Connectivity

[HarmanSmith]

You're forgetting a cardinal rule in control design; using the crouch/duck buttons to control altitude will without fail put players in a situation where they're trying to fly out of the way of that random asteroid that popped up out of nowhere but instead crash into it because the altitude controls are too stiff.

I know, I've crashed into my share of space debris and enemy ships because the "fly down" button wouldn't let me fly down at a sharp enough angle.

 

[PlanB]

If you're interested I'm a (relatively new, nine months) programmer who has done basic AI's before. if you're interested I'll send you a battleship game that me and a partner created. It's a console app, nothing special but the point was proving we could create an AI.

 

[Stardude82]

If Yahtzee hasn't heard already, the zombie corpse of MircoProse and the zombie corpse of Interplay might be reviving the Descent series.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Interplay-PC-Game-Descent-MDK,9671.html

Oh how I miss the Wing Commander/X-Wing games. Tie Fighter is an amazing game, probably my most favorite.

 

[Booze Zombie]

I went to the dentist the other day, it felt like playing ME 2.

Go from my house to a predetermined point of interaction and talk with some people who I know I'm going to talk to so they'll do something I know they're going to do.
I stood around outside waiting to meet up with my mother, just looking up out at the world...

It reminded me rather unhappily of The Citadel, this massive place with this wonderful garden and all that water and for some reason, I was stuck visiting this one place with a small scripted sequence and a slightly large level with some shops.

So, whilst they've refined shooting, they seemed to have reduced the enormity of the world to that of a trip to the dentist.

That said, my life has much less shooting in it than ME 2, so the trip in The Citadel wasn't exactly identical to my trip.

 

[Stardude82]

That's also why I always preferred Bioware/Obsidian/Black Isle games before the kinds of Bethesda with "small areas" where you actually did stuff and there were interesting things to see and interact with (even if some areas were empty aside of 2-3 things and not exactly every one of them was a big "HUB world") like Fallout 1+2, etc. while I found Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3 to be shallow and boring after a while cause you had to literally wade through a ton of shit killing enemies to even get to those 5-6 "interesting" areas in the game.

I respectfully disagree. Mass Effect's grind/time wasting areas were almost completely optional and Yahtzee has a point; if he wants a cinematic showing you beam down to the surface, why is that so hard? If you don't want to watch it you could skip over it. A good fast travel system could also help with immersion while cutting down on running back and fourth (again with optional cut scenes unlike the stupid elevators in ME1).

Fallout 1+2 must be one of the most visually boring games ever and you had to wade though waves of enemies whenever you went somewhere in the form of random encounters (at higher levels you could skip over them with perks)! But I never got bored playing it because of the other immersion aspects and constant novelty. Random encounters in those games were fun since with a few building blocks you could have thousands of combinations of unique battles i.e. gangsters verses mutants versus radscorpions with your character in the crossfire. (Though they were also somewhat necessary for ye olde Ecks Pea grinde.)

In those games Yahtzee would have like the fact that your pointer moved across the map and you could it and explore the randomly created locations in between cities thus creating a sense of connectivity.

Fallout 3 did have a pretty generous fast travel system and I also thought the developers put a lot of effort in scattering interesting details across the world map and thus I think it is fair they made you walk to each location just once.

Maybe if people really wanted unique locals, developers shouldn't try to push the envelop of graphics and stick to the art.

 

[MrTrivia]

Basically, the consensus seems to be we want the mako back but we want the planets to have plants fauna and flora (did I spell fauna right?) and for the mako to be able to go from point A to place 2 comfortably.

Well, EDI said in the cargo hold that the SR-2 is equipped to handle a land vehicle they call the Hammerhead (another breed of shark). I got bored shortly after clearing the Omega Nebula, so I don't know if you ever actually acquire one. I actually tried to get in the Mako when exploring the Normandy crash site, because it's the only thing from the SR-1 that seems intact.

 

[1337mokro]

Jaranja couldn't have agreed with you more.

But it seems Yahtzee's prayers have been heard by the Gaming Gods because Bioware just announced 5 vehicle missions. FOR FREE (for those who bought the game new, or have access to the Cerberus network).

So gear up and start warming the engine of your flame throwing hoover tank strangely named the Hammerhead though it resembles a Dragon more than a shark.

http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/mass-effect-2/1072538p1.html

 

[DreadfulSorry]

I tried using Blender once...and failed miserably. Obviously my artistic talents are limited to tangible media. I can't wait to see what Yahtzee's done with it though!

Also, the mental image of him playing Frontier as a child is fucking adorable.

 

[Fallingwater]

The "biggest" game I've ever played is X3 Terran Conflict. It could be argued that it's too big; since the ships are fairly slow, even with time acceleration one needs a good amount of patience. It's also entirely possible to play the game without seeing a lot of the universe, though if you're determined to build a lot (and let's face it, that's the REAL reason to play the game) you should have every sector mapped out.
Still and all, it is by far the best game to play if you want to feel like a speck of dust in the sea of space travel.

It's worth mentioning that it only takes a small script to cheat yourself more engine than your ship is supposed to be able to handle - a cheat which I, not being a very patient person, find essential to enjoy the game.

