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[Gimym TILBERT]

If you collapse the entire Ocarina of time item dependency (for exemple replacing linear series with a point and other equivalent pattern swapping), you basically obtain is ideal setup of not too broad at a time despite apparent complexity (good news for procedural generation).

other interesting facts about zelda design:

http://kotaku.com/5918442/nintendos-top-people-are-discussing-ways-to-make-their-new-games-more-like-their-old-ones

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/CaryChichester/20120326/167219/Tutorials_of_Zelda_When_Do_Players_Get_to_quotPlayquot.php

It's funny that in the broad strokes all open nintendo games have similar structure (pokemon, zelda, metroid) execute quite differently.




Also item supplies is becoming increasing stupid in zelda game, you don't need inventory anymore, just use what's there like a mario power ups.

[Tumetsu]

That leads me to wish they would do a "New Legend of Zelda" where they'd return to first Zelda's concept or if that is too rough, back to LA, LttP, Oracles. If Nintendo would make a new 2d Zelda in vein of their old ones I'd buy it.

Actually, it puzzles me that they haven't made a new iteration of Four Swords considering NSMB's multiplayer success. Of course FS's main point was GBA screens, but it wouldn't be completely impossible without them. Or alternatively use WiiU's pad.

[C.A. Sinner]

Problem with Zelda bosses is for me that they degenerate in to formula:
1) Observe the environment
2) Figure puzzle
3) Execute three times.

And in most of the cases the "puzzle" isn't that clever either.

yeah, exactly. actually this extends to all the puzzles, not just the boss fights. nintendo has a standard repertoire that they draw from in every single game in the series (except the first 2 games). when i play a new zelda, i can always solve at least half the puzzles because i'm familiar with them from previous games.

[Tumetsu]

Personally I haven't noticed that while playing though it is probably true (I haven't had any problems with most Zelda puzzles). I like environmental puzzles, to learn my way through dungeons and terrain. For me this worked best in 2d games for some reason. It is similar to point & click adventures where you have to figure the puzzle from the environment. Dungeon can be a really powerful environmental puzzle (like already mentioned Eagle's Tower and Jabujabu)

Problem comes up when this is applied to bosses. Boss by its nature is contained in limited space. There really isn't much space for good environmental puzzles. In effect, the puzzle transforms to something kin of traditional puzzle game. For me this takes the fun away, since usually it doesn't play well with idea of combat.

Personally I think Zelda has gotten too much into arbitrary dungeon puzzles (which aren't even that unique) while just tacking combat aspect over it. SS tried to add more depth into combat but to me at least it still felt superficial in most cases.

[C.A. Sinner]

I don't mean the overarching dungeon puzzles, those are different enough, i mean the moment-to-moment switch puzzles and that kinda thing. also the newer games (particularly skyward sword in the infamous water temple in oot) have a bit of a problem with busy work where you have run around a lot just to press a couple switches to "solve" a puzzle you already figured out 35 minutes ago.

[seagaia]

it's all about the balance i guess and trying not to kill flow. too many puzzles will make you get stuck and frustrated.

nothing like being on one side of the dungeon and knowing "oh shit, gotta walk all the way back to get x,y,z". i think it's possible to avoid this too much with careful dungeon design. but then you have the problem of stuff feeling linear possibly.

too much combat..., well, if they're just in a series of linear room sthat don't look that interesting then you won't feel like you're exploring, you're just killing shit. i mean might be cool once or twice. depends!

maybe the zelda model is inherently flawed and there is no way to save it. no, that's too pessimistic.

it seems like it is very hard to strike an awesome optimal solution when it comes to a zelda game. there are lots of ways to make stuff that is pretty good of course.


man, game design is hard

*jumps out window*

[Graham.]

nothing like being on one side of the dungeon and knowing "oh shit, gotta walk all the way back to get x,y,z". i think it's possible to avoid this too much with careful dungeon design. but then you have the problem of stuff feeling linear possibly.

