Development Info Cyclopean Dev Update

[Dyspaire]

This does not bode well for our time and space. It was forever through a game that They would re-emerge.

The gate will be a curious mechanic. This has been foretold.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Behold the horrible complexity of a script that calls guards!

IF

Delay(10)

Range([PC],20)

ReputationLT([PC],4)

!StateCheck([PC],STATE_INVISIBLE)

!StateCheck([PC],STATE_IMPROVEDINVISIBILITY)

!GlobalTimerNotExpired("RepTrap","GLOBAL")

!GlobalTimerNotExpired("MostNobleOrder","GLOBAL")

Global("MostNobleOrder","GLOBAL",0)

LevelGT(Player1,13)

THEN

RESPONSE #75

SetGlobal("MostNobleOrder","GLOBAL",1)

SetGlobalTimer("RepTrap","GLOBAL",1200)

Wait(3)

DisplayString(Myself,8205) // ~Guards approach. Obviously word of your misdeeds have reached the authorities.~

CreateCreatureObject("JOLUS",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Jolus~

CreateCreatureObject("WILLIAM",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Branet Al-Thon~

CreateCreatureObject("ALEX",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Beverus~

CreateCreatureObject("RYAN",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Paritin~

CreateCreatureObject("ALHEL",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Alhelor~

CreateCreatureObject("KENDAK",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Laren~

Wait(40)

RESPONSE #25

DisplayString(Myself,8205) // ~Guards approach. Obviously word of your misdeeds have reached the authorities.~

Wait(2)

END



IF

Delay(10)

Range([PC],20)

ReputationLT([PC],4)

!StateCheck([PC],STATE_INVISIBLE)

!StateCheck([PC],STATE_IMPROVEDINVISIBILITY)

!GlobalTimerNotExpired("RepTrap","GLOBAL")

THEN

RESPONSE #75

SetGlobalTimer("RepTrap","GLOBAL",600)

Wait(3)

DisplayString(Myself,8205) // ~Guards approach. Obviously word of your misdeeds have reached the authorities.~

CreateCreatureObject("AMNCEN1",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Amnish Centurion~

CreateCreatureObject("AMNLEG1",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Amnish Legionary~

CreateCreatureObject("AMNLEG1",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Amnish Legionary~

CreateCreatureObject("AMNLEG1",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Amnish Legionary~

CreateCreatureObject("AMNLEG1",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Amnish Legionary~

CreateCreatureObject("COWENF1",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Cowled Enforcer~

CreateCreatureObject("COWENF1",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Cowled Enforcer~

Wait(40)

RESPONSE #25

DisplayString(Myself,8205) // ~Guards approach. Obviously word of your misdeeds have reached the authorities.~

Wait(2)

END



IF

Delay(10)

Range([PC],20)

!StateCheck([PC],STATE_INVISIBLE)

!StateCheck([PC],STATE_IMPROVEDINVISIBILITY)

!GlobalTimerNotExpired("RepTrap","GLOBAL")

!GlobalTimerNotExpired("MostNobleOrder","GLOBAL")

Global("MostNobleOrder","GLOBAL",0)

OR(2)

Global("FollowGarren","GLOBAL",1)

Global("FollowedGarren","GLOBAL",1)

THEN

RESPONSE #75

SetGlobal("MostNobleOrder","GLOBAL",1)

SetGlobalTimer("RepTrap","GLOBAL",1200)

Wait(3)

DisplayString(Myself,8205) // ~Guards approach. Obviously word of your misdeeds have reached the authorities.~

CreateCreatureObject("JOLUS",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Jolus~

CreateCreatureObject("WILLIAM",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Branet Al-Thon~

CreateCreatureObject("ALEX",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Beverus~

CreateCreatureObject("RYAN",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Paritin~

CreateCreatureObject("ALHEL",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Alhelor~

CreateCreatureObject("KENDAK",Myself,0,0,0) // ~Sir Laren~

Wait(40)

RESPONSE #25

DisplayString(Myself,8205) // ~Guards approach. Obviously word of your misdeeds have reached the authorities.~

Wait(2)

END

 

[poocolator]

Killing Children
You can't kill children. The reason is that I personally find it distasteful, the end. There will be very few children in the game and fewer opportunities to attack them anyway, but one particular quest involves rescuing children and I need a mechanism to explain this exception. I was thinking of allowing combat to start, but making the children unhittable and simply having them flee. Or I could just not allow the player to target them, perhaps with an explanation that you would have to be mad to attack a child.

