Story-telling in a 2D flash platformer

2D platformers are my absolute favorite type of game, and they are the only kind I really want to make until my dumb programming skills get better. Combine this with the fact that my main draw towards gaming and any other form of media is the story and characters and you get a pretty difficult dilemma. It is incredibly difficult to create a game, regardless of genre, that incorporates dynamic and interesting characters, while still being fun to play. There are a few examples, such as Portal 1/2, and... other Valve games... and that's it? I can't think of any at the moment, but I'm sure there are some other ones. The point is that it is nigh-impossible to do right, and even more nigh-impossible-er in a 2D Flash platformer.

Flash has some restrictions, like file sizes, so a simple sound/voice based story-telling method would be out of the question. The other options that I can think of would be text, or visual story-telling based on the environment.   Many 3D games can make use of the latter using design methods and carefully scripted moments to ensure the player looks and hears specific details when the designer wants them to. This is more difficult in a 2D game as the player can usually see everything at once, and in only one perspective. What I plan on doing in my horror game is restricting the player's view on things, and then revealing bits of the level on places I know where they'll look. This would be difficult, but possible with enough scripted events and tricks. In the other game I'm working on, the player will have a full view on the screen/level, which makes restricting views sort of hard. There could still be scripted moments, which would make the player look at whatever I want them to, but it wouldn't be as surprising or special if the player knew something was coming. Still, showing characters reacting to things around them would be a better alternative to having the player read through boxes of text, and trying to derive an ounce of personality from it. It is better to show, not tell in this case. Showing a robot decapitating innocent people is infinitely better than having it say, "I like to decapitate innocent people all the times."

I wrote this because I was unsure of how to implement the story in my next games. The walrus game features its story though tiny cut-scenes. Although I dislike the idea of cut-scenes, the game itself barely has a story, and little silly animations can fit a Flash game quite well. The next two games I'm planning in my head are kind of story heavy however, which is why I thought to write about my options in this blog. Like most of these "blog-storming©" sessions, I've come to the conclusion that a mixture of both would be good. Scripted moments of visual action to demonstrate a character's personality, and then some optional text to explain the story and provide a way for the NPC's to communicate with the player. This seems like the best route given my choices, even though I don't care for reading in a game. Ideally all story should be delivered through gameplay, making use of the medium to its fullest, but with the limitations of Flash and the platformer genre, it is very difficult to do in a coherent way.

If any of the none of you reading this have thought of an alternative method to story-telling in games, please feel free to bring it up. There are only so many ways a person can absorb a story, and I think I've covered all of them. Tomorrow I'll write about how I might physically implement the text and story elements into my game, or maybe not, blog writing isn't that fun to do.

An idea to be put into a children's game:

Something here would need to explode. Preferably Elmo.

This game would be for very small children, to teach them numbers or reading, things children want to know about. Upon losing, the character in the game would look sad and say something stupid like "Try again, I know you can do it!" Now, there should be a random chance, let's say, 1 in 100000, that the character, upon losing, would explode into a gory mess filled with all sorts of organs and fluids everywhere. The child would be traumatized, and their parents would have no idea why, as it'd never happen again. If a parent were to see it, there would be nothing they could do about it, and the people they'd tell would just think of them as crazy people. Clearly this is what should be done with children's gaming. That is all.

Scary Game Brainstorming - Part 1: Gameplay

This will be more of a brainstorming session amongst myself, as I'm not exactly sure of my ideas (gameplay-wise) yet. Feel free to chime in with ideas and suggestions. Today I will focus on developing the gameplay aspects of the game, the thing I usually think up first.

Due to general laziness and not wanting to code a whole lot, I'll be using the same side-scrolling platformer engine I'm using now. This engine can be used for two different gameplay styles, standard platforming, or puzzle platforming. Let us discuss and discover which would lend itself better to the horror genre.

