Guest Rant: Turning The Other Cheek

The following piece was written by a friend of mine and I offered to post it on my blog if he could get the thing down in print. Follows is Tim's rant about realism, immersion and convincing game AI.

I am a fan of Control Alt Delete comics. I am also a fan of Call of Duty 4. Recently Tim Buckley, author & artist of CAD, made a comic joking about Killzone 2. To anyone who has read this comic my rant will make sense...or at least more sense than otherwise. (So go read it – Ed.) Regardless it did bring up the question, to my mind, of why game AI designed to respond tactically to a player’s skill or playing style, which is attempting to mimic the real world, would in the comics situation just send more troops in to die. Now true enough; if one man with a gun runs into a military facility then sending in a squad of heavily armed troops may be entirely appropriate as a response, but seriously, how many men can be sacrificed before someone says, "OK...lets just lock him in and flood the building with poisonous gas”.

Sure that may be overkill, but considering how many people (virtual people) die every time I play Far Cry 2, its curious that one man can make it the distance in a computer game without being nuked, without being murdered by the very factions I’m betraying. The commanders of these armies must be lunatics to think that a guy who has already killed many, many of their soldiers or security guards is going to have trouble if you just send in another 10.

It's then somewhat surprising these games can create and hold any sense of immersion. Sure we'd all love to see ourselves in a fantasy, an unstoppable force of good or evil or ponies...whatever you stand for – that doesn’t change the fact that no single person could possibly do the sorts of things we achieve in the virtual world. This is not to say games should make all characters week and venerable cowards who run in fear at the first site of an enemy...thought that did work for Mirrors Edge. But it is to say, why are game developer’s still obsessed with creating a sense of realism when the point of these games is often to escape the real world.

And this brings me to why I love Call of Duty 4. Any game that Nukes the player character halfway through the story is good in my books. Still, wouldn't it be nice to return to the good old days of Sonic the Hedgehog where you could die horribly by drowning but before that happened, you got bright colours and a gameshow countdown timer to bring it about, rather than horrifying orchestral music and 8 shades of gray?

- Tim.

A retrospective of 'ZZT', part Deux

In this post I am having a long-form discussing about a particular videogame with a childhood friend of mine and fellow blogger, Bibliosimius. In this 2 parter we discuss our mutual affection for the game ZZT and it's profound impact on our underdeveloped teenage minds. Part Un, in which we discuss the influence of the aesthetic of ZZT and more, can be found here.

B'simius adds his $.o2:

That's given me another thought. We learn visual art, creative writing, mathematics, "citizenship", all compulsorily in school. What about programming? One could argue that it'd make a good addition to the basic curriculum to give kids a general introduction to the very basic basics of how it all works. Using computer programs is increasingly becoming a part of schooling these days, but what about understanding how they're made? Not so much.


Ben:

Wow, that's such a brilliant idea! I think that kids would also really be into it - I know I would have been. But then again, I was a massive nerd, so... I'm sure there'd need to be classes tailored to skill levels much like the maths and sciences.

You're right that knowing how to use them is about 100 times more important than knowing stuff like how a Hard Disk Drive works (hey, I was under the mistaken impression that there was no magnetism involved until just recently, and I'm OK), so maybe school computer classes should be teaching fundamentals of programming. It also makes sense, because students are currently being taught stuff like how to use specific software packages like Microsoft office and Photoshop, etc, which all go out of date within a year or so. The ideas behind being able to understand programming are so much longer lasting though.


B'Simius:

Absolutely. It comes down to whether we want kids to grow up as good little mechanoids in the social machine or to be informed individuals who actually know how stuff works, and not just how to work it. We want new generations to avoid hardware problems which could be resolved with the dual typicals "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" and "Are you sure it's plugged in?" Understanding basic programming principles could alleviate similarly ridiculous problems with software.

I haven't thought about it from this perspective before, but understanding the basic ZZT-OOP programming paramaters and commands has probably helped me understand a fairly diverse range of electronic applications. I'd be interested in any kind of study into whether understanding the basics makes the complexities more intuitive. I'd more than tentatively guess that it does.


Ben:

Mmm, good points. I don't think it's just an age thing either. My nana in her 80's got her first ever mobile phone recently, although I guess that is more an extension of an existing older technology, but my other grandmother is getting a laptop too, so she can get on the internet.

