Emotion- How Will We Make the Player Feel It?

This sounds a lot like another thread: Link. Should this be discussed there? EDIT: Threads merged.

And I think... Good music, and individuality between organisms would probably be a good way to do this... By individuality, I mean differences... That was a bad explanation.

Let me put it this way, in Spore, all organisms were identical, clones. If you want a player to think their organism is individual, you can't go making every member of the species a clone. Well, you can, but making organisms look like different creatures... You didn't age, either, so dying basically returned your organism to a perfect health adult. Your organism should have some form of experience, making it better at what it does. Anyway, experience should be like in most games where it unlocks 'skills' or gives you more strength, experience doesn't work like that... Experience is... Knowledge of the world. Consequently, it makes you more skilful at what you do, and more likely to get something right. We should remember that if we do include experience in Thrive. We shouldn't take the path of most games. We aren't most games, we are trying to make a gave resembling reality, which isn't what most games do. Reality isn't score, or xp points. Reality is knowledge. Even if we can't get this perfect, as it is a game and so we can't restrict a player's mind, we can try to create some sort of equivalent in the organism.

Sorry for the big paragraph. I'll make this a small one. End of paragraph.

So, people do feel emotions towards their own wellbeing in real life, but not in games. Therefore, we should take ideas from reality, not games. Seems obvious, this being an evolution game, but this is a major point I want to make. People seem to be getting keen on the idea of points and advancement buttons. That's gamey, not realityey. If we want to be realityeyey, we need to make gameplay elements based on reality elements.

And, finally I end my post. Realityeyeyey.

If I remember right the player's view will depend on the senses of the creature, which opens up a lot of possibilities for this kind of thing. An injured creature might have slightly disrupted senses, enough to alert the player but not to irritate them.

Or differences in senses, like a predator with night vision watching from afar as their prey listens intently. You might have a similar effect with certain tools like crosshairs and scopes. A player might realise that a certain sound they hear, or a cloud of scent, is the only sign that a certain predator is near, and find themselves paranoid over it.

We shouldn't have a minimap (by default, at least) for that reason, I suppose. Emotion doesn't work without that perspective.

EScSi wrote:

If I remember right the player's view will depend on the senses of the creature, which opens up a lot of possibilities for this kind of thing. An injured creature might have slightly disrupted senses, enough to alert the player but not to irritate them.

Or differences in senses, like a predator with night vision watching from afar as their prey listens intently. You might have a similar effect with certain tools like crosshairs and scopes. A player might realise that a certain sound they hear, or a cloud of scent, is the only sign that a certain predator is near, and find themselves paranoid over it.

We shouldn't have a minimap (by default, at least) for that reason, I suppose. Emotion doesn't work without that perspective.

I really like these ideas.

Anyone here play Dead Space? There was some great work done in that game to create tension in your environment. It would give just enough of a hint for the player to know something was nearby, but not enough to know what, or where, or how many. The effect is uncanny, and I've never seen it done better. No minimap to break the player out of the experience; no HUD to give a "time out". The player was never completely "safe", because the experience was 100% immersive.

Now, we can't completely emulate this, because we're not looking to make a horror game, but a sense of tension, of survival, fits really well with the spirit of this game.

I'd love it if we could move in a direction of getting rid of the HUD entirely; rather, in-field navigational cues could let the player know where they're going and what's around them. Scent trails have been discussed quite a bit over the course of this project, and I think they lend themselves nicely to the sort of gameplay I'm thinking of. It would also give players an incentive to try and "grow" a creature with more acute senses, instead of just getting bigger, stronger, and scarier (though that would be an option as well). It provides a lovely series of interesting decisions for the player to make, and I would argue is a serviceable analogue for how evolution has worked.

Crippled vision, loud ragged respiration (to obscure auditory cues), impeded movement, and things of that sort would all be excellent ways to give the player feedback on how they're doing. Rather than having the player watching a health bar, could we somehow keep them watching their creature? This, I feel, would do much to deepen the sense of attachment.

Well, all the ideas listed on this thread don't quite grasp the real source of fear. We have 4.5 billion years of instinct screaming at us to avoid death because if we die there is no respawn. Death is it. So, the best way to make the player fear death is to punish them for it. In Limbo you aren't as nearly afraid as death as you are in Minecraft because Limbo has such generous checkpoints, while in Minecraft you'll likely loose everything you have and end up at your one and only respawn point.

