Well, when such a discussion gets so long, it should mean something for the game's developers. On short, if you want to please the PC adventure players, you must support a point'n click interface. Even shorter, MOUSE is GOOD, KEYBOARD is BAD, MOUSE+KEYBOARD is even WORSE!
About your concern for framing and point'n click interface. You think that if you don't see the floor to click on, you can't move. What if you allow the player to click on the sides of the frame to move in that direction? And with a special looking cursor, that could do the trick. And it could easily be integrated with the rest of the interface. What do you all think about this?
I started to play and it was a pretty good while until I found out I can't click on the floor for the classic movement style. I just clicked from hot spot to hot spot and this worked pretty well for a while. I also don't thing the need for move around freely is crucial for an adventure game. more important is to easily find and access the hot spots.
So PLEASE consider adding a MOUSE ONLY solution in your further releases. Keyboard+mouse combination is good only for shooters and hardcore gamers.
Now another observation:
I think you wanted to point the game a little in the casual games direction. That's based on the little config options in the menu and on the "auto-save" feature. Anyway I must say you are now somewhere in between. Not classic adventure and not true casual.
I was "confused" by the save system. Casual games usually have a named profile, to track the saves. I wanted to show someone the beginning of the game and I lost the progress, except for an early bookmark. And saving bookmarks is not accessible enough - and I fear there's a very limited number of them (haven't tried it to consume all yet).
Also, you can have a few more options in the menu. The already mentioned music/fx volume. I had to use the subtitles so I can lower the volume and still understand the speech. You can have an "advanced" page if you want to keep it simple for casual players.
Not to mention the casual player using a keyboard and a mouse in the same time...
Still, the game has great value - that's why I posted about these few things that would make it even better. You really did well with the W&G style, speech, animations, etc. I can't pronounce myself about the story yet (I haven't finished it).
MOUSE is GOOD, KEYBOARD is BAD, MOUSE+KEYBOARD is even WORSE!
I disagree with this assertion, personally. If they feel they need to have keyboard integration, then I find it far more comfortable to be able to use the mouse. Especially when I can use the mouse for movement through hotspots, when the inventory controls with the mouse and mouse wheel are so much more comfortable than everything else, and when there actually ARE keyboard-only control options available to people playing W&G.
I still do feel like a mouse-only control option is the most comfortable, but if it's impossible, than I'd still like to include the ability to utilize my mouse for a large majority of the control anyway.
If they feel they need to have keyboard integration, then I find it far more comfortable to be able to use the mouse. Especially when I can use the mouse for movement through hotspots, when the inventory controls with the mouse and mouse wheel are so much more comfortable than everything else.
I still do feel like a mouse-only control option is the most comfortable, but if it's impossible, than I'd still like to include the ability to utilize my mouse for a large majority of the control.
That would have been a great solution but hey, it’s "impossible" to do, right?.
is not that simple because I don’t hate the work of Telltale, I don’t hate Wallace and Gromit, I just hate the controls that where implemented.
I personally raved because for one stupid thing I won’t play something I like.
And I’m not going to force myself into liking something just because its telltale and W&G (I’m not a blind fan), so I prefer not to buy the games instead.
is not that simple because I don’t hate the work of Telltale, I don’t hate Wallace and Gromit, I just hate the controls that where implemented.
I personally raved because for one stupid thing I won’t play something I like.
And I’m not going to force myself into liking something just because its telltale and W&G (I’m not a blind fan), so I prefer not to buy the games instead.
well then thats an entirly diffrent matter. sorry for being harsh then.
And if I didn't like it I wouldn't be writing in their forums.
TellTale is one of the few adventure developers and we all want them to do their best for us. If people don't say what they want, they'll never get it. Feedback from players is very important to developers, or at least it should be. Of course every developer has the final decision on his games and that will affect sales and popularity.
About your concern for framing and point'n click interface. You think that if you don't see the floor to click on, you can't move. What if you allow the player to click on the sides of the frame to move in that direction? And with a special looking cursor, that could do the trick. And it could easily be integrated with the rest of the interface. What do you all think about this?
Either the game would need an actual frame around it you could click on, or every shot would need to be framed so that there was nothing actually clickable in the margins. Either way it would require a lot of rework and is far more complicated to use than plain old WASD.
Either the game would need an actual frame around it you could click on, or every shot would need to be framed so that there was nothing actually clickable in the margins.
No additional frame border is needed and there's no problem if there are active objects there.
If there's an object there, you click on it to use it, like you do now, and the player walks there like it does now.
If there's no active object under cursor when you click on the side (a few pixels close to the screen's edges) you can find a corresponding position on the floor (on the pathgrid) and make the player walk there. And it doesn't even have to be an exact position - you could use a waypoint in the opposite side of the room or so.
It just needs to be a valid way to access the objects in the rest of the room, to bring them in view.
