Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Frequently Asked Forum Questions | |
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Re: Story and Gameplay Integration | |
| Posted By: Narcogen <narcogen@rampancy.net> | Date: 1/15/07 12:54 a.m. |
In Response To: Re: Story and Gameplay Integration (3Suns) : That sounds like a lot of work! Don't do it for my sake, but if you do, I : look forward to reading it. Nah, I was already thinking of it. That, as well as a look at where, in each game, story is revealed and/or reinforced by gameplay, and where it is carried by cutscene, with specific regard to the agenda of the forces you're playing against. I haven't decided which of these to do first. [snip] : In my limited understanding, it seems to me that one should be able to adapt
It's a big leap. Gaming AI, I've always suspected, has been a bit like modeling. A lot of times it's not really important what is actually going on, it's important what it looks like. I remember working on a school project once that was a model. My dad, being a modeler, had a variety of tools and materials available, including carboard sheets with textured stones on it. We wrapped that around a styrofoam block to simulate a castle wall. Another student actually built a wall out of wood blocks, block by block, with glue, and then (inexplicably) stained it. That student, upon seeing the model I brought, was in shock. In his mind, the model he made, as it was authentic to the method of constructing a wall, was better than mine. But mine looked so much better, because the texture had been created by professional artists and was very attractive. Since there was no prohibition against such materials, nor any specific instruction that construction methods had to be authentic, the only thing that mattered was how it looked. I think the comparison between scripting and AI is like that. There's some part of the mind of designers (and some players) who want an authentic analogue for how people think, partially because they feel it would be better, but partially just because they want it. With scripting, though, all the designer has to do is make some good guesses about what the player is going to do, and implement an automatic response from NPCs based on what an intelligent response to those actions would be. It's reactive rather than proactive, and after a few replays, you start to see the cracks-- you see the things the AI does that are totally inappropriate, because your actions were not properly anticipated, because on the 100th time through the level, you just wanted to try something different. I don't think scripting is going away. I don't think computing power or programming expertise is quite at the point of providing an authentic intelligence to play video games with open environments and cope with a wide range of situations. Much better to have a good, general purpose AI that can do basic things (fire, retreat, take cover) and then script the particularly intelligent behavior one wants to show in response to anticipated player actions. Note that Halo doesn't have bots. I think it's because Bungie hasn't really allocated resources towards the development of the kind of level-independent AI code that you'd need for bot-style play, especially for objective games. That's a guess on my part, of course, but I think it's backed up by a look at how NPCs and opponents behave in the Halo, Myth and Marathon games. : Now, if that kind of A.I. is successfully implemented, then the idea of
The barrier isn't AI here, it's art. For each of the various routes you take to the bridge, art assets need to be created. If there are 3 ways to the bridge (down the river, along the coast, around the hill) you have to make art assets for all three. A player, first time through, will only see one. The artists will have to trust replay value to be sure the player will consume that content. I don't think we'll see that. I think that game would feel too short. I think that's why Halo 2 feels so linear. It's a long string of all the art and design assets Bungie was able to make in the time allowed. If they made every major encounter have 2 other options, the game would only feel 1/3rd as long. Think of finishing Halo 3 in 5 hours without trying hard! : Perhaps more than the technical challenges, it requires thinking beyond the
: (Again, I know that, on the scale I am envisioning, this is not the direction
: That is why I have never purchased a LoTR game in which the game followed the
The ones that don't aren't much better, at least not story-wise. I've played some of both types (not the RTS games, but the RPGs) and they're all sort of... meh. : See, this fascinates me and I think that we are on to something here.
: You know, it seems to me that everytime a FPS takes the player from gameplay
The other method, of course, is interactive events, like Half-Life 2 has. That has its own drawbacks. There was a large discussion about this last year.. maybe I can find some evidence of it somewhere...
| |
|
| Replies: |
The HBO Forum Archive is maintained with WebBBS 4.33. |