Now, while I'd love for the player to really fear death, I think that it's far more important that we work out fear in the AI. That would have the added bonus of carrying over to culture and giving us the opportunity to expand on stories and myths when they're finally patched in.

Also note that fear is entirely instinctual. It's our body's reaction to the knowledge that something bad is more likely than not going to happen. What we need to do is figure out how to mark those dangerous situations first, and work out the actually mechanics of fear afterwards.

I like Redstars idea[s].

Dead Space = Awesomesauce

And I like EscSi's ideas as well. No minimap.

merged

I do like the lack of minimap/filters ideas, but I'm not certain we can ever not have a control bar, as stuff we've discussed on other threads, such as inventory, would be hard to pull off without one.
Actually... Anyone play Myst? That didn't have any bars, you had to mouse down to the bottom of the screen to pull up a very small inventory bar, and everything else was just the screen, the mouse, and you. (Also, the music tended towards the epic, but that's tangental to my point.)

I'm all for minimalising HUD, maybe hiding it completely, but we still need a way to show minimap and vital bars/screens. I don't think moving mouse close to screen borders would work well in this game, because all screen space will be needed for movement commands. Maybe if a key is pressed?

A little menu tab in the corner of the screen would probably be necessary. Also, we'd need a way for players to be reminded of what any hotkeys and similar things are, so they don't get swamped.
Maybe there could just be an easy-acess HEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLPPPPP!!! menu somewhere...
-Waap.

Remember guys, we're discussing emotion here. HUD speaks get put elsewhere.
On the topic of dead space, I saw a great video yesterday on how they make players feel fear- basically, it's all smoke and mirrors. Their studio has quite a few dedicated lighting artists, and all of the lights in their game are put in at very specific points, with very specific properties, to achieve the right effect. We really can't do that in our game, since everyhting is going to be procedural.

Spoiler:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

I do like the lack of minimap/filters ideas, but I'm not certain we can ever not have a control bar, as stuff we've discussed on other threads, such as inventory, would be hard to pull off without one.

Have you read this thread? Inventory with no control bar.

The Uteen wrote:

The items could be shown on the creature, in the locations they are, but sort of highlighted and shown through clothing/bag. That's not been done before, and would work pretty well as long as you aren't Santa Claus with a giant bag of presents... But you wouldn't be able to find anything in that bag anyway.

But we will have to have some sort of control bar, yes. Expecting players to remember that amount of keyboard shortcuts would be a bit mean. I'm not saying we shouldn't have keyboard shortcuts, we just shouldn't rely on them.

Anyway, an option to switch off the user interface would be good for some players, particularly along with 1st person. BEcause they don't need to see their health, and neither do they need to have a menu button or action buttons. If they want to have an immersive experience, we should give them the option to use only the keyboard shortcuts, with no buttons on-screen. Total immersion is a nice idea for total emotional immersion.

The Uteen wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

I do like the lack of minimap/filters ideas, but I'm not certain we can ever not have a control bar, as stuff we've discussed on other threads, such as inventory, would be hard to pull off without one.

Have you read this thread? Inventory with no control bar.

The Uteen wrote:

The items could be shown on the creature, in the locations they are, but sort of highlighted and shown through clothing/bag. That's not been done before, and would work pretty well as long as you aren't Santa Claus with a giant bag of presents... But you wouldn't be able to find anything in that bag anyway.

But we will have to have some sort of control bar, yes. Expecting players to remember that amount of keyboard shortcuts would be a bit mean. I'm not saying we shouldn't have keyboard shortcuts, we just shouldn't rely on them.

Anyway, an option to switch off the user interface would be good for some players, particularly along with 1st person. BEcause they don't need to see their health, and neither do they need to have a menu button or action buttons. If they want to have an immersive experience, we should give them the option to use only the keyboard shortcuts, with no buttons on-screen. Total immersion is a nice idea for total emotional immersion.

QFT toggleable UI approved.

Read my last post?

