Just the other day I started a topic in the Java 3D section about software renderers. It turned into a discussion about gameplay being overlooked by graphics and developers views of what requires the most attention in a game.
This game is a good example of games today have become so complex that some of the gameplay is lost and the games just arn’t as fun as they could be. This game is simple but is probably more fun than some games you would shell out $20 or more for.
The game above is Castle Siege, I wanted to see what I could create in short period of time, it was done in less than eight hours. It doesn’t have complex graphics or any sound at all. The gameplay is very simple yet addictive.
Yes, but as you stated, I probably wouldn’t shell out money for this game. The almighty dollar rules the game industry (or any industry for that matter). If you won’t pay for it, who’s going to create it?
As for flashy graphics, I think most gameplayers have stated that they want them to enhance gameplay, not replace it. For example, Bridge Commander, an excellent starship simulator game, wouldn’t even be possible without the level of “eye-candy” available to modern computers. As another example, I loved how the Wing Commander series constantly used cutting edge technology to enhance each rendition of the game. From sythisized voices, to a full 3D engine, to interactive video, each game told a better story and was more fun than the last. It’s actually too bad that the series died back in the DOS -> Windows transition. It really was one of my all-time favorites.
[quote]If you won’t pay for it, who’s going to create it?
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That’s not true at all. I don’t get paid to make games and I’m sure theres thousands of others like me. They do it because they like to do it not because they’re paid. Even developers that get paid, make free games on the side because they love to do it.
I haven’t played Bridge Commander, but you’re right about wing commander the technology was very good for the time and gave a certain feel to the game.
But could it be done without sythisized voices and 3d graphics? Defenitely not the same. But could it be just as fun to play aswell as immersive?
A good game should be very immersive, but technology does affect it if you have a good story and good gameplay. I think we can all agree on this, I don’t how many years of my life have been sucked up by those old textbased games on the c64.
Now how about fun, theres this one game I played all the time back in the day on my c64 that I don’t think anything has compared to it in terms of how fun it was, Lazy Jones. You go around from room to room and play mini-games just trying to finish them all with the highest score. It was definetely not fancy and none of the games were very special, but it was incredibly fun because of how the game was designed.
Wing Commander was fun and it wouldn’t be as fun without the technology it had, but thats because it was designed around that technology. If it wasn’t designed for the technology, but was just as good as an idea and design (albeit a different one) it could of been just as fun and immersive.
Games arn’t created by just the industry, they’re developed by the community which includes non-paid developers aswell as the industry. Money doesn’t drive the community, people do. But, unfortuneately for everyone, money drives a lot of these people.
You start to sound like someone who wants to return to the old C64 days, as if it’s not like you don’t care much about fancy graphics but that you don’t want them.
Sure, Lazy Jones was fun and I absolutely adored the old level 9 text adventures (snowball 9 series especially), but if someone gave me the choice now between for a new shiny 3D adventure or a new text adventure (let’s assume outcast vs. snowball 9), I choose the 3d one any day.
Technology is not something to avoid for the sake of gameplay. A computer game is technology for a large part. Computers advance and games will advance with them. Bad games with great graphics have always been considered a ‘bad game’ and probably have never been played much. I prefer a great game with great graphics over a great game with crappy graphics.
[quote]If it wasn’t designed for the technology, but was just as good as an idea and design (albeit a different one) it could of been just as fun and immersive.
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Well, I guess we’ll never know. Thank God ;D
[quote]Games arn’t created by just the industry, they’re developed by the community which includes non-paid developers aswell as the industry. Money doesn’t drive the community, people do. But, unfortuneately for everyone, money drives a lot of these people.
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Well said.
Oh, back to topic. I tried your game. It’s fun with a nice retro feel
I do like games that look good, but sometimes I wish we went back to the good old days of the c64. I too would much rather play a good game with good graphics than a good game with bad graphics (most of the time, some games are just good cause they have no or little graphics.)
Your right when you say bad games with good graphics are considered bad. But games that are decent and have great graphics have been given too much praise. Just look at myst, if you consider it at least a somewhat decent game. but then again i guess it only deserves praise because it was made in the right place at the right time. It was also made on HyperCard for the mac which is quite interesting if you know the launguage. What I’m trying to say is it wasn’t that good of a game, but more people own it than any other game (I think thats still true) because it looks good and plays okay.
Maybe i’m blaming technology too much, maybe it deserves as much, but as technology has improved a lot gameplay has barely improved at all in comparision.
Its difficult to compare the two because they’re intirely different but still come together as a whole in a game. I’m going to have to think about this one more.
I played through the first 12 levels in the hope that something interesting might happen :).
If you hadn’t bothered with the graphics (e.g. used rectangles instead), and instead added some gameplay elements, it could back up your point rather well…
Also, I suggest you stop popping-up your applets. Apart from the fact that it’s annoying, and doesn’t work well, you have a bug where your applets are unclosable on Java 1.4.1 (linux). I’m not saying this particular bug is your fault (could be a VM bug; I haven’t looked at your source code), but popup-applets shouldn’t be done, and that part of it is your decision.
In this case, it is REALLY annoying, because now I have your applet running and can’t stop it; if I kill the process, it’ll kill the VM, which is shared with the whole web browser, and hence will also kill the web browser. Since I have lots of windows (about 40, including all the tabs) open, I can’t afford to just kill everything unless I bookmark everything first.
