by Debaser » Sat Jun 21, 2003 11:47 am
Roody_Yogurt wrote:I hope that most if not all of those bedrooms have something necessary to the plot or game play. Otherwise, as a player, I would probably prefer just not being able to go into them. For me, at least, rooms that are implemented just for the sake of logic often have a dead sort of feel to them.
Yeah, I know, and it's becoming a balancing act. I've got four bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room, but I never let the player see the inside of the bathroom and I'm just pretending there's no back yard, which is something I dislike doing as I tend to find it hurts immersion to pretend something isn't there when it would logically be there. The first time you visit the house, one of the bedrooms is just kinda "there", one of them (which you can't access without solving a fairly simple optional puzzle) contains quite a bit of plot foreshadowing and some stuff that provides some background information on the setting and why its inhabitant is important to the plot. The other two both contain something you need to advance, but there's no real reason the two items couldn't both be in the same room, other than the fact that I've got four characters. I'm trying to alleviate this somewhat by making each room distinct in some way that will help characerization.
For instance, one of the house's inhabitants is a hard-core "fight the power" type with absolutely no money who's pretty much relying on the other inhabitants of the house to support her. So, when I put in her CD collection, I thought it would make sense for it to consist entirely of burned discs. That meant I had to put a computer with a cd burner somewhere and so, instantly, the one member of the foursome who I hadn't come up with anything to say about other than "really, really large" (of course, this brings up the issue of extraneous characters, which I'm having an even tougher time addressing) became the geek/computer savvy member of the group. Although he's asleep in this particular time block, visiting his room presents you wth this fact, because there's a top of the line computer and nothing else that looks like it could cost any money in there. In the same sense, by including their books and/or music selections and their choices of decore, I'm hoping to flesh these people out a bit for the player. I'm not sure how it will play to anyone who's not me, of course, and I won't until beta testing. At the very least, at some time block, each of the four rooms will contain it's corresponding character at a point when the player might want or need to speak with them.
To a certain, extent, I am really trying to realise a world, and I understand the pitfalls inherent. It's especially tough, because the game takes place across a fictional city and, at some essentially arbitrary point I keep having to tell the player "no, don't go any further in that direction, use the transit system". Plus, again, just finding some sort of "hook" for every place the player has to visit , something to make it memorable or at the very least distinct from everywhere else, is tough. And I'm probably not doing as well as I'd like, but I'm trying.
[quote="Roody_Yogurt"]I hope that most if not all of those bedrooms have something necessary to the plot or game play. Otherwise, as a player, I would probably prefer just not being able to go into them. For me, at least, rooms that are implemented just for the sake of logic often have a dead sort of feel to them.[/quote]
Yeah, I know, and it's becoming a balancing act. I've got four bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room, but I never let the player see the inside of the bathroom and I'm just pretending there's no back yard, which is something I dislike doing as I tend to find it hurts immersion to pretend something isn't there when it would logically be there. The first time you visit the house, one of the bedrooms is just kinda "there", one of them (which you can't access without solving a fairly simple optional puzzle) contains quite a bit of plot foreshadowing and some stuff that provides some background information on the setting and why its inhabitant is important to the plot. The other two both contain something you need to advance, but there's no real reason the two items couldn't both be in the same room, other than the fact that I've got four characters. I'm trying to alleviate this somewhat by making each room distinct in some way that will help characerization.
For instance, one of the house's inhabitants is a hard-core "fight the power" type with absolutely no money who's pretty much relying on the other inhabitants of the house to support her. So, when I put in her CD collection, I thought it would make sense for it to consist entirely of burned discs. That meant I had to put a computer with a cd burner somewhere and so, instantly, the one member of the foursome who I hadn't come up with anything to say about other than "really, really large" (of course, this brings up the issue of extraneous characters, which I'm having an even tougher time addressing) became the geek/computer savvy member of the group. Although he's asleep in this particular time block, visiting his room presents you wth this fact, because there's a top of the line computer and nothing else that looks like it could cost any money in there. In the same sense, by including their books and/or music selections and their choices of decore, I'm hoping to flesh these people out a bit for the player. I'm not sure how it will play to anyone who's not me, of course, and I won't until beta testing. At the very least, at some time block, each of the four rooms will contain it's corresponding character at a point when the player might want or need to speak with them.
To a certain, extent, I am really trying to realise a world, and I understand the pitfalls inherent. It's especially tough, because the game takes place across a fictional city and, at some essentially arbitrary point I keep having to tell the player "no, don't go any further in that direction, use the transit system". Plus, again, just finding some sort of "hook" for every place the player has to visit , something to make it memorable or at the very least distinct from everywhere else, is tough. And I'm probably not doing as well as I'd like, but I'm trying.