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Well, it was worth a shot, hehe, I guess it's hard to give feedback on something this complex.
Back to the drawing board!

Thanks Mandle for your reply

[Extra vision]

I've always thought it's a pity that more seasoned developers tend to stop using the community, at least for the developing part, and I've also always thought that people should receive far more c&c on game and plot ideas, not just art & music and other assets.

So here I am, letting you all in on the very fundamentals of my upcoming game.
I'm working on a game currently titled God's Algorithm. The plot isn't super original - it's a sci-fi where technology has been kind of reset, in an attempt to stop AI - and its catastrophic consequences - from happening.

You play a federal agent tasked with investigating a string of murders in a remote rural town. Obviously, the government has an ulterior motive with sending you there, but yeah, you get it.

Anyways, the government has secretly gone against the high-tech policy and equipped their top-ranked agents with cybernetic implants. So you have special powers. Now, this isn't ground-breaking in any way; Donna and other games before have used special skills to break up the "use inventory object A on hotspot B" kind of monotony.

Here's a list of some special abilities I had in mind (copy-pasted from my GDD):

Extra vision: This is a powerful tool that allows the agent to see in darkness, and furthermore it highlights bodily fluids and other organic residues, effectively combining night vision and blacklight. It is the augmentation of choice during technical forensic investigations.

IQ-boost: Activating this will temporarily increase the agent's intelligence. This does not make the agent more learned, but in dialogues it may enable her to point out contradictions in others' arguments. Chiefly, the agent will use it to solve discrete logical problems, math, ciphers etc. It can not help the player to understand the overall plot.

Healing: This releases anti-toxins and/or antibodies into the agent's bloodstream. It can also discharge nanoparticles to wounded areas to speed up coagulation and prevent scepsis. It cannot heal serious trauma, hydrostatic shock, excessive bleeding or other injuries that would typically kill a person instantly or within seconds.

Muscle boost: This implant increases muscle effect very briefly. It gives the agent the explosive strength of a bodybuilder, and the speed and dexterity of a professional athlete.

Lie detection: Activating this while talking to people will make a sincerity-meter appear as a GUI. When people tell lies, the sensor will react. Only explicit lying can be registered - not whether people withhold the truth, or hide their hostility towards the agent.

Persuasion: This is a weak power that may influence others' attitude and disposition toward the agent, via subtle discharges of hormones and electroencephalic signals. If nothing major is at stake, the target is more likely to agree with the agent, and will cooperate more easily. It is comparable to being persuaded by a close friend or relative, or someone you're strongly attracted to, as opposed to just a random stranger.

What I can't come up with is a good system of implementing these powers. One way to add another dimension is this (also from the GDD):

A number of cybernetic augmentations, or implants, are available to Vera, to assist her in her work. The implants are grouped into three different “builds”. Depending on how much Vera uses implants within a specific build, they will gradually affect Vera's mood and behaviour. In some dialogues, certain options may appear or disappear depending on how far Vera has progressed in a specific personality alteration.

Analytical
Extra vision
IQ-boost

Introverted, antisocial

bodily/corporeal
Healing
Muscle boost

Authoritarian, self confident

empathetic
Lie-detector
Persuasion

social, sensitive

The personality alterations are mild, and in-game mostly noticeable during dialogues, in which options may appear/disappear depending on Vera's current build. They're an unintended side effect of hormonal and synaptic redistributions in Vera's brain, comparable to the effects of modern hormone-adjusting medications, or a woman's menstruation.

If Vera constantly changes between implants of different builds, the alterations will cancel themselves out, and she will not experience any effects.

This opens up a discussion of the "I" of the protagonist - how much is going to be made up by the artificial effects of her implants, and how much is just her? Also, it will encourage the player to try out different builds. Obviously, the game will have to present ways to solve most of the puzzles staying within one specific build.

Another system I had in mind to make it more tactical was to let the player "load" a set of implants each morning, pretty much like wizards (mages? can never remember) can choose which spells to cast that day in traditional D&D, and force the player to rest and begin a new day should they need other skills, and also put in effect a highscore table of who can solve the game with the fewest days used (the protagonist would be able to rest at various designated resting places). The disadvantage here is that the player would spend more time resting-waking-trying all skills on all things just to find out the fastest way, which would promote rather repetitious and tedious gameplay.

