The Crap Game Design Document

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A "WTF were the designers thinking of" list.

Rather than trawl gaming history, just list new ones as we come across them.

Ricochet HD (PS3)
Lets make a breakout game with some indestructible walls (no problem there) that move (still no problem) and lets not worry about what will happen when the walls stop moving and the ball gets stuck behind these indestructible walls forcing the player to quit.  Ah crap.

The uninspired gameplay and drab metallic graphics almost seem like genius in comparison.

DUOtris (PC)
On later levels DUOtris is a pretty fast paced puzzler where you have to carefully control two blocks at the same time.  I'll tell you what would make that already tricky task so much better....we'll add an unavoidable "powerup" that reverses the controls.  Oh what fun that will be.

Luckily removed from later superior versions. 

Magic Orbz (PS3)
You know how the whole point of Breakout is to keep the ball in play and if you don't it's game over?  Well how about introducing a "powerup" that also means game over if the player collects it?  Sounds like a crap idea, but hey the player can just avoid it right?  Well no, not if he needs to be in that location to keep the ball in play.  Then it just becomes a frustrating, unavoidable loss of a life.


As a side note, why do games need so many different designers these days?

[Prime_8]

they list anyone who said boo' about it in the office , make sit look more important .

[T_M_C]

Lol.

Have you seen this Blitz3d Breakout game.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=96092

It's a really neat twist on the Genre, using a physics system.

A great idea really well implemented.

TMC

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Have you seen this Blitz3d Breakout game.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=96092

It's a really neat twist on the Genre, using a physics system.

A great idea really well implemented.

Yeah I'd seen that and never knew it was done in Blitz.  Cool.  I'm a sucker for a good Breakout game.

Magic Orbz that I mentioned about takes that physics approach a little further.  Ignoring the fault I mentioned above it's a hard game to dislike TBH.

Magic Orbz Trailer 720pNEW	powered by Aeva

[T_M_C]

That looks great.

I'd not seen that before.

TMC

[fog]

Playing Wizorb right now and it makes some of the exact same mistakes as Magic Orbz.

• The ball getting stuck in an infinite loop between bits of scenery so you have to quit.
• Power-downs that lose you a life and are sometimes unavoidable.

And is it not now about time that there was a better way of dealing with the last couple of blocks in Breakout games?  Wasting minutes trying to remove those last couple of blocks does a great job of killing any enjoyment.

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I'm currently playing Deus Ex:HR again (free on PS+) and for the most part it's a good game.  Slightly repetitive, crap AI and broken boss battles, but generally enjoyable enough.

One thing really starts to annoy after a while though.  You constantly find passwords to access computer terminals on your travels and if you come across a one that you have the password for it automatically displays it on screen.  Great.....until it then insists that you type in that 8 character password using a joypad.  I don't need to say how much fun that isn't after the 20th password.

I already know what the password is.... It's displayed on screen.....so automatically type the sodding thing in.  


And while on the subject of doing stuff automatically.  If my inventory is big enough to hold all the items then bloody hold them.  Don't make me do some kind of block shifting puzzle to rearrane them all fit into my "inventory grid".  If I wanted that I'd play Tetris.  

[TheKhakinator]

The tetris thing and the password thing are both really silly. Loved Splinter Cell though, where it made you use heat vision on the keypad to see what they'd typed.

[T_M_C]

This has been bugging me for a long time now.

Richard Burns Rally.

It's one of my most favourite games and i usually play it most days.

I've literally played it thousands of times over several years now.

The problem comes once you've crashed, gone off road or run into pedestrians and need to reset the car back on the road.

This involves a very tedious ( Screenshot attached )

Press Escape - Brings up in game menu.
Screen fades out / menu fades in (Fade takes about 1 second, very tedious to watch)
Cursor down to Call For Help
Menu fades out / game fades in
Watch a tedious 5 second animation of the car being dumped back on track and several pedestrians backing away.
Camera resets to behind the car again where you can restart playing.

This whole process is so tedious that i prefer to waste even more time trying to drive back on track myself, which often involves the car geting stuck in scenery rather than go through the whole menu / animation process.

All thats needed is a Press Key or Joystick Button to reset the car immediately back on track so you can continue playing.

Apart from being tedious to watch, the animation sequence loses you valuable seconds when racing against the clock, it interupts gameplay and definately IS NOT FUN.



Another feature of Richard Burns Rally, is that you can Stall The Car, where the engine dies.  

This seems to happen at random times, although i'm sure theres some sort of physics equations for it, but when the engine cuts out, you have bring the car to a halt, wait 1 or 2 seconds and then press the accelerator to restart.

You can be tearing around a corner at break neck speeds, getting plenty of opposite lock on, kicking up loads of dust and having loads of fun when all of a sudden the engine dies.

