Some Thoughts...

I must admit I've not found the inspiration to continue blogging for so long and this post should not be an indication that there will be regular updates. There is little to talk about, which makes a couple of months of activity crammed into a single post a fairly lengthy article.

I have been trying different games and I think we can go directly to that. I was intrigued by this title called 'Culpa Innata'. It is a PC point and click adventure game with a dash of non-linear gameplay sprinkled on it. You're this female cop in this fictional futuristic world and seems off on a personal journey of sorts. I am always up for a good story so I thought I'd pick this up and figure how it fares. As in my previous blog posts, I very much do not like the standard formula for adventure games with developers seemingly hoping to add challenge by squeezing academic mental puzzles into the game. Culpa Innata is no exception. It has some challenges you would normally find beside the 'Tower of Hanoi' and I find that quite frankly rubbish. It does not seem like a very realistic rendition and I hope developers do try a little harder to make for a more believable setting and more believable and playable challenges without turning the game into a mental course quiz. While we are on the subject of puzzles, some of them are so abstract you may need to give up and attempt a trial-and-error style of play, which is so reminiscent of ancient adventure game design. We are already more than a decade older than King's Quest and Legend of Kyrandia. I think us adventure gamers deserve more than being introduced to these kinds of puzzles.

Moving on to other aspects of the title, I wish to touch on its production values. Firstly, the visuals of the game are eye-gougingly terrible. The character models are barely passable and the backdrops are extremely plain. I tend to think that if you cannot produce good production values for the visuals, you ought to try something else. Get creative and try a different presentation, perhaps using a full-blown animation video like what the old Broken Sword games did or perhaps use a graphic novel type cutscene. I would say games several years back like No One Lives Forever 2 can boast of better visuals. Culpa Innata's use of in-game cinematics also do not help its cause to tell its heroine's travails. Character animations are extremely stiff, and the cutscenes lack the punch to deliver the emotional stress of the protagonist. Add to that the very bland soundtrack that coupled with the bland visuals is bound to put you to sleep and you have a title that has some potential but never fully lives up to it, which is a shame.

Culpa Innata is not without its intriguing implementation. Its design for non-linear events make for a fairly good way of making sure players do not experience the same events over. The actions you make have very real consequence over what happens in the course of your game session. Its dialog system, allowing your character to call up her friend for a chat and touching on multiple of the game's plot points is a very good idea as it allows the player explore several insights over the game's progression.

Ultimately, inspite of this, Culpa Innata in the end is just not a title that lives up to expectations. It hobbles around its limitations while making a poor attempt at showing it does have some luster deep within its core. If you choose to make this journey, be warned that you may have to dig deep to find that satisfaction. While perhaps adventure gamers would be very much delighted with Culpa Innata and ignore my complaints, it ultimately shows that the title plays to a narrow niche and that majority of gamers will see its cracks from the word go and probably toss it in the bin, as I have.

After that supreme disappointment, I journeyed to install Neverwinter Nights. Yes, it is an extremely dated title and I was dying to get a game to play on Linux. This game fit the bill pretty nicely, and inspite of age, the game really shows it is an incredible journey. Very good story-telling and the game's production values age pretty well. Of all the three expansions, I have to say that Shadows of Undrentide is the worst, the plot is something I do not particularly care for and the NPC henchmen do not resonate with me. Hordes of the Underdark is the best of the campaigns but it is incredibly unforgiving, giving out very tough challenges and very tough puzzles for players. The kind of roleplay it provides has been lost in this day and age of gaming. Only Bioware seems to understand what it really is. For that I am extremely thankful for Bioware's existence. Unfortunately, it seems like NWN is the final Linux entry in Bioware's portfolio of great titles. Atari is not a Linux-friendly publisher and I do not think EA is.

Speaking of Linux friendliness, over at Phoronix, I found a funny story where a poster mailed EA asking where he could find the Medal of Honor Allied Assault Linux port (it exists here). EA's personnel had a very interesting quote:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

The minimum required specifications for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Spearhead are as follows:

* Windows XP, ME, 98, 95 and 2000 (Windows 2000 Server and NT are not supported)
* 450 MHz processor
* 128 MB RAM
o 256 MB for Windows XP and Windows 2000
* CD/DVD-Rom Speed: 8x
* At least 1.2 GB of hard drive space
* Sound: DirectX 8.0 compatible sound card
* Keyboard
* MS compatible Mouse
* A video card with at least 16 MB of video RAM with DirectX 8.0 compatible driver and one of the supported chipsets.

Supported video cards:

* Nvidia Riva TNT or Higher
* ATI Rage 128 or Higher
* PowerVR Kyro

If you need any further assistance regarding your question, please let us know by updating this incident.

