Book-shaped switch, tear-off napkins and Gabe Newell. - by Kamlorn
Kamlorn on 22/1/2024 at 16:20
Smoothly making my way through A Pirates Downfall FM by nicked I enjoyed the fact that I am able to do it by my own. Until one moment. A book-shaped switch at the bottom of the lighthouse. Frobbing that switch had ZERO effect! But that was me who have found this little pixel in the pitch black room! Give me my reward! I looked through the whole map! Every corner! Under the water. The Silence of the World buzzed in my ear. It was a pure panic.
And know what?! You should had to frob it twice!!! How smart of you, Nicked!:mad::mad::mad:
And here I am. Trying to rewind what exactly made me so panic. Of course there is an answer in my head already. This post is just an attempt to make myself clear. Protocol record of how did I come to this answer.
Tear-off napkins. ( Yes, it's that far! This is the first thing that came to my mind Cant help myself! ) I babysat my 2 years old cousin and to distract her from sobbing and screaming I decided to interest her with something. Roll of tear-off napkins was the first thing that came to my hand. To my surprise it was a perfect solution. With such excitement she began to tear off piece after piece. Each napkin cost her some effort, but each of them torn off so smooth and exactly the same as the previous one. She giggled so happily!
And here comes Gabe Newell. This is where the theory begins. From 16:07 of Half-Life Anniversary Documentary, ad hoc definition of FUN –' the degrees to which the game recognises and responded to the players choices and actions'. My cousin does not care about 'the degrees', little piece of paper is enough. The feedback issue here is essential.
Why does my cousin screaming in the cradle at night? Why do I panic when I can't find the door which that freaking book-shaped switch opens? Why do I write this on TTLG? Lack of attention is trully a botomless pit.
Videogames are another matter. They are designed to fill this pit because real world can be so deaf sometimes.
demagogue on 22/1/2024 at 19:54
I remember I wrote a tutorial about planning Thief-like FMs. (Actually it was for TDM FMs, but same difference.) In that tutorial, I wrote about the author using little dopamine hits to lead the player through a mission, but more importantly, to give a little reward for their exploration or figuring something out. The classic example is loot. You put a little loot in a room, and then the player feels rewarded for having gone down that path, and it will be felt it was worthwhile, otherwise, without it, they'll wonder what was the point of going down this direction at all. The mission space only makes sense when there's a reward or point for going through it.
Anyway, I see what you're talking about as that kind of issue; if I understand what you're saying. When you do something, it's good to have a quick feedback loop that connects map progress with the players' sense of progress. Having perceived feedback when the player frobs the thing that does the thing is part of that and what you're feeling when it's not done well.
Anyway it's something for mappers to keep in mind for future reference.
Aja on 22/1/2024 at 20:04
That said, a great pleasure of the old Thief games is that some areas are only there for worldbuilding; they have no loot, readables, or anything else. Including dead ends makes finding the live ones more exciting. It makes it feel like the game world exists apart from you rather than for you.
But a secret book switch that does nothing is a bridge too far.
demagogue on 22/1/2024 at 20:28
For the record, I put a bit in my tutorial about that too. You could have areas only there for visual storytelling, or even just pretty or fascinating to look at, and that's good too. I actually count that as a feedback ping. Anyway I agree a lot with that.
I think the thing you don't want is dead space, like copy-pasted hallways, massive basically empty and bland space, or big parts of the mission that don't contribute anything, not even to storytelling or visual interest. I think a mission will be tighter and better if you just lop the dead space off.
Reminds me of that T2X mission, I think the one with the brothel, where they have an entire half of the mission space built, but they closed it off because they didn't develop it. Although some things back there were interesting, it's a better mission for just focusing on where the space could be made alive.
vfig on 22/1/2024 at 20:33
Quote Posted by Kamlorn
And know what?! You should had to frob it twice!!! How smart of you, Nicked!:mad::mad::mad:
its a bug in the mission. the intended design was that you only had to frob it once.
Kamlorn on 23/1/2024 at 19:33
@vfig
But the door that this switch opens is near the other end of the map, miles away. This fact alone is so frustrating for those who managed to find it.
Kamlorn on 23/1/2024 at 20:43
Quote Posted by demagogue
...it's good to have a quick feedback loop...
Isn't this addictive?
demagogue on 23/1/2024 at 22:09
Pretty literally so, because addiction is rooted in the same dopaminergic systems.
There's a whole genre of games that prey on people with it.
It's like fire, a necessary feature if you want any flow in the gameplay, but you don't want it to consume your player to the exclusion of everything else either.
---
Edit: For this specific case (going from your description; I haven't played it) ... I think the most notorious example in the history of FMs was JIS's Elevator Mission, which had hidden levers opening stuff on the other side of the map all the time, and the whole thing was kind of surreal and non-sensical. But in that case, it was designed to be confusing and convoluted like that, so it's a special case.
In a lot of games that do this, there's a cut-away to show the thing that opens, but that'd be jarring in a game like Thief, which really tries to stay away from cut scenes and the like that take the camera away from the player, certainly mid-game. Another way to handle it is to at least cue the player to what should open by the thing.
Well, everything is relative anyway. Anyone making a map is juggling a lot of things to get a map to work, some of which work well for players and some of which don't, and they only have so much energy, time, and feedback to know how different things play to different players, who themselves might disagree on it, and some are bigger or lesser deals than others in their minds and in the minds of players -- and even taking all of that into accout they're usually happy if they can just get all of the moving parts to more or less work for players to get through the mission at all.
Kamlorn on 24/1/2024 at 01:04
Quote Posted by demagogue
There's a whole genre of games that prey on people with it.
Are there any videogames that don't do this? My first videogame was a TV volume control ( I dont remember, my mother told me
how satisfied I was when I managed to reduce the number of stripes on the screen to right triangle - 3 stripes). If there is a whole green right triangle which you can construct by yourself on the screen(!) isn't it a miracle by itself? There is something in common with every videogame. No, further, a simple interaction with a computer, when there is something happening in response to your actions - isn't it a 'quick feedback loop' aka 'little dopamine strike'?
demagogue on 24/1/2024 at 01:09
Walking sims, visual novels, art games and the like sometimes don't bother with a feedback loop to the player, though often they're considered on the boundary of being non-interactive.