The article Games Minus Stories = ? over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun struck a chord with me. I felt that my comment on it, with some rewording, was an important enough point that it merited a blog post, so here it is:
The article is itself a response to yet another writer’s claim that “If games want to be taken seriously as art or a worthwhile storytelling medium, there will have to be more games that aren’t simple diversions.” In Games MInus Stories, Jim Rossignol challenges the basic assumption here, namely that the artfulness of games lies in their capacity as a storytelling medium. I’d go even further, though, and say that games need to move away from the idea of narrative in order to mature as an art form.
Today’s games seem to have an inferiority complex and try to emulate movies, as the latter are already accepted as legitimate art. When I see people pointing to the most movie-like games as evidence for games-as-art, I feel like they don’t believe themselves that games are art, because they’re choosing examples that remind us of another medium more than they remind us of games.
What makes a game a game is the way it plays, and any game designer can tell you that making a fun game requires creativity, cultivated instincts, flashes of inspiration and lots of hard work and experience, just like painting, or writing a screenplay. Limiting our discussion of games as art to the narratives is like going to the art gallery and describing only the subjects of the paintings and sculptures, rather than the pieces themselves.
“Yeah, it was totally art. One painting was of some sunflowers, and there was another of a man and a woman in front of a farmhouse, with the man holding a pitchfork. And then there was this sculpture of a guy sitting with his chin on his fist. There wasn’t an orc or a space marine anywhere.”
Visual art outgrew its obsession with representation a long time ago. Then it outgrew its obsession with being non-representational, and now it’s in a relatively mature state where artists can be representational or non-representational as they see fit, and the subject of a piece, when there is one, is only one detail out of many aspects of the piece to be discussed and appreciated. The fact that the mainstream games industry is still struggling for more and more movie-like plots indicates its immaturity. At least the indie scene is starting to dabble in abstraction and symbolism, albeit heavy-handedly.
When you’re trying to create “art,” then inevitably you’re trying to imitate some other thing that you consider art… but imitation is not art, so these efforts will always fail. Just create the best game you can, and it will be art, regardless of whether it’s at the Tetris or Heavy Rain end of the scale.
Gameplay: 8/10 Graphics: 8/10 Sound: 8/10 Originality: 9/10 Overall: 8/10
Play at: http://armorgames.com/play/4206/knightfall-2
Knightfall 2 is a highly original puzzle-RPG featuring a somewhat nonlinear series of quests, and gameplay that incorporates mechanics similar to Bejewlled and Collapse, but with the addition of roguelike elements and a few unique twists. That’s quite a mash-up, and probably hard to visualize, so allow me to go into more detail.
I say it’s a puzzle-RPG, but it’s really more puzzle than RPG. Although there’s some semblance of a plot (just the usual stop-the-great-evil stuff), it’s completely forgettable, and neither influences nor is influenced by the player’s decisions. Furthermore, while most puzzle-RPGs only use the puzzle portion of the game as a sort of abstracted mechanic for combat, here, the player’s movement, fighting and collecting of items are all woven into the puzzle mechanics.
The player’s knight starts each level in the centre of a grid of square tiles, along with at least one monster, a key, an exit door, and occasionally one or more bonus items. Unlike most games, the player has no direct control over the main character. By using the keyboard or clicking arrows on-screen, the player can rotate the grid, while by clicking on tiles in the grid, the player can destroy orthogonally-connected groups of tiles of the same colour. Depending on which way the grid is oriented at that point, all blocks, characters and items - even the exit door! - above the destroyed tiles will fall down to fill the gap, while new tiles fall into the grid from above.
In this way, the player can either move his character around the screen to fight monsters and collect items, or else bring them to him. Each monster has its own attack pattern, represented by highlighted squares on-screen when the player mouses over the monster. The easiest monsters only attack horizontally adjacent squares, while the more challenging foes can hit a wide range of squares. The player, meanwhile, slays monsters with his drill-lance by dropping onto them from above.
Destroying blocks costs energy - only a single point for groups of three or more, but there is an energy penalty for destroying single blocks and groups of two. When the player’s energy runs out, he starts losing health instead; getting hit by monsters also depletes health. Energy is restored between levels, while health is not, though there are plenty of healing items available. Destroying blocks and slaying monsters also earns the character experience points (towards leveling up in typical RPG style) and fills up a meter at the bottom of the screen, gradually allowing the character access to various magical abilities, ranging in power from simply shuffling the tiles on-screen to wiping out all enemies on the level. Power-up items work in a similar fashion, being stored in the player’s inventory until used for various effects.
