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| 14 AUG 2004 at 9:48pm | |
Jenny100Guild Master  Posts : 3510 Joined: 12 OCT 2002 Status : Offline | Keyboard/gamepad is rotten for inventory collection and management. It's much faster and easier to use the mouse for that. My biggest problem with the controls in Grim Fandango was not with moving Manny around but with the inventory. Some people seem to be confuse inability with inconvenience and personal preference. Both are important when choosing how to spend your money. Different physical problems require different solutions. If both wrists are affected by RPM (repetitive motion disorder), you can still use a mouse by putting braces on your wrists and using your knuckles or some other part of your hand to click the mouse. You can also do this to some extent with keyboard controls - but only if no dexterity is required and you aren't required to use multiple keys at the same time. But it's still inconvenient and clumsy to have to hold down a key continuously, which is more common with keyboard control than with mouse. Doing this with a gamepad is very difficult. You can set it on a table, but then it will flip up and fall on the floor when you try to push the buttons. Maybe you could glue it to the table or to a piece of wood to keep it from flipping up. But I haven't been motivated to go to those extremes. It's easier just to choose another game. For extended periods of gameplay, you have to find some way not to damage your wrists any more than they are - or choose a game with easier controls. Most people would choose the latter. |
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| 14 AUG 2004 at 10:59pm | |
Erwin_BrPrivate Detective  Posts : 455 Joined: 7 NOV 2002 Status : Offline | Funny thing is that the mouse is very important in todays, modern first person shooters, while those games could only be controlled by the keyboard in the very early days. Adventure games are going into the opposite direction : They were ahead of it's time, with their mouse movement --Erwin [url=http://justadventure.com/IndependentDevs/BadTiming/index.html][img]http://erbserv.emptyhouse.net/public/images/bt-forumbanner.gif[/img][/url] |
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| 14 AUG 2004 at 11:01pm | |
| Deleted User | Keyboard/gamepad is rotten for inventory collection and management. It's much faster and easier to use the mouse for that. My biggest problem with the controls in Grim Fandango was not with moving Manny around but with the inventory. Again the game, not the interface. Some people seem to be confuse inability with inconvenience and personal preference. Both are important when choosing how to spend your money. Maybe. But there ARE people that constantly complain about direct control/keyboard interfaces as being too hard, when in actual fact they haven't been given a good core example of it working in our genre because of the game interface. Why it illudes (spelling?!) adventure developers is beyond me. Different physical problems require different solutions. If both wrists are affected by RPM (repetitive motion disorder), you can still use a mouse by putting braces on your wrists and using your knuckles or some other part of your hand to click the mouse. You can also do this to some extent with keyboard controls - but only if no dexterity is required and you aren't required to use multiple keys at the same time. But it's still inconvenient and clumsy to have to hold down a key continuously, which is more common with keyboard control than with mouse. Doing this with a gamepad is very difficult. You can set it on a table, but then it will flip up and fall on the floor when you try to push the buttons. Maybe you could glue it to the table or to a piece of wood to keep it from flipping up. But I haven't been motivated to go to those extremes. It's easier just to choose another game. For extended periods of gameplay, you have to find some way not to damage your wrists any more than they are - or choose a game with easier controls. Most people would choose the latter. Again, games cater, unfortunately, for the majority. Most people don't have a problem with being able to use the keyboard. A few do, for whatever reason, and there are cirumstances where even pushing a mouse around the screen is difficult. The mouse vs direct control argument is a difficult one, and applying the argument so far and wide will introduce contradictions to even the apparently simplest way of doing things. Perhaps we should all just enjoy each game for what they are, none of them being perfect after all and even, as people did with the trucklike Uru, give each new method of doing things a chance. Dreamfall et al aren't even out yet, and I'm not pointing the finger at you Colpet don't worry, but people are already becrying their lack of mouse control. Lets wait and see. Grim Fandago was years ago. Hopefully the developers would've seen past mistakes and make them far smoother to play. |
| 14 AUG 2004 at 11:27pm | |
