Lork

A common piece of advice given to people making a game (or any personal project really) is to come up with an "elevator pitch" for it. Basically a concise summary of the concept and why it's great, which you can use to convince people to pay attention to your thing. I have a game that I'm working on and while I myself understand what it is and what I want it to be, I'm struggling to find a way to easily explain it to other people. I suppose if you held a gun to my head and told me to come up with a pitch for the game in once sentence, I would say "it's a third person action game which elegantly combines melee combat and gunplay, with a focus on skillfully avoiding enemy attacks." Which is perhaps not as awful as I thought it would be before I wrote it, but still just comes off as innacurate and generic to me. Part of it is that the verbal shortcuts that are typically used in these pitches seem like a minefield of popular ideas that threaten to overwhelm anything I have to say and paint an innacurate picture of the game. For example, mentioning a focus on dodging in the context of a shooter probably brings to mind "the the lost age of PC first person shooters where movement was king and slow moving projectiles ruled the day", which is a big part of the zeitgeist right now. Unfortunately for me, the game I'm attempting to describe is not like that at all. The completely unrestricted movement of those games is less interesting to me than the style of Japanese action games which emphasize the fact that you are controlling a character and focus on limiting the player's ability to move or act in interesting ways, which is how I've built the game. There are several examples of near universally beloved games that do this (eg. Dark Souls, Resident Evil 4), but the concept itself has not entered the public consciousness in a way that can be easily referenced like "The old shooters" can. A more accurate shortcut might be to say that it falls in roughly the same subgenre as Vanquish and the modern Resident Evil games, but while a small percentage of people would know exactly what I'm talking about, my perception is that most people don't know or care about what distinguishes those games from something like Gears of War, and so would just be confused. Another problem is that so much of what I think makes the game unique comes down to so called "intangibles" - things most people don't even consciously perceive at all, but which I think have a huge effect on their enjoyment of any game. For example, I've spent (and will continue to spend) a lot of time trying to build a diverse, robust moveset for the player character and tweaking the controls to make it easy to pull off, and think a large part of the joy of playing the game will come from learning the ins and outs of the controls and putting them to use in creative ways. This is actually a proven concept - the closest example that springs to mind for me is Monster Hunter, but of course I can't make that comparison without immediately alienating a large percentage of people by bringing to mind the very long animations and strict/rigid controls that game is known for, which is very much not what my game is like. The next comparison I would make is , but that's so different in theme and genre that I'm afraid it would come off as a non sequitur. Without making a direct comparison, how do you sum that up in a catchy way? "It has good controls"? That's neither exciting nor something I would believe if someone just said it to me. It's one of those things that is just taken for granted except in the most extreme cases (good or bad), so there's no language to describe it. What do you guys think, am I just terrible at this? I know I'm overthinking it - that's part of me being terrible. I definitely think that it's a lot harder to explain what makes certain games unique though, regardless of (or perhaps because of) what makes them distinct. Two of the games I mentioned are actually pretty good examples. If you love Monster Hunter, how would you pitch it to somebody who knows nothing about it? Mario 64 might seem easier, but that's only because it's a Mario game by Miyamoto. Could you make a convincing sales pitch for Mario 64 without mentioning who it stars or who made it?

Admittedly I haven't spent much time reading the Star Citizen forums at large, but after going back and skimming through the thread I'd say Polygon's assessment of the thread itself is accurate, at least. While I don't doubt that there are at least a couple people looking to pull out somewhere in those pages, I couldn't even find a single one in my skimming. Just people arguing that the option should be available in case someone falls into "financial difficulties".

It's interesting that everybody interprets those gifs as being so fast paced. It might be because I've deliberately captured moments that make the action look as fluid as possible, or maybe I just gave the impression of a much slower game with my lame initial pitch. I've always seen it as being downright glacial compared to, say, a Platinum Game. Anyway, I came up with this: Axon is a fast, kinetic action game that arms you with guns, blades, and a variety of acrobatic moves, and sets you loose in a retro-chic virtual world with one objective: fight your way to the top. Smart positioning and split second dodging are key to victory, but in order to truly master the intricate combat system you must make full use of the vast array of options at your disposal to shoot, stab, roll, flip, dash and dive your way past the attacks of a large cast of enemies who will respond in kind. It reads much more like advertising copy than something I would actually say to another human being out loud, but I can use it as a guide for what to emphasize when talking about the game. What do you guys think, is that at all evocative of the game suggested by those gifs? (Axon is a working title that I doubt will stick, which is why I was reluctant to use it, but trying to avoid using a name just gets increasingly awkward, so screw it.)

