Book-shaped switch, tear-off napkins and Gabe Newell. - by Kamlorn
DuatDweller on 24/1/2024 at 02:11
I just need to know when HL3 is coming out.
Not that I will be able to play it anyway, I haven't updated my main rig since sept 2012.
Time to upgrade in a few months I presume.
There is a lot of games that I can't play right now, but there is no urge like when HL2, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, Thief DS, Doom3, Quake 4, TES Oblivion, TES Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout NV, Fallout 4, came out. There is nothing out there that I know right now that calls me to play it, maybe its just me.
Pyrian on 24/1/2024 at 02:11
Quote Posted by demagogue
Another way to handle it is to at least cue the player to what should open by the thing.
Could just
label it like people do in real life if there's a control that's not obvious what it's controlling. Bright glowing cables leading from the switch to the effect are popular in video games.
Talos Principle II Sphinx switches have an interesting take; the switches themselves are just out in the wild pretty randomly, but the Sphinx itself displays a map of their locations.
Quote Posted by DuatDweller
I just
need to know when HL3 is coming out.
It
isn't.DuatDweller on 24/1/2024 at 02:24
Quote Posted by Pyrian
It
isn't.Noooooooooo1!!!!!""··2223444!!!! Slashing veins right now, I'll be right back.
:angel:
Kamlorn on 24/1/2024 at 09:54
Quote Posted by demagogue
Walking sims, visual novels, art games and the like sometimes don't bother with a feedback loop to the player, though often they're considered on the boundary of being non-interactive.
The picture on the screen changes in response to your 'press W' action, if we talking about walking sims. I dont talk about mouse rotation in FPS – it's a roller coaster.
Lets call those essential for an interaction with a computer actions and computer's response – 'simple feedback loop'. Pressing one button and an appearance of the symbol on the screen is an example of simple feedback loop. It's much harder to reduce to such a simple description with a computer mouse, as you understand.
We, experienced gamers, usually dont notice it ( for me it's a big question: Why are we dont notice it now?). But it is a simple feedback loop which cannot be avoided. And just like with the tear off napkins (the joy of tearing off which we lost since we aren't 2 years old dopamine hunters, we are experienced lifers now:cool:) the source of our 'dopamine strikes' is somewhere inside those simple feedback loops.
Yeah. Lets stop right here.
I feel like I've already made too many logical leaps and it's becoming too difficult to understand me now. Unlike some art games designers I do bother about interactivity of my thoughts.
Sulphur on 24/1/2024 at 10:10
In order to be properly defined, it's not really a feedback loop if you stop simply at 'press key' -> player moves. The output needs to feed back into the input, so the entire cycle of a walking sim providing you environments to negotiate in whatever simple way it can as you move within the world defines the loop.
Most walking sims do in fact have more sophisticated feedback loops, usually in the form of funnelling the player through a sense of progression via a story. Dear Esther, for example, could be reduced to walking to checkpoints to get the next snippet of narration if you zoom all the way out. But that would be ignoring the holistic aspect of it, which is that the environment fills in part of the story when the narration is quiet, and vice-versa, and the whole thing has a definitive build towards a definite conclusion.
Apart from that, the thing about walking sims is they still engage pattern recognition in some form even if they don't have a traditional 'story' per se; the experience of the environments builds into their own little microcosm of a tale in your brain as you amble through - without that, I deeply doubt anyone would find them interesting enough to engage with for more than a relatively tiny amount of time.
Kamlorn on 24/1/2024 at 17:31
Quote Posted by Sulphur
In order to be properly defined, it's not really a feedback loop if you stop simply at 'press key' -> player moves.
'player moves' is an interpretation here, logical leap, therefore this description doesn't fit the one I suggested earlier. Your one is more complex.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Most walking sims do in fact have more sophisticated feedback loops...
This is what interesting for me here. Am I right if I say that they are intended ones? I the answer is Yes then I assume the process of their "sophistication" is an answer to a loss of effectiveness ( I just came up with this term so feel free to ask me what it actually means :mad) of the previous ones. If so, why do we strenghtening our tolerance? Reminds me of the effect similar to the drug tolerance.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
without that, I deeply doubt anyone would find them interesting enough to engage with for more than a relatively tiny amount of time
If that 'interesting enough' depends solely on our imagination ( Can I call this pattern recognition thing and 'microcosm of a tale in brain' like this actually?) then I have some bad news. It means we are not capable making something 'intresting enough' by our own anymore ( Because we need more and more sophisticated feedback loops (look previous citation note)).
