I really liked this article, largely because I found the 'dating' aspect to be one of the parts of the original Mass Effect that I enjoyed the most (even if it's not been that prominent so far as I've currently played).

While playing the original one I found it strange to come to the point where romantic decisions had to be made for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I hadn't realised that I'd been giving off those kinds of signals (although I'm fairly oblivious to these sorts of things in real life so maybe I was), I thought I was just being nice to everyone. Secondly because it seemed weird that they'd just come out and say it, maybe it's just my personal experiences that make that seem strange though.

But still, this was definitely the most emotionally moving point in the game for me because I'd decided early on in the game to play Shepard as though he were me, so the choice of woman (because obviously men should choose women as though they were objects in a shop (saying that, presumably female characters get the same choice, thus negating the chauvinistic tones)) was a personal one and I was left with a real life question. Given the choice between two potential life partners should one choose someone who they think would make a better partner (//form a better couple), or someone that they like more as a person?*

I was kind of torn on the issue and just made a snap judgement, but within minutes I regretted my choice and wished I'd chosen the other one. Thinking on the question more I'd say it's a choice between being practical and being an idealist, I chose the former despite being more of the latter. For a few days I didn't want to go back to playing it, I couldn't bear to continue playing through my mistake, but eventually I did. I'm not sure why, maybe I just wanted to see how the main story played out? Anyway, when I did get back to it I found I had a savepoint just before the decision so I loaded that one instead and re-chose, I think I'd often do that in real life if I could. Although I still haven't finished it yet despite starting it over 6 months ago.

Also of note is that the one I really liked was Tali, though there seems to be no 'romance' with her in the first game (though some quick google-ing couldn't confirm this and merely provided me with some quotes to remind me why gamers often depress me). This could provide incentive to get the second one (maybe).

So on the whole, while the 'romance' subplot-things were one of the better aspects of the first game, I still think they have a very long way to go before they're done properly.


*I'm sure someone with more life experience than me can give a much more useful answer to this question than I can.

Personally I'd say that aesthetics come under design. Isn't design essentially the way it all fits together or are you supposed to be judging design based on something else?

Reading a blog post by a designer of such games, I noticed that the people who make these Social Games are exclusively driven by greed. The only reason why these games exist is to exploit their players.

I've noticed this too, if they're not talking about monetisation, they're talking about metrics. In my opinion that's a pretty poor way to go about making games. I don't see how they could possibly be proud of their creations (there again, I don't really understand the allure of business).

EDIT: An interesting note here is that this is a reeaally bad show, which exploits both its participants and its viewers by building up fake suspense, drama, etc. In some sense, it's just like Farmville. Maybe these strategies for "hooking" the audience are prevalent in all commercial media and art - tv, games, music, news...

I'm not sure this is quite the same. One would hope that the people received at least a bit of tangible help from their participation in the program. Whereas the farmville players are left with nothing (positive) to show for it.

Thanks for sharing that.

There were a few iffy bits (if world leaders knew the world would in 6 days no matter what they did, would they really tell everyone? I wouldn't.) but on the whole it was surprisingly powerful, especially considering I spent the first minute focused on how it was exactly the same as 'everyday is the same day' but just with worse looks.

I think you can simulate touch a bit through the right kind of combination with audio, visuals and interaction.

Windowsill has certain parts where I imagine a surface being slippery, etc. There is a feedback loop between output and input that can make this very convincing.

Similar to this is the screen shaking effect that's in quite a few games (Torchlight is the one that springs to mind for me) which helps you feel the force of some impact. Perhaps this wouldn't scale too well to other sensations though.


Also, I wouldn't say that the mouse is the most immersive input to me. I actually find the gamepad more so (generally), although that's probably because I grew up on console games so using a mouse and keyboard isn't as comfortable for me. I'd imagine most people would prefer the mouse though, especially non-gamers.

Amnesia: first impressions.

I tend to focus on the negatives so, since most of my points will probably be about things I didn't like so much, I'd like to start by saying that what I've played so far is pretty amazing. I can't remember ever being so immersed in a game before. I think I've sat down to play it 2/3 times (though I took a break in the middle of one of those to get something to eat, and also to ease the tension a little). And I think I've gotten just past the trap-door puzzle that was shown in one of the pre-release videos, I don't really know how far that is in the grand scheme of things.


The first thing that stood out to me was the menu screen. It seemed somehow wrong to me. I think it's because the menu seemed to be part of the 3D rendered background which made it appear to be part of the game world. "There are dungeons with bright computer game related words on them in this world?" Maybe this is just me being weird, but with the rendered backgrounds and the perspective at a similar place to where you would expect a game character's to be made it feel like the game had started, and yet there were menus.

