The Broadness of Dragon's Dogma

It seems to be the only thing I finish these days, but here is another demo analysis.  This time I spent not more than 45 minutes in Dragon's Dogma, but found a lot interesting about it; the game has a very familiar feel, but changes the formula to offer a new breadth of experience.

That familiar feeling I reference is that of a widely popular title, Dark Souls, only without the hair-pulling difficulty.  Anyone who has picked-up Dark Souls will find the presentation very similar, and makes for a quick transition into the world of Dragon's Dogma.

Speaking of difficulty, the demo was not tough in any way, shape, or form; a bit too easy, in fact.  With epic monsters of scale and ferocity, battles felt hollow, as all conflicts devolved into rabid button-smashing party.   And with the allies (known as “pawns”) the game gives the player on their journey, those NPC’s do their job well, making any fight very one-sided.

Movement is quick and fluid in this world.  I felt, while dashing from halls to vast chambers, climbing cliffs of rubble to new areas, ect. was well executed.  While running around, I can’t help but mention that the graphics are top-notch.  Fur and flesh, cloth and steel, rock and brick all are rendered in eye-pleasing fashion.

Now, if only sound followed the route the visuals took.  Physical actions taken leave nothing in the ears of the player, making it seem that the virtual warrior-avatar is more flying ghost than human.  NPC’s are also a very talkative bunch; they give you hints and notice of their actions towards you (healing, fighting, etc.) but talk over each other in such mass, that, especially when engaging an enemy, speech just becomes a mass of neglected gibberish.

I have to admit that I enjoyed the combat system the most, despite button mashing.  Quick attacks flayed my opponents with due haste.  If an ally grabs an enemy in a brawl, the game gives a bullet-time effect letting you know to skewer the poor sap in the clutches of your buddy.  Some of the bigger monsters require you to jump on them, crawling up to slay their menacing hides up-close-and-personal.

Overall, I had fun with Dragon's Dogma’s demo.  It could have been longer, and is in need of a tweak here and there, but this is a demo, and even the issues I had didn’t ruin the experience for me.   This game drops in May, and from what I can tell, it will be one worth picking-up.

This week is finals here at school, so I may not be around for a time.  Don’t worry – I’m nearing completion of the original Half Life, have some news about Activision, and will be needing your insight on a game being constructed in a few months.  Take care until that content comes rolling out.

• + Familiar style for players of Dark Souls.
• + Smart and effective NPC allies/pawns.
• + Smooth controls, whether travelling in the world or battling its denizens.
• + High-quality graphics.
• + Ease of getting into the game.
• - It is easy to delve into button-mashing, leaving no room for skills.
• A fix: Make for more aggressive enemies that will adapt to melee patterns.
• - Dialogue is all over itself.
• A fix: Include a code check to limit the chattiness of NPC’s if others are speaking.

The Last Week - Mami Update

Next week is Finals Week.  Thursday’s final presentation of Mami will be the final showing of the game.  There is more work to do before then, but the grind to next week’s deadline goes on.

The project manager and I have been working together to ensure our levels work without incident; jumping from platforms to platforms, triggering puzzles, shifting into walls, attacking, and getting stuck in corners are just a few things we tried and edited in regards to what came up.  Anything that couldn’t be handled by the simple moving and resizing of collision boxes I recorded in a QA to-do spreadsheet for later.  If I may say so myself, it was good quality assurance!

Other work going on in Team Squaybies would have to be the finishing of giving visuals to the platform collision boxes.  Further, the final rendering of the player character animation has entered its final phase; it’s implementation happens later today.  Finally, the chief coder has been working on smoothing the corners of certain mechanics, allowing for appropriate player engagement.

Well, it’s been a good semester.  Let’s finish it strong!  Take care until next week, where I’ll be writing a “post mortem” of the whole project.  See you then.

Beta Weekend - A Hell of a Good Time

Guess what happened this weekend!  Diablo 3’s Beta servers where opened to everyone on Friday, and boy-oh-boy, did the public participate.  Though I don’t have any official figures, I’ll give you my impressions of all the classes and the new Diablo game in the context of the beta’s presentation.

First off, the Diablo game as a whole feels a lot like the Diablo 2 that I remember; loot is plentiful, gold drops like candy, dungeons are random yet familiar in reruns, and enemies explode in the beautiful explosions that upgraded graphics allow for.  If the production-build of Diablo 3 merely keeps these feelings of nostalgia that the beta offers, Blizzard will have a smashing hit (though I’m not saying that it won’t be anything but).

The 2 qualms I could find with the beta’s setup is that during play, the “normal” difficulty – the only challenge level offered – was by far too easy, and that the dialogue was shameful.  Nearly every character class burned, beat, and blasted through undead hoards like a hot knife and unholy butter.  It was nice for getting through the entire content of the beta on my first play-through, but it left me wanting more.  The dialogue was not something a company like Blizzard should be giving – cliché statements, bare-bones explanations, and the most dry feeling behind the lines delivered gave the sense that this was a student project that did all the voice acting with the programming team.  A man needs to kill his wife because she’s going to turn into an undead?  I’ve heard better emotion from someone killing an insect.

But how did the classes handle?  I beat the beta with the witch doctor, playing for about 3 hours to reach level 10.  After that, I played every other class for roughly a half-hour, each one conveniently reaching level 6, and stopping before entering the crypt to find a crown.  With that in mind, my review:

Witch Doctor – My first pick was chosen because it could summon.  With spiders and demon hounds, no-one could touch my character, since the mobs agro-ed the spawns.  The downside is that the summons don’t do a lot of damage, but they make that up in the number of creatures you can create, along with the area denial effects the witch doctor brings to the game.