It's got to be one of the most frustrating game features i've come across.  It may be realistic but it definately isn't fun and totally unnecessary.

Interestingly, the game does have a restart engine key binding but it's never worked for me.  I do have the game patched to the latest version so i'm wondering if this feature has been disabled, but the key binding is still in the options page.



Another annoying thing which Richard Burns Rally does along with many other games are those annoying animating splash screens you get when the game is initially loading.

If the programme is multi threading and loading in the background then ok, i can live with that, but if the loading stops in order to play the animation and then restarts once the animations finish is a real chore to watch when all you want to do is get into the game as quickly as possible.

OK, so Richard Burns allows you to skip the animations by pressing Escape, but again it's an annoyance that i can do without.

A much better system, would be to play the animations on first play and then to skip them on subsequent plays.

Or if they must be shown, then how about once every ten plays or so.


Even though Richard Burns is patched to the latest version and is several years old now, it's still buggy.

Especially the volume settings.

I like to listen to a lot of downloaded talk radio whilst playing, so have the game volume settings really low.

Except when you crash, where the volume gets reset to maximum ( BUG ), and you have to go into the sound menus Twice and reset back to low again.

This is a clear coding bug which slipped past QA, and if i wasn't such a HUGE fan of the game would be a game breaker for me.



Another annoying feature is the time delay for changing into reverse gear.

Changing forward gears is really quick ( i like to use auto gear change ) but when you want to go into reverse, you have to bring the car to a halt, then wait about 1 second before reverse engages.

Why is the driver So Slow at changing into reverse gear.

This also gets really tedious over time.



Apart from these faults the game is brilliant.  A flawed masterpiece.

TMC

[TheKhakinator]

Other than the bugs you listed, a lot of that stuff (even changing into reverse) is down to realism. I did hear a lot of people talking about how Richard Burns was a lesser game for it...

[T_M_C]

I did hear a lot of people talking about how Richard Burns was a lesser game for it...

Right.

This is where the game crosses the line where realism detracts from the Fun.

If i'm not having fun playing then i'm not going to play.  Fortunately though, i enjoy the rest of the game so much, the positives outway negatives.

But if only those features listed above were options via a menu, then i could turn off those features i hate.

It's interesting to note, that a lot of the games, realism features are very fun.  The car physics for example are very real, and it takes real skill devloped over a long period of time to learn how to drift into and out of corners, feeding the throttle as you go and the crashes can be really spectacular.

And then there are the other realism features such as the calling for help interlude which is very tedius.

All in all i feel that the game was a rushed release and would have definately benefitted from extensive playtesting and QA.

But these issues should have been addressed in the subsequent patches.  


I'm also really disapointed there has never been a sequel.

Apart from the fact that Richard Burns himself passed away a few years ago, this game is ripe for sequel, even if it's not related to Richard Burns himself.

Which makes me think the game was a poor seller.

TMC

[fog]

This is where the game crosses the line where realism detracts from the Fun.

If i'm not having fun playing then i'm not going to play.  Fortunately though, i enjoy the rest of the game so much, the positives outway negatives.

But if only those features listed above were options via a menu, then i could turn off those features i hate.

Not having them as options is the biggest issue for me.  It's fairly obvious that even people who like realistic sims don't want or enjoy every minute detail of the sport recreated so not having options is a design failure.

Simulation is one of the hardest things to get right IMO.  Every sim fan wants a different level of realism and do they really want an accurate sim or do they want a sim of what they think it's like?

Loads of people on the Codemasters F1 forum complained that it wasn't an accurate enough simulation, but a 100% accurate sim would be undrivable for the vast majority of people and how do you do that anyway when the default controller is a joypad?

It's interesting to note, that a lot of the games, realism features are very fun.  The car physics for example are very real, and it takes real skill devloped over a long period of time to learn how to drift into and out of corners, feeding the throttle as you go and the crashes can be really spectacular.

And then there are the other realism features such as the calling for help interlude which is very tedius.

Yeah that's where the realism gets in the way of fun.  The car physics are fun because that's an interactive part of the game, whereas calling for help and waiting while the car is returned to the track is passive. (does that make sense?  )

Passive, non interactive bits are never fun in any game though.  We've all mashed the fire button to try and skip the 3 second intro to an arcade game or to try and take a throw in quicker in FIFA.  Just get on with it!

[T_M_C]

Yep, totally agree.

TMC

[Prime_8]

sim ::  real actuations vs arcade ~ aproximations  for fun .

like poetic license , i often bend physics rules to make stuff more payable . i just need to hint at the depth .
i quite like sims that have reality options . slider from  sim <> arcade  feel. and sub options to kill  sequences , ie pressinf fire skips stuff once you have seen the 1 time .

[fog]

All this makes me think of the momentum in Frontier that totally ruined the combat for me.  Realistic?  Maybe.  Fun?  Hell no.