Linear VS. Sandbox Games

I am typing this up while I am waiting for my friend to beat Portal 2 so I can begin the co-op missions. I beat it last night, 6 hours after I started and less than 20 hours after the game was released (or so). This friend is crapping me for not savoring the game, but I have a lot of games to play and 100% completion is only something I have ever done with Lego: Star Wars* or NFS:HP2. Good games, but not great ones. I can’t bother myself to complete every goddamn side mission and buy every goddamn weapon, particularly in single player games where I don’t need it to beat the game. Here enters the pure sandbox game. I do stress pure, Ill get to that in a minute. For example, I am going to use minecraft. There is no win. There is no endgame, but at the cost of storytelling. There is no story. The game is open, and you set your own tasks and tackle your own problems. This works well in the Lego-like-creative world of minecraft, and other developers seem to be taking note from this direction in gaming (not minecraft specifically), which at first sounds like a good idea but in reality turns out to be bullocks. What happens is the developers add a piece of openness to the game. Think Grand Theft Auto. This open-ness works for Grand Theft Auto, and for its sequels (less and less, I would argue, but this is a different rant). Other games use openness in, in the most minimal sense, a way to select missions, such as in the LEGO: Movie title series. You run around a map and run into the levels to play. Worked for Mario, and it works here, in its Easter-egg filled fun way. When games take this, what is essentially map selection, and start integrating it more and more into the game, quality degrades. Eventually we enter another category, still in the ‘open’ spirit, which is covered in objective based (cover based) shooters. Here is an objective. Got it? Level up. Now you can do more objectives and beat the game. An example of this, (lets be fair and use a good game) is Borderlands. What is the storyline in borderlands? I don’t know, I spend all my time trying to level up my sniper character. –I am always reluctant to pick snipers because I feel like the gameplay is more repetitive and flat with them, (wait, wait, boom, headshot, move on). At least borderlands isn't that cover based (then it gets repetitive). Unfortunately, I am really good at sniping. I enjoy TF2, the balance is well done (or it was, I stopped playing when an big update comes out, let it rebalance and ‘newbies’ to stop playing medic (or whatever). Ill get back into it soon). Anyway, my reflexive skills with the point and click mean the open games are not as good, but this gripe is on the few with character trait selection, and mine to bear. Where was I? Oh, right, open-ness. Borderlands works. Because its fun and pretty and entertaining, but not all games have the other positive attributes, and really, really should be linear. Giving a user a way to go around is fine when they get stuck, like in many puzzle games, but sometimes you just need a god-damn linear story. Want an example? Oh, lets say Portal. Mario platform games. Half-Life series. Tell me these are not good games? Hey, developer, next time you want to add some open-ness to a game, look at the good games that have done that, and the good ones that haven't. Ok, now look at your game. Is it linear at heart? (Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. Wanted to have some openness with the co-op system, but is for the most part linear. Good game). Integrate openness in your games, but the next time I am running around searching for my god damn objective without a shit’s clue what I am supposed to be doing? I will stop playing your game. Do I stop playing puzzles because I am stumped? No. They are puzzles. That’s the point. But do I stop when I don’t know where I am supposed to go? Yes. Hey, look at me, I am in another room with textured wallpaper and pretty graphics, none of which I can grab onto or do anything with. Where am I supposed to be? What should I be doing? (oh, thanks borderlands, cluttering up my screen) (oh, thanks WW2 shooter. “Kill Enemy” “Get to safe house”. gee, thanks, REEEAAALLL fucking helpful).
It is hard for me to say no to making games open. I want innovation and creativity. But We seem to have lost that. This is a problem with little big planet, minecraft, spore, and other similar games. Users are not level designers. We will make shit. We will make YouTube videos of us playing with out shit. But those games are designed with that in mind, from the beginning. They are sandbox. They are supposed to be that. This game over here? Not. It doesn’t work. Lets stop that, shall we? Hey, you, developer! Stop making me make these decisions in your non sandbox game! Just tell me what the fuck to do! That guy? Do I shoot him? yeah? ok, cool. done. now what?
Maybe I want to be babied. But studying that game to learn what environment indicators (what 3D models mean what) is not something I should do in my games. Or at least, I don’t want to. I don’t want to rely on my ‘ah, that door, that can be opened, let me go there’ abilities. I would rather rely on my point and shoot abilities in a shooting game. Developers, take it down a notch. Look at your game, look at what it is supposed to be, what it wants to be. Make it the best damn that, that you can. Innovate somewhere! But do it from the beginning, not as a late addition in an attempt to have a unique game.
I stop playing games because I get stuck. Stuck on a puzzle? maybe. Stuck cus I cant drive fast enough, or shoot enough heads, possible. But most likely, stuck because I am wandering around pointlessly and without goal. GTA at least had a lot of different things to do! Your game doesn’t, and suffers from that. These games are bogged down in side-missions and quests and I have forgotten the whole storyline. Poop!
I wish I could name more examples, but a bad one is the first Crysis. I could not beat the first level. Yeah, really. I will man up (man down?) and admit it. The ambiguous level had a steep curve. It started out with a 5 min long learn to jump, crouch, move, run, etc. Then I kept walking 'to the location’, the objective told me, ambiguously, uselessly. Oh look, I seem to have pissed off the British armada of foot soldiers. Kill a few, not all, walk into ambush, start again. Maybe I walked into the wrong area? Enemy headquarters? Bad Idea? Sounds like one. So where should I go? I don’t know! This empty hut? Hey cool, ammo. Thanks for that. Where is the objective? oh wait, I got killed. Now I need to start again, with the walk, crouch, jump tutorial. Really? Either too steep a curve, or the mechanics are not introduced slowly enough. (you can jump no. Go kill those people. (wait what? – ahh!)). It’s OK to start a game slow, pacing is important and I guess I just failed. Online didn’t help – who makes a walkthrough for level 1? really? So I stopped playing this fun game (multiplayer is, was, fun!) because I got frustrated with, what I voiced at the time as ambiguous objectives and level design (still a problem), but now I source it at a quest for open-ness in games. They let us approach the enemy in any way. This is cool, but can you tell me your recommended method? at least? Star Fox’s Peppy type pop up (“Take those out from a distance, cadet!”). Openness lets me ignore this, but not telling me at all? lame.
I conclude my rant with If you are going to be open, spend time on it, playtest it with people who didn’t design the damn level, and make sure you want your game to be open. Please.
While GTA is on my mind Its AI makes me cry tears which I drown myself in, the game was cartoony and fun in its origins but loses more and more of that, turning towards realism with every step. I hate this movement in games, because the focus should be on fun! Also, the newer ones, vice city being the one I played the most, is repetitive and boring (until you use cheat codes and create havoc, but even that gets old). The AI sucks. OK, small GTA rant over.
*98% before I got a life