Tenebrarum wrote:

Well, all the ideas listed on this thread don't quite grasp the real source of fear. We have 4.5 billion years of instinct screaming at us to avoid death because if we die there is no respawn. Death is it. So, the best way to make the player fear death is to punish them for it. In Limbo you aren't as nearly afraid as death as you are in Minecraft because Limbo has such generous checkpoints, while in Minecraft you'll likely loose everything you have and end up at your one and only respawn point.

Now, while I'd love for the player to really fear death, I think that it's far more important that we work out fear in the AI. That would have the added bonus of carrying over to culture and giving us the opportunity to expand on stories and myths when they're finally patched in.

Also note that fear is entirely instinctual. It's our body's reaction to the knowledge that something bad is more likely than not going to happen. What we need to do is figure out how to mark those dangerous situations first, and work out the actually mechanics of fear afterwards.

So basically, we need a high cost of death- it needs to suck big time if you die? I'd agree.

~sciocont wrote:

So basically, we need a high cost of death- it needs to suck big time if you die? I'd agree.

How about when you die you skip forward a few hundred thousand years? Granted that may actually encourage suicides in order to advance. Then again, if that behavior is copied for thousands of years, your species may not do too well.

~sciocont wrote:

So basically, we need a high cost of death- it needs to suck big time if you die? I'd agree.

This sounds like bad game design. I am against punishing players - that ultimately leads to frustration, which leads to quitting. It's a lazy way out to just say "don't die or you lose all your hard work". As a player, in a situation like that, I'm much more likely to flip a game the bird and go play something else. Who hasn't gotten killed in Minecraft, said "Aah, F this," and walked away from it. I wouldn't be quick to cite Minecraft as an example of good gameplay design.

I really think it'd behoove us to try and look for more creative solutions. Beating the player for dying is really not acceptable. It's a game. They're going to die. It's supposed to happen - and in fact, it's vital to the experience.

~sciocont wrote:

On the topic of dead space, I saw a great video yesterday on how they make players feel fear- basically, it's all smoke and mirrors. Their studio has quite a few dedicated lighting artists, and all of the lights in their game are put in at very specific points, with very specific properties, to achieve the right effect. We really can't do that in our game, since everyhting is going to be procedural.

Yeah, I wasn't really getting at that at all; I'm not saying we should try to re-create that sort of atmospherics (though it'd be cool to experiment with procedural lighting when we get to that stage). We're not making a horror game.

My point was more to do with how Dead Space keeps the player engaged by keeping their eyes on the character pretty much at all times, and using on-screen, in-field cues to give the player feedback. That, I think, is something valuable and worth emulating.

Death is something players should try to actively avoid, but nothing in the game should make them ragequit. There has to be some penalty, but not too severe.

Commander Keen wrote:

Death is something players should try to actively avoid, but nothing in the game should make them ragequit. There has to be some penalty, but not too severe.

I wasn't suggesting anything too horribly frustrarting. I agree that we have to have some sort of penalty.

~sciocont wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

Death is something players should try to actively avoid, but nothing in the game should make them ragequit. There has to be some penalty, but not too severe.

I wasn't suggesting anything too horribly frustrarting. I agree that we have to have some sort of penalty.

Well i think that death's penalty is obvious. Consider that your species is supposed to copy what you do, then if you die a large portion of your species will too. If nothing else, it'll be a penalty for dying lots of times, because you'll lose the species you raised from cells. That would hurt me physically.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

Death is something players should try to actively avoid, but nothing in the game should make them ragequit. There has to be some penalty, but not too severe.

I wasn't suggesting anything too horribly frustrarting. I agree that we have to have some sort of penalty.

Well i think that death's penalty is obvious. Consider that your species is supposed to copy what you do, then if you die a large portion of your species will too. If nothing else, it'll be a penalty for dying lots of times, because you'll lose the species you raised from cells. That would hurt me physically.

Yeah, the punishment is already there. We don't need to add a ton more.
Oh, and there's also this: If you die, you are returned to a weak, helpless baby.

I have read that thread, Uteen - and while that's a good way to handle inventory, it might not work for other vital stats.

For the "don't die" incentive we just need to not overload ourselves with checkpoints and save points. After all, if you are palying as a single organism then the death of just one shouldn't necessarily cause your population to tank. Our creatures should not be lemmings. It needs to be a little frustrating to have to go back, but not horribly so.