• 2Aug 07

  Misinformed gamers

  The fight of casual versus hardcore gamers seems to be cooling down, maybe people are realizing it isn't so important, maybe there weren't enough hardcore gamers to stand any longer, in my opinion it is fine, hardcore or casual it isn't so relevant. I think the problem for all gamers aren't casual, hardcore, social nor anything like that, but misinformed gamers.

  I think it is quite self-explanatory, but I consider a misinformed gamer a person who plays games, and therefore buys them (or steals them ) and is not informed about games in general.

  The problem with misinformed gamers is that they can pay the normal price for a game that doesn't worth a buck. If there are enough misinformed gamers it will be much more profitable to make bad, cheap games and sell them for the normal price, even if they don't sell really well.

  If making good games is far less profitable then less and less companies will try to make good games, as companies exist to make money, and that is bad for gamers in general. By the way, did you buy spiderman 3?

  In hardware things get even worse. We have seen the success of the PS2 despite of its lack of quality, now microsoft has learnt the lesson, every 360 is defective. In the end, if gamers are misinformed mediocrity is the best option for every company hardware or software wise.

  Other part of the problem are misinformed gamers that misinform other gamers, the most active are called fanboys, but they are not the only ones. Using people to reach even more people and seem more credible is the purpose of viral marketing, so this probably has some relevance, hasn't it?

  So, to finish up, try to inform and not to misinform your friends, do it for all the gamers, the games and the good companies.

  • Posted Aug 2, 2007 2:05 pm GMT
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• 3Apr 07

  I Feel Asleep!!

  I am now level 24, "I feel asleep!!", ironically I noticed that about 13 hours ago, at 4:30AM.
  
  I've also noticed that I have a blog and I very seldom use it, so, despite of what you can read in the first page:
  
  

  trylks wrote:

  I don't think that my life can be interesting for the most of the people, and I'm not interested in writing things that I know nobody is interested in. So I'm not going to use this blog to write about my boring life but about things I think you should know. Take a look and if you don't find anything interesting never come back, it's going to be pretty the same.
  
  A blog about some things I think you should know.

  
  
  this blog is no longer to be about that, I don't think I can say something that everybody should know and very few people know, nevertheless I'm going to leave that message there until I decide what to do with this blog and I find something more appropriate.
  • Posted Apr 3, 2007 8:32 am GMT
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• 16Feb 07

  Fighting games.

  I've just written a post in a fighting games thread and I am so proud of it that I've decided to extend it here, and not to make a wall of text there.
  
  
  Some possible improvements to fighting games, IMO:
  
  
  
  

  • Easier controls.

  
  Having three buttons for punches and three more for kicks isn't any easy, it is in fact very complex, and it isn't intuitive because a fast punch and a hard punch are the same, a punch, and should be in the same button.
  
  One way to keep having all those sorts of punches and kicks and use only two buttons would be using analogical buttons, a different one would be to use the time the player is pressing the button to choose the strength.
  
  It would be a matter of checking how it works, but if it doesn't work it is better to have only one sort of punch and kick and use the remaining buttons for more important things.
  
  
  

  • More intuitive controls.

  
  If we do as stated in the previous bullet we have now plenty of spare buttons and we should use them. I am going to assume that we have the SNES controller, to keep a low standard that can be easily used also in portable consoles. If we have a more complex controller then we have more buttons available, better for us.
  
  Every character has some simple weaker attacks, we should put some of them assigned to the spare buttons, throwing a fire ball might be easier than kicking in certain games, there is no reason to press down, down-right, right to throw it, just put it in a button, grabbing may be other option that may work quite fine, or blocking so the character can move while blocking instead of just standing. We can also use a button to jump, as the pad or analog should be used to move in a 3D environment, this will be explained later.
  
  So we have a lot of options and very few buttons (I chose to use the SNES controller), what can we do? Factorize. We can press block and then quickly punch to grab, for example when the opponent tries to hit us, then we can keep it so and kick him, press block and punch alternatively to keep him blocked and punch him (it is harder, it is also hard to grab one person with one hand and punch him with the other) or we can also press only punch to throw him with a punch.
  
  We can in fact do many things as there are many combinations of buttons, the important point is that they must be intuitive, this is if an attack is performed with the hands then the punching button should be involved and so on. We could press punch and then jump to do the usual punch while jumping in circles.
  
  
  

  • Factorizing even more.

  
  I've chosen to use 4 buttons to punch, kick, jump and block, this means that we still have two shoulder buttons available. These two buttons aren't like the others, each one has one finger just for it, this means we can keep pressing these buttons easily and press other one while doing that so they work perfectly as modifiers of the other buttons.
  