Of course, it's just an idea and I didn't study all the frames to see if it's always possible - you know better. I just wished to be able to play it with mouse only. If not, i think I'll just use my new wireless 360 controller on PC
Just stopping in to also register my discontent with the control scheme. I don't see why being able to click everywhere and having the characters attempt to walk to the nearest spot would be too problematic, and shouldn't cause problems based on the camera angles. It looks like you've got the pathfinding AI down already, seeing as you can click on an item on the other side of the room and they'll make their way there.
just a couple things, without getting too entrenched in the ever-deepening "but why couldn't you just!" conversation...
first and foremost, we hear ya. we really do. we set out to make wallace and gromit the most cinematic experience yet from telltale, and i hope you're enjoying the fruits of those labors. i won't repeat anything (although im about to) that's already been said by other telltalians here or elsewhere, but having direct control over the character allowed us to do that.
any system that requires pointin'n'clickin to get somewhere is intrinsically tied to where the camera is -- as your screen is a 2d plane and we've gotta know what you're looking at so we can try to determine where you're clickin. the problem is, throughout production, our cameras are changing all of the time. which means scrapping and repeating a boat load of work tied to character movement every time that happens. regardless, this has been said before and is just one of the myriad of reasons we didn't go with point and click in the pc version, and while i'm sure this won't satisfy those with a dark, seething hatred for the control scheme (which i think there are few...) i hope you'll accept it as reasonable and simply the way it is.
and while im currently playing and replaying and replaying ep 103 (muzzled) with the keyboard and mouse (and not because i have to), i will say: if you have the opportunity, play with a controller (especially one that's got an analog stick) and hopefully those who have disagreed with the idea that "direct control provides an immersive experience" will peal the scorned husks from their angry hearts, and, with a solitary tear, see that walking wallace and gromit around truly is fun.
and yes, you don't have a controller (which i feel ya on because i remember what it was like to not have things like controllers) yes, the xbox comes WITH a controller *gasp!* but i promise we haven't completely sold out, turned into the monster-mega-corporation we said we never would, and now wait patiently for our oversized novelty check to be hand delivered from the hardware manufacturer we're in bed with.
i saw someone on another thread enjoyed the controls (yippee!) and i'm glad you guys are willing to burn the calories to say you didn't. but keep on playing, try to get used to what we've done with WG, realize we thought real hard about it, and hopefully enjoy the actual STUFF you're using the controls to get to.
the problem is, throughout production, our cameras are changing all of the time. which means scrapping and repeating a boat load of work tied to character movement every time that happens. regardless, this has been said before and is just one of the myriad of reasons we didn't go with point and click in the pc version
I may be sloppy, but I can't remember this argument. So, does this mean you've saved a lot of effort here compared to Sam and Max?
I just want to jump in and say that not everyone hates the controls. As I move around a lot, I don't have acces to a controller all the time, so most of the time I use the keyboard only-method. And yes, it was weird at first, but I very quickly became used to it. It saddens me that so many (well, at least those who post a lot) can't really look past this and look at the benefits of the new control-method. It makes the game so much more immersive, not only because you directly control the characters, but because of the weird, cinematic and unexpected(!) camera-angles. It just seems like a huge, huge step forward to the 'theatre stages' from previous Telltale-games, which was getting kind of old. A lot of people are just really scared of new things, I guess, but the SCUMM-style control-methods weren't perfect, even at the time. It was the best you could do with the available technology back then. And that was, you know, fifteen year ago. The production values are just so much higher this way, and I would be extremely sad to see the next series of Sam & Max to miss out on this. Not only is it perfectly playable on PC, it makes porting to the consoles so much more natural, which really isn't a bad thing.
So, yes, if someone in the office is keeping a list, put down my vote for continuing on the track of progress. And keep in mind that people who actually like something in the game, something which feels natural to them, aren't really going to take the time to sing about it in the forums. The internet was made for complaining, and that other thing. So please, don't fire the guy who implemented the control-scheme. He did a great job.
Keyboard Movement = Unplayable
Keyboard Item interaction = Unplayable. Too much effort to toggle thru all on-screen items. So you need to use mouse to do this.
Joystick Movement = Playable
Joystick Item interaction = same as Keyboard Item interaction
Mouse Movement = Unplayable. Reasonably playable with my AutoHotkey script found in another thread.
Mouse Item interaction = Playable.
Skipping all the ways they could have made mouse movement better, I'll just discuss Item Interaction.
Obviously the controls remind me of Grim Fandango. When Manny would walk near something his head would turn to that item making selection easy. W&G tries to do this, but fails. When 2 items are close together it is really hard to get the character to look at the item you want. If that was fixed then the joystick would be playable and I would not be complaining.
Keyboards and gaming just don't go together for me. This is not "Typing of the Dead." So this leaves W&G in it's current limbo of having no one universal easy control method.
As for everyone complaining, it needs to be done. That is the only way things will work smoother in the next game. It took years of complaints for TTG to finally have the nice new Video selection of any available mode. The lack of, was one of my main S&M complaints.
ha, no... you can see the floor and sam and max (and in general, the gameplay portions are shot from further away) making the camera issue moot.
but like i said, it's one of MANY reasons we settled on a direct control scheme.
yeah, I read some of those - you guys do seem to be obsessed with this floor thing anyway, I'm not questioning the decision about direct control (any more ) - I'm just very interested in the mechanics that led to it.
@Tjibbbe: please note that the source of immersion can be quite different by person - what works for you may not work for someone else.
