Visual clues in computer games

One aspect of Mario Kart Wii that I noticed and appreciate is how there are tyre tracks or skid marks leading off the road to extra sections of track or to show that it's possible to jump off certain sections. Rather than having to guess at the extra track features of Mario Kart Wii over previous versions of the game, or lose positions bumping in to scenery trying to find every alternative route or short-cut, although there are doubtless short-cuts available that are there to be discovered.

This got me thinking back to other games I've played that have used visual clues, or failed to use them. Three games from the 8-bit days spring to mind quite quickly. Although only one uses a visual clue the other two either needed something to help the player or managed to be clever enough to avoid the need.

Nebulus had floor sections that 'collapsed', and it didn't help the player out at all in finding this out. The floor would simply disappear beneath you, sending you back and wasting time or even dropping you to your doom. There was no way of telling which floor sections would collapse so you had to activate them at least once to find them, and then either map or remember them or go through the same process of falling in to their trap each time. It led to a frustrating experience, which was a shame as the game had visually impressive graphics for its time and some otherwise solid gameplay ideas.

Great Giana Sisters, a blatant clone of Super Mario Bros that I believe got withdrawn from sale because of the similarities, had a similar problem to Nebulus. Like Super Mario Bros, Great Giana Sisters had hidden sections for the player to discover. The player found these sections by dropping in to pits in the ground. The problem was that a normal pit caused the loss of a life if fallen in to, and as the game was a sideways-scrolling platformer there were a lot of pits to jump. Expecting a player to find all the hidden areas by trial-and-error would be time consuming and horribly frustrating, much like the problem with Nebulus where lives would be lost in a haphazard manner. The game designers got around this by adding a pixel-tall visual clue that a pit led to a hidden area. However, whilst visual clues are generally helpful this one had the effect of making the safe pits obvious at almost a glance, and the experience of finding the hidden areas was ruined by not having them hidden at all. It is possible that a similar solution for Nebulus, with different coloured or otherwise graphically differentiated floor sections, could also have made the inclusion of disappearing sections too easy to overcome, but some kind of visual clue would at least have kept the player alert in Nebulus rather than bringing a hidden feature in to plain sight as in the Great Giana Sisters.

Super Mario Bros had a better solution, and one that the designers of the Great Giana Sisters probably didn't want to push their luck by copying. Instead of hidden areas being in pits access to them was through pipes. These pipes were sometimes empty, but sometimes had a flower with teeth living inside. Either way, the pipes were safe to stand on. The flower did not come out when Mario was standing where the flower in the pipe would kill him, and the pipes themselves were harmless. This allowed players to test every pipe for a hidden entrance safely, allowing for as much game exploration as any player wanted to get involved in, but had the initial problem of how to know to duck down on a pipe to enter one in the first place. With the animation at the start of the second level, world 1-2, showing Mario disappear down a pipe, and the end of the level requiring the player to duck down a pipe to exit the underground level, the idea of going down a pipe was presented to the player early on, solving the problem. The game managed to have areas that were hidden without presenting any kind of visual clue to the player as to their whereabouts, but there were other visual clues that hinted to their existence separately.

I'm sure I'll remember more games in time and return to the subject of visual clues within games.

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Tags: 8-bit, c=64, console, great giana sisters, hidden areas, mario kart, nebulus, nes, super mario bros, visual clues, wii

Mario Kart Wii random frustrations

Scott 'VG Cats' Ramsoomair, he who draws the lovely Aeris, is not terribly impressed with the single player Mario Kart Wii game either. It seems that the focus on randomness with power-ups over player skill is frustrating many people, and Scott links to a comic of an artist's impression of the next version of Mario Kart.

He makes an interesting point about how the full range of power-ups is given to the computer opponents and that this is where the game falters. It's possible that if the computer players only had access to passive items like bananas, personal items like the power star or Bullet Bill, or non-homing shells, and restricted either partially of completely from having items that affect the whole field then the balance of gameplay in the single play game may well tilt back in favour of player skill.

