Nathaniel Chapman
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Posts posted by Nathaniel Chapman
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So Joseph, what will it be? Realistic medieval action or over-the-top matrix limb chopping?
Over the top medieval matrix limb action.
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A game where you fight monsters in tunnels can only be a Good Thing.
I hope to see some proper old skool values in this game.
even without the rest o' the "cheers" stuff, the above statement makes soooooo obvious that mc is english.... not that there is anything wrong with being a pasty-faced englishman (unless you are a bp exec.)
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am knowing that mc is both serious AND tongue-in-cheek with his request, but if there is one thing that sends a chill down our spine when reading game development message boards, it is the oft repeated notion that there is "proper" values or mechanics. am not wanting a developer to have some hard and fast notion o' proper. is certain elements o' the rpg and crpg community that embrace gaming dogma with a disturbing 'mount of zealotry.
make the game fun, and let "proper" burn in the deepest and most godforsaken corner o' hell. so says Gromnir.
HA! Good Fun!
Obviously all entertainment media have an inherently subjective quality, and I don't necessarily think that there can be an absolute definition of the "proper" or correct course in any creative endeavor.
However, I do think that well thought-out mechanics have (at the very least) an advantage over haphazard mechanics. Not that bad mechanics in games are always the result of insufficient consideration in their design - obviously compromise always occurs due to schedule, implementation difficulties, or other unforseen (or poorly planned for) circumstances. But, I think that the ability to maintain a clear and consistent set of principles that inform the large and small mechanical decisions you make in light of those difficulties really is what makes a good designer.
The reason I bring this up is that "fun" is completely enigmatic and difficult to pin down. No game designer can really tell you what makes a game fun - they can explain what makes it interesting, how the gameplay presents interesting strategic and tactical choices, etc. I do think that trying to nail down what makes mechanics work in those ways tends towards a certain style of design, which is maybe why things start appearing dogmatic.
am all in favor of having coherent and well-designed mechanics, but the notion o' there being "proper" mechanics offends our delicate sensibilities. as far as we is concerned, there is not some kinda universal Proper Mechanics that is appropriate for all games... or even all crpgs. for example, some folks who use the "proper" descriptor while posting at rpgcodex has argued, quite forcefully, that crpg combat shoulds necessarily be turn-based. perhaps nathaniel would care to comment?
I personally disagree with an assertion that CRPGs should always have turn-based combat, because I haven't seen (and I think it would be quite difficult to make) a logically coherent argument that supports that assertion.
However, when you look at what (good) game developers talk about when discussing design you generally find convergence on some core ideas that are, essentially, what could be considered "proper" design. Things like, "The player should never lose in a way that feels arbitrary or unexpected". This assertion is based on foundations of game design that are themselves fairly well agreed upon ("games are series of interesting choices", "players should understand the ramifications of their choices", etc.)
Of course, there are places where it's acceptable to violate these rules, which is why I think "proper" is a better term than "correct". I'd liken this to classic Hollywood filmmaking or "proper" english grammar and diction. It's okay to violate "proper" design, but you should have coherent, clear-eyed reasoning as to why you are violating it.
After you design your game, whether or not you follow "proper" design (but especially if you don't), you need to verify your reasoning with playtesting. This kind of audience feedback is especially important in games because they are about player participation at such a fundamental level.
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A game where you fight monsters in tunnels can only be a Good Thing.
I hope to see some proper old skool values in this game.
even without the rest o' the "cheers" stuff, the above statement makes soooooo obvious that mc is english.... not that there is anything wrong with being a pasty-faced englishman (unless you are a bp exec.)
...
am knowing that mc is both serious AND tongue-in-cheek with his request, but if there is one thing that sends a chill down our spine when reading game development message boards, it is the oft repeated notion that there is "proper" values or mechanics. am not wanting a developer to have some hard and fast notion o' proper. is certain elements o' the rpg and crpg community that embrace gaming dogma with a disturbing 'mount of zealotry.
make the game fun, and let "proper" burn in the deepest and most godforsaken corner o' hell. so says Gromnir.
HA! Good Fun!
Obviously all entertainment media have an inherently subjective quality, and I don't necessarily think that there can be an absolute definition of the "proper" or correct course in any creative endeavor.
