plasticflesh

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Posts posted by plasticflesh

  1. Posted

    youmeyou is 100% accurate, the game lets you choose a location and a creepy load out, and then gives you a splash image saying in french there are tons of child soldiers in the world.

  7. Posted

    Just to reiterate my specific personal desires on this topic. I have no expectations of hi-fidelity simulations of thought and speech, I have no expectations of the game providing cogent narratives. Of course any steps in those directions would be fantastic, but I do feel both are secondary to simple replayable mechanics based on dialog and social interactions.

    What I want is something aracadey and replayable, where the primary mechanics are characters socially interacting with each other. Thus describing the game becomes "I used my characters wits against the others" as opposed to "I used my characters weapons against the others."

    This differs from traditional adventure game in that the focus is replay-ability at the cost of authored narrative.

    I have no compunction with it being a fart twelve times to make guy happy game, that would be fantastic.

  9. Posted

    One time I went on the Dwarf Fortress forums imploring something similar be integrated into that game. That was a bit fool hardy. Ofcourse it's all already in there, in terms of the dwarfs having personalities. I just wanted more, more!

    Oh man, Façade, I remember that game now. It very quickly becomes the snarky side of AI, but I think that's just the parlor drama setting speaking, the hell is people sort of thing. Now that I've finally bootcamped I should give it a go. I forget, is its parser more elaborate than Starship Titanic? I don't expect a lot out of text parsers, unless there's actually a menu of terms to choose from, a transparent syntax glossary, dynamic to the conversation at hand. Then I could imagine this being the 'stream of thought' the player's character is thinking during the opponents' dialog, that the player picks phrases from and strings together a new thought to bounce back. Sort of like the audience thoughts in Arguement Champion, but used to create thoughts.

    I don't expect AI to be at any high cognitive state for these games to work. I wouldn't mind them being gamey or puzzley as long as the mechanics are more or less founded in social and emotional millieues. I mean if it's just the social wheel from Fable 2, but iterated on a dozen more times, I believe it'd be worth while. If there were no violence in Fable 2, only a way more evolved social wheel and that incredible realestate mini game, I could deal with that.

    Or a Sex in the City GTA 4 mod where all you do is go on dates, and buy shoes and dresses to modify your personality. It'd need the LA Noire interogation system for dinner chats and pillow talk. Sure it sounds like a horrible girl game like Cooking Mamma, but I have a lot of faith in the 'sit com' game being a genre yet to find it's place.

    If this Pokemon parody of the 2008 election I would play the crap out of it. I suppose a mod of RPG maker could achieve something similar. Ofcourse I'd rather have the "conversation combat" be more tactical than jrpg battle screen based, this way a room of people could be part of the conversation and interject more clearly.

    There could be a nethack clone where you ascend levels in an office building, schmoozing with the employees and middle managers at every stage to eventually gain entry to the CEO's office and pitch your product, or deliver your blackmail, whatever your agenda may be.

    Or a re-imagining of Maniac Mansion. You choose to start as a few characters who have different personality modifiers, charismatic but dumb Dave, intellectual but awkward Bernard, etc. Most item based puzzles are tossed out the window in favor of interacting with other personalities in the mansion. They gain entry by telephoning a fake pizza delivery, or posing as Jahova's Witnesses, or as cable repair. Once inside they schmooze Weird Ed while distracting Dr Fred. Eventually Weird Ed is completely on their side, The gang then coerces Dr Fred and family to release Sandy. Ofcourse every play through is random, but with certain victory flags established, so the next time Dr Fred will be too involved with Skyping with the Aliens to concern himself with the teenagers breaking in, so ofcourse the teenagers hack the skype in alien disguises, and convince Fred that way to release Sandy. It's a thought.

    Anywho, games like Hotline Miami remind me why this lower priority, visceral carnage is much more immediately gratifying. Also the challenge is that 'mobs' in a social game are expected to work together more often, and are expected to continue functioning after their 'failure', as opposed to just lying on the floor and disappearing. That's a lot of work.

    I want to believe.

  10. Posted

    This is something I've always obsessed and dreamt about. Ideally there could be a game or genre about dialog and social management or engineering, that is dynamic and replayable, to a rougue-like extent even, and also ideally multiplayer.

    The sword fighting in Monkey Island was my first really enjoyable experience in this sort of game play, where it was more variable than dialog trees, which are basically static menu mazes.

    This flash game arguement champion is an interesting example of a sort of mechanics focused dialog game.

    "Sissyfight 2000" was pretty of satisfying, especially as a multiplayer experience. Although actually very violent.

    I was excited about "Little Text People" for these reasons, but them being aquired by Second Life frustrates me, the Little Text People game itself will probably never see the light of day.

    I actually enjoy japanese dating sims like 'true love' for this aspect. Transylvania Girls is a quick simple example of that genre. The hilarity of this genre is that instead of exploiting the violence like the majority of games, they exploit the sex taboo.

    Obviously I should try Walking Dead. I guess the weird line I draw in the sand is Walking Dead seems to be choose-your-own-adventure narrative branching based, dialog tree menu mazes, and not sort of a 'full dynamic system'. That's really just taking for granted an excellent adventure game that I ought to dive into, and also talking with my butt on my shoulders as I've only played the demo for the first episode.

    It's for these reasons I'm trying out Crusader Kings 2, as it seems to focus mainly on relationship management, in what seems to be a very dynamic. Still climbing the learning curve on that.

    That's some of my rambling thoughts on this topic.