As you’d expect, each level is completed by collecting the key, and then making it to the exit door. Each quest has between three and eight levels, and the longer quests have a boss stage at the end. Each boss features a unique mechanic, both in terms of how it attacks, and how the player must defeat it.
The gameplay is fun, though too easy; I only died perhaps three times in the course of beating the game, usually due to lack of attention, and continues are unlimited. The game would benefit greatly from the addition of difficulty modes. The main challenge is working out the strategy for the first time, but once the player has learned to predict the consequences of destroying a given group of blocks, most levels other than the boss fights tend to be a cakewalk.
The overworld map consists of a bunch of nodes connected by paths, similar to Super Mario World. Some nodes represent quests, while others are shops, taverns (for healing damage between quests), or just NPC encounters to advance the plot, such as it is. It’s an appealing alternative to a linear progression of levels, but unfortunately, aside from the bosses, there isn’t really much difference between one quest and another, so it amounts more to an illusion of choice than a real, strategic decision.
The game’s graphics are much better than most Flash fare, featuring pretty decent pixel art. The contrast between the player character and the tiles is not always great, but the grid is so small and simple, there’s never any question of not knowing where everything is - it’s only a mild aesthetic problem. The sound and music are likewise above average, though nothing that will leave a lasting impression.
This is definitely a game worth playing, and it’s very addictive - it takes a few hours to complete, and I was unable to tear myself away until I’d done so. There’s a lot of potential here for a Knightfall 3, and if the author chooses to produce it, I hope he will add difficulty levels so that the more hardcore among us will be able to give ourselves enough of a challenge to feel the sense of accomplishment we crave. More variety in the quests would be welcome as well - perhaps featuring special “terrain” tiles, different sizes/shapes of grid, etc., rather than merely varying in terms of proportion of the various monster types.
I apologize for the lack of blog posts recently - I’ve been out of town a lot, and rushing to finish some contracts during the times I’ve been back. I promise there will be some more substantial content in the near future.
In the meantime, here is a robot mask I created to promote the M60 film festival here in Montreal. Click the image to get a full-resolution version that you can print out on cardstock and wear!
Cut out the X-marked pixels for eye holes
I was recently reading an interesting post on Emily Short’s blog about how she handled conversation in her most recent Interactive Fiction project. You can read the post in question here.
The gist of it, for those who’d prefer a synopsis, is that she’s moved away from the conventional model, in which the player chooses something to say, and the NPC responds, then the player chooses something else to say (possibly with new options now), and the NPC responds again, and so on. Instead, she’s given the NPC as much agency in the conversation as the player - the NPC will now have a list of things he or she wishes to say, and an order to say them in, and will go down the list until they’ve said everything they want. In the meantime, the player can say or do whatever he or she likes, and these words and actions will tend to add and/or remove elements from the NPCs list.
These elements can be either immediate or postponed - which determines whether they’re added to the top or bottom of the list - and either obligatory or optional - which determines whether they’re removed from the list or not when the topic of conversation shifts.
Reading this, it occurred to me that you could use such a system to create a highly non-linear RPG, by simply extending it to cover actions as well as words, and also to include entities other than just NPCs (e.g. the environment, a whole group of monsters or even a distant kingdom could be an entity with a list of things it “wants” to do). Also, these actions would need to have a setup and a recovery time, as global events in an RPG don’t fall as neatly into a turn-based structure as conversation in a piece of IF. Aside from these changes, however, the basic idea remains unchanged.
Today, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how one would go about designing such a game, and I think the answer is to take the player out of the game to begin with, and come up with a story that would take place without any player intervention at all. Once you have that worked out, you can break it into one or more cause-and-effect chains, in which actions taken by one entity add actions to other entities’ to-do lists, and so on down the line. The player’s actions could then prevent some of these events from taking place, or change their outcome, or cause entities to take other actions entirely. In this way, there’s guaranteed to be a story of some sort going on, and the player can meddle in it however much he or she likes.
I think this system would be best suited to small games, because the system gets very complex very quickly, and the non-linear nature of the gameplay would give the game a high degree of replayability, so a long play-time might be more of a drawback than a positive. To manage the complexity in a larger game, the thing to do would probably be to divide the game world up into a number of isolated “islands,” (e.g. towns) whose entities only interact with others within their own island, and only major events in one place affect what happens elsewhere.
