Idle Thumbs 25: Pause Theme from Battletoads

[Jake]

25th Anniversary!

"Pause Theme from Battletoads"

With the fight against Robo-Manus safely on hold, our co-hosts are free to discuss the love/hate battle with ruthless games, the slow decline of the mod community, and the science gone mad of achievements paired with grinding, all with a funky back beat you can dance to.

Games Discussed: Six Days in Fallujah, bit.trip beat, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, Flock, World of Warcraft, Battletoads

[elmuerte]

Concerning mods, I think part of the downfall of mods is the greed and "wannabe professional developer"-attitude of various mods.

If you look at various mods you'll see ridiculous role titles attached to people, or the sheer amount of "PR" people certain mod teams have. It's just insane. Various mod teams also want to keep stuff secret as much as possible, and they do so with team members signing NDAs.

[Chuckpebble]

I was kind of enlightened by your thoughts on whether or not WoW was an ethical game. You spoke as though it was something you guys discussed in the past, was this in a prior podcast, or was that just some random conversation you guys had?

[soupface]

I agree with you about mods, Jake and elmuerte: mods became very ambitious and self-serious and suffered from their own (and others') expectations. I really felt that, around the time of the Make Something Unreal Contest, mods went from hobbyist stuff to semi-pro production, and that every mod had to become a total conversion to be worthwhile.

Of course, around the same time, games moved to consoles (where it's much more difficult to have editing tools).

I also wonder how many hobbyist artists, programmers, and level designers now choose to work on independent projects instead of game mods. Do—or did—the mod and indie scenes draw from the same pool of skilled enthusiasts? Is there a general mod scene as there seems to be an indie scene (ie. TIGSource), or are they part of communities that surround a specific game?

[Jake]

www.moddb.com is definitely the mod equivalent of TIGSource, and (as pointed out by one of the guys in the Thumbs thread on neogaf) it is a very active community that is churning out a lot of content, but I don't know if anyone is actually looking at it outside that community (unless your mod is Black Mesa Source).

[Nachimir]

Yeah, definitely, though often it's naivety rather than arrogance that sets a mod teams ambition so high.

Black Cat placed quite highly in the MSUC with Alien Swarm, but the reason for that was because about half of the team had full time development jobs, and were that obsessed with games they wanted to produce more in their spare time.

It was around the time of UT2K4 that art asset demands outstripped the capacity of most voluntary teams. This also meant that projects that were possible for a mod team around 4 years earlier were slipping out of reach, but a lot of teams didn't really see this. Mod teams tend not to have producers, and ambition has not adjusted in step with spiraling art asset costs.

Interestingly, a lot of people I knew on the festival circuit still had hope that mods would be an arthouse for games, and made sounds of shocked disbelief whenever the subject of a declining mod scene was raised. If people want to do arthouse, they're better off learning C++ and making small things from scratch. A lot of mod scene observers generally don't realise that engines tend to verb lock you into making certain types of game.

[bistromathics]

I played and appreciated what Half-Life 1 did design-wise wayyy after it was released, even though I'd owned it for years. I pretty much exclusively played source mods for a good while or so; things like 'The Specialists' and 'Natural Selection' and even 'Dragon Mod Z' (I was young ) were really awesome and had totally never-before-seen mechanics. I bought HL2 expecting glorious things from the mod community, but as the engine became more complex, development time took longer and fan-support for projects became so small that it was hard to find any people playing some of the cooler looking mods.

Dystopia is still my favorite and most-played mod for HL2. It was actually officially released on steam a couple months ago.

And Remo, you are way off base saying how easy it is to make something in Unreal. Sure it is easy to carve out a map composed of square rooms (or maybe now you build them in instead of carving out), but actually making a level that has any value is very complicated. It is the difference between cutting out someone's head in photoshop and making stuff like this. Even with that, you have only made a level - an environment in which you can only do the things available in Unreal Tournament. Implementing your own ideas requires delving into UnrealScript, which is an entirely different beast. It is also worth mentioning, that there is very very little official documentation for this codebase made available to modders.

Good podcast, though.

[emphasis added for sake of visibility, not outrage]

[SignorSuperdouche]

RE achievements, I think they're great when you're just dicking around in a game having a good time going "Hey, I wonder if I can get over there" or whatever and the game unexpectedly rewards your curiosity. The problem is when your reason for getting over to this hard to reach place is because you're actively seeking an achievement as opposed to just to seeing if you can.

