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On September 17 2016 09:49 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 09:45 radscorpion9 wrote:
Wow I'm shocked the development just ended like that. I thought they kicked day 9 off the team because they wanted to go in a different direction, maybe he just left because he felt it was unsatisfying and that it would fail. I think if day 9 ever does decide to make a game again, it should be through kickstarter and he should have his own carefully chosen team. But it sounds like he is more interested in doing cooking shows (really!) and old brood war videos, with tons of hearthstone content as usual.
I hope he creates a vision for an RTS, rather than spend the rest of his years playing hearthstone. Day9 is more of a "vision"-guy. He has shown no actually understanding of being able to create fun micro interactions. Also, he was probably the reason Atlas had such poor pathing (since he was advocating for it years ago). Actually I am sure Grumbels can refer you to an interview 2-3 years ago where he talked about the amazing pathing they had developed. And yet years after, almost everyone who tried the game disliked the pathing. That should tell you alot about his judgement. He can "talk the talk" but that's it.
I was always thinking that there was a reason for that. Like in the original brood war day 9 actually talks about how bad pathing forces people to be better at micro (i.e. constantly clicking will make zealots walk in a straight line, just clicking once and they go all over the place - even worse for dragoons). So there could be some reasoning, but whatever. What's done is done (btw updated my earlier comment)
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On September 17 2016 09:52 radscorpion9 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 09:49 Hider wrote:On September 17 2016 09:45 radscorpion9 wrote:
Wow I'm shocked the development just ended like that. I thought they kicked day 9 off the team because they wanted to go in a different direction, maybe he just left because he felt it was unsatisfying and that it would fail. I think if day 9 ever does decide to make a game again, it should be through kickstarter and he should have his own carefully chosen team. But it sounds like he is more interested in doing cooking shows (really!) and old brood war videos, with tons of hearthstone content as usual.
I hope he creates a vision for an RTS, rather than spend the rest of his years playing hearthstone. Day9 is more of a "vision"-guy. He has shown no actually understanding of being able to create fun micro interactions. Also, he was probably the reason Atlas had such poor pathing (since he was advocating for it years ago). Actually I am sure Grumbels can refer you to an interview 2-3 years ago where he talked about the amazing pathing they had developed. And yet years after, almost everyone who tried the game disliked the pathing. That should tell you alot about his judgement. He can "talk the talk" but that's it. I was always thinking that there was a reason for that. Like in the original brood war day 9 actually talks about how bad pathing forces people to be better at micro (i.e. constantly clicking will make zealots walk in a straight line, just clicking once and they go all over the place - even worse for dragoons). So there could be some reasoning, but whatever. What's done is done (btw updated my earlier comment)
A problem with a lot of Day9s videos is that I can see how alot of "untrained" people would be impressed with him. Just like everyone who first got into Sc2 and watched his dailys were all like "wow this guy is so awesome". But after you got into diamond+ it became apparent that Day9's analysis were very very basic or generalistic.
But some people would still think he was this brilliant master mind. (The worst are those people who think he knows more about the game than GMs because he has watched alot of VODS).
And when it comes to his design videos, I can understand why other people might be impressed with his videos as well. I remember reading one guy who said "I actually really hated the pathing, but then I watched his video and now I think it might be good". (NONONO, if you think something is boring, it is boring for you - no matter what some design dude wants you to believe).
First of, as a designer you have to consider whether "forcing clicks" is fun. Difficult control for the sake of difficulty, is that a good thing?
I straight up don't believe that. Micro is not about clicks, it's about interacting with your opponent. In my opinion, League of Legends has the best interactions out of any game. You can react and dodge and predict so much stuff (unfortuantely the game also has other flaws), and that's a huge reason why it continue to do so well to this day. The gameplay is simply - at its core - fun.
The most simple RTS micro interaction is pulling back injured units that are target fired. For that type of interaction to be practical you need a - relatively - clean pathing. Day9s/Atlas's pathing prevented that.
Being forced to micromanage units for the sake of micromanaging units is not what a good pathing does. A good pathing should add more room for interacting with your opponent. Atlas's pathing does the opposite.
And there isn't some "objective truth to design". If alot of people find something fun = It's good design. If most of your target group doesn't --> It's bad design.
