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[Graham-]

So there are two basic directions we can take this in next. For the record new prototypes can come out only on weekends. I spend 18 hours a week commuting. I lose sleep without working weekdays. So "breaks" at work lets me write, but not code.

Ok:
  1. Challenge.
  2. Exploration.

Which is more important to a game? If I just saw those two words I would pick the first. Games in which you only explore... don't exist... and I would hate them? I don't know.

I love stories. I love difficulty. My single greatest memories in video gaming come from overcoming a challenge after a significant and personal struggle, then engaging in the world, story, immediately after. "Exploration" is the mechanical equivalent of story i.e. story + interaction. Blah.

Anyway. The correct answer for me is exploration. Even though I'm at an early stage it is a good idea to cover the reasoning for each major decision, largely because it will serve as a reference point for further decisions. If I know why I did something then I'll... be smarter later or something.

For clarity though I'll cover how I might add challenge. Some obv restrictions:
  1. No new powers.
  2. No new levels (or changes to the existing one).
  3. Fewest new rules/'enemies.'
  4. Maximum 'depth elegance' - think of this is the ratio between potential variety and complexity.

Movement is the only real input for the player. Jumping is basically useless. Recap:
  1. Can move only left/right (and jump, uselessly).
  2. Camera can only dolly, keeping the same isometric angle and distance.

So I'll just jump to a conclusion here. There's a lot that can be done in a small space. We'll use the z-axis to help us. Even though the player can't move along it other objects 'could,' or at least indicate something that is true with their behaviour.

Reference: hiding from the Sniffets in Super Mario RPG. You run left/right, and they open curtains. You can't be seen.

Imagine blocks pushing out of the back wall in the picture. They light up before they push out. Maybe red means it is coming. If it goes from yellow to red quickly then it will come out quickly. If it goes green it might come out at an angle. The player's job is to watch the patterns, learn them, predict them. Boring. You can also making jumping relevant somehow. Maybe some blocks that push out are really low to the ground? Advantages:
  1. Uses the same level.
  2. Takes advantage of the isometric view benefits.
  3. Uses the "dead space" (blackness) to represent death. If a block pushes the player off the platform he dies.
  4. Enough variety to create interesting patterns.

Disadvantages:
  1. Whatever, not that exciting.

We can build a challenge curve but so what? I want to _move around_. Every design I've ever had in my head required a lot of motion, and exploring, and long drawn-out battles with single enemies. Fighting games are cool. I love them. But I like the mobility of HL2 more than I like Street Fighter. Though I do like Street Fighter a lot. Trivial Tetris and SF (arena-battle game!), vs. Mario and Zelda. What!?

So new design:
  1. Let the player go all kinds of places to the left and right.
  2. Let him go up and down. Can he run up walls vertically? Maybe diff. rules for gravity based on location?
  3. Allow diff z planes (like in Little Big Planet), that the player can 'hop' between.
  4. Let him make a lot of choices about "where he wants to go," so traversal is both a problem and an act of exploration.
  5. Increase jump height so that the player can use it to help make choices (i.e. go left, up right, straight up etc.)

Then we'll throw an enemy and there and everyone can chase everyone else around. There will likely be a lot of running from enemies, running towards enemies, and doing both at the same time. Then I'll give you a sidekick. Then we'll add sound fx.

Gen. is obv. important. I'll probably try and gen some levels that feel interesting to "play around with" after nailing some by hand, before I put other actors (enemies/npcs) in.

---

phew. all that prototyping weakened by theory muscle. so I must reuse it.

[Graham-]

Some other things to think about.

1. What are the benefits of exploring?

2. If the level is huge (say, generated), how can each area be distinguished so that the idea of "travel" is created. Exploration is only exploration if the player is finding stuff. Meaning one thing, or space, is distinct from the next.
      a. try and do this without adding any textures, models, and just creating patterns of platforms
      b. then upgrade it with minimal new assets

3. Maybe before a challenge is added there should be a reward for exploring? For example, maybe the player finds "things." He must find them all! What makes level design interesting now.

Food for thought. imagine removing the "things" the player finds and replacing them with in-the-mechanics rewards. that's a poor, totally made up, explanation word. basically find things that help in battle. if you explore and find high ground that's extra exciting. the prize exists in the world itself, and thus is cleverly hidden. I'm assuming here that high ground gives a strategic advantage.

After a generated level, what next:
  1. Enemy.
  2. Exploration "rewards."
  3. Companion AI dog/friend.
  4. Extra moves, wall slide, double jump, crawl, run fast, duck-slide etc (go crazy here with good ideas, impl. a few)

I lean towards number 4. Number 2 maybe is good, but better would be "elegant" rewards. For example, some areas of the level may be totally sweet for jumping around in, in a particular way. That's a real reward. So scratch 2 basically.

