S Rank Slayer

Start of Play Tips
You start out with 6 instant attacks. This means you can click on that youngling S rank and instantly slay it, giving it no chance to attack you.

If you do it quickly you will get to 6 strength while the S rank is only at 4 or 5 strength. This will give you a small lead, so you can let the game idle for awhile - the repeated slayings will give more strength charge or instant attack charges. Let it idle for a minute or so, then come back to use instant attacks and hit the strength button.


How Strength Works


If the S rank has between equal to your strength or is only five or less higher than your strength, it makes an inaccurate attack upon you (you might say it's at a disadvantage). Once it's more than five higher than your strength, it makes accurate attacks - so you'll be hit a lot of the time. This will probably be the way your character dies, in other words.

If the S-rank's strength is 50 or less below yours they make inaccurate, weak attacks. Generally bandages will make these attacks meaningless - unless your run out of bandages.

S rank gain 1 strength every time you gain 1 strength from defeating one, but occasionally gain 2 - this is how they catch up and get past your strength.

They don't gain strength when you do instant attacks or use the strength gain button (or when you click on bonus swords). So these are the ways you can catch up to S rank that are stronger than you.

The 'STR: 7/16' is a bit of a tip of the hat to D&D - it represents starting out with a 7 strength in D&D and getting all the way to 16 strength. I like to think of it as what a character went through before even getting starting stats (as char gen stat distribution let you assign a 16 to strength straight away)

And something completely different
Also I'd like to promote a game by another author which should have gotten far more plays than it did - it's a platformer fire rescue game with a lot of nifty features : http://www.kongregate.com/games/VinceBetteridge/firefighter

Watch Dogs : Did hacking just turn out to be a gimmick? Do all sandboxes suffer from gimmickdom?

So it appears that perhaps just classic old GTA style driving can get you away in Watch Dogs. And even if you do hack, you don't see it because it's behind your point of view, or if they show an exploding pursuer in slow mo it tends to make you crash because of the disorientation from the camera going from the explosion back to driving.

Do all sandbox games have this trouble? Dishonoured seemed to have this problem too, where just a few powers were needed to complete a mission and anything else was just getting baroque about the matter. And the sandbox - if it doesn't force the use of hacking, then hacking becomes a throw away, unnecessary gimmick. If it is forced, then you get less of a sandbox!

That's the thing about a sandbox - it tends to make everything not matter. Just another thing amongst many things. A bit like real life!

But seriously, do sandbox game makers need to start thinking about how they implement these things, giving a secondary layer of rewards for using hacking. So someone could be rated a supreme hacker if they wanted to, or maybe they might focus on conventional escapes and fighting.

But ultimately it's the audience that might have to accept that any new thing in a sandbox will, at best, have some incentives and ratings for it - it's not going to force gameplay to be entirely different, all by itself.

Destiny FPS - thinking outside the first person frame? How?

There's the funny thing about the first person - how do you escape it?

So how does a new first person shooter like Destiny do something much different than holding a gun by your groin and swiveling like a camera on a swivel mount and making hit points go down on bags of hit points.

What is the new thing?

Or what is the new thing audiences are yearning for, that they think this mysterious new FPS will somehow contain?

"You shoot guns and you cast magic!"

Okay.

But really, what is it that folk seek - perhaps some sort of new opportunity for gaining fame for themselves that real life so often lacks?

What will the game say about real life and it's many issues - or will it deliberately avoid real life entirely* so as to support those who are attempting to avoid real life?


* Partly avoiding real life is part of the fun. Partly doing so works well. But when it gets to entirely...

Dark Souls - Moonlight Butterfly

Not even sure why I took this on - I guess you peek through the grey mist for curiosity. Then for revenge, after being killed!

