Messages

Hokay... first draft: WAY over the word limit...  Anyone else having trouble wrapping these things up in 1000 words?  There are a lot of strings to tie together. 

Actually, it looks like the problem is that the function is incorrectly linked to the item's interactions.

This function is called okey_Interact() but it's looking for Key_interact().  You can either rename this function (make sure to pay attention to capitals.  Capital 'K', lower case 'i') or you can go into the room editor, switch to object editing, choose the key, then press the lightning button.  Look at the function named here under interact and make sure it matches the one in your script.  If you press the ... button, it should go straight to it.

When I lived in Japan, I had a side job transcribing Law of Attraction self-help podcasts for translation.  And listening to these things made me sick to my stomach.  Snake oil salesman pretending to be helping people, but only doing so by selling them useless ebooks, "life-manuals", and dvd sets.  Just absolute slime.  And one person was always pretending to be the impartial interviewer: "Wow, I came into this skeptical, but I'm amazed at all the results that you claim people have had after they threw their money at you!"

I felt terrible helping to bring such sleaze into the continent, but it paid really well (like 300 dollars to transcribe a 1 1/2 hour piece of audio) so I dealt with it.  And later I found out that the book that I was helping with failed to sell well, so maybe the Japanese are just smarter.

[Tzachs!]

For some reason, when I read your name, in my head I say it in a loud whisper and accompany it with jazz hands.

So, happy birthday to

  Tzachs!

Vasily, I'm sorry to hear about your ongoing legal, mental, and financial difficulties.  I think I can help you with your financial problems though. 

I'd like to introduce you to Icey, who works with Square Enix.  He's looking for someone with programming ability to help him out, so if you're interested in working with him, I'm sure you two would produce the finest piece of gaming of all time and would, without a doubt, rake in a ton of money.

Yeah, you could get blobby 101 from a few posts ago to jump in there!

If you want to bring group A up to six, you could just have a go yourself.  I always inserted myself the first time someone vanished in the interest of time, but you could do it here to round the story out. 

Not that you would need to since these are meant to be open ended.  But just to really stick it to the people who will attempt finishing A... you could really nail them!

When it comes 'round, please do!

Man, it's so much more frustrating to be a participant than a host and not get to see each story at each stage.  I can't wait to see them.

I'm totally into queens.

I don't think there's any right answer.  Different players like different kinds of things.  Game developers can choose to cater to one of the points of views or compromise to give something for everyone.  I think the compromise discussed above is a good one, keeping the important information in the spotlight while still giving extra enrichment information to those who would seek it out.  The compromise doesn't seem to be much of a sacrifice for either side, and should benefit most.  It doesn't need to be a line in the sand, my-side-your-side kind of thing.

I'm a bit scared of us giving you our opinions and you changing the game based on it; since it's a commercial title - and who knows whether our preferences are what the market wants?

Mostly it's based on player feedback.  But the pretty singular voice on the subject from people here didn't hurt.  Besides, I'm a lot happier with these conversations now.  I've taken four of the wordier dialogs and stripped out a lot of bloat (but left some of my favorite bloat in  ).  Then I separated some of the more backgroundey conversations into LTM/STM convos and the whole thing is pretty streamlined now.  I'll need to run it by playtesters, but I like it as it is right now better than I did before, I think.  (It'll also be easier for voice acting!)

Obviously that's a rule made to be broken; it could very well be interesting and entertaining to hear how the mummy-powered spaceship generator works or why the gangster loves that toy bunny he keeps under his hat so much or where the snake does his hair.

Have you been reading my script?

