Posts by Warby

  • Meet the Pyro / Valve Movie Maker

    valve movie-maker thing: extrapolate what people have done with garrys mod and than just imagine what crazy shit people will make with this

    meet the pryo: very cool but meet the spy still reigns supreme ! the ocd inside of my head feels very PLEASED that there is a video for all classes now though !

    tf2 hats and weapons: i find it impossible to keep up with all the new content that gets added but it makes me happy to see that the game is thriving.

  • Indie Game - The Movie

    just bought it on steam and yeah its really inspiring/and depressing as hell ... was this the first time a movie got sold on steam ? i never bought one before today

    its kinda wiered:

    i really like fez but i dont really like this phil fish guy

    and:

    i dont really like super meat boy but love team meat ^^

  • warbys quick time event rant

    okay i played some of the "god of war" games again recently for those of you who dont know me personaly let me just say i fucking LOVE those games:

    and than somewhere i think it was on "extra credits" someone blamed the gow games for making quick time events popular and by implication held it against gow.

    just for history sake i am gonna point out here that i think it was actually the shenmu games that introduced them(and coined the term) and resident evil 4 that made it popular but it doesnt really matter whos to blame.

    now i understand that everyone (most of the time including me) hates qtes but i think there are some simple rules one as a designer could follow that will make them not suck and i am gonna attempt to list those rules below.

    and before you ask "why bother" and that "designers should just get rid of them all together" let me say that i think that video games at their heart are about interactivity the one major "feature" that games have over movies,music,books,comics and tv-shows as entertainment is the involvement of the audience the more we can bring the player in to participate the better. usually story telling happens during completely none interactive cut-scenes as we all know, which in my eyes is diametrically opposed to what games are ... or should be. so the more narrative we can shizzle away from the none interactive side of games and bring it to the "verb"-driven player controlled side the better. game-designers/writers(creative-)directors would be severely limited in the kind of storys they could tell if everything had to be accommodated with just the core mechanics or a none interactive cut-scene. qtes are a great "catch all" device that theoretically could turn anything none interactive into something that the player participates in. lets not forget right here that qtes dont necessarily have to be used for a giant michael bay-esque set piece s where somebody jumps from an exploding roof top to a helicopter. something slow and subtle could also be a qte for example the deus ex HR dialogue bosses are essentially qtes (although clearly not reaction based ! i really think we need a better name for qtes one that doesnt involve the word QUICK).

    now that we have established my intend lets get on to the meet an potatoes:

    DO:

    +arrange your prompts of buttons in screen-space based on where they are on the controller (i have seen so many people stumble over issues like: "where is the yellow Y button on the xbox controller ?" or "that reddish-purple square button looks exactly like the reddish-orange circle button on the play-station controller in peripheral view") god of war 3 did this right triangle button always appeared on top of the screen the cross button always at the bottom even if you were completely unfamiliar with the controller layout you could do those qtes. plus it let you keep the eye on the action.

    +when using analog sticks utilize a motion that resembles the motion performed on screen as close as possible heavy rain did this to great success and a much higher degree of immersion was the reward

    +if there is some kind of overlap between the animation that plays and your core mechanics use the same buttons ! example if in your qte two characters are fighting use the punch button for the attack prompts and the dodge button for when ever the protagonist evades. this lets people anticipate the action even before the prompt appears. when kratos jumps from the shoulder of a titan to his face and i didnt press x(the jump button) it feels like a missed opportunity. if you cant pull it of with your core mechanics tech wise than at least FAKE it properly.

    +always have a checkpoint auto save after a qte. the none or less-interactive parts of a game are always the ones you least want to repeat.

    +setting the game difficulty to easy should increase the time window for the button presses or slow down the entire qte altogether.

    DONT:

    -dont randomize the button prompts unless there is actually a different animation/action following because for one it directly contradicts the idea that the button you press has something to do with the action you perform(anti-immersion)and it doesnt allow people who repeat play the game to become "better" at the game call me old school but i still think that experience is something that exists in the players brain and is not an "integer" variable stored in a save-game people need to be able to master their games.

    -dont force quick time events on players always let them choose when to start them. the god of war games are pretty good at this but they also occasionally "jump" you which is less cool.

    -dont have a long none interactive sequence and than 1 quick-time event in the end that can fuck you up the longer nothing happens the saver players feel to put the controller down. qtes you either are all in or all out. sooner or later i hope games will become " fully interactive " and than this issue will solve itself never to return.

    -dont force people to button mash ! i am an old man by now it seems my joints hurt all the time normal game-play is okay but button mash qtes can hurt like hell. usually game designers are so careing making sure its always red vs blue ( not red vs green for the color blind people) but people with aching joints like me seem to get no love from the game industry. another dis-benefit of the button mash prompts is that they cant be followed by regular prompts i see people all the time failing qtes because they dont realize the mash phase is over and a regular prompt appeared and was immediately failed because people were still mashing.

    -dont use qtes for stuff that can easily be done with the normal mechanics. example: in call of duty black ops in the rocket launch pad mission there is a moment where you walk up to a soldier(as a qte !) and melee kill him (also as a qte) last time i checked walking and melee killing dudes where things that players in call of duty games can do at all times NO NEED FOR QTE !

    -dont instant kill the players for failing a qte ever.

    feel free to add more

  • Prometheus

    i saw that trailer 2 days ago because it was used as an example in a "make an awesome trailer for your indie game" workshop /tutorial thingy ...

    i have randomly stumbled over it since then in 4 other seemingly unrelated places (including this post by you here) i think someone is doing some crazy awesome subliminal viral marketing for prometheus by remind everyone how good alien was and that trailer certainly works to make that point.

  • Hitman: Absolution

    Quote from Puddy

    Seriously, what the hell...and absolutely no hearing (jesus you can't just snap neck after neck unnoticed!!!)?

    actualy thats the only part in the trailer that does make sense to me they just fired an rpg at a facade that was like 5 meters away from them ...

    so we have either option:

    A) they have ear plugs ---> cant hear 47

    or

    B) they have the biggest tinitus of their lifes just about now that they will probably not recover from ---> cant hear 47

    i am sure who ever coocked up this scenario didnt think that far though

  • Hitman: Absolution

    someone is looking at ALL the wrong reference

    hitman should be like a luc besson or michale mann movie

    not michael bay or zack sneider.

    it should be like splintercell conviction

    not like chainsaw lolipop.

    *PLEASE DONT SUCK*

    i hope its just marketing and this kind of thematic element will not creep into the story and gameplay

  • Skyfall

    i watched "quantom of solace" 2 weeks ago and i cant remember anything that happend in there .... there was a ... "plane" ... i think like in uncharted3 ... right ?