A third way is to implement a battery meter that will measure how much the implants have been used, and either disable them altogether or maybe demand new bio-batteries regularly, just to add some kind of restrictions. In Donne, the player had to regularly drink blood to charge the powers, but to my mind that system didn't really add anything, since there wasn't much skill or action involved in the drinking-blood routine.

I also thought about letting the player choose one or two initial powers, and then "unlock" more powers throughout the course of the game; problem is I have no idea how to integrate this into a typical adventure game setting (in an action game or RPG you would just introduce a credit system or even let the player find power ups along the way). Since the technology is forbidden in-universe, there wouldn't be an established system of buying or unlocking powers. Unless there's a black market for them. But then there's still the problem of currency...

Ah well. Thanks for reading about the problems I'm facing. If you have any feedback I would be grateful!

I too feel sceptical about the idea that the original trilogy owned a depth that the newer movies lack. If anything, wasn't it the carefree, laidback atmosphere in Lucas' first movies that attracted people? It was just plain escapism without politics and crap.

I do agree about Star Trek suffering from exactly this, even though I'm not a trekkie enough to say firsthand what the various Star Treks series were about, but I know as much that they were about peaceful exploration and learning about different civilisations etc, while the recent movies are basically just adrenaline-soaked action.

The only thing that struck me as particularly unintelligent (apart from the glaring plot holes) in ep VII was that most of the nostalgia-inducing nods were so utterly in-your-face. Like Nikolas said, it's like every old character making an appearance had to stare blankly for a few seconds for the audience to calm down before delivering their lines. That along with some other really over-explicit dialogue made it seem much dumber than it had to be - so Han Solo shoots with Chewie's crossbow-blaster and has to comment twice how good it is! What the hell? He must have fought alongside Chewbacca for at least 25 years or so, and he never got to try it before? Why not just give it an appreciative nod and move on? Who writes dialogue like that? Second example - Finn fights stormtroopers on the ground while Poe flies his X-wing in the background, succesfully shooting down TIE-fighters in a long and very well-executed shot, and I was like "please just let the audience undertand that Poe is a great pilot from that display" but damn me if Finn doesn't have to stop and explicitly, like directly to the viewer, exclaim "DAMN THAT'S A GOOD PILOT". JESUS CHRIST.

Surprised to see there wasn't a thread about this already, because I felt I saw this after everyone else in the whole world did.

I have to say I wasn't completely blown away, which I kind of expected to be, considering all the positive reviews and write-ups I've read.

My pros:
I think the scenography was mostly awesome, with great attention to detail and an overall "real" feeling to it, as opposed to the prequels where everything felt computer modelled and plastic. Great settings and cool locations.

Good acting generally, and fun, interesting characters. Adam Driver as the bad guy was excellent - he was creepy already in Girls, so with the premise of some kind of conflicted Sith apprentice, it was a recipe for greatness.

The cons:
The script/plot. The reason I was underwhelmed here is that it didn't feel like anybody - Abrams, more specifically - had put any kind of original thought in it. It felt like they had a script meeting, and everybody was like "just make it star wars-y" with all the plot elements of the first movie (ep. IV) recycled but much bigger. Seriously - another death star, only much bigger? And they squeezed in the destruction of the entire republican system in a fifteen second segment that was as understated as an establishing shot of someone tying their shoelaces.

I just wish they could have thought a bit outside the "blow up a giant super weapon by attacking its weak spot" box, because this instalment has enough fan-serving nods as it is, what with all the famous characters re-appearing. When the resistance stab planned their attack against the whatever-oscillator, they must have had the deja-vu of their lives. The bad guys of Star Wars design their bases like Gillette design their razors; keep making the same stuff, only larger.

Another thing that always strikes me when I watch Star Wars is that every weapon blows up just as much as is necessary for the plot. When a Tie Fighter shoots at e.g. the Millenium Falcon, there's seldom more than an insignificant dent, but when they steal a Tie Fighter in the beginning of the Force Awakens, they can pretty much demolish the interior of that flight base. An X-wing has a wing span of some meters, but when it starts blasting inside the oscillator tunnel, it's as if some kind of WMD just went off.

It's like everything that flies has much better shields than stationary things, which seems odd. Why not put shields on all the vital parts of your base, especially the key parts of your super weapon. You have the power to attract a sun's rays, but take fire from tiny fighters and your whole damn planet blows up?