As an example, here’s an idea for a very small game I came up with, consisting of a very small number of locations and NPCs.
There are two towns. The one in which the player starts, we’ll call Hometown, and the other we’ll call Awaytown. Both towns have a few important NPCs, and a number of generic NPCs who only share rumors with the player, or give him minor tasks with minor rewards, and little impact on the main plot.
There are two ways to get from one to the other - a pass through the Mountains, and a Road through the Woods. The mountains also contain a wizard’s hut and a cave full of faeries, while the woods contain a bandit stronghold.
The major NPCs:
HOMETOWN Hometown Sheriff, who is secretly corrupt and in cahoots with the Stablemaster (below) Bartender, who needs a cart wheel, and knows various rumors e.g. about the bandits Bartender’s son, who is in his late teens Goldsmith, who makes jewelry, but is currently out of gold, and expecting a shipment soon
AWAYTOWN Awaytown Sheriff, who is a good guy, and wants to take down the bandits Stablemaster, who is in contact with the bandits and supplies them with horses and information Cartwright, who has a young son
ROAD/WOODS Bandit Lord, who stays in the stronghold most of the time Bandit Prince, who is the Bandit Lord’s son, and leads the group of bandits who attack the player and/or any NPCs who attempt to take the road between the towns.
MOUNTAINS Wizard, who has a powerful magic amulet Faerie Lord, who is dying Faerie Council, who need the magic amulet and a human child for a ritual to create a new Faerie Lord to replace their dying leader.
The Plot, without player intervention:
And so, we see that the story has a sad ending if the player does nothing; most of the nice people end up dead, and the bad guys come out ahead. Fortunately, the links in that chain are quite fragile, and the player can bend or break any one of them, and radically change the flow of events.
Early in the story, if the player talks to Bartender or Hometown Sheriff, he could be tasked with going to Awaytown to deliver the letter and/or acquire the cart wheel. If he goes to get the wheel, but doesn’t bring the letter, eventually Hometown Sheriff will find someone else to deliver it, but it will slow down the advancement of that part of the story. Meanwhile, if he does take the letter, he could deliver it as promised, advancing the story normally, or he could open it and read it. If he does so, he could expose Hometown Sheriff and raise a mob to lynch him, or he take the evil route and blackmail Hometown Sheriff into letting him in on the action. Alternately, he could take the letter to Awaytown Sheriff, who will propose that he go back to Hometown, steal Hometown Sheriff’s seal, reseal the letter, and deliver it… so that now, with the player’s assistance, Awaytown Sheriff can arrange a sting to catch the bandits - player, Awaytown Sheriff and a small posse meet up with the gold caravan and hide in the wagons to surprise the bandits.
Another way the player could find out about the Stablemaster/Hometown Sheriff conspiracy is if he happens to be out and about at nighttime in Awaytown, when the bandits come to meet with Stablemaster. The player might end up seeing them and eavesdropping.
Meanwhile, if the player chooses to travel via the mountain pass, he may run into the Faeries and/or the Wizard, depending on how much exploring he does. If he meets the Wizard, he’ll find out about the stolen Amulet - if he manages to figure out that the Faeries have it, and get it back, he’ll have the Wizard on his side. If he meets the Faeries, he may find out about their dying leader. If he’s particularly clever in conversation, he may even get some information about the ritual they have planned. The alternative to creating a new Faerie Lord is, of course, to save the current one, which requires some rare herbs from the Woods. If the player gets these in time, he can avert the abduction of Cartwright’s son. The Faeries may also reward him by giving him the amulet, which they no longer need. He could then keep it (and risk the Wizard’s wrath, if he sees him with it), or return it to the Wizard.
If instead, the player takes the road, he’ll be attacked by a small group of bandits. Assuming he wins the fight, Bandit Prince will attempt to flee. If captured, he will attempt to bargain with the player, saying he’s impressed with the player’s combat prowess, and inviting the player to join them. This would kick off a whole “evil” plotline, in which the player is with the bandits. Alternately, the player could turn Bandit Prince over to either Sheriff. Hometown Sheriff will, of course, set things up so Bandit Prince can escape, which will possibly help the player realize what’s going on. Awaytown Sheriff, on the other hand, will interrogate Bandit Prince to find out the location of the bandit stronghold, possibly leading to an attack on it, possibly with the player’s assistance… and, possibly even with the help of the Wizard and/or the Faeries, if he’s achieved happy resolution on that side of things.