Link to actual post is here.

Perhaps this is a clear indication that the new owners of Bioware will not even consider Linux a platform even though they did announce they were doing Mac ports of their Windows titles. Even with that, it is certainly a funny scenario.

While we are on the subject of Linux games, what about Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux taking an extremely long time to get released. Ryan Gordon had released teasers on it but there has not been much visible progress other than that. Hopefully they sort out those proprietary software libraries keeping it from release. Linux gamers need decent Linux games.

Over on the Wii side of gaming I got to play Ferrari Challenge and it has been quite a good product. It has a very serious and solid racing engine coupled with some pretty visuals to boot. It is nothing close to high-definition, but why buy the Wii if you are hoping for that? As a sim racing gamer, I have been hoping for something like this on the Wii for a very, very long time and no, Need for Speed does not do it. The AI is incredibly terrible in this game. Your opponents seem to run on rails and never really react to your car's presence. That is a shame, but I have seen few games do it right.

Perhaps what is most baffling with Ferrari Challenge is that they have a pretty moronic controller setup on Wii. I remember Bruno Senna remarking how he prefers a controller or steering wheel over the Wii remote, but I'd say he ought to try playing other racers on Wii and see how the controls stack up there. Eutechnyx's control setup has been the worst I have ever seen on a Wii title and the motion sensing code is not up to EA's efforts. Wii games need to have some leeway on controls because different gamers move differently. Ferrari Challenge does not offer that customizability on the controls and that is just common sense. I cannot believe they play-tested the controls and passed it as playable. Control issues aside, the racing is very good as is the sensation of speed. Any sim racing Wii owner should have this title, as these kinds of title on the Wii are far and few inbetween.

Last game is an interesting journey of sorts. I played Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on DS, Wii and a tad bit on Xbox 360. First of all, it goes without saying that the Xbox 360 version boasts the most incredible visuals among the three. There are a lot of background interaction and lots of special effects that go into this title which makes for a very good visual show. However, I found the gameplay to be severely lacking. In terms of gameplay I found my home on the Wii version especially when you and your opponent's lightsabers lock and having to twist the remote to win the joust. After a while of playing with the Wii version, you get engrossed and simply the visuals do not matter anymore. I can forget Xbox 360's wow visuals in place for what I believe is the definitive way of playing a 'Lightsaber game' or sorts. Both the Wii and the Xbox 360 versions suffer from similar things though, and that is perhaps that the game levels are simply too long and tedious. That right balance of gameplay and length is what I found on the DS game. The gameplay is solid with the touch panels being slid to produce different moves is pretty good and I am at awe with nSpace's efforts as of late, pushing the DS to its absolute limit while capturing the essence of what its brethren's games are (Look at their Call of Duty 4 on DS and this one). Force Unleashed on the DS has that right balance of difficulty and the gameplay to keep me going back to it. Also interestingly, because the voice acting and 3d model acting is just not good on both the Wii and Xbox 360 game, I like the way the DS version handles the story telling, which is through plain text. That leaves so much to the imagination and I get a kick out of seeing the scene much cooler than what the console games do.

My verdict for Force Unleashed is fairly straight forward, despite its hardware limitations, the DS is the best of the versions. It has some very impressive visuals for a DS title and it handles everything very solidly while never really frustrating the player. The Wii version takes second place for the very engrossing gameplay that I prefer over Xbox 360's visuals. The Xbox 360 version is a solid title, but I do not agree with using the conventional controller on this game. It needs that much more now.

I have been busy with Neveredit, which is an open source NWN editor for Linux and Mac (and Windows). My main objective has been on this are:

1. Dusting off my OpenGL coding which has taken a very big degradation, the last time I have coded on it has been at least five years ago. Coupled that with forgetting some of the math concepts and I have had a much harder time dealing with it.
2. Second is to learn Python which is an interesting and easy to learn language. I am not a master by any stretch of the imagination, but I can work my way in the code.
3. To have an editor available for us Linux folks (Peter would perhaps lean on Macs instead. :)). It has been fairly frustrating to see that the only way I can get to use the toolset is through Wine. I try to avoid Wine when possible so I hope this project gives us some options.
   

The code is pretty complex and I have not had a good handle on it yet, but I have managed to iron out some graphics issues and some map issues. It has been a very interesting journey thus far and I have many, many thanks to extend to Peter Gorniak for his help and support.

As part of that work, I have delved deeper into NWN Toolset, writing a short module though it is surprisingly still a large undertaking. The story is mostly done on a general note and I have just been quite busy going through the module's most critical scenes first to get something functional. It's very interesting in that it is a very good exercise in game development, in terms of designing the level and how you would go about telling the story. The NWN scripting language is very much reminiscent of C and that is a very good thing for sure. Sometimes, it feels like a strange cross between C and other scripting languages such as TCL or Python.

