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ShadowOfHassen

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Posts posted by ShadowOfHassen

  1. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    13 minutes ago, Vantha said:

    I think it's a great idea. I was originally not planning on teaching the player the diplomacy system, but this is a nice opportunity to do so. We could make scenario 3 focus on fortifying the city and repelling an assault. But in the end actually negotiate an alliance with the attackers: For instance, gifting them some food to help with a current shortage (and maybe arranging some intermarriages). And in exchange the player gets access to the Iberian embassy building in the next scenario (therefore the ability to hire mercenaries) to use in the large attack in the end (against some Roman target).

    That sounds like a plan we’d just have to design scenario 3 so the player couldn’t conceivably brute force their way to victory without becoming allies but we should be able to figure that out .

    • Like 2

  2. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    Good observation. Perhaps after a scenario or two of war, the player finds it beneficial to ally with said enemy and halt hostilities. Run the full gamut. So then the player learns about the diplomacy and trading features that way, by making peace with a faction you were at war with. Common enemy? (Romans are encroaching now)

    Perhaps … we should teach alliances last I remember we were going to just have an allied group help you in one of the scenarios but this could work to as long as @Vantha and @Lion.Kanzen are ok with it 

    • Like 1

  6. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    17 minutes ago, ChronA said:

    Especially given that you guys seem to be trying to build a tutorial campaign, I recommend building your scenarios first and then writing your story around them, rather than coming up with story ideas now. It is hard enough to create compelling scenarios that are both entertaining and instructive. Trying to simultaneous line up those features onto a preset sequence of narrative beats is going to be nigh impossible. it will end up as an impenetrable jumble, where your story is constantly being interrupted by tutorial segments, and gameplay consists of a dry sequence of over-scripted set pieces intended to support the tutorials and story but lacking opportunities for organic creativity or challenge.

    Setting and premise is pretty much all you should have at this point. Save the rest for after the scenarios are in a playable state. Personally I think the best development sequence is tutorial -> gameplay -> tutorial -> story. Basically you start with a general outline of what skills you want to tutorialize, then you build a fun gameplay scenario to test those skills. At that point you finish up the tutorial scripting to work around the dramatic beats of the gameplay scenario. Then and only then do you write your story and characters. The skills you need to teach will inform your protagonist's motivation and the story problems that they will face, and the gameplay will inform their characterization.

    Starcraft 1's campaigns are a master class in doing this right, particularly the Terran campaign. Its tutorial goals are to teach you to control your units, how to build and defend a base, and finally how to command large armies. Thus we get gameplay and a story about an outnumbered group of refugees fleeing from the Zerg until they join up with an armed rebellion and overthrow on the colonial government. This ludo-narrative dramatic arc is supported by Jim Reynor's characterization: an inexperienced and reluctant leader who is radicalized by the scenario's unwillingness to give him the resources he needs to effectively protect his people, leading him and the player to get in bed with some really questionable characters and do some pretty messed up things to get the power to change that reality. It's a great tragic story arc that perfectly reflects the tutorialized gameplay progression of the campaign.

    Yeah you’re right. we already have a rough list of what we want to teach so we’ve kind of already done that , we’re just keeping the other stuff in mind while be build the maps.

    what I think both you and @Vantha are touching on is on the story to gameplay slider rts usually focus more on game play and I agree. But we can still do a pretty good story while we’re at it.

     

    but obviously with the tutorial gameplay and game mechanics first .

  8. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    7 minutes ago, Vantha said:

    I don't think its comparable to movies. But you're right, players will click away if Hasdrubal starts talking in Phoenician. :P

     

    i believe that's something we should provide as well. A small page called something like "historical background" that explains the campaign's historical context. And helps players embed the story told into their existing knowledge (Carthage, Rome, Punic Wars, Hannibal, ...)

     

    Well, I'd actually prefer this. It's more like paging through a history book. But I'll leave that decision up to you writing minds.

    So what if we had a kind of overview when you start the campaign, a section called historical background, then we have a description that shows up in the scenario selection area and during loading and finally there is some dialog/ objective information in game.

     

    I mean, in a single scenario you might have multiple objectives I.E. destroy the tower, build a civic center, train 10 hopilites, and you kind of need to get the player to realize they need to do that.

    • Like 1

  10. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    39 minutes ago, Vantha said:

    Do we really need dialogue to tell the story?

    Certainly a hot take, but I find cutscenes (especially with voiceovers) in RTS's very awkward. Why would Carthaginian generals talk in English? And with the moments of silence in between shouted lines, speeches sound very unnatural and feel everything else but "real". If anything, it takes away from the immersion for me.