I doubt that this would unbalance the game particularly. Certain computer opponents need to place in certain positions over the course of the grand prix to force a player to finish in the top positions to win, otherwise finishing fourth in each race against a truly random field of eleven opponents could win first place overall. Seeing how the computer opponents manage this in the currently random field makes me suspect that there is code that ensures this happens regardless of the power-ups flying around the course.

It's possible that removing certain power-ups from the available pool to be used against a player may make the game less varied. Multi-player games can use every item, where having a human behind the lightning bolt or blue shell makes a significant difference. However, the single player game can only be a racing game at heart, for what real joy can be taken from hitting a sprite with a red Koopa shell? It seems to me that the joy comes not from the use of shell itself but from gaining a position through the use of the shell. Focus on the racing and the game is fun.

It's probably hoping for too much, or maybe isn't even possible, but perhaps Nintendo will listen to the feedback and find a way to patch the single-player game.

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Tags: aeris, console, digital unrest, mario kart, nintendo, vg cats, wii

Tapping sliders on the iPod

I found a new bit of functionality on my iPod Touch at the weekend. I was turning on the wireless connection so that I could check my e-mail without needing to power-up my desktop machine. To save power, I keep wireless turned off until I need it, and to turn it on I need to go in to the preferences section and move a slider from the 'off' position to 'on', or the reverse to turn it off again.

This doesn't sound too complicated, but the Touch searches for and lists all available wireless connections on the same screen as turning the connection on and off, and although this is the right place to do so it can cause a slight delay in response when trying to slide the switch to turn off the connection.

I assumed this switch needed to be pushed sideways using the touch-screen interface because the design of the switch is of the same type as the interface to unlock the Touch, which requires moving a slider across the width of the screen and teaches the behaviour to slide that kind of switch.

What I found out is that although it is possible to do so I don't need to slide the preference switch to toggle it. The switch acts as a basic toggle when it is tapped, with no sliding required. The device also recongises a simple tap on the switch immediately, unlike trying to slide the relatively small control, and so speeds up changing the settings.

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Tags: apple, ipod

Weekend gaming

I had a lazy weekend, just idling over and keeping myself entertained. Normally, keeping myself entertained will involve playing computer games but it didn't look like I'd be doing much of that this weekend. I was keen to play some more City of Heroes, even though the game crashes I had first reported in passing as a 'relatively minor frustration' had quickly become a serious disruption because of their frequency, stopping me for playing for more than five minutes at a time. Even so, I was keen enough to create a new character, of absolutely no interest, as well as trying out the companion game City of Villains for the first time. I created a Mutation Corruptor who uses ice and chill effects to perform nefarious deeds. Say hello to Pam O'Frost.

Unfortunately, City of Villains seemed to crash in more places than City of Heroes, and I was having trouble simply getting through the tutorial. I got fed up reloading the game after a few attempts and instead watched Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang on DVD. I enjoyed the film and am a little embarrassed to note that I had trouble following the plot. That happens a lot, and gives me a good excuse to watch and enjoy films several times, picking up new elements on nearly every viewing. I went back to the computer later and avoided City of Heroes by instead loading World of Warcraft. There wasn't really a great deal I could do in World of Warcraft either, as my gaming buddies were away for the weekend and I didn't want to outlevel them. On top of that I still had some ennui about retreading the same content again, particularly solo, and still am far from comfortable about finding random groups.

However, my gnome rogue has been trying to get exalted with Ironforge so he can get a swift riding ram to replace his horse, for which he had to get exalted with Stormwind, all so he didn't have to ride a mechanostrider. He was only a few thousand reputation points away from earning the exalted level, but it looked like this last few thousand points would have to come from completing quests in the Uldaman instance. Uldaman is big, complicated, and irritating, because of the labyrinthine tunnels and type and number of mobs inside, and I have yet to complete it with any character, not for want of trying on some occasions. I didn't relish entering it.