Standard

  The standard platformer game is about jumping around a level avoiding enemies and collecting things, all while trying to get to the end of the level. Now in the context of a horror game, this could perhaps be avoiding scary monsters and collecting useful things to help against scary monsters. One thing I know about this game is that it will indeed be about being helpless and useless in an environment that is constantly gunning for you. This works well in the standard platform game. A possible gameplay idea: the player has a circle of light around them, enabling them to see only a certain amount around them, this light is constantly decreasing, and players would avoid enemies that take away light while collecting things to increase light. The dark and unknown are scary to people, so providing them a chance to insure safety around them while taking away security when they fail I feel is the sort of dynamic I want. When the light runs out, the player will not start over, but will have to play through the level in the dark. This part is difficult to make scary as there is no risk to the player at this point. If they die, they would just start over unpunished. Players need to fear death, and making them repeat the level as punishment would be tedious instead of terrifying. I look at Silent Hill, arguably the best example of a horror game, and there is no penalty for dying, other than having to start over, perhaps at a save from a long while ago. In fact, no game in the horror genre severely punishes you for dying now that I think about it. Why are you scared of the water monster in Amnesia? Because it is loud and mysterious? If you go into the water, nothing will happen besides death, and then you get another chance right away. There is no penalty and yet it is still scary. So, for some reason, penalty isn't necessary for death intensity, but including it would make gameplay even more frightening.

Puzzle



  A puzzle platformer is one in which you solve puzzles, it makes a lot of sense if you think about it. These games aren't so much about avoiding enemies or collecting power-ups, as so much as they are finding a way to get to the end of the level using your BRAIN. Could a game wherein you are meticulously solving puzzles be scary? There could be a constant stress of having to think on your feet while at the same time, manipulating the level to get to your goal. Would the game's constant interruptions while the player is thinking be annoying, or create tension? The last thing I would want to do is annoy the player with little scares and disturbances while they are trying to open doors and move boxes. This gets down to what players really want in a puzzle: challenge in the form of brain-teaser-like objectives. A Rubik's cube is not challenging because someone is jabbing you with a stick in the eye every time you try to rotate a side, it is challenging because you need to use your brain and YOUR BRAIN ALONE. So, trying to make a puzzle artificially difficult by making the game try to scare you would be a bad idea.

After writing this, I think I've fleshed out how I want the gameplay to work, feel free to critique my ideas here,  it'll probably help me along the way. I'm gonna try real hard to get an explanation of the gameplay up here for tomorrow, or maybe a Walrus Game Progress Write-up, as big things are happening with that. I just need to get into the habit of writing in this thing again.

Horror Games

I'm not too much a fan of horror movies, they are usually just a lot of gore and jump scares with a dumb plot and absolutely terrible characters. Games are a much more fitting medium, the interactivity factor really increases the personal investment a person has. I don't care about characters in movies, especially if they're in any sort of unrelatable danger that has no effect on me and never will. But if I'm playing as a character, the things in the game will affect my character, which in turn, affect me.

I'm James. James Sunderland. I have a green jacket.

Given my limited horror movie watching, I'd probably say that I'm no expert in making people scared through film. But I've played many a horror game, and the good ones all share many important things. The first and perhaps most important, which very few games do, is COMPLETELY dis empower the player. People who have any sort of fight are not scary, and games like Clock Tower and Amnesia, where your only option is to run and hide and hope. Silent Hill 2 also does this with Pyramid Head, a completely invincible character who shows that you as a player are really completely useless against him. After completely stripping the player of the ability to fight back, the next step is to make things work in ways the player doesn't expect. Reading scary short stories is always fun, and the really good ones scare you by flipping your expectations and your previously conceived notions. Telling scares is almost like telling a joke, you set the listener up with a situation they don't have all the information on, then with the punchline, or scare, you present new information that changes the previous situation. This can and should be accomplished in games, as the medium is so ripe with preconceived notions taking advantage of them would be incredibly easy. Third thing: Promote player exploration as much as possible. The story should tell itself by what the player looks for and finds. There should be a lot of implication and not much straight-forward talk in horror. No one should ever be telling the player why something is happening or how to stop it. As soon as you start answering questions is when the mystery dies and when the scares stop. The visual scares and tense gameplay will get the dumb players while the dark atmosphere and creepy subtext should get the experienced players.