I seemed to have the best experience with a controller in my left hand (using only the analog stick) and using the mouse with my right
That's exactly my point: You need both hands to play the game. What I liked about Telltale games so far is the simple, intuitive, one hand control. - With one hand free you can eat, drink, make a phone call, write down some notes, use a remote control, etc. while playing.
By the way, I disagree that you can walk anywhere with the new control scheme now: In "The Last Resort", for example, it is impossible to walk around the truck with the sand bags. After talking to Major Crumb in the basement, I had difficulties to leave the scene as I did not know to which direction. Besides I find it confusing that the perspective changes in some scenes. For example when you come out of the basement and want to go to the dining room: You first have to press "down" (or "s"), then the perspective changes, so you have to press "up" (or "w") to continue walking in the same direction.
Anyway, I guess you either love or hate this control scheme, and it is unlikely that somebody changes his opinion later. - The important question for Telltale is probably which group is the majority, as this might have a significant impact on the number of people who will buy their next game...
I'm curious to know why it's difficult to get the characters to at least move to an approximate area based on mouse clicks. I get what you're saying about the cameras making it challenging, but as the pathfinding AI is smart enough to navigate to an item, it should be able to take a guess at where you want it to go when you click on an area. Even if it's put in as an unsupported feature that has to be enabled with a config edit or command line switch at first. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I'm with the other people here in that I have my ultra-comfortable "adventure gaming" position, because I can control it with only one hand, and would love to see us thrown a bone here.
I'm curious to know why it's difficult to get the characters to at least move to an approximate area based on mouse clicks.
It's sort of mathy. You transform the click coordinates from screen space, through view space, and finally into a ray in world space. If the ray intersects with the ground, you get the world coordinates of that intersection and move to it.
If the ray doesn't intersect with anything, no coordinates are generated, and you lack the necessary mathematical information to solve where the user intended to move. The best we could do is determine a line of possible places that the player intended to move to (by intersecting a plane with the ground instead of a ray), but there are still infinite solutions in this case.
Here's a solution I can see working for most situations, and I've included diagrams to illustrate it.
This first step might not be necessary, but I'm including it for clarity of thought. When a user clicks, the screen is analysed as a two-dimensional plane showing only the approved walking areas and distances (behind-the-scenes). I'm assuming there's a system, probably an invisible plane that shows approved walking areas. I don't imagine it would be too tricky to get the engine to do this part. Figure 1 shows what the engine is looking at during this time. (the red area - background is provided for reference). Then the engine picks the closest approved walking area to the click and directs the character there. Pathfinding AI (that seems to already be in place) does the rest. Figure two (roughly) shows how any click can be simply translated to a walkable space.
This would probably work on most spaces in the game. Even for trickier ones there would be ways around it with a little thought. Take Fig3, for example. This is probably one of the most complex problems for something like this, and even that's not too harrowing. Our Hero starts off in the enclosure on the left, with the camera behind him. The black walls are around waist height, and the camera is sitting around head height. The problem here, is that clicking in the red area would look to the player like walking up to the fence, but the engine would take that as an instruction to walk around the fence to the other side - which is annoying. The solution is to zone out the walkable areas (colour coded in the diagram, with crossovers), so that area isn't seen as traversable until Wallace reaches the yellow area.
The best thing about this approach is that it's camera-independent, so you could put the camera almost anywhere you like and it wouldn't require a lot of tweaking. For some sequences it might not be workable, but it should (in theory) work for 90% or more of the game.
I'm an animator, not a game designer, so I can't claim to be certain this would work. The theory seems pretty sound to me at least though, and the implementation relatively painless (given pathfinding AI is already there).
Any thoughts on my proposed solution? There's probably something I've overlooked (not being fully aware of how the engine works), but could that be a feasible solution?
Here's a solution I can see working for most situations, and I've included diagrams to illustrate it.
Like many suggestions in this thread, your idea sounds good and there are a lot of cases where it would work. Also like the other suggestions, there are problems with it that you can't anticipate unless you have knowledge of the math necessary to implement these systems. People intuitively think about things like "close to" or "probable" based on what they're intending and a computer just doesn't work that way. It needs a math problem to solve, which means you need enough variables filled in to determine the solution. One extra variable that isn't known and all of a sudden the problem has infinite solutions.
It's sort of like saying: X + Y = 3, solve for X. Well then, X = 3-Y which is as good as you can do. You can't get "close" to the correct or "intended" value for X because 3-Y are all valid solutions.
There are ways to make some of these systems work by adding a lot of extra hand-tuned information to every camera angle in every scene. We prefer solutions that let us focus our resources on creating awesome adventures for you guys rather than painstakingly placing click targets in the background of scenes or whatever.
Interesting. I understand what you're saying, but with my limited understanding of advanced game programming I'm having trouble with something. "Closest point" is a mathematically solvable problem. If you can write AI smart enough to navigate through complex scenes without hitting something, where does the difficulty lie in having the engine determine the closest point to randomly clicked point, given a limited possible result? I don't comprehend the maths behind it, but if the engine can't do it easily and automatically, one solution could be to have it draw an invisible expanding circle using the click location as the point of origin, and the first intersection with a walkable area would be the chosen destination. The trick to this solution working (the way I'm thinking about it) is to ignore the depth axis and treat it as a two dimensional problem. That's where I would imagine most of the difficulty would spring from, as a mouseclick does not include depth information. Once the location is chosen in two-dimensional space, it would be a relatively simple task to pinpoint that in world space.
