PC game commandments

[PixelJunk]

Thank you SO MUCH for posting that.


You're awesome.

 

[CleverNickname]

Totally agreed on the Quicksave Commandment. Certain genres do fine with checkpoints (and have enough history/experience with them that their placement is pretty much universally brilliant), but AUTOSAVE-ONLY DOES NOT BELONG IN MY FPS! Or in Splinter Cell, for that matter. Textbook example of artificial difficulty.

I'm now boycotting (lol) FPSs that do not allow quicksaving. The ones I played recently showed no sign of being designed around their checkpoints and in fact would have flowed a million times better with a quicksave function.
Not to forget that quicksaving enables you to easily dick around in games. I wonder if jumping in lava will kill me? Oh, but if I try it out, I have to redo the whole last fucking half hour!

 

[imaloony]

I sort of liked the FF13 style of cutscenes. By pressing start, you could pause the cutscene. From there, you can continue the cutscene by pressing start again, or skip it by pressing back.

Also, let's not forget Yahtzee's:

- Thou shalt not be on the Wii

 

[Rattler5150]

1. Thou shalt alt-tab gracefully

Many "modern" PC games fail horribly at this.

2. Thou shalt create an interface that is designed for 18 inches and a keyboard and mouse, rather than copy your 10 foot, gamepad based console interface.

Fallout 3, Borderlands, Mass Effect 2. The keyboard has 110 ish buttons, the mouse has at least 3. Let players assign different buttons to open, pick up, jump, run, slide, duck etc.

Let me switch weapons with a single button without opening up a scroll menu, and ffs let me carry more than 2 weapons, the HALO stupidity needs to die except maybe in games trying for realism.

3. (general gaming, not pc specific) Thou shalt allow saving and pausing at any time, save points are a relic of a bygone era.

4. (general gaming, not pc specific) All "intro" screens shall be skippable with a single button, and ideally automatically skippable with a configuration file setting.

I don't care if the game was designed for Nvidia or who made your 3D engine. I don't need 30 second animated advertisements for the developer, and the publisher, and the distributor every time I start up the game. I want to go to the menu to play the damn game. Borderlands is particularly bad about this one.

I'm sure others can think of other commandments to add to this list.

1. I totally agree with. Fallout 3 always gives me issues with alt-tabbing

2. A lot of "ported" games do it quick and easy by just copying the console controller
they should take the time to fully utilize a keyboard and mouse

3. I agree with this too, the GTA games are notorious for this, I cannot stand that I have to go all the way back to a house to save

4. This is very annoying , most of these "chipset ads" are not skippable, I should be able to hit esc and go straight to the main menu of the game

I would add another commandment THOU SHALT NEVER NEED WINDOWS LIVE
I hate the fact that so many games are Games for Windows now, microsoft should do us all a favor and get out of the games market, im serious, you are not helping matters, you are just making it worse.

 

[Flames66]

Thou shalt continue to release games compatible for older OS's such as XP.

that's impractical for a myriad of technical reasons. upgrade your OS and stop complaining.


OP: though shalt not have bullshit DRM.

Thou shalt have an option in the graphical settings to turn off the Direct x 10 function that I didn't even notice so that older versions can still play it.

 

[Flames66]

Thou shalt continue to release games compatible for older OS's such as XP.

that's impractical for a myriad of technical reasons. upgrade your OS and stop complaining.


OP: though shalt not have bullshit DRM.

Thou shalt have an option in the graphical settings to turn off the Direct x 10 function that I didn't even notice so that older versions can still play it.

do you even know how programming works? the difference between DX 9 and DX 10 isn't just a switch marked "make shinier" it's a massive list of underlying features

Features that do nothing to improve the game (as far as I can see). Leave them out.

 

[Sebenko]

2) Thou shalt not purchase any FPS lacking Iron Sights

I disagree. Iron sights are great, yes (I did miss them on the pistols in Stalker: CS), but there are quite a few games that haven't been ruined by the lack of them (Doom... Uh...)

But yeah, I don't base my purchasing decisions on iron sights or the lack of.

 

[smilingcat]

How about this: Thou shalt maketh thine game fun. Number one rule. As a corollary, thou shalt listen to thine customer base, and giveth what they want. You cannot always predict what everyone wants, but a good start is to avoid the things that are universally hated.

 

[The Black Vegetable]

Thou must wait until thy game works seamlessly before selling it to the public.
Or at least bring out patches for the problems.

(This is really important when you get to deal with a major problem, like the No Sound Issue of Bioshock. That one pretty much ruins the gameplay.)

 

[Sebenko]

Yeah, Dig Dug didn't use Iron sights either! You're right! Wanna go any further back in gamings history to find examples of a game that lacks Iron Sights, or would you rather stick in the decade where it became the norm for every game?

Lots of games use regenerating health, too. Is that a good thing?

Just because it's old doesn't make it bad.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Thou shalt wake up and smell the ashes.

 

[DannibalG36]

Thou shalt make your game easily moddable.

I second this.

 

[DannibalG36]

Thou shalt wake up and smell the ashes.

G-man. Very good.

 

[smilingcat]

Thou shalt treat game design and story writing as the creative processes that they are. Thou shalt not sin by churning out reiterations of the same thing over and over. Thou shalt put thought into thine game design, and occasionally shalt thou try new things. Thou shalt, of course, have the sense to know when said new things obviously do not work or are not fun.

 

[LightningBanks]

Thou shall reccomend settings that actually work, instead of just putting everything on high (looks at valve and tf2)

 

[Flames66]

The Thnipth!

yeah they do nothing, except let the devs make bigger worlds, work more efficiently, have a longer draw distance, better lighting effects, the ability to animate more actors at the same time, higher res textures, etc. yup DX 10 offers nothing over 9.

"Bigger worlds" possibly useful, although I can only be in one place at a time and loading screens haven't really bothered me.

"Work more effectively" How?

"Longer draw distance" possibly useful, but limitations breed innovation.

"More actors" Possibly useful, but possibly cluttering.

"Higher rez textures" I don't care about texture resolution.