Ended up upgrading my crossbow to max, buying 100 heavy crossbow bolts and kindling the nearest bonfire so as to have ten flasks (I had some miracle healing, but it's kind of slow, the flasks are the fastest). If you have a couple of points of humanity, probably better to spend two of them to kindle the bonfire above the blacksmith (the one who just keeps hammering - shuddup!) rather than die to the butterfly, then possibly lose them to a slip up trying to get back to it.

Also I upgraded my shield a bit as well. Though the butterfly will tempt you to fire one to many times (probably because it wobbles up a little bit and your shot sails past it) and your guy seems to think he's in a happier, huggier game and when you hold down the shield button, he should just keep reloading his crossbow and thus take various spike blasts the butterfly pumps out on a regular basis.

Regardless in the end I recommend just shooting early and shooting often (from the far end of the walk way though, to let the spikes dissipate a bit). Some of that insects attacks just seem unavoidable - when I did kill it, it was from shooting it. Shooting it lots and lots. Till it died. Didn't let it get to that stage. Still, seems a chancy way to kill it - there's probably a more elegant method. On the other hand it worked!

Not sure if the thing at the top of the castle further on is always dead, or dead cause I let some guy out of a cage awhile ago. Curious.

* Good luck * * Praise the sun! * * Try rolling! *

Approaching game coding

Over at indie resource they've a game writing comp going on where people are encouraged to give updates. I've given one which gives a look into getting it done (based mostly around a text based PHP game) which you might find inspirational. Originally posted here.

I've layed back in bed with pencil and paper to figure out some of the programic structure to the game. I used to just try and jump in front of the computer and hash it out as I go, but mostly this just blurs the feeling of having accomplished something, as you might set up an array structure and...that's all you get done, before you tire, but you sat down to write out a whole game - which you didn't accomplish. Also if you sit down to your coding language, you can't just write notes - you write code or write nothing. Well, I guess you could write pseudo code, but that's another subject. When you sit down to pencil and paper, you can write out notes and code snippets and it doesn't matter if you write them sideways, you've still gotten something done in how much you fill up a page with your crazy writings!

Anyway, at first I'm going to test the game using session values to store the data, loading values from the session as if from a DB. I just prefer this as you don't have to juggle a database around at the same time and can feel free to add or remove session values without much concern. You just need a reset button somewhere that reinitialises all the session values.

And then I got onto breaking down the subject of the game. This is where you take the fuzzy wuzzy fiction of the to be game you have in your head, and start drawing connections from the fuzzy wuzzy to actual lines of code and memory systems.

Here I had trails. So what does that involve? Well you might have several trails leaving one place - so...probably an array with a start location and an end location. And perhaps when you are at a place, the code can search through to see if you are at that start location. Then it'll list them as selections.

So the first thing I'll code wont have any game like conflict at all - it'll be just the capacity to choose a path, walk along it, arrive at another spot from which you can choose a path again. No conflict, but the capacity to do so is necessary for something to conflict with. Gotta have something you can do before something else can get in the way of it!

Okay, that's enough for now as I feel writing more would get in the way of further development - after all, I've only written this in pencil so far. I haven't actually coded it. Ironically such would involve less description, but probably the greater effort!

See ya!

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam

Strange game this - on normal difficulty, the enemies sort of stand around not doing much of much. In their defence, soldiers on your own side don't do much of much either. I think it'd be better if they fired alot of bullets at you which are easy to dodge and which only damage a regenerating bar, so you can shrug them off - then they'd appear to be trying to be threats (but you are just that tough) rather than kinda standing around doing nothing. Perhaps they fixed this in the latter Gundam games?

And then you get to the fourth mission of a character and fail over and over again, after about twenty minutes of play. Eventually I took up the two player option, still failed the once but then beat it! Nice to bring in a ringer!

It does have that 'well, I beat you, but I want to one shot you - and your friend, and your friends friend!' to it, as you can level up pilot and Gundam.

I got it for around $20, so it's engaging for that price.

Dishonoured dis culled?

I watched an developer interview recently that said in the game Dishonoured you can get through the whole game without killing anyone.

