TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Back Up Your Stuff

My Twitter-friend Chelsea may have lost a truly heartbreaking amount of work when a powercut somehow wiped her hard drive. She and probably anyone following the awful saga have resolved to be more zealous about backing stuff up online, so I thought I’d do a post about what I use and what I think of it. Continued

Avoiding Suspicion At The US Embassy

I had to visit the US Embassy in London today, to renew the Visa I need to go on press trips. They won’t let you take any electronics in there, and they won’t hold them for you either – not without ‘severe delays’ and a chance they’ll cancel your appointment, which costs $121.

So when I was heading out before dawn this morning, I put down my phone, picked up my MP3 player and left. Then I realised I was forgetting my phone and grabbed my phone, then I realised I couldn’t take my MP3 player and put back my MP3 player, then I realised I couldn’t take my phone and put back my phone, then my phone rang and I picked up my phone, put it down, picked it up, hung up, put it down and left. Continued

Austin Translation

I look bad, I smell bad and I feel bad, but I’m back. I was taken to Texas by a guy named Pete, but alas not Texas Pete from Superted. There I:

a) chinwagged with cigar-chomping bigwigs, immediately accepting their offer of a cigar and necessary ‘cutter’, despite having no idea how to cut a cigar, no memory of how to correctly smoke one and a physical reaction to tobacco that borders on allergy. Continued

Audiosurfing The Shipping News

The B rides the least exciting soundscapes he can find, including our own PCG podcast and Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Treasure Island

Black Flag is really satisfying. Followed a treasure map, explored an island, shot a barrel.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Pirates Without Boarders

I tangle with a strange ship my men refuse to board, leaving me to somewhat sneakily assassinate the crew by myself.

Assassin’s Creed 4 Parts 1-5: Boarding School

Part 1 is a bit quiet, but the rest should be fine – click the listy icon in the top left to see all episodes. Subscribe on YouTube or follow me on Twitter if you want to know when the next one goes up.

Art Failure

I put it off for as long as I could, but after a quick prototype for Solo Trenchcoat Triathalon proved inconclusive, I had to put a second character in my game. This meant picking an art style, which was a problem for two reasons. For one, games aren’t art, and I know from contacts in the industry that professional game artists devote a good few hours of every working day to wrestling with this contradiction. And for another, the only acceptable sprite I’d drawn so far – protagonist Mr Conway – has his proportions and body shape completely concealed by an oversized, nebulous trenchcoat.

I am not an art guy. I feel visually dyslexic when I try to draw: I know the right shape when I see it, but I can’t visualise which pixel I need to change to make this deformed mess become that – even when it really is just one pixel. So I really struggle to depict what’s supposed to be going on under that trenchcoat. I have drawn Conway’s head big, monstrously big, a hangover from when he was to be a horrible space robot ineptly disguised as a human. Are his limbs similarly bloated? Can I really draw a head of that size without disguising it beneath a stylish hat? Can I balance a head of that size on a human body? Can I just set my game in a world where it’s considered indecent not to wear a trenchcoat?

All these things are problems because they resulted in this:

An armless, morose John Hodgman who just looks fat, awkward and wrong. Despite general murmurings of support on Twitter for the idea of a nightmarish Being John Hodgman world, I could see this wasn’t going to get good any time soon, so went in a completely different direction:

This would be a complete rethink, requiring a new treatment of the main character (not this douche), and a much more realistically-proportioned look. It might seem like more work, but stuff like this can be done pretty easily from photo reference. In fact, the fewer pixels you have to work with, the more artistry it takes to evoke something with them.

The trouble was Conway. Just as it was hard to extract a convincing human from the murky depths of his coat, it was almost impossible to drape the murky depths of his coat on a convincing human. Several takes ended up looking like Rincewind. And losing the outlines seemed to make every camel hue I picked for him look more and more like some kind of awful beige velour. I got as far as this before declaring it hopeless:

Doing a realistic-shaped guy from photo reference confirmed something I never realised about game art before I tried to butcher some myself: proportions, shape, size, colour, detail and expression are almost completely irrelevant. The thing that defines the feel of a character is pose. That’s why I haven’t been able to get rid of that lame original Conway sprite: everything about it is feeble and misjudged except the fact that he has his hands in his pockets.

