Let me just reiterate my problems with click & drag. (Some of these have been touched on already in this thread)
The floating arc/arrow around the player looks rubbish
The fact I still have to click on items to interact. This completely destroys the flow of click and drag. Generally I am clicking on items to navigate to them. Whenever I'm unable to click (for instance, navigating to a different room) I suddenly have to switch to a different control scheme. Feels odd!
The constant glitches where the character jumps to face the opposite way. It makes navigating seem like a total pain. I'm amazed you hadn't fixed this by EP5 but it was even more noticable there than anywhere else! (An example, walking up to the sword fighting area)
It somehow feels really sluggish the way the character starts moving, kind of like I'm vaguely steering a juggernaut slithering around on ice.
Now, if you can come up with a control system that addresses these issues, I will happily give it a chance. But I fear that point and click really was the pinnacle of adventure game control systems (until at least the invention of proper brain interfaces and / or virtual reality becomes a common home technology!) and that you are all trying way to hard to do something new when it doesn't need to be done. My other theory, slightly more conspiracist, is that Lucasarts actually asked you to drop point & click when you took on MI, claiming it's their trademark or signature or some other corporate nonsense, and you then had to come up with a crazy reason to justify it to us all. Something like that?
Finally, about the offical "navigating to areas where the cinematic camera doesn't show the floor" line. Why can't the background areas just be click targets that navigate to the nearest bit of floor? Wouldn't this be a lot easier than entirely reinventing the wheel? All the old point & clickers worked like this.
Besides which, it's actually quite nice to be able to see where the floor is. So that you know whether you can actually walk on an area, and it isn't just a gaping pit of lava, for instance. I'm not actually a huge fan of cinematic cameras that obscure the playing area!
Hmm, I did prefer the click and drag in season 2 to the click all the time in season 1 (funny thing, I played though all of season 2 without knowing right click made you run, I just double left clicked :P ). I've not played ToMI or W&G yet, but I'm sure I'd get used to the controls quick enough. It doesn't sound like they're unresponsive or sluggish or anything like that.
If the WASD and click controls can give way to a more cinematic experience, which in turn could also give us new puzzles, then I'm all for it.
I don't know about you, but I did plenty of pointing and clicking in W&G and TMI both.
The interface for doing this is a lot more welcoming than a game like Machinarium, for example, where you have to be near something in order to detect if you can interact with it. Thus far, that is the only frustrating thing I've found about the game.
Hmm, I did prefer the click and drag in season 2 to the click all the time in season 1
No, no, no - S&M Season 2 had click and hold. ToMI had click and drag. Click and hold was the best possible evolution of the control mechanism. Click and drag was thoroughly lame as proven by how many people are complaining about it and asking for something different; obviously there are some people a bit weird in the head who for some reason actually liked it, unfortunately they seem to shout louder than the folks with geniune complaints. That's democracy for you I guess...
No, no, no - S&M Season 2 had click and hold. ToMI had click and drag. Click and hold was the best possible evolution of the control mechanism. Click and drag was thoroughly lame as proven by how many people are complaining about it and asking for something different; obviously there are some people a bit weird in the head who for some reason actually liked it, unfortunately they seem to shout louder than the folks with geniune complaints. That's democracy for you I guess...
Oh. Hmm, I assumed click and drag was what Season 2 used because you clicked, and then dragged the mouse around. What's click and drag then? Clicking the character then moving them with the mouse? That... doesn't sound too bad?
I guess I need to play ToMI or W&G to get an idea of what it's like.
Right, right. I'll get it eventually. Don't want to buy another game the now though, the Steam sale was already rather... generous. Plus I can't fight down the urge to play Sam and Max again.
Oh. Hmm, I assumed click and drag was what Season 2 used because you clicked, and then dragged the mouse around. What's click and drag then? Clicking the character then moving them with the mouse? That... doesn't sound too bad?
I guess I need to play ToMI or W&G to get an idea of what it's like.
Yeah, in ToMI it basically goes like this:
Hold down mouse button. Character does not move anywhere
Move the mouse in any direction, character starts walking that way, doesn't stop until you let go of the mouse button or change direction
Character collides with a solid piece of the scenery. Character fails to navigate around it. Attempt to move mouse in different direction. Character starts and then stops, performing various idiotic half-animations as he attempts to work out why this particular corner of the street is impassible
Mouse exits nearest window at high velocity. New mouse purchased. Game uninstalled
Or something like that. I believe the exact user story varies from player to player, and depending on whether you have one of the ultra-secret TTG-employee-exclusive "point'n'click unlocked" releases of the game. Or so I heard.
Finally, about the offical "navigating to areas where the cinematic camera doesn't show the floor" line. Why can't the background areas just be click targets that navigate to the nearest bit of floor? Wouldn't this be a lot easier than entirely reinventing the wheel? All the old point & clickers worked like this.
Then the old point-and-clickers had simpler navigation meshes than we do, because this approach simply will not give a good outcome in most situations.
I was wondering, and I'm sorry if I'm making you want to bang your head on your keyboard repeatedly (but that's what you get for being a crusher of hope, we crush your hope in humanity in return and that's only fair), but I was wondering about something.
Would it be possible, in theory, to click one side of the screen (left, right, up down) and cause the character to go that way or the screen to scroll that way or something like that? With that + clicking on objects to move around, it might be possible to play the whole game just by pointing and clicking, and that doesn't mean you have to remove click and drag, either.
