81 - Descent and demos

[matt]

In this video I talk about one of the themes of Neverending Nightmares - descent - and how that relates to the game design as well as the difficulty of offering a demo.

[gagaplex]

Descent, deeper into the nightmares, eh?
Regarding demos - at the risk of spoiling something further ahead - a lot of games give/used to give levels from later on in the game. Warcraft 2's demo for instance featured - I believe - levels 1, 3 and 4 or something, skipping some content in the actual retail-campaign, to provide a better insight into what was ahead.
Again, skipping content may be risky (especially with a story-driven game like NN), but that would be a way to have your cake and eat it, too: Give people an impression of the beginning and of something further ahead, to see which direction the game will go, so they won't assume the relatively mundane yet unsettling beginning of the game would be all that's to it. So maybe a demo with that first level, skipping levels 2 and/or 3 and providing a sneak-peek into level 4 (just pulling random numbers here, considering I don't even know how many levels are planned in all) might be a good way to go for a demo.

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Aw, for a second there, I thought you were going to talk about the game series Descent. Games that actually managed to create a really creepy and threatening atmosphere, despite only having robotic enemies. Although this thing...



...is scary in a dark mine shaft, even if it's "just" a killer-robot. I was never quite clear whether that stuff on its claws was rust... or blood... or something. Also, the game was one of the first, if not the first, 3D-game with dynamic lighting; use of dark corridors, flickering flares etc., these aspects were surprisingly effective in creating a threatening atmosphere. Man, I'll have to make some videos of gameplay of that; just thinking about it makes me want to play it again.

[JPrice]

Hmmm the idea of Descent actually reminded me of a game that did it well...Spec Ops: The Line.

You always started off quite high up at the beginning of levels and would just descend further and further into the heart of Dubai. Also the framing of the game near the start sets you up for a standard military shooter before slowly revealing its true nature to you. Now of course it's a bit silly gameplay wise to be always high up at the start of levels but I love how it tied into the story, the further you got into the game the further the main character just descended into his madness which makes him do things that you'd never think a normal "good guy" would do. Hell one could probably make a decent case of that game being a horror game! Hahaha. I mean you don't have much fun playing it by the end, you just feel empty and dejected at all the awful things you've done. I thought it was really well done personally

[matt]

I played Decent 3 and quite enjoyed it. The developer (Outrage Entertainment) was in my hometown, Ann Arbor, MI, before THQ closed them. I think Descent 3 is the only game that needed more controls than you can fit on a Xbox 360 style controller. haha Too many axes of freedom! hahah

The only platform we'll do a demo on is Ouya, and we probably want to do an upsell since it's all in game transactions, so we'll probably stick with the first level and say "pay to continue". If we were doing a stand alone exe, then I think doing the level we already have for the kickstarter demo would probably be a good choice.

Someone already made a case for Spec Ops as a horror game:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DarrenMc ... _Games.php It sounds really well done - especially against the tapestry of gratuitous violence in FPSes. Maybe I'll play it eventually but I'm a bit burnt out on FPSes for the time being. (Well, I bought Killzone: Shadow Fall and have yet to play it, but I probably should before getting a new game)

[Grabthehoopka]

Spec Ops: The Line is THE best war shooter ever made, period. It's gut-wrenching and emotional and will make you feel like a horrible person, and that's wonderful.

I don't think anyone has done descent as a theme better than Silent Hill 2 (at least that I'm aware of). The whole beginning of the the third act with the underground prison is basically nothing but descent, and it's probably the scariest part of the game. You go down a staircase that's like 2 miles long, and then you just keep jumping down holes, one of which is the hole dug in front of your own grave. And it all leads to the labyrinth, which is probably the most surreal and claustrophobic part of the game, since the otherworld is a lot more understated than it is in the first one (or any one since). God, I miss Silent Hill.