However, I do think that well thought-out mechanics have (at the very least) an advantage over haphazard mechanics. Not that bad mechanics in games are always the result of insufficient consideration in their design - obviously compromise always occurs due to schedule, implementation difficulties, or other unforseen (or poorly planned for) circumstances. But, I think that the ability to maintain a clear and consistent set of principles that inform the large and small mechanical decisions you make in light of those difficulties really is what makes a good designer.
The reason I bring this up is that "fun" is completely enigmatic and difficult to pin down. No game designer can really tell you what makes a game fun - they can explain what makes it interesting, how the gameplay presents interesting strategic and tactical choices, etc. I do think that trying to nail down what makes mechanics work in those ways tends towards a certain style of design, which is maybe why things start appearing dogmatic.
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The fact that it's going to be on consoles makes me sad. Can we expect a dumbed down interface Obsidian?
Considering that some consider Alpha Protocol's PC version a disaster port, I'd say this is sadly a very likely possibility.
Nope! Actually I don't want to do this just to be contrary, but here's where I get to say that GPG and Square have been great to work with and that the DS license has provided more opportunities than restrictions. I don't think I'd call this a "project to stay afloat" at all. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of an IP that's more pleasant to work with.
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I would've expected Gas Powered to be doing DS3 here. I wonder if they still own the IP - and if they don't, who does?
They do. The DS development is a mixpot though.
DS1: GPG/MS
DS1XP: Mad Doc/MS
DS2: GPG/MS
DS2XP: GPG/2K
DS PSP game: GPG/2K
DS3: Obsidian/Square Enix
Change devs and producers much?
Aaaactually the PSP game was developed by SuperVillian.
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I think you guys have a lot to look forward to with this one. (Hopefully not violating any NDAs by saying that...)
MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTT. We missed you.
So, can you say to us how much Obsidz have been working on it without violating any NDAs?
We've been working on it quite a bit!
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Thank you for your answer.
Now I know what you mean by the masses and markets. A strong demand and or numbers to support the work and effort of doing. Now, my little question is this.
If nobody really tries to do anything like make tools to build like the PC and the game it self to run well on other non Win systems. How is the market going to expand and or grow then?
The iPhone didn't start as a gaming platform, but it's become one pretty handily. The PC didn't start as a gaming platform either.
The Mac as a gaming platform will be successful alongside the Mac as a general computing platform.
The exception that you might cite for this is gaming consoles, but in those cases the first parties put a lot of money into developing killer games for their platforms to build the market and support the platform. Apple hasn't done this for gaming with the Mac (and they didn't *really* do it on the iPhone until the last couple OS releases with some new gaming focused features and the new Game Center in OS4). The iPhone became a successful gaming platform because it was a really good phone and people bought it for that.
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haha creepy creeps
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Now that Apple has updated the Macbook Pro line with Core i5/i7 CPU's and the new video CPU the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M. What are the thoughts of the Dev's and Programmers on this? Would this make the task a little easier if you all were to take on making games for the Mac? Again I'm saying doing something from scratch and not just porting over. The biggest hurdle that I know is the .NET vs OpenGL. Many of you may be too use to .NET and may find OpenGL old hat to you. But is it really old hat?
I just picked one of the new 15" MBPs up. They're sweet B). But they wouldn't really be any easier to develop for than any other generation of intel Mac.
.NET doesn't matter much for game code. It would just be a tools issue.
It's never been a question of difficulty, it's just a question of cost vs. reward. The market of additional people who would buy your game if you made it on Mac hasn't generally been large enough to justify the expense - but that changes as the market changes.
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Another real world RPG?polish level
ahahahaha.
This was the source of many jokes on NWN2 since we actually had a Polish language SKU.
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er, can we not do that? We need him over here...
Sorry, we all ready the paid the assassin and can't reach him :/
Don't worry, it was me.
Jokes (or serious business?) aside any hint on how close you're to an announcement?
Other generic question that expects generic answers : do you already have something strong to show off?
I don't want to touch prognostications on dates or anything. Sorry.
I will say that I feel we do already have something strong to show and we're really proud of the polish level we're going for on this.
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Is there a correlation between your numerous (relatively) posts these last few days and your position as Lead Designer on another project, Nathaniel? Any hints on what it is?
Re: your first question, not really.
To the second question, We're really proud of what we've been working on and we're really excited to show it off. We hope you guys will like it as much as we do.