I'd love to see achievements presented as a private, personal collection of easter eggs that you've found rather than a way to extend a digital penis you can wave in your friend's faces.

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm still listening, but I'm loving Remo's description of how it is to try to beat an impossible game to completion.

As someone who is a completist when I play games and therefore have a backlog because of it, I try really hard to get everything a game has in terms of unlockables, secret levels, and different paths. Sometimes to the point of masochism, although it's hardly satisfying in some games, like the one time a while back that I got an A rank on everything in Sonic Adventure 2, but I've learned my lesson trying to get through shoddy games like that. It's more compulsive than anything.

Because of this I often try to avoid playing games I know are going to be problematic for me. Something like Beyond Good and Evil is just a sigh of relief as something I can finish, collect everything the game has, and enjoy it the whole time I'm playing. Zelda games sometimes push it, especially with Windwaker and the figure collecting, but really none of them are anywhere near as frustrating as something as simple as Zelda II. Had Windwaker let me hold more photos on my camera or didn't make me do some stupid quest to make my camera shoot color photos, I would have been much happier, but then again, a lot of it is also my fault for attempting to get as many photos as I could early on without realizing later in the game I would be able to warp my boat around and easily collect everything.

Games I know ahead of time that only require me to beat it straight through in like 20 hours or don't have a shitload of unlockables are automatically appealing to me, as well as indie games that tend to be both short and amazing.

This is probably what pushed me towards PC gaming when I was young over any kind of console, even though I had an NES and Genesis. Like Remo said about NES unfairness, it's really just bad design when you can't beat levels just because of ridiculous odds, until you actually win and get some arbitrary screen that just says "Congratulations." I realize back then the designers felt you were supposed to get your enjoyment and money's worth by mastering such ridiculous toughness since most 8 bit and 16 bit console games were short. But on the PC (or Macs and Amigas or whateever) during that era, most games seemed to be geared towards completing and having an actual climax and step ladder type design, as well as taking advantage of a save function, thus giving you a much more satisfying experience and for the most part insuring your completion at one point or another.

Too bad about Henry Hatsworth, I was really looking forward to this, but it sounds like I'll have to avoid it. I get the feeling it may be one of those games where the developers don't actually play through it themselves. At my job I notice some of the programmers can't really beat some of the games they made themselves, but they know what happens either way, so it's not a big deal. I think I heard on a different podcast you guys mention that a lot of developers aren't good at games, so I'm wondering if Kyle Gray has a hard time playing Henry.

[Nappi]

Yeah, I also enjoy getting achievements as a sort of reward for doing cool but otherwise pointless things. This has rarely happened to me, though. Some achievements can also be semi-interesting challenges (a bit stupid example but Burnout Paradise achievements/awards actually made me seek out a place to perform a double barrel roll) themselves but, as mentioned, they could usually just as well be actual challenges. Majority of the achievements I have encouraged are crap though.

Also, um.. cool. Thanks. Should I give my address to someone or will that creepy thing locate me on its own somehow?

[LetterT]

You mean there's more to Battle Toads than the one level where you're swinging like a wrecking ball as the level scrolls down? Who knew?

As for Bit-Trip. Beat, I know I've posted before, but I love the game. It's only $6 and it is multiplayer. It doesn't look like it when you launch the game (because there's no way to choose), but if you have more than one Wiimote on, you'll get a "paddle" for each active Wiimote. From there, it's basically just co-op play to get through the stages.

I've made it through the first stage both on my own, and co-op with my wife. We haven't made it to the end of stage two yet. There might not be a lot of "lengthy" play, but for $6, it's fun to sit down for 20 min or so.

And you could almost consider it a rhythm game. . . it's possible to match the patterns of the "bits" with the music behind and sort of memorize the stage.

[elmuerte]

And Remo, you are way off base saying how easy it is to make something in Unreal. Sure it is easy to carve out a map composed of square rooms (or maybe now you build them in instead of carving out), but actually making a level that has any value is very complicated. It is the difference between cutting out someone's head in photoshop and making stuff like this. Even with that, you have only made a level - an environment in which you can only do the things available in Unreal Tournament. Implementing your own ideas requires delving into UnrealScript, which is an entirely different beast. It is also worth mentioning, that there is very very little official documentation for this codebase made available to modders.