Luckily, I had a few low-level quests left in my log that offered Ironforge reputation, so with little else to do I decided to spend an hour or so clearing those up instead of facing Uldaman. It didn't take long, particularly with my new overpowered weapons, as well as some new level 57-58 Outlands armour I bought, and I was only a short gain away from achieving exalted reputation with Ironforge. But that was enough for me in Azeroth for the time being, not wanting to get too mired in to a routine just for the sake of something to do.

I didn't feel like trying to get to grips with the crowded grand prix in Mario Kart Wii again just yet, after the frustrating efforts with the 100 cc class recently. City of Heroes was still crashing. World of Warcraft was offering nothing new. I went out for a walk, and when I got home I rewatched The Departed.

On Sunday, I decided to get my rogue exalted with Ironforge, having prepared myself for the pain that would be Uldaman. I ran around picking up the quests and headed in. As luck would have it, and mostly because the mobs not inside the instance itself having been downgraded from elite to normal mobs, I was able to complete enough quests to become exalted without having to enter the instance. Personal quest complete! When I reach level 60 I can visit the Amberstill Ranch in Dun Morogh and buy myself a swift ram. I was so chuffed with this little but long in coming achievement I was happy enough to get my warrior out and gain her a whole level running around in Stranglethorn Vale completing the 'mastery' quests. She's now level 38, but her target of getting a tiger has stalled after running out of quests that offer Darnassus reputation since level 32 or so. Even so, that seemed to be enough solo World of Warcraft for me for the moment.

After a break I decided to see if I could help City of Heroes run better. I have been meaning for a while to fiddle with the graphical settings in the game to see if I could stop the game from crashing, but the last time I looked there didn't seem to be too many options that might actually make a difference, maybe because I don't really know what I'm looking for and would be relying on trial-and-error, which is a lot of trial and effort surprisingly enough. With an interesting-looking game, some time on my hands, and the only other option I could think of being to buy EVE Online, which I was considering yet again, I fired up City of Villains and opened the options menu.

With the advanced graphics settings enabled I turned most options off or down to their lowest setting, and then ran around for a bit wreaking villainy. This seemed to work just fine, with the effect of making the graphics look rather simplistic. I tweaked a few settings up a bit, so I could get a game that looked to be from a more advanced era than the VIC-20, and ran around a bit more. A bit more trial and a crash later, I decided I had my settings tweaked to offer me a game that looked good enough and, more importantly, allowed me to play without crashes interrupting me. I have to admit, I was really pleased with this! I had to cut the experiment short, as it was time for dinner, and this led to a curious realisation: I didn't know how to quit the game. It had always crashed and I had simply not reloaded it. It didn't take long to find the menu option but it was still kind of amusing to have to search for it after a couple of weeks of play.

After dinner I fired up City of Heroes and got Sue Purr running around Paragon City fighting crime. And by that I mean I hung around the middle of Atlas Park for a while to check that the game wouldn't crash in an area where it was guaranteed from experience to happen. Not only did the game remain stable for the whole time in Atlas Park, although I did have a single crash when I was actually out fighting crime, I managed to pick up a badge for flying to the top of the Atlas statue. Apparently it is a predictable place for newbies to fly. With the new-found stability it looks like I have City of Heroes and City of Villains to enjoy properly as a gaming option, so both Sue Purr and Pam O'Frost will be quite active.

One day I'll find myself in EVE Online, one day.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Weekend gaming
Tags: city of heroes, city of villains, console, crossover games, eve online, kiss kiss bang bang, mario kart, pam o'frost, sue purr, the departed, wii, world of warcraft

Free crap from the Sci-fi Film Festival

I forgot to mention in my review of last week's Sci-fi Film Festival that I managed to get a handful of DVDs thrown or handed to me during the screenings. As I mentioned, the festival director, Louis Savy, introduced each film personally. During these short introductions a whole bunch of free goodies was thrown in to the audience, mostly consisting of DVDs, t-shirts and caps, but with the occasional more interesting item. There were also a few competitions of sorts where a question was asked and whoever thrust up their hand quickly enough and answered the question correctly won something a bit more special, including Archos media players and a few Xbox 360 consoles.