Of course, the Bandit Prince might also escape, only to show up again later. Or the player might kill him, in which case the Bandit Lord, outraged over his son’s death, would seek revenge - either against the player specifically, or by attacking one or both towns, if he doesn’t have a way of determining who killed him.
Meanwhile, if the Faerie Lord does die, then the player might go to try to rescue Cartwright’s son himself, or he might join the party that ends up getting caught in the avalanche, or he might go up afterwards, to rescue them after they’re caught in the avalanche.
If this all sounds exceptionally complicated, that’s just because it’s nonlinear. There are any number of other possible interactions that could take place too - I’ve just tried to cover the main possibilities, but there are any number of ways the player character could involve himself in everyone’s business, either for altruistic reasons, personal profit, or loyalty to a specific NPC that the player has decided that he likes. Whatever happens, the overall story will probably be fairly short, but dense - this isn’t an epic game, by any means. However, the player should be able to play it several times, with a radically different experience each time through… almost any NPC or group of NPCs can end up being an ally or an enemy, depending on what the player does, and certain locations (the inside of the faerie cave and the bandit stronghold) might not even be seen at all in a given game!
Also, the possible permutations and combinations of PC-NPC and NPC-NPC interaction grow exponentially as more are added. With just four main areas and a handful of entities, the game is already quite complex - just a couple more locations to visit and a few more active parties with their own agendas, and the story would be truly unpredictable and surprising. The ultimate goal, of course, is to make an RPG that is actually a role-playing game in the true sense of the term, similar to the experience one has playing a pencil-and-paper RPG.
Gameplay: 7/10 Graphics: 7/10 Sound: 8/10 Originality: 7/10 Overall: 7/10
Play at: http://www.kongregate.com/games/TerryCavanagh/dont-look-back
Retro, in the sense of ancient history
Modern fantasy games draw plenty of elements from Greek mythology, but usually these consist of places, people, magical items and monsters, taken out of the context of their original stories. Here we have a game that takes its (minimal) storyline - and its most original gameplay feature - from the story of Orpheus. In the myth, Orpheus’ wife Eurydice dies, and he travels to the underworld to persuade Hades and Persephone to let him bring her back. They agree, but on the condition that he not look back at her until they’ve both returned to the surface. Unfortunately, in his anxiety, he can’t help looking back as they approach the surface, and thus loses her forever.
In Terry Cavanagh’s Don’t Look Back, you take the role of Orpheus, albeit anachronistically armed with a pistol, rather than a lyre. Running, jumping and gunning your way through hell, you eventually confront Hades and “persuade” him - via several bullets to the head - to liberate your dead bride. At this point, the game’s title - and the reference to the myth - come to light, as you must now return to the surface, but while moving only in a single direction; turning around even for an instant results in her disappearance, which is equivalent, in game terms, to your own death.
There are several good things about this game, and some not so good. In terms of gameplay, the level of challenge is tough but fair, and the level of frustration is kept manageable by the fact that you have unlimited lives and only need to restart the current screen when you die (or accidentally look back at your fair maiden). The difficulty curve is rather inconsistent, unfortunately. Some early screens are quite tough, and some later ones are trivial; I would have preferred to see more thought put into introducing challenges gradually. The two bosses - Cerberus and Hades - are likewise reasonably satisfying to fight, but poorly balanced in terms of difficulty; you would expect the main boss (Hades) to be the more difficult of the two, but it took me far more attempts to get past Cerberus.
Part of the problem is with the “don’t look back” mechanic. It’s original, but greatly limits the level design. Since you can’t turn or move backwards at all, the challenges actually become more simplistic, as the controls have been reduced to simply moving forward and/or jumping. Although interesting from an artistic perspective, it fails from a game design perspective for this reason. Much more interesting would have been if Cavanagh had Eurydice follow a little ways behind Orpheus, and allowed him to turn around so long as she was not in sight - for instance, if the player could get her temporarily stuck behind a wall. This would allow for much more interesting puzzles than the game currently offers.
There are likewise good and bad things to be said about the graphics; certainly, the blocky pixels and limited palette will be nostalgic for those of us who grew up on the Atari 2600 and similar machines. The palette itself is nicely-chosen as well, with everything portrayed in suitably bleak reds and burgundies. The special effects are also nice, including the rain in the outdoor scenes, and Eurydice vanishing in a puff of smoke if the player does look back. However, as is often the case with such games, one often gets the impression that the graphical “style” is often just a convenient excuse for artistic laziness - for instance, it would not be hard for a marginally competent artist to produce better-looking trees than those in the screenshot above, even with a four-color palette and low resolution.