 

[robinkom]

So, what, do we get to rip apart HIS game when he finishes it? Or maybe someone from a Game Publisher or Developer should guest-rant on his work, that would be a switch.

 

[swenson]

I can so relate to the love of flying in old videogames! On our old Windows 95, we had Fury 3, and I would spend hour after hour playing that--not just to win the game, but just to fly, because it was so much fun!

For those who haven't played it, you basically have this little fighter that you fly around to different mission objectives on a planet. Once you've completed all objectives (which were usually something like "Fly to Checkpoint A. Then fly to City B and kill target. Then fly to City C and destroy it. Then fly through Tunnel D, etc.") you flew to the "Jump Zone", which teleported you to another place on the planet. After three missions, you went to the next planet. As you flew around, you picked up more and more enemy fighters around you, which you destroyed by shooting them down with increasingly powerful weaponry you picked up from blowing up OTHER stuff.

So pretty basic, but the fun thing was that there were no limitations whatsoever on where you could go or what you could do--scenery was extremely limited, especially outside of the areas you were "supposed" to go to, but it was all explodable, and you could even completely skip mission objectives and go straight to the Jump Zone if you wanted to. And flight was AMAZINGLY fun! I used to do crazy loops and skim as close to the ground as possible--I think I even managed to get a couple of enemy ships to crash like that once. And you could even fly beyond the cloud cover into the upper atmosphere (or whatever it was; graphics were terrible back then), so there was all sorts of maneuvering moves you could make, and even a limited turbo speed to cover lots of ground fast.

All in all, it was incredibly fun because it was so open. The planets were technically limited, but it wasn't obvious, because after a while you looped around to where you'd started from. The controls were easy to pick up and simple to use, and could do pretty much anything you put your mind to. And the freedom was great--you could do each mission objective, then go at turbo-speed to the next target and so on, but it was a lot more fun to meander around and kill everything in sight instead (besides, you got all sorts of lovely bonuses and extra points from that!). We need more games like this. It had scarcely any plot beyond "aliens taking over the galaxy" and terrible graphics, but it was fun, and that's all that mattered! *sigh* Nostalgia. I'll have to go play that game again now...

 

[Jake the Snake]

Yahtzee you seem to have an interesting point but i really think the "teleportation" travel is good for a game like Mass Effect. We probably just don't see eye to eye on this, but I think Mass Effect is plenty immersive just with its missions. I do hope you know that the Mako and the airlock/elevator sections were actually something people really didn't like about ME1. All the airlock was, was a little filler loading screen while the game loaded the planet. I don't call that immersion, I call that the was of time. They were all about presenting the game to the players in the way the players could access as much content as possible. And it DOES show you a cut scene of you ship coming into port with every planet you visit. I think they were thinking normal people could just fill in the blank that "oh, OK, Shepard took his shuttle and put on his armor", I mean do you really need the game to show Shepard stripping and putting on a spacesuit EVERY time you land somewhere?

Its a valid argument you have, but ME2 isn't the same kind of game as Fallout or Oblivion. And personally i'm glad it isn't. Like you pointed out in your Oblivion review, after awhile its just the same piece of dungeon/countryside copy pasted 100000000000 times and to me thats not immersive. Thats just boring and wasteful.

I think your criticism is mostly based off a nitpick. long live the nitpicking.

 

[Jhales]

Hmm, that would actually be really cool. If you had the tools, you could (if you wanted to)board the massive behemoth ships and take them out from the inside. A lot like Battlefront 2, but with less suck.

Going into the atmosphere of a planet to land would be amazing in this day and age of technology. Though, I have yet to play a game which has an ability to land a flying vehicle without having to jump out watch it crash. Well, Battlefront 2 had a kinda working landing mechanism, but it was very annoying.

Maybe if Battlefront 2 was not a starwars game, it would have been given the care and love it needed to make all of the pieces work right.

 

[KrisKing]

I feel the sameway how games cut out the connectivity between areas in game.
In FFX, Squaresoft cut out the world map which i believe was a huge mistake on thier part, for me, its a vital ingredient to the ff franchise. :/

 

[atol]

No game has yet to capture, even slightly, the actual size of the cosmos. Infinity [http://www.infinity-universe.com/] might be the first title to, but who knows when that will be released.

 

[GrinningManiac]

Like the idea of the game

I completely "get" what Yhatzee's saying there with a lack of connectivity

Sometimes I feel that a developer has had a cool idea in his head which he imagined, and then put it into a game. Unfortunately, he can't get across the idea exactly the way he wanted it, so he simplifies and/or stylises his idea

When he plays it, it seems perfect. But that's because he's using it as a platform, a sensory aide to the idea in his head. When we play it, even if he explains it to each of us personally, we cannot get his idea into our heads, and so we're left with the game, which is good-to-average, but not a godsend like he finds it

For that, I envy developers

 

[Blackout62]

the new game your designing sounds pretty innovative and I know your just gonna take this as fanboy crazies but still I'd like to wish you good luck.

 

[Daedalus1942]

I agree completely with you about the lack of spatial believability in Mass Effect II and the lack of the Mako (I never bitched about it, I quite liked rolling away in the damn thing, just wish the controls had been better). I'm also extremely intrigued and looking forward to Fun Space Game: The Game.
I await your updates eagerly and wish you well on your epic endeavour.