Travel abstraction in Fallout 1 and 2 was very good. Especially when the players speed increases when you got a vehicle. You also used up resources which could be used as ammunition. I am in favour of how final fantasy does it. In FF8 you get mutiple ways to travel. You can travel on foot, use a car, later you use a swimming fortress and in the end you can fly. I think I like that system the most. I wanted to also point out Neverwinter nights 2 had an expansion Wind of Zehir where you could also travel in an abstraction layer and encounters were visible on the map so you could choose to interact and depending on your skills the encounters could chase you down. I would love to see that system mixed in with the one from FF8. When you get better transport the threats stop being relevant. You can also get player used to skipping encounters and take the transport away as part of the plot. For exapme the car/airship got stolen like in Fallout. That could also serve as a companion introduction. All mixed up. 😅

This channel is such a nice hidden gem. Very helpful

I feel this math Wikipedia statement so much 😂

Once I became well familiarized with the cube grid tool, I created a fairly complex and impressive-looking sci-fi research facility, with multiple hallways, rooms of various sizes, multiple floors, etc. I had a lot of fun adding all sorts of little tiny details so that the environment didn't look so angular and boring. It reminds me of painting or sketching in a way - I'd just put on some music and spend hours working on the map geometry. Great way to pass the time. And yes, using the material editor to paint all the textures was EXTREMELY tedious and time consuming, but I've grown used to it. Now it's just a standard part of the work flow.

change the light source setting, "Indirect Lighting Intensity" to "0"

is there a way i could find a top-down perspective of some of these levels? I am trying to get better with making level schematics and wanted to use Prey as reference but I cannot find it ANYWHERE

Can you make it where voice go with typing

I'd make people on each planet humans that have the same personality and each planet would be like a different person. So if you have someone annoying in the office who thinks everything should be done their way I'd have a planet that is fully made up of people with that kind of personality and it would show really well how the planet would be governed if that was the dominant personality. I'd also have planets with weak people that can't really build anything, with ambitious people that have an anarchy because they can't listen to each other and so on...

I know this is kind of separate from the topic this video is attacking (that is, crafting minigames with pass/fail scenarios that betray the player's basic intuition of recipe = item), but what about minigames that are literal minigames - i.e. minute interactive visual (or maybe even aural) puzzles that the player has to solve in the process of making an item? For example, I have a machine I want to make and I get to actually drill the screw holes and solder the boards via a set of little click and drag prompts or key prompts etc., or the same for chopping logs, or sewing. Maybe a fast player who has memorized the prompts can quickly finish a recipe and be rewarded with more items. Has this been done before? Is it a fun idea? This might classify as "chore play" like you mentioned in another comment though. The complexity of the puzzle would most likely scale to the value of the item - either gameplay wise, or the number of ingredients - so frequent and seemingly unimportant tasks like making sticks would offer less resistance to the player.

can't agree with the space shop thing. the deal is that Shepard is a super star, beign first human spectre, beign a "citadel hero". that event is absolutely fine. I heard you said it is bad - but I never heard the reason of it. also Shepard as facist intergalactic cop - is kind of yes and kind of no, due to different role play possibilities.

I had the same issue with implementing water in Godot. There is no pre-built wave anything, so you have to write it all from scratch. I used a wave function and then a few noise textures to get it to feel more organic. My version of Godot doesn't even have compute shaders. What I ended up doing was having the wave code run on the GPU in the shader, and also on the CPU by rewriting the math and reading the same textures again. I then pass the delta from the CPU to the GPU through the shader uniform to make the timing all line up. Definitely one of the more expensive ways to solve it, but as long as the game stays simple enough, you can get away with it. I'm sure this is all stuff you already knew, but in case it's helpful to anyone, its a way to go about it. All told, I have an average render time of around 5ms which isn't horrible for the most expensive effect in my game.

now stormworks removed boiler pressure

Extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation, love this stuff.

What does it mean when you're playing a normal table-top RPG and you fail a skill check? For example, picking a lock. Does that make you not a thief? How would you compare random dice roll skill checks vs Fallout (New Vegas), where there's a hard requirement for certain options, or even hacking where you *have* to have a certain level to hack something or you're just not allowed.