The reason I bring this all up is that I'm planning on making a horror game. I'm a huge fan of the genre and I think that aside from a few shining gems (its the same with the film industry), not many people have gotten it right. The plan is to make a 2D Flash platformer (that's all I make!) that encapsulates the feel and themes that a Silent Hill game has. I'll talk about it more in depth tomorrow.

I said I'd do a write-up everyday!

I'm running a little late on this one so I'll quickly talk about the greatest tutorial level in the history of all videogames ever: Super Mario Bros 1-1.

This one screen is an entire tutorial

A good tutorial teaches you everything you need to know through the gameplay, and not by just telling you and expecting you to do them. The VERY FIRST SCREEN of SMB 1-1 has everything you need to know. It presents 3 types of blocks to hit. But how do you know you are supposed to hit them? Well, there is also a Goomba quickly moving to the left. WHAT EVER SHALL YOU DO??!?! The obvious answer is to jump. You just learned jumping is the main part of gameplay without any text or voice over telling you. Once jumping is in your arsenal of gaming abilities, you'll want to try them out on those previously mentioned blocks. You discover the first '?' block gives you a coin. The next brick block you find is unbreakable. Next block is another '?', will this one be different??!? WILL IT BE THE GREATEST THING OF ALL TIME!!?!? IT IS, THE ALL POWERFUL MUSHROOM! The mushroom pops up, you hit the next brick block to discover that the mushrooms can be pushed up from underneath. You hit the next one for another coin. The last block you still can't break, but by then, you have a got the mushroom. And the first thing you try is to hit that block again. NOW YOU CAN FINALLY BREAK IT, HAPPY TIME. The final block of the intro screen is way up above. This is where you learn that blocks can be stood on, and thus completes a completely subtle and hidden tutorial level within the first screen.

Now, it may seem obvious that you can break blocks and jump on top of them, but this was one of the first platformers ever and videogames were still new to a lot of people. The genius of this game, is in it's level design. One could say the popularity of Super Mario Bros stems from how easy it is to play immediately, as it teaches the player how to play without them ever knowing it. IT IS THE BEST LEVEL DESIGN EVER AND IT SHOWS HOW IMPORTANT A FIRST LEVEL CAN BE! No game should use a tutorial with the characters telling me to press buttons, or big signs to read. Everything can be explained through gameplay, no matter how complicated.  

Game Progress #2

Hello! I should be working on the game right now, what with the demo deadline ever approaching, but I have since decided to do a progress write-up to keep my promise of writing in this thing every day.

Right now I have a ton of bug fixes to do. The only real new thing that is top priority is the sloped tiles, which have to also work with the projectiles. This is a tall order and is probably the most difficult thing to code in the whole game (besides the boss battle, but that's next week). I really do hate all this fancy math I have to do, which shouldn't be as hard as it is for me, but that's how it is. It'll probably all click after days of working at it, and since I've tried getting them to work for a couple days already, that click may get here soon.

This here is for making levels

Yesterday I spent most of my time programming a level editor, (about 3 hours a day I suppose), as Jonny had just finished some tiles and I wanted to implement them into the game. Doing this was pointless, as I just ended up using and modify the old one I was already using. It's really outdated but works well and I liked it better than the other ones. The reason I hesitant in using it was I tend to forget how things work and I hate trying to relearn things I once knew. Another reason was the fact that my tile system is now a 3D Array instead of a 2D one, which sort of complicated things for the editor. Today I fixed the code to create and generate 3D Arrays, but I have yet to test it.

In summary:

• Map editor is done. Making levels is easy and fun now, as opposed to tedious and awful
• Sloping Tiles are the bane of my existence, and will confuse me for forever
• I still have a TON of bugs to fix. And by ton I mean 3 or 4
• The enemies need to be completely recoded, I wrote that in my notepad as a fix, but it's really an overhaul. The way we want them to function is gonna require so fancy numbers, which I love
• I like bullet points.

Thanks for reading once again!