Another thing that disturbs me - and this has been brought up by others - is that despite the vastness of all the systems and planets and space bases in the Star Wars universe, all the vital characters keep bumping into each other all the time. Moreover, in this instalment the main characters couldn't travel anywhere without stormtroopers and Kylo Ren showing up seconds later to blow everything up. It's like in Larry II, where you wish you could just be given time to explore and play around for a while when you've reached a new location, but the bad guys keep showing up and you're forced to escape and it gets really repetitious and exhausting.

When the final scene came, where the girl - good character btw - finds Luke after a surprisingly uneventful journey, I wish the movie could have been more about just that; a long quest to find Luke, a lonesome girl traversing the strange and diverse worlds of the galaxy, maybe a touch of existentialism and also a more deep inward exploration of the Force, instead of how she just kind of stumbled over it.

A bit late to this wake, just wanted to express how big Bowie was for me - definitely up there with Cohen, Dylan and Lennon as the foundation of my world of music.

Since there's an original thread already debating this, I'd say this thread is up for imminent locking/removal.

...but if people want to let out some steam by posting macros and/or other crap maybe we should keep it open for a day or so!

Wow, you can always count on being remembered in this thread, feels great

This topic has been moved to Recruitment.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=52899.0

Hello Teemu, nice to see a true oldie return to the boards!

There's always debate whether this genre is dead or not, which I think is a bit silly; good games will always be good games, and all genres evolve in order to meet new demands and cater to new audiences. The last couple of years have been great for selling indie games, because we have Steam and various other ways to handle the sales, and kickstarter and stuff to reach out and get attention, whereas some decade ago and back only larger companies could sell games.

Now, adventure games are by no means part of the current gaming boom; and can't be compared to the "freemium" app games that flood the market at the moment.

The genre still has so many loyal fans that even with little innovative elements or modernized gameplay, a quality "retro" adventure game may still sell enough to keep a small team sustained.

Having said that, compared to their forefathers of the 80-90s, modern successful games seem to have developed in the following ways;
* They are easier (less getting stuck, fewer puzzles over all)
* No dead ends a la Sierra - and in general, the player isn't expected to perform tasks or act in ways that don't make sense
* More focus on dialogue, cinematics, and relationships
* Less stereotypical in terms of gender roles, ethnicity etc (try to play KQ6 again and you'll just puke at how badly the female part is written)

But as you and many others have pointed out already; adventure games today can't be as slow and taxing as they were back in the day. Lose the player's attention for just a minute and they'll turn to the next title on their Steam to-play list...

Thanks for the link!
That's a nice blog, btw.

Poobungies! I can't make it those dates
I'll send some other merry Swedes, most notably Theo Waern and Joel Staaf Hästö, to represent my nation.

Good luck to both of you! Nice to know someone is taking up the torch, MAGS is after all one of the cornerstones of this society!

A good episode!

However I think developers have moved away from puzzle-heavy, inventory-dense game designs for quite some time now. Most of the recent big titles have featured mostly cinematics, cut-scenes and a focus on atmosphere and characterisation.

I played Walking Dead and was surprised to see that most of the gameplay was reduced to making decisions such as answering yes or no every now and then, which in the end turned out not to alter the game very much anyways. But players thought it was a great adventure game, so that's what people want these days - to never get stuck.

Kickstarters always lose momentum after the initial rush, but your campaign is doing so well there's no chance in hell you won't make it.

Pledged of course, but being as I am on paternal leave, and with a girlfriend who's taken up studying again, it's only a small contribution at this point!

Nice, Snarky, thanks for the tip.

Mods, maybe you should edit the first post so that it reflects the current (uncertain) state of things. For a second I looked at the thread and thought it was all sorted out, until I saw the date of the thread.

I'd love for a AdvX to happen this year, but unless it's the first weekend of December or earlier I probably won't make it, as I'm away mid December...

Sorry to hear about the financial pickle, Theo, but I'm sure the kickstarter will work out well for you guys!

Hi, BruisedWeasel!

Looks like you had a great time indeed, sorry I missed it!

Grundislav has been working out since I last met him.

Have fun everyone! Really sorry I couldn't make it this year, but budget concerns and a new family situation made it hard for me to undertake such a longest journey...