[Chain Story, August 2009]

Chain Story, August 2009


Trihan, AtelierGames, Andorxor, [Cameron], Phemar, Ultra Magnus, monkey_05_06, Babar, tzachs


Andail, Akatosh, Vince Twelve, The Ivy, Wyz, LGM, DanielH, TheJBurger, Bulbapuck


Vince Twelve, [Cameron], uncle-mum, tzachs, TheJBurger, AtelierGames, LGM, The Ivy, Andorxor, TheJBurger, DanielH, monkey_05_06, Bulbapuck, Wyz, Akatosh, Phemar, Ultra Magnus, Trihan, Andail, Babar


AtelierGames, Andail, Ultra Magnus, Babar, Wyz, Bulbapuck, The Ivy, Phemar, monkey_05_06, [Cameron]


TheJBurger, tzachs, Vince Twelve, Trihan, LGM, Akatosh, DanielH, Andorxor


Vince Twelve, [Cameron], uncle-mum, tzachs, TheJBurger, AtelierGames, LGM, The Ivy, Andorxor, TheJBurger, DanielH, monkey_05_06, Bulbapuck, Wyz, Akatosh, Phemar, Ultra Magnus, Trihan, Andail, Babar

Broken Picture Telephone Chain Story, May 2010


Andail, AtelierGames,  Bulbapuck, [Cameron], Tuomas


Jim Reed, Ascovel, Babar


Wyz


Tuomas, ShiverMeSideways, Privateer Puddin', [Cameron], Babar, Akatosh, Stupot, AtelierGames, Vince Twelve, Andail, Wyz, tzachs, NsMn


Scarab, wonkyth, Dualnames, discordance, Ascovel, Bulbapuck, discordance


Babar, Privateer Puddin', Akatosh, Vince Twelve, discordance, Andail, AtelierGames


Ascovel, Wyz, AtelierGames, NsMn, Bulbapuck, Dualnames, Jim Reed


[Cameron], tzachs, Jim Reed, ShiverMeSideways, Andail, Stupot, Scarab

(Phew, I think that's all correct...)

Snarky, all points right on target, as usual. 

And just to be clear, I've never been on the fence about whether dialog should be loquacious and overstuffed (though I may have been guilty of making it so  ) or trim and snappy, but was mainly enquiring about whether or not having the option to ask such background questions was doing more harm than good.  And the answer is pretty unanimous!

Oh, yeah, totally!  I forgot your AGS forum name!  Hi Jochen!  You get the whole shebang! I'll email it to you now!

Having said that, obviously I can't generalize on data I don't have - didn't know there was demo of Resonance
(may i ask if you still have one? )

It wasn't really a demo, but a "playable sample".  Just one room from early in the game with a couple puzzles given to people who donated to the project via Kickstarter.  And you can still get your hands on it by donating via Paypal!  [/pimping]

@Ponch:  Heh, yeah, Anna had something like that.  Though I always thought being overwritten was one of the best features of that game. 

@MMMorshew: I like parser systems, my problem would be that I would then have to write a million more dialogs since the possibilities would be endless and I still wouldn't get all the things that a player might think to type in.  But yeah, that kind of interface can be awesome when well handled.  I'm just not sure I could handle it!

Lesson learned.  I had been approaching a lot of the design of Resonance with the belief that more options and choices for the player is almost always good.  While that probably holds for gameplay and puzzles, I need to back away from it with dialog.

Dialog has always been a sticking point for me in this game.  It slows me down so much trying to figure out the best way to structure conversations.  I will be editing a bunch of dialogs to hide these background information topics behind STM/LTM options where possible.  That should work well.  I think there will be some players interested enough in the world and characters to actively seek them out.  And those who do, will hopefully feel more engrossed in the story.

Thanks for the opinions guys!

I have to say that in my view there shouldn't be any conversation segments whose only purpose is to convey backstory that isn't relevant to the game.

But isn't it relevant to the game to know who the characters are, personality-wise, and where they're coming from, emotionally, etc?

Yeah, I'm down with being snappy in the dialog.  I'm the same way with not having enough time to bother with excessive dialog in games.  I thought that having it there as a choice would make it worth it for some.

I am planning on going through and pruning quite a bit, but there's still a lot of background on these characters and some game-world info that I'd like the player to have access to.  No matter how snappy the dialog is, just having the not-necessary-to-understand-the-story conversations in the game as options adds a lot of words that some players might not want but feel obligated to go through anyways. 

So, is it better to have these options even though they add more words, or to not have the options even though you loose the choice of getting a deeper understanding of the game world and its characters?  A solution where all this extra info is imparted to the players without adding to the amount of text the player has the "option" (which translates to adventure gamers as "obligation") to read, just isn't possible.