  One can be the magical/alternative modifier, so when pressing it instead of a punch the button relative to the punch is used to throw a fireball or to perform a different attack. You can use it to dodge instead blocking or to charge your "ki" instead blocking. Also to fly instead jumping of to jump against the opponent instead of just jumping, it just depends on the game and what is possible and what not, but this button adds for sure many possibilities in an easy and intuitive way.
  
  The other button could do the same function than the previous one, increasing the amount of combinations, we had 4 buttons, that could serve as 8 when modified, and we could even have 16 with this one, but it would be hard and not very intuitive. Instead of that it may be better to use it as a "wait a second I'm performing a string" (wasipas) button. I said before we can press block and then punch quickly to grab, but we may want to block and then punch quickly, not grab, it may be hard to do things quickly enough too. That is what this button is for, when performing a string the player can press this button until the complete sequence of the string has been introduced, the string can use the four buttons, modified or not, and simple movements, forward, backward, left and right, while the string is being performed we may introduce another to perform a combo.
  
  
  

  • The game has to be challenging

  
  Not to your hands but to your mind, as every game should, IMO. In any case some people may like a challenge to their hands, that's great, there are many games for that, this post is about something different and new.
  
  We can perform string in a really easy way with the "wasipas" button, we could even be reading the string and talking by the phone an entire conversation while performing it, but it isn't still too easy. To start with the opponent will define how much time do we have to perform our string, to continue the challenge is to our minds.
  
  There have to be different attacks that work in different situations, counter attacks, etc. We have just made easier the controls, now it is time to make harder other parts of the game.
  
  We can put different interrelations among the attacks, blockings, etc. to make combos, the important part is that they should be completely intuitive. Pressing back, down, front, down, back, is hard and unintuitive, pressing block, punch, punch, jump, kick while pressing the wasipas button is as easy as you want it to be, and it is intuitive if it blocks the attack, grabs the opponent, throws him and jumps over him crushing him against the floor. It is a quite complete and complex blocking movement that can be performed easily.
  
  It would be important that every string serves for something until a determinate length, to keep things simple, but it is more important to make the stings intuitive, we could also not allow the overlapping of strings so the players don't have to release the wasipas button, it takes more time to release a button than pressing it.
  
  
  

  • Options and freedom.

  
  Finally it is about options and freedom. The challenge is in choosing the best option, that's why the game should be in 3D with interactive environments. We can grab our opponent, we could also grab a chair to throw it at him, we can jump over a table and kick him in the face and so on, there are way more sophisticated options. I may write a different post for them, but it is easy to come up with a handful of them and the point of this post is more general.
  
  It would be important to have several characters that are very different among themselves, even the controls can be slightly different as long as they conform to a standard and they are intuitive, we could for example put a vampire that instead grabbing sucks some blood regaining some health, that movement may be a little slower or the vampire may have other cons to keep the game balanced.
  
  That would be like the difference between Age of Empires and Starcraft. While the former has many similar civilizations the latter has only three very different races, I'm not stating that one is better than the other but I think that there are too many fighting games like AoE and one like starcraft (in this aspect) would be good.
  
  I may write other post with some more information, and some improvements for more complex controllers, for example the second stick can be used to control the camera, but can also be used to control some special attacks. This long post contains pretty much everything that I wanted to say and I've to go back to do some homework, fuzzy control actually.
  
  
  
  
  

  ---

  
  
  PS: as I don't know how long does gamespot keep the forum posts, but looks like they keep the blog posts for ever I'll copy the post here.
  
  
  
  

  trylks wrote:

  I know what you say. I think the combos should be made with the buttons instead the pad or the stick, that would make it easier, an example of a elaborated combat system can be seen in PoP: WW, and I haven't played Zelda:TP but it probably has a good combat system. The problem of the fighting games is that they stick to the formula too much and every game is like the previous ones.
  
  
  I would like to see a fighting game where pressing the buttons is theeasy part, and thinking the hard one, choosing which technique to use instead pressing the buttons hoping you will be able to use it and using the environment. A slight difference towards that type of game may be the dragon ball games, as you have an energy bar and you can only use attacks that require less energy, you have at least to decide if use the energy now or save it for later for a stronger attack, you can choose to cover or get more energy too when in other games you can keep covering all the time except when you have to attack.
  
  
  To sum up: Fighting games are button mashers and there are already enough button mashers, if developers want to make a best seller fighting game it should be something new and different.

  
  
  • Posted Feb 16, 2007 6:39 am GMT
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