And speaking of descent; I meant to ask this before, but I haven't cause I feel kind of stupid asking, but...in the livestream, when you showed off the rough staircase test, you said you wanted to make the player feel small and it ended up looking stupid because you can see forever. I know it was just a test, and you probably did, but, did you try it with the darkness effect applied over it? I would think that if the problem was with too much visibility, if it was all blacked out and the player had the candle, it would solve that problem, plus achieve what your original intention was by surrounding the character with tons and tons of negative space. Since you're a lot more hip to this stuff than I am, I assumed that you had thought of this, and either tried it and it didn't work somehow, or you couldn't try it because of some technical issue, so I never bothered asking.

[matt]

I assumed that you had thought of this, and either tried it and it didn't work somehow, or you couldn't try it because of some technical issue, so I never bothered asking.

The staircase is one of those things that we revisit briefly and then other things take priority, and it gets pushed back down the queue. We are still working on the animation/programming aspects of the stair logic, so we haven't worked out the art quite yet... I have some ideas for making the negative space look more negative that will hopefully improve the feel of the staircase.

The main reason I wanted to tighten up the camera is because I like the idea that you can't see very far ahead of you, and you are walking down into the unknown. I feel like that is a cool thing we can do with fixed camera angles that wouldn't be possible with a user controlled camera.

I actually never planned the staircase to have that camera angle. I think it ended up that way because of a bug or a miscommunication between how I expected the staircases to work and how Dan thought they should work.

Do you think it is cool with the tiny player or were you just suggesting how you thought I could make it work? If we want to scale down the player, then we probably have to add mipmaps to make the texture on the player look good, which can be kind of a pain in the ass.

[Grabthehoopka]

Do you think it is cool with the tiny player or were you just suggesting how you thought I could make it work? If we want to scale down the player, then we probably have to add mipmaps to make the texture on the player look good, which can be kind of a pain in the ass.

I do think it would be cool! I would think that the fixed camera angle and all that negative space would really emphasize the descent going on, because the character very clearly starts at point A, up here, and the player watches them go all the way to point B, down there. Plus, if it's different, and I know that if the camera angle suddenly changed like that, as an experienced gamer, I would immediately suspect that it's a setup for some kind of scripted event, which is the perfect opportunity to not have a scripted event. Plus, if you lit it like you did with the candle, then the player wouldn't be able to see more than a few relative feet around them, so they'd still be walking into the unknown.

But, I figured there were some technical problems. Like I said, you're smarter about this stuff than I am, I don't want to add anything to your workload.

[JPrice]

I'll agree with the descenting in Silent Hill 2 being incredibly unnerving, especially when you get to those grave stones.

I'd also agree with the preference of the normal camera angle as opposed to the drawn back one on the staircase. As Hoopka said if you have it take up the entire screen then the player has a good idea of where the start and end point of the staircase is. Although you could play on those expectations somehow, even though the player is probably going to expect something as the camera angle has been changed to something not seen before. Perhaps try to do something out of left field like have the next room be the exact the same staircase over and over so the player on instinct just goes back up the stairs eventually and tries to open the door leading to the previous room. From there like have it like disappear or not open which triggers some other event, or perhaps let you go through the door but you end up somewhere completely different.

Conversely you could go the total opposite way and have nothing happen at all which could work in its own way as the player would be expecting something due to the angle change.

I didn't think about these ideas for long though so I know they're not that great, just wanted to make an example of the type of thing I was thinking haha

You should just do what ever you feel comfortable doing though! Don't want to pile more on the workload if it's not exactly necessary hahaha

[matt]

Hmmm... That gives me a lot to think about. Maybe we'll have it both ways in different places. We'll have to do some experimentation.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Stefan8000]

i am very excited, how the game will show the descent. i liked that in silent hill 2 and it would be awesome, if another game will do this good.

i think, the ouya dema should be the first level. it is bad in a game like this, if you play a part in the middle, and then start with low tension. but the kickstarter demo works good too. i think, both are good ways. maybe, if we will see the first level, we can help you to make a decision.