Project Offset Trailer

The newest trailer for Project Offset.


GameTrailers

Movement in Metal Gear Solid 4

Metal Gear Solid is one of the greatest game series' ever. Guns of the Patriots is the fourth and final entry in the tactical espionage action epic. As always, this latest Metal Gear is being directed by Hideo Kojima and his team at Kojima Productions.

Guns of the Patriots holds makes many changes and additions to the Metal Gear formula. One area I want to talk about in specific is movement. Compared to many other games, Snake has always had pretty limited options for movement. He can run, crouch, roll, roll into prone, and crawl. He can also lean against and sidle along walls. Later Metal Gear titles added the ability to hang off ledges and climb trees, amongst other movements. However, MGS4 offers without question the most diverse move set of any Metal Gear title yet. While this may immediately be met with much applause, it is very important to remember that Guns of the Patriots remain Metal Gear at heart.

"Do a Barrel Roll!"

Movement style is a signature of the franchise. As a series that helped to create and define the stealth genre, MGS4 must retain the heart and soul of the series, and not deviate too far from what makes it Metal Gear. To clarify, movement has always been a pivotal aspect of Metal Gear Solid. There's a reason Snake moves the way he does: his movement compliments the rest of the game. Metal Gear would be quite the different game if Solid Snake could move like Ryu Hayabua. Thats why its of paramount importance that Snake's movement repertoire doesn't compromise the feel of the game.

Kojima clearly wanted to expand Snake's move set, but at the same time, diversifying movement too much may sacrifice the feeling of a Metal Gear game. The key? balance.

Yay Crouch-Run!

Now let's talk about Snake's expanded range of movement. Or at least what we know of it. Everything I'll be discussing can be found in the newest MGS4 Gameplay Trailer.

Snake's New Moves:

• Snake can now crouch walk. Previously, Snake was only able to crouch while staying still or sidling along a wall. Now, Snake can crouch and walk at the same time, much like Sam Fisher of the Splinter Cell series.

• Snake can roll. Along with the traditional crawling, Snake can roll over left or right. This opens up another movement option.
  

• Now Snake can lie on his back. This allows Snake to crawl backward on his back. He can now also aim and shoot in FPS mode while lying on his back.

• Snake can now also lie very flat on his stomach. This allows him to play dead. It also allows Snake to very slowly, very.....slowly crawl forward. Like slithering. Its actually pretty sweet.

• Snake can hang off of edges, just like usual. But now he sort of hand stands then flips onto an edge. This seems thus far to be more of an aesthetic effect than anything else. But its still awesome. Also, notice how when Snake drops from the edge he uses has the same falling animation as always. Classic.
  

• The box of yore returns. Now also in drum can form. This proves to be a more resilient shield to bullets, and also allows Snake to roll over ground into enemies.
  

Lots of additions. But is it still Metal Gear? I would argue, yes. In my opinion, Kojima has expanded Snake's move set without losing the Metal Gear feel. Rolling makes moving around of the ground alot easier, and more realistic. Crawling forward slowly allows for less chance of detection. crawling at all in Snake Eater was almost certain to alert the enemy to Snake's presence. Being able shoot while on your back gives Snake a larger radius of attack. Before, it was necessary to look from first-person, swing the camera around, and then start shooting. Now players can just roll over and shoot away. The drum can is yet another weapon in Snake's arsenal. In past Metal Gear's, players were defenseless when cooped up inside a cardboard box. Now they can roll on through the enemy if threatened.

Back crawl into over-head grenade throw.

Most important to all of this is how Snake's new move set compliments his new battlefield. Snake is now in the middle of a war. An environment that is constantly shifting. Snake needs more mobility to cope with this faster-paced environment. Being relegated to his old move set probably wouldn't be enough to survive in Snake's new jungle. I'm positive Kojima was aware of this. Kojima designed a whole game. Not just a new move set. The environment needed to be considered along with Snake's movement. Everything must be designed cooperatively. Ingenious.

And now for something completely different. From the makers of the newer Appleseed comes Vexille.