You can design that stuff out. A dungeon never requires an unnecessary element. If it's your dungeon you can do whatever you want with it.

The kinds of constraints that pop-up are often a result of the individual elements of a dungeon being designed separately. The dungeon has a theme. It has a boss who has some concept art that inspires someone. The textures look good if they're lit using torches in a certain way. The resulting shadows create restrictions on where stuff can be because they player needs to see these 3 things easily from this position, and not see this one thing from over here, and so on.

Then there are cool monster designs, and you've got to re-use some element from a previous dungeon who's dungeon is already so far along that you can't remove it. You've got to re-use it because you have a budget.

Then there's the ego of the designer, usually the biggest constraint . He doesn't want to re-design the whole thing... again. He fell in-love with one piece, and now he can't fit that piece with this other piece and the other requirements the dungeon has - like training the player in certain skills, having a play-through pace that's complementary to the other dungeons and so on.

There's a lot of shit to deal with. Making a dungeon linear is just the easy-way-out. It isn't required. You just might have to rethink a lot of things. Game design is fun, and yes, very hard.

[seagaia]

posting this here because i don't want to make a topic, and this is kind of related to zelda stuff.

so my current game obviously has zelda-dungeons and stuff. that's part of the game (The other part is more exploring less strutured areas), but i'm increasingly getting this feeling in my head of "christ, the health bar has got to go". it feels tacked on and death feels like an annoyance to me, much in the same way a mechanic in an earlier game i made did (except I left it in)

what do people think about removing health, and ways to make the dungeons not some cakewalk from a fighting standpoint?

i'd still require killing enemies to get through some rooms. is this mostly just more work on my part in terms of designing enemies that can't be brute-forced smacked to death? i have trouble thinking of ways to make combat meaningful without health and was looking for advice on how to approach removing the health system. c'mon tigsource, you're my only hope

[Graham.]

The player has to lose something if you want meaningful encounters. A challenge isn't a challenge without a failure state.

I'm a little tired of health too in Zelda games. Zelda being Zelda is enough. I'm glad you're trying to rid yourself of it.

Cave Story lets you collect tokens from defeated enemies. You use them to level up your gun. If you take damage your gun level goes down. So you have like a bar that's maxed out at level 3. That gives you the most powerful blast of whatever weapon you have equipped. If you take enough damage to drop that bar - like an exp bar - so that it depletes, you'll drop back to level 2.

Any area can be defeated using a level 1 weapon, it's just extremely irritating to do it that way. You can die too....

You could do something similar. Maybe the character powers up as he's being successful, and powers down when he "takes damage." You can reduce things that are not combat specific, unlike the way its all about guns in Cave Story. You could take away or reduce other powers, maybe something that makes navigating the dungeon harder. You might have to invent some powers just so you can take 'em away.

In Dark Souls, the punishment for dying is having to repeat the level. Also, if you heal at a fire you have to repeat a level. You have to master a level before you can take down a boss, because you need multiple runs at the boss.

Maybe your main character doesn't die, but he's set back somehow, though that's really the same thing as health with a 1-hit kill and carefully chosen respawn points.

Maybe you don't need to do away with health, just implement it in a different way. What kind of dungeons do you have?

Another alternative is focus heavily on your enemy design. You could have 3 stages of attack for each enemy, each obviously progressively harder. If the player makes a single mistake when in combat, the enemy reverts a single stage, meaning the player has to beat it again. So if it were in stage 2 and the player failed, the monster would go back to stage 1. Maybe if the player does 6 stages (i.e. 2 full monsters) in a row he goes on a streak, getting some improved ability until he makes a mistake.

If you want longer/harder rooms just make the player kill several monsters in a row, or make a monster with more stages.

[seagaia]

The player has to lose something if you want meaningful encounters. A challenge isn't a challenge without a failure state.

...