I wasn't in a screening where an Xbox was given away, but an Archos player could have been mine during the screening for Chrysalis. The question we were given was 'When is Chrysalis set?', to which I was quite tempted to answer 'the future', but I resisted the urge to be my literal, flippant self. The answer is, of course, the year 2020. Even so, I managed to act like a DVD magnet and attract a fair few free DVDs, even if the first one I caught was ripped from my hands by someone sitting in the row behind me in a bizarre display of selfishness.

The first DVD I snagged was Phantasm II, which we thought was a sneaky way to get people to buy the first DVD in the set. This view was reinforced when the next DVD I got was Phantasm III, although that DVD was apparently accidentally left behind in the cinema when we left for the night. I also got volume 11 of the TV show The Professionals, although I don't think that programme relies so much on knowing what came before it, even if it is still an odd choice to give away.

Other DVDs thrown my way were Number One, starring Bob Geldof as a snooker hall hustler in a British hustler film, and Messages, a supernatural thriller with the enticing tag line of 'victims are crying out from the grave but the only one who hears them may be their killer'. I got two more DVDs from the MST3K all-nighter goodie bag given out to everyone who attended the screening. I got the anime Cashan: Robot Hunter as a two-disc deluxe set, which contains the original Japanese four-part series on one disc and the American film edit on the other, and a three-part miniseries called The Triangle, which could be interesting.

I haven't done particularly well in watching any of the DVDs that have been gathered from previous Sci-fi Film Festivals. One of them is Witchcraft starring David Hasselhoff, and I'm not sure if it's going to be simply awful or hilariously crap, but appear to be too chicken to find out by myself. Just about everyone who attended a screening in one year got Maniac Cop 2 that although stars Bruce Campbell and therefore cannot be all bad also has the tag line 'You have the right to remain silent... ...FOREVER', which hints at there being a touch of cheese to the film.

Maybe there are some films here that are best inflicted on a group of friends, and will be played at future film nights.

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Tags: bruce campbell, cashan robot hunter, chrysalis, david hasselhoff, dvd, free, maniac cop, messages, number one, phantasm, professionals, sci fi london, the triangle, witchcraft

iPod Touch battery

My iPod Touch's battery lasted me the whole of the four-day working week between recharges. Okay, so Friday is generally a half-day, but it's a lopsided half with a longer morning than afternoon, so I tend to get home only a couple of hours earlier than normal.

I hadn't intended to make the single charge last the week. I had the iPod charged at the end of the Bank Holiday Monday ready for the start of the week on Tuesday, and I generally recharge every other day. I don't recharge each evening mostly because I don't have a dock for the Touch in to which I can place it to recharge from any mains socket.

I didn't consider it worth buying a dock because I am still using my third generation iPod connected to my AV amplifier. This lets me play any music in my collection separate from the computer, so I don't need my iPod Touch to perform this function and I don't need my computer on should I want to play music. My iPod Touch is thus just a portable player, with extra functions, that I connect to the computer to charge when necessary. I also don't want to retire my third generation iPod because it has a random album playback mode, which is the predominant method of listening to my music, a feature that the Touch sadly lacks and I dearly would like to be included soon.

Because of D&D being moved to Wednesday this week instead of Thursday I found that I lacked time to charge the iPod on Wednesday evening, not wanting to keep my computer on unnecessarily for a few hours whilst I was out. I didn't think this would be a problem as my plans for Thursday night, when I would also be out, had been altered. However, the Thursday night outing ended up going ahead as planned and again I found I had no time to recharge before going out. I ended up with little option but using the Touch on a single charge for the week.

It lasted the whole week with some extra charge to spare. Admittedly, I was involved in a few periods of work where I couldn't listen to the iPod, but as I wasn't trying to prove that the iPod could last the whole week I was just happy at the end of the week for the charge those periods conserved. There is also a neat feature that is lacking in my older iPod in that the Touch brings up an alert when the battery charge is down to both 20% and 10%. Of course, the charge level of the battery is graphically displayed on the screen of both iPods, but there used to be a significant amount of playback available on the old iPod when the battery is shown to be empty.