It's curious these games that have options like these - yet what is the advertising? Shiv to the neck! Shiv to the neck! Shiv to the neck!

I'd assumed (call me assuming) that it was another murder porn game that secondarily has some strategy element. Now I'm not sure what design philosophy the developers have.

3, 2, 1, Death Contact!

I'm at that stage in game development where I just haven't put in damage to the player.

It just gets in the way of play testing. It's fairly rudimentry to add.

But - it's like your just imagining how it'd be like if you could actually take damage/die/lose in game. It's this hazy notion of what'd be like to play the game - which will indeed have nothing to really do with the game. It's kind of like drawing a big wafty cloud, but in the end play with be a hard square somewhere inside of it.

Actually, 'Death Contact' would be a good name for a game.

Some good Unity 3D tutorials

I was refered to some great unity 3D tutorials recently. I've done the point and click tutorial and am currently on the space shooter tute. Very much a step at a time stuff, though you have to squint at the code in the video. You'd pay $$$ to get this from a course.

The plausible escape: Are reloads jarring?

What'd be nice is if more games didn't rely on the reload button for death.

Far cry 2 (despite its flaws) did this really neatly where you had a buddy and if you went down, you had these great black out scenes of him carrying you and shooting enemies. It'd black in and out, making you want to see how bad things were each time (and also skipping some time in between to save you waiting as long, I suspect). After they saved you, they then had to get away themselves (they could get shot doing this) and to 'recharge' their save you had to go meet them in a safehouse.

This is just so much better than hitting reload!

To a small degree lord of the rings online does this as well, in that once an hour you can recover from being downed, so you never leave (ie, jarringly teleport to a recovery circle) where you got hurt.

A way of being beaten in the game, but without the completely story flow jarring effect of a reload.

Or; that's a question - are reloads and their effect on continuity potentially making games less fun for you?

'I am alive' - faux climbing tension?

I was watching the above demo of 'I am alive' (it's in the first four minutes) and here's a thing: Although it was a demo, it has you climbing and using up your stamina bar.

But really all those climbs are set pieces - the designers and playtesters have played through that and know the exact amount of stamina that will be lost.

It's not like in, say, nethack, where a particular area of dungeon is randomised and you know part of the random elements and so can strategize, in such a case the randomisation might very well mean its not survivable. Or it is, but maybe your strategy wont be good enough?

Here, if I'm understanding it, its a fixed, predecided climb with no strategic element (you just push in the right direction). Well, apart from hitting the extra effort button furiously.

Though I guess you have to see the right direction coming in time. Maybe when you play, especially for the first time, it's hard to know those right directions to climb and that's the uncertainty point that gives game?

Or the raw illusion of doing it all then badum, badum your stamina meter is down and OMG quick bash that button and...

Except it isn't a tension moment where things are going wrong. The designer set it to be that way.

Well, it was the tutorial level and also maybe the combats the real dealio, eh?

FPS idea where you don't die every minute

I think maybe there's a moral in multiplayer first person shooters - I mean, you tend to get wasted time and time again. Kind of pounds in the idea that you'd just die if you went into a real life gun battle. And in real life, you tend not to respawn (if the games are somehow giving people the impression they respawn after death, well, that's surprising...)

So possibly my idea is more violent for there being less death.

The idea is that you have some sort of beat down status, instead of dying. Your character goes into a sort of defensive mode - you can't shoot, only try and get away. In the levels, there are escape hatches, which only people in beatdown status can use. You get to one, you crawl in and you see your character run down a series of escape tunnels, grab some supplies to replenish themselves, then exit from another escape tunnel point. Effectively much the same as respawning, but you have a solid narrative link from one event to the other.

It is possible to get killed whilst trying to get to an escape hatch, you only have X amount of life left. Getting killed lowers your beatdown score. So you want to develop a strategy with where they are, in case you get beat down. Or maybe your good enough you wont need it...hehe. Sure!

