It's all in your head, Part 6

[BrianBlessed]

I'm going to admit that I never quite understood the hatred for creating content, I can understood how irritating it is for creating huge levels. However I remember the team saying that making the content for the demo level took several months, I literally don't understand how it took that long (which may sound incredibly condescending). I understood that they used 3dsmax to make the models and that the landscapes were all done with the generators and so on, it would be good if someone could explain what part actually took up so much time.

[NeoThermic]

I'm going to admit that I never quite understood the hatred for creating content, I can understood how irritating it is for creating huge levels. However I remember the team saying that making the content for the demo level took several months, I literally don't understand how it took that long (which may sound incredibly condescending). I understood that they used 3dsmax to make the models and that the landscapes were all done with the generators and so on, it would be good if someone could explain what part actually took up so much time.

Two words. Gameplay Mechanics.

It's great to create a level, but you must then tweak and tune it. You need to get the cam working right in it, events and triggers working fine, and then you've got to alter the map so that it isn't too easy, but also isn't insanely difficult. For example, in Darwinia, the original alphas of the mine level had you starting on the island with the trunk port on it. This was adapted, and you were then moved to the main island with the refinery on it. The level was then extended further with a trunk port added, some of the units moved and the level tweaked to make it playable (the original objective was some 100 polygons, meaning the users had to wait and do nothing while they refined them).

The second demo had a level that needed to repesent the whole game. It needed a fair few objectives to get that done, and it needed a whole storyline created for it. Content is a killer because IV do not have just one person they can use for pure content generation. Any content must involve the time of key people, meaning that sacrifices of code development must be made for content. That is unacceptable, and thus it just adds time.

NeoThermic

[The GoldFish]

Working from *nothing* is a lot harder than making a mod level - they could have *anything* they cared to code in the demos. Then they need it to have a plot. Then they need it to be fun. Then they need it to work. It's a huge balence, and changing any one little thing creates ripples through all the others. An idea for something fun that doesn't work out can be weeks of coding wasted, as there is no way to preview what it would be like until it's half finished.

Even though it was more complex, I would imagine that Demo2 was *a lot* easier for IV to make than the original demo was.

And don't forget that IV are full of coding geniuses, business managers and marketing gurus. I can make a half decent Darwinia mod in a day because they've already DONE 80% of the job for me. They've created characters who behave in a certain way, and once you have that you can put an idea forward and have a story write itself. They've created a list of buildings which work a certain way. If a Darwinia dev CD comes out, you'll see about as many decent code mods for it as we have Uplink, it is *exceptionally* hard to just pull functional, enjoyable and feasable ideas out of the bag and follow through implimenting them in code.

[BrianBlessed]

See, being a graphical man I can barely conceive content being a problem. Programming would be a huge huge problem for me, even trying to imagine coding anything is an unfeasibly large obstacle. As such, to me modelling a sprawling bosnian tundra or writing out a plotline is relatively easy in comparison with having to code....well anything.

[The GoldFish]

Yes, but if someone wants a BIG TOWER WITH EVIL LIGHTS, they can just tell you that. They needed to come to the conclusion that they needed one, should spend the time coding one in, and designing the level around said tower.

It seems to me from your post you haven't grasped the point. Even if you can *see how to do something*, a game is *not* just a list of somethings that were strung together - that's just what a game needs. But what a game *is*, that's a different story alltogether!

Why do you think most Darwinia mods never reach the public domain? Because modders play them a bit, realise their crap, and don't spend any more time on them. Imagine that 100 fold and you end up were IV were making the game. Now imagine that you're relying on this game to make you money, you're going to try a whole lot of things before you find something that works. Read up on the game development diary on the Darwinia sight, why don't you, and see how many things were changed or cut or reconceived.

[BrianBlessed]

The fact I can't grasp that is primarily because that is not how my development process works, I will have an idea (generally entirely randomly) then it just needs to be realised and fleshed out and developed. I think in any medium or the arts there are generally two development processes, one where the entire concept is thought out almost in an instant and just has to be realised/created and the other is the more experimentative process where what works or doesn't work is determined by implementing and experimentation. With the former you end up with a product which is essentially how the creator initially conceived it, whereas with the latter it is what works/feels right. Obviously I imagine creating a personal art type game isn't very practical economically, as the game needs to be for the consumer not the creator.

[zach]

... the game needs to be for the consumer not the creator.

That is where you're making a big mistake; that is one of the main reasons we get the same games over and over again. Making games is (among lots of other things) about not limiting yourself to what seems plausible, sensible, logical or doable etc.

Telling your designer/artist "that can't be done" is a sure way of coming up with yet another mainstream game. Try circumventing what "can't be done", because in all probability, there will be some way or other to do it.