Invisible Studio 100 Posts

Only nine months since Invisible Studio's inception and we've reached 100 Posts already. Thats on average a post roughly every 3 days, or 2 to 3 posts a week. This is a great milestone for Invisible Studio, and furthermore, myself. I have proven to myself that I can really work on and stick to something I'm passionate about. Most importantly, thank you. I am so grateful to everyone who reads this blog. It means that I'm not the only person who finds the things I talk about meaningful. I love learning about game design and finding things every day that teach me even about one little aspect towards creating great games. And I love sharing these things with you. I also want to thank David Mcmahon who helped me get my start with helpful blog tips and a weekly mention in his blog awards. Lastly, thanks to blogger which has a very streamlined posting and management interface. Now for some milestone goals: I am going to make my best effort to post at least once every other day. Its a reasonable request without bein overly daunting. My second goal is to create more of a community at this blog. Though I attempt to stimulate conversation in most posts, clearly my efforts have been in vain. I would really love to hear any ideas you might have for making Invisible Studio more discussion focused. Please let me know. My third and final goal is to improve my writing. This means spelling and grammer checking before posting and really focusing on making each sentence count.

Thanks again for visiting Invisible Studio. I hope you come back and help to make the blog as best as it can be.

And so was written posts one-hundred-and-one.

Gamasutra: Where's The Design in Level Design?

My brother recently pointed me to an interesting Gamsutra article entitled "Where's the Design in Level Design." Written by Tito Pagan. The article comes in Two Parts: One, Two. The first part is admittedly more interesting than the second, which focuses more on how to develop levels rather than the design aspect. A good summary article comes from the first page, actually, where Pagan writes:

A well-designed level takes into consideration a whole set of requirements, such as user interaction and navigation, which are inherent to the purpose they serve. How will the spaces control and direct the player throughout the explorative and interactive experience? What sort of directional and responsive feedback mechanisms will be provided to assist the process? How will all of the elements tie together to form a cohesive environment that is well understood without compromising aesthetic appeal? The level designer must also consider the impact of particulars such as sound, space, lighting, pace, and scale.

The article is worth reading, the first part at least. Pagan talks about wall orientation and window design that is interesting enough in itself, not to mention its application to game design.
Check it out.

Mario Party 8: Koopa's Tycoon Town

Mario Party is a fun series. There are plenty of people who would disagree, in particular gaming journalists. But I know that at least I've had a lot of fun over the last nine years playing these games. The eighth edition was released a couple of months ago for Wii. Like the last couple of Mario Party games, each board features a different goal. The standard version is to get as many stars as possible by navigating the board, getting lucky, and buying as many stars as you can get your hands on. One of the alternative boards in Mario Party 8 is Koopa's Tycoon Town. This plays similarly to the Windmill level in Mario Party 7, and more familiarly, like Monopoly.

That there is a one-star hotel.

Koopa's Tycoon Town tasks players with running around a city and investing in seven hotels interspersed throughout the board. Once again the goal is to have the most stars when the final turn comes, but in this board players earn stars by strategically investing in hotels with their precious earned coins. What makes this board interesting is the investment system itself. At first it seems pretty simple. Walk up to a hotel and the koopa hop will ask you if and how much you would like to invest. Invest any amount and the hotel is yours, complete with street side logo and a free star. Things get more complex once players start stealing hotels from one another through out-investment. This is how it works. Essentially, the highest bidder is the owner. While you may be the first or even second owner of a hotel, you are not necessarily the last, and the last is all that really matters.

You have to be careful not to help out your opponents. The reason is that stars have three levels of quality. All hotels (with an exception I'll get to shortly) start out as one star. As players invest in a hotel, the coins accumulate for an acquired total coin investment in that hotel. Once the total investment reaches 20 coins, the hotel upgrades to a two-star. 50 coins bear a three-star hotel. The level of a hotel is determined by the accumulated coin investment from all players, two players can each put 10 coins into a hotel and it will become a two-star building. Regardless of star rank, the hotel will belong to whomever has invested the most coins.

Luigi upgrades to a two-star hotel.

A hotel will only ever give three stars to players as it is upgraded. When one players out-bets an opponent, all stars previously awarded are transfered to the new highest bidder. This means that if a player had 26 coins invested into a hotel, and a second player personally invests 27 total coins, then the hotel now belongs to player two. The original owner is stripped of his or her two previously bequeathed stars, and two new stars are awarded to the newest owner. If the second player invested 50 total coins or more, then the previous owner loses all of his or her coins, and the new player is given three stars as the hotel becomes a three-star itself. A hotel will not take more than 100 coins in total investment. What this means is that if a player invests more then any other player into a hotel, and caps the total at 100, the player will be given all three stars and will never lose them. Something else interesting is that if a player invests a certain amount of coins so as to upgrade a hotel, but does not invest so many coins as to surpass the current owner, then the star from the new upgrade will be given to the current owner, not to the most recent investor. The last trick is that there are two special hotels, reached by a special board space, that are already set at three stars. Any coin investment will award that player with all three stars. But if another player comes by and invests more than the owner, then all three stars are transfered to the new investor.