So, to segue into a neat conclusion - what's the single best thing about ZZT? The Aesthetic? Teaching Programming? Creative Potential? Or even the community of programmers and storytellers that grew up around it?

B'simius:

I'd say that the single best thing about ZZT is all the good times it gave us - it was fun; fun to learn how to use it, fun to collaborate, fun to work individually, fun to share... but that's a matter of opinion. There's a lot in ZZT for a lot of different types.

Single best feature in your opinion?


Ben:

For me probably the creative outlet aspect. I really need to have something like that and ZZT was the first ever thing where I could just be creative without being constrained by lack of skill or talent or equipment or something =P

It's not like there weren't constraints on ZZT (in fact there were lots) but it was the first real "medium" or toolset I ever managed to come to grips with enough to get to the stage of being able to make something that was meaningful to me.

And on that note, thanks for taking a stroll down memory lane with me, B'simius! Feel free to blog about the experience and how librarians can use Facebook threaded conversations, etc on your own blog. And dear readers, may I also encourage you to check out Bibliosimus sometime in the future too.

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That's all for my two part discussion with B'simius, however if people find this format at all interesting (and I quite like it myself) then look out for more posts in a similar vein. If you're looking for Part Un, in which we discuss the influence of the aesthetic of ZZT and more, it can be found here.


Random ZZT Linkdump:

ZZT @ YTMND.com
ZZT In retrovision article at Gay Gamer
Official Wikipedia article on ZZT

A retrospective of 'ZZT', part Un

In this post I am having a long-form discussing about a particular videogame with a childhood friend of mine and fellow blogger, Bibliosimius. In this 2 parter we discuss our mutual affection for the game ZZT and it's profound impact on our underdeveloped teenage minds.


Ben fires his opening volley:

So in this blog post I'm discussing with my long time friend B'simius a game that is part of both of our shared gaming heritage, and has probably had the single biggest impact on my tastes when it comes to games. I am of course talking about the 1991 classic videogame ZZT!

ZZT was a game by Tim Sweeny, later founder of Epic games, who went on to make both the Gears of War and Unreal Tournament series. What is probably most notable about the game is that it's not quite your ordinary PC game - in large part ZZT was just a level editor for making your own games. B'simius, would you also agree that a large part of the attraction to ZZT was the fact that it was really just a cleverly disguised game creation tool?


B'Simius replies:

As far as I'm concerned, the editor was ZZT's primary point of appeal. I probably spent more time programming Objects and drawing giant sandwiches using nothing but ASCII than I did playing the games, even though some of them were pretty amazing feats, especially given the limitations inherent to the program.

In retrospect my many attempts at crafting masterpieces of ZZT-OOP were generally fairly shoddy, but I couldn't get enough of trying, and trying, and trying again because of that ever-present sense that I made this, this is mine; a sense that's generally out of reach to the common gamer. A bit of a melodramatic assessment, I must admit, but there is truly a warm, snuggly spot in my heart reserved for this game.


Ben:

You're totally right about the feeling you get of owning your creations. I remember I once spent a good six hours scripting an EPICintro cut scene to a game that I never made more than a single screen for. It was fantastic!

Do you get the same sensation of ownership from Spore? I know you have been playing that game like a bit of an addict, does it reflect a similar attraction? I've been formulating this weird theory recently that ZZT (and the semi-sequel Megazeux) have been more of an influence on my gaming tastes than anything since.

I mean, how else do I explain why my favourite game ever is the batshit insane Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist? I can only guess that the surreal games of ZZT (I'm looking at you Bernard the Bard & That Game With B-Fly Ptarmigan in it. For readers unfamiliar with this particular ZZT game, B-Fly was a Ptarmigan God who spewed up the universe).


B'simius:

Spore has a similar feel, although it pales in comparison to the scope and scale of ZZT. You can only go so far with creating Spores; eventually you have to set them loose in the universe, which is where the majority of the game really takes place. In ZZT, though, it's not just the majority but the entirety of the game that's forged in the editor's fires.

A thought's occurred to me. ZZT may have influenced your taste in games as far as the surreal and loopy content goes, but do you think your early exposure to ZZT has influenced the way you think about games as games - that is, the structure, outlay, design, etc. of games?