I guess in the first option, if I click left and the character can't go left because there is something blocking them, it's not very useful. But as far as scrolling the screen goes, I can't think of a problem since the character wouldn't have to move, and then you can always click on an item that appears to make the character move...
As long as exists and the like are clickable, that sounds to me like it might work.
Of course, it might be a terrible idea, but I was just wondering if you thought it would be workable or if some problems would arise (like they would with straight point-of click due to your angles).
Would it be possible, in theory, to click one side of the screen (left, right, up down) and cause the character to go that way or the screen to scroll that way or something like that?
My other theory, slightly more conspiracist, is that Lucasarts actually asked you to drop point & click when you took on MI, claiming it's their trademark or signature or some other corporate nonsense, and you then had to come up with a crazy reason to justify it to us all. Something like that?
Wallace & Gromit, which started before ToMI, didn't have point & click either. In fact, you had to use WASD (unless you were close enough to click on something).
And, I guess I'm one of those "weird in the head" people, because I liked click & drag.
Seriously, are gamers really that spoiled? Are they really that much of a scrubs if they can't even play the game? There are two control methods, WASD and click and drag. Console players, at least of the not-Wii kind, would have problems with the point and click gameplay. It's not impossible, but it's also not practical.
I mean, for Christ's sake, I'm a writer, not a game designer. Yet even I get why they would want to switch to the current control methods. It's not terrible. People were able to finish the game with the current control method. Sure, I agree that the circle looks ugly, but that's the only thing that's a downer. That can be fixed easily.
And Jesus Christ. You bunch of hypocrites. You guys love adventure games right? You enjoy games like Grim Fandango right? Guess, what, Grim Fandango is played with the keyboard, joystick or gamepad.
Seriously, are gamers really that spoiled? Are they really that much of a scrubs if they can't even play the game? There are two control methods, WASD and click and drag. Console players, at least of the not-Wii kind, would have problems with the point and click gameplay. It's not impossible, but it's also not practical.
I mean, for Christ's sake, I'm a writer, not a game designer. Yet even I get why they would want to switch to the current control methods. It's not terrible. People were able to finish the game with the current control method. Sure, I agree that the circle looks ugly, but that's the only thing that's a downer. That can be fixed easily.
And Jesus Christ. You bunch of hypocrites. You guys love adventure games right? You enjoy games like Grim Fandango right? Guess, what, Grim Fandango is played with the keyboard, joystick or gamepad.
I said it all.
BROOKLYN RAAGGE!
I mean, while you are angry about it, I can see where you are coming from. Games do evolve and people don't like it, but it happens and if it makes the game better then so be it.
However I'm not sure about point and click being bad on consoles. RTS's yes, but point and click adventure can easily be done with an analogue stick and maybe a turbo button to make the pointer go faster. However I do acknowledge that it's not as nice as PC controls so something to benefit them would be better for them.
Penny Arcade Adventures: On A Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness wasn't enjoyable with its point and click methods, especially not when you had to be precise on what you click. Often you don't want to trigger something but you do, triggering a lengthy cut-scene or dialog which you cannot skip.
Chill out, folks -everyone is entitled to their opinion. I'm fine with answering questions about why we went the route we did as long as people keep asking.
To give you a little more information: it's not "that would be terrible," but "that was terrible." We tried exactly what you suggest as one of the first attempts, an area at each side of the screen where you could move the mouse (or move the mouse and click) to move the camera in that direction.
We tried two versions: one where you move the character, and one where you move the camera. For the character, it failed because you're having to make huge movements of the mouse in order to get minor movements of the character. Especially on a widescreen monitor, you'd have to sweep the mouse from one end of the screen to the other just to get your character to go left and right.
The one where you click or scroll to move the camera failed because it turned you from a videogame character into a cameraman. In a game like The Sims (which lets you move the mouse to the edges of the screen to scroll), you're not playing as a Sim, you're in "god mode" and watching what all the characters are doing. In a point-and-click game like Season 1, you're supposed to feel like you're Sam (or Max), and you're deciding to walk here or use this thing or talk to this person. You shouldn't have to care about the camera at all.
The one where you click or scroll to move the camera failed because it turned you from a videogame character into a cameraman. (..) In a point-and-click game like Season 1, you're supposed to feel like you're Sam (or Max), and you're deciding to walk here or use this thing or talk to this person. You shouldn't have to care about the camera at all.
Just out of idol curiosity, if you were so concerned about the camera angles, did you guys consider making it 1-st person from Sam's PoV?
Just out of idol curiosity, if you were so concerned about the camera angles, did you guys consider making it 1-st person from Sam's PoV?
Well, no. Making a Sam & Max game where you never got to see Sam would be pretty weak.
And if you're interested in making more cinematic camera angles, you wouldn't make the game 1st person, because you have the least amount of control over the camera. You'd only want to go 1st person if you're either emphasizing exploration like in Half-Life 2 or something, or if it's for special moments where you're "inhabiting" a character.
No jumping to conclusions; you already control Max (kind of) in "Night of the Raving Dead!"
But what I was getting at was the idea that when you play Season 1 and 2, it's not supposed to feel like you're just playing Sam, but playing as both Sam & Max. It's just Sam is the only one you make walk around directly.