Jeroen StoutSchattenjger  Posts : 2798 Joined: 14 NOV 2003 Status : Online | Are controls the real issue here? Weren't there people that complained about going from text to cursor? I prefer cursor/keyboard mix... sort like a FPS in which you look around with the mouse, and walk with the keyboard. That's not too difficult. Just get descent hotspot control then. And who cares about the way, shape or form of the adventure... I want adventure! Look at the old games, they look worthless compared to what we have now... why object about slightly less looking 3d games now? What bothers me is the urge to make supersimple puzzles, storyline, to throw it all on graphics, to be the best in this - that - thus... there is no soul in larger games mostly. It's just money into a project. Look at Myst and Riven. They had soul. Then came along Exile... it was nice, good possible, but had no soul. And that is what's missing from newer games. Take a look at Revelations... "you'll never feel more emerged", "this game will be the best because the graphics are amazing with this ALIVE system we made"... what happened to "a thrilling plot that goes beond your dreams" and "logical puzzles that will make you use the world around you"? They need to innovate, but not just on graphics. Graphics can be like a pretty box. It might have 3rd grade rubbish chocolate in it. Still a nice box, but the chocolate you wouldn't give to your dog. That's how games are made these days.. pretty boxes with the 'wow' factor of the new mobile phone. |
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| 14 AUG 2004 at 11:27pm | |
MichalNGrand Inquisitor  Posts : 7058 Joined: 14 SEP 2003 Status : Online | Originally Posted By SquarejawHero (14 AUG 2004 11:01pm) I can never understand why keyboard control is called "direct", when the mouse is a lot more direct. I mean, with a mouse you can just click on the object and let the game do the rest. How more direct can you get? Not that I have a problem with keyboard control per se. It just is very inefficient for certain tasks compared to mouse control (notably inventory management). I liked the interface in games such as Deus Ex which combined (IMO very well) keyboard control with point and click. Now that I'm thinking about it, I believe this type of control goes all the way back to Ultima Underworld (released 1992). Why it illudes (spelling?!) adventure developers is beyond me. Correct spelling eludes most people, so I wouldn't worry about that I forgot my sig. |
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| 14 AUG 2004 at 11:41pm | |
| Deleted User | Damnit, I wrote "elludes" in the first place too. It's late, let me off. Mouse has its limitations. You've got the flexibility of wrist control, sure, and (on average) three buttons and a scroll wheel. It can't be adapted to everything and isn't always ideal in itself. For example, getting stuck in the scenery in Schizm I found myself using the WASD interface to maneuver out of situations, or just using WASD to get about quicker in general. From a third person viewpoint, either can be good. It just depends on preference, although you can allow for a more flexible way of playing through a key/mouse interface, as in DX. @Parrot - Farenheit looks pretty innovative to me in its presentation and reliance on physicality in acting. I'm really looking forward to that one... I'm also interested in seeing how the interface turns out. |
| 14 AUG 2004 at 11:45pm | |
MichalNGrand InquisitorPosts : 7058 Joined: 14 SEP 2003 Status : Online | Originally Posted By SquarejawHero (14 AUG 2004 11:40pm) I never said mouse was the only way! In fact for first person games, I find that a combination of keyboard (for moving around) and mouse (for aiming/manipulating object) is by far the most powerful and least clumsy. I forgot my sig. |
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| 14 AUG 2004 at 11:51pm | |
| Deleted User | I understand that... sorry, I was generalising... Back to bed... |
| 15 AUG 2004 at 1:12am | |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By MichalN (14 AUG 2004 11:45pm) I really enjoyed this combination in Titanic: Adventure Out of Time. As they described it, the mouse was your hands, the keyboard your feet. It was quite easy to get around and I'd love to see more games using the interface- one definite plus was that there was never any confusion over which direction you were going. With point-and-click first person controls, you have the problem of pixel hunting for the movement hotspots, and you have the problem of confusing the different cursors (I can't count the number of times I've confused the "move forward" and "look up" cursors in a first-person game). A 1st-person 3D game could very easily use the Titanic: AOT interface, allowing you to move around with freedom but still retain the ability to click on hotspots with the mouse. |
| 15 AUG 2004 at 1:17am | |
MichalNGrand InquisitorPosts : 7058 Joined: 14 SEP 2003 Status : Online | Originally Posted By Fickfack (15 AUG 2004 1:12am) That's a very good point! There are far too many games with mouse only control where I click to move in some direction and then I'm stuck wondering, "hey, now where am I at and which direction am I facing?". The "feet" vs. "hands" differentiation is useful as well. I forgot my sig. |
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| 15 AUG 2004 at 1:21am | |
