There were a few other arcade games that also used twin-controls, like Smash TV.
Editorial On "Is Wii Next-Gen?" (answer: no)
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There were a few other arcade games that also used twin-controls, like Smash TV.
I'm not sure what more you want from an FPS other than taking cover, running to get help, flanking, throwing grenades, dodging bullets, avoiding grenades, retreating when low on health, leading shots, not magically knowing exactly where you are, and avoiding choke-points.
I mean, it's not like giving an FPS automaton the ability to make stock market decisions would make it any better. And if you make it too good, more than two guys = you are dead. Just the fact that I couldn't run into a room, wake the guys up, and then wait by the door for them to file out and die changed my FPS strategy quite a bit from the ol' Quake 2 days.
I mean, it's not like giving an FPS automaton the ability to make stock market decisions would make it any better. And if you make it too good, more than two guys = you are dead. Just the fact that I couldn't run into a room, wake the guys up, and then wait by the door for them to file out and die changed my FPS strategy quite a bit from the ol' Quake 2 days.
Of course there were, but I was snarkily addressing the "started it" comment.
I hope you are being sarcastic
.They can do all of that but I still learn how to kill them to easly (g in Halo (probably one of the best AIs in a game) we all know the right(s) way(s) to kill a elite) and that is in the best case. The fact is that taking cover always in the same spot and all of those action that are triggered by players actions (so you control NPCs) does not give a big challenge to my brain (that is probably why I like soo much of MP in some games). There is ways to avoid the NPC being to good (just give them low health or bad aim...).
I dont think that a game will ever be really intelligent, but I dont like to always have a certain PlanB to kill enemys for when I am out of inspiration to kill them on a new way.
Like I said before the AI must fit in the game design.
For eg in the GoW video I linked before, it seems that the AI really reacts to player actions (bettr than Halo or such) and that should at least give some replay value (once we will soon predict most AI reactions like it happens in Halo and make sure than his next cover will have a grenade waiting for him).
But if learning alghorithms (or system that use them, like ANN) start to be used then we may be able o say goodbye to what is today many time more a memorization process to a always thinking one. (Ihope it is not easy to discovery the next step with those systems).
Redefine boss battles with a battle against a semi-sentient enemy that is truly the "Elite" one among the enemy soldiers. I thought the final battle against "arnold clone" in RE4 was fascinating. Especially the earlier knife fight. That obviously wasn't AI, but it was creative scripting to make him feel really formidable.
It's just that, well, Halo was a high point for sure, but nothing has really changed in years. There have even been tons of worse examples of modern FPS AI. And lots of letdowns after hype (Oblivion, HL2, etc).
It's just that, well, Halo was a high point for sure, but nothing has really changed in years. There have even been tons of worse examples of modern FPS AI. And lots of letdowns after hype (Oblivion, HL2, etc).
The problem is when you have non-random enemy placement, replaying the same levels will feel the same. Half of what keeps multiplayer fresh is that the other players spawn randomly, and you never know what powerups or weapons they'll pick up before you meet them...and they might find you and shoot you in the back before you find them. With single player games, once you've played a level a few times, you know exactly where the enemies will be standing, what weapons they'll be carrying, and where all the good cover in the room is (both for you and for them). Even with godlike AI, this puts you at a ridiculous advantage. Enemies with UT-style AI would make the gaming feel more spontaneous and fresh, but it would hurt immersion (watching a guy run backward while shooting RPGs doesn't look realistic) and kill the ability of the level designer to create a fairly controlled experience, since enemies would automatically know from the first moment that they should be looking for you.
And brilliant AI + bad aim + low enemy health would kill the experience. What good is AI if the enemies basically can't kill you? Learning algorithms wouldn't help anything then, you'd just walk up to them and kill them no matter where they were.
You basically need good level design to make fights feel fresh. You need enough action going on that a meticulous battle plan just plain won't work. But even then, once you've played a level 5 or 6 times and figured out the trick to it, it quits being hard. This simply comes from the planned nature of single player story-based FPS's.
And brilliant AI + bad aim + low enemy health would kill the experience. What good is AI if the enemies basically can't kill you? Learning algorithms wouldn't help anything then, you'd just walk up to them and kill them no matter where they were.