Even that was a mistake: I just hadn’t got round to drawing his hands yet. But as soon as I saw it that way, it looked like the character I had in mind. Hodgman failed not because he looked like Hodgman – Hodgman is great – but because he was standing like a mannequin. I eventually solved my art style problem by realising art style doesn’t matter: the most basic possible shape would work fine so long as I could pose the limbs. So I just copy and pasted the original Conway, trimmed him a bit, and I had his first friend:

The relationship lasted as long as it took me to remember that the first character is meant to be an incensed gunman trying to kill you.

One or two people have very kindly offered to lend me their artistic talents. This is appreciated and noted, because if this gets anywhere I will almost certainly ask someone who knows what they’re doing to pretty it up. The reason I’m putting some effort into coming up with the basics myself is not because I expect them to endure, but because I need to decide on a tone. If I’d stuck with those slender realistic characters, the ludicrous super-jumping I’ve got right now might have needed rethinking. Now I know the game is allowed to be a little more cartoony, clean and simple.

Obviously now that there’s more than one person in the game, I’m thinking more specifically about combat. All my ideas for stuff like this have different modules: there’s a basic version I’m definitely going to try, then progressively fancier systems I could stack on top of it if it turns out to be interesting and fun.

That goes for the game itself, too: level 1 doesn’t need a combat system, level 2 doesn’t need a hacking system, level 3 doesn’t need a dialogue system, and none of the adapting plot stuff is relevant till after that. If one thing turns out to be cool enough to focus the game on, I’ll scrap whatever I haven’t made yet. That’s why I’m not worrying too much about the warnings about biting off more than I can chew: I haven’t bitten anything off yet, I’m just scoping it out.

The last thing I did was code the new guy to shoot you dead on sight, and already I’m liking him.

Art And Motion In Mirror’s Edge

PC Gamer’s wildly inaccurate review of Mirror’s Edge went up recently, in which Graham Smith criminally under-rates the game at 83%. My own review, for PC Format, gives it the score it so obviously deserves – 84%. Unfortunately they don’t put their reviews online, so run-don’t-walk to your local newsagents – or to the United Kingdom if you’re not already there.

The colours in Mirror’s Edge look like the cordial from which normal hues are diluted. They’ve found a new way of rendering them that dazzles, almost glows. Even when it’s just a warehouse or factory you’re clambering through, every surface has that fresh paint smell, newly dried matte too smooth and lustrous to have ever been touched. There’s the sad sense of a city gleamingly maintained but otherwise unused.

But beyond that, the design of the place constantly excites me. It’s the burden of level artists that they can’t just be level artists, they have to be architects, interior decorators, graphic designers, key grips, feng shui consultants and engineers. The buildings of Mirror’s Edge suggest its level artists actually are architects, interior decorators and graphic designers, moonlighting at DICE for some extra cash. If there are real offices that look this hip, I’m applying.

The game’s acceleration-based first-person parkour movement system does scratch the N itch, as I’d hoped. The second time through, with the route-highlighting Runner Vision off, is a new experience. This time you speak the language of the levels, and can pronounce your responses with new and fluid verbs. What I appreciate most about it, over third-person platformers, is the freedom of direction when launching myself from whatever wall I’m clung to, running along or flipping from – it gives scope for an elegance that isn’t pre-orchestrated like Prince of Persia’s.

I’m not keenly interested in major shortcuts – the fastest possible routes skip large chunks of the levels, but they’re large chunks I like. For me the finesse is in corner-cutting on a smaller scale: jumping to the center of a high-beam instead of tip-toeing its whole length, tucking to clear a huge jump fully rather than hauling yourself over the threshold, wallspringing to avoid a slow pipe clamber.

Strung together, flourishes like this surf the game’s acceleration mechanic and cannon you into a hurtling pelt. The little thrill of extra speed you get for vaulting an obstacle is a subtle but satisfying pat on the back for mastering the game’s unique nuances of environmental interaction.

The main thing wrong with the platforming is the grabbing logic – it’s inconsistent, and it can’t afford to be. Some objects, like bars, can be grasped when your hands are more than a foot away, other ledges I’ve physically hit and still wasn’t able to hang onto. The platforming was never too difficult, to me, but every time I died without knowing why my character didn’t grab the ledge to which I’d propelled her, the irritation was vast.

Of course, that’s not the main thing wrong with Mirror’s Edge. Find out what is in my next post: The Combat In Mirror’s Edge And Why It Fucking Sucks.

