Extra Punctuation: Not All Sequels Suck
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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I think the DS sequels managed to make Castlevania: SOTN's formula even better. Well, and Aria of Sorrow on GBA. Added a new abilities system over sub-weapons for AoS and DoS, made a 2 member mage/warrior split for PoR while escaping the usual castle setting thanks to the portraits, and OoE split the line between "classic" and "Metroid"vania.
Minus the generic anime art style for character art in Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin being a huge downside.
This:
Minus the generic anime art style for character art in Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin being a huge downside.
This:
I read a book [http://www.amazon.com/Hamlet-Holodeck-Future-Narrative-Cyberspace/dp/0262631873/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305648891&sr=8-1] years ago in undergrad by an English prof at MIT who claimed the holodeck (or simpler VR setup) would be the future of narrative. It's been over a decade but it might still be worth a read. Tabletop RPGs and choose-your-own-adventure style gamebooks are probably good training for non-coders who are interested in game design as well.
Not sure if anyone mentioned it first time around but Assassins Creed 2 was much much better than its predecessor, and yet you still had Desmond, Lucy and Vidic.
now this i wholeheartedly agree with. make the barrier of entry for development lower for those who want to make simple games without having to learn a shit-ton of programming.
that makes lots of sense to me.
that makes lots of sense to me.
Films: Alien/Aliens, Godfather II, Dawn of the Dead, Goldfinger (though that may be cheating), Star Trek 2, Terminator 2, Empire Strikes Back (Dodgy ground but it's a contender), The Dark Knight, Mad Max 2, The Toy Story Trilogy, Lethal Weapon 2, Addams Family Values
Novels: Dexter in the Dark, Barchester Towers (The Warden), Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer), War of the Worlds (The Crystal Egg), A lot of Lovecraft's "inspired by" works, Wild Cards.
Games: GTA 3 vs GTA 1 or 2? Street Fighter 2 vs Streetfighter? Dungeon Keeper 1/2?
It's a good rule of thumb, but it's not set in stone.
And just to annoy Yahtzee, Buffy (TV Series) beats Buffy (Movie).
Novels: Dexter in the Dark, Barchester Towers (The Warden), Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer), War of the Worlds (The Crystal Egg), A lot of Lovecraft's "inspired by" works, Wild Cards.
Games: GTA 3 vs GTA 1 or 2? Street Fighter 2 vs Streetfighter? Dungeon Keeper 1/2?
It's a good rule of thumb, but it's not set in stone.
And just to annoy Yahtzee, Buffy (TV Series) beats Buffy (Movie).
But let's be honest here: AC's story was about Altair and AC2's was about Ezio. Diffrent characters, diffrent location, diffrent era. Desmond and friends are only an excuse to explain the "you're in a memory" mechanic so you can't just kill everyone during a mission.NinjaDeathSlap said:
I would have to disagree with that. While I respect Cameroon's sequel for creating a number of popular tropes, it was largely underwhelming compared to Ridley Scott's tension-filled, well-paced narration. It's like comparing Amnesia to Dead Space.The_root_of_all_evil said:
RPG Maker VX is a fairly solid program for those who want to make RPG's. It takes some getting used to, but it's easily learned if you give it an afternoon or two. And there's a huge online community consisting of graphical artists, storytellers, musicians; you can easily post on a forum saying "I want to make a game, here is the concept" and then have a group of people working on your idea within a week. It's pretty cool.
One problem with the holodeck approach or the plain english approach to coding logic, is that as the complexity increases the ruleset starts to look more and more like spaghetti. Some technical conventions may have a high barrier to entry, but are often designed to make it easier to handle large projects.
Even if we have a magic wand that can grant us wishes (and modern development tools are very much like magic wands) the hard part is still defining exactly what we want.
A writer writing a game in plain English, would stil face the challenge of structuring the logic in a way that he can comprehend himself. I bet some writers actually make technical flowcharts or tables to visualize the flow of a traditional story.
Even if we have a magic wand that can grant us wishes (and modern development tools are very much like magic wands) the hard part is still defining exactly what we want.
A writer writing a game in plain English, would stil face the challenge of structuring the logic in a way that he can comprehend himself. I bet some writers actually make technical flowcharts or tables to visualize the flow of a traditional story.
I actually think this is your strongest point in that entire article. I had been thinking about the same thing myself recently. All other forms of story-telling (books, movies, music) are all very easy to create. All you have to do is just pick up a pen and some paper/video camera/instrument and go at it. Video games are not at the point were they can do that (the closest thing is Game Maker, and even that needs a decent amount of technical expertise), and I think that is really hampering the medium. You hear that developers? Make a freeware program that makes creating games so stupidly simple my grandmother could do it! Get on it!Yahtzee Croshaw said:
It's a different genre really, with the same main characters. It'd be like having Godfather 2 being all about gun-battles.Raiyan 1.0 said:
Hold on...
But yeah, Aliens is as good an action film as Alien was a psychological horror. Better?...that's purely conjecture.
First, I have to be Super-Ultra-Turbo-Mode nitpicky on this: Castlevania: SOTN didn't start the 'Metroidvania' trend that we saw later in the (IMO excellent) Aria/Dawn of Sorrow games on the DS, and others... the second Castlevania: Simon's Quest on the NES did that, though not quite to the same degree as SOTN did.