The sound, meanwhile, is one of the game’s better features. The music suits the mood well, and I like that it comes and goes, rather than looping continuously. Eurydice’s wail when she goes up in smoke is also well done. The death sound is extremely retro.
I like the fact that this game manages to bridge the gap between being a game and an interactive art piece. Most art games feature minimal gameplay, and often no challenge whatsoever. Don’t Look Back, on the other hand, has several difficult parts, and manages to be fun, albeit simple. The artistic expression in the game is limited to the concept of the title and corresponding gameplay feature, the general graphical and audio style, and the game’s beginning and ending scenes. The rest of the time, the game focusses on being a game, as it should. All too often, those seeking to gain acceptance for games as a valid art-form try to do so by making their games less game-like; this, in my opinion, is self-defeating.
A masterpiece, this is not, but it’s still an interesting experiment. Moreover, it’s short, reasonably entertaining, and doesn’t even require a download - I would say it’s well worth investing 15-30 minutes of one’s time to give it a play through.
It’s about time I got back to talking about typography. Up until now we’ve been discussing how to choose the appropriate typeface(s) to set your text. Many people seem to think that this is the big issue in typography, but it’s really only the tip of the iceberg. Actually putting the characters on the page is not as trivial as it might seem.
The usefulness of a wide right margin
Type is a fluid. It’s compressible, but only to a certain extent. It can be shrunk or expanded to fit the space available, but there’s only a small window of comfortable pressure - expand or condense it too much, and the readability starts to suffer. What you can do, however, is adjust the shape of the container; type, at least in English, has the nice property of being composed mostly of short words, so the lines can be broken up into all sorts of different lengths, so the same passage of text can be rearranged into any number of shapes and aspect ratios, as long as the total area on the page remains roughly the same.
Most non-designers, when putting a document together in word, simply use a single column, with the default margins. If they need to include pictures, they’ll often put them in at the top or bottom of the page, or if they do put them in the middle, will often interrupt the text above the picture and resume it below. This is equivalent to using a bucket for all one’s water-containing needs. Sure, it’s very practical at times, but it’s hardly the thing to impress dinner guests. Sometimes, it pays to be more creative with text placement.
The horizontal width of a block of text is called its “measure.” Unless the text is justified, the length of an individual line will typically be less than the measure; the measure is the maximum length of any line within the block. Justification is the process of forcing every line (except, usually, the last line of a paragraph) to be exactly equal in length to the measure, thus having clean edges at both sides, as opposed to a ragged margin.
There are a number of reasons one wants to have control over the measure, and like most things in typography, there are always trade-offs to be made. Making the measure wider can help fix awkward spacing in justified text, and is usually slightly more efficient in fitting text into a small area on the page if the paragraphs are long, as every line break represents a little loss of space, since the words usually won’t fit exactly into the space available on the line. However, expanding the measure also brings associated problems - the longer the line, the harder it is for the eye to trace its way back to the beginning of the next line, decreasing readability by increasing the number of times the reader will lose his or her place. Also, if the text contains many short paragraphs, wider measures can actually be less efficient, as a great deal of space is lost when a paragraph ends partway through a line.
Using a sketch to plan layout
There are two ways to change the measure. One is to break the text into columns. On a portrait-oriented 8.5×11 page, two columns are often optimal, as 7.5-8 inches is actually an extremely wide measure, usually too wide - the proliferation of single-column typed documents is mostly a throwback to the days of typewriters, but even in this day and age of powerful word-processing software, the majority of people haven’t outgrown this Dark Age in typographical history, due to a combination of habit and lack of understanding of the technology.
The other thing you can do is to adjust the white space on the page. Changing the width of the left and, particularly, the right margin of a page will result in a corresponding change in the measure. If you have more than one column, you can also adjust the gutters, that is If your document contains many images and/or is likely to be read by someone who might want to take their own notes, having a wide right margin is a very good idea! It allows pictures to stick halfway into the text and protrude out into the margin in an aesthetically pleasing fashion, and provides a convenient place to take notes.
Remember, too, that you needn’t stick to one measure for the whole page. Balance and harmony are important, but especially for text with natural divisions, and when there are images that can be used as visual dividers, you can split the text up into different areas of the page and vary the margins and columns between them. You can also use typeface variations as discussed before, to further create a separation between the different sections.
