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TIGSource ForumsCommunityTownhallForum IssuesArchived subforums (read only)CreativeMaking a world seem Open and Alive
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TheSpaceMan
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« Reply #20 on: January 05, 2011, 10:31:20 AM »

STALKER.

The rain in STALKER and the muffled noise of it when you crawl under a tree. It made you not want to leave it even if the rain itself had no ill effects. It just feelt nicer under that tree untill the rain stoped.
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torahhorse
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« Reply #21 on: January 05, 2011, 11:30:38 AM »

open & alive work differently for everyone. there's a variety of fiction that accomplishes the 'alive' part, even short stories can do it with an economy of words. i think it's about picking the right details, as said before. details that go just a little beyond the immediate purposes of the game.
i think half-life 2 did this well.. my fav part is this drainage nook off a path where you can find a little shelter, there are no people but you can uncover their forgotten boots & other artifacts. if you stick around, you can hear disembodied wind chimes. i thought that was a brilliant moment..
open is tricky, i always feel like it's about making the boundaries seem inconceivable, and then engaging the people enough so that they don't encounter them
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FARTRON
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« Reply #22 on: January 05, 2011, 12:07:05 PM »

Little touches like the rain go a long way.

For me the key to STALKER was the interaction between elements of the world that were not the player. I've heard that if you stand around long enough other STALKERs will eventually finish all the story missions before you can get to them. Never tested it.

You'll often come across a fight already in progress, wolves chasing down a boar, a boar charging at a STALKER, STALKERs fighting raiders, etc. This goes a long way to convincing you that you aren't the center of the universe.

Sometimes you come across a body in STALKER and you really don't know if it was placed by the devs to be found, or if there was some fight here while you were doing something else. Sometimes there are clues around to what happened: a dead beast nearby maybe, another body further down. Sometimes not.

Basically STALKER gives you the experience of finding that nook in HL2 that hero twin mentions over and over, and without any specific effort by the devs for each.

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PleasingFungus
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« Reply #23 on: January 05, 2011, 01:31:29 PM »

For me the key to STALKER was the interaction between elements of the world that were not the player. I've heard that if you stand around long enough other STALKERs will eventually finish all the story missions before you can get to them. Never tested it.

That was the original design - you were going to be one of many stalkers racing to the heart of the zone... it proved to be pretty nonviable, though. Too confusing for players. The original design is a much more conventional shooter.

Very immersive, though. Their "A-Life", even in its scaled-back form, really does help create a sense of the Zone as a place. The third game, Call of Pripyat, was much more polished, but never did that quite as well for me.
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« Reply #24 on: January 06, 2011, 12:21:21 AM »

From a spatial sense and at a very basic level, I think that the inclusion of tension in tight spaces that lead into a warmly lit environment and more open volume of space really can pull a player in and make them feel relatively welcome.

I like to lean on the tension (small to big) environments to allow me to give the player some relief from where they've been when they arrive in the more open area.

From a more system level, I personally identify with a world that is running itself (npcs that eventually go home, conflict among enemies that you happen to encounter) and as a player I inherently develop a sincere want to belong to this world to establish worth and recognition in that system of my own.

The rain in STALKER and the muffled noise of it when you crawl under a tree. It made you not want to leave it even if the rain itself had no ill effects. It just feelt nicer under that tree untill the rain stoped.

This comment really illustrates my first point. There's a tension developed by the brunt (audio volume) of the elements that made you feel safer. Although in this case, you actually go into a smaller space to feel more comfortable. Pretty neat when you think about it
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unsilentwill
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« Reply #25 on: January 06, 2011, 12:45:50 AM »

If this is your issue for world-building, why not get outside and relax and observe the open and living world around you?
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« Reply #26 on: January 06, 2011, 03:55:29 AM »

STALKER.

The rain in STALKER and the muffled noise of it when you crawl under a tree. It made you not want to leave it even if the rain itself had no ill effects. It just feelt nicer under that tree untill the rain stoped.

