Random Encounters in Imaginary Realms

My Influential Women List

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:23:05 -0700

I looked at Gamasutra's list of their top 20 influential women and I was disappointed. The list was mostly of female executives; while I am happy to see that these women are climbing to high positions such as "executive VP of global marketing" and all, I was hoping for a list of amazing women who worked like crazy in the development trenches creating and innovating awesome games. The women were instrumental in the creation of original IP and exciting experiences. Here it is, in order of me coming up with their names.

Reiko Kodama. She was one of the co-creators of the Phantasy Star series of role playing games for the Sega Master System and producer for Skies of Arcadia. It seems like she does everything from design games, create pixel art to managing the production of a game. Considering how much I loved Phantasy Star as a kid, I consider her to be an idol of sorts. I dream to meet her some day.
Mieko Ishikawa. A composer and now producer at Nihon Falcom. She was one of the original composers for Ys, an action RPG franchise known for having some of the greatest music ever in a video game. Mieko continues to take part in shaping Falcom's products. Falcom is a special company for sure, making a good deal of money on live concerts of their music(I'm pretty sure arrangements of Mieko's original pieces still persist) and arrangements of their music that weren't in their games.
Minae Matsukawa. Producer of the Phoenix Wright series. She's worked office jobs, a security guard job and just wanted to get into games. She did so with great success and I admire her for it.
Rika Suzuki did game design for Hotel Dusk: Room 215, Trace Memory and the first 3 Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior games.
Kim Swift. Right from graduate to Game of the Year winning pro is a leap many envy. She was one of the members of a group of students that made a project that became Portal, one of the greatest gaming phenomenon of recent times. Props to her and the other members of the student team that Valve snapped up in a jiffy.
Amy Hennig. Directed Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver. I enjoyed this game on the Sega Dreamcast, and thought is was pretty darn groovy that a woman directed it. Props to her!
Rhianna Pratchett. Writer and story designer for Overlord, that amusing game of causing mayhem through a combo of action and real time strategy. Thank you for making lines worth reading.

That's it for now, if I think of any more, I will add them to the list.

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Video Game Plagerism

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:48:18 -0700

Read this earlier and it's hardly a new issue. I remember wondering how the creator of Snood got away with ripping off Puzzle Bobble for years. At first, the "creator" didn't charge for Snood, but now customers must pay for Snood licenses and much money has been made off Snood spin offs and merchandise. The ancillary stuff wouldn't have sold if it wasn't for the popularity of the "original" Snood.

If you really want some gaming de ja vu, check out Columns. Horizontal, vertical and diagonal 3-matching has been with us since 1989 according to Wikipedia! At first, I thought Puyo Puyo was one of the first games to deliver 3-match, but it's actually based on 4-match. Minor semantic difference, but overall, it's the same match-to-win aspect.

Just thought I'd dig up a bit more history...

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Turn Based Games - Why Are They Still Here?

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:12:29 -0700

I understand the origins of turn based games. There was an era when your PC or game console had far less memory and CPU horse power than your pocket calculator, let alone your cell phone or some Happy Meal toy with a little game embedded.

Now, consoles are super computers. At least, by the definition of a super computer while I was growing up. There's a physics lab that uses Playstation 3s. That's a lot of power to compute all manners of events simultaneously. Regardless, decisions to make games turn based are still made. Why's that?

First, what exactly do I mean by Turn Based? The flow of the game is broken up into phases the player can discern or "turns." There's of flexibility as to when turns can occur and how much happens within a turn. Chess what I'd refer to as a rigid turn based system. You and the other player each alternate. There's no way that your opponent can move twice in a row; all players get an equal number of turns throughout the game up until a winner is declared.

I remember Final Fantasy Tactics considering itself a "semi-real time" strategy game. Really, what this game does is shuffle turns about, making them depend on the in-game characters' relative speeds. If character A is twice as speedy as character B, A gets twice the number of turns as B in a given time frame.

Simplicity.
This has to be the biggest strength of making gameplay turn based. It's a sweeping generalization, which I'll break down.

