[Altered Reality]

Micky C, on 21 June 2016 - 03:58 AM, said:

Pretty much anything but DNF's implementation where you're not allowed to walk through a very wide hallway because some kid wants your autograph.

The flaw in DNF was that... it didn't have enough of a story. There was always only one possible course of action, it didn't present you with alternative outcomes. There was no story branch were you ignore the kid and go on your merry way, no story branch where you get out of the Lady Killer to meet your fans, no story branch where you forcefully remove the fan from your throne, no story branch where you shoot the president in the head when he snaps at you. The entire game world stopped until you did what you were supposed to do.

Let's compare it with an ancient sandbox game: Damocles. It absolutely had a story (a comet was about to collide with a planet and you were supposed to prevent it) but:
1) it let you free to basically do whatever you want in a solar system, fly in space, explore various planets, get off your spaceship and enter buildings on the planets, use interactive objects in the buildings, destroy whatever you wanted
2) unlike DNF, you were not limited in your choices. You could reach your goal in various ways, each with different consequences, or even drive the story completely off course. But without a story to follow or drive astray, no objectives to reach or to subvert, it would've just been a technical experiment in interactivity. A demo (in the demoscene sense), not a game.

[PikaCommando]

Alternative outcomes and branching paths isn't the sole factor for a good story in a video game. You can have a completely linear story and still make it good as long as the game itself is fun to play. Make the player excited to find out the next part of the story by providing them an equally exciting challenge.

[MusicallyInspired]

Most people would say that the problem with DNF was that there was too much story...

[HulkNukem]

DNF's story didn't understand what should be a Duke story.
His two seemingly in a relationship twin girlfriends are impregnated by aliens (with a little of Duke in there too) and just before they die, Duke just blurts out "...you're, FUCKED"
He may look like a douche on the front cover, but that single line solidifies it. That's something you say to the alien queen as she's about to blow up, not two human chicks who did absolutely nothing to deserve what happened to them.
It's pretty sad when Planet of the Babes respected Duke's love of the ladies more, and thats regarded as the worst Duke game (not including handhelds)

[Carl Winslow]

I just find this whole thing with 'deep meaningful plot' and 'your choices matter (only gets three choices that can be arbitrarily triggered through playing the game slightly different)' to be totally juvenile and dull, especially concerning FPS games.

Doom 4 has you playing as, not a character, but a natural humanoid force of destruction. The story around him doesn't matter because he's doing exactly what comes naturally, and even then what plot is necessary to see is paper thin. The further story only ever comes out if you actually read the TOTALLY OPTIONAL data logs, and you'll probably read them the first playthrough and never again. (or not bother at all lol)
Quake is basically the same thing. I don't want a big drawn out story that i'm forced to pay attention to. Everyone's finally starting to get sick and over the Half Life 2 in-game narrative forcing and honestly i'll be glad when the big name devs finally stop it.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm not sick of it, I'm just sick of it being done badly. And done for games that don't need it. Or just for every game, it doesn't need to be in every game. I think people just need some variety. I hope Half-Life never changes. Although, that's probably why HL3 isn't out yet...

[Altered Reality]

PikaCommando, on 21 June 2016 - 06:19 AM, said:

Make the player excited to find out the next part of the story

Exactly. And it goes without saying that if you're using invisible walls to prevent the player from going off the rails, you're doing it wrong.

[Altered Reality]

Carl Winslow, on 21 June 2016 - 10:06 AM, said:

I just find this whole thing with 'deep meaningful plot' and 'your choices matter (only gets three choices that can be arbitrarily triggered through playing the game slightly different)' to be totally juvenile and dull, especially concerning FPS games.

As opposed to randomly shooting around and finding yourself in random situations that might have been generated by throwing dice.

"You are a..." (throws dice) "...space..." (throws dice again) "...marine!"
"You fight..." (throws dice) "...demons..." (throws dice again) "...on Mars!"

That is mature and educated, and not juvenile at all, right?

Carl Winslow, on 21 June 2016 - 10:06 AM, said:

Doom 4 has you playing as, not a character, but a natural humanoid force of destruction. The story around him doesn't matter

So I noticed. I tried Doom 4 at the local mall and I saw that it started in media res. You didn't see when shit hit the fan, shit had already hit the fan in the first scene of the game. As I explored the environment, I asked myself why I was fighting against demons, but I got no answers. Only more demons to shoot.

Then I realized. The story of Doom 4 doesn't matter. Who you are in Doom 4 doesn't matter. Going forward doesn't matter. The whole game doesn't matter.
I realized what it means, when people say that graphics alone don't make a game. I placed the joypad back down and left.

