4 ms·

I can find several other examples of games that are "incorrect" in much the same way, and I don't just mean Sonic knockoffs. Doom is pretty much a seminal momen

by cwyers 9y ago

I can find several other examples of games that are "incorrect" in much the same way, and I don't just mean Sonic knockoffs. Doom is pretty much a seminal moment in game design, and it looks nothing like the "ideal" design of Mario. I think the game design principles that are being tossed around here are very, very far from being universal.

setr 9y ago
It's not even clear that they're correct for the one example they go by. It's difficult to argue that "teaching" is essential to good design; to me it's just important for on-boarding (that the "tutorial" stages aren't canned info-dumps and dreadfully slow, interruptive, and staged events that treat the player as incomprehensibly incompetent). I'm more inclined to the idea that good design is found in the ability to explore a ruleset, and the ruleset being interesting enough to justify exploring it. The art, music, themes and such all supplement the exploration of that ruleset (or even help define it). Good "levels" push you to explore the ruleset in ideally unintuitive ways, and lays the foundation for further exploration in future levels. Ideally, the game shouldn't "teach" you how to play. It should simply exist as a world, and its rules, and you'll figure out the rest. Incentivized to explore particular areas of the world/rules, but thats about it. Bad design comes from limiting your ability to explore. Rules that appear general (applies to all NPCS), but it turns out you can't punch the kids, because. You can normally jump around as much as you want...but this particular area you have to sit down and walk because its movie-time. You can run around as much as you wish, but here there's an invisible wall because you're not at the designated level for it. Or the lack of things to explore. Poorly designed procedural generation games like No Man's Sky and Borderlands come to mind. The generation rules constantly produce different/new things... with little difference to your actual ability to interact with the world. It gets boring, fast, because it's not affecting the ruleset to any interesting degree. But a proper roguelike on the other-hand has you forced to explore corner cases of the ruleset every time you find a new enemy with some special combination of [dangerous] skills. The roguelike ruleset is potentially interesting (and expansive), and the procedural generation pushes you to explore all its corners. No Man's Sky has a much more limited ruleset, and the generation leads you to explore all its corners... very, very quickly. And then ofc you have other aspects like compositional rules and feedback loops that allow the player a much freer exploration, of the world, to the point that you have genres defined around it (eg simulations, grand strategies, etc).
- sqeaky 9y ago
  Other than the guns where is the procedural generation in Borderlands?
  - setr 9y ago
    The guns is the only procedural generation, but also where the meat of the marketing and gameplay was meant to revolve around. ofc, the guns were entirely uninteresting three hours in, and so what you're left with is the relatively weak level design, coop mechanics and mechanically simple enemy design. These would have all probably been fine, maybe even good, if the guns actually offered what they meant to: constantly changing gameplay (and so you'd see interesting combination of native mechanics + the new gun's mechanics). Instead you just have a weak coop shooter.
dkonofalski 9y ago
I kinda disagree. The first level of DooM starts you off in an open area that's safe to play around in and you have to "choose" to start the first confrontation. The only thing you need to learn in DooM is to shoot and open doors and you learn how to do both things within the first moments of the first level.
- Retric 9y ago
  Doom also has keys and switches. The map is arguably rather critical as is weapon selection.
  - dkonofalski 9y ago
    Keys and switches work exactly the same way as standard doors, though, so there's nothing really to learn. The only education needed is the notification, which is shown in level 2, that you need a red keycard to open a specific door. The mechanic isn't sufficiently different, though.
  - tracker1 9y ago
    I remember doom to this day having some of my favorite multiplayer map levels. Not enough to play one of the modern variants online, not enough people when I've tried. I also remember the original Team Fortress (Quake 1 mod), the first experience with that was a full weekend without any sleep.
1wd 9y ago
Doom used game design principles though. At least Romero hints e.g. in [1] that was the case. ("Golden rule of level design: finish the first level last", classic horseshoe.) In [2] he lists other "core principles" (although it's a bit unclear to me if these were only explicitly formulated later.) [3] is an in-depth writeup of the classic Super Mario World design principles. [4] argues the recent new Donkey Kong games has gone "beyond" these principles, and invented a new multi-mechanic approach. I don't really agree that this is "better", but it's fairly convincing in that the principles are indeed there. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV6HlBa88js https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV6HlBa88js [2] https://github.com/anttiviljami/romero-programming-principles https://github.com/anttiviljami/romero-programming-principle... [3] http://thegamedesignforum.com/features/RD_SMW_1.html http://thegamedesignforum.com/features/RD_SMW_1.html [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHcE6B4OP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHcE6B4OP4
jjuel 9y ago
But Doom isn't a platformer...

