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[stevesan]

I think Heroes 4 is a lot more difficult to design properly than TrapThem or Braid. Of course it doesn't mean what I am doing is easy.

Well I don't think it's fruitful to say what kind of game is harder to design. It all depends on your personal skill set and experience.

[J-Snake]

Braid = low experience you need

Heroes 4 = high experience you need

[J-Snake]

i find action games harder to design than strategy games tho

Action games is my master-discipline, especially the combat-system and controls. I think there is no one out there who can match my quality-standards in this discipline.

Just wait for Super Metroid Tournament and Cave-Rage after TrapThem.
Here is some example of my early works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIf1BuHFUj8&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=bfaSoYkEgOM

[mirosurabu]

i find action games harder to design than strategy games tho

Action games are strategy games but with focus on dexterity (RTS's focus on dexterity too, but I'm talking about games like Civ and Chess here). They have less depth, but require more dexterity.

Designing strategies is painful because you have to make sure that all those emergent properties aren't ridiculously dumb.

[gunswordfist]

I've been thinking about how I don't like tutorials of today. Infamous 1's tutorial really irks me. They don't even let you move without doing what they say at the very beginning. I also hate how freaking 2D platformers have hand holding tutorials now. None of the offenders have any mechanics that are more complicated than an attack button.

I say if the game does have some not so simple mechanics, give the player a bit of freedom at the beginning to experiment with them and maybe some optional transparent tutorial popups, if not the less-immersion breaking in-game on walls, through in-game dialogue, etc. tips. While games that are simpler should just let the player run free and find out themselves.

[stevesan]

I've been thinking about how I don't like tutorials of today. Infamous 1's tutorial really irks me. They don't even let you move without doing what they say at the very beginning. I also hate how freaking 2D platformers have hand holding tutorials now. None of the offenders have any mechanics that are more complicated than an attack button.

I say if the game does have some not so simple mechanics, give the player a bit of freedom at the beginning to experiment with them and maybe some optional transparent tutorial popups, if not the less-immersion breaking in-game on walls, through in-game dialogue, etc. tips. While games that are simpler should just let the player run free and find out themselves.

Yeah text on walls is far less annoying. The worst is just the damn pop-up text so many games seem to love now...just soooo damn annoying and the opposite of fun!!!! 

[gunswordfist]

I think more people should design their games like Super Mario Bros. There are some very informative articles that analyze the level design in SMB, and you see how the developers managed to teach the game with no written instructions to people who had never played a platform game before. The general pattern seems to be that the developers predicted how people would react to situations to basically trick them into discovering new mechanics.

I was just thinking about that. SMB did it so well. Everyone just picked up and played the game. No, "Huh, how do I do this?"

[J-Snake]

No, pong did it best. You immediately know how it plays. Everyone should make games like pong.

[gunswordfist]

And it is my will to provide my vision of quality, even when it costs my life.

This summer, one man's quest to make a great game...even as the hitmen who killed his wife are closing in on his house.

[moi]

seriously tutorials are stupid, just gtive the player the controls and let him play. If you really want to make a tutorial, then make it spearate from the game, like they didi in half-life 1 (training course). Short and no huge walls of text

[Gimym TILBERT]

http://facerocker.com/2011/01/12/starting-the-perfect-adventure-%E2%80%93-link%E2%80%99s-awakening/
Perfect tutorial

[baconman]

The Binding of Issac has the best Tutorial ever.

[Jackson31]

I think games that can't think of a good way to do their tutorial level as part of the greater game eg. God of War 1, shouldn't pretend that they can/are. What I mean is, a lot of games give you the illusion that you've started playing the game proper when really you need to stop and learn a whole lot of new information, often presented as a slab of text. I'd prefer if a game had an isolated area where it just quickly tells you the things you need to know and then throw you into the game for real, the best example of this I can think of would be Assassins Creed 1, in the blank-white-digital-limbo space of the animus you're plain and simply told how to play and made to demonstrate your understanding, then you start the real game.

[J-Snake]

The Binding of Issac has the best Tutorial ever.

Binding of Isaac is a tutorial.

Anyway, my tutorial will be the best, it has some text in it.


btw. thanks for that zelda-game, Gimmy, I will play it to revisit past times.