BTW, as of now, my favorite first-person game is The Talos Principle. That game is what I call storytelling done right.
It has a compelling story, which you discover bit by bit, but that does NOT make it linear, absolutely. In fact, it's the epitome of non-linearity. Just consider that at the beginning you find yourself into a hub world, but then you discover it to be merely one among many hub worlds, and the hub that contains them is in turn a section of an even more diverse hub world, which contains more hubs! There are some limitations, in that, in order to navigate some of the worlds you need to have completed certain tasks, but even then, your freedom of movement remains immense.
It even solves, no, OBLITERATES, the problem mentioned by Carl Winslow. Choices that can be "arbitrarily" triggered? Playing the game in a "slightly" different way? Oh hell no. For any goal you want to reach, you need to be extremely deliberate and perseverant. There is no randomness in it, and "randomly" triggering a different ending in The Talos Principle is no more probable than "randomly" winning a marathon in real life.

[Carl Winslow]

Altered Reality, on 21 June 2016 - 12:29 PM, said:

As opposed to randomly shooting around and finding yourself in random situations that might have been generated by throwing dice.

"You are a..." (throws dice) "...space..." (throws dice again) "...marine!"
"You fight..." (throws dice) "...demons..." (throws dice again) "...on Mars!"

That is mature and educated, and not juvenile at all, right?

'I'm gonna dig in real hard on this thing nobody but myself said about randomized gameplay'
This is literally your only argument and you can't actually think of a reason why I'm wrong. It's not even a good argument, you're just being overly hyperbolic to the opposite direction to 'prove a point'. Your point literally doesn't make any sense. Neither does this idea of 'deep meaningful plot about lone strogg dude who we really couldn't understand or care about this inane struggle he's got going'. It doesn't add up and it won't make the player care. he's totally as alien and unrelatable as whatever could have been written about the Doom Slayer, the only difference is stroggboy is a literal machine of destruction. There is no struggle, it's a hamfisted means to thrust the Strogg into yet another fucking game. We've had two of them, fuck. let's go do something else!
The more you abstract the definition in a game's story the further you can stretch the player's point of disbelief. Or you can go the other way and make things completely absurd and make the player's focus be entirely on the idea of it being a game. Your job is to create a game that the player can immerse in through the combat mechanics and visuals. FPS games straight up don't have good directly told stories and never will.

By the way, both Quake and Doom are based on the team's DnD campaigns, so i find it ironic you're talking about dice of all things.

E: wow you are literally one of those weirdos who can't handle an exclusively gameplay-centric game. Good job guy!

[PsychoGoatee]

I can see both sides of the debate, personally I think a minimalist or understated story would suit a new Quake game. Kind of like the new DOOM game did. I think it would be fun to be the Ranger character from Quake 1 again, just because I like that kind of thing happening. I'd love lots of cool touches and things that make us wonder about why and how things are happening, I like Quake to be a bit on the abstract side.

Personally, I found DOOM's story to be well done. I liked how we started in media res ("demon invasion in progress" message etc), loved stuff like Doomguy throwing the moniter against the wall at the beginning, ripping out stuff and disobeying the robo-guy on the radio etc. They could've gone further with that, but there were lots of fun little touches and characterization. I think they did well.

To me the most exciting way to utilize Quake would be to have us end up in various different bizarre situations/worlds, largely unexplained. With hints to tie it all together. But everybody has different taste with this stuff.

I love Metal Gear Solid, I can dig very story driven games, I just would not mind if a new Quake game had no English dialogue for example. Just one man trying to figure out what's going on in a bunch of crazy worlds.

[Micky C]

Ugh, I totally forgot about that punk kid ordering Duke around instead of getting off the throne, and being yelled at by the President on multiple occasions. Everyone can agree that's totally out of character.

[Jblade]

Micky C, on 21 June 2016 - 06:12 PM, said:

Ugh, I totally forgot about that punk kid ordering Duke around instead of getting off the throne, and being yelled at by the President on multiple occasions. Everyone can agree that's totally out of character.

The issue I noticed is that Duke doesn't actually really TALK to anybody in the game - it's almost like he's a silent protagonist until the end of conversations when he chucks out a one-liner that nobody reacts to. Even at the Dam where the guy gives you the freeze ray there's a really unnatural pause until Duke replies about him being the backup. The DLC didn't have this problem though, I'm honestly confused what the deal with this was.

[Micky C]

Clearly there wasn't much thought put into the conversations, or even the story in general. IIRC the details produced at the time of release indicated that the story was ultimately hastily written as an afterthought simply to piece together random levels, like how I put in gameplay as an afterthought to my maps.

[Altered Reality]

Jblade, on 21 June 2016 - 11:56 PM, said:

The issue I noticed is that Duke doesn't actually really TALK to anybody in the game - it's almost like he's a silent protagonist until the end of conversations when he chucks out a one-liner that nobody reacts to. Even at the Dam where the guy gives you the freeze ray there's a really unnatural pause until Duke replies about him being the backup. The DLC didn't have this problem though, I'm honestly confused what the deal with this was.