(The low framerate of the first one makes it look like the gun is firing really slowly. Oh well.) Vanquish is a few structural and design issues away from being one of my favorite games ever, and my time in the challenge mode of that game directly led to me dropping a couple other projects I was working on and starting this one. That experience of being pushed to master the controls to the point of becoming one with the character and narrowly escaping death by making skillful use of all of his moves to dance around an overwhelming rush of threats is exactly what I'm chasing here.

You're probably right, although I still think not being able to explain it verbally looks really bad (because it is bad). I have a bunch of hang ups about posting gifs/screenshots at this early stage in development, but I recognize that it's really just me being overly self conscious and dumb, and that I need to push past that stuff if I want to move forward. So I made a gif. How does it look?

According to the article an informal poll says that 25% of backers would like the option to get their money back if they want it. Nowhere near as alarming as you're making it sound.

I think the running theme of this thread is that you need some kind of context for the game as a whole. I can rattle off individual mechanics until my face is blue, but my audience will have become bored ages ago and be no closer to understanding what the game actually is. The vast majority of games use the embodiment of a fantasy to fulfill this purpose while a few oddballs opt for some kind of meta-context instead, but they all have something to tie them together in an easily explainable way. Aww, thanks. Part of the reason for this thread is that I want to start showing it to more people, but I find it hard to do that if I can't even explain what it is. I actually posted an earlier version of the game in the "Post Your Game for Playtesting" thread and was under the impression that only one person had tried it. However, that's only because I somehow managed to completely miss that clyde had posted a detailed critique. Sorry, clyde! I like this, but fear that I wouldn't be able to live up to it. It inherently promises a level of perfection that I can't assume I would be able to achieve. I think that what I've been able to pull off so far is pretty impressive for what one person can do, but I am just one person with no money and little experience, and that assumption of quality has not been tested in the wild. I'll have to do some thinking about how to provide a context for the game, but it's probably going to end up being a narrative conceit. As much as I like the idea that my mechanics should be able to stand on their own, I'm not so attached to it that I would let it sabotage the game.

And I still disagree. Geometry Wars is sold as a refreshing throwback to "those old arcade game where you were a triangle shooting at other shapes", in stark contrast to the narrative heavy games of today. The fact that there isn't an overwrought story with long cutscenes is an explicit selling point. The name, to me, communicates the idea that in a video game you can have a war, with all the intense action that implies, without giving even the slightest bit of thought to who's fighting it or why. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Having this conversation has show me that I was wrong to think that my game is similar to Geometry Wars in theme, though. Geometry Wars actually has a fairly nuanced take on theme, even if that take is to make a point of distancing itself from concept of theme. I on the other hand simply didn't give it much thought, and it's becoming increasingly clear to me that that's not good enough. Thank you for helping me come to this realization.

The games that inspired Geometry Wars are as you described, but I strongly disagree about GW itself. GW is a game that revels in its abstractness. It riffs on the aesthetic of those old games, but almost seems like it's making an implicit statement about how irrelevant the themes and the primitive shapes that represented them were to our enjoyment of those games. "That's not an alien ship coming at you, it's a square!", it says. And yet it's completely thrilling anyway. I also don't think for a second that anybody is playing that game because it makes them feel like a rad space pilot. Would somebody who isn't familiar with GW's influences even make that connection?