One of the problems with the lower capacity of the old iPod was that I needed to make use of this extra time on occasion, and with increasing regularity as the battery aged considerably, but the only alert the iPod gave me about a low battery was when the battery could no longer power the unit at all. This was mostly a problem because when this flat battery alert occurred it effectively reset the iPod, losing its current place in the playlist. When playing a few thousand songs on random album playback that can take six weeks to complete it is a bit disappointing, for someone like me who would like to enjoy listening to all my music at least once, for the playlist to be reset half-way through.

The new alerts help to alleviate this problem, at least giving me more warning about the battery draining should I not notice the graphical display, which now shows a green battery to indicate a healthy charge and updates to become a red battery for low charge thanks to the colour screen. I still think it would have been preferable for the old iPod to have shut-down at a time where it could still hold it's position in the playlist, although there may have been technical reasons why this wasn't done. Even so, the superior charge capacity in the iPod Touch, as shown by it lasting so long this week, pretty much ensures that I am not likely to encounter this problem with the Touch. Now all I need is to be able to make use of that charge by being able to play all my albums in a random order.

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Tags: apple, ipod

Iron Man

I saw Iron Man last night, and greatly enjoyed it. The nuts-and-bolts of the plot were pretty formulaic and held no surprises overall, but the story told using the plot was captivating and exciting with some wonderfully drawn characters. Even the robotic arms were given some fun personalities, even if only through Tony Stark's dialogue. I have to admit that I didn't recognise Jeff Bridges until he'd been in a few scenes, and even then it was his distinctive voice that caught my attention. He really looks quite different from any other character I've seen him play so far.

Iron Man is a super hero in the way that Batman is, without any fantastical powers at his disposal and simply using advanced technology and his own abilities, as well as operating mostly outside of the law. There are differences, and one is made quite clear at the end of the film that should develop in the sequel, which I am hoping there will be.

The technology presented in the film is amazing, and presented in such a way to make it seem quite believable. The Iron Man suit and other vehicles are not shown off in a gratuitous manner but in ways that enhance the credibility of the technology by showing how it is working. There are even computer screens that seem to be showing actual code and not just big flashing text in garish colours. There is a wonderful attention to detail throughout the film in the technology and visual effects that clarifies rather than complicates detail. I particularly like the vapour cones that appear around Ironman when he breaks the sound barrier, making everything feel real. I even found myself not cursing at the camera work for moving too much to give an impression of action, instead enjoying all the action sequences and following them easily.

There are moments that are clearly fantastic, like Stark surviving a couple of high velocity impacts with the ground. Whilst the suit may be able to withstand such impacts the huge g-forces created during such events would turn a person's internal organs to mush. But I can forgive a film as good as this a few minor quibbles for the sake of some more dramatic shots. I really enjoyed Iron Man and will no doubt see it again at some point, and hope that the sequel is at least as good as this origin story.

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Tags: film, iron man, jeff bridges, robert downey jr

Note to self

When taking a late-night stroll through a fairly remote field do not let your mind wander off and think about the film Zodiac.

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Tags: zodiac

Memory man

I was a little forgetful last night. I filled up my bike at the petrol station and then parked around the back of the station briefly so I could pick up some chips from the chip shop next door. After I had ordered my food I realised that I wasn't carrying my keys, and nor were they in my jacket pocket. I had left them in the bike! I got a little panicky, even though I would only be away from the bike for a couple of minutes at the most and it was out of sight of just about everyone. It might seem like it's not as inviting as leaving keys in a car's ignition, as without a helmet you can't really get far on a bike, but it would be just as easy to pluck they keys from the bike and return a little later, or just throw them away to frustrate the owner. Nothing was amiss when I quickly got back to the bike though, and I was able to ride home to enjoy my chip butties.