I understand and empathise with wanting a control solution that doesn't involve repetitive manual setup for every scene, camera angle, and a rework for changes of the aforementioned, but it would seem a solution based around two dimensional analysis such as this would probably work with minimal tweaking for each scene.
I don't imagine this would be done soon, or even in W&GS1 (I know even minor changes take a lot of initial testing and tweaking), but it would be nice to see this in a possible season 2. A system like this would also be a big timesaver on other projects. In the next season of Sam & Max for example, you'd have the functionality built into the Telltale tool which would grant a lot more freedom in terms of your cameras, and save on time (as I'm under the understanding that the scenes in S&M require a lot of manual setup).
You can't rank how "probable" a solution is without having something to compare it to.
just shooting from the hip, you can lay a probability map on the original 3D scene, and there you have the basis for the ranking - and that's not even camera dependent.
don't get me wrong, I do think there are a few scenes in the Last Resort where it would be difficult to control the character by clicks, whatever the method is - most notably, the around-the-table scenes in act 3 were simply great, and it owed a lot to the camera angles.
however, I don't think it's fair to say that these problems represent mathematical impossibilities
"Closest point" is a mathematically solvable problem.
Solving "closest point" requires a target point, and a set of possible solutions. In this case we have a set of infinite solutions but no target point in 3d space. We can't get close to something if we don't have something.
Working in 2D space, we can get a target point as suggested by moving to the closest valid spot on the walkbox in 2D space and then tracing a ray as normal. This solution is not viable because it does not allow you to (as one example) walk towards the camera in areas where the ground is out of the shot. Sure, we could click to move in areas where there are no walkboxes, but what if that area we need to click in is off the bottom of the screen?
Point and click to move has a ton of issues that all arise from mapping input from 2D to 3D, and being constrained in the game window. Most games make this a solveable problem by fixing or limiting many variables such as camera position and level design.
If there were a 3D cursor you could move in game along the surface of the walkbox and off the visible edges of the screen then it would be just as viable as WASD.
Aha, I didn't think of navigating to areas where the walkbox extends beyond the camera. The solution I was imagining factors in obscured floors or cluttered maps, but that would indeed pose a problem. This whole thing is an interesting exercise in problem-solving/design. The issue of not having a target point in 3d space is negated by analysing it as a 2d plane, but that doesn't solve off-screen walkbox areas. A 3d cursor locked to the walkbox (of a reasonable size and shape, with a shadow to help indicate depth) would probably be quite simple to put in place, but extremely unwieldy and unnatural in practice.
Perhaps for those few situations where you need to navigate to a position where the cursor would need to be below the screen for this system to work, a solution would be to have the cursor move the characters down when it dropped below a certain level, up when above that, and left and right as appropriate. Again - probably not a one-size-fits-all solution, but it could solve for some of those.
Correct me if I've misunderstood, but from what you've been saying this system would work in most scenarios. It does seem there might be a couple of tricky scenes to use it in, however manual setup in just a couple scenes per episode shouldn't be too arduous. From my limited understanding of programming (but reasonable understanding of 3d space) it probably wouldn't take more than two or three days, a week at most to knock together a rough prototype of this system to test for feasibility (though I could be way off on that estimate).
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to this discussion, I'm not trying to prove you wrong or say "point and click is easy and should have been done from day one" (though that would have been nice), but hopefully this might help solve some of the problems inherent in getting a mouse interface for these games, either by deducing a solution or by giving you a spark of inspiration that will lead to a better solution.
A 3d cursor locked to the walkbox (of a reasonable size and shape, with a shadow to help indicate depth) would probably be quite simple to put in place, but extremely unwieldy and unnatural in practice.
Not only that, but we'd have to make a toggle to set the cursor in 2D mode to get it to come off the walkbox so you could click on characters and other things! It would be very strange, I think.
Correct me if I've misunderstood, but from what you've been saying this system would work in most scenarios.
Walking toward the camera when you can't see the ground is the deal killer for point-and-click from a purely mechanical point of view. Making the character walk toward the camera when you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen would work, but it would be very different from normal movement. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but an inconsistent user interface is one of the most frustrating things to deal with and should be avoided when alternatives exist.
I don't mind discussing technical minutia with the community, so far as it falls within my domain and is not a company secret.
Interesting turn into technical details - I hope you guys don't take this the wrong way, but I'll add some suggestions myself.
First of all, from what I've seen, there are not so many situations limited by the "walk toward the camera" issue. I'm not counting non-interactive "cut-scenes".
1. Just do a rayhit with the geometry (from camera through cursor) and the first point found, just use it to pick the nearest path grid point. Player goes there. You can project the point on the walk plane(s) or whatever you use. You can also consider the player's position when you choose the closest path grid point. If needed you can filter the geometry you test in the rayhit to walls and floors.