Well, that is all I have to say as of the moment. Pretty lengthy blog post and I am not sure when the next update will come. When I feel like it, that is what I can say.

Random Thoughts

Lately, I've been playing 'Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic'. It's a nice little roleplaying game from Bioware with a good story and lot of good rpg play into it. Nice games don't come often, and I don't usually give games high ratings, but KotOR is indeed a classic that needs to have a place in the list of games people must play. It's certainly dated on a technical aspect, but it doesn't loose it's allure. I certainly don't miss newer games when these old gems can really still bring you some good enjoyment.

These past months have been somewhat a time warp for me, checking out older games. I thought to check out Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which is one of the newer RPGs and by Bethesda. Judging from videos and screens, I'll probably never pick up a new RPG by them. Oblivion is a highly touted product, and with good reason too. So much work has been put into it, but it's all so strange that everytime I see it, my interest level drops to zero. I've put in countless of hours on Morrowind, it's predecessor and while Morrowind was a good product, it wasn't a great one. You have to acknowledge the flaws alongside its strengths, but overall, after playing Morrowind to the ground, the lasting memory of it isn't the roleplay that you do (or lack of), but the tedious nature of the game.

I'm sure Oblivion attempts to solve many of those issues but for a game that's built from the ground up, it sure looks a lot like Morrowind in motion. Morrowind's graphics are eye-gougingly bad by today's standards and for all the accolaides that oblivion receives from the visual department, it looks like crap. Everytime I see it makes me cringe, from the facial acting to the character models and the lighting effects. That's me talking from a visual aspect which isn't much to speak of when I play games. I play even older games with far less fancier visuals.

Oblivion's gameplay from videos look a whole lot like Morrowind did, and the Elder Scrolls series is the kind of game after I play once, I don't really look forward to going back. It's the same with Oblivion. It moves so much like Morrowind, the battles seem so much like it, and it really looks like another tedious game. I know Oblivion has a little bit of some thing like those teleport to location things, which by the way is a bad idea. I think that when a Dungeon Master warps his players to the 'exciting' parts just because his players are getting bored, something is definitely wrong with the game. Come on, Bethesda, you're more creative than that.

Or are you? Perhaps the Elder Scrolls series will benefit from a fresh different approach. Perhaps Bethesda ought to give another studio a shot at building this epic and gigantic RPG. I want to like The Elder Scrolls series. Don't let Morrowind be the last TES game I play.

Moving on, I suppose...

As depressing as TES is, the Linux gaming is just as depressing. The opensource games out there don't really peak my interest, and the games available are and few in between. Some people hinge their hopes on emulation which is a valid solution and has been for the past few years. This, though, only alleviates the problem to a certain degree. Emulation, for one thing, is always going to play catch up, and it isn't likely to run every game conceivable. The allure, I think loses its sheen when you have to work to get the games running and sometimes, there's just too much work to be done and too much waiting. The only solution I think is that Linux gaming leans on porting. For the same amount of effort you push into emulation, it's far more productive in the long term that portability tools be developed, hence giving development studios and big game companies a good reason to port for far less the cost.

I do think that unlike the previous topic, the Linux gaming scene is slowly changing. More games are coming and LGP surely has some aces under its sleeves. I hope this is the start of big and better things to come for the Linux community.

All in good time, I suppose. All in good time.

Opinion on Roleplaying Games *REDUX*

For this next editorial, I thought I'd syndicate one of my older blogs. This is a revised re-write on the blog I posted on Gamespot. I believe the content is too good to pass up. Without further adieu, read on.

Roleplaying games (RPGs) have been with us for quite a while, starting with the paper and pencil days of the 80s to the currently more tech savvy games available in the market. In scrutiny of these RPGs, I've always felt strongly about how these games should be made and in my opinion, very few game developers really do get the essence of an RPG. There's a slew of them in the market, Japanese developers, Western developer and European ones try their hand to deliver great RPGs. But what is it that they focus more of that makes the game eligible as being categorized 'RPGs'? How are they considered RPGs at all? Is it the level counter of your character? Is it the experience points?

In my opinion, all of those do help. They are trappings, machinations if you will, that assist but do not define roleplaying games at its essence.

Before we continue, allow me quote from two Dungeons and Dragons books:

"Role-playing games are much like radio adventures, except for one important detail: they're interactive. One player provides the narrative and some dialogue, but the other players, instead of just sitting and envisioning what's going on, actually participate. Each player controls the actions of a character in the story, decides on his actions, supplies his character's dialogue, and makes decisions based on the character's personality and his current game options."