Sound/acoustics are so important. Nothing immerses me more than believable storms. Including rain that doesn't ignore collision (hello Morrowind, Oblivion). Agreed about STALKER, storms help emphasis the interior and exterior spaces.
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Smithy
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« Reply #27 on: January 06, 2011, 09:57:06 AM »

If this is your issue for world-building, why not get outside and relax and observe the open and living world around you?
There is value in applying real world inspiration and details to fantasy/horror/sci-fi games (the stories of which do not take place in the real world,) to make them immersive. To make them into better games.

This is a thread about game design.
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unsilentwill
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« Reply #28 on: January 06, 2011, 10:17:52 AM »

It wasn't meant to be an insult. Thinking about personal observations of the small things that you enjoy outside can lead to improving in game systems. It's part of game design to me, but I'm new.
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loinbread
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« Reply #29 on: January 06, 2011, 02:18:05 PM »

How do you make a jungle seem full of life if the hardware can not support the multitude of life and wind in each branch etc.
This was a big problem in Far Cry 2 for me. A game set in Africa that doesn't feature wildlife (or any animals at all) just seems... wrong to me.

There was wildlife in Far Cry 2... I think. Recalling it was laughably bad and more of a token gesture. Tapping an impala with your geep and watching it fall over was pretty funny.
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TheSpaceMan
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« Reply #30 on: January 06, 2011, 02:20:23 PM »

How do you make a jungle seem full of life if the hardware can not support the multitude of life and wind in each branch etc.
This was a big problem in Far Cry 2 for me. A game set in Africa that doesn't feature wildlife (or any animals at all) just seems... wrong to me.

There was wildlife in Far Cry 2... I think. Recalling it was laughably bad and more of a token gesture. Tapping an impala with your geep and watching it fall over was pretty funny.

Ah this is true, The damn Zebras allways ran straight for my car when I was driving, and my girlfriend would allways ask me why I killed those poor zebras.
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laserdracula
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« Reply #31 on: January 17, 2011, 07:20:51 AM »

Prostitution is a key feature in any worthwhile open world game.  Duh.
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TheSpaceMan
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« Reply #32 on: January 17, 2011, 08:03:40 AM »

According to a friend of mine it's not a open world game if you can't pee on others or yourself. I guess the important things in games are diffrent between people.
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laserdracula
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« Reply #33 on: January 17, 2011, 01:39:52 PM »

True.  Optional lewd behavior in general makes it more believable.
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thedaemon
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« Reply #34 on: January 17, 2011, 04:13:10 PM »

There's an issue here that I didn't see posted on much. Open and alive don't have to go hand and foot. I'm currently working on a game that takes place in a small space ship, but I still want to convey the feelings of being alive and feeling connected to the avatar and npcs. How can I do this? By tingling the players curiosities? By forcing the player to make choices that can affect his avatar and the npcs around him? Currently brainstorming gameplay ideas, so I just wanted to touch on this.

As stated earlier some games that are open feel very static and dead to some players. This could be because of the large amount of choices, or they notice the small amount of variation from said choices. "Gothic" is a game that really immersed me with it's open and alive world. People had jobs, ate, slept. The player's choices meant something to many npcs. They could not like you anymore for doing something, or their respect could grow to admiration from disdain. You really felt like you earned your skills after finally beating an orc in combat, which believe me you wouldn't do at all with a low level character.
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FARTRON
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« Reply #35 on: January 18, 2011, 12:26:54 PM »

I think liveliness in something like an RPG is influenced far less by the choices available to the player (which has to do with being open, using your distinction) and more to do with the choices available to the NPCs and other actors in the world.

When I show up in some town in Fallout 3 with pockets full of loot and clean out a merchant's cash selling it all, and then move on to other adventures and other towns only to come back (perhaps even days later) and find the merchant standing in the same place with the same stock I sold him and the same lack of cash I left him with, it reminds me how dead the world is outside of my actions.