2. Usually adventures exit close-up scenes by clicking the bottom of the screen.
When you click this area, you can extend the previous technique by doing a rayhit (from player) toward the camera and hit whatever geometry is there. Again pick the closest path grid point to that location.
Now, the solution above may (or may not) work in all scenes or frames. But I have the feeling it would in most of them. Why not implement it as an additional feature. You can leave the keyboard on, in case the point n click doesn't work for a particular scene frame.
At least this way we get to understand the reasons for the decision, and maybe even help influence changes/improvements.
Having thought about it a bit, there's a few things I can think of that might ease the problem of those pesky few scenes where the ground is out of frame.
As xelanoimis said, it's worth factoring in the very small number of scenes where this is a problem.
First and foremost, shots where the ground is off-screen are generally pretty confined and close-up. This means the need for a lot of player movement, other than to exit the scene is limited to begin with. On top of that, most of the movement would (in most cases) be controllable by clicking interactive areas and having the character move there to perform an action. Scenes of this nature would generally have them fairly tightly clustered due to their close-up nature.
For what little movement is involved in scenes like that, it may require manual setting of click targets. Anything below a certain point would be left or right movement depending on the click, and anything above would walk the character "up" and out of the scene (I imagine it would be rare where the scene exit is down, but that could be factored in easily enough too). The need for manual setup is not ideal, however these scenes are so infrequent that it shouldn't be much work, especially compared to setting it up for a S&M/SBCG4AP episode (from what it sounded like you were doing it manually throughout, correct me if I misinterpreted).
It's too late to make an additional control scheme for Wallace & Gromit. Due to the episodic nature of our projects, our schedules are extremely tight and don't have much wiggle room. If we do another direct-control game in the future, it's possible that the engineers on that project might have the inclination and enough R&D time to get some kind of intuitive mouse-only control in. Point-and-click might even work side by side with direct control if the designers want to use Sam & Max style camera framing.
That sort of thing is decided by designers, though, not engineers. And we have so many engineers that it's probable for the next project I won't even be the person implementing the controls. We won't know until the next project gets under way.
Of course, I never expected you guys to go back and add it in (as much as I would like you to). I've just been trying to get the ideas flowing as to how a system could be designed to work with both control methods and unrestricted cameras, so as to increase the chances we will have mouse support in the games to come.
Well, when such a discussion gets so long, it should mean something for the game's developers. On short, if you want to please the PC adventure players, you must support a point'n click interface. Even shorter, MOUSE is GOOD, KEYBOARD is BAD, MOUSE+KEYBOARD is even WORSE!
Alex
Actually I am probably the minory of liking the new control scheme but because I play it with a gamepad. I really like the fact of having my notebook computer on the table and sitting in the couch with the gamepad in my hand and playing the game comfotably there. The controls really work out well for gamepads especially if you can play on a couch or sofa.
Well, I did not like the Idea of this control scheme, when I heard about it. Now I have played the whole first W&G Episode, and it is by far not as bad as it could be. I still prefer the controls of Sam and Max Season 2 (Mouse for Everything + Keyboard in Action scenes) and did almost everything I could using the mouse (everything except moving around, obviously, and opening the Inventory, see below), but I have no problems with theese controls either.
But I have some suggestions about opening the Inventory:
a) Open the Inventory with right Mouse button (would feel a bit more intuitive than using the middle mouse button... to me at least)
b) Put a clickable Icon on the screen like in Sam and Max or SBCG4AP (maybe allow turning it off in the options )
c) Open the Inventory when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen.
Using the middle mouse button or hitting shift is okay, but I think it could be improved.
Comments
About your concern for framing and point'n click interface. You think that if you don't see the floor to click on, you can't move. What if you allow the player to click on the sides of the frame to move in that direction? And with a special looking cursor, that could do the trick. And it could easily be integrated with the rest of the interface. What do you all think about this?
I started to play and it was a pretty good while until I found out I can't click on the floor for the classic movement style. I just clicked from hot spot to hot spot and this worked pretty well for a while. I also don't thing the need for move around freely is crucial for an adventure game. more important is to easily find and access the hot spots.
So PLEASE consider adding a MOUSE ONLY solution in your further releases. Keyboard+mouse combination is good only for shooters and hardcore gamers.
Now another observation:
I think you wanted to point the game a little in the casual games direction. That's based on the little config options in the menu and on the "auto-save" feature. Anyway I must say you are now somewhere in between. Not classic adventure and not true casual.
I was "confused" by the save system. Casual games usually have a named profile, to track the saves. I wanted to show someone the beginning of the game and I lost the progress, except for an early bookmark. And saving bookmarks is not accessible enough - and I fear there's a very limited number of them (haven't tried it to consume all yet).
Also, you can have a few more options in the menu. The already mentioned music/fx volume. I had to use the subtitles so I can lower the volume and still understand the speech. You can have an "advanced" page if you want to keep it simple for casual players.
Not to mention the casual player using a keyboard and a mouse in the same time...
Still, the game has great value - that's why I posted about these few things that would make it even better. You really did well with the W&G style, speech, animations, etc. I can't pronounce myself about the story yet (I haven't finished it).