Ben:

ha ha! I was actually hoping this topic would come up, because, yes, I think ZZT has totally influenced the way I think about and appreciate games. And not just games too - I think the 'ZZTOOPS' system of scripting burrowed deep into my impressionable mind as a child and is influencing the way I make music.

When we started working with a music program called Max/MSP in Digital Musics back in 2nd year Uni, I was one of those insane few people who actually got it. Although I wasn't super great at making cool stuff with it, I understood the underlying principle of the visual patcher environment as a programming language and that gave me a huge advantage over just about everyone else in the class.

When it comes to games, I think I also have that same rule based approach, hence my attraction towards the work of Ian Bogost & Gonzalo Frasca who both talk about games qua simulations or computations. It's all rules and instructions baby!

And thus concludes part I of our ZZT retrospective.

The peaks and perils of First Person Camera

Corvus Elrod and I have been going back and forth over twitter this week about camera's and camera choice in games, and he's written up a series of posts about 3rd person camera (yesterday) as well as 1st person view. And its gotten me thinking about first person perspective games a lot (mostly because they are the kind of game I tend to gravitate towards) and in particular why I think Assassins Creed was actually better for being rendered in third person and conversely why I think Mirrors Edge, while commendable for trying a whole slew of new ideas and daring to be different just generally, is possibly doomed to have some serious problems.

The essential point is the difference in camera angle - where Assassins Creed generally uses a 3rd person over the head view to depict Altair scrambling up the side of buildings, Mirrors Edge uses First Person perspective. So what's great about the first person perspective? Primarily, with a First Person Perspective you get a strong and direct connection with 'you' as the player inside the game. You're are looking out your own characters eyes, after all, and in my opinion this view (with certain caveats) seems natural and instantly relatable; it's closer to the 'normal' way that we view the world from our bodies. Additionally, it allows for very precise actions, most commonly used for aiming weapons such as guns, bows and other projectiles.

Unfortunately there are equally a number of negative aspects with the first person perspective game and which for the sake of brevity I will not attempt to list. However, one aspect I want to foreground in this discussion is highlighted once we start aiming for rather more complex control relationships with our player avatar and ourselves.

Basically I see the issue as one of embodiment in the game-space. As I hinted at in Corvus' original post I don't think that anyone has yet made a first person perspective game where the 'camera' - your embodied view of the world - is anywhere near as flexible as our real world bodily configuration.

We have a pair of eyes that move independently of our heads, and on top of that our heads can also move independently of our torso. The whole history to date of the First Person Perspective game (to the best of my knowledge) has been limited to an avatar that moves his or her eyes, head and torso as one. And this is actually fine... for certain things. It's fine particularly for (surprise, surprise) shooting games as when you aim down the sights of a real-world weapon, you don't move your head or even your eyes far from the target.

Additionally the first person perspective can only give the player so much information about their surroundings. For starters, our display screens for videogames are woefully too small to represent the whole field of vision of the average person, and as such, first person representations of games are going to lose information that the player would have in an identical real-world situation.

Take for example, your feet. Do you have to look down at your feet to know where they are? Of course not. So when Halo makes the player aim down at their feet we just know that some information about the environment is being lost. And you know, this is also fine. As Corvus says, many videogame protagonists are supposedly wearing bulky, vision impairing helmets after all. Except that when playing a game we also lose two (well three if you count taste) other senses that could be delivering information as well! We don't get to feel the world - the cool brush of a breeze on our skin or the crunch of gravel under our feet - or smell the scents in a space. So all this information which we would in reality be receiving about our surroundings, whether consciously or not, is further lost.

I was reading recently the Game Set Watch Column 'Diamond in the Rough - A body in the dark' about the healing system in the most recent Alone in the Dark. The article rightly discusses some of the innovative features of the game and how it encourages embodiment in the game-space, however when I came to this passage I had to stop, suppressing the urge to guffaw.

The effect of all of this is to ground you in the body of your protagonist. You must constantly check yourself for new cuts or bruises, sometimes eliciting a tired shrug from Edward when a visual check reveals no new blemishes.

Okay, am I the only person to think that having to visually check your body for cuts and bruises is actually dis-engaging you from your body? Since when have you ever had to stop and look yourself over only to realise that actually "Oh, I'm bleeding from the stomach".