This here car takes you straight to a special three-star hotel. Except in English.

I was pretty intrigued by this system. What seems complex at first becomes much simpler as you learn the mechanics. However, there is also a certain strategy required on part of the player to get the most out of each hotel. Players must balance where and how they will spend their coins, and when. Furthermore, coins are far more important on this board than with the standard rule set. What this board eventually boils down to is earning lots of coins. And that means being good at and winning mini-games. So in a sense this board requires more skill from the player as well. I enjoyed the board. If you've player Mario Party 8, let me know what you think of the game or this board or any other interesting design mechanics that may be present in other boards as well.

You Shirk it at Your Peril

Game Designer Ernest Adams writes a frequent column for Gamasutra titled "The Designer's Notebook." His latest entry is subtitled: "Why Design Documents Matter." Its a really interesting article explaining why game design documents are necessary to have a successful game development. My favorite part of the article comes on page 3, where Adams describes how "design documents turn generalities into particulars."

The process of writing a document turns a vague idea into an explicit plan. It’s one thing to say “Harpies will be flying creatures” in a meeting, but that’s nowhere near enough to build from. In fact, there’s not even any point in writing it down if that’s all you have to say. What the developers need are details: How high can they fly? How fast do they fly? Are they affected by the weather? Can harpies land? Can they land anywhere they want to? Can they also move on the ground, and if so, what sorts of terrain and how fast? Are they more, or less, vulnerable when in the air or on the ground? And so on and so on, and it all needs to be written down so that everyone on the team has all the information they need to build the product.

It would be nice if game design consisted of sitting around with your feet up and daydreaming about cool content and features, and I’ve met some designers who thought that was the whole job. It isn’t; they were slackers. The vast majority of design consists of figuring out the details.

Although you’ll always change those details later in testing and tuning, you have to start with something. In a real sense, the process of writing documents is the process of design, because it is then that you turn abstract concepts into concrete plans. Even if no one reads your document at all, an idea written down is a decision made, a conclusion reached.

A good example of above excerpt is Warcraft III, which actually has several types of Harpys in game, and to which most of the above questions apply. As a matter of fact, there are many, many types of creeps in Warcraft III, it would be nigh impossible to have designed all of them without a document at hand.

I have taken to writing design documents for my own game concepts. It really is quite fun. When I think about a game I'm creating, ideas pop in and out of focus and also change over time. Remembering all of those ideas is basically impossible, not to mention extremely stressful. At first I write down notes on a legal pad I carry around, pages of notes. I write down every idea that comes into my mind, and all of the variations and potential forms of those ideas. Then, when I feel comfortable enough with where I'm going I take to a word processor and type all of my notes to the hard drive. Then begins the process of refining and organizing and deciding. Its really cool to see how the game develops over time, even conceptually as all of my games do, because eventually you have whatever number of pages of ideas that you can print off and show to people and say, "Hey, this is a game I'm making, what do you think?"

I imagine you go through a similar process. How do your game design ideas develop over time, and how do you keep track of them?

Eternal Sonata Combat

Eternal Sonata is in development for the 360 by tri-Crescendo (also rumored to be in development for the PS3). Or was, depending on how you look at it. The game was released in Japan a month ago under the name of Trusty Bell, and is currently being localized for the United States with a planned September release. This is not tri-Crescendo's first title, that belongs to Gamecube RPG Baten Kaitos. But it doesn't take too hard of a look to notice aspects of that earlier title within the newest (namely graphics and music). However, not one to rest on their laurels, tri-Crescendo is once again innovating combat within the RPG genre.

The vertical bar on the left is the timer. Only .20 seconds remaining!

Eternal Sonata's combat is both turn-based and real-time. Players have a party of four characters at a time. Combat is either single-player or multi, as Eternal Sonata supports four-player co-op. Regardless, as in many other RPGs, one character acts a time. Both ally and enemy characters take turns moving and attack one another over the course of a battle. This is where the real-time part comes in, mostly. In RPGs like Final Fantasy, players act via menu selection, and take as long as they please to do so.