Mills Mess Explanation

I recently learned Mills Mess (the juggling move). It was very complicated and took me a while to learn. I hadn’t realized I had previously ‘discovered’ it while playing around with under and overhand tosses. So here is an easier (in my opinion) way to learn mills mess.
Prerequisites (and to be fairly good at them):

• Reverse Cascade (outside – in/overhand)
  
• Under the arm

Start juggling a cascade. I would use one off-color ball. When the off color ball comes around, juggling it under the arm and toss it strait up. Then immediately do it again with the other arm. You are juggling jugglers tennis but instead of overhand, its underhand.
At the same time, when you are catching the ball that was tossed by the under the arm throw, throw that one outside-in/overhand. For now just throw it all the way over. If you keep this pattern up, you will have one ball in the center of two other balls that are flying over and under around it. The trick that makes this mills mess is, on the overhand toss, only toss it into the center of your body. Let your other arm (crossed, above) stay out of the way before you catch it with the other one (crossed, below). Now you should be doing mills mess.
Remember the path the balls are taking. They all seem to be following each other in the infinity sign/sideways eight pattern. Keeping this in mind has helped my mills mess drastically.
Don’t forget your tempo, be patient with the second (uncrossed arms) toss. Wait for the previous ball to hit its apex for each toss.
Also, here is how I learned mills mess:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiMHQ7nOa0k

Juggling

I can Juggle. Don’t believe me? Too bad. I learned because, while on a unicycle, I was tired of people asking “but can you juggle?” –what, is the Unicycling not talented enough? Well, hey look, I can! (on the unicycle!). When I learned to juggle, I learned the basic three ball routine and, after I got it down, I didn’t move on to anything else. I really got it down so that I could do very well, and I can do it on a unicycle. Recently I have started moving on to learning move juggling techniques, and I have been practicing for almost an hour every day this week (no Facebook, look at my free time!)  Anyway, juggling is fun and worth picking up, which I recommend you do!