I'd like to avoid forced repetition. now that you brought up cave story, it reminded me of the heart gates in an untitled story - they would be at the end of some challenging area, and you'd need full health to open them.




i've thought about the "only set back a few rooms thing", but it just felt awkward and like an excuse for dying or something.


the dungeons are zelda-like in structure, but my hope is to design them with a far smaller focus on items-as-a-one-time-use-gimmick.  *shrug* I like the idea of encouraging better performance via taking away some sort of energy...in this case, i'd like to have certain areas of the game blocked off until enough "thingies" have been collected via exploring areas.

say that the "thingies" were spread about the world, some you just find, some thingies you need to do well in a dungeon to get - like the heart gates in AUS. if you are too careless in one leg of the dungeon, you won't be able to get this "thingy" - this could make boss fights more meaningful, while still not really penalizing overall progress in the game if you don't get the "thingy" - content for the dedicated I guess, those who wish to master the world of the game.

and of course you could just replay a boss, or replay the section if you want to try to do better, but it won't really be necessary for overall progress in the game.

just an idea i guess. i mean, it could fit in with the theme of the game i think, on some weird metaphorical level, so whatever o_o

thanks for the help/.

[Graham.]

I'm thinking about Flower. I haven't played it, but my understanding is that you sort of do what you want. You're kind of collecting these petals, so there's a completion state, but you can't really fuck it up either.

Sometimes I do more challenging, and riskier, things in Mario just for the style. There are minor rewards like 1ups and power-ups. Those tease me, but I really just go for the style.

There's a lot of style in Smash too. Beating someone well just feels a lot nicer.

Removing health is a difficult path to walk. You don't want setbacks right.... I'll play Geometry Wars over and over. The setbacks there are max 2 minutes, and each play-through is different.

Games are all about doing the same things over and over in slightly varying contexts. Death is cool because it lets you replay content again and again. Each time it feels slightly different because you're more experienced, generally meaning you "get further."

You know one of the big flaws with something like Zelda? Everything is one-off. Compare it to Geomtery Wars. That game milks the basic mechanics over and over. You have to die in Zelda or you'd zip through the content. Dark Souls is the same way... like any challenging game I guess.

A good Zelda without health would be a Zelda that lets you replay content in your own way.

Why are Zelda games linear? Like why do they have to be dungeon A, dungeon B, dungeon C, plot, dungeon D. Why can't they be, a little A, a little B, a little C, a little B, a little C.

Like maybe there are thingies in dungeon A that gives you some "powers." Now maybe to get these thingies you need to perform X well (X is an amount, like on a scale, like "gold star" well). Say you have to explore into the right room, then you have to overcome a particularly hard challenge. You don't have to beat the challenge. You just can. If you do you get some thing, say, the STAR. The STAR gives you a small advantage in some challenges in the current dungeon, and a big advantage in dungeons B, C, D, but it isn't necessary.

Ok. Let's say dungeon B has a similar room and item, say, the BAT. Now the BAT is easier to get than the STAR. But dungeon B is one you'd like encounter after dungeon A. If you have the BAT, then it is easier to get the STAR. You don't have to get the STAR. You don't even have to get the BAT. You can just be a boss and keep on playing. Or you can start tracking around getting the things you need.

You could keep doing this. You distribute powers all over the place, then you make each power valuable in over-coming some other challenge. You'd have like a network of powers and challenges, some challenges giving powers, some powers helping with challenges.

Every power could be gotten without any other power. You never need any of them (or just most of the them), but all help in some way. Each power has its own challenges to overcome first, and the difficulty of these challenges varies wildly. Also, the kind of challenge varies. Some players would find the acquisition of some powers far easier simply because they excel at particular aspects of the game. Maybe those players wouldn't need to get every power, or get them in order of increasing difficulty. They could sometimes just skill their way to some of the good ones.

Weaker players would have to spend more timing investigating and doing things in-order.

You could balance this until you were blue in the face.