The key to creating a nice design in these cases is to experiment quickly by means of sketches, before starting to set the actual text. Using lines for text and crossed-out boxes to represent images, do some brainstorming - come up with as many viable layouts as you can before settling on the one that provides the best organization of the information and the most aesthetically pleasing page.
I am extremely busy with both freelance contracts and personal projects this week, and won’t have the time to make many blog posts. In the meantime, this is an essay that I wrote a couple of months ago for a post on IndieGamer, before I had a blog set up for such things.
Games are a controversial subject these days. Gamers and non-gamers debate constantly about the possible value and dangers associated with games, and gamers argue amongst themselves about which games or genres are better than others. This may be due, in large part, to the increasingly diverse nature of games; indeed, the term has begun to be applied so generally that two “games” may have very little in common with one another, beyond being forms of interactive entertainment. When dealing with such a broad categorization, it is impossible to establish clear criteria for gauging quality. It is thus inevitable that these quasi-religious arguments should go on indefinitely, with no resolution possible.
The word “game” used to mean something quite specific. Even the concept of a game was fairly universal, regardless of language. For thousands of years a game has been a form of competition between two or more parties, within the constraints of a set of rules. It could be a contest of physical speed or strength, mental ability, luck, or some combination of those. Regardless, the key elements were that a game had: Rules that were clearly understood by all parties; an objective; one or more winners, either at the end of the game (for finite games, like chess or soccer), or at any given point in time (for infinite games, like tag or poker); and the ability to replay the same game multiple times, following the same rules, but with potentially different results.
This is a clear way to separate games from non-game forms of conflict/competition (i.e. fighting, arguing, business), which don’t follow set rules, and non-game forms of entertainment, such as non-interactive ones like books, and solitary challenges, which are usually called “puzzles.”
Up until the advent of mass production, innovation in games was limited, because anything destined for a wider audience had to use either standard components (e.g. deck of cards, chess set, or dice in the West, or equivalent items in other cultures) or commonplace objects (e.g. horseshoes). Starting mostly in the 20th century, new mass-produced household board games started popping up, but designers instinctively stuck to the idea of a competition between individuals or teams, even if in a very casual way.
The latter half of the 20th century brought two successive revolutions to the world of gaming, in rapid succession. Each was accompanied by a massive broadening of the term “game.”
In 1974, TSR published the first edition of Gary Gygax’s Dungeons & Dragons, the first role-playing game (RPG). Although the existence of such games is now taken for granted by most aficionados, one cannot overstate the change in thinking that they represent. Although conflict is still present - between the player characters and fictitious foes - there is no longer competition between the parties involved; although the players could be said to “lose” if their characters fail or die, this does not equate to a “win” for the Game Master. There are goals, but no clear victory conditions for the players, and although there are rules, they are not exhaustive and very much open to be interpreted or disregarded entirely by the Game Master.
Prior to that, the first computer games began to appear. Rather than a sudden revolution, however, these created a more gradual muddying of the waters. Many early games attempted to simulate more traditional games, such as Tic-Tac-Toe, chess, or tennis (Pong). These often pitted two human opponents against one another, as computing had not advanced far enough to provide a worthy opponent. As such, these early games did not digress very far from the traditional definition.
Eventually, single-player games began to appear, featuring either fixed or randomly-generated challenges. Although still popularly referred to as “games,” many of these bore more resemblance to puzzles. Nonetheless, for many games, the addition of the concept of “points” created a sort of meta-game, in which multiple players could compete against one another by trying to obtain the highest score, despite playing the game separately, on different computers and at different times.
The advent of artificial intelligence introduced another ambiguity. Although a game like Robots, in which the enemies follow the simple rule of moving directly towards the player at all times, should probably correctly be considered a puzzle, other games feature more sophisticated and unpredictable AIs. This leads one to ask the question: At what point should a program’s AI be considered an “opponent,” as opposed to a part of the game/puzzle? The Turing test is one possible answer, although that would leave most modern games being classified as puzzles. Another criterion might be whether the game’s designer, knowing his own code, can reliably predict the program’s behaviour (or the probabilities of its behaviour, if randomness is present).
