A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

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Marten
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A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by Marten »

You've probably heard stories recently about how Nintendo is planning on implementing a solution for the Wii "Super Mario Brothers" game, where the player can engage a mode so that the Wii plays the game for you to get past hard sections. I believe Nintendo is patenting that idea, so that is not quite what I have in mind, although my thinking IS inspired by a much older Nintendo game - The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.

One of the great design decisions in 'Ocarina' is that the player never has to press a button to jump. If the player can make a jump, the avatar (Link) will perform the jump If he cannot make a jump, and the player tries, he'll frequently skid to the edge, drop down, and hang. It's difficult to fall accidentally in the game.

My idea is to implement an assisted playing mode in Uru. This is something I've felt really belonged in the game since my experience in Prologue, after many nights cussing at having to re-load Ages that I'd fallen out of, and reading a lot of players' similar reactions on forums. I'm set in my mind that one of Uru's problems in reaching a wider appeal is that Uru needs a way NOT to be a 3D platform game where a player is penalized for having poor timing skills.

For existing Ages, this is one of those thorny types of ideas that would most certainly involve modifying those files or creating additional files related to those Ages, and so Cyan would need to give approval - but the idea is not to add any content to the Ages; rather, regions would be defined where the assisted playing mode - an optional feature in the client - would affect the avatar's behavior.

I expect that this will be a difficult feature to implement because I believe the current Uru design is to run all physics in real-time (no guessing as to what will happen when the user jumps - the engine figures it out as the avatar sails through the air.). The assisted mode would need to work differently. As an example, suppose the player has navigated to the rotating Gahreesen landing on Building #1, and is attempting to jump to the rock in the center. Under the current model, the player can jump at any time, and may miss. Under my proposal, if the avatar is running toward the edge of the platform, the physics engine would need to calculate ahead of the avatar's position what is going to happen if the avatar jumps. If the avatar would safely land on the rock, the avatar would automatically jump. If the avatar would fall, the avatar would skid to a stop at the edge despite the player directing the avatar to run in that direction.

This assisted playing mode could perhaps also re-enable some long lost work... like the climbing animation over the rubble in Gahreesen.
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Re: A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by Mac_Fife »

I don't really know any of the Zelda games, so your description will have do ;) . Reading between the lines I'm guessing that what would need to be done in Uru would be a lot more complicated and with more "case dependant rules". It's an interesting idea though. On the plus side, I see this being a way to make the game more accessible to people with, say, a motor control disability. On the other hand it might make some things too easy for others, like the Kadish pipe-walk, or that bit in Kemo where you need to hop across a couple of rocks to get a Relto page. I feel it'd need to be an option you could toggle on or off - I think you probably intended that anyway. You'd need to turn the mode off for things like getting the marker below the bridge in the city - I'll admit it was annoying re-linking back from Relto 20 times 'til I got that one the first time, but that probably made the sense of achievement greater.

The AI aspect, trying to prejudge what the player's intent is, is what I'd see as the most difficult part, since the decision needs to be made before the "event" occurs: Is an avatar running to the edge of a cliff because he intends to jump off or is he just trying to get there quickly before stopping to peer over the edge? That said, if someone is creeping along the edge of cliff then it's probably pretty safe to assume they don't want to go over. Unless there's a ledge underneath, which is why I said you may need lots of case dependant rules.
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Gehn, lord of ages
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Re: A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by Gehn, lord of ages »

Perhaps the cursor would change to show the jumps or other assisted maneuvers. Then you'd know that if you clicked there, it would automatically jump or navigate past the sheer drop in the ground or whatever for you (I'm not sure if there would be any way to get the same effect for keyboard controls). Perhaps there would also be a separate thing (or a suboption that you could toggle on and off without bothering with menus - toggling the "assisted playing mode" on would put a little icon in the interface to quickly change things like that) that you could use there that would automatically put up blockers so you couldn't fall of (even to ledges you might want to get to - you'd have to toggle the blockers off for that).
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Re: A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by Mac_Fife »

Gehn, lord of ages wrote:... (I'm not sure if there would be any way to get the same effect for keyboard controls).
Hmm, well I'm a committed keyboard man, at least for Uru ;) but at the same time, I personally don't feel the need to use Marten's assisted mode. That's not to say I'm against Marten's idea - I think it's a useful aid. But you've raised a pertinent point, that I wasn't really thinking about (and possibly affects some other ideas that have been posted here): GUI changes should try to account for all the different controllers people might have chosen (or are forced) to use. But that's probably a subject for a different thread.

