Automating game play

I've just replied to a query about Unangband on the angband.oook.cz forums, that I'll expand on a little here as it's relevant to game design.

Another, when traveling in the wilderness, would it be possible to automatically, or something like that, eat something that is in your pack. Instead of arriving at your destination weak from hunger when you have food in your pack. I am sure there are others, but don't see much of a point in bringing up too much since the game isn't really complete yet and I don't know what is coming.

This is the old 'I don't want to have to think about x so can the game do it for me?' argument.

I'm actually a fan of this particular argument. As a game designer, I'm never able to make my mind up about which features work, and which don't, and which choices are interesting and which are not. For any designer shocked by that statement, consider that you really don't know the answers either: you're just guessing. Only user testing can tell you whether you've made the right choices (Play testing is a good substitute, but may just tell you that you find yourself interesting - not the most productive of strategies).

There's always a risk in balancing any changes that automate player actions, as you can end up with a game that gets played automatically for you. Don't be discouraged if this occurs. The popularity of Final Fantasy XII, Progress Quest and the Angband Borg screen saver suggests that automatically played games are a great untapped genre. Although Dungeon Siege is a great counter example of what not to do. (I mean, the whole point Diablo was to see how fast you could wear out your mouse and/or development Occupational Overuse Syndrome. Automating the clicking just misses the mark).

I've tentatively sketched out a 'gambit system' design for a future verison of Unangband. Although I've borrowed the name, I have no idea how similar it is to Final Fantasy XII as I've never played it before. I'll acknowledge that Unangband has a heck of a lot of different things to do and remember, and the more time you get to devote to choices about how to fight monsters and not which flavour of food to eat, the better. So the 'gambit system' will allow you to 'programmatically' enhance game play through allowing you to specify automatic player actions using a 'if in this state' --> 'do this action' mechanism.

But ultimately, you want to replace a 'way of automating uninteresting decisions' with more intelligent game mechanics. For instance, Angband has various resistance spells, which run out after a short time. It makes a lot of sense to allow the player to automatically recast these, provided that you're in a place where you can do so safely. But the annoyingly named Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King makes even a smarter design decision, which is to allow the player to have the spell cast permanently, in return for sacrificing some of your maximum mana amount.

The mini-game is another way of enlivening otherwise uninteresting decisions. I'm in the midst of even worse named The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (two 'The's in the title being almost as bad as two colons), which still features atmospheric/dreary (delete one) sailing around islands from Wind Waker, but replaces the 'gee I have to watch the same unskippable animation' feature of hauling treasure up from the sea floor, with a 'guide the salvage arm' to the treasure mini-game. Much like Okami's mining game, it's not all that great, but at least you get to do something.

For the record, the only worthwhile in-game mini-game I've played is the hacking subgame from Paradroid. And that is as central a mechanic to the whole game as running around shooting droids. I suspect that the puzzle mini-games of Puzzle Quest are just as fundamental to the game play (The DS version of Puzzle Quest wasn't in stock, which is how I ended up with Zelda).

PvP and advancement

Psychochild's blog (RSS) sets a weekly game design challenge, which is a great exercise for thinking about possible game systems and game mechanics. This week's exercise is coming up with a successful PvP design. I've commented on his blog, but it's worth repeating here as PvP games with advancement are fundamentally broken. As David Sirlin points out, it's like a grandmaster getting two queens instead of bishops because he's been playing longer than his opponent. If you disagree, he's written an excellent article criticising World of Warcraft for this reason, among others.

So the challenge for anyone doing a PvP design where they want to allow advancement is to come up with a fundamentally unbroken version of advancement.

My suggestion follows:

If you are going to do PvP with advancement, I'd recommending taking a leaf out of the Call of Cthulhu RPG design and have a learn through failure approach. The loser gets to pick one ability that the winner has used, which they don't know. The winner improves the ability picked, and the loser learns it.

That immediately makes the advancement through PvP technique have it's own tactical component in terms of which opponents you select. By restricting the ability chosen to only something that the loser doesn't know, you also encourage people to go out and find enemies that they haven't fought before. They may even be encouraged to set up 'dojo' like systems, in order to train as many beginners in the ability they want to improve.

[Edit: You'll probably want to read 'How to make a game with PvP Done Right'.]

20 Underused Game Mechanics

In the spirit of everyone else doing '20 game clichés we thought we'd repeat for you' lists at the moment, I've written a 20 under-used game mechanics list that'll hopefully at least give you some game design suggestions. No pictures - I don't want to pad out the reading time unnecessarily. Feel free to digg this, irregardless of that fact.