Another major change came with the ability to interrupt play and resume it later on. Eventually, this was accomplished with saved games, but earlier games implemented it via passwords. This allowed games to be made longer, but also began to remove the repeated playing that characterized many early games. They began to be more like crossword puzzles, to be set down after completion in favour of a new challenge. Now, this idea of games with a clear end has become so assimilated into the gamer’s psyche that a common datum passed around about new games is “number of hours to complete,” much as descriptions of books often give a page count.
Although early games were often quite difficult to complete - many beyond the reach of most gamers - the increasing emphasis on “completion” has caused them to become easier, as customers are often let down or frustrated if they cannot make it through to the conclusion, as if they’ve gone to the theatre only to have the movie interrupted fifteen minutes short of the climax. Although games vary in terms of how linear the route to the ending is, most have only a single endpoint, and reaching it is more or less inevitable, unless the player grows bored and abandons the game before.
Thus, we’ve reached a point where there are many very different forms of interactive entertainment that we still lump together under the umbrella term, “game.” Moreover, the players are equally varied in terms of their preferences and expectations.
Some want to compete against opponents, be they human or computer. These are the gamers in the very traditional sense; they favour multiplayer titles, or stick to physical tabletop board games or real-life sports.
Some want to overcome specific challenges, either cognitive or reflex-based. They favour traditional puzzles like crosswords or sudoku, solitary sports like skiing, archery or juggling, and computer or video games that resemble these activities.
Others want to create their own stories and make their own challenges. These are the people with the role-playing personality; some may still play old-fashioned pencil-and-paper role-playing games, but many favour the so-called “sandbox” computer and video games.
Lastly, there is an ever-growing segment of the market that simply wants to be part of someone else’s story. They don’t mind linearity in gameplay, nor do they want challenges that are difficult enough to break the flow of their progress through the story. They don’t need more than the illusion of control over the game’s events, much as any movie-goer or reader can suspend disbelief for the purpose of entertainment.
Although variations in taste are a given in almost all areas of life, it’s important to see how these different forms of entertainment actually bear very little resemblance to one another, other than the fact that we use the same word to describe them all. Imagine if all “handiwork” were lumped together under that single term - a cabinet-maker applying his standards of excellence to evaluate a sweater might find it very lacking, even if it had been made by a world-class knitter.
There is little hope of convincing the general public - or even the industry - to adopt more specialized terms. Nonetheless, the progress of interactive entertainment in general would be considerably advanced if it were more commonly recognized that these are more than different genres; they are different products, different activities entirely. We must stop thinking of a first-person shooter and a casual title as an action movie and a romantic comedy, respectively, but rather acknowledge that they are indeed more like a cabinet and a sweater - intended for different purposes and used in different ways, and thus subject to different theories and standards.
Although there’s a lot more to typography than just choosing the right typeface, it definitely goes a long way, and it’s hard or impossible to make your type look good if you choose the wrong one. Thus, typeface selection seems like a good place to start this series of tutorials. The first thing we need is to nail down some basic terminology.
The word font, contrary to popular belief, does not refer to the letterforms themselves. Rather, the font is the technology which is used to produce them. Historically, a font was a set of metal pieces (known as “sorts,” from which we get the expression “out of sorts”) featuring raised letters, which could be used in conjunction with a printing press to produce printed pages. Nowadays, we use the same term to refer to the software which produces letters on our screen.
By contrast, a type family is a set of letterforms that are similar in terms of their shape and structure. The distinction between a type family and a font is a little bit pedantic in this day and age, but technically speaking, if you’re holding a printed document and inquiring about the letters thereon, you should be asking the designer, “What family of type is that?” or “What font did you use to set that?” and not “What font is that?” as the font itself is still on the computer, not on the page.
A typeface is a subset of a family - a specific size, weight, style and set of that family. So, for instance, Myriad is the name of a type family (and of the font used to set that family), whereas 14 pt. Myriad Semibold Extended Italic is a specific typeface within that family.
Type families generally fall into one of six classifications. These classifications are important to understand for two reasons. Firstly, each is suited for a different set of tasks, so knowing which classification you’re looking for drastically cuts down the number of type families you have to consider, and reduces the chances of making a really ugly mistake. Secondly, when combining more than one family of type on a page, you generally want to avoid using two different families from the same classification, as they will clash.
You can get an interactive tutorial on type classifications here: http://www.counterspace.us/typography/, but I will summarize the key points below:
Oldstyle families were the first forms of movable type invented. They draw inspiration from handwriting, but are meant to be more readable. They feature serifs (little “feet” on the ends of letters) and a variable stroke weight with a slightly inclined axis to the thick-thin transitions. They are very readable, and the serifs help guide the eye along the line of type. Thus, they are the best choice for setting large passages of printed text.