All this because I spent a couple of minutes on your game! Not good…
my game was not hindered by using the graphics, theres hardly any difference between rectangles and gifs. In terms of speed it makes little difference either as from what I’ve seen it would only run slow on a 486 or such.
The graphics do make the game better, but its not important because it doesn’t change the gameplay or accessibility of the game. My previous arguments were that gameplay is hindered by graphics, the game here is so simple that it doesn’t affect it at all.
I apologize for the problem of the pop-up windows I’ve never had this problem, but then again I hardly ever use java2. I guess another reason why I don’t like java2 very much. If i had known that the popup makes the game less accessable then i would not of included it. I thought that I could make the game more immersive (by bringing it out the browser) at no cost, I was wrong.
you probably didn’t like it all that much because you only played the first 12 levels, try it on hard mode (puts you up to level 12 or something), it doesn’t become any different, but IMHO the increased challenge (gets damn near impossible around level 20 or so) makes it a lot more fun.
The game is good because it focuses on quick thinking (at the higher levels). I said quick thinking not quick reacting because you can’t just react, the enimies move at different speeds. Most of the time you die not because you can’t move fast enough but because you can’t think fast enough.
No worries - as I said, you might just be getting screwed by another java bug. 1.3 and 1.4 seem to have added a LOT of bugs in the basic execution of apps and applets; this is probably (I’m merely guessing) due to the ambitious changes in the execution architecture (doing away with JIT’s; massive modification of hotspot, etc).
But it’s a really good example of how you WILL get screwed if you don’t use libraries the way they were intended. If you want an app, package it as an app. I click download, I double click, - and voila! the app runs! It actually feels nicer than applets in many ways, because it makes a game seem like a “normal” windows game.
when i gave an example of why i thought the game was good it was my opinion on what i thought one of its strengths were. Its hardly praise because its only like that because of fluke, i never inteded it too end up that way.
the reason i didn’t package it as an app (besides laziness) is because i wanted everyone to be able to play it and i wanted it to be a quick game to play like on other websites. I intended to be one of those games that you play when you have a spare 5 minutes or something.
In retrospect i should of done it as both but i guess i had to go watch junkyard wars on tv or something
[quote]my game was not hindered by using the graphics, theres hardly any difference between rectangles and gifs. In terms of speed
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Excuse me for being blunt, but in the context of the thread that YOU started: Who cares about the speed? This thread is about the difference made by the quality of rich content (graphics, sound, etc). To explain my point in detail: if you spent 8 hours writing this game, and the graphics took you even 15 minutes to create, then I really really wish you’d spent those 15 minutes on adding something - anything! - to the gameplay, to make it more interesting. I’d actually prefer block graphics to the graphics the game has (I’m not dissing your game - but it takes a LOT of time to make sure that rich content is “just right”. E.g. in your game, I find the wall-texture really unpleasant to look at - but that’s why artists get paid lots of money ).
No, I didn’t like it because it’s a really dull game. The short message: “difficulty does not make something innately fun, except to a tiny tiny proportion of people - many fun things are difficult; the logic is not reversible”.
In more detail…
Your game is barely even one-dimensional in terms of my (the player) decision-making process. There’s absolutely no trade off for any decision, no “I would like to do this, but doing it will make it harder to do that other thing in 5 seconds time”. You can’t even deliberately sacrifice your life at a certain point, in order to gain some advantage.
This game is like “simon-says”, with 5 different buttons. Only, it’s less interesting than “simon-says”, because there’s no “gotcha” to watch out for.
I could actually keep going for a while longer with reasons why it is dull, but I don’t want to get at you.
It may sound like I’m ripping your quick-n-simple effort to pieces; if so, I’m not trying to be nasty - just trying to help. I appreciate that this is something you rapidly knocked together - but if you don’t realise the things I’m pointing out, you either need to learn to think about them more carefully - or steer away from game design. The fact that you are so sure it is actually a fun game, despite evidence to the contrary is why I feel you need to hear this. Game design is a very difficult job, and you seem to have under-estimated it (nearly everyone does; I probably have done for 10 years). Even simple games are hard to design so that they are actually fun.
speed does make a difference, for example i like to play UT and i find it tons of fun, but if it ran under 10fps (which it has on my laptop) i don’t find it very fun.
i didn’t say that if a game was hard it was more fun. It was my opion that my game became more fun when it was harder because i think that everyone can agree with that a game thats incredibly easy just isn’t very fun (or have good replay).
in terms of the art, i created when i was satisfied with the gameplay and i thought the art would make the game more immersive by adding a theme.
When designing a game you have to be aware that you can’t please everyone. Not everyone likes certain types of games. I think deer hunter is a horrible boring game, but i know plenty of people who like it. I haven’t had any complaints until now about the gifs.
if you wanna make a 20x30 gif look like angela basset be my guest, i be very impressed if she was reconizable
i don’t think i add her to my game though, i could give u the code if u really wanna try, its very simple to understand
[quote]Maybe it’s an idea to add characters that climb the ladder that you must not hit? Like cute damsels that look like Halle Berry or something? ;D
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Yeah; howabout you have an extra drop key, and you can drop chocolates as well…if you hit Halle with a chocolate, you get a big bonus. But hitting a soldier with chocolate makes him jump sideways, onto a different ladder.
