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About Nifflas' Website and Forum / Re: [CLOSED] The Nifflas Discord Chatroom
« on: December 23, 2016, 20:25:40 »
Open it back up if you can, I'll be a permanent squatter
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Aside from all that, one of the things that's been brought up (and which I REALLY enjoy) is when the game has a story that it leaves you to discover on your own. That's really just interactivity leveraged in another way: rather than feeding you the story all at once in a particular order, you can find it out on your own, at any pace you like. In some cases, you can even ignore the story to complete all the challenges, if that's your style. You're just put into this world and can enjoy it at your own pace.
either way i like your approach 'no talk' just tell story through pictures. but that could be lots of hard work. for example instead of having a conversation you'll have to make animations etc. to create a scene.
would you mind sharing your story? I would be very interested in hearing it so I can judge all your mistakes. no just joking but it would help with your question since not all stories fit all genres.Oh I don't have any story yet, just bits and pieces of unrelated stuff that I haven't been able to put together into a concrete whole.
But I'm not really a game developer, so my opinion isn't very relevant.
the problems come with limitations in dimension- and space restrictions. 2d sidescrollers i think is the most cursed genre because the player becomes so confined. unlike other genres i feel like you're never playing or seeing beyond the layout. every jump or obstacle you avoid or enemy you have to pass, You just can't have a 2d sidescroller that is played any way unlike it is intended. this genre is old and quite frankly have not played any innovative ones since knytt but i do miss out a lot and theres like hundreds.
you're gonna do it in a way the developer meant for it to be done, like your entire progression through the game does not differ from any other play through.
most 2d scrollers have the story advance through dialogue boxes with characters you are set up to run into. That is both lazy and no fun. it doesn't matter if these people have other things to say or do either. This is why themes is important, good thing i said that before. otherwise your dialogue have no purpose beyond information and you just waste time. another reason i think 2d scrollers are cursed is because they can't handle many cinematic approaches, which is usually why I imagine one would go for 3d or a 3d world in a 2d environment if they want to get serious with a story. In a 2d scroller the players character is always in the center or is the focal point of attention. Meeting people / discovering things is hard to get interesting when missing that dimension and it always kinda becomes that you stumble upon these things.
2) dialogue and characters
bad dialogue can make a decent movie worse or a good movie decent. Like when I watched sphere a few weeks ago I imagined it would have been a decent movie if this was accomplished. Games never seem to have good dialogue. it's extremely bland, predictable and lack writing imagination.
Hey, don't go discounting a whole genre just because it's mostly text
you can't really point it to a genre. Any game that wants can tell an awesome story successfully.
Have you played much interactive fiction?
I'm not sure what physics based puzzles have to do with a witches exam. Shouldn't mastery of magics be the key to success?
A big drawback I see is if it's Metroidvania, then you'll have to navigate to collaborative areas twice. Maybe, Mimi could carry Pumpum around. Or, maybe there could be stations where one character could summon the other.
Designing a large map that can be navigated and re-navigated as a witch and as a pumpkin will be a large challenge. In Knytt Underground there are many places which are easy for the the sprite to walk through but highly annoying to traverse as the ball. It sounds better suited to a level based design to me. A Mario-world map would allow for replaying levels with new abilities.