Alex
I still do feel like a mouse-only control option is the most comfortable, but if it's impossible, than I'd still like to include the ability to utilize my mouse for a large majority of the control anyway.
is not that simple because I don’t hate the work of Telltale, I don’t hate Wallace and Gromit, I just hate the controls that where implemented.
I personally raved because for one stupid thing I won’t play something I like.
And I’m not going to force myself into liking something just because its telltale and W&G (I’m not a blind fan), so I prefer not to buy the games instead.
TellTale is one of the few adventure developers and we all want them to do their best for us. If people don't say what they want, they'll never get it. Feedback from players is very important to developers, or at least it should be. Of course every developer has the final decision on his games and that will affect sales and popularity.
Either the game would need an actual frame around it you could click on, or every shot would need to be framed so that there was nothing actually clickable in the margins. Either way it would require a lot of rework and is far more complicated to use than plain old WASD.
No additional frame border is needed and there's no problem if there are active objects there.
If there's an object there, you click on it to use it, like you do now, and the player walks there like it does now.
If there's no active object under cursor when you click on the side (a few pixels close to the screen's edges) you can find a corresponding position on the floor (on the pathgrid) and make the player walk there. And it doesn't even have to be an exact position - you could use a waypoint in the opposite side of the room or so.
It just needs to be a valid way to access the objects in the rest of the room, to bring them in view.
Of course, it's just an idea and I didn't study all the frames to see if it's always possible - you know better. I just wished to be able to play it with mouse only. If not, i think I'll just use my new wireless 360 controller on PC
Thanks!
Alex
first and foremost, we hear ya. we really do. we set out to make wallace and gromit the most cinematic experience yet from telltale, and i hope you're enjoying the fruits of those labors. i won't repeat anything (although im about to) that's already been said by other telltalians here or elsewhere, but having direct control over the character allowed us to do that.
any system that requires pointin'n'clickin to get somewhere is intrinsically tied to where the camera is -- as your screen is a 2d plane and we've gotta know what you're looking at so we can try to determine where you're clickin. the problem is, throughout production, our cameras are changing all of the time. which means scrapping and repeating a boat load of work tied to character movement every time that happens. regardless, this has been said before and is just one of the myriad of reasons we didn't go with point and click in the pc version, and while i'm sure this won't satisfy those with a dark, seething hatred for the control scheme (which i think there are few...) i hope you'll accept it as reasonable and simply the way it is.
and while im currently playing and replaying and replaying ep 103 (muzzled) with the keyboard and mouse (and not because i have to), i will say: if you have the opportunity, play with a controller (especially one that's got an analog stick) and hopefully those who have disagreed with the idea that "direct control provides an immersive experience" will peal the scorned husks from their angry hearts, and, with a solitary tear, see that walking wallace and gromit around truly is fun.
and yes, you don't have a controller (which i feel ya on because i remember what it was like to not have things like controllers) yes, the xbox comes WITH a controller *gasp!* but i promise we haven't completely sold out, turned into the monster-mega-corporation we said we never would, and now wait patiently for our oversized novelty check to be hand delivered from the hardware manufacturer we're in bed with.
i saw someone on another thread enjoyed the controls (yippee!) and i'm glad you guys are willing to burn the calories to say you didn't. but keep on playing, try to get used to what we've done with WG, realize we thought real hard about it, and hopefully enjoy the actual STUFF you're using the controls to get to.
I may be sloppy, but I can't remember this argument. So, does this mean you've saved a lot of effort here compared to Sam and Max?
but like i said, it's one of MANY reasons we settled on a direct control scheme.
So, yes, if someone in the office is keeping a list, put down my vote for continuing on the track of progress. And keep in mind that people who actually like something in the game, something which feels natural to them, aren't really going to take the time to sing about it in the forums. The internet was made for complaining, and that other thing. So please, don't fire the guy who implemented the control-scheme. He did a great job.
Keyboard Movement = Unplayable
Keyboard Item interaction = Unplayable. Too much effort to toggle thru all on-screen items. So you need to use mouse to do this.
Joystick Movement = Playable
Joystick Item interaction = same as Keyboard Item interaction
Mouse Movement = Unplayable. Reasonably playable with my AutoHotkey script found in another thread.
Mouse Item interaction = Playable.
Skipping all the ways they could have made mouse movement better, I'll just discuss Item Interaction.
Obviously the controls remind me of Grim Fandango. When Manny would walk near something his head would turn to that item making selection easy. W&G tries to do this, but fails. When 2 items are close together it is really hard to get the character to look at the item you want. If that was fixed then the joystick would be playable and I would not be complaining.
Keyboards and gaming just don't go together for me. This is not "Typing of the Dead."
As for everyone complaining, it needs to be done. That is the only way things will work smoother in the next game. It took years of complaints for TTG to finally have the nice new Video selection of any available mode. The lack of, was one of my main S&M complaints.
yeah, I read some of those - you guys do seem to be obsessed with this floor thing
@Tjibbbe: please note that the source of immersion can be quite different by person - what works for you may not work for someone else.
