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Never send a monkey to do a code monkey’s job

October 18th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Me

Nothing could be easier than upgrading your WordPress software, eh? Well, a combination of plug-ins, database mismatches and general incompetence on my part led to a few hours of panic this afternoon as I considered the possibility of losing months of data.

Patrick at POEHosting, however, saved my ass as we went back and forth over an hour while he understood the problem and forced a solution. Thanks a lot. It was really appreciated.

Now I just need to get my banner back online, and my sidebar re-set.

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Flailing Elephants

October 16th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Big Huge Games, Design, History, RTS

From Big Huge Games’ Andrew Auseon at the Asian Dynasties blog at IGN.

A good example of when the element of history bowed to the element of fun was the Flail Elephant. The Indian civilization can train a siege elephant that swings a weighted chain from the end of its trunk. The only accounts of this ever happening were with Sri Lankan elephants, and even then it was infrequent and not very effective. This begged the question: do we include units that don’t have mass of supporting research simply because they’re cool? Our answer was a resounding “yes.” We included the Flail Elephant because it was a wholly unique siege weapon, complementing the Indian civilization’s elephant-based military. Once a player has a chance to batter an opponent’s Town Center with this chain-flinging giant, he’ll realize that we made the right call.

The annoyingly common but incorrect use of “begging the question” aside, this sounds like a lot of fun. Sure, it falls into the Mayan Hornet Bomber category, and it turns its back on the strong historical grounding the core Age of Empires III game. But, you know. Elephants.

The campaigns will mark a return to the old fashioned Age of Empires campaign, where you have to help famous people do famous things. I wasn’t aware that the Indian Mutiny of 1857 was “still controversial”, but I suppose everything is somewhere. Having just finished Niall Ferguson’s Empire, I think this could be an interesting conflict to dramatize.

I have a lot of work to do before this comes out…

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Opening Cinematics

October 15th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Art, Design

It wasn’t that long ago that television programs had theme songs and opening credit sequences. Some treacly music would play in the background while Michael J. Fox or William Daniels grinned at you. They’d be updated with new clips (and occasionally new names) each season, but the format pretty much stayed the same. Sometime in the last decade, this TV tradition has been tossed aside; more programs than ever jump straight into the plot with credits running in the corner while Dunder Mifflin or Oceanic 187 confront whatever the week’s crisis is. The writers can cram more in this way and precious ad time isn’t used as a bookend for a 40 second song that people mock. You might get a splash screen with the title of the show, but you might not. The opening theme song is living on borrowed time.

So how much longer will we need to put up with opening cinematics in our computer games? I ask this because I noted a press release announcing that the opening video for Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties is available for those sites that want to use it. It’s the type of thing I will watch once and then never watch again. A lot of man hours are spent making animation and music for a film clip that most gamers will skip.

Not that they can’t be cool. The intro cinematic for Rise of Legends, for example, perfectly captures the theme of the game with a dramatic battle between the Vinci and the Alin. I’ve probably let that one play through a few times. I liked Age of Mythology‘s too. I think Warhammer: Mark of Chaos has the best intro film of the last year. Generally these videos are big on pomposity, emphasizing just how grand and epic this new game will be. (I see very few peasants chopping wood in RTS intro videos. Peculiar.)

For all the hours spent making this film clip appealing, how much gamer time is actually spent watching it? I don’t know enough about development to make a case that this time would be better spent doing something else, but it would surely save some money, wouldn’t it? You have animations that don’t have to be made set to music that only plays for a few minutes in the lifetime of a title.

Developers will tell you that they do lots of things that most gamers never see. Editing tools. Multiplayer. Credits. But at least those serve a game related purpose. Watching the opening video doesn’t make the loading progress bar fill any faster. If the intro clip is supposed to put you in the mood for the game, why do so many people skip it?

So, developers and gamers, why do you make these things? And does it bother you when people only watch it once?

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A Tale of Two Expansions

October 13th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Design, Paradox

In the last couple of months, Paradox has released two expansion packs – one for the year old Europa Universalis III (called Napoleon’s Ambition) and one for the aging Crusader Kings (dubbed Deus Vult). The former adds more new content, new options and answers pleas that the community has been making since the initial release. The latter adds a couple of new dynamics but is mostly an interface and graphic makeover.

Here’s where the writer tells you in a cliche that the modest expansion is actually the better one, right?

Right.

Europa Universalis III is still a good game – it was a good game when it came out and remains one in spite of a few backward steps from EU2. Napoleon’s Ambition was supposed to address some of those steps back. Before EU3 was released, the developers claimed that:

a) the Napoleonic era wasn’t a good fit for the EU3 model since the revolutionary period was such a dramatic departure from the politics of the 15th to 18th centuries, and
b) historic monarchs and leaders would mess with the uncertain future they wanted players to experience.

Apparently the first problem wasn’t so much a problem as a design issue they had to work out, and they did to some extent. New revolutionary government models and National Ideas don’t make the break of 1789 feel like a huge departure from the past, but it’s not like they got the religious wars right either.

The second problem was addressed by letting the player choose whether or not to use historic monarchs, leaders and advisors. But they stuck to their guns, to some extent, by forcing certain trade-offs if you choose this option. Since you have historical kings and queens, you can’t change your government type (it’s now tied to the calendar), you can’t do royal marriages (since that could trigger dynastic stuff that could mess with something), and, most insanely, you end up making a bunch of National Ideas totally useless. Since you can’t use military tradition to recruit leaders, there’s no reason to choose any idea that affects it. And since all explorers and conquistadors are now historical only, the Quest for the New World idea is useless.