So, if I understand all this correctly, "point and click" controls cannot be used in 3D adventure games unless the locations/player movements are restricted in the game or unless the player is given control over the camera. The first obviously limits what you can do and where you can go in the game, and the second places you in "god mode," and fails to provide a cinematic experience. Did I get all that right?
I can definitely see the problems there. As far as being Sam & Max, it's true that you control Max on some occasions, such as when you choose his dialogue for instance.
I definitely agree we don't want to end up in God mode, that puts too much of a distance between you and the character. And I wouldn't like first person at all, I tend not to like these games, plus what if we need to use and item on ourself? I agree it's best left to some cinematics and not to play the whole game.
I think that point and click thing is nostalgia for a lot of it. To me, adventure games meant three things: point & click, combining items and pixel hunting. You kinda dropped all three (I mean, ToMI has some item combining but not to the usual extent).
I don't mind being done with pixel hunting, which I found annoying, but I liked the other two. It was like other games (action/adventure, action, RPGs...) were moved with arrows or a joystick, but adventure games were different because they were point and click, because you couldn't die/lose, and so on.
I guess I'm also worried about another thing: as you work more and more on the interface and the graphics, won't that leave less and less room for what I consider the "actual" game? I'm all for good graphics but if that means some things need to be cut out, well that would be sad. I keep worrying that someday we'll get these amazing graphics and stuff, like virtual reality, but that will take so much room that you won't be able to do anything at all in the game.
Also, I had to buy a new computer to play ToMI and even then can't play it higher than quality 1. I guess I'm worried I'll have to constantly buy new computers just to be able to keep playing games, instead of keeping the same computer until it stops working. And that just seems very... wasteful, replacing something that's still in working condition.
Sorry for the long speech, but I just wanted to be honest. I don't mind using the keyboard that much. I'm just worried because of the reasons I mentioned above.
Also, I had to buy a new computer to play ToMI and even then can't play it higher than quality 1. I guess I'm worried I'll have to constantly buy new computers just to be able to keep playing games, instead of keeping the same computer until it stops working. And that just seems very... wasteful, replacing something that's still in working condition.
I have a dual-core 64-bit Athelon 64x2 clocking @ 2.63ghz (with 3gb ram) and I have to play it on 3 or under. I'm stunned that a "simple" point-and-click game woudl require at LEAST a quad-core to run properly (possibly even an octocore)
I have a dual-core 64-bit Athelon 64x2 clocking @ 2.63ghz (with 3gb ram) and I have to play it on 3 or under. I'm stunned that a "simple" point-and-click game woudl require at LEAST a quad-core to run properly (possibly even an octocore)
That would likely be due to your video card, not the processor or RAM.
So, if I understand all this correctly, "point and click" controls cannot be used in 3D adventure games unless the locations/player movements are restricted in the game or unless the player is given control over the camera. The first obviously limits what you can do and where you can go in the game, and the second places you in "god mode," and fails to provide a cinematic experience. Did I get all that right?
That's the idea. I wouldn't want to say that they "can't" be used in 3D adventure games, because games and developers are different and emphasize different things. For instance, Telltale's put its focus on detailed environments over huge environments, so that means exploration by movement is less important than exploration by interacting with things. (Most Telltale games would rather you have 1 room with 20 things to look at instead of a huge open space with only 10 things to look at).
It's totally possible for a game to give you control over the camera and still feel cinematic -- Uncharted 2 is a great example. But it's a fundamentally different type of game, even before you take the size/budget/development time into account.
I think that point and click thing is nostalgia for a lot of it. To me, adventure games meant three things: point & click, combining items and pixel hunting. You kinda dropped all three (I mean, ToMI has some item combining but not to the usual extent).
I don't mind being done with pixel hunting, which I found annoying, but I liked the other two. It was like other games (action/adventure, action, RPGs...) were moved with arrows or a joystick, but adventure games were different because they were point and click, because you couldn't die/lose, and so on.
If you think you're nostalgic for point-and-click games, imagine being so nostalgic you'd be willing to move and spend 40-60 hours a week working on them. Most of the people at Telltale are there because they like adventure games.
But the company is still making a specific type of game, and one of the goals is to keep the aspects of the old games that worked the best and drop the ones that don't fit. Telltale chose to focus on the storytelling, based on the idea that a lot of people remember the characters and the cutscenes and the big story moments of the old games. And a lot of people didn't fondly remember being stuck for hours or days on a particular puzzle, or having to call a hint line, or having to try every item with every other item to find a good combination, or making one wrong move and dying, etc.
Some people complained that the move to direct control was because of consoles, and they're partly right, but not in the way they think. When people working on Wallace & Gromit plugged in an Xbox controller and started making Wallace move around directly, it felt a lot cooler than pointing somewhere and then watching him walk. So they put the effort into getting that feeling across on all the platforms. The keyboard is a decent way of doing it on a PC, and the click-and-drag was added for people who want to play with just the mouse. Telltale will keep refining the interface, but there's always going to be a bit of translation with the mouse because it's inherently designed to work in the 2 dimensions of your screen instead of the 3 dimensions of the game world.
But say with Hit the Road: the appeal of that game to me was never clicking somewhere on the screen and watching Sam mosey all the way over to it. (Walking back and forth at the Ball of Twine still gives me nightmares). And it was never fumbling around in my inventory for hours trying to find just the right combination of stuff, or using Max on everything until I found the one right thing that would work. For me, it was being able to guide Sam & Max around weird places and choose what they said to people, and see what happened when I tried to get them to interact with weird stuff. So that's the kind of thing the Telltale games emphasize.