By the way, I disagree that you can walk anywhere with the new control scheme now: In "The Last Resort", for example, it is impossible to walk around the truck with the sand bags. After talking to Major Crumb in the basement, I had difficulties to leave the scene as I did not know to which direction. Besides I find it confusing that the perspective changes in some scenes. For example when you come out of the basement and want to go to the dining room: You first have to press "down" (or "s"), then the perspective changes, so you have to press "up" (or "w") to continue walking in the same direction.
Anyway, I guess you either love or hate this control scheme, and it is unlikely that somebody changes his opinion later. - The important question for Telltale is probably which group is the majority, as this might have a significant impact on the number of people who will buy their next game...
It's sort of mathy. You transform the click coordinates from screen space, through view space, and finally into a ray in world space. If the ray intersects with the ground, you get the world coordinates of that intersection and move to it.
If the ray doesn't intersect with anything, no coordinates are generated, and you lack the necessary mathematical information to solve where the user intended to move. The best we could do is determine a line of possible places that the player intended to move to (by intersecting a plane with the ground instead of a ray), but there are still infinite solutions in this case.
... which you can rank by probability and choose the top scorer
This first step might not be necessary, but I'm including it for clarity of thought. When a user clicks, the screen is analysed as a two-dimensional plane showing only the approved walking areas and distances (behind-the-scenes). I'm assuming there's a system, probably an invisible plane that shows approved walking areas. I don't imagine it would be too tricky to get the engine to do this part. Figure 1 shows what the engine is looking at during this time. (the red area - background is provided for reference). Then the engine picks the closest approved walking area to the click and directs the character there. Pathfinding AI (that seems to already be in place) does the rest. Figure two (roughly) shows how any click can be simply translated to a walkable space.
This would probably work on most spaces in the game. Even for trickier ones there would be ways around it with a little thought. Take Fig3, for example. This is probably one of the most complex problems for something like this, and even that's not too harrowing. Our Hero starts off in the enclosure on the left, with the camera behind him. The black walls are around waist height, and the camera is sitting around head height. The problem here, is that clicking in the red area would look to the player like walking up to the fence, but the engine would take that as an instruction to walk around the fence to the other side - which is annoying. The solution is to zone out the walkable areas (colour coded in the diagram, with crossovers), so that area isn't seen as traversable until Wallace reaches the yellow area.
The best thing about this approach is that it's camera-independent, so you could put the camera almost anywhere you like and it wouldn't require a lot of tweaking. For some sequences it might not be workable, but it should (in theory) work for 90% or more of the game.
I'm an animator, not a game designer, so I can't claim to be certain this would work. The theory seems pretty sound to me at least though, and the implementation relatively painless (given pathfinding AI is already there).
You can't rank how "probable" a solution is without having something to compare it to.
Like many suggestions in this thread, your idea sounds good and there are a lot of cases where it would work. Also like the other suggestions, there are problems with it that you can't anticipate unless you have knowledge of the math necessary to implement these systems. People intuitively think about things like "close to" or "probable" based on what they're intending and a computer just doesn't work that way. It needs a math problem to solve, which means you need enough variables filled in to determine the solution. One extra variable that isn't known and all of a sudden the problem has infinite solutions.
It's sort of like saying: X + Y = 3, solve for X. Well then, X = 3-Y which is as good as you can do. You can't get "close" to the correct or "intended" value for X because 3-Y are all valid solutions.
There are ways to make some of these systems work by adding a lot of extra hand-tuned information to every camera angle in every scene. We prefer solutions that let us focus our resources on creating awesome adventures for you guys rather than painstakingly placing click targets in the background of scenes or whatever.
I understand and empathise with wanting a control solution that doesn't involve repetitive manual setup for every scene, camera angle, and a rework for changes of the aforementioned, but it would seem a solution based around two dimensional analysis such as this would probably work with minimal tweaking for each scene.
I don't imagine this would be done soon, or even in W&GS1 (I know even minor changes take a lot of initial testing and tweaking), but it would be nice to see this in a possible season 2. A system like this would also be a big timesaver on other projects. In the next season of Sam & Max for example, you'd have the functionality built into the Telltale tool which would grant a lot more freedom in terms of your cameras, and save on time (as I'm under the understanding that the scenes in S&M require a lot of manual setup).
just shooting from the hip, you can lay a probability map on the original 3D scene, and there you have the basis for the ranking - and that's not even camera dependent.
don't get me wrong, I do think there are a few scenes in the Last Resort where it would be difficult to control the character by clicks, whatever the method is - most notably, the around-the-table scenes in act 3 were simply great, and it owed a lot to the camera angles.
however, I don't think it's fair to say that these problems represent mathematical impossibilities
Solving "closest point" requires a target point, and a set of possible solutions. In this case we have a set of infinite solutions but no target point in 3d space. We can't get close to something if we don't have something.
Working in 2D space, we can get a target point as suggested by moving to the closest valid spot on the walkbox in 2D space and then tracing a ray as normal. This solution is not viable because it does not allow you to (as one example) walk towards the camera in areas where the ground is out of the shot. Sure, we could click to move in areas where there are no walkboxes, but what if that area we need to click in is off the bottom of the screen?
Point and click to move has a ton of issues that all arise from mapping input from 2D to 3D, and being constrained in the game window. Most games make this a solveable problem by fixing or limiting many variables such as camera position and level design.