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,1416.0.html
Argh. At least he's coherent in his explanation. The guy doesn't like the idea of killing children because it irks him. I respect that he doesn't then go on to talk about how "fun it is to kill grannies, durr hurr durr derp derp."

Disallowing killable children kills (hurr) the impression of freedom for me. However, the game can still be an astounding enjoyment for me to play. FO3 was not, because it implemented unkillable children wrongly. Not only was FO3 shit in the rest of its parts, but having that fucking Little Lamplight (or whatever it's called) thrown in to taunt players-- voila! A recipe for a terrible experience.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Killing Children
You can't kill children. The reason is that I personally find it distasteful, the end.

...

 

[Black Cat]

Killing children, murdering random peasants, and looting random houses are the elements of a true role playing game, indeed. How do they dare not include such thingies?! I question. Burn them, burn them all. And stuffies, nya.

Seriously people, the consequences for random murder and random house breaking would be either totally superficial (police comes, bang, you are totally dead) or too much work for a gimmick you are only going to see once or twice and stuffies since this isn't suposed to be a Phoenix Wright thingie. He should, and probably is, be asking himself how would this or that help the game as i envision it instead of adding gimmicks just because he can and stuffies, and i really don't understand in which way killing random people and breaking into random houses would help a lovecraftian horror and mystery game.

 

[shihonage]

a bloody mess

Looks like, whoever wrote that, haven't established enough hardcoded faction/hostility/combat framework. You can't do EVERYTHING through external scripting, and above is proof.

 

[BeholderX]

Limiting player choice just because the developer is a pussy who finds something "distasteful" or is just too plain lazy to give us the option to is Bethsoft-level shit.

RPGs should let the player make his own choices, no matter how stupid and doomed to failure some choices might be. If I want to freak townspeople the fuck out with my mythos spells for the lulz then let me do it, even if it means I've doomed my character to a brutal nigger beating from the cops.

I appreciate the irony of this statement considering that Morrowind is one of the very few RPGs that let you kill literally everybody everywhere in the game, including vital main quest characters and the local deities, yet still continue playing.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Killing Children
You can't kill children. The reason is that I personally find it distasteful, the end.

...

Outrageous. A guy who's making a game doesn't want to include a feature he doesn't like. What is the world coming to?

 

[Marsal]

Killing Children
You can't kill children. The reason is that I personally find it distasteful, the end.

...

Outrageous. A guy who's making a game doesn't want to include a feature he doesn't like. What is the world coming to?

So he likes killing people that are not children?

Pliskin, is it so hard to type "ou" between "y" and "r"? Don't be a Qwinn.

 

[BeholderX]

Killing Children
You can't kill children. The reason is that I personally find it distasteful, the end.

...

Outrageous. A guy who's making a game doesn't want to include a feature he doesn't like. What is the world coming to?

Please stop putting up strawmen in these threads. The reason people have a problem with that statement is because the fetishization of children in western society has caused endless human misery and injustice in every aspect of our adult lives, from the imposure and subsequent misuse of tax dollars to the systematic ostracization of celibate and asexual individuals. There is nothing morally or ethically wrong with killing fictional children, and it might even be a healthy way of releasing any violent impulses you have built up over the centuries of injustice that mature gamers have had to endure.

If a developer chooses to reinforce those exploitative and harmful notions by transforming all children into unkillable angelic superhumans is just as despicable, if not worse, as making all the women in the game rape-able. It propagates a sick, ageist culture, and any game reviwer worth his salt is going to critizise it as such. If the devs don't rethink their decision, and pronto, this game is going to bomb. Hard.

