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Idle Thumbs 102: Standing on the Shoulders of Babies

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Idle Thumbs 102:

 

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Standing on the Shoulders of Babies

After an engineering malfunction left our first recording attempt dead on the launchpad, we strip off all the weird bits, hard reset the equipment and try again. We disclose this only in the spirit of early-access game development.

 

Games Discussed: Neptune's Pride II: Triton, Kerbal Space Program, Prison Architect

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No matter how many times Neptune's Pride is mentioned on the forums, I will always confuse it with the free apology Xbox Live Arcade game Undertow.  I need to remember that Neptune is a planet as well as a god of the sea.

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Just started listening to this episode, but wanted to say a couple things about Neptune's Pride II since I'm in a game right now.

 

Most of the changes they've made are cosmetic and UI based, just making it easier to communicate with people and stuff. Overall, the design looks a lot better, although I think it's a little too busy in places and I wish the zoom worked on a finer scale.

 

The gameplay changes mostly relate to research. There are still only three main things to buy at each star (Economy, Industry, Science), but now instead of only having four things to research (Weapons, Speed, Scanning, Range in the original), there are seven: Scanning (lets you see the things that other stars have), Hyperspace (increases your jump range), Terraforming (increases stars' natural resources, making future upgrades cheaper), Weapons (makes you attack stronger), Banking (gets you more money), Manufacturing (gets you more ships) and General Research (every hour, randomly contributes some points to one research stream). There is no longer any way to research faster ships. Instead, you can build Warp Gate Accelerators at stars and when ships are jumping between them, they go 3 times as fast. The Warp Gates are also ludicrously expensive.

 

They've also made all the formulas in the game far more explicit and straightforward, which is really nice. And they've included a Battle Calculator, which is invaluable.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about the gameplay changes so far. It's nice to have different strategic avenues, but it feels like it might over-complicate the elegant simplicity of the original. The Warp Gates are an especially double-edged sword: they make certain stars far more valuable, but their expense means they won't get used a ton until the late game, which could slow down the game over all. I'll have to wait and see.

 

It's interesting to hear you guys talk about the strategic uses of the formal alliance system, since I've yet to play a game with that feature activated. It sounds interesting, but I don't think I would really need it.

 

Also, if you guys need another player for your game, I would be more than happy to jump in.

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i really like building simulations, i think prison architect is great, i like to think of the AI inefficiencies as human error so you have to build in redundancy into your design,  

 tumblr_mlevx90Epf1qcut6ko1_1280.png

and achievements MEH!! when i first heard people were obsessed with console achievements i thought the points you got were money off games but it turns out that they are just arbitrary markers than mean nothing in game or out of game, i don't get why people love them so much and even say you have only completed the game if you have all the achievments. and shut up the matrix 2 is a masterpiece 

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'Bout time you guys talk about Prison Architect, geeeeeez.

 

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, 'cause I love it, although it's very obviously not a finished game, yet. Or at least, last time I played it. (A month or so ago.)

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Not my favorite episode so far (30 minutes in). None of the games discussed remotely interest me. I think that's a first for IdleThumbs.

I tried Neptune's Pride I, but that's clearly not my kind of game.

I've followed Introversion, and also Prison Architect, but it doesn't interest me to play it (very interesting to follow it's development though):

Today's bug: Some visitors died tragically in a fire in the Visitation room. Then at 8pm when visiting hours ended they went home.

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So did you guys record this before Nintendo actually did announce that Everybody Votes is closing for exactly the reasons you gave, and I can add this to the Kinect/Dante's Inferno/Tony Hawk Skateboard list?

We knew they were closing them, that's why it came up. There was a way more extended talk about that on the first recording attempt, the one which was eaten by the input board.

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Oh, sorry. I'm having a hard time concentrating lately and I think I missed that.

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I love the Introversion guys.  They just choose the craziest themes.  Nothing like that uncomfortable feeling in Defcon as you annihilate millions of people from behind a console, listening to the awkward coughs in the background.  

 

Here's an interesting interview with them on how they think about Prison Architect:

 

http://www.pcpowerplay.com.au/2012/01/chris-delay-the-pcpp-interview/2/

 

“You could think of your prisoners as the enemy army. And in a traditional game, you would destroy your enemy army. And that would be your victory points. But obviously, in a game about prisons you can’t destroy your enemy army.  But then again, an alternative way of thinking about it is that the prisoners are actually your army. Your group of people, to look after, and work on. And I’ve been trying to find ways to hold back the concept, to try and stop the player thinking about the prisoners as his enemy, that are just in his way, or just wreck his prison all the time, and start thinking about the prisoners as interesting characters in their own right, that you’ll be just as interested in as if they were your own bunch of characters.”