Anyway, excellent points both in this article and the one previous, and I personally thought of a few concepts that broke with the norm, but for the most part, Yahtzee had a point. And actually, someone making a more graphical 'version' of the Inform 7 creation engine would definitely be awesome, though one example of it I've seen is at http://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creator-resources/game-dev-resources/the-games-factory-2... basically a Flash-game/movie program that you can download for free. Granted, you can only upload your creations to the Newgrounds.com site, but that's not exactly a bad place to have it hosted either.
(On the note of Inform 7 games, though, I'll also point out two of my favorites... 9:05 and Shrapnel by Adam Cadre, at http://adamcadre.ac/if.html. Both extremely good, and good examples of 'story-based' games, rather than puzzle ones, like what Yahtzee referred to.)
Anyway, excellent points both in this article and the one previous, and I personally thought of a few concepts that broke with the norm, but for the most part, Yahtzee had a point. And actually, someone making a more graphical 'version' of the Inform 7 creation engine would definitely be awesome, though one example of it I've seen is at http://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creator-resources/game-dev-resources/the-games-factory-2... basically a Flash-game/movie program that you can download for free. Granted, you can only upload your creations to the Newgrounds.com site, but that's not exactly a bad place to have it hosted either.
(On the note of Inform 7 games, though, I'll also point out two of my favorites... 9:05 and Shrapnel by Adam Cadre, at http://adamcadre.ac/if.html. Both extremely good, and good examples of 'story-based' games, rather than puzzle ones, like what Yahtzee referred to.)
I think I recall reading once the original 'Alien' was meant to be a horror movie, but in space, yes... but it also helped that it was actually something of a metaphor about, ah, forced invasion, as it were: http://www.cracked.com/article_18932_alien-film-franchise-based-entirely-rape.htmlRaiyan 1.0 said:
You mentioned Inform! My life is complete! I can go all whiny fangirl and snobbishly complain that TADS is far superior if you'd like, though.
Text adventures in general are awesome, though. They're much easier to put together than a graphical game, even if you use a more difficult language like TADS, so you can focus on creating good gameplay and story rather than worry about physics engines or graphics.
(for the uninitiated--Inform is more of a scripting language, while TADS is more of a complete programming language, just specifically geared toward the creation of text adventures. As the joke goes, TADS is so powerful, you could create Inform in TADS! Both are very powerful, however, and you can make complex, fascinating games in both. If you've never played a text adventure, first, I pity you. Second, check out Dreamhold [http://eblong.com/zarf/dreamhold.html] by Andrew Plotkin--it's a great introduction to the whole thing, and it's a wee bit easier to figure out than something impossible like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml]. When you're done with that, there's thousands more at the IF Archive [http://www.ifarchive.org/] (as it's rather a large place, you might be better served by looking at Baf's Guide to the IF Archive [http://www.wurb.com/if/], which categorizes and reviews many of the games in the Archive).
If you're interested in writing interactive fiction on your own, why not check out TADS, Inform, ADRIFT, or one of the other many free IF creation tools out there? If you'd like to learn about TADS, check out the official site [http://www.tads.org/], where you can download it for free and get some really great literature/tutorials [http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/index.htm] to introduce you to it. Inform can be found here [http://inform7.com/] and ADRIFT (another relatively simple system) is here [http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi]. If you want advice on writing text adventures, there's some great articles over at The Brass Lantern [http://www.brasslantern.org/]. Enjoy!)
I'm a little obsessed with these things, can you tell?
Text adventures in general are awesome, though. They're much easier to put together than a graphical game, even if you use a more difficult language like TADS, so you can focus on creating good gameplay and story rather than worry about physics engines or graphics.
(for the uninitiated--Inform is more of a scripting language, while TADS is more of a complete programming language, just specifically geared toward the creation of text adventures. As the joke goes, TADS is so powerful, you could create Inform in TADS! Both are very powerful, however, and you can make complex, fascinating games in both. If you've never played a text adventure, first, I pity you. Second, check out Dreamhold [http://eblong.com/zarf/dreamhold.html] by Andrew Plotkin--it's a great introduction to the whole thing, and it's a wee bit easier to figure out than something impossible like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml]. When you're done with that, there's thousands more at the IF Archive [http://www.ifarchive.org/] (as it's rather a large place, you might be better served by looking at Baf's Guide to the IF Archive [http://www.wurb.com/if/], which categorizes and reviews many of the games in the Archive).
If you're interested in writing interactive fiction on your own, why not check out TADS, Inform, ADRIFT, or one of the other many free IF creation tools out there? If you'd like to learn about TADS, check out the official site [http://www.tads.org/], where you can download it for free and get some really great literature/tutorials [http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/index.htm] to introduce you to it. Inform can be found here [http://inform7.com/] and ADRIFT (another relatively simple system) is here [http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi]. If you want advice on writing text adventures, there's some great articles over at The Brass Lantern [http://www.brasslantern.org/]. Enjoy!)
I'm a little obsessed with these things, can you tell?