You basically need good level design to make fights feel fresh. You need enough action going on that a meticulous battle plan just plain won't work. But even then, once you've played a level 5 or 6 times and figured out the trick to it, it quits being hard. This simply comes from the planned nature of single player story-based FPS's.
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That could certainly help, but there is more than that, one of the things is that you will indeed control the enemys if you do the things right, ie you know that if you do "A" the AI wil do "X", if you do "B" the AI will do "Y"... after you learn that the AI is under your control. And something, to present some kind of good challenge to your brain, should at least learn to avoid some paterns so it cant be artificially controled.
Maybe it would be more realistic than you think
(since it is in MP).I dont see why would it hurt the level designer (besides some very cinematic games), or why would the AI need to know a priori that I am the enemy (actually this is what happens in most games).
Of curse I am not telling that this should be like this in every game (in many wouldnt make that much sence, eg Mario, Serious Sam...) but in many would make sence.
Sometimes the way we do things matter more than what we do.
I dont see why would it necessarely be easy (or easier) to kill the AI, in todays games most enemys are "hard to kill" just because you need to put a lot of bullets in them before they put in you, but it could be put a few bullets in them but it is hard to put the bullets in them because you dont know here they are and because you arent sure to control/predict what they will do... Instead of using just "muscles" you could use both.
Definitely that is what have being the salvation to must games, using tricks like new enemys during the progression of the game, good level design (which some(many?)times hurts in the long run IMO)...
Anyway why not put Spore like AI (not really but) in a FPS or a action game and here the enemys in the next level (or time you play) are a evolution without the weak spots of the old one (eg a player with great aim that do a lot of headshoots would in the next level face enemys without head or with a very resistent helmets that would kill the advantage of the player eg2, player is good at frontal atacks would face with guns that are good against that kind of attack (eg shootguns)).
That is a good example on good level design.
If UE3 had good AI out of the box, maybe things could change faster.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Why wouldnt Wii be next gen? next gen just means its the console after te last gen. Something doesnt have to be uberfast and have te latest tech do be next gen, its just has to be a product released after the last product for it to be next gen.
Why are so many people here so focussed on gfx and AI? really, in the end those things dont matter at all. People often think they do, but they dont. More and more people are complaining that they dont have fun playing games anymore. But why is that? gfx are now at a point where things are more than realistic enough, there is enough power to build hughe worlds and make good AI etc. But the reason we play games, because we want to have fun, is actually getting less and less. Games arnt designed to be fun anymore, they are design to push a gazzilton poly's but making a game that is actually fun to play doesnt seem to be important anymore. EA said this themselves, the reason their DS games didnt sell very well is because the games are not fun to play according to EA. EA discoverd that players actually want to have fun playing a game. WOW, a gamedev discovering that games have to be fun... Maybe its just me, but isnt that why we play games? because we want to have fun? its pretty bad when devs start thinking we rather see ubergfx than having fun playing the game. But that is the way we are going. The only thing devs seem to be able to say these days about their games is: Look at the GFX! you see the awsome ai? or that physics engine! non of them mentions that it is actually fun to play the game.
Why is it that games from the 2d area are still fun to play? thats because the overall design is made to be fun. If you dont have alot of power, you have to focus on making a game fun. That is why they are still fun today. But that wont be the fact with most current (and next gen) games. They are designed to look awsome. But looking awsome only lasts untill the next uberconsole will hit the shelves and because those games arnt designed to be fun they wont stand the test of time.
And that is where nintendo kicks in with the Wii. It is not designed to be the next leap in gfx, to bring another generation of games wich are awsome on the technicall side, but arnt actually that much fun to play. The Wii is designed to produce games that are fun to play. The Wiimote is a big part of that, instead of the same game only with better gfx you are now able to interact with the game more than ever. Ask yourself what is more fun: playing a golf/tennis game where you only press buttons, or play a gold/tennis game where you actually have to make the movements yourself? it will connect you alot more to the game than even the best gfx/ai/physics in the world will do.
What alot of people also seem to forget often is that a good looking game doesnt depend on the amount of poly's you can push, or the resolution or whatever but what is important for a game to look good is the design and style, and you dont need hugh power to produce those two. I see alot of games wich look awsome form a technical point of view, but the lack that special feeling wich connects you to the world in the game. It are just alot of poly's and high res textures, but no heart, no imagination.