Of course, if the developers want to be up front about their bias and market the game as a "kiddie" or "juvenile" game, that's fine by me - at least that's being honest! But don't pretend that you're targetting an older audience with your press blurbs when the actual gameplay speaks a very different language entirely.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

a bloody mess

Looks like, whoever wrote that, haven't established enough hardcoded faction/hostility/combat framework. You can't do EVERYTHING through external scripting, and above is proof.

So, what's wrong about it? It works in game and does what it's supposed to do. Also, it's Bioware.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Killing Children
You can't kill children. The reason is that I personally find it distasteful, the end.

...

Outrageous. A guy who's making a game doesn't want to include a feature he doesn't like. What is the world coming to?

Please stop putting up strawmen in these threads.

Look up the definition of stawman.

The reason people have a problem with that statement...

How many people are having a problem with this statement? 2? 3?

... is because the fetishization of children in western society has caused endless human misery and injustice in every aspect of our adult lives, from the imposure and subsequent misuse of tax dollars to the systematic ostracization of celibate and asexual individuals.

Like, seriously?

There is nothing morally or ethically wrong with killing fictional children, and it might even be a healthy way of releasing any violent impulses you have built up over the centuries of injustice that mature gamers have had to endure.

I see.

 

[Mortmal]

Try being teacher one year, youll reconsider killing childrens being distateful...
However even i traumatized by those little brats dont consider it to be a mandatory feature.
Unkillable npc is usually bad design , fallout did it righ everyone was killable and you could still finish quests just by finding documents, but we are speaking of a post apocalyptic world, in 1920 you cant get away with this easily.
Its easy to solve it, kill the wrong npc just launch a small cutscene with a story explaining that your quest is doomed, you dont have any trails n and the police is tracking you now, you dont even need a script spawning police , thats not improving realism . Even with a pen and paper session theres limits , kill the plot npc and the game master will take care of your characters in very original and picturesque ways .

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Everything that lives is mortal. Yes, kiddies too. Immortality is an unforgivable heresy.
Even when it's granted to plot NPCs, it is barely tolerable and should be avoided.

 

[Victor Pflug]

Killing children is fun, I'll give you nay-sayers that, but in no cool RPG I know of can you turn killing children into anything more than just that. A moment of kill crazy amusement. You kill a kid. Wow. He's dead. You can't kidnap and ransom him. You can't do anything other than blow the tyke away. Fun for like 3 seconds then you load and do something that involves actually role playing to some extent.

In this game you can make a goddamn seriel killer character. Stalk women. Maybe wear thier skin. I don't give a fuck if I can't kill kids, because I can actually role play a seriel killer. Limiting options? Yeah, it limits one shitty little thing, but gives you a whole range of evil to commit as a dedicated and customized psycho, that no modern RPG I know of does. How is that lazy development?

"market the game as a 'kiddie'... at least that's being honest!"
Wth? The seriel killers opening quest is to hunt down a pretty socialite. How the hell is role-playing a guy stalking some chick with the bloody intent of eating her liver a 'kiddie' game?

 

[Yeesh]

Immortality is an unforgivable heresy.
Even when it's granted to plot NPCs, it is barely tolerable and should be avoided.

What about shopkeepers? Is it "intolerable" that in the vast majority of CRPGs, your average shopkeeper has a magical form of invulnerability that makes whatever ultimate villain you're going to face seem downright fragile?

 

[shihonage]

So, what's wrong about it? It works in game and does what it's supposed to do. Also, it's Bioware.

I thought you were complaining about complexity of scripting required to call guards. Now I am confused.

 

[Alex]

I don't really understand the reasoning behind not allowing characters to commit killing sprees in broad daylight. Sure, I can understand that being caught by the police would mean gameover, but it should be easy enough to avoid by simply covering your face and then escaping any pursuers on your trail. Maybe Scott was just trying to avoid situations where the players would stray too far from what the game is about, but I still think it would be better to somehow create some alternate path for these characters.