Getting killed can only lower your score, say, three times. And only after you've made two beat downs. So if you've only beaten down one member of the other side, you don't loose that (to give newer players some sense of accomplishment, rather than losing their very first three points of beatdown score). But if you beat down two then being killed loses that second beatdown score.

I think it'd be interesting to play in a combat where the core of the combat isn't...so freankin' rediculous, ie, coming back to life just out of thin air? Ahh, that's stupid!

Some sort of play where self preservation is actually part of play, instead of a stupid macho fantasy of going in guns blazing, neva gunna miss a shot. A fantasy that can only be supported by a rediculous respawn mechanic, showing just how stupid dumb ass that macho fantasy is!

In an endless game, if you can die, everyone dies...

There's a new multiplayer persistent world game (correction: evolving persistent world) zombie game coming up. Here's the link.

I like the info dump being done in story format. Makes it more than a spreadsheet.

But the big thing is, the ability for a character to permanently die! Not to mention become zombiefied!

From the look of it, it sounds like you have to really, really lose bad to actually die.

But all the same, it's a striking move. I play the Finnish survivalist roguelike 'Unreal world' (as you can see here) and death - it really makes living more alive, if that makes sense? There's a hint of a legacy system, which sounds good - starting over exactly from scratch with no prior history just seems to cut off, when really people die and others go on to live off what they achieved while they live. This is a poignant part of stories as well.

But it seems it'll be on X-box only, so sucks to it all! Unless I buy an X-box...but their online stuff sounds sucky.

Still, if it's popular enough it'll find its way elsewhere...

Is the word 'game' going through a slow hijack?

Recently someone tried to say the regular definition of 'game' is an entertaining activity or sport.

Of course feeding ducks or watching a sunset are entertaining activities as well. Thus they must be games.

I think for thousands of years the way people have (to not use a name yet) engaged certain activities is in a verses mode, where one of them is trying to beat the other. For millions of years we didn't have computers, only another person hungry to win.

It's really hard to imagine after millions of years of that, it's not atleast a small amount of evidence towards the word 'game' being primarily about winning/having win conditions.

But computers are entirely new on our cultural horizon. And computers...well, they can lose to you a million times, if you keep the supply of electrickery coming.

This really allows the developer to project a falsehood - have the program 'lose' to the player where if the developer were playing the opposition, he would attempt to win. And this falsehood can be extended until what is there is farcicle. Just a veneer of opposition.

Computers have made it really easy for people to think they are beating something of note, when really they are simply engaging some busy work the developer thought up. Thus allowing the slow hijack of 'game' into anything that makes money for the commercial, or anything thats artsy, for those craving artistic recognition but hiding it under the credibility of 'games'.

Two Player MMORPG

Of course, eventually you'd end up hitting each other, streets of rage style...

Sounds funny, doesn't it? A two player mmorpg.

Yet I've thought about this for ages and would really like it!

What I mean is that two people can play from one computer. So you can actually journey together through the mystical world. Remember the old fashioned version of together, which didn't involve squinting at a chat box or wearing a headset?

Maybe split screen, or maybe both on one screen (ala lego star wars).

Maybe I should try and make a browser game like that, some day...?

Balanced opposition makes leveling pointless?

Have you ever encountered the idea that, if you level up and get +10 attack but then the monsters you face have +10 defence more than the previous ones you faced, leveling is utterly pointless?

I get the social pecking order of leveling. But in terms of gameplay it blows!

If you had a middle ground, like say a random 10% of the time you encounter an opponent from a lower level rather than a balanced opponent, then your +10 attack actually matters, because for once you ran into an opponent with +0 defence. Then you actually did get stronger, but the rest of the 90% of the time it follows the usual formula of delayed progression.

'Game' Sycophancy - Absolutely Drab-ulous!

I was looking at shots for silent hill: downpour over here at gamer grills (wait - grrlz!)

After not utterly acknowledging the moniker, I've probably lost half my audience already - but moving on all the same, the pictures just struck me as a prime example of the, from this perspective, rising trend.