Good game design is in the end about creating a fun experience for the target group. It's not about creating clicks of the sake of clicks.
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Increasing the difficulty only works if the controls "feel good". Bad pathing only works if there is a clear route to "good control" that is evident through the feel of the game. SC2 does not have perfect pathing. You ask any protoss player about zealots, immortal and sentries and how smart they are. But controlling them feels good. They are responsive. Using a force staff or blink dagger in Dota "feels good". Same with anti-mage's blink or sand king's burrow strike. When you disjoint a spell with a blink, it feels awesome.
That is not the feel I get from this game. The pathing is shitty and its feels shitty for no other reason that it wants me to click more.
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On September 17 2016 10:09 Plansix wrote:
Increasing the difficulty only works if the controls "feel good". Bad pathing only works if there is a clear route to "good control" that is evident through the feel of the game. SC2 does not have perfect pathing. You ask any protoss player about zealots, immortal and sentries and how smart they are. But controlling them feels good. They are responsive. That is not the feel I get from this game. The pathing is shitty and its feels shitty for no other reason that it wants me to click more.
Around 2 years ago I had an email conversation with Erik - Day9s friend who also works at Atlas. I asked him what the pathing was supposed to accomplish? What type of micro interactions does it reward?
And he simply couldn't give me any reasonable answer aside from "can't explain it, but you can feel it when you play it".
And that was obviously a very early warning sign. If you as a game-developer cannot be concrete when it comes to exactly why a very essential game mechanic is supposed to do, you will likely fail. To be a game-designer, you need to be extremely analytical and be able to understand how all factors are related to each other and which variables/numbers to tweak on to get the most fun micro.
But my impression was instead that they added the pathing because Day9 liked BWs pathing.
Pathing is not good or bad in itself. If an "unclean" pathing can make for better interactions (and you exactly can point out how and why) without being frustrating, sure go for it. But don't add bad pathing just because it was like that in BW. As you point out, unit control needs to feel good.
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On September 17 2016 09:34 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +it might be cool.. it might not. needs to be play-tested by a variety of people first. As a game-developer, you look at other comparable games. What are actually the best part of those games? What makes them fun at the core, and how can we improve upon th --> You could succeed.
you still need to play test. u discuss game design "training". welp, u must pay attention to outcomes and test and you have no idea where the feedback loop will take you. just automatically assuming a variety of people will accept it as fun is a bad move.
the SC2 MOD Kit is there. doesn't DOTA2 have one as well? there is the WC3 MOD Kit. for more advanced people Unreal Engine 4 is free.
angry birds was made by what? 3 guys?
the original dota was icefrog and some copy-cats that were basically 1 man developers.
Zealot Hockey was made in 1 week by 1 or 2 guys.
Spelunky ... 1 guy.
Roller Coaster Tycoon ... 1 guy.
its a lot easier to sit back and play the blame game than it is to take action though.
there was some guy on here complaining that games were getting worse and game development was basically dead and under the control of giant megacorporations.
nothing could be further from the truth.
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No you cannt make a proper RTS game one guy alone. It takes years in development and you already need very good programming skills in advance.
And as I said, there are tons of guys out there who think they understand RTS design but no way for investors to tell them apart. That's the issue. But the good thing is that it's just a question of time (years) . Eventually market forces will "win" and the best talent will get the money.
So the RTS genre isn't dead. A proper game is likely to be developed in the future. But who knows when.
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RTS is not something you can slap together in your basement without a team. There's simply too many assets required, too much netcode to fiddle with, too many client requirements for one person to handle. If you're doing a project like that solo you pretty much have to use something like a war3 or sc2 editor.
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On September 17 2016 15:29 Hider wrote:
No you cannt make a proper RTS game one guy alone. It takes years in development and you already need very good programming skills in advance.
And as I said, there are tons of guys out there who think they understand RTS design but no way for investors to tell them apart. That's the issue. But the good thing is that it's just a question of time (years) . Eventually market forces will "win" and the best talent will get the money.
So the RTS genre isn't dead. A proper game is likely to be developed in the future. But who knows when.
no, Blizzard has handed you the engine and a Dev Kit for free. just use the MOD Kit.
don't like it? use Valves.. use WC3 Mod Kit, use Unreal, use any one of freely available tool sets.
