Jah on 30/7/2008 at 19:03
Quote Posted by Goldmoon Dawn
I see.
(Loot glint) (and this is the one that killed me) The loot should only be visible to those who actually *look* for it. Placing loot used to be such an elite form of design in the first two titles. Finding the loot was just so damn rewarding and fun. WTF went wrong here?
I thought the idea behind loot glint - what I at least assume the designers were trying to do - was good: Make it easier to tell which items are loot and which are junk. In the first two games, it took me a good while before I learned to recognize what is worth picking up, and before that, there were many frustrating moments of ending up with a junk object and having to drop it on a stone floor, alerting every nearby guard. Garrett is a master thief; he knows what is valuable and what isn't, and no guesswork should be necessary. What sucked was the implementation, where the loot items shone like beacons that could be spotted from half a mile away.
New Horizon on 30/7/2008 at 19:29
Quote Posted by Jah
I thought the idea behind loot glint - what I at least assume the designers were trying to do - was good: Make it easier to tell which items are loot and which are junk. In the first two games, it took me a good while before I learned to recognize what is worth picking up, and before that, there were many frustrating moments of ending up with a junk object and having to drop it on a stone floor, alerting every nearby guard. Garrett is a master thief; he knows what is valuable and what isn't, and no guesswork should be necessary. What sucked was the implementation, where the loot items shone like beacons that could be spotted from half a mile away.
Sure, Garrett is a master Thief...but as the player...you have to 'learn' to become Garrett, the game shouldn't spell it out for you. T1 and 2 did a pretty good job of making junk look like junk and loot look like loot. The implementation did suck, but it was only needed because the textures lacked enough definition to tell what was loot from junk. If they had added 'specular' textures to loot items, so that they were a tad bit shiny, that would have helped a lot. You won't find any loot beacons in TDM, we've taken the T1 and 2 route of simply making the loot look valuable, and also by making the items shiny when appropriate.
Making mistakes is part of the game, and part of 'growing' into the character of Garrett. It drives me nuts when it's expected that the game should point everything out to you because 'the character' would know. You have to become that character...it's a slow, painful process, but it's worth it. I could blow through TDS so quickly, there was never a chance to become Garrett...I was simply pointing him in different directions and pressing buttons.
Goldmoon Dawn on 30/7/2008 at 20:01
Quote Posted by New Horizon
You won't find any loot beacons in TDM, we've taken the T1 and 2 route of simply making the loot look valuable, and also by making the items shiny when appropriate.
I havent drooled in a while! :ebil:
Quote Posted by Jah
I thought the idea behind loot glint - Make it easier to tell which items are loot and which are junk.
Have you been drinking man?!?!
In Deadly, you are correct in that assumption! I'm not sure how much experience you had with the first title, but in Dark Project loot was almost too obvious! Thats why we love it. It looks like freakin' loot! On the other hand, since the absolute dumbing down of loot glint was out of the way, the designers chose to spend their time masterfully crafting cool places to hide this obvious loot. Im telling you, loot could be sitting right in front of your face as you nervously crept past the same area or whatever. The game built up suspence and disbelief enough that when you finally noticed the loot, you felt challenged, and good. Taking junk, which is what it was, and giving it a loot glint to differentiate it from the actual nonglowing junk is a travesty and a mockery to the original. However; it perfectly suited the title it was used in.
Beleg Cúthalion on 30/7/2008 at 20:08
Afaik the loot items DO look different in TDS, with fancy ornaments etc.. But there have been times that I was glad that a small key or copper goblet gave a little glint when buried beneath a lot of other stuff. And at least with JohnP's textures it's not like they attached a lamp to every piece of loot, so for me the only disadvantage might be that you can see it from a couple of meters away.
New Horizon on 30/7/2008 at 20:17
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
Afaik the loot items DO look different in TDS, with fancy ornaments etc.. But there have been times that I was glad that a small key or copper goblet gave a little glint when buried beneath a lot of other stuff. And at least with JohnP's textures it's not like they attached a lamp to every piece of loot, so for me the only disadvantage might be that you can see it from a couple of meters away.
The main issue is that the TDS textures don't really stand out as they should. There are cups that share the same model but are just reskinned...the loot texture is barely discernible from the junk texture. It's also the resource saving texture sharing that causes a lot of issue, as textures are so generalized they could be using the same texture for loot as they did on a pillar or fancy wall...causing everything to blend together.
If they had simply used a specular texture to shiny up the loot a bit, that would have made a lot more sense.
Jah on 30/7/2008 at 20:30
Quote Posted by Goldmoon Dawn
Have you been drinking man?!?!
Of course. How could a sober person possibly disagree with you?
Melan on 31/7/2008 at 05:27
Quote Posted by Zillameth
Bad game design is better than no game design at all. Focus groups are tricky, but it's better to know one player's opinion than not to know any opinion at all. TDS might be not exactly what veterans of the series expected, but it's playable and somewhat enjoyable in its own way.
Teams that don't do game design tend to have their projects cancelled.
All good teams do game design, in fact, yeah. But what I am talking about is the highly theoretical "here is how to have fun" school of designing games that, by thinking in narrow recipes, takes edge, surprise and imagination out of gaming. Unified ammo, for example, is an example of game design gone wrong; "streamlining" in general is another. I just believe thinking about things intuitively is often more useful than going into game theory. There is also, I think, an one-upmanship element among game makers that places theory over practice.
On focus groups, they might be useful in some respects... but focus group teams are almost always mentally retarded 14 years olds with a caffeine and sugar addiction, the kinds who chew on the jostick and don't want complex words and readables and crap. They will not like anything not on their level, and, frankly, if these types had to be placated during the making of Thief, the game would have been about Garrett blasting guards with his eXtreme auto-crossbow. I detest a gaming scene where everything has to be written down to blithering idiots. If that's the business, more power to game companies.
But I am no longer buying, not until someone gives me something interesting.
nicked on 31/7/2008 at 11:15
Instead of loot glint, they should made loot highlight a different colour. So you only know its loot when aiming directly at it within reach.
Goldmoon Dawn on 31/7/2008 at 13:03
For Heavens sake man!
With todays advanced graphics technology, why not just make loot look like loot? I just dont get it! Why take a mundane item that is otherwise worthless, slap a "graphical enhancement" on it and call it loot?
jay pettitt on 31/7/2008 at 13:15
Quote Posted by nicked
Instead of loot glint, they should made loot highlight a different colour. So you only know its loot when aiming directly at it within reach.
ooh, neat; I hadn't thought about that.
Quote Posted by Melan
I just believe thinking about things intuitively is often more useful than going into game theory. There is also, I think, an one-upmanship element among game makers that places theory over practice.
A necessary evil of big project management perhaps. When you've got a hundred staff and a budget of millions working over a period of several years on a massive and complex project - intuition probably isn't going to cut the mustard in any kind of big way. I suppose you might hold up Deadly Shadows' flawed rewrite of the Unreal engine as reason not to do it.