Either way, I think this is all indicative of a bigger problem in rpg design, more specifically, how we make stories interactive. We still mostly use branching paths when designing rpgs (like Cyclopean), and the number of states in a branching path story rises exponentially. Sure, you can avoid a lot of work by having certain stories be independent, but this isn't much fun. Interactive stories are at their best when the player's choice have great impact in many areas.

I have said this many times in the Codex. So much I am beginning to feel like a broken record. But I repeat this again: in order to offer better interactivity in rpgs, we need better ways to program and represent the story. Chris Crawford's Storytron system (which, unfortunately, looks like won't get off the ground any time soon) is one example of this. Still, any system that allows us to determine the "story state" through some calculations rather than simply mapping them all out beforehand would work.

Back to Cyclopean, if we were to have a story system where illegal actions are possible, but police reaction to it was somehow calculable based on variables (such as crime, presence of witness, closeness to PD, etc), the overall result would flow much better. Sure, there might be a ton of actions that are practically impossible, but it wouldn't feel like the designer is arbitrarily choosing what we can and can't do.

Heck, I think that if careful planning is done with a story manager, it would even be possible to ensure that either any given state still has one or more ways from it to complete the game, or it is a gameover state, which could then trigger some kind of gameover appropriate to that state. Also, by putting some care on developing the verbs (actions that the player can perform), we could even assure that different paths in the game would lead to very different experiences.

Anyway, I am not trying to suggest that Cyclopean should implement any such system. No rpg before (that I know of, at least) has done so, and it would be stupid to try to add it to a well defined, already started project. I am just trying to argue that there are other ways to solve this kind of problem without sacrificing interactivity, and that freedom to do what seems to be stupid only seems stupid because it is out of context. For example, one might say it is stupid to kill a child (I am not referring to Scott, he was clear in saying he just found it distasteful) for any reason. But there are various situations I can think where it would be better to have killable children. Here are some examples:

1- If the children are in a dangerous area, where combat can break out, having them killable by stray bullets could add a tactical depth to the situation and interactivity to the story.

2- For a serial killer, killing children could be advantageous since they are the least likely to be important later on.

3- On a certain situation, you might need to burn down a house where a cultist is supposed to live. But he has a daughter. Having to choose whether to take the kid out of harm's way could be an interesting dilemma.

By the way, I feel that one reason people might find it constraining to be unable to kill certain people, or to kill people in broad daylight, is because of verbs. In most rpgs, you are able to kill things. When some things are simply impossible to kill, or the kill verb becomes disabled, you are jarred a little. It is more clear that you are being railroaded to certain actions in order to continue. I would even argue that something similar happens when you are able to talk to some npcs, but not all. However, since people already expect this from a game, it is less jarring than not being able to kill. I also suggest that this is why people don't miss the ability to torture or rape npcs. Since the verb is never present anyway, people don't feel artificially constrained by being unable to rape or torture anyone.

I won't argue that the game should allow the verbs to be always usable. If Scott feels it is outside the scope the game, so be it. But I wonder if there aren't smart ways to get around (or at least diminish) this jarring effect. For example, I never missed the option to kill a shopkeeper in the Might & Magic Xeen games. I think this is because shopkeepers appeared in a completely different screen. I think that the obvious interface change helped establish the idea that a different set of actions was available at that moment. I dunno, maybe this is all a big brainfart, but who knows, maybe there is something here that is worth using...


VD: I am pretty sure BeholderX was just making a joke... Maybe you were joking too in your post, but these days I just can't tell anymore...

 

[Barrow_Bug]

Screenshots plz

 

[Darth Roxor]

How is killing a fictional set of polygons a morally wrong thing?

 

[shihonage]

If you don't want killing children, and you don't want retarded unkillable children, then don't put children into the game. Problem solved.

 

[Marsal]

If you don't want killing children, and you don't want retarded unkillable children, then don't put children into the game. Problem solved.

Don't be silly. That would break immershun

 

[Radisshu]

He finds killing children distasteful, okay.

But he doesn't find serial killers distasteful, since he put one in the game? He doesn't find fraternizing with evil orders worshipping insane space gods offering them human sacrifices distasteful? Why is killing children more distasteful than killing adults?

