4 ms·

Why Retro Rules

23 points by jsnell 12y ago

DevFactor 12y ago
It's important to also note, that retro designs where quite frankly a lot more simple than modern designs. One of our inspirations for http://rivalz.io/ http://rivalz.io/ was the Mac OS 1 (1984) because it easily organized all of the features you wanted, without any extras or bloat. Today's design is so superficial, that a large chunk of applications/games/ui is just fluff and sometimes distracts from the main experience.
SwellJoe 12y ago
Interesting that "imbalanced" and "unfair" have come up a couple of times in the past couple of days in game discussions on HN. I'm thinking of this article about Jeff Vogel: http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/17/the-original-indie-dev-how-one-man-made-22-games-in-22-years-mostly-from-his-basement/2/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/17/the-original-indie-dev-how... as well as a recent discussion of NetHack and it's infamous YASD. Sometimes, games being capricious is exactly the right thing. Though I find it frustrating when I feel like a game is "cheating" (like other Civs science advancing at a much higher rate than mine in Civilization games). There's some kind of balance in doing imbalance right. It maybe needs to go both ways...bad things and good things need to happen in surprising ways. I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about game design, and the only games I've ever actually made were for the C64 and Apple II nearly 30 years ago, but reading this, and the article about Jeff Vogel's games, and thinking about the kinds of games I play forever...Nethack, Civ (including older Civs now and then). They are games that can be vicious and shocking in their lack of concern for the player. I dunno what that means about me or about game design. But, I kinda want to play some Nethack now.
- JetSetWilly 12y ago
  Many modern games are so meticulously balanced, that it makes decisions seem pointless. Compare nethack, to dungeon crawl stone soup. In DCSS everything is so carefully balanced, that you can choose A with caveats or choose B with caveats and it amounts to the same. Choose heavy armour, and have less agility? Or light armour and more agility? Who cares, your overall impact is the same. By trying to get rid of "no-brainer" decisions, they have made the decisions that you do make seem meaningless. Nethack by contrast, could be completely imbalanced but so much more atmospheric and fun to play as a result. DCSS tried to be like chess, nethack feels more like an actual place that might exist without the player. This also applies to modern 4X games, like endless space. Perhaps that is one reason for the success of Dwarf Fortress, you definitely get the feeling that the player is an afterthought - right down to the very UI, the game hates you.
fredsanford 12y ago
explorminate.com: This has to be the most poorly designed website I've ever visited outside of some one off hobbyist crap and random AOL properties...
deleted 12y ago
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23 points by jsnell 12y ago

It's important to also note, that retro designs where quite frankly a lot more simple than modern designs. One of our inspirations for http://rivalz.io/ http://rivalz.io/ was the Mac OS 1 (1984) because it easily organized all of the features you wanted, without any extras or bloat. Today's design is so superficial, that a large chunk of applications/games/ui is just fluff and sometimes distracts from the main experience.

SwellJoe 12y ago

Interesting that "imbalanced" and "unfair" have come up a couple of times in the past couple of days in game discussions on HN. I'm thinking of this article about Jeff Vogel: http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/17/the-original-indie-dev-how-one-man-made-22-games-in-22-years-mostly-from-his-basement/2/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/17/the-original-indie-dev-how... as well as a recent discussion of NetHack and it's infamous YASD. Sometimes, games being capricious is exactly the right thing. Though I find it frustrating when I feel like a game is "cheating" (like other Civs science advancing at a much higher rate than mine in Civilization games). There's some kind of balance in doing imbalance right. It maybe needs to go both ways...bad things and good things need to happen in surprising ways. I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about game design, and the only games I've ever actually made were for the C64 and Apple II nearly 30 years ago, but reading this, and the article about Jeff Vogel's games, and thinking about the kinds of games I play forever...Nethack, Civ (including older Civs now and then). They are games that can be vicious and shocking in their lack of concern for the player. I dunno what that means about me or about game design. But, I kinda want to play some Nethack now.

JetSetWilly 12y ago
Many modern games are so meticulously balanced, that it makes decisions seem pointless. Compare nethack, to dungeon crawl stone soup. In DCSS everything is so carefully balanced, that you can choose A with caveats or choose B with caveats and it amounts to the same. Choose heavy armour, and have less agility? Or light armour and more agility? Who cares, your overall impact is the same. By trying to get rid of "no-brainer" decisions, they have made the decisions that you do make seem meaningless. Nethack by contrast, could be completely imbalanced but so much more atmospheric and fun to play as a result. DCSS tried to be like chess, nethack feels more like an actual place that might exist without the player. This also applies to modern 4X games, like endless space. Perhaps that is one reason for the success of Dwarf Fortress, you definitely get the feeling that the player is an afterthought - right down to the very UI, the game hates you.

fredsanford 12y ago

explorminate.com: This has to be the most poorly designed website I've ever visited outside of some one off hobbyist crap and random AOL properties...

deleted 12y ago

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