Narrative Campaign General Discussion?

[ShadowOfHassen]

8 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

2-Having historical figures in the form of portraits will certainly give it depth.

I was wondering how we'd do dialogue. We don't exactly have voice actors so the Age fo Empires narrative strategy of cutscene + dialog in game might not work.

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 minute ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

I was wondering how we'd do dialogue. We don't exactly have voice actors so the Age fo Empires narrative strategy of cutscene + dialog in game might not work.

For now only text.

[ShadowOfHassen]

1 minute ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

For now only text.

Something like that with the text would work, though it might be smart to do something like how Wesnoth has a press space to continue for the dialogue, for slower readers.

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Something like that with the text would work, though it might be smart to do something like how Wesnoth has a press space to continue for the dialogue, for slower readers.

As if it were an RPG.

[ShadowOfHassen]

12 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

As if it were an RPG.

Yeah, at least for the moment... It would take some coding, but it'd be the best thing we can do currently...

[Vantha]

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.

But I have a strong suspicion I may be the only one here who thinks this way

[Lion.Kanzen]

32 minutes ago, Vantha said:

Carthaginian generals talk in English?

Like movies, they have an audience. The audience is the one who listens, they call it the communication process, if you interrupt them the message is not delivered.

Sí yo te escribo este mensaje en español, no lo vas entender especialmente si no usas un traductor.

Quiere decir que no  lo estás decodificando.

Edited 19 hours ago by Lion.Kanzen

[ShadowOfHassen]

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.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 minute ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

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.

 

May be skip the dialogue if you are speed runner.

[ShadowOfHassen]

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

May be skip the dialogue if you are speed runner.

Well yeah, skipping it is useful. If I'm stuck on a mission, I don't want to have to read the beginning of the scenario over and over

[Vantha]

2 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Like movies, they have an audience. The audience is the one who listens, they call it the communication process, if you interrupt them the message is not delivered.

Sí yo te escribo este mensaje en español, no lo vas entender especialmente si no usas un traductor.

Quiere decir que no  lo estás decodificando.

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

 

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

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.

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, ...)

 

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

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"

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.

[ShadowOfHassen]

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.

 

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.