Critical Flaw: “Ohhh shiny...”

In quite a few games you see something... something shiny. 

Specifically, there's item highlighting. Stuff you can pick up or interact with either has a shine effect to it (Thief: Deadly Shadows) or is outlined in some way (Deus Ex: Human Revolution).

And a lot of the opinion about that is... that it sucks.

Generally the argument is that this is too much handholding once again, you shouldn't be told what you can take and what to interact with.

However there is an issue with that which kinda is more a result of technological development and what it means for art design that makes it somewhat necessary.

Artists and level designers are now able to put a lot more details in the games, tons of furniture, a lot of decorative items and the like, which all makes games feel more real.

But just this has the issues, you aren't able to interact with a lot of those decorative items.

When you have 10 boxes in a room but you are only able to open 1 or 2 of them, the others being purely decorative, what you'd have to do is click through every single one in the hope that it opens. When a huge table is set with all kinds of cutlery and food, but you are only allowed to take the silverware and health potions served you'd have to interact with everything to find the right stuff.

Slightly annoying example from one of the early levels of Thief: DS was a painting you can steal, there are several paintings in the entire castle you invade but you can only steal that one. Yea it did have a different texture on it but still it was a little annoying.

And to prevent the frustration of having to do all this clicky guesswork a lot of game designers resolve it with highlighting the relevant objects. It's a solution but by far not the best one.

Now there is a better solution but it is a lot of work, but it has been done and you probably know about an example already, make everything interactable.

And the example, the TES series from Morrowind forward. If it's an item you have a 99% chance you can pick it up (some items like wicker baskets and small pillows excluded), if it's a container you can probably open it (again only with small counter examples).

And as a result, you don't need any kind of highlighting; if it's there you can use it somehow.

As you might be able to guess though, while this solution would be a lot better it is a lot more work as well, you'd have to make stats for all the different items, all the containers need to have properties added to them. And as the detail capabilities of game worlds rise the need to stat all of those items rises as well

Also this does create a lot of clutter, things you either can't use or that are worthless to sell. However there are solutions to that as well, crafting and creative uses.

In DX:HR you sometimes encounter carts full of cleaning utensils, those could be used to make makeshift poisons, explosives or throw them around. A face full of bleach could do wonders against a guard.

Useless items like wooden spoons could still be burned, damaged swords and armors broken down for raw metal, or have an option to sell “bulk” which gives you something for clutter items.

As a little related note, this also applies to being able to take things from killed enemies and creatures. It's annoying when they wear a full suit of armor that could fit you but you're not allowed to take it. Or you're starving to death but can't take the meat of a killed creature because it's not classed as something edible.

Generally Fallout 3 onward does well on that front, you can take pretty much everything off a fallen enemy and most of them also have edible meat... well as edible as you get in a nuclear wasteland. And they even extended that to being able to eat human flesh, though with a silly “crime against nature” penalty attached, but lets best not get into an ethics debate here.

Anyway that's my thought on the topic.

Highlighting would be less necessary if you weren't inherently limited to certain objects in a selection of much more, but the extra work is an issue.

"Size matters"

Wow, it's been ages I wrote one of these... well, lets not put it up any further!

Lately I've been playing “Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition” and it's a really great game... frustrating, infuriating, brutal... but fun.
However it at some points has kinda tickled up a small issue quite some games have, conveying size of enemies though their movements.

For the most part Dark Souls does quite well there. The Giants and most big enemies you encounter a bit later on do move like they are huge creatures.
It's just a few that tickled this and reminded me of this topic, for example the GIANT giant rats in the sewers which move like regular sized ones that have just been increased in size... which is probably what has been done here :-p
Or the final boss of the "Artorias of the Abyss" expansion, or as I like to refer to him "Spaz Monkey", who really seems to move way too fast and agile for his size.

Now, this is not to criticize Dark Souls, just in case someone got the wrong idea here, and lets be honest, this is the Internet, someone WILL have gotten the wrong idea here, so lets clarify.

The main meat here is that oftentimes animators and developers don't seem to take size, mass and momentum into account. While this isn't a huge issue in itself, if the game still plays well there's not a real problem, it does waste a bit of potential. That potential being to really convey size other than just making something look big.


A small example is between “Mechwarrior 3” and “Mechwarrior 4”.
In 3 the mechs moved rather slow, the faster ones both needed time to speed up and to slow down again and overall the movements felt heavy and somewhat slow. In 4 they moved a lot faster, could accelerate and decelerate pretty fast and where overall more agile.
While this is largely done for gameplay, fast and agile is more engaging, it did make them lose a lot of the feeling of size and weight, it felt less like you controlled a 40 meter behemoth but more like you controlled the 4 meter tall X1-Alpha from “Future Cop: LAPD” which is a small mech that's supposed to be fast and agile.


On the topic, my brother sent me a video a bit ago about the eruption of a volcano in Iceland which tossed out huge lava bombs. While you do get a certain scale by seeing people near the eruption site, simply seeing how slow they apparently move does convey a lot of their size.
If you want to check the video out, here's a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgih2TL-9As


Now, the primary problem if course, what does this mean for gameplay.
For players this would mean losing a bit of “control” in a way. If something huge has been set in motion it's hard to stop again. This does already work in a lot of driving games, a huge truck will take a lot longer to get to a halt than a small city car.
You would be more at the mercy of physics which can be an off-putting thought but should be doable with some time to get used to certain quirks.

For NPCs this is less a problem, what has to be done it actually make the move appropriate to their mass. A small issue again though is consistency, the player has to be able to rely on big mass meaning more momentum. If an enemy can swing a 20 ton hammer but simply fully turn around mid swing it breaks both the illusion and being able to rely on a tactic.
An enemy that's huge and heavy and does a jump your direction should still carry the momentum and slide or roll on quite a bit before coming to a stop and not just behave like a scaled up version of a regular sized person.


Inversely the momentum issue does also work out for smaller scale.
Oftentimes, especially in First Person games, character and especially the player seem to have no momentum at all. Again this is often done for gameplay, however I personally think the issue is simply being afraid to try it.
I have tried out the first person view mod for GTA4, as you may know when you played it you do have a good bit of weight to you, it takes a bit to get into a full run and to stop from it and while sprinting you can't take tight corners too well. And surprisingly, it actually feels very natural after a little bit, all you need is some getting into it. And for GTA4 not being designed for first person this still says something.

And of course a little problem with seeming to apply too MUCH weight at times. See how slow you often move melee weapons (especially swords) or when punches seem to move at walking speed.
I personally like to refer to that as “reenactment accuracy” as this is probably done by watching people do reenactments and show fights. Of course this misses a little detail, the actors of course are trying to not kill or hurt each other, which is kinda the point of fighting. So of course they will throw their hits slower and and more careful.
My advice, watch the reenactments but then give them some foam batons and just let them wail away at each other as well, that should give you a small idea of them really throwing punches. While that isn't that accurate as well try to find a bit of a middle there.


Anyway that's all for now, hope my next installment will not take one and a half years to write up.