Two different problems. The first (Duke only talking with one-liners at the end of conversations) is bad storytelling. The second (the unnatural pause) is bad programming. Somebody at 3DRealms took the naive approach of timing conversations with frames, instead of milliseconds. If the game on your system is currently running at a slower frame rate than what is expected, the engine will still count a predetermined number of frames (which will take longer to be reached) before starting the next phase of the conversation.

Carl Winslow, on 21 June 2016 - 03:36 PM, said:

E: wow you are literally one of those weirdos who can't handle an exclusively gameplay-centric game. Good job guy!

Oh, you're another of those types who wave the word "gameplay" around as a sacred word, while in reality it's too generic to be meaningful. Literally ANYTHING about a game can be defined as "gameplay", so the concept of a "gameplay-centric game" really makes no sense. Like talking about a "game-centric game". Actions you can do are gameplay, the story you are presented with is gameplay, the ability to follow it or disrupt it is gameplay, the flow of levels is gameplay, the strategy you can adopt is gameplay...

Carl Winslow, on 21 June 2016 - 03:36 PM, said:

This is literally your only argument

Because that's all you want and I'm showing it to you for what it really is. I'm trying to pull the wool from your eyes and make you see the light, but you're complaining that the light hurts and wool feels good.

Carl Winslow, on 21 June 2016 - 03:36 PM, said:

Your point literally doesn't make any sense.

Maybe you're too removed from the idea of a game that satisfies EVERYTHING in a player's mind, instead of being forced to choose only one aspect between visceral feelings of mayhem and a cohesive world where everything happens for a reason. That's the point I'm making. Why be forced to ignore one aspect and only satisfy part of a player's cravings, when it's possible to satisfy all of them?

PsychoGoatee, on 21 June 2016 - 04:42 PM, said:

loved stuff like Doomguy throwing the moniter against the wall at the beginning, ripping out stuff and disobeying the robo-guy on the radio etc.

Those were just ways to take control away from the player.

[leilei]

Today is Quake's 20th anniversary.

(quake091.zip's release on 6/22/96 marks it)

[Altered Reality]

leilei, on 22 June 2016 - 02:14 AM, said:

Today is Quake's 20th anniversary.

(quake091.zip's release on 6/22/96 marks it)

What about Qtest?

[cybdmn]

Altered Reality, on 22 June 2016 - 03:36 AM, said:

What about Qtest?

Qtest was a multiplayer test only, released month before the games release. Kind of an public multiplayer beta.

[CatNapDreams]

We have QTest... I like jumping in the lava to hear Trent Reznors awesome (awful) scream-gurgles. Hehehe

CatNapDreams

[Mr. Tibbs]

Belated birthday wishes, Quake!

[deuxsonic]

*raspy breathing*

[Marphy Black]

Mr. Tibbs, on 23 June 2016 - 11:18 PM, said:

What's the deal with the Enforcer's hair? The source tweet bears no answers. Whaaaaat?

[PikaCommando]

Marphy Black, on 24 June 2016 - 04:31 AM, said:

What's the deal with the Enforcer's hair? The source tweet bears no answers. Whaaaaat?

I think the Enforcer here is a female?

[Marphy Black]

The Knight is also clearly using his early Qtest skin rather than his retail appearance. Whaaaaat? Don't worry, I'm on the phone now with the proper authorities to inform them of the inaccurateness of this fan art.

[MusicallyInspired]

I don't see this as having been posted, but Machine Games (creators of Wolf TNO) made a whole new episode for Quake 1 for its birthday.

https://twitter.com/...9768650752?s=09

Direct Link

[PsychoGoatee]

MusicallyInspired, on 24 June 2016 - 09:11 AM, said:

I don't see this as having been posted, but Machine Games (creators of Wolf TNO) made a whole new episode for Quake 1 for its birthday.

https://twitter.com/...9768650752?s=09

Direct Link

That is awesome, and unexpected! Very cool, gonna give this a play soon.

[Micky C]

How do I run it with the gog version? I seem to have all the files and the executable mentioned by the bat but it just instantly closes and doesn't do anything.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Micky C, on 24 June 2016 - 11:31 PM, said:

How do I run it with the gog version? I seem to have all the files and the executable mentioned by the bat but it just instantly closes and doesn't do anything.

You can run it by extracting the contents of the rar to a new folder (eg dopa) in the main directory and then adding -game [mod folder] to the executable, or just start the game, press the tilde key and enter game dopa.

[HulkNukem]

It was a cool little episode!
Real quality stuff in it, maybe a bit too many enemies in certain sections, but that might just be my rust.

[PikaCommando]

Anyone know where to get that awesome Quake necklace that Romero used to wear?

[Bloodshot]

testing out some custom entities