Spacecake level design
 

Is it me, or are some of Messiah's levels just too implausible? I appreciate the need to make the maps challenging, but the flow of the game is totally broken when you realise that the bunch of scientists you're trying to reach actually have no way to have got where they are. Or that the cops' locker room is only accessible through and 'scientists only' area.



Compare that to Half Life, Thief or Jedi Knight, where the levels feel 'right'. Heck, even Duke 3d for that matter.



Am I alone thinking that plausibility is important?

I have no idea what you are on about %-(

in some instances he is correct. For example at the begining, there is an officers break room in an area only accessible by a scientist. At other places, there are doors you need a scientist to get through, but there are cops who will shoot at you in a scientist body. there are not a lot, and one could make up stories to explain them away, but it is a little messy.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.....!


Man, If I can get a dollar every goofball mistake in level design for Messiah, I'd be a millionaire----screw Regis!

Oh, BTW, at Club Kyd--a friend of mine thought it would've been just a lil more challenging if a waitress had to carry drinks to someone to get into BAR 2...

Haaahahhhaaa....Keep it coming fellas!

Half-Life "feels" right? What a load!

Half-Life is one game where I felt completely conned. Had the game flowed as well as the demo I'd be singing it's praises but my impression after only the first few levels in HL was that it was becoming completely abstract and slipping away from the "interactive story" I so dearly hoped it would be. The puzzles were completely contrived in most cases; hardly any effort seemed to have been made to explain the purpose of many obstacles. A scripted scene now and again doesn't cut it.

Messiah's puzzles at least have been designed to have some rationale in the environment. Yes, I'll agree that a lot of areas are closed off in unrealistic ways, but for this game that is a GOOD aspect of level design. Linear progression is enforced by limiting exploration possibilities; in another kind of game that wouldn't be appropriate.

As for nitpickers, I certainly don't see a lot of amateur mappers out there who can manage anything more complex than a capture the flag base (ooh, what a challenge). So what expertise do you have backing your complaints about the design work coming out of Shiny?

Hey, I got this guy...

>>>Mantic

"So what expertise do you have backing up your complaints about the design work coming out of ShinY?"

Answer:

By the fact that I am the GAMER who purchased the product for entertainment. The designers's job is to make the game BELIEVABLE as possible--not unbelievable.
This is what separates GOOD game design from BAD game design. :P

Marvin is your only purpose on this board to
make negative comments on Messiah?
You might be a gamer but not a mature one.
Besides I read a while back that you were done talking about Messiah. You sound pretty bitter.



[This message has been edited by sebastian (edited 05-22-2000).]

Originally posted by Mantic:
> Half-Life "feels" right? What a load!
> Half-Life is one game where I felt completely conned.

That's weird. I don't doubt your experience, but felt completely the opposite way around - that HL's levels fitted in with the story, whereas Messiah's kind of had set pieces that had been designed in a void.

Why did we have such diametrically opposed experiences?

> A scripted scene now and again doesn't cut it.

Gosh. For me, those little vignettes *made* HL; the ability to read clues from your surroundings (including the cut scenes) was a key feature, IMO.

> Messiah's puzzles at least have been designed to have some rationale in the environment.

Again, I always felt that HL's were, too.

> Yes, I'll agree that a lot of areas are closed off in unrealistic ways, but for this game that is a GOOD aspect of level design.

I wouldn't disagree with this point, but perhaps what slightly bugged me was the feeling that the world had been designed around me. Whole buildings had been constructed and populated just to create a particular challenge.

> As for nitpickers,

Moi?

> So what expertise do you have backing your complaints about the design work coming out of Shiny?

I'll take "How much I enjoyed playing it".

Incidentally, I *did* actually enjoy playing Messiah. My post was to illustrate what I thought was its greatest weakness.

A. Wall.

Originally posted by Marvin:
> Hey, I got this guy...

Oh good. That seems to make 2 of us.