Yes, granted there have been some times when I have experienced an adrenaline rush that has suppressed the pain of small injuries, and I have heard of people 'shrugging off' larger injuries as well, but if you've got the time to 'look yourself over' you've got the time to take a breather and start feeling the pain!

So, all this gets me to the point of saying, for all the benefits the FPS brings with it's embodied perspective, it comes with a bunch of detractors. And that's why I think Assassins Creed went the right way with 3rd person parkour action. I believe that the use of the third person perspective can partially make up for what we lose in the form of experienced, embodied information about the world.

Just one last quick quote - this time from Clint Hocking of Far Cry 2 talking about their own implementation of specific areas and even types of injury, Hocking responded saying

...a contextual animation [plays] based on the type of injury you received and the location of the injury. If you fell from a cliff, you might have a dislocated ankle that needs to be relocated. If you were shot in the leg, you might need to prise the bullet out with a knife, if you were hit by a grenade blast you might need to pull shrapnel our of your elbow… the idea is to hit the player with a visceral ‘punch’ right at the moment that the intensity is highest and his adrenalin is pumping. The combined effect is to create powerful psychosomatic bonds between the player, the avatar and consequently the world itself.

I think Hocking's got the right idea - whether it's first, third or some odd combination of the two (think Oblivion style interchanging) the aim has to be to convey enough information to the player and about the player so as to aid a sense of embodiment, which only aids in the never-ending quest for 'immersion'. If that's the goal (and the actually result) then I don't really mind which one they choose. Maybe I could even learn to love Mirrors Edge (God knows I really want to!).

The attraction to collaboration

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I'm on holidays and I'm lazy, but also because I've been playing lots of Oblivion on PC. I bought a new graphics card last week (a Gigabyte 8800GT 512mb) which is awesome and makes PC games fun again. Hooray for generous tax returns to poor students! Anyway, what I wanted to quickly mention was something entirely unrelated. I've been thinking about it for a while and I just wanted to jot down some thoughts about it and ask the audience.

Collaboration. From Miriam-Webster online:

1 : to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor
2 : to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one's country and especially an occupying force
3 : to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected

Yes, that's the sound of this post heading in a completely unexpected direction. Collaboration is everywhere. It's in Music (any band who ever played together), it's in Writing (any writer and their editor/s), its in Videogames (in any multi-person development or mod team) and it can be in blogging (like RPS, etc).

I'm bored of doing stuff by myself - for starters, its never as good as when I work with someone else as what always seems happen is we end up inspiring each other and produce something better as a result. In my second year at Uni we had a subject called Collaborative Project in which we formed inter-disciplinary groups of artists from music, drama, electronic arts and fine arts to put on a short 20 minute work at the end of the semester. The groups were as big as 15-20 people, and easily became unwieldy, with decision making being done mostly on a basis of whoever actually bothered to turn up to the class (which was about 5-10 of us regularly =P). Anyway, it was a great time and one of the best things about such a large group was that you could do something very specialised within the group. My contribution, other than often helping facilitate discussions, was a piece of musical improvisation that used live digital signal processing to make lovely ethereal sounds.

A screenshot of my Max/MSP patcher - a visual programming environment made for digital signal processing, and my first musical love. The bottom box was used to 'draw' a spectral filter that was applied to white noise, resulting in some awesome sounds.

I've uploaded a short sample of a very early version of what it sounded like, just for fun, here. (1.9mb, 4:10) The final performance was... OK - and our supervisory lecturer really enjoyed it, so we obviously did something right. Good marks too.

The point that I wanted to to get to was that I want to collaborate more. The Internet is possibly the most powerful communication enhancing tool out there and can facilitate some great works... so where are they all? Have you got a great idea you want to collaborate on? A Mod idea? A musical work you want to do? Something you want to write about that you want input from others on? If so, tell me about it! Collaborate with me, people! I want to give you my time!

So in conclusion, consider this an official invitation to sequester me for all sorts of strange collaborations. Got an idea, drop it in the comments or send me an email and we'll talk! I'd love to hear from anyone and everyone, and I'd also love to hear your success/horror stories of collaborations. If they've turned you off them, why? They can be ever so much fun.