 

[Grunker]

How is killing a fictional set of polygons a morally wrong thing?

Can't believe all this "OMG it's not real!" bullshit being spewed around here. Yes, of course it isn't real. Yes, no one is a criminal for doing something like that in a game. So I don't think you should be arrested or anything like that. But that sure is fuck won't stop me from passing judgement on you if you enjoy doing something like that in a game. Anyone who could go through something like that mission and not feel sick to their stomach is a morally depraved individual, regardless of whether they take that depravity out on others.

Because it's not "just a game." It's presented in a way that is realistic and is meant to tug at the emotions of the player. All games (and indeed all art) does that to some extent. To deny that is to say that you have never felt the slightest bit of emotion at anything that ever happened in a game, book, or movie that you experienced. And if you say that, you're a fucking liar. And you're one of the worst kinds of apologists that ever existed in gaming history - much worse than any of those mainstream gamers that like to forgive bad rpg mechanics who we like to make fun of so often - if you simply say it's "just a game," when referring to this depravity in MW2. It's never "just a game" when presented in such a manner. It's not meant to be. For fuck's sake, in gaming terms it's a mission where you simply go through the level mowing down people who don't even fight back and are basically only there so they can die. And yet, all you people - you who praise challenge in games, who always speak in favor of good gameplay mechanics - are defending this mission against those who see it for the trash it really is, all the while jumping up and down and yelling "Lol it's just pixels!"

You moral cowards. The very fact that you praise this level and say that it's "fun" shows that you don't think of it as just a game, because in pure gaming terms it's a piece of shit. So you look at it in terms that the developers wanted you to look at it, all the while trying to deflect attention from both you and what that level truly demonstrates. Go fuck yourselves.

That level is the ultimate in video game depravity. It has you acting out a truly evil act, presented realistically - a complete inversion of what it should be. Art is about presenting the ideal. And yes, games are art too. Anything that an artist puts forth is his vision of the ideal. So just think of that now in context of that mission. Now, games are art, but there is also the gameplay element as well to take into consideration. But I've already established that there is nothing "gamist" about that level, so you have to look at it in purely artistic terms. And in those terms, they are presenting evil depravity and, what's more, forcing the player to experience it firsthand. It is complete filth, on the level of a movie or book that has a serial killer as the protaganist, or a rap song that is about raping and killing women.

But there's more to it than that, you say? Like what? Showing maturity in a game? Except that all the other missions are your classic "good versus evil" mission, as others have already pointed out in this thread, and that this mission is a jarring departure. Presenting a complicated moral dillemna? Meaningless without actual choices, and furthermore that would require more build-up. That level has all the interactivity of a cutscene, and yet instead of presenting it as such, they force you to play through it. It is celebrating depravity for depravity's sake, and as such deserves every kind of condemnation we can give it.

And as far as Fallout is concerned, that's a completely different situation. Fallout is about CHOICE, and as such the ability to kill everyone is a representation of the power of choice and the freedom that players have. Nothing is ever forced. When we all complained about the lack of killable children in Fallout 3, we were complaining about the lack of CHOICE in the game, since they were presenting it as a sequel. Because player choice is another means of presenting the ideal in games, since it gives more immersion and greater player interaction in a game, and no other art form can do that. But in the absence of choice, a game should always force you to play the hero. Always.

This mission is doing the complete opposite. It is filth. There is absolutely nothing, nothing, that is redeemable about it. And by defending it on this forum you are giving moral sanction to this artistic depravity, and as such deserve this post that I wrote and any other vitriol that may be flung at you in this thread. If you don't want such comdemnation, then shut the fuck up and start seeing things as they really are, for
once.

 

[Hory]

Outrageous. A guy who's making a game doesn't want to include a feature he doesn't like. What is the world coming to?

It's not a lacking feature as much as it's a moral code forced on the player in a genre that should put the player's morality first. It's also a questionable production decision - if there's any genre that dead children belong to, it's horror.

How is killing a fictional set of polygons a morally wrong thing?

Polygons aren't fictional. And how is killing a set of atoms morally wrong?