Now you'd have re-usable dungeons. Players would be bouncing between them all the time in their own way. There's no cost to failure, not really. You just "lose" that challenge, then can try again. If you'd like, you could time-lock some of the challenges so that a player only gets a handful of attempts before they have to spend some time adventuring somewhere else first. Or maybe they have a currency that could be spent on particular challenges. Or whatever.

In regular Zelda, everything you need is right in front of you. You go to place A, then B, then C. You can backtrack but only for special things that aren't really necessary.

You could have no health and re-usable dungeons. Jenova Chen talked about "Flow" as being a way to let players control their difficulty by choosing to pursue food, leveling up, or sink into the dungeon, facing new challenges. Over time they found the right balance, hence the name. This game I'm thinking, is like Zelda meets Flow meets Dark Souls. That's what I'm thinking.

These kinds of patterns are kind of related to my own stuff, so I got something out of talking about them. Good luck with your thing. I haven't checkout out your devlog yet but I will.

[vinheim3]

Why are Zelda games linear? Like why do they have to be dungeon A, dungeon B, dungeon C, plot, dungeon D. Why can't they be, a little A, a little B, a little C, a little B, a little C.

This is top of the list of things I want to see in future Zelda games. It's done quite a big in a few official zeldas like OoT and TP, in some rom hacks, and in some ZeldaClassic quests, but usually, it's just you revisiting a dungeon to get past 1 obstacle to get 1 optional item/upgrade.

I think it would make the dungeons feel more memorable if you revisited them later to access new sections containing new challenges (without removing other dungeons), rather than just forgetting it for the rest of the game. It would also give the player a sense of progress when he revisits the first bits mowing down everything he encounters and speeding through it if there are movement upgrades (like Roc's feather).

It might seem like the redundant theme would be a downside to this, but it could actually make environments more interesting. Say you had a forest temple like in OoT, but one corner of the temple started to get a lot more damp and humid, up to the point where you'd need to learn to swim (in 2D games) or dive (in 3D) to further progress. The point past that would be something like a marsh, it would keep up with the forest/grass theme while playing and looking very different.

It would mean you'd have to make more dungeons, but with zeldas going all the way back to MM having 4-6 dungeons, it would be the same as zeldas before that

[Graham.]

It would also allow for the dungeons to be a lot more complex. If the complexity is too much for you, either because you're playing unusually poorly or just a newer player, you can just move on. There would be the smooth ride for the casuals and the deep experience for the insane, and neither would feel short-changed.

Familiarity is king. If you make an asset, why not re-use it. It's free. Take advantage. It also always allows for more control in pacing.

And of course replay goes up.

[seagaia]

Thanks, this has been helpful. This is a very tough question to crack but I'm working on it, hopefully I can make it work.

I like a combination of having "later revisit" barriers and "skill" barriers. Areas in the game  would be unlocked via collecting Xs (X is something, star, medal, whatever). You only need a minimal amount to actually "finish" the game, and you can collect a lot early if you want, but to get those you have to go through ahrd parts of dungeons without messing up too much. Other times, the dungeons can have blocked off areas that lead to a deeper part of the dungeon.

I'm hoping to set dungeons around a certain theme. Going deeper into the dungeon, later in the game, when you've explored more of this character's mind, will let you be able to more deeply explore the theme of that dungeon. At least that's what the artist and I are sort of discussing.

This has helped a lot, thanks you guys

[Azure Lazuline]

In Skyward Sword, you revisit a dungeon once, and there are new monsters and a few new puzzles. Special mention also goes to the last dungeon in that game, which was one of the most interesting and unique dungeons in any Zelda I've ever seen - The dungeon consists of 8 rooms and 1 empty space, lined up on one of those sliding tile puzzles, and you have to rearrange the rooms in various positions to progress further. Each room only has certain sides connectable and you can't move the room you're in, so it's a really fun and challenging meta-puzzle, and the individual rooms are all pretty cool too. One detail I really appreciated was that after you clear a room, it always opens up a shortcut to make traversing that room easier for after you've moved it around and are just using it to get from A to B.