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Another recent example is from Starfield, where shops inventories are handled by a physical chest hidden underneath the shop. You can use noclip to loot the che

Another recent example is from Starfield, where shops inventories are handled by a physical chest hidden underneath the shop. You can use noclip to loot the chest and get shop items for free.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
That kind of makes logical sense, though. Physical hidden chests are, after all, how almost all real life shops implement inventories. Those are typically inaccessible to players, too. (There is a part of shopping experience where the player grabs items and puts them in their own chest/basket prior to purchase. This works thanks to the security scheme of law enforcement NPCs dragging your ass to jail you can't save-scum your way off, should you steal something. But this is too complex to implement in a game, unless you're making the next GTA.) Hell, even the bunnies and spectral radio cats make sense, to a degree. This reminds me of the ol' Flash games or Klik&Play/The Games Factory-made games. In all of them, you'd find yourself placing support objects on the scene but outside the screen boundary. I used to laugh at it, but eventually realized it kind of makes sense, if you think of the game as a theatre play - there's lots going on at the edges of the stage, just beyond what the audience can see. Or think back to RAD tools from Borland (Delphi, C++ Builder) - they had a notion of abstract objects like "Timer" as invisible UI controls that could be placed in the window you're designing. On the one hand, this makes no sense - an abstract timer doesn't have "position" or "size", not at runtime. On the other hand, it was intuitive and convenient at design time.
- noirscape 3y ago
  The recent Pokemon games also had a bug where the various support objects placed on the map for cutscenes were made visible during battles. Since they lacked a model, they'd default to the first model in the games object list, which was a PokeBall, but then also loaded up every single texture onto it, resulting in various maps getting random multicolored PokeBalls in the floor (usually at their 0,0 point). The approach to me also makes sense if you think of these support objects as "directors" for the gameplay. They usually track a specific bit of state to then act on once it's met. It's a pretty clever technique for rapid development (you can usually do what support objects do without them but it'd take a lot more effort in the game engine to do it that way) that can sometimes backfire in entertaining ways.
- sterlind 3y ago
  The jail mechanic is not too complex to implement, depending on the kind of game. It sounds pretty similar to the Keystone Kops in Nethack. Like Dwarf Fortress, it exchanges graphical detail for complexity.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > Nethack > Dwarf Fortress Ah yes, the two most complex videogames ever created :). I do appreciate the remark, though. The mechanics may not be impossibly complex, it's just prohibitively complex for vast majority of the games. (Which is a sad thing to me; I love games with lots of internal complexity.)
    - sterlind 3y ago
      I love them too. I'm hopeful LLMs may eventually help fill in the details and lead to complex generative mechanics like this.
delecti 3y ago
That's been the case with Creation Engine games for decades, it's also present in Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallouts 3/4 (and maybe others, that's just all I have experience with). It's amusing that it still works the same even through the iteration of the engine they made for Starfield.
alex_lav 3y ago
(Off topic to ECS) This description is kind of funny to me. If you’re using noclip, who cares about how much things cost? You’re already cheating.
- SigmundA 3y ago
  Well one of the bugs was the very small corner of the chest poked through the ground and at the right angle you could loot it without no clip.
sdwvit 3y ago
Been like this since at least Skyrim, maybe earlier

Another recent example is from Starfield, where shops inventories are handled by a physical chest hidden underneath the shop. You can use noclip to loot the chest and get shop items for free.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

That kind of makes logical sense, though. Physical hidden chests are, after all, how almost all real life shops implement inventories. Those are typically inaccessible to players, too. (There is a part of shopping experience where the player grabs items and puts them in their own chest/basket prior to purchase. This works thanks to the security scheme of law enforcement NPCs dragging your ass to jail you can't save-scum your way off, should you steal something. But this is too complex to implement in a game, unless you're making the next GTA.) Hell, even the bunnies and spectral radio cats make sense, to a degree. This reminds me of the ol' Flash games or Klik&Play/The Games Factory-made games. In all of them, you'd find yourself placing support objects on the scene but outside the screen boundary. I used to laugh at it, but eventually realized it kind of makes sense, if you think of the game as a theatre play - there's lots going on at the edges of the stage, just beyond what the audience can see. Or think back to RAD tools from Borland (Delphi, C++ Builder) - they had a notion of abstract objects like "Timer" as invisible UI controls that could be placed in the window you're designing. On the one hand, this makes no sense - an abstract timer doesn't have "position" or "size", not at runtime. On the other hand, it was intuitive and convenient at design time.

noirscape 3y ago
The recent Pokemon games also had a bug where the various support objects placed on the map for cutscenes were made visible during battles. Since they lacked a model, they'd default to the first model in the games object list, which was a PokeBall, but then also loaded up every single texture onto it, resulting in various maps getting random multicolored PokeBalls in the floor (usually at their 0,0 point). The approach to me also makes sense if you think of these support objects as "directors" for the gameplay. They usually track a specific bit of state to then act on once it's met. It's a pretty clever technique for rapid development (you can usually do what support objects do without them but it'd take a lot more effort in the game engine to do it that way) that can sometimes backfire in entertaining ways.
sterlind 3y ago
The jail mechanic is not too complex to implement, depending on the kind of game. It sounds pretty similar to the Keystone Kops in Nethack. Like Dwarf Fortress, it exchanges graphical detail for complexity.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > Nethack > Dwarf Fortress Ah yes, the two most complex videogames ever created :). I do appreciate the remark, though. The mechanics may not be impossibly complex, it's just prohibitively complex for vast majority of the games. (Which is a sad thing to me; I love games with lots of internal complexity.)
  - sterlind 3y ago
    I love them too. I'm hopeful LLMs may eventually help fill in the details and lead to complex generative mechanics like this.

delecti 3y ago

That's been the case with Creation Engine games for decades, it's also present in Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallouts 3/4 (and maybe others, that's just all I have experience with). It's amusing that it still works the same even through the iteration of the engine they made for Starfield.

alex_lav 3y ago

(Off topic to ECS) This description is kind of funny to me. If you’re using noclip, who cares about how much things cost? You’re already cheating.

SigmundA 3y ago
Well one of the bugs was the very small corner of the chest poked through the ground and at the right angle you could loot it without no clip.

sdwvit 3y ago

Been like this since at least Skyrim, maybe earlier