs beteween different characters or whatever, are reeeeeally reaaaaaally long. I'm not complaning about that, but I will to pose the next stage: you are relaxing with a good point and click adventure game; you click "talk to" and select a NPC really important in that part of the story, you will have the answers that you was looking for a long time; you will know why that person was killed, why that strange kid knew more than you think, why that monkey has 3 heads; and then, then someone from the real life come beside you and start to asking something from the real life, or call you for your help with a thing, or whatever. In that moment you push the spacebar like you did with your old games in scummvm, trying to get pause the game in the middle of the very very extensive dialog, but the game still running. You push the P key, but nothing. You presos the ENTER key, but nothing. You start to sweat. You hear the voice of the other person asking for you. You answer "just a second" meanwhile you are pressing all the keys like if tomorrow doesn't exist. Your hearth sound like the flight of the bumblebee but played on bongoes. You start to curse the damn creator of that damn unpausebled game, and you wish that damn son of a ***** has itch right in the center of his *** hole and he can't scratch himself. And ten seconds after you look at your arm passing trough your monitor's screen faster than the sound's speed.


Well, you got the point. I experienced a lot of situations like this, and it's really really really annoying. So, my question is, dear adventure games creators, do you have this in mind when you develop a game? Do you even think in people like me?


I hope you can explain to me WHY this things happen. Thanks.

[arj0n]

For AGS games, I play them in windowed mode. Just click outside the game and the game looses focus and freeze (pauze-like). Click inside again and the game gets its focus back (unpauze) 

[Crimson Wizard]

I hope you can explain to me WHY this things happen.

Because developers are people and people are lazy. Or running out of time before the deadline. But more often - lazy.

For AGS games, I play them in windowed mode. Just click outside the game and the game looses focus and freeze (pauze-like). Click inside again and the game gets its focus back (unpauze) 

Also in AGS you can implement a skip style switch for user, which toggles between "click/press to skip" and "skipped by timer".

[javixblack]

My idea with this thread is open the developer's eyes. I think there isn't much work make a pause-in-any-time button, and it will be really useful.

For AGS games, I play them in windowed mode. Just click outside the game and the game looses focus and freeze (pauze-like). Click inside again and the game gets its focus back (unpauze) 

Good idea, but I lose the immersion doing that

Also in AGS you can implement a skip style switch for user, which toggles between "click/press to skip" and "skipped by timer".

Mmm that's true. The text won't go trough if you don't press the click button. But the developer has the work to implement that mode, I guess. And, for me, is a bit annoying be clicking continuously 

DEVELOPERS, PLEASE, CONSIDER THIS THINGS. THANKS

[Sinitrena]

I agree, pause buttons should be available in all games, and not just for situations where something does happen that needs to be paused (like dialoge, in your example). I'm someone who just really prefers to pause a game when I have to leave the computer, even if it is not technically neccessary (there's no random encounters that could kill my character). That's just how I play - when I pause playing, I want the game to pause as well.

That said, from a developers point of view, when there is nothing that can happen when you just stand around, a pause function is probably the last thing you think about, because it seems so unnecessary. It's something that exists mainly for the player's comfort. I have to wonder, is there someone who specifically decided to not have a pause function as a design choice? Is there a reason to keep this comfort from the player?

[Cassiebsg]

Normally, opening the game menu will pause the game. Problem occurs in unskipable cut scenes og long dialogues that can't be stopped or paused. As a rule I try to avoid these, cause I also enjoy being able to stop or pause when I have the need to, and not when the dev decided.
I once complained about being stuck in a dialogue tree and no way to come out of it, because the dev decided that I shouldn't be able to leave before I learned all I needed to. I was told off, so I haven't mentioned it again... but haven't touched that game again and have no intention to do so again. 

I modern AGS games, you can ALT-TAB between fullscreen and windowed, so maybe you can play in full screen, and alt-tab out of it if/when you need to pause and have no other choice given by the dev.?

[Matti]

I usually don't pause adventure games because it isn't necessary, and I don't give much thought to a pause key/button. As Cassiebsg pointed out, normally you can just open the game menu to pause the game though.

I agree that it's quite useful to be able to pause long cutscenes or long dialogs where you don't select a question or answer inbetween (which, basically, is like a cutscene). I think it's bad game design though if you can't repeat important dialogs or retrieve the relevant informations some other way, like having a notebook or something similar.

[Danvzare]

I hope you can explain to me WHY this things happen. Thanks.

Easy. Because almost no one realizes that writing for a video game is different to writing a book or a movie.
If there wasn't a huge amount of text between you actually being able to do something, you wouldn't have that problem. Since Adventure Games these days typically don't have anything time sensitive in them, other than dialog.

[Crimson Wizard]

Easy. Because almost no one realizes that writing for a video game is different to writing a book or a movie.
If there wasn't a huge amount of text between you actually being able to do something, you wouldn't have that problem. Since Adventure Games these days typically don't have anything time sensitive in them, other than dialog.

The amount of writing may be an indirect reason that leads to this problem. But direct reason is that a program feature is too primitively implemented (no way to pause a dialog, no way to rewind a dialog, and so on). If we take AGS as an example, many users of AGS are hobbyists, not alot of them would know how to program this, and AGS unfortunately does not provide convenient way to control dialog flow out of the box.

On the other hand, for instance, Visual Novels made with specialized engines often have tremendous amount of texts (I won't discuss the quality of these texts :p), yet very convenient UI which allows to pause, rewind and fast-forward conversation.

[javixblack]

I think it's a very basic and fundamental thing not only in adventure games but all videogames. The possibility to stop the game wherever you want, just pause this or that is essential. You aren't inside of a cinema with you 100% attention in the movie and with not distractions; you are at home (probably) with a lot of things than could happen and requere to left the game for a while.