I right this was going to be on how to craft xp graphs, what bosses should drop etc. Haha, I was pleasantly surprised though!! Another part of this is conveying urgency. “Oh the world’s about to end?” Hold up while I go finish my 20 side quests. That to me ruins the experience of drama

If you find a way to make barren fun too 🎉

Ok but who is playing skyrim because they wanted to be a fisherman lmao

after finishing metaphor refantazio in a 100 hours in a week after never having done that for any game in years, ive recently been obsessed with a new forever WIP indie game project combining transformable metaphor archetypes, persona/SMT recruitable/fusable demons, and draftable slay the spire cards (unlocked thru upgrading bonds) in a deckbuilder rpg. fixed non-grid battlefield tiles but the player can recall and summon allied party characters, summoned demons, etc. onto tiles as they cycle through their deck so that everyone's abilities can be maximized. in theory this video is implying that their might be merit to allowing all starter non-fused demons to be not completely overshadowed by fused/multi-fused demons (unlike SMT where it's always better to fuse from what i can tell) so that they remain as mediocre but not unplayable options in the late game for potential challenge runs and to not delete them from the iteration process, did i understand this correctly? hahaha

Much appreciated. I've got no comments but your videos certainly get me to think more deeply about stories and game design.

Really good stuff!

Amazing and simple way to do it, thank you

Pokemon is a rogue lite lite 😂 What's kerbal? I'm from the glorious future multiverse where kitten space agency is all i know 😅

I've thought about replayability a lot as I'm trying to figure out what kind of game I can make myself, and one huge part of these self-imposed challenges seems to be offering enough interlocking systems to the player that can combine in interesting ways, plus of course the randomness and iteration that you mentioned from pokemon. The Elder Scrolls games are quite popular on YT due to many people doing all sorts of weird self-imposed challenges. Some do that with Fallout 3/NV/4 as well. Of course, those are huge open-world games so they may not be so feasible to create by a solo dev or a small indie team, but the core principles of various systems you can combine is still useful to keep in mind (melee/ranged/magic combat, stealth, alchemy, enchantment, random leveled loot, followers, etc.). These self-imposed challenges are also highly dependent on growing a large or loud enough community that will not only find it fun to challenge themselves, but also share these challenges with others online, which shows other players the possibilities of these challenges and inspires them to try them out.

Yes! Another Craig video.

Your channel is so underrated

This is such a good series. You explain basics in novel ways and extrapolate thoroughly and quite well.

What's wrong with youtube? Great points btw, good vid

this is amazing thank you for quick and helpful tutorial.

Very thankful for the good content <3

Hi Craig, do you still create new videos like this? A previous video you mentioned you are going to stop posting here.

Wow, here 9 years later and this is a great video.

As an aspiring RPG game dev, feels like I found a gold mine

2024

Hey Craig! I really enjoyed this video. I’m a film student studying story and I want to start creating KZbin videos specifically analyzing video games from a strictly storytelling perspective. If you’re interested in chatting sometime about what tends to be missing from games with poor stories, I would love to have that conversation!

A good voice and a good teacher. Finally

its not on the workshop :/

So basically the old serial formula of case of the week, where the case is random mission allowing for the long-term relationship B plot to happen through generic affordance within these mission? Ie the dating sims structure of game like tokimeki memorial 😮

Concord 😂

Yes, exactly!

You're a lifesaver

I always loved your design videos, super excited to see them pop again on my feed!

The war table in Dragon Age Inquisition is a bit awkward, but I think is a decent example of how this kinda thing could be done. The characters you interact with there don’t go on regular missions, but you still learn about them. The stories that are told through this mechanic are usually short and simple (so, cheap to make), but they make you feel like things are happening in the world and sometimes involve your party members. The game itself is full of tragic backstories though.

how disruptive is it to player's planning if a major npc starts out as representative of one faction, but if neglected/the opposing npc/faction is favored by the player, then the neglected npc's personality splits and forms 2 new factions that are both opposing the favored npc/faction but are still part of the player's adventuring party? it feels pretty normal with the faceless factions of frostpunk 2 but i wonder how it applies to crpg's unless it's just another regular tool for the videogame writer hahaha

Nice:)

so pleasant to see these pop up more often now hahaha

Nice to hear from you again!

Very nice video as always! Thank you for taking your time doing them ^^

Another greate video from my best youtuber ever :) Thanks mate, love your theory of game dev, cheers 🥂🥂

Nice! Another good video

Such good advice! Underrated channel :D