What I'm playing

Every Monday I'll write up something about what I'm currently playing, and with the release of Pokemon yesterday, Pokemon Black/White and the series as a whole is the subject.

Blitzle, he's pretty cool.

So far, I have nothing bad to say about the game. It really encapsulates the feel of the first generation again, but with some new ideas. The way they designed which Pokemon show up and where in the overall progress of your adventure is back to Red/Blue levels of brilliance. I'd still say the second generation is my favorite, with HeartGold being among, if not the best, Pokemon game; but the first games had a way better difficulty curve and a steady stream of interesting and new Pokemon to discover at any point in the game. 

Perhaps I notice this Pokemon progression more having just played Pearl, which by far had the worst choice in Pokemon, and was designed in such a way that there was no incentive to catching more monsters. Incentives in gaming is another thing that interests me greatly, and I'll probably write about it tomorrow, but back to the Pokemon topic. The aim of the Pokemon franchise, according to their slogan, is to "Catch 'em all," and part of the appeal to this is the fact that the Pokemon themselves are interesting and unique. The 4th generation did horribly in promoting the slogan, as the beginning of the game was filled with

I don't think this thing is an electric type.

nothing but 1st gen pokes and the new ones they did add were boring. It was like this throughout the entire game, in fact. The severe lack of new Pokemon really killed the fun, as I usually only use new pokemans when playing a new pokeman game. But when you have no new Pokemon to add, what's the point? Two facts about how horrible Pearl/Diamond are: there are THREE new fire types, the starter of course, an evolution to Magmar, and a legendary. That means, if you don't pick the fire starter, you pretty much won't have a fire
Pokemon for the rest of the game. The other fact is the electric type gym leader has four Pokemon: Raichu, Ambipom, Octillery, and Luxray. 2 of these aren't electric types, and 2 of these aren't new pokemon. Now, when you have a game that requires you to beat your opponent based on attack-types over strategy, you can't have a gym leader use Pokemon that aren't the types advertised. I feel like a stupid little nerd kid for complaining about Pokemon design, but it is one of the biggest games around and design choices like these are deplorable and almost arbitrary. Well anyhow, I should get back to wrting about Black/White, and stop complaining.

Lookit this guy! He totally wears clothes!?

These new games manage to capture the feeling of playing Pokemon when you're a kid, all the new things to discover, new pokemon to catch, and new mechanics to utilize really makes a new experience without really changing the same old great stuff. The way I've played Pokemon after the 1st generation was to catch only the Pokes I needed. If I found a cool water type, but already had a water type, I wouldn't catch it. This is counter-intuitive to what Pokemon is about, and they got it right the first time, and have finally gotten it right again this time. I found myself catching everything I could find. I've got around 10 pokemon already and I only have two badges. This is how the game should be played, with constantly changing teams you create while going on a big adventure. I only got 6 Pokemon in Pearl and made it to the end with those 6, two of which weren't new. This game really captures that feeling of exploration and adventure that is crucial to the franchise, while still keeping to the basics.

One thing that annoys me is the fact that there are (at least) two separate Pokemon teams, one for remakes and one for the main games, that seemingly never interact with each other. It seems the remake team has better design ideas for the most part, yet they are being wasted on simple remake games. I liked the following Pokemon, the PokeWalker, and the touch screen controls. These are all things that were added as a part of HeartGold and were not implemented into Black/White. Now, maybe since the games were being made parallel to one another, the ideas didn't have time to cross over. But the thing with iterative design is building upon ideas instead of starting new each time. If the next game doesn't have the new stuff that was exclusive to a remake, than I must say GameFreak really needs to switch the teams around.

This one sort of looks like a walking anus, and that's pretty cool.

Well it looks like this post turned into a rant of hate towards Pearl/Diamond, which is too bad as I am really liking the new game. I gotta construct these beforehand instead of just spewing out words that don't work together. But in summary, the new game has somehow captured the feeling that no other Pokemon game has since the very first ones, and that makes it superb. Also their tile system is in 3D and it looks absurdly good.