jujigatameSchattenjgerPosts : 1976 Joined: 14 FEB 2003 Status : Online | Presently I have lots of choice when it comes to PnC adventure games You do? Frankly, excluding TLJ, I can't remember the last PnC adventure that knocked my socks off (I'd probably have to go all the way back to 1997), and there certainly isn't an abundance of new ones being produced nowadays. |
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| 16 AUG 2004 at 5:01am | |
| Deleted User | If you ask me, there will always be problems with the use of a swinging camera and keyboard controls a'la BS3/SH3. There were plenty of times whereby my direction of movement became confused in both of these games. The mouse/keyboard combination just feels so much more intuitive to me. There is nothing more annoying for me than the swinging camera. Hitman contracts is a 3rd person shooter, but its interface is nice a smooth because even in tight places the camera does NOT swing around, instead the view zooms in closer to your characters head and your perspective remains consistent. It works very well. I was forced to play URU in first person because I found the 3rd person controls counter intuitive. I couldnt agree more with SJH. The adventure genre seems to go out of its way to choose the most convoluted control mechanisms whenever they make the move into a 3D free roaming world. I play a LOT of FPS and I still find the "direct" controls in most of the free roaming 3D adventure games are brain dead and awkward. Problem is, people then draw the "incorrect" conclusion that 3D free roaming and control awkwardness go hand in hand, and there are so many examples in other genres of this not being the case. Have a look around... good controls have been done to death in other genres, why does it seem so hard in the adventure realm. |
| 16 AUG 2004 at 5:22am | |
DJ SouzaJourneyman  Posts : 1452 Joined: 19 OCT 2002 Status : Online | Presently I have lots of choice when it comes to PnC adventure games Originally Posted By jujigatame (15 AUG 2004 1:20am)He never said the choices were GOOD...: [center]DIEGO J. SOUZA&&Consulting Detective for Hire[img]http://www.justadventure.com/public_html/YaBBImages/smilies//detective.gif[/img]&&&&[img]http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v249/Fairygdmther/Avatars/A-G-E-S_SIG.jpg[/img][/center] |
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| 16 AUG 2004 at 5:27am | |
DJ SouzaJourneymanPosts : 1452 Joined: 19 OCT 2002 Status : Online | Originally Posted By MichalN (14 AUG 2004 11:27pm) Originally Posted By SquarejawHero (14 AUG 2004 11:40pm) So, it's "illudes", "eludes" or "elludes"? Haven't you 2 decided yet? [center]DIEGO J. SOUZA&&Consulting Detective for Hire[img]http://www.justadventure.com/public_html/YaBBImages/smilies//detective.gif[/img]&&&&[img]http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v249/Fairygdmther/Avatars/A-G-E-S_SIG.jpg[/img][/center] |
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| 16 AUG 2004 at 5:45am | |
MichalNGrand InquisitorPosts : 7058 Joined: 14 SEP 2003 Status : Online | Originally Posted By DJ Souza (16 AUG 2004 5:27am) I have - it's "eludes" I forgot my sig. |
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| 16 AUG 2004 at 9:27am | |
| Deleted User | D'oh! [smiley=doh.gif] |
| 16 AUG 2004 at 11:52am | |
colpetSchattenjger Posts : 1630 Joined: 12 APR 2003 Status : Offline | By JujigatameYou do? Frankly, excluding TLJ, I can't remember the last PnC adventure that knocked my socks off (I'd probably have to go all the way back to 1997), and there certainly isn't an abundance of new ones being produced nowadays. By DJ Souza He never said the choices were GOOD... I have a backlog of older PnC games - Rama, Drowned God, Connections, Pilgrim - to name a few. The new games I have that I can't wait to get into are Aura, the Arrangement and Mysterious Journey 2. Upcoming games that I'm anxiously anticipating are Myst 4, Dark Fall 2, Rhem 2 and Alida. Of the newer games I've recently experienced - Egyptian Prophecy, Crystal Key, Black Mirror, Nancy Drew Deception Island and Haunted Carousel - I haven't been disappointed. They provided good entertainment and fun. They weren't perfect, but I still got my money's worth. I guess I don't need to have my 'socks knocked off' with every game I play. In my most favorite games category, I have 2 recent games (certainly more recent than TLJ). Riven Myst Exile RealMyst Schizm Rhem Dark Fall Zork Nemesis Morpheus Obsidian Black Dahlia Timelapse Riddle of the Sphinx Reah It does seem that many people who are dissatisfied with the current adventure games are ones who have experienced other genres (FPSs, RPGs, and console games). They always want to compare the adventures to Doom 3 or Half Life. There is a group of gamers like myself who only play adventures and are satisfied with what is available today. As a consumer, I will continue to purchase the games that appeal to me, and ignore the ones that don't. That brings up the initial point of the thread. The new innovations don't sound so great to me, and as such I won't be lining up to buy them. Occasionally visiting Uru Live (KI 0063722 .&& |
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| 17 AUG 2004 at 3:04am | |