If there were a 3D cursor you could move in game along the surface of the walkbox and off the visible edges of the screen then it would be just as viable as WASD.
Perhaps for those few situations where you need to navigate to a position where the cursor would need to be below the screen for this system to work, a solution would be to have the cursor move the characters down when it dropped below a certain level, up when above that, and left and right as appropriate. Again - probably not a one-size-fits-all solution, but it could solve for some of those.
Correct me if I've misunderstood, but from what you've been saying this system would work in most scenarios. It does seem there might be a couple of tricky scenes to use it in, however manual setup in just a couple scenes per episode shouldn't be too arduous. From my limited understanding of programming (but reasonable understanding of 3d space) it probably wouldn't take more than two or three days, a week at most to knock together a rough prototype of this system to test for feasibility (though I could be way off on that estimate).
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to this discussion, I'm not trying to prove you wrong or say "point and click is easy and should have been done from day one" (though that would have been nice), but hopefully this might help solve some of the problems inherent in getting a mouse interface for these games, either by deducing a solution or by giving you a spark of inspiration that will lead to a better solution.
Not only that, but we'd have to make a toggle to set the cursor in 2D mode to get it to come off the walkbox so you could click on characters and other things! It would be very strange, I think.
Walking toward the camera when you can't see the ground is the deal killer for point-and-click from a purely mechanical point of view. Making the character walk toward the camera when you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen would work, but it would be very different from normal movement. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but an inconsistent user interface is one of the most frustrating things to deal with and should be avoided when alternatives exist.
I don't mind discussing technical minutia with the community, so far as it falls within my domain and is not a company secret.
First of all, from what I've seen, there are not so many situations limited by the "walk toward the camera" issue. I'm not counting non-interactive "cut-scenes".
1. Just do a rayhit with the geometry (from camera through cursor) and the first point found, just use it to pick the nearest path grid point. Player goes there. You can project the point on the walk plane(s) or whatever you use. You can also consider the player's position when you choose the closest path grid point. If needed you can filter the geometry you test in the rayhit to walls and floors.
2. Usually adventures exit close-up scenes by clicking the bottom of the screen.
When you click this area, you can extend the previous technique by doing a rayhit (from player) toward the camera and hit whatever geometry is there. Again pick the closest path grid point to that location.
Now, the solution above may (or may not) work in all scenes or frames. But I have the feeling it would in most of them. Why not implement it as an additional feature. You can leave the keyboard on, in case the point n click doesn't work for a particular scene frame.
Thanks!
you have some serious stamina. I can't believe you're still contributing to this thread
If they were just throwing rocks at me, I probably would have bailed long ago.
Then we would never get anywhere. =]
At least this way we get to understand the reasons for the decision, and maybe even help influence changes/improvements.
Having thought about it a bit, there's a few things I can think of that might ease the problem of those pesky few scenes where the ground is out of frame.
As xelanoimis said, it's worth factoring in the very small number of scenes where this is a problem.
First and foremost, shots where the ground is off-screen are generally pretty confined and close-up. This means the need for a lot of player movement, other than to exit the scene is limited to begin with. On top of that, most of the movement would (in most cases) be controllable by clicking interactive areas and having the character move there to perform an action. Scenes of this nature would generally have them fairly tightly clustered due to their close-up nature.
For what little movement is involved in scenes like that, it may require manual setting of click targets. Anything below a certain point would be left or right movement depending on the click, and anything above would walk the character "up" and out of the scene (I imagine it would be rare where the scene exit is down, but that could be factored in easily enough too). The need for manual setup is not ideal, however these scenes are so infrequent that it shouldn't be much work, especially compared to setting it up for a S&M/SBCG4AP episode (from what it sounded like you were doing it manually throughout, correct me if I misinterpreted).
What have I overlooked?
Of course!
It's too late to make an additional control scheme for Wallace & Gromit. Due to the episodic nature of our projects, our schedules are extremely tight and don't have much wiggle room. If we do another direct-control game in the future, it's possible that the engineers on that project might have the inclination and enough R&D time to get some kind of intuitive mouse-only control in. Point-and-click might even work side by side with direct control if the designers want to use Sam & Max style camera framing.
That sort of thing is decided by designers, though, not engineers. And we have so many engineers that it's probable for the next project I won't even be the person implementing the controls. We won't know until the next project gets under way.
Actually I am probably the minory of liking the new control scheme but because I play it with a gamepad. I really like the fact of having my notebook computer on the table and sitting in the couch with the gamepad in my hand and playing the game comfotably there. The controls really work out well for gamepads especially if you can play on a couch or sofa.
But I have some suggestions about opening the Inventory:
a) Open the Inventory with right Mouse button (would feel a bit more intuitive than using the middle mouse button... to me at least)
b) Put a clickable Icon on the screen like in Sam and Max or SBCG4AP (maybe allow turning it off in the options )
c) Open the Inventory when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen.
Using the middle mouse button or hitting shift is okay, but I think it could be improved.
That wasn't the case in Grim Fandango.
Personally, this works for me, though I would prefer point and click. Still, you need something for the consollers I guess.