Combat changes everything. Even though it gives a challenge it restricts what the player can do. The player can't do that much, because he can only move in a limited number of ways. So the diversity of challenge is limited. I'd rather have mechanics that are fun to play with on their own before adding a challenge.

Here is a piece of theory I just came up with: challenge is a structure through which the designer can force the player to engage in another activity - like exploration, or self-expression - but it is this "other activity" that gives the player his greatest joy. the challenge is simply a tool to get him to engage in it in the proper way.

Following this theory it is more important to create a world for the player to mess around in, then I can create challenges that push the player into uncovering all the little nooks and crannies and interesting aspects of the mechanics I have designed.

Whoa, talking does help.


----

tho I'm feeling a strong urge to just f-ing shoot somebody in my game. I can't decide: shoot, smash, or running tackle?

[Udderdude]

So there are two basic directions we can take this in next. For the record new prototypes can come out only on weekends. I spend 18 hours a week commuting. I lose sleep without working weekdays. So "breaks" at work lets me write, but not code.

Ok:
  1. Challenge.
  2. Exploration.

Which is more important to a game? If I just saw those two words I would pick the first. Games in which you only explore... don't exist... and I would hate them? I don't know.

Knytt series is very close to an exploration only game.  And yeah if you don't like exploring, it's the most boring thing ever.

I love stories. I love difficulty. My single greatest memories in video gaming come from overcoming a challenge after a significant and personal struggle, then engaging in the world, story, immediately after. "Exploration" is the mechanical equivalent of story i.e. story + interaction. Blah.

I think most story-based games are intentionally made easier so that players who are into the story don't get frustrated and quit, because that's all they're there for, the story.  See: Pretty much every JRPG ever.

Challenge based games, on the other hand, tend to have less story.  They also have varied difficulty modes, too ..

For clarity though I'll cover how I might add challenge. Some obv restrictions:

Restriction-based challenge doesn't really interest me, unless it's well done in such a way that you need to come up with a better strategy to win.  I'm much more into challenge where you get varied tools and can use them all effectively, even if they're a bit limited in use (See: Mastery).

Too many restrictions and your character ends up feeling crippled or too difficult to control.

We can build a challenge curve but so what? I want to _move around_. Every design I've ever had in my head required a lot of motion, and exploring, and long drawn-out battles with single enemies. Fighting games are cool. I love them. But I like the mobility of HL2 more than I like Street Fighter. Though I do like Street Fighter a lot. Trivial Tetris and SF (arena-battle game!), vs. Mario and Zelda. What!?

It sounds like you want to recreate some of the boss fights from Shadow of the Colossus here.

[Graham-]

Knytt is boring because the exploration is boring. Think about Space Quest, or Little Big Planet, or Mario. I spent half my life in Mario trying to do hard things I don't need to do just because it looks fun. The variety of the actually provided challenges is there too I guess.

So challenge will obviously be there.

JRPGs are not easy if you don't grind. FF6/7/8 require proper party mngmt. If you go for treasure, or do any grinding at all then you are a wimp.

If I had to state simply what I want my game to be it would be this: very hard, very engaging story/world. RPGs _can_ be hard but only if you know what you are doing. And even then they have stupid hallways of unnecessary bullshit. While challenge games that have suck story have suck story. I love Deus Ex.

By "restrictions" I meant restricting the development complexity. i.e. make Smash Bros battles more "swingy" by adding only 1 move to each player, or just by adding 1 level. These are the kinds of restrictions I mean. They are a way to help determine how much variety you can get out of your mechanics. Design as much variety as you can in 5 Mario levels, using only run and jump: tells you how "varied" your run and jump is. Good test to do this before tweaking the moves or adding new ones, so you can avoid duplication, or building on a bad foundation. In the actual game, yes, I want very broad challenges that have "unlimited" approaches. But such challenges are designed on solid fundamentals.

Shadows of the Colossus is awesome. It's more like they copied me. Here are some big diffs though:
  1. Those boss battles are drawn out.
  2. They are too infrequent.
  3. They aren't as "personal" i.e. are scripted. Consider the diff between this and fighting a human opponent in Tekken.
  4. They don't take advantage of the environment.
  5. You fight each one only once.

Some boss battles I like:
  1. Mario 64. Use all of your variety to accomplish very simple things. Obvious weakness, lots of ways to kill. Expert kills instantly. Novice kills slowly. Drawback: too few.
  2. Sonic Adventure: same reason.
  3. Devil May Cry. The patterns are so unique for each one. You have to master 1 new skill each time.
  4. 1 or 2 levels in Sacrfice. You were severely overpowered and had to find ways to strip down your enemies' abilities, just enough to get an edge, to stip something else off, bandying about until you spied the right opportunity. It was like fighting through a kaleidescope in layers.
  5. Little Big Planet: multiplayer.
  6. Contra, Joe and Mac: multiplayer but competitive, and more hectic.