I'm hoping I can find a good way to keep those enrichment topics without making them seem like they're A) mandatory and/or B) getting in the way of gameplay.

I haven't played Mass Effect, but I do have dialogs that contain all the important stuff plus one "More about ..." option which leads to a dialog tree of unnecessary "enrichment" topics.  Perhaps relying on that tool more consistently can make it clearer that these are optional avenues of discussion.

The other alternative I'm considering is hiding most of this dialog behind STM/LTM interactions, which people following Res's development will understand.  The player will have to specifically be seeking out the information to find it.  It will be more like solving a puzzle to get at the dialog, and people who aren't curious about said information won't even know the "puzzle" is there.  It's hard to do this in some points, though.

but how exactly did you separate the essential (the ones that tell you how to solve puzzles or a code to a door etc.) parts/questions from the exposition and the "unnecessary" ones? Or is it up to the player?
Can't help thinking that people will miss something (or for example accidentally exit the dialog). I'm not saying it's a bad idea (far from it) but as you describe it, there might be a need for some caution/playtesting.

Definitely, I've taken careful planning with these.  It's usually something like

{Dialog with three important choices}
                 |
                 |
           when finished
                 |
                 |
                 V
{Dialog with five non-important choices + end dialog option}

In another example, I have the player with lots of dialog choices, but once a few key, necessary options are hit upon, an event takes place that interrupts the dialog.  These options can be returned to by talking to the chars involved later, but it is not necessary to do so.

But the general idea I get is that just having the options there makes them mandatory and I should be writing as such.  This might mean cutting some of the character-background conversations that don't really have impact on the plot.  Hmmm...  I'm going to have to think this through.

How immersion-breaking would it be to have some kind of highlight for story-critical dialog options so players would know what they can skip?

In Resonance, I've put in a number of completely unnecessary dialog.  I wasn't intending it to be unnecessary in the "God, why don't they ever stop talking!" way, but more in the "Oh nice, I can get a lot of extra information about the characters and plot if I want to take the time to do so" way.

The idea was, if you want to read through all these lines of dialog to flesh out the world and characters, you can.  But I only make story-important dialog necessary.  The rest can be skipped.  So, if you're more interested in getting the gist of what's going on and getting back to the gameplay, you always have that option.

For example, in one early dialog, you have several options of things to ask about or "Wait quietly."  Choosing to wait quietly ends the dialog and moves on to the gameplay.  In another, you're talking on a train and one option "My stop is coming up." causes the dialog to end and, well, your stop to come up.  The rest of the options in both these cases are completely superfluous, but should help the player's understanding of where the characters are coming from.

Later, there's a really big series of dialogs, many of which are the exposition fairy coming in and explaining some plot points.  You get the info you need and are able to end the dialog.  Or you can ask deeper questions to learn some things (like the quantum mechanics governing the plot's central MacGuffin).  People don't need that extra info, but it's like I feel that I've gone through all the trouble of thinking of this shit so I want to give players access to it. 

I thought it was nice to give people the option to get the info or skip it, but I've had a couple play testers and an IGF judge comment that these sections were too wordy.  I agree that they would be if they weren't entirely optional, but maybe they're right.  Maybe since we are trained to exhaust all dialog options no matter what, to an adventure gamer, these sections aren't optional at all.  We're wired to be incapable of skipping them.

So my question is, are these sections of dialog a good thing?  Would you skip them if you weren't interested or would you feel forced into going through them all?  Is there a better way to do this?  How's my hair?


Along the same lines, I have a number of optional puzzles in the game.  These puzzles are often mathematical, logical, difficult, and/or time consuming.  These puzzles express my guilty love for Myst-like puzzles, but as an allowance to players who don't like that kind of thing, I've made them optional.  They offer access to bonus features, give you something that might make later puzzles a little easier, or just give you the satisfaction of solving them.

Same questions.  Are these optional puzzles that are supposed to enrich the game actually a burden for back-broken adventure gamers who are trained completionists?  If someone who hates Myst-alikes comes across a complex mechanical puzzle to get through a door, are they going to throw their hands up and quit the game, despite there being another way into the room that requires a more adventure-gamey (and fairly easy) solution?