Half life 2 does something similar, but I think it uses stranger camera views and the menu text doesn't seem to be a part of the world, it's like it's written on a window that looks into the world. My initial thought was that it may have been better if you moved around the area to select menu items, walked through different doors or something, but I don't know. I suppose you're probably more interested in feedback on the game iteslf.


Another early thing that I didn't like so much was the fact that almost as soon as I gained control, I practically lost it. I don't mind the stumbling / hard to controll-ness that comes with low sanity, but for it to happen straight away gave the impression that the actions weren't really controlled by me and sort of 'detatched' me from the character rather than making me feel like I was Daniel. Later on the loss of control works very effectively, though I'm not too sure about it happening so soon.

It's probably worth noting that the first time I played it I was really tired and not in the mood to be doing anything. But I felt compelled to do something, which ended up being play Amnesia so maybe my impression wouldn't have been quite as bad otherwise.


One thing that I Like is the fact that all the 'collectables' seem to be useful. This is perhaps the only game where I don't just horde items so that I'll always have plenty should I ever need them, I always want to use my flint/lantern because I don't want to be in the dark. There's no logical reason for it, I just want to. On the other hand, the flint/oil do seem to turn up in pretty weird places, or maybe I'm just not that up to date on usual flint storage locations.


And the thing I like the best so far is probably the monsters (I think I may have seen about two or three of them or perhaps even the same one 2/3 times). The great thing is that I still feel like I'm completely unprepared for any sort of close encounter to them. I have no idea what will happen if they catch me, but the world is so convinceing that I really don't want to know. Before I'd seen them I was getting pretty anxious about what would happen when I saw them. Reading about some of the creatures in one of the texts started getting me worried, then being told by the tutorial hints to run or hide when I saw one added to it as well. When I finally did see one I kinda froze and just tried to hide and stay completely still until it went away. Which it didn't, so I ended up trying to creep as slowly away from it as I could until I got a bit of distance between us, then I sprinted. It was incredibly nerve racking.


A final thing for the negatives is that the castle doesn't seem to be structured very naturally (or maybe it's just the way that you progress through it that doens't seem natural). It always seems like there's only one way to go at each point in time, then you unlock the next door, explore and move to the next. It seems kinda forced, though I'm not sure how that could be avoided easily in this type of game.



I don't think I've written this much in ages, but if more things occur to me while playing I'll come back and post some more. It's actually been a week or two since I last played it so there are probably a few things I forgot to mention.

A good read (as per usual). The essence often seems to be underappreciated I find, though maybe it's more important to me since after playing games / reading books / watching films etc. I often don't remember many plot details or even character names, just a vague idea of what happened. Though I'd say it's worth noting that you can't remove all low-level elements of narrative.

Low-level is the part most people focus on, while high level is more like an overall subconcious impression. Without the low-level people would probably not be able to focus on it at all, it'd be like showing someone an abstract painting and saying "feel". Some people would probably get it, but I think most wouldn't. You could potentially get around this with videogames by focusing on interaction instead of traditional details, but most interactions within videogames are too mechanical which either makes them fairly transparent, or if they're too complicated, it can just make them seem inpenetrateable. Although those examples from Amnesia are pretty good at showing some that worked. I think some narrative framework is necessary for most people to be able to appreciate it (although I don't think you're arguing against that idea anyway).

I think social games are easier to accuse of not having soul because the game world is so abstracted (I mean that you seem very far away from the worlds surface). You're interactions are limited to clicking buttons and I think lack of animation makes them seem almost 'too static' to be alive (note: I don't play any social games so this may not even be the case). Although often maistream videogames of yore were like this too so it seems weird that the divide exists.

Obviously most AAA titles aren't much better, either lacking a coherent design or being a derrivative of what's been done many times before, thanks to being made by so many people. It's like someone's taken a huge scoop out of the general ideas of the masses and dolloped it up onto a plate. It's all a bit too 'meh' and impersonal to be interesting (with some exceptions).

Cool, I'll check that out soon.

I found another game based on Kafka (I stumbled across it by chance). Again, I haven't played it yet, but I plan to soon.
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/05/browser_game_pick_before_the_l.html

Despite not having read any of them, I looked at some of the wikipedia pages and 'Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor' seemed pretty interesting. I only read a general outline of the plot though, and the story was never finished, so I'm not sure how well it would actually translate.

Apparently someone's already made a game out of 'The Metamorphasis' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Mojo.

Any examples here? As I want to remove any forced puzzles for the next game, would be nice to hear what you found most natural and which where least natural.