Modern families were popular in the 18th century, when Enlightenment ideals led to typographers feeling the need to design typefaces by mathematical proportions. The thick-thin transitions were exaggerated, and the axis thereof straightened out to be perfectly vertical, with wide strokes on the sides and thin on the top and bottom. The serifs were kept, but reduced to tiny little hairlines. Unfortunately, this actually made them less readable, so they are less suited to large blocks of text and better used for headings or display type. They do, however, have a very formal, elegant and high-class feel to them. Vogue magazine, for instance, uses a modern typeface for its logotype for this reason.
Slab Serif families take the opposite route to Modern families. They have little or no thick-thin transition, and big fat serifs. Although they look kind of clunky (or strong, in the right context), they have the advantage of being very clear and simple, with no chance of mistaking one letter for another. As such, in the past they were often used for setting books for children. Now, in this day of computers, we probably see more type without serifs than with, so 21st century children’s books use Sans Serifs more often.
Sans Serif families lack serifs entirely, as the name suggests. They also tend to have little or no thick-thin transition. The resolution of monitors is considerably less than the printed page, so serifs tend to become blurry and merely confuse the letterforms when displayed on screen at sizes less than about 14 pt. Thus, for most digital purposes, especially large passages of text, sans serif is the only game in town. Because they’re all you see on the Internet, they’ve also become associated with modernity and thus incredibly trendy for offline use in this decade. This will almost certainly change, as fashions always do; in the meantime, do not use sans serif type to set long passages of text for print! Oldstyle is much more readable.
Script describes any family of type that is intended to resemble human handwriting, of whatever form. Whether it’s curly and ornate, or resembles the block lettering people use when filling out forms, it’s still “script” as far as typography is concerned. Script tends to be less readable (sometimes bordering on illegible) than any other classification other than Decorative. Use it sparingly, and only in a decorative role, never for long passages.
Decorative is the catch-all term for any type family that doesn’t fit into one of the other classifications. As such, Decorative families vary widely in appearance and function, but, like Script families, tend to be hard to read, and should never be used for setting long passages of text.
As stated above, one rule of thumb that will serve you well is: Never use two different families of the same classification on the same page together. Also, certain classifications don’t generally like each other either, especially the ones that have a lot in common. For instance, Oldstyle doesn’t usually get along with Modern, or many Scripts.
On the left are three examples of good combinations, using radically different families from different classifications. On the right are three examples of horrible, horrible combinations, using families from the same classification (the first two) or an Oldstyle with a Modern (the last example).
This, and all subsequent posts for the weekend are being posted both here and at the Ludum Dare website. The theme of this year’s competition is Advancing Wall of Doom.
The theme is not what I was hoping for - I was one of the people pulling for Rain, myself. However, knowing that AWoD had a high probability of being picked, I spent the hour leading up to the announcement brainstorming for an idea. What I ended up coming up with is a sort of tactical maze game with Roguelike-like aspects (yes, it’s like games that are like Rogue… so not really that much like Rogue itself). It’s called The Dark at the End of the Tunnel.
The premise is that you, the hero, have arrived too late to stop the evil wizard/demon/whatever from opening a gate to the Plane of Shadows. You’re now trying to escape the dungeon, with a billowing wall of shadows hot on your heels. If you can get out before being caught by it, you can seal the doors of the dungeon behind you, and thereby - one hopes - save the world from being doomed to eternal night.
Unlike most Roguelikes, you don’t have any equipment, except potions, and no hit points, just energy. You can walk around at normal speed without using energy, or you can run at double speed, but using up energy as you go. Moving through water and jumping over pits also uses energy, as does battling monsters. You regenerate energy very slowly as you walk around, or much more quickly by standing still. You can also pick up potions that restore your energy completely.
The dungeon gets harder to navigate as you go along, as there are more and more dead ends, and less paths to lead you closer to the exit. Fortunately, you can also find torches in sconces on the wall. Moving through one will light it, which will delay the wall of shadows a little bit when it reaches the torch.
And that’s all I have planned now. I think that’s enough to keep me busy for 48 hours. If I finish all that with time to spare, I’ll think of some small embellishments, but I think it should be at least a bit of fun just like that.
Edit, at Hour 3: First screenshot. Just got the tiles loading up in the game and the grid where the map will go set up. No level generation yet.