A little later I went out for my weekly D&D session. I was running a little late and remembered that the route I normally take would be closed because of overnight roadworks for a couple of weeks. I would have been okay had I been on time, but by the time I would reach the junction they would no doubt be closed. I remembered early on in the journey and it was no problem diverting around it, so I got to D&D easily enough and not too late, and spent part of the journey working out which route to take home also to avoid the roadworks. We had an enjoyable session of D&D, and when I left I headed home the normal way, only realising about the roadworks after I had passed through the junction that was supposed to be closed. The sign informing road users of the roadworks reminded me that it is the following fortnight when the road will be closed overnight, it hadn't started this week. Not only had I misremembered the dates earlier when driving to D&D but I also forgot about changing my route home later. Doh.

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Tags: dungeons and dragons, memory, motorbike, petrol, roadworks

Mario Kart bleurgh

I played some more Mario Kart Wii over the Bank Holiday weekend, after I'd recovered some sleep from the film festival. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much more I'll end up playing. I've been relatively positive about the game with my initial impressions, but with some reservations about the random nature of the added computer opponents. After the other day's sessions I am leaning towards the game being too random and unforgiving for my liking.

The Rainbow Road circuit has been the biggest challenge since what I believe was its debut back in Mario Kart 64, with it being longer and more punishing with more places to fall off the track than any other circuit in the game, and the same is true in the Wii version. This time, the game seems to help in punishing mistakes on Rainbow Road. Hitting a barrier on one side of the track on Rainbow Road often has the effect of ricocheting you across to fall off the other edge without the opportunity to steer your way out of trouble, which makes me question the point of the barriers in the first place. The barrier jumps, which have seemed to me to be almost fool-proof in that when you jump from them they end up pointing you in the right direction down the course, repeatedly pointed me towards a circular hole in the track with no chance of steering to avoid after getting the boost from the jump. And when I twice fell off a section of the road that looks to be an automatic jump I started to wonder whether this was a problem of skill or just poor design.

Rainbow Road as a course is entirely unforgiving and makes for quite the challenge just to make a circuit. When you are then in a race with eleven opponents this makes completing the circuit challenging. When your opponents have access to power-ups designed to prevent your progress and they fire them off almost at random, and even their vehicles can act as weapons that can barge you to one side, even off the edge of the course itself, it's more of a frustrating waste of time than a challenge.

Such is the nature of the pack of racers that a single incident that makes you crash, and particularly one that knocks you off the track, you can easily lose multiple places in a matter of seconds. Whilst it is also possible to make up a number of places in an equally short period of time it is more unlikely for that to happen, and dropping from first to seventh on the last corner because of a random power-up event does not endear me to the racing aspect of the game, particularly when this occurs so frequently.

I'm not sure I have the patience to be continually battered just trying to get lucky one race. I would like to believe that it is just a matter of acquiring a certain level of skill before I can start winning races with some regularity, but the random power-ups and likelihood of losing several positions points more to luck playing far too large a part in the game. A friend pointed out that it seems the best tactic is to stay in second or third place and linger close to them near the end of the race, relying on a power-up to remove them from the first spot to claim it yourself, but I don't want a tactical race. I want to be able to race as fast as I can around a circuit and rely on my skill in handling the car and reactions in avoiding obstacles to help me win. When my skill becomes second to random events I am no longer having fun.

When I got hit by a blue shell and came plummeting back to the track to see a red shell literally circling beneath the explosion waiting for me to land before it could strike I could feel my excitement for the single-player game dwindle significantly. This is a shame, as the steering wheel control is fantastic, and the best racing controller I have ever used. The tracks are good, with a couple of flaws here and there but also with some great designs. The animations are excellent and the use of bikes is interesting addition. I'm sure that as a multi-player game, with a bunch of people who can all play at least moderately well, it is a whole heap of fun, but the single player game suffers horribly from randomness. Maybe I'll persevere a little more, but I don't want to play a game to be frustrated, I want to have fun.

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Tags: console, mario kart, racing, wii