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On September 17 2016 16:49 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 15:29 Hider wrote:
No you cannt make a proper RTS game one guy alone. It takes years in development and you already need very good programming skills in advance.
And as I said, there are tons of guys out there who think they understand RTS design but no way for investors to tell them apart. That's the issue. But the good thing is that it's just a question of time (years) . Eventually market forces will "win" and the best talent will get the money.
So the RTS genre isn't dead. A proper game is likely to be developed in the future. But who knows when. no, Blizzard has handed you the engine and a Dev Kit for free. just use the MOD Kit. don't like it? use Valves.. use WC3 Mod Kit, use Unreal, use any one of freely available tool sets.
There is no potential for making MODs through Starcraft 2. Need matchmaking and a way to monetize it.
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On September 17 2016 09:49 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 09:45 radscorpion9 wrote:
Wow I'm shocked the development just ended like that. I thought they kicked day 9 off the team because they wanted to go in a different direction, maybe he just left because he felt it was unsatisfying and that it would fail. I think if day 9 ever does decide to make a game again, it should be through kickstarter and he should have his own carefully chosen team. But it sounds like he is more interested in doing cooking shows (really!) and old brood war videos, with tons of hearthstone content as usual.
I hope he creates a vision for an RTS, rather than spend the rest of his years playing hearthstone. Day9 is more of a "vision"-guy. He has shown no actual understanding of being able to create fun micro interactions. Once in an AMA-video I asked a question on how they worked on micro/which types of interactions they wanted to create, and his response was - like everything he does - extremely generalistic. On the other hand if you asked me a question on a micro topic, I could give you a 30-60 minute talk on all of the factors you had to consider. Also, he was probably the reason Atlas had such poor pathing (since he was advocating for it years ago). Actually I am sure Grumbels can refer you to an interview 2-3 years ago where he talked about the amazing pathing they had developed.And yet years after, almost everyone who tried the game disliked the pathing. That should tell you alot about his judgement. He can "talk the talk" but that's it.
If anyone is wondering, it was this article. To be honest it annoyed me at the time, and I've complained about it to Hider before. >.>
I participated in the alpha in (iirc) late 2014 and early 2015. By this time the game consisted of a handful of cloned units from Brood War and Starcraft 2, with possibly one or two unit concepts that were new. The game was more or less unplayable, with a lot of lag and bugs, and especially the pathing was extremely bad and clumsy and made it annoying to play. The art was all placeholder and the map objectives were changing every week. I didn't enjoy testing, partly because no testers were ever online at good hours for people from Europe, and partly because of the myriad technical problems with the game.
Now let's look at what Day[9] tells the public a year before the game was in this awful, unplayable state:
"I haven’t felt any restrictions with Project Atlas. I’ve worked with other game engines like Unity. It’s typical to have conversations like, ‘We can’t have that many sprites, we can’t render that model.’ For me, this is total carte blanche with Project Atlas. Any experiment I’ve thought of running, we’re able to build and implement.”
“When most people approach real time strategy games, they wonder about sweet races, awesome units, great abilities. We spent months perfecting pathfinding, optimizing the way units move. How do you code the correct amount of stupidity into a unit so they have the right weight and feel? The same way a basketball with air feels just right to dribble.”
“We’re not going to go from three races to four races and call it innovation,” he said, taking a little jab at Blizzard’s Warcraft series. “Project Atlas is unlike any major real-time strategy game you’ve ever played.”
I know they're quotes for a super fluffy promotional article, so maybe I shouldn't care, but when I went in as a tester I could still recognize they're essentially lies.