I guess when I say "Sell" I mean it as a synonym for "convince". I'm not even thinking about what ad copy would look like as that's way off. I was thinking more along the lines of the typical role of the elevator pitch: Something I could use to explain to friends what I've been spending all this time on, potentially convince another game developer to work with me, or just to explain what the game is and why someone might be interested if I were to put the game up for playtesting and feedback on a forum like this. One thing that's probably making this a lot harder is that the game doesn't really have a fantasy that it's trying to bring to life. Both of your examples focus on a sort of wish fulfillment goal rather than anything specific about the mechanics themselves. I on the other hand am working in the abstract; tinkering with mechanics to create dynamics that I find fascinating in and of themselves rather than as a means to make the player feel like a space marine or whatever. There's a strange pairing of theme and mechanics going on - The closest thing in terms of "theme" is something like Geometry Wars, which trades on simplicity, but the dense mechanics resemble larger/bigger budget games, which almost always have some kind of fantasy fulfillment component. More fantasy fulfillment stuff. I guess I'm really going against the grain by not focusing on that, which just makes me sad. I find the feeling of being pandered to very distasteful, and only enjoy narrative games despite, not because of that aspect. Your Mario 64 example sort of demonstrates how hard it is to do without being able to reference theme, although it also just sounds like you're not familiar with or don't like the game/genre. If the mechanics of Mario 64 are what we're using as the bar for "getting 3D platforming right" then there can't be more than half a dozen games that don't get it wrong, which is selling both the game and the entire genre incredibly short. This is not the most interesting thing about the game, you've pretty much just described the camera. Quote You're not the first game to do this, and it sounds a bit self congratulatory to say definitively that it achieves this. Quote This is the most interesting part! But how does it focus on those things? How does the player avoid? Sorry if that's all a bit mean. What I take away from everything you have said is that this game fundamentally challenges the player to make weighty decisions within a 3rd person context of melee, shooting and dodging. I think that's interesting. Maybe start with something like "The game forces the player to make split second choices, be that shooting an ogre from a distance, punching a demon in the face, or rolling under the unicorn's laser horn, the consequences of which would be dire". I don't know, that isn't my best work, but I think instead of explaining the conventions that inform the design (third person, shooting, etc.) it's more interesting to give me a taste of what I'm going to be doing, what I might be seeing, or which character I'm going to embody. As a secondary point, I think the meets-meets-meets description shouldn't be used, and if that is the best way to describe the game, instead say "it was inspired by mechanic X from game Y". Hope that's not all too catty, and maybe helps some. That sounds way better than what I came up with, so I think you're definitely on the right track. If I'm going to describe the game purely on the basis of its mechanics, it makes a lot of sense to talk about it in terms of the actions you can perform. I'll keep this in mind, thanks. By the way, does anybody know if there's a way to get the forums to show the actual BBCode for quotes in the text editor? The way it tries to "help" right now makes dealing with them a complete nightmare.

The ring of fog won't help at all for just running up to them, but it would probably make it a lot easier to pull off the poison arrow strategy.

Crimzon Clover doesn't need limited credits because it has an incentive to play well integrated into the game itself - you need to 1CC the game in order to fight the true final boss. A pretty smart way to set a goal for players to work toward without artificially limiting them or alienating players who just want to mindlessly mash their way to the end, I think.

Comparing Skyrim's UI to Morrowind seems like a really weird example to me. The UI in Skyrim is more "evolved" in that it follows all the current "hot" trends in UI design in order to look appealing to current audiences, but those trendy features end up being applied with seemingly no regard for their effect on the usability of the system, with the end result being a nightmare to navigate. Aside from being a bit uglier, Morrowind's UI almost seems like a straight upgrade over Skyrim's, because it literally just presents the exact same information in a more organized and less confusing way, perhaps because whatever was trendy in UI design at the time simply happened to be more appropriate for an RPG. So much of game design seems to be just blindly following whatever the current trends are, so the longevity of most games end up being tied directly to that of the trends themselves, resulting in a convoluted series of peaks and valleys as the trends of the time fall in and out of favor in hindsight. Think about games from the SNES era, which are still considered eminently playable followed immediately by the early 3d era, considered by many to be a dark age full of unplayable games, as trends like the use of fixed camera perspectives and tank controls have been judged very harshly by future generations. You simply don't have to deal with that kind of non linear topology when looking back on movies as far as I can tell, which gives them a huge leg up on games.