I mean look at the oh so dark and terrible backgrounds - what are they there for?

To make the protagonist look good.

And are the protagonists a little grungy and messy? Yeah...and why is that the case? To make them look good in a sort of cutting edge, "I'm a little dirty therefore I must do stuff" way.

Then you just flat out have the neatly composed model shots (which may be more a result of the imaginative rigidities of working with 3D models, granted)

What would be a bit more scary, perhaps? Perhaps someone who looks maybe like they deserve, for some reason or another, to die. And you play as that person. How do you console that in play - you don't have a perfect mary sue looking character - not a prime alpha, so surely by our very inner nature we assign them red shirt status. Yet your playing them, so this assignment doesn't work out? Or does it? Or doesn't it? An inner termoil that isn't in the game, it's inside your heart, inside your head.

Or you can play characters who look simply fabulous, darlink!

Challenge doesn't need a penalty? What if it's for exploration of an aesthetic?

Ready, Set, Crow!

I read an interview in the Australian game magazine 'Game Informer' on bioshock infinite with Ken Levine, Irrational president (I love how that title comes out) and Irrational creative director (love that one too!).

The question

In Bioshock, vita-chambers essentially made death inconsequential. Is that mechanic changing in Bioshock infinite?

The responce

My feeling about the vita-chambers was this: I think they set a certain tone for the game in twerms of how it felt and the progression. It was not a game about dying and restarting. It was a game about experiencing the feeling of being in Rapture. Certainly there are arguments to be made about whether there was enough disincentive to get killed.

I think that's a reasonably legitimate concern. I would say that it's unlikely we'll have the exact same approach we use in Bioshock 1 as it shipped - without any option to turn it off or any penalty.

Notice the penalty.

Now the first thing I thought was that they were reconsidering supporting gamist play to win/play against something that, through penalties, might be too tough for you to complete (not everyone can climb everest).

But then I realised I was projecting my ideals into it. No, why he's considering a penalty for 'death' is to further the experience of being in the setting he's making. The penalty, atleast to his mind, is possibly necessary to the aesthetic of the experience. Here's a post of someone trying to weve a mechanic into the aesthetic of a game, as an example.

Now the funny thing is if he's considering it because of fans who actually carry my idea - a hard game. Where a penalty is the thing that might stop you getting to the end. Like, alot of people might be able to climb a cliff - it's when you put several in a row (like everest) that it becomes an even bigger thing. Anyway, that's a real crossed wire - if he's into some sort of 'experience the aesthetic' but the fans here are into a hard game - they just want two different activities. Each of which just gets in the way of the other - and even if you compromise, your just doing one or the other activity to a lessened extent, in a sort of nerd fallacy attempt to include everyone.

But the main point was : Penalties - part of the explorers experience, perhaps?

Hear and obey: Kingdom of Keflings

I have been told to spread the word of Kingdom of Keflings. I hear and obey!

Looking at : Torchlight - very difficult takes awhile to...get difficult

I chose very difficult for my first play of torchlight. Or whatever the highest difficulty there is, but without the use of hardcore mode. Hardcore, which I'll probably try out sometime, as the natural direction to take is to make a waddling tank - will that be fun? I'm curious, but this topic is about difficulty.

But after about seven hours of play only now is it really presenting difficulty and requiring manouvering. On the upside it's doing it on a consistant basis - I'm guessing if I did more side dungeons I'd be higher level and have better gear.

Sadly I obviously went through six hours and 59 minutes of not so challenging play - I don't know why I'm drawn to it. Moth to the shiny flame? Already spent money on it, may as well try?

I think it 'pushed back' so to speak near the start, but really, the solution was to keep the attack or magic button held down and a finger over the heal potion button. That's it. I guess that's a timing skill as atleast these potions take a little time to heal you instead of insta healing you like in diablo. Instant heals just mean buying tons of potions and mashing the heal button over and over will be enough.