But we can't and won't say anything about what it is until it's announced.
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Note that Steam and Source-based games being translated does not necessarily mean we'll see AP or other newer games ported.
What it means is that the tired argument that the Mac isn't financially viable as a game platform is baloney and can be put out to pasture permanently.
I know Obsidian probably still can't be bothered but meh.
We've actually looked into options for Mac versions before. Even if it hasn't been a viable platform in the past, it sure could get that way.
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Nathaniel Chapman seems like a pretty cool dude. I'm pretty sure there are some hilarious quotes from him in the NWN2 irc chat when the SoZ dev team came to chat.
Surely this is something to be respected!
Thanks! Actually probably my favorite part of working on NWN2 and the expansions (either as a designer or a producer) was interacting with the community. Despite the brutal honesty of a lot of the community members, it was a real treat to get to work closely with people who care enough about your game to spend time making stuff for it.
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One thing that I do really like about voiced PCs is that I think they make conversations flow a little more naturally, especially if you time out the conversation properly. This is something I noticed playing ME2 - because I could pick my option before the next line was up, the conversation just tended to have a nice flow where it felt like two people talking.
While I think that there's some benefit to having the character as a blank slate, I think that because you're essentially picking lines from a predefined pool in a dialog tree system, it doesn't harm things too much to have Player VO.
Obviously there's more practical concerns like VO cost, and whether or not that restricts the number of lines you can do, but in a perfect world I like player VO in the right kind of game.
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hahahahahah
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Good question. Why wouldn't we?
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in my experience it is a vast mistake to try and cross apply tabletop maths to a computer environment. On the tabletop we make result generation exciting through human interaction. On computer, we make result generation natural and exciting generally by going beyond the obvious and into complex algebra. Exposing that would be pretty much of interest to rules lawyers only.
I'd even argue that in a lot of cases traditional tabletop math isn't fun in tabletop games. For example, the emphasis in pre 4.0 d&d on success or failure being the major scaling aspect of your character at low levels (fancy way of saying you miss a LOT) on single actions that make up your entire turn really hurts gameplay even in tabletop sessions. It certainly doesn't help PC games, either.
Fallout handled this really well by letting you opt in to higher difficulty challenges (called shots) so you could scale as you gained levels without making you miss all the time in order to provide a sense of progression.
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I have a question, what do you think of the fact that the math in the Dragon Age rule set is so inelegant that they don't dare to show it to the player (I remember Josh saying in one blog post that a developer should show clearly to the player what the different abilities do)? Also, what about the fact that the description of some capacities really makes them sound under-powered while they are in fact extremely powerful (Arrow of Slaying, Sunder Arms and Sunder Armor come to mind)?
Personally for me the math isn't as important as the results of the math, if that makes sense. It isn't critical that you know how the armor scaling formula works in WoW as long as you know that it works, more armor is better, and that relationship is clear as you upgrade your gear.
Also, this is true because sometimes math that looks pretty inelegant can work out elegantly in practice. For instance, you may have a relatively complex formula generating the values that you end up with but as long as those values result in good gameplay, you're golden.
I think it's a mistake to intentionally obscure the math, however I don't think it's a requirement to display the math itself. On the other hand games should absolutely display the results of the math, i.e. how much damage an attack will do or your chance to score a critical hit.
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This is one of the things that bugs me a lot about current game design paradigms. The goal apparently is to get as many people as possible to buy a game, which I understand intellectually but I think is an incorrect approach, so games are designed primarily for people who have little actual interest in playing them or learning them.
It sucks when a hobby you have is reduced to the level of a pre-school intellectual exercise, just to make that hobby as inoffensive and mass-appealing as possible.
I don't know, I think it can go either way.
Simplicity in rulesets in my eyes can make a game trivial, or it can make it elegant; interesting gameplay isn't really dependent on how complex the rules are, it's dependent on how complex the player's choices are.
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I like the idea of classes for a very simple reason, they happen to be roles which are predefined which folks happen to know about.
The biggest issue is when you have classes which are not defined as a result of the design of the game, but which just happen to be there. Really a class should be defined based on how it affects the story, in NWN2 this is not as much of an issue since you "should" have a DM, and the classes help the DM who does it backwords, but the lack of maturity on the DM client and the fact it's a single player game 99% of the time show the shortcomings of this.