Editor wise there was no easier editor than Build (you know, Duke3D). I've only messed around with UnrealEd 2 (the one that came with the original UT). I was more interested in programming. UnrealScript is hardly a beast. It's quite easy to learn, specially when you know a bit of Java or C#. The most difficult part is to understand now, in general, the game framework of the UnrealEngine works. The basics of this hasn't changed much over the years, there was an important change between UE1 and UE2. But you don't have to know the whole framework, or even the explicit implementations used for Epic's games, to create some mods. Also the user generated documentation (see: unrealwiki) is quite well, and a lot of it is still useful to understand how UE works, even though most of the documentation is about UE1 and UE2 (UT and UT2003/UT2004 specifically). The problem is that quite some people simply do not want to spend some effort to read up on the tech. They simply want to copy paste stuff and follow explicit tutorials. And the last couple of years the "newbs" also became quite arrogant. They would join #unrealscript on irc, ask a question and leave (in anger) within a couple of minutes before somebody could even answer the question. Things should instantly work the way they want, or else they will get mad and say the tools suck. (Not saying the tools are great, they do suck on various levels)

Anyway, this is mostly based on my own observations of the Unreal mod community for the past 9 years.

[syntheticgerbil]

Oh hey Remo, any chance of you posting the Braid 2005 shots? I've seen some from 2006, but not that far back. I get really interested in early production elements in games.

[miffy495]

I'm actually really enjoying the difficulty of Hatsworth. It is exactly like you said, Megaman difficulty. Only not quite so hard. Megaman is hard as shit, and some levels have ways of killing you within seconds of approaching the screen from the wrong angles, but if you can laugh those off as "What the shit? Oh man, that was hilariously cruel..." it's incredibly enjoyable. Hatsworth has a similar feel for me, only I find it to be slightly less cheap. I know if I die that it was because I didn't react quickly enough or didn't pull up the puzzle menu when I should have. It is indeed hard as shit, but at least it's fair. The over the top cheesy characters make me smile every time they come on screen simply by virtue of the little voice samples they have. Remo is right about the forgettable dialogue, but are you really buying something like this for deep characterizations?

Syntheticgerbil, don't give up on this one so quickly. I was on the fence about it, but I am incredibly glad I caved and picked it up.

[Erkki]

I don't really know, but it seems reasonable to assume that a lot of modders have moved to creating indie games. There are now some pretty good open source graphics/physics/etc. engines out there and it's really easier to get started making a game from scratch. And somehow it has become acceptable to do 2D games again.

There's one problem still though: C++. Sure it's a great language for some purposes, but I never really got the hang of it even though I consider myself a pretty good programmer. It's just too technical, IMHO, and I hate focusing on the details it forces me to focus on. Even just the notion that your classes are usually split into two separate files (.h and .cpp) is ridiculous to me.

Once there are better open source engines written in Scala, Java or maybe some other easier to use but still somewhat performant language, I think we will start seeing even more indie games. http://www.ardor3d.com/ (from the jMonkeyEngine devs) looks promising.

[bistromathics]

UnrealScript is hardly a beast. It's quite easy to learn, specially when you know a bit of Java or C#. The most difficult part is to understand now, in general, the game framework of the UnrealEngine works.

That is the part that is a beast. The unrealwiki is a good source of information, but often times things are outdated or unclear. The best way I found to learn the framework is just tracing code back through the javadoc-esque (minus the documentation) pages that are out there.

My CSC senior design project was making a UT2K4 TC mod with a team of 5 CSC students and 2 industrial design students. It took a serious amount of work and our final game - while functional - was quite unenjoyable. As Nachimir said, the biggest problem of all was that we had no producer or manager of any sort (nor any prior experience with Unreal).

EDIT: Wow...I was looking for a link to the javadoc-esque things I mentioned. Found http://uncodex.elmuerte.com/!

Edited April 15, 2009 by bistromathics

[soupface]

Syntheticgerbil, don't give up this one [Henry Hatsworth] so quickly. I was on the fence about it, but I am incredibly glad I caved and picked it up.

