Game design...

On Tue, 4 May 1999, Ray Ghanbari wrote:
> As much as I enjoy Breakout (and prefer Super Breakout), I really don't
> enjoy Arkanoid. It just isn't "old school" enough for me.
>
> For me, the classic pattern in the vintage games was a very small number
> of interactions that were simple to grasp and internalize, a variety of
> venues that made these interactions more interesting, and tight controls
> and speed and a sense of being at the edge of control.

Ditto. Score counts too. Scoring should be simple enough to be
understood and written down on a small card, but commensurate with
difficulty.

One thing I've noticed in new-school games is that scoring doesn't
matter. Whether it's through inflation (a million points a minute
for staying alive in many driving games from "Out Run" onwards),
or through lack of design (TMNT, one point per enemy killed, whether
"boss" or "cannon fodder"), a "score" on a new-school game often
means little. Part of this, I guess, is due to "lots of enemies
that behave the same way but look different", something impractical
with the limited graphics on old-school games.

(Flashy graphics don't preclude game design -- Blasteroids is a good
example of a game with flashy graphics and lots of enemies and powerups,
but maintains a lot of the elements of old-school scoring and gameplay.)

> Arkanoid added complexity in interactions (why the hell does this brick
> give me a powerup??),

I confess I'm not a big fan of "random powerups". If I were
Arkanoid's designer, I'd have made the bricks-with-powerups
distinguishable from the other bricks - and maybe even displayed
the powerups inside the bricks. (Perhaps only when a brick was
"exposed" and vulnerable to being knocked out - tempt the player
into trying to get the brick or avoiding it...)

Back to Tempest - I love the way that once you get past a certain
point, you can see the contents of the tankers *inside* the tanker
graphics before you shoot 'em, so you can gauge whether or not it's
worth the risk of shooting it. The higher levels would be much more
difficult (i.e. more so than they already are :) without this feature.

> By fixing the interactions to a *very* small space, you define the
> "rules" for the game universe. The venue then becomes a challenge
> rather than "cheating".

IMHO this is the difference between old-school play and the newer
"quartersuckers", where you _know_ the machine is gonna hit you once
for every two or three hits you get on the "boss" ("I got killed
because I screwed up" is more fun than "I got killed because the
boss alien decided to squish me like a bug instead of Player 2.")

I second Ray's call for player-controlled interactions. In the case
of Breakout, it'd be fun to see whether it's best to "split the ball
into three" early (say, just after you've broken through the wall),
or late (to avoid the "play Pong for 5 minutes just to get that last
brick I keep missing by a hair" syndrome) in the wave.

In general, I prefer games that call upon the player both to balance
both judgement calls based on reflexes (sub-second, "nail the immediate
threat" decisions) against longer-term (say, 3-5 seconds) strategic
considerations (e.g. do I use my Smart Bomb now or later? Do I shoot
this flipper now, or should I ignore it and nail it on the rim when
it comes near me?")

> Warlords kicks serious ass because the interactions are hyper
> simple, yet the venue creates the challenge. This is old school.

Request: Monochrome options on these vector ports. I'm a great
fan of those insanely-bright Asteroids bullets, and I've never
seen anything like them on a color screen. (Vector Breakout and
Warlords would be seriously cool with eye-burning single-point
balls... I wonder if you could vary the point's intensity for a
fireball-like effect in Warlords :-)

Since Warlords is a multiplayer game, it might be best redone as
a "defend the alamo" kind of thing. Player in middle of screen,
360-degree spinner control, four enemy castles in corners or on
edges... Maybe a "Star Castle" played inside-out...

> Of course, one of the advantages of writing your own games is
> being perfectly justified to ignore people like me ;-)

And me. I'm sure that whatever it looks like, we'll enjoy it.
It's definitely refreshing to hear talk of people developing on
these platforms again.

Later,
Doug.

-- 
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