P.S. If you hear any drilling, notice any scaffolds or strange new constructions around here, it’s because I’m tinkering behind the scenes a bit. James 2.7 will, I think, go up bit by bit over the course of this week. It’s too hard to prototype most of this stuff offline.

Arguing On The Internet

 
I don’t argue on the internet anymore, but I have some ideas on how to do it without defeating yourself and also human decency.

Update: This post now has a sort of sequel, suggesting ways to contribute to an argument without being an asshole.

Anne Diamond Reviews Games

What the hell is going on with that photo? Did somebody hit her with a copy of Dead Rising so hard that it stuck five inches into the flesh of her shoulder? Is some previously unnoticed fold of unctuous fat obscuring the tops of the rest of those game boxes? (Via Craig)

Analysing Team Fortress 2

One of my only criticisms of Team Fortress 2 was that the Medic isn’t as fun to play as the other classes – a particular shame when he’s so critical to success. Some people objected to this, because they really enjoy the Medic, so I’d just like to make sure these people don’t miss the Team Fortress 2 stats: cold, hard evidence that I am right and they are wrong. The Medic, for anyone not motivated to click the link, is the least-played class by a head.

Obviously the THIRTY-SIX achievements they’re adding just for Medics is an attempt to redress that imbalance, but I wonder if that’s the way to fix this.

You never had to bribe people to play Medic in Battlefield 2, partly because they were effective combatants, but I think mostly because the medicking part of their job was extraordinary fun. When I’m holding my healing ray on a Heavy while he mows people down in TF2, I feel like I’m serving him. When I sprint through thwacking gunfire and dive defibrillators-first onto the unconscious body of my squad leader in BF2, I feel like I’m saving him.

What’s surprising about those stats- well, okay, there are lots of surprising things about those stats.

1. The first surprising thing is the very first fact: the Scout is the most-played class? He’s the only class which, for the majority of any given round, is almost entirely useless. The second the enemy have a single sentry up in any sensible location, he has no way of getting to their objective and is too weak to effectively defend his own. It must just be that, like me, a lot of people always play him for their first life on 2fort, well and granary. But when I do, can I persuade the rest of my team to get a decent Scout rush going? Can I testicles.

2. Speaking of those three maps – the three perfectly symmetrical ones – here’s the most remarkable stat of the lot: the Blue team is almost twice as likely to win on any of these. Even 2fort. These are maps in which each team’s base is a mirror of their enemy’s, and the game’s teams have no inherent differences. If you played in black and white, you wouldn’t even be able to tell which team you were playing on.

I can think of only two explanations for this, and the first one is stupid. Perhaps the Red team are just slightly easier to see? This would be a perfectly reasonable theory in a game with large maps or camouflaged players, but Team Fortress 2 is depicted with unprecedented clarity. It’s the one game in which you can always spot enemies and even tell which class they are, at any range. Perhaps Snipers, through the smallest and darkest of windows, sometimes go unnoticed for a moment, but you’d think Blue Snipers would stand out more strikingly against the warm wood buildings of well, and that’s the map with the the strongest pro-Blue bias of all.

The other possibility is that for whatever reason, better players pick Blue. It’s not often you get to choose your team, since one usually outnumbers the other when you join, but the times when you do could account for this difference. It would have to be an overwhelming trend, to show through the auto-balance and playercount restrictions, but it’s possible. I pick Blue when I can – maybe I’m just that good.

The real answer is probably the counterpart to this: it seems possible that new or inexperienced players might automatically pick Red, since it’s first on the team-choice menu.

3. My other criticism of TF2 was that hydro didn’t quite work. It’s the map that changes shape every round, in complicated ways, in order to keep it fresh for years. As far as I’d played when I reviewed it, this just seemed to keep it confusing for years, but I said I was prepared to bear with Valve’s experiment to see how it played out.

Three months later, I have a more conclusive answer: sucks! hydro is awful. But looking at the stats, Valve must be delighted: apparently hydro sees the longest rounds of any map, and never results in a stalemate. That’s funny, because around fifty percent of all stalemates I’ve ever had and my ten shortest rounds have all been on that very map.

