4 responses so far ↓

• 1 Marquillin // Jul 23, 2010 at 8:40 pm

  Well, Its hard to offer advice as someone who has no personal experience programing, when even the AGS veterans don’t know what to expect. It’s easy to root for pushing boundaries and revolutionizing gaming. All we can try to do is reason out what the pros and cons are, hypothetical though some of them maybe.

  I never imagined I would do anything but start a new story from the beginning, but not necessarily finishing the story I’m on if I feel compelled to explore that other street or cave, I’d like to be able to put that on hold while I explore who knows where and come back if I need to know how that first story ends. I’s kind of what I do with reading books anyway, though I consider it a semi-bad habit.

  But I’m not certain how the transition was going to work in your original plan anyway, beyond the epic yet abstract scope you’ve described in a world of interconnected stories. If I was to go down a cave from Dantes Hell into Vernes center of the earth, would I be exploring my way up to the top of the world again, looking for the stories starting scene? Cause while part of that sounds cool, it might undermine the exploratory virtue of the novel, which is shared with the main character. If the first thing I see is the dinosaurs or whatever is halfway down the world where the stories intersect, well how do you top that? It’s usually less amazing near the start.

  On the other hand, we’re exploring the world and the stories though the character of Peri who has the ability to see a broader picture, she can explore the world in her own way and it will be interesting on that level, yet at the same time we can see how characters react to the scene as they reach that level (with help from Peri). In this way, first person narratives were always going to loose something integral with this adaptation, but that’s what adapting is all about, change can be a good thing and it leaves a unique experience in reading the novel.

  Now, if I was to click on the new cave and it took me to the introduction of the new story, on “level one” as it were (no different then clicking on the bookshelf), then I would be less inclined to look ahead, unless the puzzle demanded it. From the demo, that seemed to be the way Dante’s inferno was designed, that the player and Peri- though they didn’t have to- were encouraged to see the universe from Dante’s perspective, and some puzzles had you going back to earlier circles, but not to the later ones. Please tell me if I’m wrong, I’m at a disadvantage for the moment of only playing so much (though looking forward to fixing that).

  So if the game world worked like in the latter example, then it would seem like they might as well be seperate games that “faked at” being one. But then what would happen? Could you explore freely once both games were complete, or after the intro scene? I need more information in order to answer honestly what I’d prefer.

  But I can tell you my interest is primarily for the single stories told well and without bugs. If they can interconnect, that sounds really cool, but also really abstract. And I do think it’s worth waiting for, even if it took a long time to work out.

  You’ve come a long way in learning programing language, so I guess you have to think seriously about how far you want to go with it. For your sake; Do you have go where your passion is? For your project’s sake; Is your ultimate game vision worth building more on the coding knowledge you’ve gathered so far, though through the undiscovered country is fraught with hazards? Is it worth table-ing the decision until you’ve covered the table in games and have learned more about programming (albiet the more fun kind) and see what options are available then (more skill available, but more work to compile it too).

  It’s a big decision, so don’t feel too compelled to rush it in your desire to streamline the games. Take a day or two off of the computer at some point to think about it.

• 2 Alex // Jul 23, 2010 at 10:25 pm

  This is where my previous idea comes in, wherein instead of walking casually between stories (thus requiring a whole lot of between-game code that is apparently buggy), when a player decides he wants to play a different story for a bit, he goes back to the bookshelf and chooses another story.

  But you have to really think about what you want this to be. If you are really passionate about this being one huge world of stories, then you will find a way to make it work – the greatest minds didn’t fulfill their life’s purpose by simply sticking with what was easy.

  You also have to think about it from a financial perspective: it sounds like combining all of the games is going to take a long time, and you need to consider whether you can afford to go that long without working on the next story.

• 3 alistair // Jul 24, 2010 at 1:25 am

  Well here is my 2 pennies worth, Personally I want the games, I have no issue in stopping and starting fresh, if the joining together is a massive slow up then why turn a labour of love into a grind. I would rather have lots of quality games in a shorter time frame than wait for ages for something all joined together which takes ages and might not be stable

• 4 Chris // Jul 24, 2010 at 6:09 am

  re: time taken

  Yes, the time issue is a real clincher. If people have to stop one game and start another in order to explore a different part of town, I think they’ll forgive me. But if I spend too much time on the code, or of the code is buggy, then the project may never even get off the ground. My number one goal for the game is rapid creation, so I can develop my skills, release everyone’s favorite stories, and create a general buzz of some new story always happening.

  re: arriving at a game in the middle:

  There are various ways to solve this problem, but some may work better than others, and all require a lot of extra thought and code. One advantage of separate games is this kind of thing is never a problem. Besides, I plan for these games to be relatively simple: if you want to explore a part of a city that’s in the middle of game X, it should only take a couple of hours to get there even if you’ve never played that game before. That’s my goal anyway. So the feeling of exploring should be possible even if every game is played linearly.

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