 

As of this writing, more specific gameplay details have yet to be announced; we asked if you had, say, a safe cracker, a forger, and a master of disguise in adjoining cells, they might tap out Morse code on the pipes to plan an elaborate escape. Chris didn’t take the bait: “[Laughs] Those are great ideas.” Though he did confirm that he wanted to give the prisoners plenty of character, and that part of that inspiration came from Australia’s favourite women’s prison drama, Prisoner.

 

“I think any game involving prisons will undoubtedly be inspired by that [laughs]. It’s interesting. There’s a lot of good prison television, and prison films. And it’s a challenge making a game about prisons, to try and get something positive out of it. Because it can be a very grim subject. And it is a very serious subject, and a very political subject, as well.  But obviously if you’re making a game about it, you don’t necessarily want it to be really heavy and over the top. And one of the nice things about Prisoner: Cell Block H was that it did manage to make interesting characters out of guards and prisoners. It didn’t have the really nasty overtones that a lot of American prison TV shows.”

 

In the course of researching the game, Chris has burned through the box sets of just about every prison show ever made. One thing he’s learned is that a TV show or film about prisons either succeeds or dies based on whether you are interested in the prisoners or not. “Because the guards and the staff are not enough. It’s the prisoners who are often the interesting characters.”

 

Chris also hinted that his game will have a strong moral dimension, and that it will explore what happens when private prisons are run with public funds. “It’s an interesting moral conundrum, when you’ve got shareholders and things, and you have to think about the profit of a prison. It leads to some quite interesting choices.” Then there’s the question of punishment versus rehabilitation – whether you should hate the sin, or the sinner. The degree of actual punishment virtual screws will get to mete out has clearly played on Chris’s mind. 

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This episode brings up fond memories of episode 36.5. Currently beginning my very first game of Neptune's Pride 2, in which I have no idea what I'm doing.

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Oh my jebus you read my letter again! I can't believe you actually got an (amazing) anecdote out of that.

 

Did you guys recognize me? It sounded like you might have remembered me from the Metroid Prime email however many episodes ago, but I'm not sure.

 

Also, I was secretly hoping you guys would refer to me with female pronouns this time to make up for thinking I was a boy last time, but you managed to avoid using any pronouns at all. booo

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This pod makes me wish I used Twitter and had a smart phone, so that immediately after finishing it I could have tweeted "Just listened to Idle Thumbs 102...garbage." Just as an experiment, understand; I don't think it was garbage. Now that I wrote it up there, I might. No!

---------

Thoughts About Exploring Spaces!

 

First, regarding ways to replicate that natural feeling of looking for answers in a space that's familiar to your character...getting the whole "immediately runs to the master bedroom" scenario...I thought I remembered Deus Ex 1 doing this, when you break into the DuClare Chateau with Nicolette. Watching a replay of it now (

) I see that it doesn't happen as much as I remember -- she doesn't go running off the important parts of the house by herself. However, when you walk into different rooms she does call out the important pieces like computers, paintings that move, other clues like that. That's one of my favorite parts of the game, because it's a nice homey space, but completely new to you, and the vicarious sense of familiarity you get through Nicolette's accompaniment doesn't seem at odds with that. As in Gone Home, the house also contains secrets that even Nicolette doesn't know about. I can see that it would be more of a challenge in Gone Home when you don't have Expository Sidekick tagging along doing the natural human scanning-for-things-out-of-place; but it was a memorable use of Expository Sidekick, to me. =)

 

Secondly, regarding the problem of Exploring in games being a weird methodical room-combing forensic exercise. I've thought about this in the context of the neighborhoods of Skyrim, but it also applies to rooms in something like Gone Home. The problem (if it's a problem) is:

 

In the real world, stuff just lays around. Most of it's not important or related to you at all (unless you're a poet who drinks in mundane discoveries and writes about their hidden signficance). In COMPUTERGAMES, especially single-player ones, everything that you see is For You. You're the most important (and only) person in the universe, and if a thing exists, it exists to be seen and interacted with and acknowledged by you. Junk isn't junk; it's "content". ^_^ If I'm looking for my harmonica in real life and I pull open all the drawers in the house and find a stack of useless bills, I get crabby. If I had to find a harmonica in Gone Home and I pulled open the drawers and found a stack of useless bills, I would say "Woww, look at all this atmospheric miscellany! So authentic, and quite possibly one of these fifteen letterheads contains A CLUE?! If no clues, that means it's here just to draw me further into the world and delight me with attention to detail. Thanks, Scoops et al." and then I would read every single one of them. Because they're mine. They're meant for me.