One Thing at a Time.
By definition, turn based is a sequence of well defined phases of gameplay as mentioned before. In a sequence, the next item doesn't start until the in-progress item has finished. Think of it as series vs parallel processing. The player can devote all of their attention to what goes on in this particular turn. Not to say that what will happen in the turn isn't necessarily going to be complicated, but by focusing the player on a certain phase, the game's "signal to noise ratio" goes up.

Allows for Strategic Thinking
I did not want to paint myself into the corner by saying that Turn Based is inherently more strategic than any other play style, but a lot of turn based games I enjoy make it easier to assess information and make decisions based on the long term of the battle than a real time strategy game.

Pace Control
The player has it. My friend's sister sticks to RPGs with turn based combat. Why? She's got 2 crazy children that could wreak havoc at the drop of a dime. Hitting a "pause" button doesn't enter her mind when junior is sticking his fingers precariously close to a wall socket. While this is a very extreme case for the benefits of a turn based system, allowing more player control of how fast the game progresses certainly has its benefits.

Ease of Prototyping
At least, in theory, it's easier to do a paper game based off, say, Final Fantasy 7 than it would be, Star Craft. Punch some buttons to calculate who goes first then start dishing out the damage. This is more of a development related issue, as I doubt that the masses out there will go forth and create a Final Fantasy 7 board game.

So, what are the weaknesses to Turn Based gaming? Pretty much, everything I mentioned before. As in, what makes turn based gaming strong can also be spun into a weakness. I haven't had a turn based game really engage me much these days, I've been gorging myself on realtime games such as shooters and RPGs with real time combat like replaying the previously abandoned Ys Origin.

Number, not Skill Driven
This has to be my biggest qualm of a lot of turn based games. I have a reasonable set of reflexes. When a monster charges at me and I see an opening to get away, I'll go for it. However, with most turn based games, this sort of thing gets determined for me by my character's agility or some other type of statistic. There are some games that mix things up like Eternal Sonata and give you chances to block and counter attack real time while the rest of the gameplay is turn based which works.

I'll have more on this, my thoughts about turn based gaming still feel a bit disorganized for my tastes.

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Interview with Omega Five's Composer

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:05:53 -0700

Clicky, on Siliconera.

Omega Five is an amazing feat. The graphics and sound are absolutely amazing, but they fit below XBLA's original 50 meg limit. Crazy huh?

I've been wondering what kind of direction to give the audio guy. With art, I'm familiar, I can give rather specific critiques and even do some concept art on my own(even if it's crude.) But audio? I can give a theme and then upon hearing a draft of the work and respond with basic stuff like the tempo isn't quite right, some of the instrument choices feel out of place but I feel like I'm trying to salvage the original rather than guide the creation of something better. That and it doesn't help that I get other songs stuck in my head and I feel like they work. I will improve my ability to imagine what something should sound like as well as look like!

Fortunately for me, the audio guy I work with is very understanding and I can easily talk with him and tell him my concerns.

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Oh Guilty Gear, you teach me much

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:44:01 -0700

Namely, the power of really simple techniques in sprite art. I've been trying my hand at doing sprites and going over board on selective outlining, manual anti-aliasing and just making a muddy mess. Guilty Gear does very little of this. It's a formula I can follow, as long as I draw decent frames to base the technique off of. Fan artist Prophetic Dream does a nice job of using GG's techniques in a small scale.

Of all the sprite art tutorials I've found, this has been my favorite, highly technical one. It's wordy, in Japanese but the illustrations say more than a thousand words.
Dot E Kouza
The first 10 Step list covers a lot of important aspects from smoothly translating freehand curves to pixels(Step 3) to calculating pallets based on 8-bit RGB values(Step 7, with more than just grays calculated here.) Pallet construction has been giving me the most grief so far. Just because 2 colors look different enough zoomed in at 500%+ doesn't mean they'll be differentiable at actual size.

Back to the drawing board.