I have a dual-core 64-bit Athelon 64x2 clocking @ 2.63ghz (with 3gb ram) and I have to play it on 3 or under. I'm stunned that a "simple" point-and-click game woudl require at LEAST a quad-core to run properly (possibly even an octocore)
It's a matter of perspective. The game scales to a wide range of video cards. People with cheap low end video cards can play on low graphics levels. People who spend more and buy mid/high range graphics cards can get better graphics.
If you think you're nostalgic for point-and-click games, imagine being so nostalgic you'd be willing to move and spend 40-60 hours a week working on them. Most of the people at Telltale are there because they like adventure games.
Obviously. And because they're good at making them (I'm sure there are people here who would be willing to spend 40-60 hours a week on adventure games, but wouldn't be able to accomplish anything by doing so).
I wasn't trying to say you don't like adventure games. But I assume when you're actually making them it's different. You start thinking "what if we did that? What if we changed that? Wouldn't that be cool?". You're active instead of passive. You see things change, but you know why, and how, you were part of making it change.
I think it's easier to accept a change if you helped it and know everything about it than if you're just put in front of it once it's done.
And a lot of people didn't fondly remember being stuck for hours or days on a particular puzzle, or having to call a hint line, or having to try every item with every other item to find a good combination, or making one wrong move and dying, etc.
I totally get that. And I appreciate the effort in getting rid of the frustrating part, and giving a lot of importance to the story. The writing is great, the lines are hilarious, I really love that about the games. I've always felt adventure games need a good story, unlike, say, fighting games, where the story doesn't really matter as much.
I didn't like getting stuck, or calling a hint line (which I did a lot). But, if I got stuck and did NOT call a hint line (which happened a lot too, because they cost an arm and a leg), when I figured out the solution, it was like fireworks in my brain. It was wonderful. I got it.
I guess it would be frustrating if you stumbled upon it by accident, but that's not the way I did things. I didn't try everything with everything mindlessly. I wanted to know why I was doing things.
When I called the hint lines, I'd hang up before they told me what to do, if they gave a good context. So I could figure it out.
On the one hand, I really appreciate how logical things are in your games. You don't get stuck as much, and if you do, not for as long, because it's straightforward. You know what you have to do, you know why, and you have a basic idea of how.
Sure, it has its problems too. For instance, when you stumble on a solution before you even know the problem. It's a bit frustrating in its own way, because you didn't get to think about it, you just found it by accident. You know you're going to need to do that specific thing later, and when the reason arises, well, you're not really surprised. But I don't think there is much you can do about that, since not being railroaded is one of the other good things about adventure games.
It just seemed a few times that you were trying to go around combining items. Like, I remember a time in Muzzled when I really wanted to combine
the pie and the ice-cream
but, unless I'm mistaken, I couldn't. Instead I had to give one, then the other, even though I knew it was incomplete.
Anyway, we're far from the click and drag thing here. I also wanted to give some feedback about the hint system but I'm not sure if it's the right place...
Oh well, I'm started, anyways >.>
Right now my husband is playing Sam & Max 2, and I'm watching him. The first thing I can say is that it's amazing how he thinks about things that stumped me, and is stumped by things I did without giving them a second thought. We're actually thinking of playing the third season together, since it's obvious that as a team we'll do much better.
Anyway, he put the hints as "never". But he does occasionally get stuck. now, like me, he doesn't like the idea that he might get an unsolicited hint, which is why he turns them of (I'm paranoid that it will prevent me from figuring things out myself, or that it will give me a hint about puzzle A while I'm working on puzzle B or something).
But while in season 1 you could ask Max for hints, you can't in season 2.
I think it was a good feature. The thing is, I can totally understand why some people might want to play with hints. But as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather have hints only when I ask for them, otherwise I feel cheated in my figuring out stuff.
And if you're stuck and change the hints setting, you have to just walk around, waiting for one to come, which isn't ideal. And if one comes, as I said earlier, it might not be for where you're stuck.
So I liked the option of being able to ask Max for hints about something in particular.
On the other hand, I find that without having Max around to answer me, well I end up using less hints, which is nice too. So I guess I can see an advantage to not being able to ask him, too, but I still liked the way it was.
Anyway, sorry for the long, mostly off-topic rant, but since you were nice enough to give some insight, I wanted in turn to share some feedback.
I didn't like getting stuck, or calling a hint line (which I did a lot). But, if I got stuck and did NOT call a hint line (which happened a lot too, because they cost an arm and a leg), when I figured out the solution, it was like fireworks in my brain. It was wonderful. I got it.
Your post brought up many good points, but this stood out the most for me. I loved the story in Sam and Max, but one thing I liked more was getting past a puzzle that had me stuck. It's a great feeling. I also enjoyed puzzles that were smartly done (the one that pops to mind here is the puzzle in Chariots of the Dogs to get the Listening Mariachi out of the ship. When that clicked into place I was very impressed by the solution).
I guess what I'm getting at is that as long as the game has a great story and good puzzles then the controls aren't as important, unless they hinder the enjoyment for some reason.
I only use non left-mouse buttons on games that use a lot of hotkeys. Left = use/open, scroll = fire/attack, right = change weapons, thumb = strafe left, pinky = strafe right.