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On September 17 2016 10:14 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 10:09 Plansix wrote:
Increasing the difficulty only works if the controls "feel good". Bad pathing only works if there is a clear route to "good control" that is evident through the feel of the game. SC2 does not have perfect pathing. You ask any protoss player about zealots, immortal and sentries and how smart they are. But controlling them feels good. They are responsive. That is not the feel I get from this game. The pathing is shitty and its feels shitty for no other reason that it wants me to click more. Around 2 years ago I had an email conversation with Erik - Day9s friend who also works at Atlas. I asked him what the pathing was supposed to accomplish? What type of micro interactions does it reward? And he simply couldn't give me any reasonable answer aside from "can't explain it, but you can feel it when you play it". And that was obviously a very early warning sign. If you as a game-developer cannot be concrete when it comes to exactly why a very essential game mechanic is supposed to do, you will likely fail. To be a game-designer, you need to be extremely analytical and be able to understand how all factors are related to each other and which variables/numbers to tweak on to get the most fun micro. But my impression was instead that they added the pathing because Day9 liked BWs pathing. Pathing is not good or bad in itself. If an "unclean" pathing can make for better interactions (and you exactly can point out how and why) without being frustrating, sure go for it. But don't add bad pathing just because it was like that in BW. As you point out, unit control needs to feel good.
Eric was only Day[9]'s administrative assistant though, who also handled relations with community testers. It's really Day[9] himself who has the responsibility to be able to articulate such matters. On the other hand I've never had any actual interaction with Day[9] aside from reading his bizarre spam messages on the public chat, and it was left to Eric and other developers to respond to bug reports and feedback on the private forums. Day[9] strikes me as very insular, someone who can't easily discuss specifics publicly because he is too invested in grand ideas and his own vision for the game, something that oddly is contrary to his public image of game mechanics guru.
My interpretation of pathfinding is that it's a quite complicated topic which essentially requires that you studied it intensely at university, something not necessarily typical for a number of programmers who seem plucked from Facebook's web division. I recall a conversation with Eric about some newfangled algorithm which depended on some precomputation elements and learned that they had discussed this internally to some degree even though a cursory inspection should show it is probably not appropriate for an RTS. I think that gives some clues about the level of experience of the programmers. When Blizzard hires programmers to implement pathfinding you can somehow bet they are up-to-date on state of the art pathfinding algorithms used within the industry and can reliably evaluate what algorithm is appropriate for their situation and how it compares and contrasts with other standards. With Artillery it was more like they were happy to just get the pathfinding to work at all. I'm happy to be corrected here, but I doubt this is completely wrong speculation on my part.
And while the pathfinding in Brood War was bad, at least it had certain positive effects on gameplay dynamics. But you can usually steer the game into having the correct dynamics by using design corrections, and I think for a modern game deliberately aiming or settling for some sort of outdated and clumsy pathfinding would be wrongheaded. I don't actually like Starcraft 2's pathing because it feels more like fluid dynamics and has large armies behave unrealistically by being able to squish and move in lockstep. However, the responsiveness of marines and such is a high point and I think you're correct that the basis for any future RTS game has to be this level of responsiveness at least for when you have small groups of units.
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“When most people approach real time strategy games, they wonder about sweet races, awesome units, great abilities. We spent months perfecting pathfinding, optimizing the way units move. How do you code the correct amount of stupidity into a unit so they have the right weight and feel? The same way a basketball with air feels just right to dribble.”
Let's think about this quote for a minute. He made this comment years before the game goes into public testing (and thus they had years to further refine it). Yet, the pathing was the number one complain from most testers (throughout all the time I had access to the forums).
This is probably one of the most deluted comments from a game developer I have ever seen, and I hope that everyone are very critical of Day9 as a game-designer going forward. There is a very real possiblity that one of the main reason the game failed was due to Day9's incompetence.
He even used the word "PERFECTING"!
Eric was only Day[9]'s administrative assistant though, who also handled relations with community testers. It's really Day[9] himself who has the responsibility to be able to articulate such matters.
Fair enough. But then it is probably an issue of Day9 not being able to explain properly to Eric what specifically the pathing was intended to do.
And well we all know (by know) that Day9 is all about fluff and avoiding specifics so that definitely seems very likely. Probably a bit unfair to single out Eric though.
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On September 17 2016 17:35 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 16:49 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On September 17 2016 15:29 Hider wrote:
No you cannt make a proper RTS game one guy alone. It takes years in development and you already need very good programming skills in advance.
And as I said, there are tons of guys out there who think they understand RTS design but no way for investors to tell them apart. That's the issue. But the good thing is that it's just a question of time (years) . Eventually market forces will "win" and the best talent will get the money.