jujigatameSchattenjgerPosts : 1976 Joined: 14 FEB 2003 Status : Online | Most of the games you list are Myst-a-likes, which I cannot stand. Let's face it though, no matter what your tastes, standards have fallen for all types of adventures. Half the game you mentions are quite old, so you can't count them, and let's face it, most of the newer ones would have been considered mediocre also-rans 10 years ago. enying that the selection of traditional adventures has dwindled in both quantity and quality is just silly to me. I mean, come on. I've been playing adventures for 14 years. on't tell me the selection is just as good as it always was, because it just isn't. |
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| 17 AUG 2004 at 6:22am | |
sttngfan1701dIntergalactic Janitor  Posts : 45 Joined: 7 NOV 2002 Status : Online | Colpet, my original point for this post wasn't that adventures aren't good anymore. It was to say that due to our genre's lack of evolution, as well as sales figures that pale in comparison to what they were in the 90's, we can't make ANY argument whatsoever that it ISN'T an antiquated genre. Which is why Greg Kasavin's comment in Time magazine was accurate, and why I felt I had to respond to Randy's rather "sour grapes" reaction to the comment (and his implication that Kasavin was holding a double standard) in his column. I still enjoy today's adventures (Syberia, Traitor's Gate, ROTS, Pharaoh's Curse for example), but I'm just frustrated that more games haven't emerged that make an effort to utilize changes in technology. Why don't they? I don't know, but I'd venture to guess it's because people don't buy them enough to justify the investment. Yes, I LOVED Syberia, but god I was frustrated that the max resolution on it is only 1024 x 768. Yes, the artwork is beautiful, but you can virtually see the limitations of the game on that resolution. "If only..." I found myself saying. "It'd be perfect, if only..." Traitor's Gate and ROTS/Omega Stone were fun, as was Pharoah's Curse, but how long will we have to deal with pre-rendered graphics stuck at 640 x 480 or 800 x 600? Conspiracies, Schizm II, and Uru with their fully 3D worlds are huge steps forward. Yes, I understand there are people who JUST play adventures, and that's fine, but it pains ME to see that adventures are moving forward so slowly, because - and excuse the cliche - the opportunities are virtually limitless if we adapt to the new technology. Adventures on the new tech will STILL be adventures, with stories that we love, etc. I can't tell you how frustrated I was when I was inside one of the statues on Easter Island in Omega Stone and I couldn't see a THING unless I turned the brightness on my new LCD monitor all the way up (not to mention the opening movie skipping and stuttering to all hell, even on a brand new Radeon 9700 Pro which I had just bought : ), which of course then looked like crap when I got out of the thing and returned to the desktop. Since it was an independently-developed game I made allowances and forgave, but I still couldn't believe that even in 2003 I had to do something like that. I THINK the game had gamma correction (I don't remember), but it didn't help. The point is that's what really got me WISHING for a game based on current technology. I know this discussion veered toward control issues, but I must emphasize that while that comes with the territory of change to 3D, it shouldn't be the point of this argument. You have a point that, inherently, adventures can't be compared to Doom 3 or Half-Life, but those games just show us exactly HOW far we are behind the tech trend. To you or to many it might not matter, but it does to me and when I see a comment like Randy's implying that we aren't an antiquated genre, I have to speak up. Not caring about it is fine, but implying that the gulf doesn't exist or making comparisons between genres in the wrong context - like Randy did - is turning a blind eye to the facts. |
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| 17 AUG 2004 at 8:28am | |
MaciekIntergalactic Janitor Posts : 78 Joined: 14 OCT 2002 Status : Online | I generally agree that adventure genre needs to evolve. That's why about 3 years ago we decided to switch to real-time 3D instead of staying with prerendered graphics. And belive me, it wasn't easy to convince the publisher that this is right way to go. It was very important for the developer to keep up with technology changes, but we also wanted to move the genre forward, to make it more similar, 'compatible' with majority of the games. I know that many adventure players don't mind playing with mostly static, limited resolution prerendered images, but we want new gamers attracted to the adventures. And presenting them technology that is slightly outdated, completely different from games they know isn't likely to do the job. Unfortunately, I don't see a chance of the latest 3D technologies being using to develop adventures. They are extremely costly and I don't know any publisher who would like to invest that much money in the technology alone. Maciej Miasik&&[url]www.detalion.com[/url] |
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| 17 AUG 2004 at 8:22pm | |
