Redesigned characters and procedural generation in Valve’s upcoming zomcom team FPS, as narrated by Gabe somebody. Never heard of him.
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Posted by Alec Meer on July 15th, 2008 at 12:00 pm.
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Er, that was the whole point of that part of the presentation. The Director isn’t just about enemy numbers/smarts.
This line about the Director caught my interest: “Writes a script for your character to expose state and provide emotional cues.”
Does that mean that someone playing like me, being pretty bad at FPS games who get stressed and jumpy in tense situations will have that reflected in how their character acts while someone who’s a good FPS player with nerves of steel will have their character act and speak in a cooler way?
@ Crispy
Or maybe the game is hard enough to require ALL players to do well in the harder difficulties for the team’s chance at survival, thus having the veterans feel the need to show newbies the ropes before taking on the harder levels. Kind of like Alien Swarm, only not quite as insanely difficult and scripted. As for unsportsmanlike behaviour, I doubt camping works for the zombie players since the survivors can win by escaping or achieving other goals or whatever, thus they have to be hunted down. At least in some game modes I think. No to mention that if they just camp some random place then they may not even get to see the players who go about for their own team goals… Unless the goal is to kill all zombie players, then camping will not do anything for them.
Besides, griefing happens in every single multiplayer game out there, you don’t judge the gameplay by the idiots who try to ruin it and you can generally find servers to play on where either they don’t exist or they swiftly get kicked out. If there are too many idiots, then only play with friends, or at least “online gamemates” which you can depend on not griefing. Surely you must have a few of either kind.
Anyone have a clue where procedural generation was mentioned? I must have missed it. Unless they just hyped the randomisation of objectives and enemy placement, that’s not quite the same as procedural generation.
@Master Builder
Haha, I was wondering if anyone other than me thought he looked like Henry when I first saw the concept art :D
On and during the first slide they show — “Dynamic shared narrative achieved with procedurally generated character performance, pacing, lighting and music”. Also on third slide (the AI director) — “procedurally populates the environment, sets stage for bosses and climaxes, controls difficulty and pacing”
The objectives and enemy placement isn’t to be purely randomised, but matched (difficulty-wise) to performance of players.
When I play this, I’ll be Ben, from Night of the Living Dead.
Regarding the Director
As they’ve stated this is an attemptat an interactive horror movie I get the impression that all teams regardless of skill will be shepherded to the ‘final’ confrontation and then that will be tailored to their skill level. That way it works like a movie with a proper climax (that could go either way). There’s no point in building a narrative for a player if they’re going to be offed at the first encounter!
That’s all very well from a cinematic perspective, but I like to ‘beat’ games. The knowledge that if I hadn’t played as well the game would have just made it easier for me kind of takes away from the sense of acheivement that comes from that.
I really hope they let you put the director into a sort of “presentation only” mode where the difficulty just is what it is. No mention of it, though…
@Skalpadda:
I very much doubt it, but if this were the case it would go great lengths to justifying the ‘emotional impact of Half-Life’ claim.
@Don:
Is that not being taken care of by the player matching system? Already there in Xbox land (or so I’ve read, not a user) but also to be implemented on Steam so that you can play with/against players of roughly equal skill. Also records griefers whose first move in the game is to chuck a pipe bomb at the feet of the other players so you’ve got a good chance of playing in an asshole free zone.
I have read nothing to indicate the particular example of Matchmaking you mentioned is coming to Steam. It is badly, badly needed and should (imho) take precedence over Ep3 resources because of the massive impact it could (should) have on Steam multiplayer.
So far the only references I’ve seen of ‘Matchmaking’ for PC have been regarding the ability to filter servers and join lobbies and join friends’ games, basically nothing astoundingly new or really that helpful in terms of matching player skill and clamping down on griefers.
The fact that L4D will be 100% ‘FF ON’ leads me to believe that the success of the game hinges on players’ collective ability to protect themselves (or be protected) against wanton spoilsportsmanship. After Insurgency for HL2 released with friendly fire ON by default, griefers descended on the mod from every corner of the underworld to feast upon their hapless victims: the players.
Valve usually have something up their sleeve half the time, but occasionally they make the occasional blunder (how the Medic achievements were handled), so I’m not holding my breath just yet.
Incidentally I like Erland M’s take on the AI Director. It is an interesting experiment, but I’m not sure if it will be enough to make me want to part with money. If the reviews don’t convince me, I’m sure I’ll find out on the first L4D free weekend, whenever it’s due.
@Al3xand3r
As for unsportsmanlike behaviour, I doubt camping works for the zombie players since the survivors can win by escaping or achieving other goals or whatever
The levels are linear. Nothing I’ve read so far says they are ‘get from A to B or C’. It’s been said there are multiple paths to main areas, but it was also said that the team never got lost, which to me says it’s a straight “go one direction or the other” motif.
Besides, griefing happens in every single multiplayer game out there, you don’t judge the gameplay by the idiots who try to ruin it
I don’t, but I do judge developers very highly if they are clearly making strides to protect their intended end-user experience. Similarly devs who are multiplayer veterans but overlook the ever-present problem of griefing lose my respect, because they should know better and because the right kind of testing will find these problems.
Anyone have a clue where procedural generation was mentioned? I must have missed it. Unless they just hyped the randomisation of objectives and enemy placement, that’s not quite the same as procedural generation.
I think this is the latter.
It would be interesting if it did. Considering the Director AI is actively monitoring how well you handle situations, aim, ammo, getting hit etc, it doesn’t seem like it’d be too hard to use slightly different voice clips for players of different skill for example. We’ll see.
Still no details about playing as infected.
Since this will be my main focus a month after launch, and create most of the replayability for those of us who currently play TF2 twice a week, I’d really like to know what it will be like.
Eh, I’ll buy the game either way, just want more details…