The AI still chooses these now pointless National Ideas, by the way.

So you get to play with historical rulers and advisors, but doing so cuts you off from the strengths of EU3 – the adjustable history and customization. In a system where half of the National Ideas were clearly better than the rest, and where dynastic inheritances could throw the continent into turmoil, making National Idea choice even more obvious and forcing a strict line of rulership emphasized the weaknesses of the game instead of the strengths.

So, you are left with the pretty good Napoleonic era, which isn’t really Napoleonic since you only get Napoleon if you play the historical setup or a scenario starting in that period. The expansion doesn’t make the game worse, but it does seem more like an attempt to make up for oversights than an effort to take the game in a new direction or make the experiences even more varied and interesting.

Deus Vult, on the other hand, plays directly into Crusader Kings’s strong points. CK was always a bit of weak sister in the military and diplomatic side. The movement rules and diplomatic factors usually led to outcomes that were not merely ahistorical, they were impossible. Muslim kingdoms would be founded in Ireland and baronial military exhaustion led not to greater centralized states but to fractured realms with the players’ kingdom spanning the continent; I’ve been – simultaneously – king of England, Scotland, France, Finland and Jerusalem.

But the dynasty building part of the game has always been great and by adding a couple of new twists, this role playing element has been emphasized and accentuated with a new ledger and alert tabs. The friend/rival mechanic adds drama to court politics, as your marriage falls apart or your spymaster plots against you. Or when an embattled king finds a core of loyalists who will stand for the crown no matter who else challenges the throne.

By hiding the talents of offspring until they are educated and mature, there is less incentive to go around murdering children who tand between your kingdom and posterity. This means that there is a good chance that you will have a bad ruler from time to time and, instead of avoiding that through murder or exile, you have to cope with it.

It’s not that there aren’t changes to the diplomatic/military side; it’s that these changes take a back seat to the court management spreadsheet part of the game, all aided through new events, a ledger that tracks the eligible brides of Europe and tab alerts like those in EU3 that let you know of vacancies, court bachelors, disloyal vassals and options for new titles. (The other interface addition from the EU3 system, floating text for tech advances, is more annoying than useful.)

There is still too much fragmentation of large AI kingdoms. Friendship won’t keep a kingdom together if the liege is always mobilizing his vassals’ troops and claiming every county in sight.

The biggest problem with Deus Vult is its stability. It’s very difficult to continue a campaign for over a century without crashes forcing you to retreat to earlier saves or autosaves. My medieval history is a little weak, but I don’t think the Third Crusade was canceled because of a fatal exception error. This technical issue is enough to keep me from fully endorsing DV; this needs a hotfix fast.

But I play Crusader Kings more than Europa Universalis III now. Both expansions are available only through Gamersgate.

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2008 IGF Entries

October 9th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Indie Games

A list of the entries in the 2008 Independent Games Festival can be found here.

It shows just how out of the loop I am that I recognize very few of these titles. And I had no idea that Slitherine was working on another History Channel title.

Finalists will be announced on December 3.

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Building a Better Odin

October 8th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Design, Ensemble, RTS

AI researchers in Austria have come to the conclusion that a “neurotic AI” is more likely to win real time strategy games than other AI personalities. In a test of four different AI scripts, aggressive and neurotic personalities won all their matches against the default AI in Age of Mythology, but the neurotic one won its matches 25 per cent faster. A neurotic AI tended, for example, to make irrational evaluations of available resources and veer between extremes in its play style.

All the emotionally scripted AIs won handily against the default computer opponent, though. “Defensive” and “Normal” were 6-1. And the average “Defensive” win was only four minutes slower than the Neurotic one.

The research is trying to determine if “emotional” AIs would be more attractive to a human player, and, with only the power point presentation to guide me, I’m not quite sure how a strong win-loss record against the Hard AI of Age of Mythology gives any clue as to whether it would be more enjoyable as an opponent. Is the assumption that a stronger AI is also a more “fun” AI?

It is, undeniably, more fun to play a real time strategy game against a human, but human skill is only part of the appeal. Personally, I like the fact that, even though I suck, human control gives the potential of really “outsmarting” someone. Not to mention the trash talking.

A more human AI is one that, as one of the power point slides indicates, adjusts its calculations based observable factors. Not just stuff like “this opponent gets cheap cavalry” but things like distance to resource points, assessing choke points, mastery of the seas, etc. Take the new Honshu island map in Asian Dynasties. Like all maps in Age of Empires III, it has predictable features. There are treasures in the ocean as well as on land. The single trade route is not on the main map. And the “native tribes” are in the middle of the map.

Even if you haven’t played the demo, this description should give you enough information for a human to plan a strategy. A single monitor ship can destroy everything, so one option is go heavy naval. The one trade route means that even if you can’t hold it, you shouldn’t let your opponent grab it for no cost. On land, the map is won or lost with control of the trading posts; Europeans should just plunk some outposts there. And, like many Age 3 maps, there is never enough wood. Geography is as important as play style.

It’s worth noting, then, that the AI scripts were run on the Alfheim map in AoM, a hilly and heavily forested map that can either have lots of hunting (key for the Norse) or little. (I’m not sure how you could overestimate the wood supply on a map like Alfheim, in any case.)

If you have any interest or insight about RTS AI, please comment. Is this research helpful, or is it already obsolete given what is going on the industry at the moment?

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