Cake/Prom Follow up

Bake an 9” Cookie. Repeat. (5x)
Stack 5 of these cookies with icing in between layers.
Put “Prom?” with sour gummy worms on top.
Bake delicious, delicious, ineffably delicious truffles (funfetti ones!)
Try not to eat all of the truffles.
Bring cake in box to dinner where girl is at, bring friends.
Girl doesn’t notice box with cake. Perfect. Dinner ensues.
Plates un-cleared, No room on table everyone stands to leave… present cake at later date. Return to house.
Spend 30 minutes wrangling friends into TV-room.
Get movie going (It’s kind of a funny story)
Ask if anyone wants drinks, food. Friend says desert. Girl says “desert? What do you have?”. I’ll show you.
Return with box. Girl never saw it at dinner, so it’s safe.
Girl distracted by other friend. Wait patiently.
Wait more patiently.
Open lid of box. Present cookie-cake, truffles, prom?
Yes!
Watch movie.

How to bake a vertical cake, or something else similar

What is similar to vertical cake? In fact? What does that even mean? I am planning on asking a friend to go to prom. In true fact, I already have asked her, and she already has said yes. But txt-message ‘prom plans?’ was lame, and If I am to actually ask her, I am determined to do it in style.
Where does this put me?
Simple. I have all of the best parts of asking someone to prom and none of the worst. I don’t have to worry about her saying no, and I don’t need to be gushy romantic serenading. (It has it’s place somewhere, but we’re “just” friends). It leaves me with an awesome chance to be creative and funny. In other words: Vertical Cake.
I asked a friend for advice on how to ask, and he said bake a cake that says “prom?” on it. That would be cool, but what if it wasn’t the icing that says “prom?” but rather, the cake itself. The cake is cut into the message ‘prom?’ and put vertically, reading prom? upright.
That’s the plan right now. I think I might put bacon bits in the batter, but other than that it’s actually fairly simple. The problem is execution. Can cake support itself? Can it stay balanced? Do I need to add some sort of rigging system, on that note, what if I hung the cake from the ceiling? Why? …Don’t ask stupid questions.
More thought and planning is needed to execute this radical baking maneuver, so I will stop typing as a way to avoid doing math homework. Updates to come, probably.

More Paranoia Postings

Before I get into that just want to update that I am making progress on the couple of card/board games I am designing. Fun stuff.

I keep a notebook with me on all times. This is because it is useful to have on me. Recently, a friend asked me why. I told him it is useful to have on me. He said “ok, but why?”. Good question. After some meditating, I realized it comes back to my paranoia. In truth, me memory is not that bad. If I come up with the idea to bake a bacon-cake (whatever that means) or a mechanism for a card game, most likely, I will be able to remember it later. But that isn’t one hundred percent. How many ideas do I have that I forget? The first step is logging. In fact, the simple act of writing things down, making an action on the thought, usually is all that’s required to help me remember. That is partly why I don’t have an organizational system with the notebook. No sections for ‘food ideas’ or ‘game ideas’ or ‘story ideas’ or ‘doodles'. The system is organized by date. As in, I write whatever it is at the farthest point in the moleskin. (Has to be moleskin). Flipping through the notebook later is very eclectic, and – while reminding me of some beautiful things, such as shark-ta-squid, mostly its things I already remembered and acted on. But there it is, in my notebook, archived for all time. Additionally, many ideas, such as song lyrics or story ideas, get put in the cloud. I have a very large collection of Google Docs documents. Am I going to forget everything? Anything? Without the notebook, maybe. With, no. If I lose the notebook, which I have before, I figure things out.

Anyway, I keep a notebook with me at all times, because it is useful.

We need card games and programming

That multitouch project you all may know about? Yeah, I have moved away from flash and into the world of JavaScript, HTML5 and other niceties with web languages to create the interface. How? Firefox 4 beta multitouch support. More information later, perhaps.

Now I am up to two very realized card games that only need a little bit of polishing. One is the devils assistant, see a previous post, and the other involves rescuing orphans from a fire. (or cats from a tree, or mining for gold, or otherwise level-up-until-repeatable-collection mechanism).

I need to sleep more.