Barbarian – The only “hardcore” character I created (if I die, I die permanently), this is definitely a damage class.  Though the first few levels leave the barbarian soft to blows, after getting some armor, the damage that the class deals-out more than makes up that bad feeling.  However, there was an imbalance between the solo damage abilities and the crowd control attacks; it just felt off.

Demon Hunter – The best thing I can say about the demon hunter is that the range on this class is quite superb.  This leads to superb crowd control, as the traps and devices that go along with the special attacks really keep all mobs under lock-and-key.  The regular “click” attacks are a bit mediocre, but I must mention that this is the only level 6 class that I wanted to continue on with to get more abilities.

Monk – Now let me introduce damage, I mean the monk.  If you can’t guess, the monk is quick to hurt others in a brutal fashion.  I can’t tell if the monk is susceptible to taking a lot of harm itself, but I was burning through enemies so fast they couldn’t land a blow.  Despite the lack of any sort of ranged attack or ability, I did seem to destroy enemies faster than any other class.

Wizard – One thing I noticed about this class is the number of critical hits delivered.  That was handy with all the ranged abilities, but the wizard is the only class I found that had a semi-ranged attack: a lightning bolt that only reached a few yards.  The attacks were very slow, and not that powerful.  Poor damage per second is not a good compliment to a soft character; my least preferable class.

So, with the Diablo 3 beta now closed to the public, and the game set for launch May 15^th, I can say that I had an enjoyable time.  The classes are varied and distinct, with all the great characteristics that made D3’s predecessor one of the best games of all time.  Given the good qualities of the beta, the nagging let-downs of dialogue and lack of challenge in the design this late in production is disappointing, especially with a title coming from a company like Blizzard.  All-in-all, I had a good time with Diablo 3 and I look forward to the launch mid-May.

Take care, and I’ll see you in Hell!

• + Distinct and varied classes.
• + Random dungeons.
• + Plenty of loot and mobs to drop it.
• - Poor writing of dialogue with sub-par delivery. 
•  A fix: Blizzard has the assets to invest more in script writers and voice actors.
• - Dumbed-down difficulty.
• A fix: Respect the skill of the player and give more imposing enemies; it’s Hell on Earth!

Program All the Things - Mami Update

I’ve recently promised to provide some code samples from our work on Mami, and have been talking about it even longer than that.  So, without further ado, le program:

Let’s start with some puzzles.  Above is the triggering code for the puzzles, and below that is the platforming code that handles various collisions with specific blocks within a level that open doors/grant recognition for this, that, and the other thing.  To reset the platforms, a simple timer will be used.  Easy!

As you can see, the implementation of special “shards” is a bit sparse; their collection throughout a level would activate various bonuses, but creating and managing another array within the game is currently being put on the back-burner.  The question is really how we would like to do it, and again, the time to implement and debug.

The last of the puzzle sections we are using, the map is very straight-forward; if the player is in reach of a special node, allow them to activate it.  Once activated, move to a new frame to show a picture, remove player control (aside for a deactivation button), and revert back to the playing frame once they are done looking at the map.  Only bringing in the picture into the library is the thing left to do.

AI seems to be the most fickle thing currently in our design.  To translate changing XY coordinates between the tiles, the enemies, and the player is just making a mess of things.  The chief programmer and I managed to make good progress on it, but the buggy nature of the beast has caused us to comment-out everything past our “patrol” mode and the self-deletion function.  For a demonstration of what we have, that code should be satisfactory (for the most part).

What’s here is but a very small part of the code structure, but the work I put in to creating these chunks of code helps the game flow in a way such that Team Squaybies may just make our deadline in 2 weeks!  Speaking of deadlines, I’ll let you go until next time.  Take care in commenting and reading future posts; I’m currently grinding through Majesty 2 and the original Half-Life.  Those are … interesting games.

Code in Abundance - Mami Update

With only 2 weeks left before Mami hits the deadline for presentation, the code is coming together, the visual products are being put into place, and the entirety of the project is coming to a head.  Despite setbacks, possibly losing some teammates, and some side project work, Mami is looking forward to its release date!

When code runs smoothly, it is a beautiful thing; when it’s code you’ve made, it’s personally satisfying.  This week saw the chief coder and I implementing the final programs for the three puzzle types we’ve designed: a displayable map, a special-item collection system, and a specific platform combination puzzle dealing with jumping onto certain locations at certain times.  Don’t worry; I’ll be sure to start posting some code snippets.

I hate to leave you so soon, but code not associated with Team Squaybies must be written!  Please comment  if you have any thoughts or questions; I’d love to answer!  Take care until next time.

A Short Week and a Short Week to Come - Mami Update

Easter Break: a terrible holiday.  No, it’s not the ham, or the eggs, or the religious aspects about it; it has to be the block of time it takes from the two weeks the holiday falls between.

Thus, 4 days will be lost between this week and next as colored orbs are sought for and pigs are slaughtered.  I pause here as I look upon a wall of stories yet to be completed for Mami… Though a break is much appreciated from the grind of collegiate life, I shudder at how far back Team Squaybies’s development is likely to be.

Despite the woes to come, I must mention the success of Sunday night’s Fools Day game faire.  Both Team Squaybies and Perpetuam Memoriam had a great showing, with playable demos and a large contingent of group members able to attend.  After playing some other games at the faire, Mami received some usable quality assurance testing from an attendee, which our illustrious lead coder found and amended.

Speaking of programming fixes, remember the issue of not loading into the next level at the correct frame?  That was fixed at the faire, too.  Thus, after also garnering video recordings of the commendations put forth for the games I’m working on, our team handled some nagging issues in the various program features.

So, progress was made in this short week.  There likely will fail to be much coming up at least through the start of next week, but I know Team Squaybies can pioneer like the best of them.  Take care, and have a restful weekend!

P.S. Long title FTW.