I guess I'm also worried about another thing: as you work more and more on the interface and the graphics, won't that leave less and less room for what I consider the "actual" game? I'm all for good graphics but if that means some things need to be cut out, well that would be sad. I keep worrying that someday we'll get these amazing graphics and stuff, like virtual reality, but that will take so much room that you won't be able to do anything at all in the game.
I never understood where this "graphics versus gameplay" thing came from. It's not like game companies have one guy who comes in to work every day and decides to spend his time either making things pretty or fun.
I never understood where this "graphics versus gameplay" thing came from. It's not like game companies have one guy who comes in to work every day and decides to spend his time either making things pretty or fun.
It will be both.
Well, there has been a trend, hasn't there? (Of course, you might disagree with me on that, I guess.) I mean, the more games developed the graphical aspect, the less they cared about the story. Not that there aren't games that are both, but I guess when games weren't nice to look at, they /had/ to be good, and when they started looking better, people worked less hard on the quality.
But my concern with you guys was really a size thing. Graphics take a lot of room, and your games need to be a downloadable size. I'm just worried that if the graphics start taking more room, then there will be less locations, less items, less characters, less story.
Plus, with higher graphics everything takes longer to make, too, so it probably happens more often that someone goes "well, that would have been cool, but we don't have the time/room to do that part so we'll have to skip it".
I mean, it's obvious that if you were making games like the old times, they would take a lot less room, right? With computers having more and more room, it's okay that games are bigger and bigger, I'm certainly not saying we should go back to 8-bit, but when it's for downloading there is a maximum size, isn't there? It just seems logical to me that any room that's taken by the graphics can't be used for the rest.
I realise it might not work like that at all, I'm just explaining the way I feel here. And I'm not saying graphics have to suck, either. Or that games should go back to silent, for instance (obviously sound takes room too). I'm just worried about the balance, that's been shifting towards graphics more and more, it seems to me.
And... it's okay if things look nice, but it's not like I'm really going to notice while I'm playing. It's not like I ever told a friend "you should try that game, it looks good". I mean, it's not a movie, or a painting, it's a game, who cares what it looks like? As long as I understand if I'm picking up a cat or a jar of mustard, that's enough for me.
I don't pretend to hold the absolute truth here, just giving my own feelings. I realise that some people do care what it looks like. They might even be the majority for all I know, it's not like I can tell. It makes sense that I would be friends with people who think like me for instance, so the fact all my friends think the same way doesn't mean anything, we could be the only people on Earth in that case.
Anyways. I'm sure Sam & Max Season 3 will be great. And I trust you guys more than I'd trust your average companies. I've just been disappointed lots of time. Like The Longest Journey 1 vs 2 for instance.
So when I read "we're changing the gameplay so we can do more with the graphics" there was like an alarm going in my head, like "oh no, are they taking that direction too?".
But it seems it wasn't just for that reason anyways, so that's a bit different.
But say with Hit the Road: the appeal of that game to me was never clicking somewhere on the screen and watching Sam mosey all the way over to it. (Walking back and forth at the Ball of Twine still gives me nightmares). And it was never fumbling around in my inventory for hours trying to find just the right combination of stuff, or using Max on everything until I found the one right thing that would work. For me, it was being able to guide Sam & Max around weird places and choose what they said to people, and see what happened when I tried to get them to interact with weird stuff. So that's the kind of thing the Telltale games emphasize.
Yep! That's what I loved about Sam & Max.. That's what I would judge any new Sam & Max game on. It's amazing the other things people get hung up on. Maybe they complain about all the other stuff because Telltale has got the writing, the story, the characters.. right? :cool:
I never understood where this "graphics versus gameplay" thing came from. It's not like game companies have one guy who comes in to work every day and decides to spend his time either making things pretty or fun.
It's easy. Some companies cover up shitty games with pretty gfx. "Some" was like 20% in the late nineties, while it's probably 80% now. So emphasis on graphics does ring alarm bells, as avistew said. It's Pavlovian now.
PS: It's just an explanation. I'm not worried about Sam&Max 2010 at all
I just played Bone The Great Cow Race and was so annoyed that I couldn't click and drag them! Especially when the camera moved to a funny angle and I couldn't see the characters or interesting clickable objects. Having to point and click on the floor felt like such a big regression!
It's easy. Some companies cover up shitty games with pretty gfx. "Some" was like 20% in the late nineties, while it's probably 80% now. So emphasis on graphics does ring alarm bells, as avistew said. It's Pavlovian now.
PS: It's just an explanation. I'm not worried about Sam&Max 2010 at all
I don't think any companies set out to cover up bad gameplay with pretty graphics. They shoot to be great at both, but since they are completely independent of each other, one mark can be reached while the other fails.
Comments
Now, if you can come up with a control system that addresses these issues, I will happily give it a chance. But I fear that point and click really was the pinnacle of adventure game control systems (until at least the invention of proper brain interfaces and / or virtual reality becomes a common home technology!) and that you are all trying way to hard to do something new when it doesn't need to be done. My other theory, slightly more conspiracist, is that Lucasarts actually asked you to drop point & click when you took on MI, claiming it's their trademark or signature or some other corporate nonsense, and you then had to come up with a crazy reason to justify it to us all. Something like that?