[Graham-]

So, after copious note-taking on the bus, and the summarizing of some text-editor stuff I did in my at-the-pc/mac spare time, I have a condensed design I'll be pulling from next.

The things in bold represent the targets. The bullets below them represent important things to think about when building them. The titles are categories, and the single words are keywords that represent a whack of writing each.
 
I'd say there's about 40 pages of crap represented here.

---------

understanding other beings
  - cooperation
  - relating
  | have another being
    . that does a lot of things
    . that has similar abilities as you but are different somehow
    . that reacts to your decisions and can impact what you can do

having influence
  - accomplish
  - control
  | give the player something to get better at
    . endless development is good
    . need good feedback to ensure player can improve
    . balance of tasks so that the player keeps 'perspective'

how much bigger the world is than you
  - world
  - humble
  | have the world be enormous
    . lots of different locations that are visually different and
      mechanically different
    . find as much variety as possible with the simplest tools

the rules to govern behaviour
  - interaction
  - process
  | have some rules to manipulate interaction
    . example: can't go left in red zone, right in green
    . or: can't jump when standing on certain platforms
    . or: can interact with partner for 5 second only after jumping

---------

I'll puke more design only after I have a prototype that satisfies the 4 bolded points. When I go around for a second pass I'll shed some light that produced this summary in the first place, and the process of going from raw idea to summary.

[thatredant]

Uh... I... okay....

[EmilMeiton]

If you can pull of your bold lines in a working prototype then that would be a major step. but yeah, less talky more doing!

Your ideas sounds so amazingly grandiose that you can't possible meet your own expectations, I think? At least be prepared to kill some darlings 

[Graham-]

Everyone has a different skill set.

[EmilMeiton]

Just curious.., have you done any other games before (or maybe been part of)?
Not wanting to step on your toes I'm just realy curious 

[Graham-]

You are stepping on my toes.

[sublinimal]

So, after copious note-taking on the bus, and the summarizing of some text-editor stuff I did in my at-the-pc/mac spare time, I have a condensed design I'll be pulling from next.

This is great, a list like that is more relatable to casual devlog browsers than the more stream-of-consciousness posts early in the thread. I do those sort of notes too, usually on the level of how different parts of a game should feel like, and they're sometimes eerily similar to your condensed points.

Actually I find it weird when people don't do *any* design on paper, because it helps a lot by making the gamedev process more goal-oriented. I wouldn't even mind seeing more rough notes (director's cut) somewhere along the way if that's not, ahem, stepping on your toes.

[Graham-]

Hah, no it's not stepping on my toes.

Thank you. Sometimes when I write I write just to write. Other times it's to share.

[aberrantmind]

This is great, a list like that is more relatable to casual devlog browsers than the more stream-of-consciousness posts early in the thread. I do those sort of notes too, usually on the level of how different parts of a game should feel like, and they're sometimes eerily similar to your condensed points.

same here. my notes start off really abstract like this and only through iterations does it become more focused and specific. from a design standpoint it's good to be able to jump back and forth between broad/abstract, and focused/concrete to figure out what's fat and what's meat in the overall design.

[Graham-]

I fluctuate between abstract and specific

[AlphaPlus]

I'm going to say this as politely as I can...

what is wrong with you?

[Graham-]

I received an education.

[Blink]

The potential conflict between the words under your avatar and the events unfolding here have me intrigued. Plus I like your thoughts, and want to see if you can actually manage them into a playable form ;P "Minimum viable product" for "lifelike MMO" is a contradiction I would like to see exist.

[Sved]

I think you shouldn't bother with a game and write us a book!

That said, if you really want to stick with games, there were great exploration and interaction ideas in Tiny & Big grandpa's leftovers.

[Moshfunk]

W-well, I read the whole thingy, and it's still not very clear what you're trying to accomplish. It's ok tho! I don't even know what I'M trying to accomplish with my current project. Also, Knytt mentioned!

There's something which irks me: MMO.

Why MMO? They're not realistic at all when it comes to finishing a product. They're hopelessly difficult to make, impossible even, and then there's the blahblah [insert reason why mmo-projects are bad]. Having massive player base on the same server isn't even providing any great benefit for most of the games. Well, if it's done like Minecraft multiplayer, I'll shut my mouth!

[Udderdude]

It's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

That was my best Graham impersonation, I'm sorry