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Is all about it!
In the post that I explained what I wish to create in my game, I said that “the experience will be deeply focused on the interaction with people who inhabit the place” so it makes the encounters loop the most important of the three but before we start to talk about it I need to contextualize you.
In most of the games you don’t have to discern the npc(non-player character) intentions because the game makes it clear, giving you too much information. They put an icon above the head indicating that the npc is an enemy, or in more obvious ways, the level of the threat with a number below the screen. Hold information is essential to create unpredictable situations, letting just enough for the player to make plans but not have sure of the results, and in that way you force the player to be aware of his surroundings and immerse in the experience.
You can’t change the npcs roles with your actions, maybe if you attack an ally one hundred times he can become hostile, but you can slaughter a whole army but no one will consider run or surrender, sometimes you can’t even kill them, indicating that he’s an ally or a merchant but it’s something that only few games do, with take the player out of the experience, because of the lack of feedback and agency.
There are few games that tried to make responsive AI, but I’ll focus on the one I think did the best job, “I am Alive”, a game published by Ubisoft that you probably never hear about, because it’s just a “ok” game, but with a lot of innovative ideas. In the video below, this guy explains exactly what I’m talking about, so please watch at least the first three minutes and you can jump the first 34s.
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What I’m trying to achieve is something similar, my main goal is to improve these encounters and make the game work around it , creating emergent gameplay and narrative.
#game dev#game development#game design#indie game#indie dev#games#video games#gaming#devlog#devblog#the long dark#dayz#subnautica
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Core Gameplay Loops #1
Today I will give more details about the gameplay, so as you already know... keep reading.
I’m using the gameplay loop methodology to help guide my design process, so first of all, what is a gameplay loop? In the article The Gameplay Loop: a Player Activity Model for Game Design and Analysis, Emmanuel Guardiola describes it as
the potential states of the player in the game system.
Then after analyzing the gameplay experience that I want to convey in my game, I was able to establish three core gameplay loops: Move, Maintenance and Encounters.
I am still working on the loops so I think it doesn't make sense I show you it right now. I intend to divide this post in at least two parts, so for now I’ll give you a preview of the possible activities and states of each one of the three loops.
The activities related to the Move Core Gameplay Loop are, as the name says, executed while the player moves around the world. The Maintenance is constituted by the activities performed when he stops in the way.The player enters the Encounters loop always when he encounters a NPC, either when it crosses his path or the reverse.
#game dev#game development#game design#indie game#indie dev#games#video games#gaming#devlog#devblog#the long dark#dayz#subnautica
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Now we have Disqus comments
I discovered this new feature and I'm so glad to know we can interact in a easy way, than please share your thoughts!
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Kind of a weekly report
This week a member of the team decided to leave the project for an indefinite period, I thought it wouldn't affect me because I already knew it was gonna happen but things didn't occur like I expected.
I won’t say I didn't have time to write something decent to you but the truth is that I was a little down and I didn’t want to do something of questionable quality, so I hope you can understand the situation.
He was supposed to take care of the prototypes, but now it became one more task for me to do. I don't blame him, he had his reasons and we still being friends.
I realized that some of the people who read my posts aren’t users of tumblr so I decided to create a discord server to notify about the updates and to have a space to interact with each other I also want to know who is interested in what I’m doing. If you join it, it will be a pleasure to talk to you.
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Let’s Talk about the game!
The image above is a sketch made by my teammate Samuel, it illustrates the core experience of our game. There’s no problem if you don’t have the habit of playing games, just go ahead and keep reading.
In this game you will be a traveler in a strange land, like everyone, your goal is to survive one day at a time. If you want something more meaningful than that you must find it for yourself.
The experience will be deeply focused on the interaction with people who inhabit the place. They are not welcoming to strangers so you must pay attention to your behavior and what you carry with yourself when approaching them. It can affect directly on the way they react to you. Because of that, there’s not an easy way to know the results of an encounter, but sometimes it can be worth the risk.
The items you carry are crucial parts of the experience because interacting with them is the main way to express yourself. For example, if you draw your weapon while approaching someone may be understood as a threat but if you come showing your empty hands, it can be seen as a gesture of peace or if you go to a danger place disarmed people can see you as an easy prey.
Let’s analyze the image. I believe you have already realized that in this scene you are the guy coming down the road, you're cold, hungry, hurt and you ran out supplies one day ago.
Those two fellows could be hunters, thieves or maybe murderers, you don’t know. Walk away is a reasonable choice, but in your state maybe you’ll not survive until you find the next place to get some help. Try to hide and watch them a little more before making a decision is a clever move, but you need to have enough time. You are carrying a bow, shoot them in the back and loot for supplies is an option too. In the end it's a matter of life and death... alright?
Who are you? What do you believe? Answer it by your acts not with empty words.
Travel light, use your brain, few people are trustworthy so choose right. You must find a way to get some coins, surviving secluded in the woods is not an option, getting food from nature is a tough task so buying is your best chance against starvation. If you live enough, maybe you can figure out what is happening in this place.
#game dev#indie dev#gaming#game design#game development#games#devlog#devblog#video games#the long dark#dayz#subnautica
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I wanna be more than I guy with ideas.
Three year have passed since I started on this “journey”. This word makes it sound epic but actually it is more trivial than seems, because it became my daily life.
Sometimes we’re so focused in seek majestic moments of our lives, we start to do everything to achieve it, things become blur around, you stop to care about the difficulties, the opposition, the tiredness, you think that it will worthwhile when you reach your goal, finally you’ll be able to breathe again and enjoy this delightful moment... but the truth is: you don’t know what will happen tomorrow, so why risk to live an “almost life”? because as a wise Mexican man once said:
“a life of almost is a life of never.”
I do not wanna wait until become who I intent to be to enjoy my work and share it with the world. Then I decided to start writing and put my ideas out of my mind and register my evolution. English is not my native language so I’ll use the experience to improve it too, if you want know more and accompany me, will be a pleasure have you here.
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