I do think it's a major issue when you just focus on a particular system, which is how most systems are done, really it needs to mature to the point where it's not patched on but integrated with the overall game design. The idea of doing the character creator afterwards and just putting in the options that affect game play is indeed very wise.
Of course there is a lot of folks who focus on more than just gameplay, the so called "role" players who are really looking for a sims like experience, where they make their character. So a little fluff will appeal to those, but you have to balance this overhead with the fact many don't like this. Being able to control appearance, and enter in a custom description likely would be all that is needed.
Aaaactually, I think a lot of the fluff things can be integrated into the ruleset in a smart way. However, that is really part of the 2nd or 3rd layer of development on a rules system.
I'd describe my approach as this:
1) Develop the core mechanics that will drive the game. For something like D&D or Fallout1/2, this would mean developing a simple version of the tactical combat game. For a more action oriented RPG, it would mean developing the action gameplay.
2) Determine the variables that make sense to expose to RPG progression. In a western CRPG, character development is a key part of the gameplay, and a lot of the job of an RPG system is to express that character development in the rulesset. So basically, you pick out from the core gameplay which variables you'll use to express tougher and weaker creatures/challenges/etc., and to allow the player to improve relative to those challenges.
3) Develop the framework in which those variables will be improved. This is the step that Josh and I are saying is mistakenly taken as the first step in a lot of systems. This is the point where you determine things like attributes, classes, etc. A lot of the choices here are more about how you want the game to feel, what kind of player experience you want to create for each class, etc. These are higher level goals that rest on the lower level gameplay you've constructed earlier. This is also where you'd tie together the classes in a way that integrates well with your story/world.
The real advantage to this system is that you really understand the foundation and can use that to elicit the kind of gameplay you want when setting up the more touch-y feel-y aspects like classes, stats, level progression, etc.
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I wouldn't worry about this negatively affecting Obsidian.
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Yeah, I have no idea what I was typing there. I think the main complaint I was trying to get through in that particular quote was the difficulty level of escaping the vault. Where you, as a 19 year old kid, easily dispact the Vault security and runs away. While Fallout 3 isn't an extremely hard game, it still clashes with the rest of the game I think. This is obviously due to it being the tutorial area, but the tutorial is still the start of the story in Fallout 3. I mean, you can punch your way through basically even if you haven't put anything into Unarmed. It sets a weird tone for the story's plausability right from the beginning.
But you are right in that I don't mind tutorials that are a seperate entity and not vital to the story (I know, I basically said the opposite in your quote
). But I do mind when the tutorial is integrated into the story/the game overall, and in *that* situation is a very seperate entity in terms of gameplay and feel.But yeah, I'm not a fan of the tutorial in general. I guess it can't be avoided these days but I much prefer it when you have the information in the paper manual, in a pdf manual and, best of all, available in-game somewhere where you can quickly check up info if you need it. I find it extremely annoying to go through the "press left mouse button to fire your weapon" stuff. I've played games for quite a while now thank you, they are generally not hard to figure out. If new players need to go through it then I'm sure there must be good ways to present the information to them without slowing down the experience for everyone else.
I think the way Left 4 Dead handles that stuff is really cool. They have some things that essentially detect whether the player is getting stuck performing necessary actions and then tells them what to do if so. For instance, if you start a game and don't move for a while, it says "Press WASD to move" or if you stare at an item and don't use it it will say "Press E to Use".
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I never liked this notion of the tutorial sorta being seperate from the rest of the game, and it being super easy (which is the case for most tutorials). Like in Fallout 3 where you murder a bunch of guards *really* easily when you escape. It just starts the game off on a weird note.
It sounds like you don't like the notion of it being integrated with the rest of the game - or, just that you don't like tutorials.
For instance, if instead of F3's tutorial, it had an optional tutorial that was a seperate level (think of the tutorial in Deus Ex) then it doesn't seem like you'd be as concerned with it? Maybe I'm reading what you're saying wrong.
). But I do mind when the tutorial is integrated into the story/the game overall, and in *that* situation is a very seperate entity in terms of gameplay and feel.
Obsidian making Dungeon Siege III
in Dungeon Siege III: General Discussion
Posted
I don't know why you make the assumption that an OEI DS3 wouldn't be story driven.