That's good to hear, thanks. The long reload times are there to encourage the player to employ a mix of melee and gunplay rather than sticking to one or the other, but as you say, they may be a bit too long.

I have something that vaguely resembles a video game for you guys to try: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vrxtrgos6a6ksxc/Axon.zip?dl=0 It's a wave based survival game that plays sort of like a cross between a third person shooter and an action RPG (think Monster Hunter or Dark Souls). A gamepad is strongly recommended, but if you insist, the keyboard/mouse controls are as follows: WASD + Mouse to look/move Hold the Right Mouse button to aim, press Left Mouse button while aiming to fire your weapon X to swap ranged weapons R to reload Hold the Left Mouse Button while not aiming to equip the sword, use QEZC or 1234 while the sword is equipped to do melee attacks Hold Left shift to sprint, tap it to dodge QEZC or 1234 to use abilities (must be found and equipped in the loadout screen) Left Ctrl to crouch If the gamepad controls aren't sufficiently explained by the game itself, please let me know so I can fix that. I haven't really hit any milestone that would signify that the game is ready to show off so much as I feel like I've gotten too deep into making it and need some outside feedback to regain my perspective. Please let me know what you think.

Relevant information:

Regarding the fish in the percolator scene, I can't explain why it exists, but a friend of mine came up with a pretty good theory of how it happened. Keep in mind that I'm very roughly paraphrasing both the show and my friend here because my Twin Peaks rewatch happened several months ago, but here goes: When Truman and Cooper arrive at the house Pete is skinning a fish in the kitchen. He then goes to the living room to talk with the guests, leaving Josie in the kitchen to make coffee for them. Cue wacky off-screen hijinks wherein Josie doesn't know anything about coffee and assumes the fish has something to do with it. It's a bit of a stretch, but I can't think of a better explanation... or any other explanation at all, for that matter.

That gif (sorry, jif) looked very damning to me as well, but it makes a lot more sense with the sound included: http://a.pomf.se/agbero.webm It's just really fast, and started going for the player as soon as they looked away.

DooMero is actually well known for his "Other games in Doom" experiments. Making the Doom engine do things that it has no business doing is kind of his thing. If you take a look at his Youtube channel you can see all sorts of crazy stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UgXQpWrT84&list=UU-f6moVlnHkm-b58De34RTA This one won't embed for some reason but it's a remake of Resident Evil 2 with coop

As someone who on occasion struggles to understand inline math, I would definitely be interested in a way to display it with proper notation. This idea seems like it would be more appropriate for a Visual Studio plugin than a full programming language though. It's not something that I would choose a language over, and it seems like it would be entirely possible to do on the IDE level - something that interprets inline math and replaces it visually without actually changing the code written to the file. To continue down the IDE path, I think the easiest way to insert the special characters would be to have a GUI with a calculator style grid of buttons for them ala Matlab and other advanced calculators/math programming languages.

Not sure what you're talking about here. A vector is an abstract construct that is not limited to only representing velocity. A "zero vector" would be useless for indicating direction because, well, it doesn't indicate a direction. Instead a unit vector pointing in the desired direction is used, hence "A vector representing the direction I'm facing".

Thanks guys. I don't think I would've found that in a million years of searching, simply due to the fact that I wouldn't know which terms to start looking for.

Someone mentioned it earlier in the thread. I have one as well and while it's a definitive improvement over the original design, it's still not great.

Making the buttons closer together and fatter looks like it addresses my main complaint about Sony's other d-pads, namely that it's too hard to pull off diagonals on them. It's a shame they always seem to be so conservative with their Dual Shock designs. It must be an overreaction to the outcry that happened when they unveiled the original PS3 boomerang controller.

I want this, but with the bumpers back in their proper place and alternate buttons for L3 and R3 where they are now. That would be the perfect 360 controller for me. Try playing the original Zelda on a 360 pad to see the effect of the diagonal problem at its absolute worst. In order to make a game playable on a 360 d-pad the developer needs to de-emphasize the effect of hitting the diagonals as much as possible, so games that straight up ignore diagonal input, like LoZ are hit the hardest. Edit - See also: Sonic games, where the previously rock solid dependable spin-dash becomes a finicky nightmare to perform.