Comments on: UC Berkeley Lecture Posted

By: justin

justin — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 20:05:36 +0000

[Hi Justin, I edited your comment. I really don't like to do this, in general, but it just seemed a bit beyond the pale with the "bastards" and the "retards" and the "lazy" and whatnot. Also, posting identical comments here and on The Witness blog is suboptimal. At least write them a little custom to the game on whose site you're posting. Thanks - Chris]

ok guys, here i go: update!
gametrailers published the interview with: “Jonathan Blow, Chris Hecker, and ‘Notch’ ” unfortunately they divided the interview in 4 parts that they will release throughout the month , but the interview is great and very informative about inde scene:
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/503?ch=1&sd=1

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:17:33 +0000

I would just quickly like to thank you for uploading your lectures, I find them both thought provoking and inspiring and your way of thinking about games sure is a fresh breeze in this comparatively stagnated (when it comes to big releases) “industry”.

What really got me thinking was your “three seconds of quake” comment. People tend to see games as a form of film, at least in actual execution, and as long as that doesn’t change games will never become an artform of their own. That way of thinking limits the development of games. Games are interactive *systems* – not reels of pictures that you trigger by shooting the same amount of bad guys in the same spot every time – and that is what one should focus on to create memorable games: something that’s (potentially) different every time you play it. I think the evolution of games has been severely hampered by the fact that movies were there first. I wonder how someone who’d never seen a movie would design a game.

In other words I think you’re game is a great way to move things forward in this development, and I hope to do my part in the not too far away future.

By: DF

DF — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:41:37 +0000

>> knowing that the General likes to chase skirts and then being able to do that or detect it requires even more knowledge about the party and personalities

A way to avoid this is to have this generated randomly for a certain game mode.
As you said, might begin to get pretty complicated though :p

By: checker

checker — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:29:35 +0000

Yeah, both of these ideas (partygoers shifting states and the Spy having to decide what to do, and different personalities having different behaviors the Spy has to take into account) are on the list, and hopefully I’ll get to them. I think they’re both fairly advanced, though, for both Spy and Sniper, since knowing that the General likes to chase skirts and then being able to do that or detect it requires even more knowledge about the party and personalities. Which I love, but I’ll have to ease players into it, since the game is already overwhelming. :)

Keep the ideas coming! I should start a brainstorming page and comment thread.

By: DF

DF — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:14:22 +0000

Seems cool!

Your idea made me think of situations in which most of the guests do the same thing (getting together to sing a birthday song, going to he balcony to see an accident on the street bellow, etc) and the spy player would have to drop what he’s doing to do the same, or else he would be noticed as not being a “good guest” :)

That is, explore the contrast between “good guests” and the spy (which is much more worried about his mission).

By: Alan Au

Alan Au — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 08:29:54 +0000

So yes, I guess part of the thing I’m thinking about is the notion of an emergent party narrative, maybe even the idea that NPC characters have some “preferred” behaviors. Of course, the effect would have to be subtle, and I have no idea how this would affect game balance. I suppose it encourages players to understand the behavioral “expectations” associated with each character, which could be immersive, or it could just be distracting.

By: checker

checker — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:33:47 +0000

Yeah, sorry, I meant “no one is putting this stuff into games”, which presents a whole new set of problems. Yes, the robotics people are doing it, and the math and papers from that work is very helpful, but they have an even harder technical problem than we do, due to the physicality of the system. They don’t, however, have the game design issues, which is what I wish people would work on. Ico shows you don’t even have to have a very good IK solver to have an amazingly compelling mechanic.

Of course, saying “no one” is also an exaggeration, so substitute “not enough people” for the more balanced statement. :)

By: Zaphos

Zaphos — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:27:47 +0000

Watching the AI talk, & have a random note — you said no one’s working on stuff like ik for hands, but fwiw people in robotics and a few in graphics do work on control for grasping; there’s a whole grad course at cmu on it — http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/nsp/course/16-899/

I know you were talking about the games industry specifically, so maybe it’s not relevant! Just thought it might be of interest :)

By: checker

checker — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 22:58:10 +0000

Yeah, emphasizing the “Clockwork Party” as Frank Lantz–coincidentally posting above–calls it, is a big goal. There will hopefully be a lot of large scale “state changes” that the Sniper can trigger. There’s a scene in Peter Seller’s The Party where everybody sits down for dinner. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go that far, but that would be totally awesome. Opera singer performs an aria. Phone rings. People dance. Etc.

Also, the partygoers will react to odd behavior (they already get miffed if you interrupt them in conversation, and I’m going to push hard on this in the future).

By: Alan Au

Alan Au — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:22:55 +0000

So this discussion of interactivity vs. procedurality may be a bit off-topic (which is supposedly about the UCB talk), but I do wonder whether the game would benefit if, say, the “party” aspect was given more prominence.

Presumably the spy and the sniper don’t care that it’s a party, but neither do the NPCs care about the spy and sniper. Is there a host? Is there a guest of honor? Are there any scheduled activities (like a speech or award presentation)? These are all possibly procedural, but they also add extra social interactions with the potential to alter the gameplay experience (for better for worse!).