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Games Worth Remaking

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:02:50 -0700

I still love my old games. Not too long ago, I hooked up my Turbo Duo to play some Rondo of Blood on my regular TV. I don't know, I have the original, never bothered to play the PSP remake, even though I picked it up. Porting older games to newer systems has been nothing new, but when I talk about a remake of a game, I'm expecting more than a mere graphic and sound update. Fill some plot holes, at least the damaging ones. There's a fine line between a plot hole and just leaving something to the player's imagination. Do a re-translation, if needed. Symphony of the Night and Final Fantasy Tactics both have lines laughable like "Life is short! Bury! STASIS SWORD!" That "campy charm" is fun to laugh at now, but at the time of release, it was horrifying. Anyway, on to the list!

Final Fantasy VII. I loved and detested this game all at once. The background images were amazing but the character models looked like a pile of Tangrams. And at the time I played it, Cloud was more of an irritation than a suitable main character. Playing a game of "Chase Sephiroth" all over the place got old. And until Advent Children, I really wanted to punch Yuffie in the face.

With Advent Children, Crisis Core, Before Crisis, etc the Final Fantasy VII canon is larger than the one Shinra built. As much as the Materia system was cool and all, there were some cheesy exploits like taking 0 damage when defending, then as you defend, block attacks to another party member. These little things didn't break the game, but I'd take an FFVII that makes the most of all the wonderful, shiny CG of Advent Children along with the meatiest character development parts of all the FF7-set games outside of...well...FF7.

Phantasy Star IV. Sega made good with some remakes of Phantasy Stars I and II for the PS2 that have a retro vibe but make the games way more accessible. The difficulty curves have been ramped down from "every moment could be your last" to "Alys is a can of whoop-ass." Boss battles were still difficult, so don't let the ease of regular fights let you completely take your guard down. Of the traditional Phantasy Star games, IV is still the best of the bunch in my book. Well done story, characters and the best turn based combat system of its kind. Seriously, I enjoyed Etrian Odyssey, Lost Odyssey, etc, and all, but none of you thought to use PSIV's macro system. Shame on you.

Remake-wise, Phantasy Star IV would highly benefit from an expansion and re-translation. When I replayed the game about half a year ago, I was disappointed how short the game felt. That's always the case with good games, isn't it? Dungeons were maybe 3 floors, tops, side quests were easy "go buy this" or "kill that" quests. These ordinarily banal quest types were at least given amusing scenarios. If PSIV was to go the longer and more route, I'd also request that I be able to save my game anywhere. Otherwise, there's very little about PSIV's core that really requires updating.

Super Off Road & Motoroader. I remember playing the SNES version of this old game and loving the heck out of it. This racer shows you the entire course on one screen with an isometric view of the track and cars. The tracks may be cramped compared to other racing games, but the density of mayhem per pixelled tile is greater than just about any other driving game I can think of.
Motoroader is a Turbo Graphix 16-based battle racing game with a nice level of customization of weapons, etc. Throw the battle mechanics of Moto into Super Offroad's viewpoint and you'd have a delicious party racer that can be enjoyed locally or networked.

This game is screaming for online multiplayer. A graphical update that preserves the viewpoint and style would be welcomed. Physics, well, adjust them for fun if realism doesn't bring any.

Guardian Heroes. I think I'm effectively getting a remake of this game when Castle Crashers comes out, but hail to the original! This mult-path hybrid between Final Fight style Beat 'Em Up and RPG is and always will be a winner. Each player character has loads of highly animated special moves bursting with personality. The style honestly stands up to the test of time, but some monsters start looking fairly nasty when scaled up or down too far.

A lot of text in this game didn't get translated for the US release, notably when Kanon tells the story of how the Sky Spirits feared him, the origin of the conflict between the worlds and so forth. Wikipedia's article on Guardian Heroes states that Valgar was supposedly going to be a player character but got turned into a boss due to time constraints. If this is actually true(as he plays a very important role in the story) it'd be interesting to see what the plot would have been like had Treasure not had time going against them.

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Balancing work styles

nobody@vox.com(Random Encounters) — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:49:42 -0700

Well, my indie project has me working with 2 very talented and different people. One fellow told me he's not very good at giving time estimates. The other needs hard, fast deadlines to get anything done. I haven't really thought of myself as much of a manager and I've already got this challenge in front of me.

I'll think of something, I have to in order to get this done.

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