>>>Mantic

>By the fact that I am the GAMER who purchased the product

Careful, Marv. Believability is not *always* a good thing.

Airwall.

>>>Sebastian

It appears you see the TRUTH as negativity.

>>>Airwall

True. But when I am able to suspend belief this easily wrecks the entertainment value of the product.

For instance, I play Half-Life to see if it denies my ability to punch holes in it. It's been TWO years and I still have not been to do it. Not purposely, at least. The design and work that went into HL exposes the 'other' games considerably. I have YET to see the amount of detail that other games do that can EQUAL or BETTER half-Life.

Messiah wants to BETTER HL, it even calls the game out to the player---

The Medium Cop tells you at some point, "This is as far as you go, Half-Life!"

When I first saw this, I thought, "Ok we're in for some fun"

Little did I know.

I can't deny the sales of Half-Life, nor the capabilities of the engine. But I suppose it's in part an aesthetic difference (not entirely, however). Half-Life did put maps into an order with perhaps less variance from area to area... until the dramatic shift to alien locations. And that may be less startling than walking out from a laboratory to find yourself hundreds of stories up with spacecraft zipping back and forth (especially when you know that the sewer wasn't all that far away... http://forums.voodooextreme.com/wink.gif

I don't really expect conformity to spatial realities in these kinds of games. In a persistent world or a strategy game in which your location in the larger world has game significance, that's another matter.

My comment about the scripted scenes seems to have been misinterpreted: I love scripted scenes, but they don't, in themselves, make up for a poor contivance (for example: a jump puzzle in which boxes hang by chains over an abyss, using box and chain textures, but not making any sense as to why they exist, what they are good for, why they are hanging over an abyss, etc.).

The demo for Half-Life had great scripted events, lots of them, tightly connected. And when puzzles were presented they used materials that made sense. Of course, spatially, it's plenty odd to see the various subjects of the map so close together and arranged as they are... but care was taken to make what is in view sensible enough and to ensure that the pace never slowed.

The full game abandoned this attention to detail rather quickly. Perhaps it was just too long to maintain that quality and stay on schedule, but I won't overlook it even if I can excuse it. The game moved at a snail's pace more often than not, falling back on meandering exploration and poorly contrived skill tests. The ratio of plot- or situation-driven events to abstracted fps filler left much to be desired. So far, Messiah seems less watered-down.

>>>Mantic

HL works in the context of the GENRE, ACTION and DESIGN.

GENRE
It's a First Person Shooter. A real-live honest to goodness genre. Surrounded by a persistant & constant hazardous environment. The designers created as many obstacles that I can think of.

ACTION
The environment is mediated with how you(the player) react to opposition. Mostly on the fly.

DESIGN
The environment is a fabrication where the player(YOU) is existing within a world that was there before YOU(The Player) appeared.

An urban area.
An alien ship.
Another planet.
Aboard a jet plane.
An island in Costa Rica.

Although Messiah is not a FPS. It does have action and design. Or my favorite: CONTENT & DESIGN.

The design of Messiah faults on so many levels, it's not even funny.

Just when I didn't think there was nothing else to SPOT --->Someone else finds another BLOOPER. If it was intended, OK. But I doubt it.

They GLARE right at ya.

The examples you stated are the right ways to do a game. All four are "gaming gods". To try to have every game you play to live up to all four games is idiocy, especally when you consider that Messiah does a fair job at everything each of those excel at. Saying that messiah can rival Half-life is not something to be proud of. Messiah takes games to a new level. If you don't believe me, just read what popular mags have to say about it like gamepro. Messiah doesn't offer good level design, but if you look past the surface, it has great gameplay.

The examples you stated are the right ways to do a game. All four are "gaming gods". To try to have every game you play to live up to all four games is idiocy, especally when you consider that Messiah does a fair job at everything each of those excel at. Saying that messiah can rival Half-life is not something to be proud of. Messiah takes games to a new level. If you don't believe me, just read what popular mags have to say about it like gamepro. Messiah doesn't offer good level design, but if you look past the surface, it has great gameplay.