I agree. I've heard a lot about Hatsworth being difficult, but I don't think it's as unfair and merciless—like Mega Man or Contra—as you may think it is.

[syntheticgerbil]

Okay, I will keep it in mind.

I mean I've never been able to get anywhere in a Megaman game, at least the old ones, but if it's less hard than that, then it may be okay.

But like if it's harder than Zelda II, Super Mario Bros. 2 (Lost Levels), or maybe Wario's Woods (SNES version), which are all games I remember I stuck it out until the end for despite the extreme difficulty, I don't know I may still have to pass.

The gameplay and graphics on Henry Hatsworth look both novel and charming though. Arghhhh decisions!

[miffy495]

Most of those games that you mentioned seemed to take pleasure in torturing the player. Levels that loop endlessly til you find the secret exit, spike traps right where you'd be entering from that will kill you instantly, etc. I'd say Zelda 2 is probably the most apt comparison, as it wasn't really cheap, just ball-breakingly hard. Hatsworth is not a cheap game. It does not torture you arbitrarily with crazy things. Rather, it demands a hell of a lot from you, skill-wise. It is far more generous with continues than Zelda 2 though, so you'll usually have the stock of lives necessary to power through. I'd say that the action game part is actually more in line with things like the original NES Ninja Gaiden than the kind of game you mentioned. Again, not cheap, just demanding.

[Chris]

I played and appreciated what Half-Life 1 did design-wise wayyy after it was released, even though I'd owned it for years. I pretty much exclusively played source mods for a good while or so; things like 'The Specialists' and 'Natural Selection' and even 'Dragon Mod Z' (I was young ) were really awesome and had totally never-before-seen mechanics. I bought HL2 expecting glorious things from the mod community, but as the engine became more complex, development time took longer and fan-support for projects became so small that it was hard to find any people playing some of the cooler looking mods.

Dystopia is still my favorite and most-played mod for HL2. It was actually officially released on steam a couple months ago.

And Remo, you are way off base saying how easy it is to make something in Unreal. Sure it is easy to carve out a map composed of square rooms (or maybe now you build them in instead of carving out), but actually making a level that has any value is very complicated. It is the difference between cutting out someone's head in photoshop and making stuff like this. Even with that, you have only made a level - an environment in which you can only do the things available in Unreal Tournament. Implementing your own ideas requires delving into UnrealScript, which is an entirely different beast. It is also worth mentioning, that there is very very little official documentation for this codebase made available to modders.

Good podcast, though.

[emphasis added for sake of visibility, not outrage]

Well sure--making anything good and implementing is not easy. But stuff like Kismet in Unreal Engine 3 goes so far in at least weakening the barrier between idea and implementation. It's an amazingly good tool. Obviously, making a full game with lots of stuff in it is an immense undertaking. I was specifically comparing modern tools to older tools though and just speaking relatively. There's definitely a difference in efficiency between different toolsets (and I think the vast acceptance of Unreal Engine 3 as a licensed engine speaks at least partially to that). Not all of them are equal when it comes to usability. Making something good is going to be difficult no matter what, but it can certainly be more or less frustrating from tool to tool.

[Nachimir]

That changes according to environment too. One games programming course I know of currently uses UEngine for student projects. They tried Source first, but found authenticating and keeping it updated on around 80 machines was a nightmare (at the time, about 4 years ago I think).

[n0wak]

Oh hey Remo, any chance of you posting the Braid 2005 shots? I've seen some from 2006, but not that far back. I get really interested in early production elements in games.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3753/the_art_of_braid_creating_a_.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15290

[Marek]

Erkki, I agree. Well, I don't know any C++. But being a game designer slash shitty coder, I really like how there's now quite a few engines/frameworks/etc. that go up a few levels in abstraction, or use less overly technical languages with more readable syntax, allowing people such as me to more easily make things.

Also, cool that you mention Ardor3D. One of the guys working on that was the lead programmer in my team at NCsoft. He's quite excited about working on this engine. I'm actually curious to know what people think of it as it develops.

[syntheticgerbil]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3753/the_art_of_braid_creating_a_.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15290

Thanks, very cool! I like all the different renderings the artist tried of the same level as well.

[Kos Luftar]

Hilarious ep. Good Job guys.

That ign twitter account is hilarious.