 

Another way to look at it is that the house in Gone Home, every detail of it, is part of a creative work that's meant to be enjoyed. So if you don't dig through every drawer, you're missing part of the craftsmanship. If I bought, for example, a lovely hyper-realistic dollhouse, I feel sure that I would test all the drawers and coo over whatever tiny home supplies they contained, even if it was a "mystery dollhouse" I was supposed to be solving. This desire to experience everything that the creators created (whether because you appreciate it, or because you paid for all that content!, or because it is For You) doesn't *require* the systematic room-by-room approach...but that's the easiest way to make sure that you won't miss a single thing. I do it in games like Baldur's Gate as well, clearing every bit of fog of war in every zone before moving on -- because I just know that the one little space I don't explore is going to have a crazy guy with a funny dialogue in it.

 

I don't know how you would drop a person into a meticulously handcrafted virtual environment, and then convince them to -- at least for starters -- act like most of the objects are incidental, atmospheric clutter that needn't be scrutinized before moving along. As was mentioned in the podcast, you don't *need* to make people play this way. The urban archaeology style is fine. =) But assuming you wanted to, I'm not sure how you would do it. Someone (Nick?) mentioned some kind of danger or time limit pushing people forward. Maybe a better method is to turn the player's motivation against itself -- if the reason I comb every square inch of the floor is because I don't want to miss something cool, then convince me I'm missing out on something amazing by spending all my time staring at a stupid floor. Make there be events happening in other parts of the house that you'll miss if you aren't paying attention. Instead of danger pushing you to stop exploring and start running, make intriguing flashes of light or muffled voices emanate from other rooms, and make it so that the player needs to react by running over there to explore. Everything still exists For You, but it won't wait around for you -- and if you miss it because you're pixel-hunting, you might hopefully break out of the obsession. =) Also perhaps these real-time events would happen in a confined space, perhaps the cars of a train...perhaps the LAST train. And perhaps if you miss one you can rewind time with an egg. >_>  (But the real-time events passing you by in The Last Express can also be kind of stressful and bewildering if you aren't prepped for it going in, as happened to Mrs. Berzee when I started playing that game with her without describing it first ;)).

 

The other way to make people stop being methodical is The Elder Scrolls method of filling the world with so many piles of tongs and spoons and utterly useless rubbish (much of it unpleasantly heavy) that the player really does eventually need to get over the idea that everything needs to be looted. Eventually, I had to give up my hyper-thorough looting behaviors because it was making the game take so long; eventually, I was able to walk past a barrel without pawing through its grubby contents. I actually started looking for environmental clues to let me know where the good loot was supposed to be. It's fun that way! Thinking "the chest at the foot of the bandit's bedroll is probably worth my time; the pile of 16 crates probably is not" and actually being right, is pretty rewarding. :) Except...you can't know you were right unless you also look in the crates. =P And as Nick's Skyrim tutorial anecdote suggests, the game is still designed with an expectation that you'll be at least moderately interested in dumpster-diving -- so maybe all the tongs and plates and stuff are there not so much to discourage you, but to make the treasures you do find feel more like that one pretty nice chair that your keen eyes detected in the pile of busted furniture on the curb.

 

This post is long.

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Coming up on the reader mail segment (wow it starts right on 60 minutes in, on the nose) but I wanted to get to a couple things before I forget.

 

First, Nick was mistaken about Don't Starve and its beta access. The game is still in beta, but it is launching on... the 23rd I think? The Chrome access was just Chrome access in parallel to Steam access. The versions are all the same (one of the most recent updates to the game actually made it Apple and Linux compatible), it's not any sort of porting thing or whatever. I've been playing the beta for the last few months and it's been growing in depth substantially, with the sort of "campaign" or "story" mode being the last thing they really added to the game and worked to finish (everything else was about getting all the systems in place). I recommend the game highly and hope people like it. The most intriguing thing is that the Klei folks had a goal of circumventing any of the sort of low-investment, guaranteed survival tactics people were developing as the beta pressed on, and I'm pretty sure Klei have succeeded.

 

Second point, just a brief note about Prison Architect; a couple weeks ago I got into a strange, brief argument over Twitter with someone who seemed to think the game was irresponsible and gross. Not for anything regarding its details in how it works, it was all just from the face-value of a game being about operating a prison. Which wasn't fair, obviously, but it also is too bad because it's not like games about this subject matter get made frequently.

 

Okay, so, crowd sourcing.

 

This is something people have been talking about regarding this game that's in development, Starbound. It's a spiritual successor to Terraria (which is a side-scrolling sort of Minecraft game) and actually employs the artist of Terraria. The devs recently launched a pre-order / beta-access drive for the game and it seems to be working out well, though I've found myself (and others) discussing with people how I'm hesitant to invest early. And it's probably for a silly reason, but essentially I invested early into Terraria and ended up feeling burned by it (though, not in any deep way). I read their sort of plans and goals for the game and figured I'd get behind it. It certainly was fun from that day one experience and even beyond the official release date it saw a few updates here and there, culminating in one major update. And then it all stopped, and the team disbanded. All the roadmapped ideas they had for the game left unfulfilled.