>>>Helixso

...HUH?

Marv I get your point, honestly.
But remember your conversation with PMaster,
its opinion not TRUTH.
Another thing is that I have read your many posts and its like you are kicking a dying horse,over and over I might add. (whats the point) It's one thing to criticize a game and another to slice it open pour alcohol into the wound and then add some tabasco for good measure, and then laugh insanely.

>>>Sebastion

Heh Heh Heh... That's pretty funny. Not as morbid as a Wendy's Massacre in Flushing, NY. But funny.

No, seriously. For the millionth time:

I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO disappointed IN ALL MY LIFE WITH A VIDEO GAME. I JUST CAN'T EXPRESS IT THAT CLEARLY. I WANT SO BAD TO POUND THIS ISSUE INTO THE GROUND UNTIL THERE IS nothing LEFT...

Ok I gotcha. I am glad I don't share your deep disappointment. But now I know where your coming from. Why don't you look to the future, lots of good games coming out.

>>>Sebastian

...Uh ... yeah...right...there ARE a few interesting titles coming soon.

---LIKE IN ANOTHER THREE YEARS!!!

Messiah, was not meant to be a FPS, not meant to be a true action game, it was meant be a Metal Gear Solid type stealth and stategy game, with a nice twist to it, you are able to consume bodies of various classes and use them as human shields, very innovative.

Requiem attempted this, and failed, Shiny used a little naked baby and did it successfully :-) Who would have thought Pampers would make this game shine.

Lets talk about the gameplay here. Messiah could have had a better design overall, yes i agree with that, but what the ended up with Messiah was good. It was good in the fact that it attempted to do something out of the norm of regular games and interweve many types of geners into one.

Messiah involved a lot of puzzles, a lot of stealth is required, mixed with action. This is not a game where you can go in guns balzing, well you can but that baby will never see past the next level. Yeah we all tried and failed I'm sure :-)

The gameflow was good, in flowed nicely, without having to really backtrack to complete a mission, if you had to it made sense most of the time. I hate games where you just get so damn lost you have to backtrack in the reverse path you came, when going forward was hard enough!

If you notice that the arsenal weapons wasnt really heavy meaning not a lot of thought there, because it wasnt meant to really be an action game, and putting in a better arsenal would have pissed people off, I have these cool guns but I cant use them as I'd like. More puzzles than anything here.

Overall Messiah was good, not saying great here because it wasnt great, was good. As a hardcore gamer I was satisifed with it because I went in knwoing what to expect out of this title, a hybrid of some action with some cool stealth and puzzle solving. The demo showed that.

So I mean to mock a game over and over shows that some people do not have better things to do, there is so much that you can do productive. Satisfying the bloodthirsty gaming community is very hard, people will always moan and bitch to put it bluntly, until they can make something better, just shut up. There.

-
Rudy

>>>Rudy

Hey, I usta hang out in Chula Vista. Up and around Tiuquana,Mex--and other parts of San Diego.

I think all that warm beach weather has gone to your head. Or MAYBE those pesky girlfriend chasing SWAB-BEEs are getting to you (if you know what I mean http://forums.voodooextreme.com/smile.gif

It appears everyone can't quite define MESSIAH in words as I've heard many interpretations of the same thing. Sounds as if the product is somewhat SYBIL-like. Weird huh?

I know one thing for sure--I CAN'T BRAG TO ANY CONSOLE PLAYERS ABOUT THIS PROGRAM TRYING TO CONVINCE THEM PC GAMES ARE all that!

That's what hurt the most. this is not the game to brag to your friends>>>as one cannot escape the glazed eyed stare they'd give you when you say, "--no, really it IS a good game!!" and they snicker behind your back when you slowly slip the CD back into its' jewel case.

It's just plain embarrasing... http://forums.voodooextreme.com/frown.gif