Finally, about the offical "navigating to areas where the cinematic camera doesn't show the floor" line. Why can't the background areas just be click targets that navigate to the nearest bit of floor? Wouldn't this be a lot easier than entirely reinventing the wheel? All the old point & clickers worked like this.
Besides which, it's actually quite nice to be able to see where the floor is. So that you know whether you can actually walk on an area, and it isn't just a gaping pit of lava, for instance. I'm not actually a huge fan of cinematic cameras that obscure the playing area!
If the WASD and click controls can give way to a more cinematic experience, which in turn could also give us new puzzles, then I'm all for it.
The interface for doing this is a lot more welcoming than a game like Machinarium, for example, where you have to be near something in order to detect if you can interact with it. Thus far, that is the only frustrating thing I've found about the game.
No, no, no - S&M Season 2 had click and hold. ToMI had click and drag. Click and hold was the best possible evolution of the control mechanism. Click and drag was thoroughly lame as proven by how many people are complaining about it and asking for something different; obviously there are some people a bit weird in the head who for some reason actually liked it, unfortunately they seem to shout louder than the folks with geniune complaints. That's democracy for you I guess...
Oh. Hmm, I assumed click and drag was what Season 2 used because you clicked, and then dragged the mouse around. What's click and drag then? Clicking the character then moving them with the mouse? That... doesn't sound too bad?
I guess I need to play ToMI or W&G to get an idea of what it's like.
Yeah, in ToMI it basically goes like this:
Or something like that. I believe the exact user story varies from player to player, and depending on whether you have one of the ultra-secret TTG-employee-exclusive "point'n'click unlocked" releases of the game. Or so I heard.
Then the old point-and-clickers had simpler navigation meshes than we do, because this approach simply will not give a good outcome in most situations.
Would it be possible, in theory, to click one side of the screen (left, right, up down) and cause the character to go that way or the screen to scroll that way or something like that? With that + clicking on objects to move around, it might be possible to play the whole game just by pointing and clicking, and that doesn't mean you have to remove click and drag, either.
I guess in the first option, if I click left and the character can't go left because there is something blocking them, it's not very useful. But as far as scrolling the screen goes, I can't think of a problem since the character wouldn't have to move, and then you can always click on an item that appears to make the character move...
As long as exists and the like are clickable, that sounds to me like it might work.
Of course, it might be a terrible idea, but I was just wondering if you thought it would be workable or if some problems would arise (like they would with straight point-of click due to your angles).
Yes. This would be functional, but also terrible.
Wallace & Gromit, which started before ToMI, didn't have point & click either. In fact, you had to use WASD (unless you were close enough to click on something).
And, I guess I'm one of those "weird in the head" people, because I liked click & drag.
I mean, for Christ's sake, I'm a writer, not a game designer. Yet even I get why they would want to switch to the current control methods. It's not terrible. People were able to finish the game with the current control method. Sure, I agree that the circle looks ugly, but that's the only thing that's a downer. That can be fixed easily.
And Jesus Christ. You bunch of hypocrites. You guys love adventure games right? You enjoy games like Grim Fandango right? Guess, what, Grim Fandango is played with the keyboard, joystick or gamepad.
I said it all.
BROOKLYN RAAGGE!
I mean, while you are angry about it, I can see where you are coming from. Games do evolve and people don't like it, but it happens and if it makes the game better then so be it.
However I'm not sure about point and click being bad on consoles. RTS's yes, but point and click adventure can easily be done with an analogue stick and maybe a turbo button to make the pointer go faster. However I do acknowledge that it's not as nice as PC controls so something to benefit them would be better for them.
That sounds just like real life.
Thanks
We tried two versions: one where you move the character, and one where you move the camera. For the character, it failed because you're having to make huge movements of the mouse in order to get minor movements of the character. Especially on a widescreen monitor, you'd have to sweep the mouse from one end of the screen to the other just to get your character to go left and right.
The one where you click or scroll to move the camera failed because it turned you from a videogame character into a cameraman. In a game like The Sims (which lets you move the mouse to the edges of the screen to scroll), you're not playing as a Sim, you're in "god mode" and watching what all the characters are doing. In a point-and-click game like Season 1, you're supposed to feel like you're Sam (or Max), and you're deciding to walk here or use this thing or talk to this person. You shouldn't have to care about the camera at all.
Just out of idol curiosity, if you were so concerned about the camera angles, did you guys consider making it 1-st person from Sam's PoV?
Plus a FPS camera means at least twice more places to look at with a narrowed sight, so it'd be rather painful to play...
Do we have to draw conclusions from that?
Or did I just
And if you're interested in making more cinematic camera angles, you wouldn't make the game 1st person, because you have the least amount of control over the camera. You'd only want to go 1st person if you're either emphasizing exploration like in Half-Life 2 or something, or if it's for special moments where you're "inhabiting" a character.
No jumping to conclusions; you already control Max (kind of) in "Night of the Raving Dead!"
But what I was getting at was the idea that when you play Season 1 and 2, it's not supposed to feel like you're just playing Sam, but playing as both Sam & Max. It's just Sam is the only one you make walk around directly.
that was a cheep trick. Though we're all glad to know where Max keeps his gun... well... then again... maybe we're not... >.<
and for the record, I love the HL franchise! (though I do get the point)
I can definitely see the problems there. As far as being Sam & Max, it's true that you control Max on some occasions, such as when you choose his dialogue for instance.