Eternal Sonata is different. For one, characters can move during a fight, and in fact, stratgeic movement is integral to the combat system. Second, players don't select actions from a menu. Instead players can run their chararacters around with the analog stick and use the face buttons to attack, defend, and cast spells or use abilities. This makes for a feel much more reminiscent of Tales of Symphonia than Final Fantasy. But rememer, only one character can act and attack at a time. If the game is both turn-based and real-time, then how are turn length or limits constructed? Good question. And the answer is a timer.

Towards the beginning of the game, players have a 5 second action timer. But as the game progresses, that time is reduced to 4 (and possibly lower, in so far as I know). But the time limit isn't static, not at first. tri-Crescendo is using the timer to pressure players and force them to play more strategically. As opposed to just making harder and harder monsters, this time limit manipulation serves to inflate the combat difficulty. Combat at the start of the game allows for more thought and planning in making decisions. This is because the timer only ticks down when the player is acting. If the player just stops and sits still, so too will the timer freeze. But when the player moves, attacks, or acts in any other way, then the timer ticks down. As we all know video games work in animations, so when players perform an action, such as attacking, then the timer will count down for as long as that animation lasts.I love tihs because it so neatly combines turn-based and real-time. Players can sit and think as long as they want about what type of action they want to take. Do you run in and perform and attack, attack, attack? Or, do you run in and attack, then run away again so the monster won't attack you come its turn? You may change your mind half-way through, and thats ok, because you can just stop acting and reevaluate the situation, then adjust your tactics accordingly. Unlike in turn-based games where players move through grid spaces, Eternal Sonata's system is free-form and allows for 360 degrees of movement. Its more like Warhammer than Chess.

But eventually this system might get too easy, or at least tri-Crescendo feel so. Who needs all that time to think and plan and stuff? The answer is irrelevent because players don't have a choice. Eternal Sonata gets harder. At some point in the game, the player loses the ability to pause time. Now, when the player stops acting, the timer just keeps on going anyway. When a character's turn starts, so does the timer, and it doesn't stop until time is up (therefore ending that character's turn). Players are thereafter forced to think and act much more quickly than at game's start.

Let it be known that water wheels are awesome.

The combat of Eternal Sonata has a whole lot more to it then what I've discussed, including a shadow/light mechanic, combos, and more. The active timer is a really awesome system. It is like the confluence of two great rivers: real-time and turn-based, and it is good.

Sources:
IGN Pre-E3 Preview
IGN E3 Preview
Gamespot E3 Preview
Gametrailers

Project Gotham Racing and Frame Rate

You may remember a post from a while back about Forza Motorsport 2 and its physics and frame rate. Basically, Forza runs at a constant 60 frames per second. This is because the physics in the game need to update as fast as the player is driving. If the frame rate were at 30 per second, then the physics of a players' car would be lagging behind whats happening on screen. Meaning the physics are basically null because the car is moving too fast for the physics to update.

The reason I mention this is because today I read a short but interesting article over at Gamasutra. This article talks about Forza's main competition, Project Gotham Racing 4. A large difference between the two games is that PGR4 is running at 30 frames per second. But even though that sounds like cow dung compared to Forza's frame rate, developer Bizarre Creations has their own reasons for doing so. Because the whole article is pretty much all quotes from PGR4 producer Adam Kovach, I'll just give you the gist of it. Kovach explains the decision to give PGR4 an fps of 30 as opposed to 60:

We looked at that, we debated for a long time... we looked at what we would be giving up if we tried to go to 60 versus 30 frames a second. We don't want to lose the visual fidelity... we made a conscious decision that 30 frames plus all the effects in the game was far more important than having a pure 60.

The environmental weather effects in PGR4 are very important to Bizarre.

Project Gotham Racing is more of an arcade racer than Forza Motorsport. For Bizarre, and for PGR, 30 frames per second is sufficient enough considering the amount of visual effects the game is throwing at the player. Especially when the weather effects are so important to driving in this iteration. You know, when I'd read about Forza a couple months ago, I thought that there was no better way to design the game. 60 frames per second was really the only way to go. But after reading Bizarre Creations' reasoning, I think that 30 fps is equally as valid a design, as long as it is conducive to the game, its gameplay, and play experience. Check out the whole article over at Gamasutra, its short and well worth reading.