I think nintendo made a choice that could work out very well. They more or less force devs to build games that are fun and make games that look good from a artistic point of view because they dont have the power to just push a shitload of poly's.
Over time ive noticed that I rather have games that are fun than games that look good. Sure, awsome looking games are cool, but the gfx arnt special anymore after playing for a couple of hours and from that point on the game itself needs to be fun to play otherwise I dont feel like playing more of the game.
Why are so many people here so focussed on gfx and AI? really, in the end those things dont matter at all. People often think they do, but they dont. More and more people are complaining that they dont have fun playing games anymore. But why is that? gfx are now at a point where things are more than realistic enough, there is enough power to build hughe worlds and make good AI etc. But the reason we play games, because we want to have fun, is actually getting less and less. Games arnt designed to be fun anymore, they are design to push a gazzilton poly's but making a game that is actually fun to play doesnt seem to be important anymore. EA said this themselves, the reason their DS games didnt sell very well is because the games are not fun to play according to EA. EA discoverd that players actually want to have fun playing a game. WOW, a gamedev discovering that games have to be fun... Maybe its just me, but isnt that why we play games? because we want to have fun? its pretty bad when devs start thinking we rather see ubergfx than having fun playing the game. But that is the way we are going. The only thing devs seem to be able to say these days about their games is: Look at the GFX! you see the awsome ai? or that physics engine! non of them mentions that it is actually fun to play the game.
Why is it that games from the 2d area are still fun to play? thats because the overall design is made to be fun. If you dont have alot of power, you have to focus on making a game fun. That is why they are still fun today. But that wont be the fact with most current (and next gen) games. They are designed to look awsome. But looking awsome only lasts untill the next uberconsole will hit the shelves and because those games arnt designed to be fun they wont stand the test of time.
And that is where nintendo kicks in with the Wii. It is not designed to be the next leap in gfx, to bring another generation of games wich are awsome on the technicall side, but arnt actually that much fun to play. The Wii is designed to produce games that are fun to play. The Wiimote is a big part of that, instead of the same game only with better gfx you are now able to interact with the game more than ever. Ask yourself what is more fun: playing a golf/tennis game where you only press buttons, or play a gold/tennis game where you actually have to make the movements yourself? it will connect you alot more to the game than even the best gfx/ai/physics in the world will do.
What alot of people also seem to forget often is that a good looking game doesnt depend on the amount of poly's you can push, or the resolution or whatever but what is important for a game to look good is the design and style, and you dont need hugh power to produce those two. I see alot of games wich look awsome form a technical point of view, but the lack that special feeling wich connects you to the world in the game. It are just alot of poly's and high res textures, but no heart, no imagination.
I think nintendo made a choice that could work out very well. They more or less force devs to build games that are fun and make games that look good from a artistic point of view because they dont have the power to just push a shitload of poly's.
Over time ive noticed that I rather have games that are fun than games that look good. Sure, awsome looking games are cool, but the gfx arnt special anymore after playing for a couple of hours and from that point on the game itself needs to be fun to play otherwise I dont feel like playing more of the game.
Because the designer can't put caches of enemies in certain rooms and expect to stay there. And if the AI's really all that good, you don't want to be facing 6 or 7 enemies at the same time. Unless, as you said, their aim/damage sucks, but then that just reintroduces the problem. Just imagine playing a 6-on-1 match of Quake 3 against some really good players.
I'm also wondering how much you've played FPS's on the maximum difficulty settings. In many, top difficulty means enemies have perfect aim, which certainly makes things more difficult than just needing to put more ammo in a guy to kill him.
The main thing I think is that playing through a story-based campaign will never have infinite replay value. And finally, I doubt they'll make an AI for a long time that is truly smarter than a human...and once they do, you won't be facing multiple enemies in a room, at which point a lot of games will get pretty boring, and everything will feel like a series of 1-on-1 Quake 3 matches. I would just say that if you're looking in story-based video games for an experience on par with deathmatching with experienced humans, you're going to be continually disappointed, because not many people would want to play that kind of game.
I think you missed the point of wanting better AI or even gfx to make the game more fun, because that can also be used to make a game fun. Althought I confess that many times I feel the same way, but that is just a dev choice.