    In my mind, there are three ways to convey information in a video game (i.e. Plot)

    The first way is atmospheric story telling. I.E. there's a skeleton right next to a dark cave. The player then gets the impression that something dangerous is there.

    The second way is lore dumps. This could be a book or terminal in game, or the loading tip. They're nice to know information that flushes out the world. It's not necessary, though, and you can not look for it and ignore it.

    The final way I think information is given is direct information given to the player that is necessary for them to complete and/or understand the game. I call this dialog, though there could be a better way to say it. Basically, it's the thing that says. "Hey, Player, you need to get these elephants over the alps"

    Now, of course you could do this different ways. You could have a description before starting the scenario "One day Hannibal decided he wanted to take his elephants to go visit Rome, and to do so he needs to get over the alps"

    Or you could have direct dialogue (which is how you meant dialogue) like:

    "Hi Hannibal, what do you want to do today?"

    "Well, I've been thinking and I kind of want to take my elephants to go see Rome."

    "Well, first we'll have to get them over the alps"

    I wrote the examples rather silly, but I think you get the basic point.

    For scenarios for 0 A.D. We'll often need to make it very clear to the player what they need to do. And in those cases I think direct dialogue would be better. There's a rule in writing that isn't always right called show, don't tell. And I do think showing what is happening in cutscenes and dialogue is better than just telling with a text box that says. "Move the Elephants across the alps"

     

    I agree with @Lion.Kanzen with the translation. We wouldn't probably have voice actors, so that would give us a bit more wiggle room if we just have written dialogue to help address at least the silence problem.

    The only problem is you'd be brought out of the game whenever there's dialogue because you'd have to read it, so we'd probably use it sparingly anyway, mostly at the start and end of the scenarios.

     

  15. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    14 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    Instead of Aleppo Pines (which use old and ugly actors) for Mediterranean and Aegean pine trees, I've been using Pine_Maritime, which look a lot like Aleppo Pines and other coniferous trees I've seen in Mediterranean basin photos. 

    For near the coast, medit_fan_palm, date_palm, and cretan_date_palm. Oak_holly is fine for some decorative or stragglers. Berries should be gaia/fruit/grapes. :) 

    Hills can be covered almost completely in bush_mediterranean and bush_mediterranean_dry. 

    7xtnbZ6.png

    t8YgTRu.png

    You know we could usually use those screenshots and post them on the social media places. They look really, really good.

    • Thanks 1

  20. On the usage of AI to generate 0 A.D. content

    in Official tasks

    Posted · Edited by ShadowOfHassen

    I'm going to be honest, if AI starts to be openly used for art and stuff, I'd probably stop helping.  I have too many problems with it. I could list them all but a big one is I want to be working alongside of a team not people trying to speed run and see if the game can get done quickly.

    With all due respect, If someone really wants to see the game out sooner rather than later, instead of suggesting/ using AI. They should do the best they can to help.

    13 hours ago, Wijitmaker said:

    I get the glory/honor of doing things from scratch - and I respect that.  But at the same time I'm thinking... 25 years in development?  I hope this thing gets to beta before I die :P

    Well we were talking about just removing the alpha and put it in beta...

  21. The toxic player Issue

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by ShadowOfHassen

    20 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

    well we want to make spamming accounts more difficult, but not at the expense of first time account creators. Having to register an account here to play multiplayer would probably stop lots of ppl from trying multiplayer.

    Hmmm--- This might require some brainstorming. There's probably another topic for that, but another idea is the game Team Fortress has a kind of premium mode where you get better stuff if you buy a skin or something (Or soI've heard. Again I play very little online) could we do something like that except instead of paying require a forum link of some kind? You can give it a whirl, but you only get special features if you're verified.

    I don't know what the features would be, but it'd need to incentivize normal people creating a forum account. Another idea is requiring an email for the lobby, just to make it a little harder. I think the cool open source game Veloren was having some problems with bots recently, and that might've fixed it. (Bots are different from smurfs, but it's a little bit of an extra step) We could also talk to administrators for Minetest Servers and other open source games to see what they do.

    If a lot of them have the same problems, maybe we could pool our the brightest minds, and they could come up with some kind of open source method to help mitigate/ remove the problem.

    I think the ultimate solution is if we had a TON of players, then if there's one or two bad eggs nobody would notice.

    • Like 3

  23. Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    1 minute ago, Vantha said:

    Yeah. I'm still working on the map every now and then. My expectations might maybe be too perfectionistic, which is why it takes me so long. Of course, doing it all in one weekend was a bit too optimistic. :D

    And I won't try to estimate when I'll be done since that has gone wrong enough times in the past. But once the map is finished we can get right into writing and scripting.

    Great! I can help with writing-- I can also help with coding scripting if it's something easy like python or Lua, though some other people might be better qualified.

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