~Dungeons and Dragons Rulescyclopedia.

"This is the heart of role-playing. The player adopts the role of a character and then guides that character through an adventure. The player makes decisions, interacts with other characters and players, and, essentially, "pretends" to be his character during the course of the game. That doesn't mean that the player must jump up and down, dash around, and act like his character. It means that whenever the character is called on to do something or make a decision, the player pretends that he is in that situation and chooses an appropriate course of action."

~Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition, Player's Handbook

These two quotes particularly encapsulate the entire idea, but few games ever grasp. As I have mentioned earlier, these so-called RPG trappings: level counters, experience points, magic, etc. They all are utilities that assist in the role-playing aspect, but do not define an RPG.

With more experience points for instance, a player can surmise that he gains more knowledge and perhaps is more able to perform certain feats. And with the existence of experience points and levels, it becomes entirely possible for the player to perform such feats. The same could be said by gaining more hit points, and magic points. However, these concepts merely hint at what the roleplayer can perform and not what the character can do.

Japanese developers often show cinematic videos, but how are you really participating in all this? The breathtaking views that you see do not translate at all to how you would react. The protagonist is shown and he decides based on a written script. In short, you aren't even participating at all. You're a mere spectator in a film roll that is triggered when you get to certain points. They assist in story telling, that is for sure, but it does not give you, the roleplayer, the independence to decide for him or herself what the character should do or react.

Dungeon crawling and all that monster killing are yet again, tools in the adventure. They provide the action, but within these particular activities, there are opportunities to allow the player to put himself to the shoes of the character. However, the actual activities aren't part of the definition of an RPG. When the player's objectives is to find monsters to level up, it's the absolute failure of an RPG by allowing the player play with a context that's absolutely and entirely outside the game lore.

Very little Western RPGs understand this concept either, choosing to automate different actions that assists in gameplay elements such as traveling. However, they also often than not leave the more important core of what makes an RPG an RPG. There is a focus on action, but that in itself is not part of roleplaying. They provide the abilities to give players quests and give simple yes or no types of choices, extract information that is quest relevant, but there is still many layers missing in all of this.

It is to no fault of either developers that CRPGs tend to falter to grasp the very essence of an RPG. The core of it tends to depend on something that is completely difficult to emulate. Very rarely do I find developers that come close to this very definition and much more successes on true RPGs linger towards the MMO-realm.

That is not to say a lot of CRPGs are terrible. In fact, they are pretty good in their own rights in achieving what is being set out by developers. These games are pretty good adventures, but one thing they aren't are role-playing games.

Allow me to quote Gary Gygax:

"As to what computer games have done to role-playing, virtually nothing. The so-called CRPG isn't role-playing. To whom does one role-play in such an exercise? However, I like what is now offered as a CRPG, and know that as AI improves, these games *will* involve actual role-play."

~Gamespy Interview

"They are really action-adventure games with a few RPG elements added. With AI improving, though that will change."

~WomenGamers.com Interview

Gary Gygax hit the nail on its head with his thoughts. The best most games have done so far is to be an action adventure with certain roleplaying elements. There are some cases where developers get extremely close at building games that capture the essence. These are often very special games when they do achieve that.

Mr. Gygax's quote is a specially very interesting one too. To whom does one roleplay in such gaming activities? In my opinion, roleplaying in games should be done within the context of the game itself. That means the act of roleplay is done to the character you meet, or the event that you come across. Roleplaying games, after all, are very social in nature. The very definition of a character by the player is often defined by what social contact he may encounter. Whether he meets a straggler in the streets, or a lady he is smitten by, or a hideous monster lurking in the dark, there are always different reactions, possibly infinite of them. In my opinion, this is ultimately what is downplayed in CRPGs. The social contact you have is either to slaughter, to sneak past enemies, to converse only to get a quest, or to converse to get a reward or item. These activities produce a very dead world. There is no act of social contact that expounds based on a live society and there is little reward when actually making the attempt to linger in its social realm.

MMORPGs have things quite easy with this respect. Social contact is almost impossible to miss in these games. When your action is received and reciprocated by an actual live person, the reactions create a dynamism that is missed in many CRPGs. Social contact, in my opinion, is what is deficient.

CRPGs can create controlled dynamics for social contact. This, I believe is what Gary refers to when he speaks of the use of AI. Creating actual intelligence is inherently impossible with finite machines, but it is possible to create a game world that provides more options, and more actions that may not necessarily contribute to the actual main plot, but allows the players a characterization that fully assists him in socializing and, more importantly, roleplaying.