I dont think that we will see a smarter-than-human AI anytime soon too, so it would still be very close to design, so we will not see deathmatch AI for a story level. Still there is ways to get it working but with diferent tuning.
About the hardest settings in FPS I tryed a few, in most of them you just need to be better (aim, faster, reflex), in a few you need to change tatics if the old one dont allow to improve enought.
Anyway there is many more games that can improve even with only "low level AI".
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I know that was the intention, but lately its obvious that gfx and AI are only used for PR purposes and not to make the game better. I see gorgeus games, and while devs have the potential with this power to make awsome games, almost all games I play arnt more, or even as fun as alot of games that are already old. It seems all the time and energy goes into creating those gfx but no or little time seems to go into making those gfx work for the game.
I agree. Gameplay hasn't evolved much since the ps1 days. Graphics have gotten much better, AI is better, etc. However, we were mainly playing the same genre since the days of ps1 and even before then. We have new non-games which Nintendo is cranking out to appeal to another crowd.
But for gamers in general, there is nothing really revolutionary. We are lead to to believe that the Wii is because of the control scheme, but you are basically playing the same genres with different controls. It might make the game more immersive or it might make it a big pain in the butt for people to get adjusted to it since the controls might have been perfected on traditional control schemes. Nintendo ******s might argue this, but some of the game such as Wii sports seem to be taken from the arcade with the motion controls. It's like briging the arcade experience home in a different way. It's still nothing really new.
However, I not stating that the Wii won't be fun. It might be. But it's not the revolution that I was expecting.
If you're looking for something totally new, you're going to be severely disappointed! In books, movies, TV programmes, the same ideas are recycled over and over. And that's because there's only a few ideas possible. Similarly in games, you have goal and how you achieve that, and pretty much all combinations have been conceived already. What makes a game is the gameplay. It's like sports. Tennis is tennis. It has been tennis for hundreds of years. Every tennis match consists of hitting a ball over and over, scoring points. People still play and enjoy tennis though, because every time they play it's a challenge. Every football match is the same. Every race is. Every fight in Tekken is. Every buzz around a PGR3 track is. The glut of human activities are the same basic thing over and over. It's the 'extras' that keep it fresh.
There aren't likely to be (m)any more new genres. We'll only have the same sorts of games as we have now. What'll make those games enjoyable is their implementation. It's the way you control them, and the way they're designed, and the way different play throughs offer enough of a different or rewarding experience in challenging the gameplayer. This is where power comes in. Better graphics means taking Captive and freeing it from block-movement to full 3D to produce Wolfenstein3D. Better AI means taking the simplistic bots of Wolfenstein and have them duck and cover and sneak around, creating GeoW. GeoW and Captive are the same branch of the gaming family tree. First person view, run around and shoot things, but the extra power of modern hardware has produced far more involving and challenging games. Captive can still be fun. It offers its own gameplay experience. But if technology hadn't progressed, we'd only have Captive style games and not the multitude or free FPSes we have now. We wouldn't have the contrasting play of COD and SW:Battlefronts. We'd be stuck with running around blocks.
Wii Sports Tennis and Virtua Tennis are exactly the same game as Pong, but are far more fun due to the better graphics making it more believable and the control scheme and the greater challenge given to the gamer. Who here would say graphics and power don't matter, and they'd be as happy to play Pong over any current tennis game?
Looking to the future, there's a couple of areas that can be greatly enhanced other than graphics. AI can make for very different game playability, and physics can produce whole new games structured around virtual physical interactions. There's a physics based game I played but can't remember it's name, where you have to stack blocks to make towers, competing with the computer or other players. That game, though simple, wouldn't be possible without modern processing power. There's certainly scope for growth in that realm if publishers weren't so conservative, and hopefully things like homebrew and open development initiatives will free development to use power to create new genres.