I definitely agree we don't want to end up in God mode, that puts too much of a distance between you and the character. And I wouldn't like first person at all, I tend not to like these games, plus what if we need to use and item on ourself? I agree it's best left to some cinematics and not to play the whole game.
I think that point and click thing is nostalgia for a lot of it. To me, adventure games meant three things: point & click, combining items and pixel hunting. You kinda dropped all three (I mean, ToMI has some item combining but not to the usual extent).
I don't mind being done with pixel hunting, which I found annoying, but I liked the other two. It was like other games (action/adventure, action, RPGs...) were moved with arrows or a joystick, but adventure games were different because they were point and click, because you couldn't die/lose, and so on.
I guess I'm also worried about another thing: as you work more and more on the interface and the graphics, won't that leave less and less room for what I consider the "actual" game? I'm all for good graphics but if that means some things need to be cut out, well that would be sad. I keep worrying that someday we'll get these amazing graphics and stuff, like virtual reality, but that will take so much room that you won't be able to do anything at all in the game.
Also, I had to buy a new computer to play ToMI and even then can't play it higher than quality 1. I guess I'm worried I'll have to constantly buy new computers just to be able to keep playing games, instead of keeping the same computer until it stops working. And that just seems very... wasteful, replacing something that's still in working condition.
Sorry for the long speech, but I just wanted to be honest. I don't mind using the keyboard that much. I'm just worried because of the reasons I mentioned above.
I have a dual-core 64-bit Athelon 64x2 clocking @ 2.63ghz (with 3gb ram) and I have to play it on 3 or under. I'm stunned that a "simple" point-and-click game woudl require at LEAST a quad-core to run properly (possibly even an octocore)
That would likely be due to your video card, not the processor or RAM.
Radeon X1300 with 256mb Vram
What's expected? 1gb Vram??
It's totally possible for a game to give you control over the camera and still feel cinematic -- Uncharted 2 is a great example. But it's a fundamentally different type of game, even before you take the size/budget/development time into account.
If you think you're nostalgic for point-and-click games, imagine being so nostalgic you'd be willing to move and spend 40-60 hours a week working on them. Most of the people at Telltale are there because they like adventure games.
But the company is still making a specific type of game, and one of the goals is to keep the aspects of the old games that worked the best and drop the ones that don't fit. Telltale chose to focus on the storytelling, based on the idea that a lot of people remember the characters and the cutscenes and the big story moments of the old games. And a lot of people didn't fondly remember being stuck for hours or days on a particular puzzle, or having to call a hint line, or having to try every item with every other item to find a good combination, or making one wrong move and dying, etc.
Some people complained that the move to direct control was because of consoles, and they're partly right, but not in the way they think. When people working on Wallace & Gromit plugged in an Xbox controller and started making Wallace move around directly, it felt a lot cooler than pointing somewhere and then watching him walk. So they put the effort into getting that feeling across on all the platforms. The keyboard is a decent way of doing it on a PC, and the click-and-drag was added for people who want to play with just the mouse. Telltale will keep refining the interface, but there's always going to be a bit of translation with the mouse because it's inherently designed to work in the 2 dimensions of your screen instead of the 3 dimensions of the game world.
But say with Hit the Road: the appeal of that game to me was never clicking somewhere on the screen and watching Sam mosey all the way over to it. (Walking back and forth at the Ball of Twine still gives me nightmares). And it was never fumbling around in my inventory for hours trying to find just the right combination of stuff, or using Max on everything until I found the one right thing that would work. For me, it was being able to guide Sam & Max around weird places and choose what they said to people, and see what happened when I tried to get them to interact with weird stuff. So that's the kind of thing the Telltale games emphasize.
It's a matter of perspective. The game scales to a wide range of video cards. People with cheap low end video cards can play on low graphics levels. People who spend more and buy mid/high range graphics cards can get better graphics.
Obviously. And because they're good at making them (I'm sure there are people here who would be willing to spend 40-60 hours a week on adventure games, but wouldn't be able to accomplish anything by doing so).
I wasn't trying to say you don't like adventure games. But I assume when you're actually making them it's different. You start thinking "what if we did that? What if we changed that? Wouldn't that be cool?". You're active instead of passive. You see things change, but you know why, and how, you were part of making it change.
I think it's easier to accept a change if you helped it and know everything about it than if you're just put in front of it once it's done.
I totally get that. And I appreciate the effort in getting rid of the frustrating part, and giving a lot of importance to the story. The writing is great, the lines are hilarious, I really love that about the games. I've always felt adventure games need a good story, unlike, say, fighting games, where the story doesn't really matter as much.
I didn't like getting stuck, or calling a hint line (which I did a lot). But, if I got stuck and did NOT call a hint line (which happened a lot too, because they cost an arm and a leg), when I figured out the solution, it was like fireworks in my brain. It was wonderful. I got it.
I guess it would be frustrating if you stumbled upon it by accident, but that's not the way I did things. I didn't try everything with everything mindlessly. I wanted to know why I was doing things.
When I called the hint lines, I'd hang up before they told me what to do, if they gave a good context. So I could figure it out.
On the one hand, I really appreciate how logical things are in your games. You don't get stuck as much, and if you do, not for as long, because it's straightforward. You know what you have to do, you know why, and you have a basic idea of how.