by cwyers 9y ago

setr 9y ago

It's not even clear that they're correct for the one example they go by. It's difficult to argue that "teaching" is essential to good design; to me it's just important for on-boarding (that the "tutorial" stages aren't canned info-dumps and dreadfully slow, interruptive, and staged events that treat the player as incomprehensibly incompetent). I'm more inclined to the idea that good design is found in the ability to explore a ruleset, and the ruleset being interesting enough to justify exploring it. The art, music, themes and such all supplement the exploration of that ruleset (or even help define it). Good "levels" push you to explore the ruleset in ideally unintuitive ways, and lays the foundation for further exploration in future levels. Ideally, the game shouldn't "teach" you how to play. It should simply exist as a world, and its rules, and you'll figure out the rest. Incentivized to explore particular areas of the world/rules, but thats about it. Bad design comes from limiting your ability to explore. Rules that appear general (applies to all NPCS), but it turns out you can't punch the kids, because. You can normally jump around as much as you want...but this particular area you have to sit down and walk because its movie-time. You can run around as much as you wish, but here there's an invisible wall because you're not at the designated level for it. Or the lack of things to explore. Poorly designed procedural generation games like No Man's Sky and Borderlands come to mind. The generation rules constantly produce different/new things... with little difference to your actual ability to interact with the world. It gets boring, fast, because it's not affecting the ruleset to any interesting degree. But a proper roguelike on the other-hand has you forced to explore corner cases of the ruleset every time you find a new enemy with some special combination of [dangerous] skills. The roguelike ruleset is potentially interesting (and expansive), and the procedural generation pushes you to explore all its corners. No Man's Sky has a much more limited ruleset, and the generation leads you to explore all its corners... very, very quickly. And then ofc you have other aspects like compositional rules and feedback loops that allow the player a much freer exploration, of the world, to the point that you have genres defined around it (eg simulations, grand strategies, etc).

sqeaky 9y ago
Other than the guns where is the procedural generation in Borderlands?
- setr 9y ago
  The guns is the only procedural generation, but also where the meat of the marketing and gameplay was meant to revolve around. ofc, the guns were entirely uninteresting three hours in, and so what you're left with is the relatively weak level design, coop mechanics and mechanically simple enemy design. These would have all probably been fine, maybe even good, if the guns actually offered what they meant to: constantly changing gameplay (and so you'd see interesting combination of native mechanics + the new gun's mechanics). Instead you just have a weak coop shooter.

dkonofalski 9y ago

I kinda disagree. The first level of DooM starts you off in an open area that's safe to play around in and you have to "choose" to start the first confrontation. The only thing you need to learn in DooM is to shoot and open doors and you learn how to do both things within the first moments of the first level.

Retric 9y ago
Doom also has keys and switches. The map is arguably rather critical as is weapon selection.
- dkonofalski 9y ago
  Keys and switches work exactly the same way as standard doors, though, so there's nothing really to learn. The only education needed is the notification, which is shown in level 2, that you need a red keycard to open a specific door. The mechanic isn't sufficiently different, though.
- tracker1 9y ago
  I remember doom to this day having some of my favorite multiplayer map levels. Not enough to play one of the modern variants online, not enough people when I've tried. I also remember the original Team Fortress (Quake 1 mod), the first experience with that was a full weekend without any sleep.

1wd 9y ago

Doom used game design principles though. At least Romero hints e.g. in [1] that was the case. ("Golden rule of level design: finish the first level last", classic horseshoe.) In [2] he lists other "core principles" (although it's a bit unclear to me if these were only explicitly formulated later.) [3] is an in-depth writeup of the classic Super Mario World design principles. [4] argues the recent new Donkey Kong games has gone "beyond" these principles, and invented a new multi-mechanic approach. I don't really agree that this is "better", but it's fairly convincing in that the principles are indeed there. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV6HlBa88js https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV6HlBa88js [2] https://github.com/anttiviljami/romero-programming-principles https://github.com/anttiviljami/romero-programming-principle... [3] http://thegamedesignforum.com/features/RD_SMW_1.html http://thegamedesignforum.com/features/RD_SMW_1.html [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHcE6B4OP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHcE6B4OP4

jjuel 9y ago

But Doom isn't a platformer...