Of course, a game company needs money, too. But saying the game needs to be for the consumer not the creator ... sounds like publisher-speak to me

That's my two cents, anyway ...

[xander]

...as the game needs to be for the consumer not the creator.

Around the time that Uplink came out, Chris wrote a little manifesto on writing games. On of the points that he made was that games don't need to be for the consumer any more than any other art form. Good games should seek to force the player to think, and I don't mean in the puzzle-solving sense. A really good game forces a person to reevaluate certain conceptions about the world. In Uplink, it is easy to become "evil." It is hard to do good. This, all by itself, is a rather interesting point. Defcon forces one to reevaluate what the terms good and evil mean in the first place -- you can't do anything but evil in that game. And a lot of people became very attached to the Darwinians by the end of the game, making it difficult to sacrifice them in Biosphere.

Of course, IV are trying to make games that will sell. Of course they are concerned about the bottom line at the end of the day. But, I think, their primary goal is to make good games that make people think. Making it appeal to a mass market it secondary.

xander

[Chris]

I'm going to admit that I never quite understood the hatred for creating content, I can understood how irritating it is for creating huge levels. However I remember the team saying that making the content for the demo level took several months, I literally don't understand how it took that long (which may sound incredibly condescending). I understood that they used 3dsmax to make the models and that the landscapes were all done with the generators and so on, it would be good if someone could explain what part actually took up so much time.

Don't forget that we also redesigned the entire control mechanism for that demo. We threw the gesture recognition out the window and designed an entirely new icon based system. That took us a long time to settle on and a long time to playtest until it was right.

[BrianBlessed]

I would have classed that as programming/game mechanics/engine creations/whatever. I was under the impression that content is textures, level design, character/object models, sounds, music, plot/in game text. I can understand the concept of creating procedural content creation as it ultimately means you can have editors and better mod support, however I wouldn't have thought that the order of complexity of content in Darwinia was so high that making levels with height maps or something is unfeasible.

Obviously for the mindfuck of complexity that is Subversion, manually creating content would be unfeasible but I was more enquiring about the comments made on previous games.

[NeoThermic]

I would have classed that as programming/game mechanics/engine creations/whatever. I was under the impression that content is textures, level design, character/object models, sounds, music, plot/in game text. I can understand the concept of creating procedural content creation as it ultimately means you can have editors and better mod support, however I wouldn't have thought that the order of complexity of content in Darwinia was so high that making levels with height maps or something is unfeasible.

Obviously for the mindfuck of complexity that is Subversion, manually creating content would be unfeasible but I was more enquiring about the comments made on previous games.

Content is anything and everything that makes up the game. This includes any control methods. For example, Guitar Hero's interface and thus control system is content. You also need to remember that a control method interacts with content as well, ergo one must make sure the interaction is correct, else you've blown a lot.

I think (and I hope this doesn't sound insulting) that you need to remember that content is more than just what you can see. It's what you use, it's how the game does things. (for example, content is also things like language, fonts, scripting, and I'd even go as far to say the game mechanics of things like multiplayer. Content is too large of a word really to describe anything other than the whole damn game


Hunt down a copy of the speech that IV gave at Imperial last year, they talk about content and why they avoid it, and it's also insightful as to how IV nearly disappeared due to Darwinia (JUST REMEMBER TO TURN YOUR SPEAKERS DOWN JUST AS THEY FINISH!)

NeoThermic

[BrianBlessed]

So content is the entire 'contents' of a game then, including all the programming and game mechanics?

How in the name of god can you avoid that then? Surely you'd be avoiding the entire game....

[Chris]

Sorry for not being clear, I wasn't suggesting the new control method for Darwinia was "content" as far as we're concerned. I was simply stating that was a big reason why it took three months. BrianBlessed asked why it had taken so long and thats a big part of the reason.

You could classify anything as content, but we tend to think of it primarily as graphics, textures, maps/levels, scripts, sounds, audio etc.

[Kadayi]

Heh. You might want to read up on the production of Darwinia

New company, second game..let me guess... time got invested needlessly into certain things and certain elements that got developed got dropped later on? Any creative company goes down that route in the early days because it's a matter of sounding out your processes, and learning how to achieve results more efficiently through trial and error. If you've established how to get past an obstacle once already, you're not going to dilly dally about repeating the same mistakes again. Never assume the last project is indicative of how the next one will be managed.

[KingAl]

It was a joke - don't read too much into it. My argument stands.

Incidentally, Darwinia is arguably Introversion's first game, in that it was the first to be designed while the company existed, and as such the first for which the intent to create a game preceded the idea upon which it was designed - making the fact that they had to 'work out the process' doubly applicable.