Sure, it has its problems too. For instance, when you stumble on a solution before you even know the problem. It's a bit frustrating in its own way, because you didn't get to think about it, you just found it by accident. You know you're going to need to do that specific thing later, and when the reason arises, well, you're not really surprised. But I don't think there is much you can do about that, since not being railroaded is one of the other good things about adventure games.
It just seemed a few times that you were trying to go around combining items. Like, I remember a time in Muzzled when I really wanted to combine
Anyway, we're far from the click and drag thing here. I also wanted to give some feedback about the hint system but I'm not sure if it's the right place...
Oh well, I'm started, anyways >.>
Right now my husband is playing Sam & Max 2, and I'm watching him. The first thing I can say is that it's amazing how he thinks about things that stumped me, and is stumped by things I did without giving them a second thought. We're actually thinking of playing the third season together, since it's obvious that as a team we'll do much better.
Anyway, he put the hints as "never". But he does occasionally get stuck. now, like me, he doesn't like the idea that he might get an unsolicited hint, which is why he turns them of (I'm paranoid that it will prevent me from figuring things out myself, or that it will give me a hint about puzzle A while I'm working on puzzle B or something).
But while in season 1 you could ask Max for hints, you can't in season 2.
I think it was a good feature. The thing is, I can totally understand why some people might want to play with hints. But as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather have hints only when I ask for them, otherwise I feel cheated in my figuring out stuff.
And if you're stuck and change the hints setting, you have to just walk around, waiting for one to come, which isn't ideal. And if one comes, as I said earlier, it might not be for where you're stuck.
So I liked the option of being able to ask Max for hints about something in particular.
On the other hand, I find that without having Max around to answer me, well I end up using less hints, which is nice too. So I guess I can see an advantage to not being able to ask him, too, but I still liked the way it was.
Anyway, sorry for the long, mostly off-topic rant, but since you were nice enough to give some insight, I wanted in turn to share some feedback.
Your post brought up many good points, but this stood out the most for me. I loved the story in Sam and Max, but one thing I liked more was getting past a puzzle that had me stuck. It's a great feeling. I also enjoyed puzzles that were smartly done (the one that pops to mind here is the puzzle in Chariots of the Dogs to get the Listening Mariachi out of the ship. When that clicked into place I was very impressed by the solution).
I guess what I'm getting at is that as long as the game has a great story and good puzzles then the controls aren't as important, unless they hinder the enjoyment for some reason.
I never understood where this "graphics versus gameplay" thing came from. It's not like game companies have one guy who comes in to work every day and decides to spend his time either making things pretty or fun.
It will be both.
Well, there has been a trend, hasn't there? (Of course, you might disagree with me on that, I guess.) I mean, the more games developed the graphical aspect, the less they cared about the story. Not that there aren't games that are both, but I guess when games weren't nice to look at, they /had/ to be good, and when they started looking better, people worked less hard on the quality.
But my concern with you guys was really a size thing. Graphics take a lot of room, and your games need to be a downloadable size. I'm just worried that if the graphics start taking more room, then there will be less locations, less items, less characters, less story.
Plus, with higher graphics everything takes longer to make, too, so it probably happens more often that someone goes "well, that would have been cool, but we don't have the time/room to do that part so we'll have to skip it".
I mean, it's obvious that if you were making games like the old times, they would take a lot less room, right? With computers having more and more room, it's okay that games are bigger and bigger, I'm certainly not saying we should go back to 8-bit, but when it's for downloading there is a maximum size, isn't there? It just seems logical to me that any room that's taken by the graphics can't be used for the rest.
I realise it might not work like that at all, I'm just explaining the way I feel here. And I'm not saying graphics have to suck, either. Or that games should go back to silent, for instance (obviously sound takes room too). I'm just worried about the balance, that's been shifting towards graphics more and more, it seems to me.
And... it's okay if things look nice, but it's not like I'm really going to notice while I'm playing. It's not like I ever told a friend "you should try that game, it looks good". I mean, it's not a movie, or a painting, it's a game, who cares what it looks like? As long as I understand if I'm picking up a cat or a jar of mustard, that's enough for me.
I don't pretend to hold the absolute truth here, just giving my own feelings. I realise that some people do care what it looks like. They might even be the majority for all I know, it's not like I can tell. It makes sense that I would be friends with people who think like me for instance, so the fact all my friends think the same way doesn't mean anything, we could be the only people on Earth in that case.
Anyways. I'm sure Sam & Max Season 3 will be great. And I trust you guys more than I'd trust your average companies. I've just been disappointed lots of time. Like The Longest Journey 1 vs 2 for instance.
So when I read "we're changing the gameplay so we can do more with the graphics" there was like an alarm going in my head, like "oh no, are they taking that direction too?".
But it seems it wasn't just for that reason anyways, so that's a bit different.
Yep! That's what I loved about Sam & Max.. That's what I would judge any new Sam & Max game on. It's amazing the other things people get hung up on. Maybe they complain about all the other stuff because Telltale has got the writing, the story, the characters.. right? :cool:
It's easy. Some companies cover up shitty games with pretty gfx. "Some" was like 20% in the late nineties, while it's probably 80% now. So emphasis on graphics does ring alarm bells, as avistew said. It's Pavlovian now.
PS: It's just an explanation. I'm not worried about Sam&Max 2010 at all
I don't think any companies set out to cover up bad gameplay with pretty graphics. They shoot to be great at both, but since they are completely independent of each other, one mark can be reached while the other fails.