On the whole though, much of the power available will be used to refine the old experiences, and it's used to good effect. Saying 'old games were fun, so power isn't needed' is ridiculous. Those 'old games' are dependent on vastly more powerful hardware than the first games. The fact that modern gameplay hasn't progressed much is due to factors like limited scope for advancement and publishers being reluctant to invest in new ideas. Better hardware is going to mean more opportunity for better games regardless of whether the opportunity is taken or not. If we take Wii, with more processing and graphics power, you'd get better framerates and higher detail that'll make the game more believable and make it easier to follow the action, and would allow for more diversity of games. Imagine a puzzler based on fluid dynamics, with a flow of liquid and airflows. On PS3 you could have an interface to direct water flows along a complex pathway system, orientating different platforms and tubes by turning them with the motion control. On Wii, though the motion interface is there, the processing power isn't. That's an example of where processing power enables more. Accepting the current capabilities as an adequate cap on technology that's 'as good as it gets' is totally missing where the problems facing the creation of good and intersting games come from. It's not the hardware at fault, but the software industry.
Shifty,
I see where you are coming from and I agree with you on many of your points. I'm very dissapointed in the lack of horsepower in the Wii, and it could cripple some of the advancements in graphics, physics, and AI that we expect for a next-gen console. I guess the main issue is the stagnation of gameplay. PS3 has the power, but will we see publishers taking the risk on a new type of game with the higher cost of development. For the Wii, it may be possible with the controller, but the power isn't there. For some innovation, power might not be the issue. It may just involve thinking outside the box and using what we already have. However, more power has led to many advancements as you have noted. The only place where we might see innovation now is from the small devs who get to publish their games in the marketplace.
That's what Nintendo have going for them. They're forcing innovation by providing a very different system where the conventional doesn't fit so well into both the control and the target demographic. Consider Elebits. A game like that is only likely to appear on Wii due to the human interfacing and the willingness to go with simpler game concepts.
Is a daring and impressive move, and one that looks like it'll work. However, it won't be long before much of the innovation is exhausted and games end up using the same control methods as previous games (eg. all RPGs will have sword-waggling via the Wiimote). It will again boil down to what the devs do with the software and how much freedom the publishers grant the devs. After a rush of new titles, it might be found that certain genres sell the best, and publishers start churning out the same content over and over. Ugh.
But wasn't that the same for most PS2 games? Also, it was because of cheapness that games like Katamari got out.
Anyways, it doesn't matter if Wii is "Next" or "New" Gen. What matters is that it is succesful at what it is aiming to do.
Completely agree but none would force them to use any extra power if there is, only the controler is needed. Althought that it is interesting that this is one of the few devs that put emphasis on more advanced (spec wise) features like physics, complex AI and lately a good improvement on gfx too
That is one of the things that I wonder too, but there is a few variants:
1- How much time till we have standard control schems (eg only Halo made standard FPS control schems, yet there are controlers (DS) that would suport them how many years before (4-5)?), and would it be enought till a new gen?
2-Can we hav multiple controlers paradigms (eg, again in FPS we already have two, RS and MP3, one in a light gun like fashion and the other in a mouse like one, will we have more(?)), if so would that lead for even more subgenres making the control innovation last much longer.
3- with a very broad range of possibilitys and/or true intuitive control will not that lead to much broad range and much more complex game making innovation easier.
4- how much will HW limit the control schems, or if we even can do/order more with the controler how much will the HW limit what we can do in the game (beyond the expected).
Those will have a great influnce to how much time will take to innvation wears off.
One of the common points I see raised in favor of the wii is that graphics aren't important to gameplay. But the two aren't mutually exclusive. Graphics and presentation are a huge factor for all kinds of games, and for many, it's hard to really go back and deal with the old standards.
If you want to continue this line of reasoning, then maybe first person shooters should go back to 90 degree walls. Maybe RTSes should run at 640x480 (Hell, who needs to be able to select more than 9 units at a time anyway). Why should RPGs be fully voice acted when we can just have poorly translated clunky two-line dialog like "You spoony bard."
When I look at the Wii, I see a system that's a departure from everything that's come before. It's a blatant omission that Nintendo is no longer in a position to compete. If you think they had to sacrifice graphics just to make a motion sensing controller, then maybe Nintendo has no business being in hardware. In fact, I suspect this will be their last home console and after the Wii, they will become a third-party developer on the other systems (while still maintaining their handheld business).
A lot about this system seems to point to the past, from limited hardware and dated graphics to the emulation of 20 year old 8-bit games. It's almost like Nintendo thinks living in the past will give them some semblance of the success they achieved back then.
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