 

This is where I start to lean back and forth on both sides of the fence, because on the one hand I wasn't shortchanged for what dollars I put in - especially after that one major content update. I had a lot of fun, no denying of that. But at the same time all the now pie-in-the-sky plans didn't get fulfilled, which was sorta what I was feeling like I was investing in in the first place. Like I got a good game, but not the one I was sold on receiving over the long term. I probably sound like a total butt about it, but that just made me a little wary about investing in things early. It comes down to paying for promised features vs. paying for what the game is when it launches. It's a strange thing to say and all considering that Starbound in its alpha demonstratable form has way, WAY more to it than Terraria. It's just that I've now applied an idea of only paying for things in advanced when it's from people I know can deliver. Not to suggest the artist was the reason why Terraria didn't deliver for me, it's that I haven't played any games the Starbound team has made (or is making, I actually don't know if they've launched anything yet). The artist is just a coincidental factor.

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Oh god and by the way, the idea of Neptune's Pride 2 being playable from smartphones frightens me. I don't have a smartphone and already feel like I'm at an inherent disadvantage. This is horrible!

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I wanted to check out Neptune's Pride the first time around, but never jumped in. The new one looks slick!

Don't make the same mistake I did and jump into a public game, though.

uAMsxcZ.png

edit: I got a nearly immediate reply from the developer after snitching these knuckleheads out saying he'll look into it, so that's encouraging.

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In their defense, it is mildly amusing to imagine alien life saying that stuff in tropey alien tones.

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In their defense, it is mildly amusing to imagine alien life saying that stuff in tropey alien tones.

That makes me want to put together a Star Control II ROM hack type of thing that gives the game dialog an absurd comedic tone. (More than normal, I mean.)

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I really enjoyed the discussion about how Twitter/Internet/etc solidifies our gut reaction to media. For years I've been afflicted with this curse where I will publicly (to friends, customers, strangers on a livejournal) dislike an album or whatever and then immediately flip-flop on it. It doesn't even matter how much time passes before I make my opinion known, just somehow the act of expressing that opinion activates my troll glands and all of a sudden I'm tapping my feet. It's total bullshit and it has led to me basically never wanting to express my opinion on anything. As if anyone even cares that I've changed my mind!

 

Anyways, horray for anxiety! Thanks for a good cast, Thumbs.

 

PS this pheonomena will probably rear it's head again as I've told a co-worker how much Kerbal doesn't sound interesting to me and now after listening to you guys talk about it, it sounds dope as hell. In this case I'll just blame my co-worker for making it sound like balls.

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I love the classic dynamic of this podcast. The old panel back together again!

 

Also, I haven't finished yet, but you guys seem super punchy, either because this is round two or because Sean's presence compels seriousness. Who knows? We'll have to do another round of debugging to find out.

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I was interested in the question asked in the podcast about how to explore spaces more naturally.

 

I think the solution might be to create less naturalisic environments in games. The way our perception works is that we only focus on things that are important to us. Once we've registered the details and framework of an environment, we stop paying attention to it. Simulating this in a game might entail having a more abstract/dreamlike environment where objects that we've looked at, but that aren't important for progression, disappear or blur out, or levitate away, and only the things that are immediately important stay.

 

This fundamentally changes the way we observe and interact with a game, but despite its initial shock of abstraction, might actually more closely resemble the way we exist in spaces. More importantly; encourage a less exhaustive, minute ruffling through every detail, but taking space as fleeting time, something you almost can't capture or infinitely observe.

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I would say it's more about the context of the game and environments we're put into rather than what's occupying the environments. In Fallout 3 I search every nook and cranny because that's an environment where I want to scavenge to survive. Conversely in Half-Life 2, while there are things to observe, you're on the go constantly and that level of attention to detail isn't really necessary (supplies are usually placed in a manner that makes them appear to be on display, or the hidden caches have the Half-Life logo spray painted by them).

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On the subject of an ending changing your opinion game/experience

 

I recently finished Cod Blops 2 and although i didn't really have that great of a time playing it, there is a post credit in game

which actually greatly reduced my opinion of the game :fart:

 

(if you can watch this video in its entirety you win a life achievement)

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I can think of a lot of games that I liked *until* the ending (or until I found out about the ending on Wikipedia), and then it was ruined for me and I never wanted to play it again. I have trouble thinking of many games that worked in the reverse, though. =P

 

I won't mention any of the other good games where the ending ruined it for me, in case spoilers, but I will say that I thought Deus Ex: Invisible War was kind of awesome when I played it 2.5 years ago, all the way up to the ending, whereupon you are presented with four distinct and incredibly depressing options for the future of humanity. I've played it again since then, but never had the desire to see the endings.

 

Ah-hah! I did think of a small game, at least, whose ending retroactively gives new meaning and enjoyment to the experience. It is the wonderful pOnd.

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