Creston wrote on Oct 14, 2012, 10:30:

Sepharo wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 23:06:
It's shaky but I believe the "emergent" aspect is how you deal with these events that happen. The narrative in FTL is emergent. "Aliens boarded my ship, there was a fire, I lost most of my crew, but I picked up more from a slaver later." Random != Scripted

No, but random isn't emergent either, because all these things are planned to happen. Aliens will often board you because they're designed to do so, fires happen because getting hit sets stuff on fire, being able to pick up more crew from a slaver is programmed to happen in that encounter. (or at least it's one of the options.)

Maybe my definition of emergent is too rigid, but the things you described are natural outcomes of events that were programmed. I see emergent as something that happens that the devs never planned for, but which changes something in the game in a way that actually has an effect.

So, to give a weird FTL example, you get boarded by aliens and you lock one in a room somewhere. Then because you don't have enough crew left to kill it, you decide to leave it there. If you were then able to continue on (I don't know if the game allows that, but let's assume it does), and get boarded again, you find that the other aliens won't try to enter that room because one of their own is already in there. So you have effectively created a wall they can't pass.

Maybe not the best example in the world... ehm... let's go with Notch's example of a damaged landing gear. If it damages when you land, that's because there's a chance of it damaging when you land. That's just written into the game. But what if you land and go outside your ship, set off an explosion somewhere that dislodges a bunch of boulders, which roll down and slam into your ship, thus breaking its landing gear?

To me that's more emergent gameplay.

Creston

Creston wrote on Oct 14, 2012, 10:30:

NKD wrote on Oct 14, 2012, 01:32:

Creston wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 19:01:
The trailer is stupid,
Creston

It's not a trailer, it's an early art test.

Poor choice of words. I should have just said video.

Creston

NKD wrote on Oct 14, 2012, 01:32:

Creston wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 19:01:
The trailer is stupid,
Creston

It's not a trailer, it's an early art test.

Sepharo wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 23:06:
It's shaky but I believe the "emergent" aspect is how you deal with these events that happen. The narrative in FTL is emergent. "Aliens boarded my ship, there was a fire, I lost most of my crew, but I picked up more from a slaver later." Random != Scripted

Creston wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 19:01:
The trailer is stupid,
Creston

Creston wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 22:58:

Sepharo wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 21:38:
The point of mentioning FTL and the landing gear is that he wants to emphasize it not being a game about flying a ship through space, but a game about working on and managing a ship flying through space.

Okay, and that's fine. And if you do an First Person game about flying a ship through space, that might be seriously frakking awesome.

It has nothing to do with emergent gameplay, though.

Creston

Sepharo wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 21:38:
The point of mentioning FTL and the landing gear is that he wants to emphasize it not being a game about flying a ship through space, but a game about working on and managing a ship flying through space.

Creston wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 19:01:
The trailer is stupid, tbh, as I see nothing there to even get remotely excited about. Why are his laser bolts flying towards that planet? Does his space ship have no windows? (to be fair, I watched it with the sound off, so maybe he explains that.)

The more interesting thing would be if he made an emergent gameplay rogue/fps variant. However, he mentions FTL which, quite frankly, has zero emergent gameplay. Every single thing that happens to you in FTL is scripted. It happens randomly, but all those encounters are scripted. FTL doesn't throw something at you that the devs didn't prepare.

So him saying "Oh, and the landing gear breaks, and you have to spend resources to fix it" isn't emergent, because he'd script for the landing gear to break.

Slashman wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 13:29:
Most indie games don't even sell 500k copies. This guy, with a tiny team, sold more copies than most AAA games these days sell. He did it with no publisher taking a cut and extremely small overhead. He now has the means to produce something better. If this was a startup indie company, I could maybe excuse that because they need to start somewhere. But this guy has the finances and resources to do much better.

Prez wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 14:42:
Minecraft didn't grab me; Terraria (the 2D Minecraft ripoff) totally did. I much preferred Terraria because even though it wasn't a graphical powerhouse its graphics were charming in their simplicity and it wasn't ugly.

We haven't seen enough to dismiss the game based on its graphics alone, unless one is a graphics whore.

Cutter wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 04:48:
and I still say he's out and out lied about his sales numbers.

Slashman wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 10:33:
Minecraft sold over 9.2 million according to sales figure from Notch. I think he could afford to do something slightly more than what we're seeing in that video.

NKD wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 12:33:
I don't really buy into the concept that indie's are obligated to spend millions and millions developing their next title if they are successful just to measure up to some arbitrary level of "Triple A" polish and art.

Minecraft was hugely successful with meager art and a shoestring budget. If Notch can't do it again, then him spending millions of more dollars is only going to get you a prettier failure, not a more successful game.

Prez wrote on Oct 13, 2012, 12:53:

Sorry, but I'm not going to feel bad or arrogant about giving a game a chance despite it's limited graphics, no matter how you want to frame it.

You made a douchey statement; playing the victim now doesn't change that. No one is attacking you for giving a game a chance, so you can put that strawman to rest.

Sorry, but I'm not going to feel bad or arrogant about giving a game a chance despite it's limited graphics, no matter how you want to frame it.