1. Asymmetric Co-op: The game has a playable co-op mode, but the second player has different abilities from the first. Whether it's collecting star fragments, shooting colour drops or rising out of the ground to bust heads, allowing a second player to drop in for some lighter entertainment without needing the l33t skillz of the main gamer in the room is a sure-fire winner.

Idea from: Wizball. Druid. Super Mario Galaxy.

2. Bad-Ass Boss Fight: You want to know how tough the bad guy is? Play as him, before you fight him. Then you can really justify your inability to beat him.

Idea from: Marvel Nemesis: The Rise of the Imperfects.

3. Design Your Own: Design the dungeon, then play through it. You can't blame anyone else for the problems with the architecture.

Idea from: Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground.
Who raved about it: Clive Thompson in Wired Magazine.

4. Not Re-Using Mini-bosses: You've all had those games when you get to the mini-boss, and have to pull out the stops to beat them. Then, on the next level, the same mini-boss is back. Multiple times. The idea is as old as Ghosts'n'Goblins. Well here's another idea. Don't.

Idea from: Darwinia.
Who raved about it: Kieren Gillon in Eurogamer.

5. Letting You Fight Fights You're Intended to Lose: You've been betrayed by Athena and shrunk back from god-like dimensions to normal size. Then Zeus sucks the rest of your power out of you by tricking you into channelling it into a sword. You're left weak and bleeding, unable to even move faster than a stagger. And still you have to fight.

Idea from: God of War II.
Who raved about it: N'Gai Croal in the inaugural Vs mode discussion.

6. Interactive Cut-Scenes (But not Quick Time Events): If you're going to be stuck in cut-scenes telling part of the story, you may as well make them interactive. And I'm not talking about hiding unimplemented game-play behind a Quick Time Event - I'm talking about looking down Eva's top in Metal Gear Solid 3, or completely changing the outcome of the final cut scene in Soul Calibur.

Idea from: Soul Calibur.

7. Breaking the Fourth Wall: Whether it was showing you the Game Over screen prematurely, or telling you that you've been playing long enough, there's not enough games that break the fourth wall and talk to you the player, as opposed to the character you're playing. Or for that matter, deceive gamers about which character they'll end up playing.

Idea from: Metal Gear Solid 2.
Who raved about it: Tim Rogers in "dreaming in an empty room"

8. Moving the Controller: And if there was one way to really break the fourth wall, it was for a computer game to reach out and cause your controller to move without you touching it. A heart-stopping moment for many a game-player. Not enough games make you look on the jewel case for clues these days either.

Idea from: Metal Gear Solid.
Who raved about it: Practically everyone who played the game.

9. Upwards Preference: Get the player to look up early in the game. Use it to figure out whether they prefer regular or inverted mouse-look. It's not a hard thing to do. So why do so few games do it? (I know this is an Xbox console setting now. Hiding the option elsewhere in the user interface still doesn't solve it though.)

Idea from: King Kong.

10. Vengeance is Mine: First you sneak past them, then you kill them. It could be a Tyrannosaurus Rex in King Kong, or a gang of Outlaws in Call of Juarez. The opportunity to turn the tables and lay the smack down is not one to be missed.

Idea from: Call of Juarez.
Who raved about it: Kieron Gillen in Eurogamer.

11. Seeing the Consequences: Re-encountering the same scene as from a different point of view suddenly gives you a whole new perspective on events. Half-Life gives you the opportunity to go back to the Xen teleport chamber in both expansions, while Fahrenheit and Call of Juarez allow you to see the same scenes as both the pursued and the pursuers.

Idea from: Fahrenheit.
Who raved about it: Michael Filby from Jolt.co.uk.

12. Setting the Environment on Fire: Sure, physics engines are great. And destructible environments will be 'teh next-gen' as soon as they catch technology up with the likes of X-Com. And you can set fire to enemies in lots of games. But nothing goes better with marshmallows than watching half a hillside go up in smoke from a single match. Games should bring the pyromaniac out in all of us. There needs to be more first-person shooters in burning buildings as well.

Idea from: King Kong.
Who raved about it: Kristan Reed in Eurogamer.

13. Playing with Scale: There's nothing quite like scaling tall buildings, crushing people beneath your feet and watching the screaming multitudes fleeing in front of you. Psychonauts? King Kong? Katamari Darmacy? The end of God of War? Pick one - they're all good at it. The re-use of the sword level in God of War is a particular standout - arguably one of the best level designs ever.

Idea from: Katamari Damacy
Who raved about it: Tom Bramwell in Eurogamer.

