9/19/2023 0 Comments Hazelnut bastille hitboxThere is nothing worse than finding a shiny new toy, only to find that all it is good for is opening a certain door that it happens to be the oddly-shaped key for. With item design, we were really focused on making sure that each of them, rather than being merely contextual, offered a way for interacting with puzzles, a way for traversing progress gates, and especially that they have some kind of combat application. This need bolsters the notion that the player is taking an active role in overcoming the challenges of the world, rather than merely going through the locations in sequence, because B follows A and C follows B.Ī system with so many options also allows the player to express their unique play style: do they want to rely on superior weapon consumables, or on health potions and protective charms? Would they like to spend a huge number of resources pursuing a special unique item, or save those resources and use them organically throughout the game? Will they deny themselves access to one item if they pursue another? They wouldn’t have sought these items earlier, because resources are quite finite, so they would have been used on what the player perceived they needed at the time. Oftentimes, the player will find a situation they cannot overcome except by going back and preparing for it by trading for and crafting the items they needed. It creates a sense of provisioning and preparation. On a design-level, this trading system has several uses for us. The trade mechanic is one of the main means the player has for breaking the ice with certain characters, and advancing their storylines together, and to open up quests and other features. There are also some very special items which can only be obtained after trading-up with various NPCs a half dozen times, which in turn may be priceless to someone else in the world. Some of these rarer items may also be combined with other items to craft things like potions, special weapons, protective charms, and many other useful tools. Every NPC has need of certain commodities which they are willing to trade for some rarer or more exotic items as well. These generally have immediate uses, or are at least precursors to things that are useful, so they are good to have in and of themselves, having intrinsic value. The player, over the course of play, collects a number of commodities. Rather than go with the standard currency of many games in the genre, we chose to go with a trading-based resource system. The characters, beyond their involved back-stories, are also a hub of interest for another reason. The industry wants to produce low-risk projects with predictable development costs and financial outcomes. They want to experience something they have never experienced, and they want to do many things while there. Users demand innovation and very wide scope. There is a tension between what users demand, and what the surprisingly conservative games industry wants to provide. But in the adult world of user-experience-design, creative deadlines, and finite resources, and where modern game engines can bring nearly anything to life, why did we choose this particular scheme of game? Something we have often cited in the past is the “scope vs depth” balance. So that is a detailed autobiographical explanation of the personal connection people from our age group have with these games. Like a concert pianist, 20-25 years later I can picture the entire sequence of the game from start to finish, if I close my eyes. I played it during that critical developmental period a young child has where they are learning the tasks they need to memorize to survive in their hunter-gatherer setting… as a result, I can recall the entire world map in my head from memory. Over the next 6 years or so, I think I must have beaten the LoZ over 40 times. Then there was the combat… rooms full enemies that dominated the screen, and together with scene geometry, restricted the movement choices of the player to the scenario the designers intended each time.
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