The style of this game is so awesome.

I can't wait to see more.

Pretty much "Don't Suck!", but that always applies.

I'd prefer to explore the more interesting arena of "How to not suck."

In this case: Design the game around allowing the player to create the plot.

How to do that is an entire series of subjects by themselves.

I just browsed Chris Crawford's stuff, and it's quite interesting.

I would summise it as: it's not the stories that are the problem, but how they are told within the construct of a game. The railroading/limiting/restrictive aspect of story-games is a BAD form of storytelling. Like FatHat said, it comes from a need for a story writer to tell the story.

If we dissect a story though, you have setting, characters, plot and themes. Only the plot, and perhaps the characters, requires railroading. The setting and theme of a story should already be expressed throughout the game. Characters can also be placed in a game without much of a problem. It's plot that's the irritating factor. The requirement for plot to go a certain way is what's restrictive. We end up with the  game | plot | game | plot  segmentation. Honestly, a game for a player is all about creating their own plot. As much as they want to experience a story, they also want to participate in the creation of the plot. Otherwise they'd just go watch TV, it's a lot cheaper.

So the question then becomes: How do we enable the player to be active participants of creating the plot? Games are the only medium that the viewer can actively participate in, and that's what makes it so powerful.

So instead of seeing games as a bunch of game mechanics with a story draped over it, look at it more like a device that allows the player to make his own plot from your story.

ps. Life still is the best plot creator in terms of depth, but the plots that it can make are still quite boring, compared to the things that we could come up with for games.

I should mention this makes much more sense if you're also using data-driven development, and all your entities are in data files separate from the code.

Aha! :D

I read about Component Design a while ago, but it didn't fit with the "every object is a class" idea of game design. Then I read about Data Oriented Design, and that made sense in terms of efficiency and easy of code use, but the question of inheritance still remained.

Looking at it again, it seems like the two go hand in hand perfectly. Data Oriented Design means that your code is sleek and minimal regarding internal data handling, while at the same time your code for game objects will be small because they are made up from components.

Going from regular OO design to Data Oriented and Component Oriented design is a major paradigm shift.

Do you have any more information on these models of design? I'm all excited now.

gunmaggot: your entire contribution is "don't suck"? Thanks for the advice.

The problem with open ended designs is that either they are boring, or they are hard. There are the rare few games which are neither, like sim city, dwarf fortress and, to a lesser extent, GTA.

If you are in a situation where you can do anything, then everything becomes boring because there's no purpose. Jump off a bridge? Okay! Why? Who knows!!! The story gets thrown out in favour of a simulation, or a sandbox, and people LIKE stories. If they didn't like stories, novels would have died years ago in favour of non-fiction, as well as TV shows and movies without stories.

Is the major issue not with the story though, but in the illusion breaking way the story is forced on the player? The "indestructible wooden door" is a good example. If it were solid 4" steel, perhaps we wouldn't be so suprised by it. Perhaps if it required a 10 digit door code instead of a dinky little key, then it would be more suitable.

So if you want to tell a story, tell it, but tell it well, and don't get in the player's way. If you absolutely have to get in the player's way, do it properly and realistically. If you can kill the Mayor and he's needed later, game over or a billion cops. The player might not like it, but it's more reasonable.

It's mighty hard to make a good game that creates the story dynamically as the player plays. Even the best of them get boring after a while, and there's not really a story after all. The story is created by the player as they play the game, not by the game itself. Dwarf Fortress, Sim City, Civilisation etc don't have stories in them at all, just events. The player can turn those events into a story, but it's not intrinsic.

As for "The Ultimate Game" that's 100% emergent where players make their own stories as they play: Life. Life is 100% emergent with dynamic gameplay and infinite choices. Notice how we tend to play computer games to get away from that freedom?

Why do unrequited love make you suffer?
What's really painful is when someone loves you but you/this person/both can't make it happen or you end up breaking up for some really stupid reason.
Or when someone loves you just a little bit but not as much as you do and you realize you're just one on the list
Or someone tells you she loves you but has to move away to another place and doesn't love you enough to stay
Or one hundred other stupid things in love....

but unrequited love? I always found it was the easiest thing to deal with, just move on, you have nothing to lose...

Please.. stop

This girl I liked told me she liked me but wasn't ready for a relationship, then she goes out with a good friend of mine for the sex. Turns out she was just stringing me along because she liked the attention.

Now she can go die in a fire. 

I think Smithy wins.

That's a whole lot of hurt you've been through.

tabasco in eye

Worse: Chilli powder in the eye. Took an hour an a half to wash out completely and the whole time it's burning like hell.

My brain just exploded from the pure awesome of your blog.

Infected root canal in a tooth. AAAARGH. Sharp, throbbing and burning pain all at once. It feels like someone is trying to bore a hole in your tooth/mouth/head with a searing hot drill.

Although as a kid I managed something incredible. I was doing an obstacle course at school, clambering over a metal ladder frame I slipped and fell forward with my leg trapped. By rights I should have broken a leg, but instead I just tore one of my hamstring muscles. Agonising. For the next 6 weeks I couldn't walk or move my leg without pain so I had to hop everywhere.

That sounds like Mischief Makers -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischief_Makers
http://www.mobygames.com/game/mischief-makers

I also remember a game where you built a space-station out of simple platforms, and you built turrets (maybe buildings too?) on those platforms, and units, and you could move the whole station around against the enemies' space-station. Your units would then proceed to jump from your station's platforms to the enemies' and it was pretty cool. For some reason, I associate the game name with something like "Life and death" but that probably wasn't it.

Any help?

Sorry to necro, but was it NetStorm at all? It wasn't space, but it had all the other stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netstorm
http://www.netstormhq.com/

That looks awesome. :D

I want to see what you do next.

I think people might get suspicious that he's suddenly 5 years younger. 

Just musing on this idea at the moment. (at work )

Is there a market/demand for sprawling games with lots of secrets. With all the talk of linear/secretless games around, it seems that the OCD and completionist players are left in the cold.

A game that would take a few hours to finish, but several dozen to full complete would be popular for going against the trend, perhaps?

The walrus cometh.

Pineapple whatever:

http://www.parthonsoftware.com/pineappleoutput.html

Not really a game, but the start of one.

A very challenging and fun maze-traverse game.

The controls are very much on the twitch side until you get used to the glide factor, but once you do it's fun to zip around and complete the courses. The first one being easy and the rest quite heinous.

If you have 10-20 minutes to spend, go check it out.

I had an idea for a 3d platformer where there would be subjective gravity. the player would be attracted to the nearest object and have to use skill to kill enemies and avoid traps using the environment to their advantage.

Then 6 months later, Mario Galaxy is announced. 

Ashkin: If Derek wants to release it as retail on another platform in the future, that would be a *BAD* idea.

Which algorithms were you interested in? Perhaps just an explaination of some algorithms would be more helpful than just mountains of code.

Yeah, by events I consider everything that requires user interaction, including things that happen to the player that changes the state of the game if they take no action.

In a high speed fps, this would be hunting, attacking and being attacked.

I think Fallout 3 had good pacing only because it leaves it in the hands of the player. Like many single player games, the interaction is reactive, so the players actions cause the game mostly. This means pacing tends to be mainly player controlled. Even given that, there's still many single player games where the pacing is not player determined. The player often has to wait, or gets overwhelmed.

In multiplayer and even in many single player games, you can't leave the pacing soley in the hands of the player due to the rest of the game. In multiplayer you have other players that can interact. In an RTS you have the computer controlled sides that take actions against the player.