The problem is that they don’t count the fight over two control points – before the map reconfigulates – as a round. They count the entire, tedious push through each arbitrary mess of blocked-off routes towards the enemy’s final base – at least four separate games – as one round. This cleverly conceals the two main ways in which hydro sucks: if one team is even slightly better than they other, they utterly storm the enemy control point in a matter of seconds, and no-one has any hope of mounting a comeback or even having an influence on the battle. And if the teams are even in skill, every damn game ends with two nests of Sentry Guns sitting vigilantly at their own bases, waiting for the Sudden Death timer to run out.

4. As you can see from the ugly grey lumps in that graph, Stalemates are all too common on the maps where they can occur. Amazingly the solution to this is so simple the community have already implimented it in places: a fantastic server-side mod causes everyone to spawn as the same class when entering Sudden Death, and restricts them to melee. When I last played on such a server, this meant twenty-four Heavy Weapons guys punching each other to death, but pretty much any class is as funny.

It completely transforms the dark, paranoid, defensive atmosphere of Sudden Death into a glorious burst of humour and madness at the end of the round. Instead of saying “You’ve failed to complete a game of Team Fortress 2, now you must play Counter-Strike until everyone gets bored and leaves or the game tells everyone they suck”, it says “Eh, you guys are about as good as each other. Fist fight! Woo!” Then it spins around with its arms out until it falls over from the giddiness. In other words, it’s silly and friendly and hilarious in just the way TF2 is everywhere else. You actually come away from it feeling almost like friends, instead of hating the enemy team’s stupid camping guts and your own team’s stupid non-Medic faces.

But if I were Valve, I wouldn’t be working on any of these issues yet. In fact, I’d be doing absolutely nothing to the game until I’d come up with the perfect auto-balancing/team-reshuffling algorithm. I think they ended up maximising almost every other factor that positively contributes to the percentage of time you spend enjoying a multiplayer game, but left alone the biggest one: engineering a fair fight.

If it were up to me, no-one would get to pick a team. Everyone’s auto-assigned according to their skill level, keeping Friends together and players who prefer the same class apart, in that order of priority. After every round, the highest-scoring player from the winning team, along with the third best, fifth best, seventh, etc, are switched with the second best from the losing team, and the fourth, and sixth, respectively. In other words, maximum rejiggling with a slight bias towards the losing team, giving the best players a challenge and the worst players a break.

The reason you couldn’t do most of this stuff in older games, like the original Team Fortress, was that the game simply didn’t have access to that sort of information about players. Steam now has all this and more, and if they’re only using that for playtesting, they’re missing the real value of this kind of data. They’ve got everything they need here to rig a multiplayer game to be fun every time, and that could be a hell of a thing.

Analysing Happiness

This is a series of reminders to my future self about what I’ve figured out about happiness. The gist of the last one was basically this:

The reason we want things isn’t that they’ll make us happy.

Often, getting what you want does give you a little rush of happiness. We can be fooled into thinking this is the sensation of having that thing. In fact, of course, it’s the sensation of getting it. We are feeling the change in our status, not its new level. Which is why it fades. Continued

An Update About Monetising Videos Of Gunpoint, And Testing

We now have a slightly staggering 5,500 people signed up to test Gunpoint, and I haven’t sent a build out for ages. This means I get more e-mail about it than I can respond to, so here’s a quick FAQ: Continued

An Idea For More Flexible Indie Game Awards

I just read Zach Gage’s post proposing some changes to the IGF. My summary of his problems with the current system would be:

• For ‘best audio’, it’s not clear whether jurors should a) prioritise audio alone, or b) take into account the quality of the rest of the game and how important audio is to it.
• Currently jurors usually go with b), which “leads to games that are very well designed making it into multiple categories”, reducing the number of distinct games recognised.
• Medium-length single player games also get disproportionately recognised because they’re easier to judge than huge or multiplayer games, and feel more significant than tiny mobile games.

Generally I think b) is fine, but I do agree that over-celebrating single games is needless, and I think the categories themselves are a pretty rigid and inadequate way of capturing what’s worth celebrating in games.

Zach’s suggestion is to change the categories to reflect game length/type, and have developers choose one category to submit for. I’m not wild about this because a) the categories are still rigid and don’t capture gaming’s diversity of form, and b) a developer could screw themselves by miscategorising their game, which is not the skill we are trying to evaluate or award.

As it happens I’ve been thinking about a different kind of award ceremony I’d like to see ever since the BAFTAs in 2013, and I think it would address a lot of this. Continued