Off the top of my head,

Some I liked from Overture were:
-One bit where there was an item I needed on a high shelf, to get it I think I was supposed to use the broom behind me to knock it off, although it was also possible to just stack chairs/boxes and jump to get it.

-Another one was where there was a lever that opened a door, but once you let go the door started to close (albeit slowly). I'm not sure if it was possible to run to get there in time before it closed, but what I did instead of trying that was hung a chair on the lever to keep it down.

-Also, there was a box which I think contained a  battery for a machine, but it needed a special machine of its own to open, the machine didn't seem to be in the general area and the box couldn't be moved too far. Fortunately there was a nice deep pit nearby to drop it down. I suppose that may be a bit illogical (the battery could well have broken too) but it felt like good improvisation. (Getting the machine to work after that was unnecessarily complicated and quite annoying though.)

A couple I didn't really like from the start of 'Black Plague' were:
-In the first room, crushing the coin in a clamp to then use it to open the grate. Once I'd done it, I could see how it could possibly have worked, though it didn't feel very natural. Also, there was a toolbox in the room which I smashed, bits flew everywhere and I spent ages scouring the room to see if a screwdriver had fallen out of it.

-Another one was getting the soda can out of the vending machine. If I'd known I'd need the can it would have been easy, but when I examined the machine it said something along the lines of that it wasn't working, so I thought it was just scenery. Also, when I'd got the can, I had no idea what to do with it.



I guess on the whole I prefer the puzzles which don't rely so much on inventory items, but more on interacting with objects in the physical world, which tended to be the physics puzzles. Overture had some of the inventory puzzles too, but usually the required items were right there, or I'd just picked up some notes which explained what to do, so they were pretty easy and less annoying. I'll skim through a walk-through later to see if there were any notable ones I forgot about.

That codebubbles thing looks pretty interesting: all the structure of code, but with some more 'natural' (I couldn't think of a better word) arrangements/flow. It looks like the sort of thing I would find very useful while coding.

(It took me a while to realise that it's easier to work out what's going on in that video with the sound on)


@axcho
Some interesting ideas. I can almost picture it, it's like one of those things you can just about see, but can't quite define. The videogame creation equivalent of playing an instrument, how dreamy 

Here's one in Swedish, just for fun:

Flytta karaktären snabbt framåt (på ett snyggt sätt) när jag trycker på uppåtpilsknappen, tack.

I'm glad programming isn't in sweedish, that looks very complicated (probably because of my complete and utter lack of familiarity with Sweedish or any similar languages).

So I'd say English speakers probably do have the 'native tongue advantage' when it comes to programming.

I listened to that most recent one, it's pretty nice, very relaxing.

For next game, we are gonna try and get rid of all classic incoherent adventure game puzzles and the like.

Having just finished 'Penumbra: Black Plague', I'd say this was one of the main differences between it and 'Overture'. I found the puzles to be a lot more natural and intuitive in 'Overture' while I often had no idea what I was even supposed to be doing at parts of 'Black Plague' and had to use a walkthrough throughout. On the other hand, I found the 'combat', or lack of, to work a lot better in the 2nd one because the enemies were actually scary (I suppose the spiders kinda were in the first) whereas the dogs in the first one were more of an annoyance because it was always far easier to kill them than to hide or run away. Also, 'Black Plague' seemed to have "bigger" scares, though maybe that's just because I played it more recently so I remember them better...

Also gonna see if we can evoke emotions other than fear.

I'd very much like to see that, fear isn't my favourite of emotions 



Also, I've finally started downloading Amnesia on steam. Impressions should be forthcoming within the next week or so.

I would say that code, can be very intuitively read if you use lots of OOP to make it more like sentences (as Erik said) and also if you use an IDE which colours keywords in nicely for you (this makes things a lot more readable or me). Although there will definatley be times when more graphical methods are easier to use, such as long if-else blocks... kinda like in that snippet from the Path's program. I guess everyone beat me to the key points.

And "paint with algorithms". That's a great phrase, you should use it more often. I would use it all the time, but I don't think I'd ever have call for it. I also didn't really see why you'd want a graphical interface until you said that. I was thinking how it would be exactly the same but just with boxes instead of code, then that phrase gave me an apithany (kind of), as though programming were like writing a script for the program to follow, while doing it graphicly is more hands on, more like making/shaping something.

That last paragraph should have had more of a point. Somehow my thoughts always get lost in translation between my brain and my mouth/writings. 

- 3DVIA Studio is the ( spiritual ) successor to 3DVIA Virtools
- 3DVIA Virtools is expensive, 3DVIA Studio is free*
- 3DVIA Studio is currently in Public Beta

I'd come across this website before but never figured out why they had so many products which all seemed to do the same thing. Now, finally I understand.