Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Dead Gear Update

A cutscene in the beginning of the game.

Still working away on Dead Gear! Our long-awaited framework package will be coming at the end of the week, so we'll finally get to put the RPG and combat elements into the game. Getting pretty excited about the progress being made.

-Alex

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Tutorials and 'Handholding' in Games





Finalized Look and Feel of the Flooded Cavern region of Dead Gear
How's everyone doin? In DG news, Dead Gear was pushed back a bit as we wait for a scripting asset that will save us a lot of time. The asset in question should be ready soon enough, however. Anyhow...

Today, I'd like to talk about tutorials in games. During the last few months at work, as we began to put all of the finishing touches on our (still under NDA) game, a particular topic was a constant source of discussion: tutorials; or how to 'teach' players new mechanics. It's an incredibly difficult branch of design to master, and unfortunately many designers simply don't bother half the time.

Of course, that doesn't mean tutorials should always be used. When a game uses tutorials over-zealously, it becomes hand holding, and (usually) nobody wants that. Why? It can feel patronizing, it can feel too easy and bore the player. In a casual mobile game that makes sales with micro-transactions especially, you risk a player getting fed up and deleting your game from their phone/tablet. After all, people want to play a game, not necessarily have it played for them.

Professor Easy, you smug son of a bitch, you think you're better than me?

But there are two devilish sides to the same coin: you don't want to dump a player into a game with nothing to go off of either. Some players will feel completely lost, confused, or worse, stupid. They won't know why they aren't able to figure out your game, and that will cost you the player. Mostly, this balance of Hand-holding vs 'Freedom to Fail' depends on the target demographic of your game.

Is this a casual mobile game, targeted at people who may never consider themselves gamers? (Angry Birds, Farmville, Plants vs Zombies, Where's My Water?)

If so, these games can be the most difficult ones to figure out proper tutorials and difficulty curves for. The more mechanics and skill-based you make it; the more you have to rely on tutorials to ensure that this target demographic really GETS it and isn't just fumbling through the game without learning the vital rules that govern the game. But if you flood the game with too many mechanics (and the tutorials that you'd need to go with them), the players won't really feel like they're playing a game.

Fling bird; hit pig.
Take a look at Angry Birds' tutorial here, that shows up on the very first level of the game. Angry Birds is easily the most simple, mechanically, of the example games I listed earlier.

That's because there is only really just one single base mechanic used in the entire game:
Fling Birds with the slingshot to kill the Pigs.

It's a very simple, easy-to-understand mechanic, and the simple, wordless, visual tutorial says all that needs to be said. After this one level, the player is even given about 10 levels or so to reinforce this simple mechanic, before introducing the Blue bird (That splits into three smaller birds when tapped again), which is also a fairly simple mechanic that builds upon the first.

Noooooo

But imagine if the Developers had put the Blue Bird level directly after the first level? With no reinforcement levels, players would be forced to learn a new mechanic without ever truly mastering the base mechanic in the game. Like a house of cards, videogame mechanics are often stacked upon each other; you have understand one mechanic to understand the next. If the player doesn't, well; the whole thing comes tumbling down.

Angry Birds has massive, massive international sales; and much of it can be owed to a simple fact: it's extremely simple and gives lots of room to reinforce any gameplay lessons taught to the player; and that fact has universal appeal across ages, languages and cultures. 

Well, sure; you say.
Angry Birds is so simple that the Devs probably didn't even need to put the visual tutorials in there, and people would have figured it out fine, for the most part. What about games with more meat to them?

Maybe you aim at more seasoned gamers, or just more complex games in general.

There are a few different ways to actually teach players a mechanic.

The first, like Angry Birds up there,  is to essentially tell the player straight up what they need to do. It's involuntary, you have to see it. We've all seen games like this: games that have entire tutorial sections or popups that show up on screen. It's probably the easiest way to impart information to the player, although also the most overly-expository. As such, it runs the risk of a player simply skipping it and learning nothing. It will need to be used in conjunction with a game-lock, a test, to ensure that the player has learned this lesson.

Yoshi's Island had great optional Hint Blocks you could use


It is this type that developers should be most wary of. Ideally, the strength of the level design should be strong enough to visually hint and prepare the player for the lesson. However, this in itself can be a trap, because developers often design with videogame 'common knowledge' in mind. Ideas and intuitions that may come as second nature to most gamers won't even occur to a less seasoned one. ("What's HP? I die when I fall down a pit? I thought it was just a different area!")

This brings me to a great example of good visual tutorials: 1-1 of Super Mario Bros.


Here we are at the beginning of the game. Let's say that the player has never played a platforming game before. Even right at the very beginning, the player will learn most of these consistent game rules just by doing them:

- I can move left and right.
- I can jump!
- I can jump over obstacles!
- The level expands only to the right!
- Goombas are hostile, I die if I touch them.
- Goombas are killed by jumping on top of them.
- ? Boxes have coins or mushrooms inside them when I hit them.
- Mushrooms make me big!
- I can't break bricks when I am small, but I can when I am big.

Wow! That's certainly a lot of things being taught in such a small area, even indirectly. Look at that Green pipe there. That's a good example of a Blocker; Mario can't proceed past the first screen until he's learned how to jump over obstacles; the most important lesson so far. Let's move on.


In the next section, we run into another new mechanic tutorial. A bottomless death pit! Notice how the very first pit is two blocks wide. Then, the next pit is 3 blocks wide, to reinforce the lesson of jumping over the pit. Alternatively, the player can jump up onto the bricks and skip the danger of the 3-block pit. Additional mechanics being learned here are:

- Green mushrooms give me an extra life!
- Some blocks have lots of coins inside them!
- I can avoid some obstacles if I'm smart about it.



In the next section, we run into another mechanic tutorial, and a new enemy. When Mario hits the ? block, and obtains the Star, the player may quickly realize that he is invincible, thanks in part to the change of music and the flashy effects. The player is given the chance to run through an entire row of goombas with his new-found invincibility. Alternatively, the player may discover an additional characteristic of the Koopa Troopa: jumping on it and then kicking the shell will make it zoom along the ground and kill the entire row of goombas!


Next, another jumping reinforcement. Jumping is the base mechanic in Mario, and in most platforming games; so it's absolutely essential that the player is taught the lesson and that the lesson is reinforced over and over. Notice how the level designer first makes a 'fake' pit to jump over. Even if the player fails, they'll still be alive. Then, it's the real deal. Notice how the design has given an additional block of running room as to allow the player to make a running jump.


Finally, we come to the end of the level. Notice that the designer reuses the two block running-space to hint to the player that they should make a running jump. Mario takes the jump, slides down the flag, and completes the level. In doing so, the player has learned enough lessons about how to play SMB to at least feel comfortable progressing through the next level of the game.



Even in games that are often touted as having zero hand-holding, such as Super Metroid, have several visual tutorials that force players to learn mechanics.

For example, when Samus first achieves the morph ball, (the ability to scrunch up into a ball and roll around), she isn't just allowed to leave the room. No, she must utilize the morph ball in order to even leave, again forcing the player to learn a mechanic in order to progress.

Most metroidvanias follow this pattern, in that they very often drop a player into a world without any menu-style tutorials, and instead rely almost entirely on visual and interactive tutorials to teach the player the rules of the game. Dead Gear will follow the same route for the most part, although for more complex mechanics, I will give the player the option for a more indepth explanation, a la SMW2 Hint Blocks.

There's still a great deal more to talk about, but I'll spare you the walls of text. (for now)

-Alex