So the RTS genre isn't dead. A proper game is likely to be developed in the future. But who knows when. no, Blizzard has handed you the engine and a Dev Kit for free. just use the MOD Kit. don't like it? use Valves.. use WC3 Mod Kit, use Unreal, use any one of freely available tool sets. There is no potential for making MODs through Starcraft 2. Need matchmaking and a way to monetize it.
you don't even have a working demo and you are yapping about revenue model? c'mon dude you just don't want to do the hard work that the Starbow guys did. then you might find out your idea ain't so great and you'll have done all that work for nothing. its better to just sit in a dream world thinking you have the answers.
you do what Icefrog and the other DOTA guys did. at this point its even easier than it was for the DOTA guys. its far easier to design and build games than it ever has been in the past.
no one will green light anything without a working demo unless you are will wheaton or rob pardo or some guy like that. i guess you can whine about that as well. if you want to look for excuses though... and dream of some giant megacorporation before u even have a working demo.
for emphasis : its far easier to design and build games than it ever has been in the past.
On September 17 2016 20:23 Grumbels wrote:
I know they're quotes for a super fluffy promotional article, so maybe I shouldn't care, but when I went in as a tester I could still recognize they're essentially lies.
3+ years ago they said they were replacing the console with the web browser. the did a lot of yapping and in the end produced nothing. anything any one says at Artillery must be taken with a huge grain of salt.
to be blunt: i don't trust a damn thing they say.
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c'mon dude you just don't want to do the hard work that the Starbow guys did. t
This is so ironic.
And those Starbow guys must be completely unknown. We have no idea of knowing who spent hundreds (over a thousand hours?) hours on the game.
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I don't know why you are hating on day9 Hider. Maybe he just communicated badly with the testers and the public. It's like scientists who try to simplify things when communicating to laymen and end up oversimplifying and communicating essentially wrong information.
You are apparently a big fan of micro in league of legends. For me it's the exact opposite. I've only touched LOL for a couple of games and it's been years but from what I remember it feels like units almost have 0 collision size.
I tried blocking creeps' movement as in HoN or Dota so I could fight farther from my opponent's tower. It didn't work. The extent of orb walking in league is also seemed to be much less than it is in Dota or HoN. These are in my opinion two of the most important factors for micro.
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On September 17 2016 23:27 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +c'mon dude you just don't want to do the hard work that the Starbow guys did. t This is so ironic.
and if your idea is not catching on then you have your proof that it won't work. you can keep whining and banging your head up against the wall if you want though.
and if you do nothing and don't even create a demo.. you can just keep on whining.
if you truly enjoy game making you it does not have to succeed money-wise. you will enjoy the process.
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I don't know why you are hating on day9 Hider.
I have no idea why you are even attempting to defend Day9. Are you a fanboy?
Now tell me how in anyway sort of shape his comment on pathing can be defended.
Maybe he just communicated badly with the testers and the public.
When you both communicate badly (despite given countless chances) and the end-product is bad --> I think it's reasonable to make a conclusion.
Please don't go around defending someone for the sake of defending someone. Sometimes criticism is valid. And if you have no arguments for why it's not, don't go into this discussion just to defend your idol (from my experience - that's usally the case).
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On September 17 2016 23:29 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 23:27 Hider wrote:c'mon dude you just don't want to do the hard work that the Starbow guys did. t This is so ironic. and if your idea is not catching on then you have your proof that it won't work. you can keep whining and banging your head up against the wall if you want though. and if you do nothing and don't even create a demo.. you can just keep on whining.
You still don't get why it's ironic?
Do you even know the story of Starbow development? Why even talk about Starbow when you have no clue of what happened in the development proces (despite alot of it being public available?)
Do you even know what I have done with the editor? I spent easily a thousand hour on the editor tweaking micro interactions.
There is no whining from my side. It's an assesment based on how the industry is functioning.
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if you love game development it won't matter whether you do get a big money pay off in the end.
its pretty clear Morhaime did not start Silicon and Synapse for the money.
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On September 17 2016 23:35 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
if you love game development it won't matter whether you do get a big money pay off in the end.
And hence why I spent more time than anyone (probably) working on Sc2 mods. For $0. You don't even get the amount of time I spent (wasted). That's why its ironic.
Point being you should stop talking out of your ass when you have absolutely no clue about anything I have done (despite some of it being public available).
But there is no potential without your own client for matchmaking.
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EPT