Back on topic: Should an assisted mode have simple on/off states or is there scope for assistance levels or "tolerances": For example, should you be able set a control on how badly you mis-time a jump and still be allowed to make it?
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Re: A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by realXCV »

Tolerances would be better. An on/off state looks like the step before the game plays itself from start to finish.
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Re: A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by Gehn, lord of ages »

Mac_Fife wrote:
Gehn, lord of ages wrote:... (I'm not sure if there would be any way to get the same effect for keyboard controls).
Hmm, well I'm a committed keyboard man, at least for Uru ;) but at the same time, I personally don't feel the need to use Marten's assisted mode. That's not to say I'm against Marten's idea - I think it's a useful aid. But you've raised a pertinent point, that I wasn't really thinking about (and possibly affects some other ideas that have been posted here): GUI changes should try to account for all the different controllers people might have chosen (or are forced) to use.
But then again, would the jumps or other actions be mainly navigation or just actions? Even the keyboard navigation includes lots of clicking to take actions.
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Re: A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by Mac_Fife »

Yes, but I don't believe we're talking about opening a door or turning a dial here. Walking, running and jumping, seem to be actions that would (mostly) be in need of "assistance" and those are things that can be done exclusively on a keyboard. In some respects, despite what I said earlier, keyboard use may be an area where the assisted mode could serve more purpose, as it could help counter the effect of the more coarse-grained control you tend get when using a keyboard rather than a mouse.

For example, in Geoff Crammond's "Grand Prix" series of racing games, there are a wide variety of controllers you could can use: keyboard, joystick, gamepad, wheel/pedals. Each has a different "assistance profile" associated with it since you can't apply "a bit of throttle" or "a bit of steering" with keyboard or gamepad, but you can with a joystick or wheel. And then a joystick doesn't give as "direct" a sense of control as wheel and pedals do. On top of that you can then select a "skill level" that further determines how much extra assistance you get, and options to turn off that extra assistance for certain features ("I want help changing gear and steering but I can do the braking myself, thanks").
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Re: A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by Gehn, lord of ages »

Mac_Fife wrote:Yes, but I don't believe we're talking about opening a door or turning a dial here. Walking, running and jumping, seem to be actions that would (mostly) be in need of "assistance" and those are things that can be done exclusively on a keyboard. In some respects, despite what I said earlier, keyboard use may be an area where the assisted mode could serve more purpose, as it could help counter the effect of the more coarse-grained control you tend get when using a keyboard rather than a mouse.
While walking, running, and jumping would be the large majority of actions that would need assistance, I think a lot of the actual actions wouldn't be just general navigation. The main problems I could see would fall into these categories

Falling when walking around places like the broken areas in Kadish Tolesa. This could be solved by having an option to make all unnecessary falls impossible (by putting up boundary walls). This could perhaps have several degrees of assistance. In all but the strictest assistance levels would allow you to get to such falls if you really showed that you were trying to do so (jumping, walking straight at it, etc.).

Very difficult areas, like the Gahreeson pillar jumps or the Kadish journey door. These are more of specific actions than actual navigation. These, I think, could be solved just by having the avatar automatically get to the spot flawlessly if the player clicked on it (indicating they wanted to go there). The players could also try to navigate on their own by mouse (careful not to click on the hotspot) or keyboard, depending on their other settings.

Timed places, like the Teledahn bucket. Perhaps timing handicaps could be added?
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Re: A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by realXCV »

It might not work every time. When I want to take the yeesha page in kadish, I usually run then jump at the last moment. A "guess" by the game of my intentions may not give the expected results but instead a bump into an invisible wall.
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Re: A "no accident" or "assisted playing" mode

Post by Mac_Fife »

Gehn, lord of ages wrote:Falling when walking around places like the broken areas in Kadish Tolesa... ...Very difficult areas, like the Gahreeson pillar jumps or the Kadish journey door...
Your examples still seem to fall into the "walking, running, jumping" category to me, so I'm struggling to see how you're differentiating here :?.
Gehn, lord of ages wrote:These are more of specific actions than actual navigation. These, I think, could be solved just by having the avatar automatically get to the spot flawlessly if the player clicked on it (indicating they wanted to go there).
This may be a technical challenge. As far as I can recall, all the places where you get an "action" cursor currently use a pre-set camera: Trying to manage the location of the hotspot in a dynamically rendered 3D scene may be awkward (someone who knows more about the internal workings may be able to make a more informed comment here). And there are two very different routes to the Kadish journey door, so you'd need different hotspots depending on where you're viewing it from.

I guess there will be some who feel that this kind of hotspot navigation of difficult areas is maybe a step too far, either because it makes the task too easy, or because "sweeping for hotspots" gives extra clues on what you're expected to do. There is a need for any game to present a "challenge" to all players, but at the same time not be so difficult it puts people off. Games that offer "skill levels" to allow you to adjust the challenge to match your aptitude, probably rarely achieve their aim; instead they invite players to just select "Beginner", beat the game, then declare "bored" and wander off. The Myst series has always focused more on the intellectual rather than physical challenges. In the earlier games you simply didn't have the option to walk off a cliff, so you didn't need the hand-eye co-ordination. So maybe we're thinking about an Uru specific problem - are traditional Myst fans clumsy at physical challenges :) ?

It links with a point Nalates made in another thread (in different words): You need to know your customer.
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