The old cheap method was to just randomize the stock and cash whenever you left, but this is often unsatisfactory too. Ideally if you want to have a market in your game, you should be simulating it at some level. Same with other public behaviors.
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FK in the Coffee
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« Reply #36 on: January 19, 2011, 12:45:12 PM »

I'd say simplicity is key here.  One of the things that made Knytt Stories so blooming with life was its minimalist approach.  The characters, tilesets and enemies were incredibly simple, and that really made me focus my attention on the music and nature pieces.  You can make a very linear game and make it seem beautiful and open by focusing the player's attention on the environment.  Also, don't pressure the player with any specific goal.  My ideal "open game" is one that is loose on story, and lets the player make navigation descisions on their own.
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baconman
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« Reply #37 on: February 04, 2011, 09:48:48 PM »

Content. Animation. Preferably with interaction. That's how you do it. Just sugarcoat your world a bit. I've seen "open" looking worlds that only consist of about 64 screens; and entire games with huge scope of level size, but totally stale and lacking in any kind of atmosphere (or variety thereof).
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Christian223
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« Reply #38 on: February 06, 2011, 06:51:39 AM »

I always felt that games that tried to be immersive tend to ruin the playing experience somehow.

When I want to play, the game makes me walk for kilometers to make me feel the "immersion". Or they put countless numbers of people with "realistic paths that simulate realistic behaviour to simulate tasks of each person", and then you put repeptitive dialogue in there, it's a good try, but does not give a good result.

Maybe the key is to make everything more simple and straightforward, because even insects are alive, when you try to simulate real life it gets so complex that you increase the number of things that can go wrong. But above all, fun is the most important thing.

Maybe it's all a misunderstanding, immersion is equal to fun, and thats it. When devs want to make something immersive or realistic, they don't realise that everytime you look at the HUD the immersion is broken, everytime you die the immersion is broken, withy every repeated dialogue, even the movements of the characters, the graphics, everything breaks the so called immersion. After all, its a game, when people are having fun they are focused on the game and are immersed in it, aim for fun.
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« Reply #39 on: February 09, 2011, 11:03:00 PM »

Sometimes open and alive is overrated.
Go for dead and small.

But seriously,

I love games that feel ... Expansive.
That feel like I'm only experiencing one part. That there's more out there yet to explore.
Examples of games that I think have pulled this off:
Full Throttle, Shadow of the Colossus, GTA III, Mondo series, Portal, along with others I won't list.

I wanted to point out Mondo, and Portal though.
The way they make you feel as if there's more out there is by trapping you.
Then they feed you little glances of a bigger world. Igniting the imagination into fabricating the world outside.

I played mondo quite a while ago, but if I remember correctly, there was some sort of dealio/explaination/tidbit that suggested you were part of an government experiment.

For me, this made the whole game feel like a crazy dream that I would eventually wake up from and then return to the real world.
So even though the real world never actually was seen or heard, it was still there in the back of my mind during the game.

With Portal it was a little less subtle I guess, you knew you were trapped somewhere, it slowly becomes more and more apparent that there's a world outside, at first with the observation rooms behind funky glass, and then with the artifacts of other test subjects assuring you that "The cake is a lie!".

Obviously these two ways of approaching open worlds are a little specific and only really work if that's the kind of story you want to tell.
But I was just thinking about it so... Whatever.  Durr...?

Also, this is definitely worth repeating:
Maybe it's all a misunderstanding, immersion is equal to fun, and thats it. When devs want to make something immersive or realistic, they don't realise that everytime you look at the HUD the immersion is broken, everytime you die the immersion is broken, withy every repeated dialogue, even the movements of the characters, the graphics, everything breaks the so called immersion. After all, its a game, when people are having fun they are focused on the game and are immersed in it, aim for fun.

« Last Edit: February 10, 2011, 07:53:09 AM by Heinz91 » Logged
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