14. Better Level Themes: You've played games with the lava level. The ice level. The sewer level. Well how about a game with the Milkman level? The disco level. The Escher level. The Meat Circus level. Welcome to Psychonauts.

Idea from: Psychonauts.
Who raved about it: Yahtzee throws down the praise and back-hands you.

15. Designing the Level to Let You Use Your Toys: Bridge littered with the debris of cars moved into make-shift blockades. Check. Concrete barriers behind which terrorists are cowering. Check. An M203 grenade launcher and enough ammunition to take all of them out. Check. Survival horrors and low ammunition be damned. If you give me something shiny, I want to be able to play with it to my hearts content. Shame on those games that give you sniper rifles without suitable draw distances, or rocket launchers in twisty corridors.

Idea from: Black.
Who raved about it: Kristan Reed in Eurogamer.

16. Adding Things to Photographs: The photograph collection mechanic has been used well - arguably over-used in some games. But the photographs tend to turn up - well, just like you took them. What you really want is a game where the photos you take, and the resulting pictures have disparate elements - ghosts in the background, missing objects, weird aliens like in They Live. It could be a whole mechanic in itself, but sadly, just a nice Easter egg in the example below.

Idea from: Metal Gear Solid 2.

17. Economy of Design: Stop using a game-mechanic when it stops being interesting. We've played with the toys - it's time to put them back in the pram and move on. The whole of Portal is an exercise in economy of design - once you've learnt how to do something, you're only ever asked a few times to expand on it. I mean, the weighted companion cube appears on one freakin' level and already has its own fan clubs. So is some of the mechanics in Half-Life 2 - in particular the pheropod.

Idea from: Portal
Who raved about it: Every game journalist this year.

18. Annotating Maps: The in-game map - an abused and reviled mechanic if there ever was one. The only way to pep it up is to let you draw on it like you used to as a kid. And if you're really lucky, mum will let you put it in the oven afterwards so it can curl up and look, like, really old...

Idea from: Zelda: The Phantom Hour-Glass.
Who raved about it: Tom Bramwell in Eurogamer.

19. Telling the End of the Story First: Kratos stands at the edge of a cliff. He is heavy with despair. He slumps forward, taking a final step and tumbling into the abyss towards the rocks below. Sure, they cheated in the end with a deus ex machina. But you want to find out how such a kick-ass character wanted to top himself. Hell, build a game where you're forced to fail a scenario, go back three years earlier, and then have to replay the events, with additional information that'll help you beat it the second time around.

Idea from: God of War.
Who raved about it: Kristan Reed in Eurogamer.

20. Falling Action / Playable Denouement: You've saved the world. Just seen the biggest explosion ever. Fled out of the castle as it crumbles around you. And the credits roll. Well, howabout for once, let you actually enjoy the moment. Kratos gets to run up to the steps to Mount Olympus. Call of Duty 4 goes all slow-mo on you. Grand Theft Auto - well, it never gets dull.

Idea from: Grand Theft Auto.
Who raved about it: Stephen Totilo in MTV Multiplayer.

50 greatest game design innovations

Picked up via Reddit, the 50 greatest game design innovations.

While we're at it, every so often one of the game blogs I read discovers the 300 Game Mechanics website, and trumpets it as a great set of ideas - which it is. The latest was Raph Koster, last week it was Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Unfortunately, the designer, Sean Howard, stopped at number 59, for various reasons.

[Edit: He actually appears to have restarted. The original challenge was one a day, and he's eased the pace. Some good analysis of the pros and cons of procedural generation of content round these off].

At least one of his ideas has been picked up and is now a playable game.

Replace death with achievements

As a (part time) game designer, you give yourself a problem, and immediately start thinking about solutions.

So, as soon as I finished the article about games I've not finished, I started thinking about how to fix the damn problem.

Here's a suggestion: Checkpoint your game regularly, and have a set number of lives for each check point. Give out an achievement for reaching each checkpoint without using up all the lives - you don't even have to tell the player how many is enough.

If the player uses up the lives before reaching the next checkpoint, not only do you offer to reduce the difficulty level, like God of War does (and other games), but you offer the option to skip through to the next checkpoint, minus the achievement. You can even make them suffer through a cut scene to get them up to speed on what's happened in between. Because it's a self-evaluation system, players will have an idea 'how close' they were to overcoming whatever obstacle is slowing them down.

That way, people can play the game, overcoming the difficulty humps they may experience (which may be wildly different from one person to the next), while still rewarding people who have the skill and perseverance to play the game well.

[Edit: I think I've read this suggestion somewhere before. My apologies for not being able to site the original source].