jalexSchattenjger Posts : 2503 Joined: 5 MAR 2003 Status : Offline | Here is what I believe along this line. I agree as well about game not changing and in some respects that's good as radical changes quite often make them not as interesting to play. I think adventure games shoud focus on more realism like ways to open doors, caninets and things that are the way it's done in real life. Like you said it's the story that counts so they also need a good story and clues to keep us intersted and guessing as to what comes next. The clues should be hidden so when you examine things you get what to need to advance in the game without needing a walkthrough. That was the system that Sierra used and everyone here knows how much success they had. What we really need is games like these with our new graphic features added. In other words keep the bacics of the game simular and add things that don't change what adventure games are all about. A lot of adventure games these days have nothing to keep us intereted in how the story is going to come out and a lot of things that distract our thoughts on the story as it unfolds causing us to loose interest in the whole game. |
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| 18 AUG 2004 at 4:10am | |
Jenny100Guild MasterPosts : 3510 Joined: 12 OCT 2002 Status : Offline | Originally Posted By sttngfan1701d (17 AUG 2004 6:22am) Sheesh. I've played DOS games with gamma correction. It isn't exactly current technology. At least it isn't a new idea. You'd think every game would have it by now. |
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| 19 AUG 2004 at 3:51pm | |
ConMolSorcerer Apprentice  Posts : 396 Joined: 10 OCT 2002 Status : Online | http://avault.com/articles/getarticle.asp?name=nonfs&page=1 Is a great article about the pleasure of slow paced gaming by Bob Mandel - Randy talks about twitch gamers and this article talks about the underlying prevalent attitude of the bulk of todays gamers. |
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| 19 AUG 2004 at 7:47pm | |
Speaker4DeadIntergalactic JanitorPosts : 53 Joined: 6 APR 2003 Status : Online | The thing that's troubling me is this. It seems like an argumentative thread is that 3D graphics, direct control, etc. put a precedence on technological improvement rather than story-telling and puzzles. I really wish that was the case, because story-telling and immersion are what got me into the AG genre to begin with, but I really just don't feel that's the case anymore. There was a time as recently as 5 years ago when adventure games led the industry in terms of story-telling and plot, but as technology has advanced, other genres have come to surpass adventure games by a long shot, leaving them in the dust from a plot AND technology. I'd argue the two are related. When I think of the best stories I saw in games last year, I can't think of a single adventure game that came close. What adventure game offered as uniquely detailed and culturally fascinating world as Beyond Good and Evil? What adventure game could match the amazing scope and epic exploration of Windwaker? What adventure game had anywhere near as many twists, turns, or complicated plotlines as Planescape: Torment, or Xenosaga: Dur Wille Zur Macht? The genre hasn't seen a truly GREAT story since TLJ...the closest that's come is Syberia, and that was a disappointing cliffhanger that led into an even more disappointing sequel. I'm not saying all adventure games have terrible plots...certainly, the stories are on par with many games of many genres. But the really great stories are now being told in other genres, and all the adventure industry seems to be able to muster up is puzzle-fest set in Atlantis and/or Egypt? Is this because adventure game designers are worse? No, I'd say the flaw lies in intrinsic design, and in stuck-in-the-mud mentality. It's not that AG plots have gotten worse, it's that they've remaind, for the most part, stagnant, unevolving, just re-iterating the only real stories that a point-and-click interface allows. That's what it comes down to, I think...PnC design inherently limits the story you can tell, by limiting greatly the level of immersion. Beyond Good and Evil's world felt so immersive and real becuase you could move around in it, explore it at your leisure...Windwaker felt so grand because it allowed virtually limitless exploration. Direct immersion in an environment is not just an aesthetic choice...the kind of interactivity offered by PnC gameplay is so fundamentally limiting that, without absolutley brilliant writers who have long moved on to other genres, you really CAN only tell stories about Atlantis and Egypt. |
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| 20 AUG 2004 at 1:32pm | |
ConMolSorcerer ApprenticePosts : 396 Joined: 10 OCT 2002 Status : Online | Thats a great post.... The thing is that while Beyond Good and Evil and Windwaker are really immersive, they also are action games that require quick thinking and reflexes. They cater to the majority of gamers that like combat. So they have bigger budgets that support a bigger fan base. I contend that a great story can be told on a smaller budget...look at Dark Fall...without having to be revolutionary. Personally I can't wait for the Moment of Silence. It may 'represent an antiquated style of gaming' but it looks fun to me. |
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