Wishlist for Porting Projects (Pt. 2)

[Raven3x7]

How bout Trine, Frozenbyte's new game? I guess that's LGP territory though

[MAXX]

Wow, Trine looks so awesome, if they had a Linux version, I'd have bought it right now, after seeing that video on their website. It reminds me of "The Lost Vikings".

Right now I'm actually considering buying it and trying to run it through wine, but probably won't do it, since i hate running software through wine.

I really hope that LGP is gonna port it.
None of Svartalfs business i guess, since LGP is already porting Shadowground.

[L33F3R]

imo, and strictly my opinion!

game is good for the first 2 hours. then it starts getting boring.

[MAXX]

Doesn't that apply to virtually any game unless it has a good story or you play online against others or unless it has some huge world to explore?

According to their forums they want to wait for Shadowground sales figures before deciding whether to port Trine or not.

[L33F3R]

Doesn't that apply to virtually any game unless it has a good story or you play online against others or unless it has some huge world to explore?

plants vs zombies

[Dragonlord]

Doesn't that apply to virtually any game unless it has a good story or you play online against others or unless it has some huge world to explore?

According to their forums they want to wait for Shadowground sales figures before deciding whether to port Trine or not.

No, that's not the problem.

1) Game with good story but boring gameplay => boring
2) Game with good MP but boring SP => gonna suck as soon as cheating can't be stopped anymore or player numbers drop ( will ALWAYS happen at one time )
3) Huge world ( aka sandbox ) => sucks too because having a huge world and nothing fun to do with it sucks.

The only thing that makes a game good for long time is varied gameplay and keeping the tasks interesting. A good story alone does not work especially since I know only two games so far which had good stories: Deus-Ex and Thief. And both games had a great gameplay first paired up with a great story.

[MAXX]

Oh, hai, yeah, sorry, I forgot that you studied game design for 12 years and that your likes and desires dictate the likes and desires of others.

Cheating can be stopped pretty good if the devs did not totally mess up the games creation. And why would I care if the interest in some game dropped after 5 to 10 years? If the game is good then it keeps its players for ages, if a game sucks then the players leave quite fast.

[Dragonlord]

Oh, hai, yeah, sorry, I forgot that you studied game design for 12 years and that your likes and desires dictate the likes and desires of others.

Keep your smart assing for yourself. There exist certain guides on what makes a good game. Sometimes you can get a big selling game by not following them ( Pokemon is one example ) but in general if you neglect them then your game won't find a big audience. So it has nothing to do with me but guides existing before I arrived on the scene.

Cheating can be stopped pretty good if the devs did not totally mess up the games creation.

Where there are humans there are errors. There exists nothing like a bug-free game. Cheating is based on exploiting bugs. Some bugs are very hard to fix and in some situations it is even impossible to detect cheats unless an Admin watches every match on a server. But I forgot that somebody having no idea of actual game programming tries to teach me here.

And why would I care if the interest in some game dropped after 5 to 10 years? If the game is good then it keeps its players for ages, if a game sucks then the players leave quite fast.

Maybe it would interest you if you have a hard time to find a server with players on it? Maybe if the good servers stopped serving the game since it is not played that much anymore and only crap-ping servers remain? Maybe if only hard-core players are left where often the fun is second important since they build clan-waring or simply don't like people just playing a game for fun not for glory ( and I've met a ton of those guys )?

I've seen various games including good ones lost over time like this. Just because you may be playing mainstream games doesn't mean such things exist. But we better drop this here. I should anyways not have answered to somebody throwing n00bish lines around in a quote but sometimes I'm just to good for this world.

[L33F3R]

i was going to reply to maxx but you just basically hit the nail on the head. Not fallowing the "guides" as you call it is risky. But the better games are the ones that take the chances.

I do disagree about storyline however; thats based entirely on personal preference. Regardless of that, if all you have is a storyline you might as well have wrote a book. Classic games got by with little or no storyline because adding the extra crap would bust the 1.4mb limit...

I should anyways not have answered to somebody throwing n00bish lines around in a quote but sometimes I'm just to good for this world.

dont flatter yourself. Thats 1 step closer to being L33F3R, and noone wants to be L33F3R...

[Dragonlord]

I do disagree about storyline however; thats based entirely on personal preference. Regardless of that, if all you have is a storyline you might as well have wrote a book. Classic games got by with little or no storyline because adding the extra crap would bust the 1.4mb limit...

I don't expect people to agree with me, that's the nature of mankind. Just doing argumentation in a civilized manner with actual arguments is what I call for. Now what goes for story and gameplay I am perhaps a bit particular. This is since I belief the media games is under-used so far. As you mentioned if I have only a good story and more or less just following it without much interaction then I could instead read a book at the beach or watch a movie with friends. What puts games apart for me from other media like books or movies is the interaction. The player changes the course of action. And somehow in many games nowadays this goes lost. Now it depends on what you call interaction and this is in fact a tricky question to answer. For me interaction especially means the player can actively interact with the world, the inhabitants and objects he can retrieve. This does not cover deciding if you shoot at monster A or B or tossing a chair at it instead of shooting it but higher order interaction like deciding to fight them in the first place or doing something else or going all MacGyver on them because it is much more rewarding to do things in the unconventional way. Or a game where you can actually get through being a pacifist and outsmarting your opponents. The last time I've seen a game with enough interaction to allow for such a game play type has been deus-ex and this had been way back in time. We've got more and more powerful computers and hardware in general but yet interaction in game is still restricted to shooting monsters or grinding up character levels. Put up again a bit much text right now but maybe you see where I'm coming from in this matter.