matthewmatosis
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Project Proxima Developer Diary 003
🕑 Added 2021-06-01 13:05:47 +0000 UTCOver the Hump and Into the Ceiling
Slopes and collision response have been a sticking point for the project so far but it’s looking like those dark times might finally be over. Behind the scenes I’ve also implemented - or at least made great progress on - two other concepts which form the basis of Proxima. Lets just say one has to do with level design and the other with enemy design. The pieces are in place, all that’s left is to make the game.
Proxima is intentionally simple. That said, the aforementioned challenges (which now seem small in hindsight) made me estimate coin flip odds that I’d already be working on Betelgeuse by now instead. Thankfully Proxima seems promising. This month gave me a growing impression that it’s actually worth making which is great news but also a dilemma because now I have to ask another question, how far should Proxima go? No doubt feature creep is a killer but the solution can’t always be sheer minimalism. For example I don’t want the protagonist to be a cyan rectangle.
Baba Is You smacked of genius right from the first trailer. Even so, seeing such a promising concept also caused me concern because it would be that much more disappointing if the final game failed to do the idea justice. Thankfully my worries were unfounded in that particular case but it illustrates my point. Having a worthwhile idea imparts a kind of responsibility to do that idea well. Now I’m not saying that Proxima is innovative, in fact you could probably understand the concept entirely if I gave you an ingredient list of three games to combine. Regardless, it’s a combination I haven’t quite seen elsewhere. As presumably the only chef making this particular dish, I’d like to bring out as much of that flavour as possible. This is why I’m torn about the future of the project, it was designed to be simple but it’s getting a little more complex recently.
Baba is good.
Maybe complication is only natural when the approach so far has been minimalism to the extreme. I added a walljump when it became clear I’d need one but apart from that the player can only move and jump. We’re talking three buttons here. To help me work out my feelings on this topic I began playing N++ since it takes a minimalist approach to movement. It was a valuable experience which demonstrates how basic movement options alone can be compelling provided there’s enough complexity under the hood. At its most fundamental, it’s a game where you attempt to precisely control the rate of change between x and y values. I suppose that’s the basis of any platformer but simply adding nuanced momentum provides a skill ceiling which a player can inch toward in a satisfying way. Maybe that’s all you need.
Many games technically have a skill ceiling beyond human attainment, if you’re doubtful just watch any tool assisted speedrun. Granted, those robo-runs often use tricks that would be unenjoyable to perform. When I talk about a skill ceiling I’m not talking about what happens when you abuse some ultra precise setup to clip through half a stage. I’m talking about the skill ceiling as it was intended to be played. With that in mind, what is the skill ceiling for a game like Bayonetta? Even the mere inclusion of jump cancelling must make it so enormous as to be beyond human reach. I don’t even mean a jump cancelled aerial combo, I simply mean jumping from a grounded position to reset Bayonetta’s priorities, allowing for the input of a new move immediately. Using this trick optimally would be a frame perfect input which opens up new options. Keep in mind, this is just a single example of the complexity that game has to offer. So now I ask, does Bayonetta have a higher skill ceiling than N++? The answer may surprise you.
Consider this, every input for N++ is frame perfect. If a single one of your actions is not optimal, then you fail to attain the best possible completion time for the given stage. If mathematicians are to be believed, some infinities are larger than others. It might be best to think of skill ceilings in this way. One could argue that Bayonetta inhabits a larger infinity but both are beyond human grasp. Rather than striving for the largest possible skill ceiling, perhaps we should instead strive for a large enough skill ceiling and let other developments happen naturally. What truly matters for both Bayonetta and N++ is that they’re enjoyable on a moment to moment basis. They’re engaging, that’s the primary goal.
Perfect play is hard to achieve, especially when momentum enters the picture.
How does this relate to Proxima? Well, rather than adding more obstacles or player moves, I mostly want to mess around with core movement depending on the stage. Think of the water levels in Mega Man as a positive example. A more contentious choice might be ice blocks which are slippery. I’ll need to experiment before I decide if either of those ideas make the cut but I was initially drawn to them (and several similar ideas) because changing the player’s physics raises the skill ceiling. If I listed the pros and cons mentally, this skill ceiling increase would’ve counted as a pro. In light of everything I’ve just discussed, I’m not sure this pro is much of a pro after all. Once the skill ceiling exceeds human reach, raising it further is arguably unimportant. As such, the survival of ice or water physics will now depend entirely on whether I find them to be enjoyable on a moment to moment basis. Provided the implementation is good, I can see some altered physics being a worthwhile inclusion. I know that’s not to everyone’s taste so you might be disappointed by my choice to include them but at least now you’ll know I did it for the right reasons.
E-motion
Lately I’ve been thinking about a comment I saw on Meta Microvideos.
To be honest, I didn’t expect the Many Years Later segment of that video have such a strong impact on people but I did hope it would arouse some emotion and I knew the back half of the video was largely melancholy. It had the desired effect, just stronger than I anticipated. Maybe I’m pretty good at that in video form but I honestly don’t know how I would craft a game to achieve an emotional result. It’s just not the way I default to thinking about games. At first I was disappointed in myself for this perceived failing of mine but I’ve been mulling it over for the last week and I’m wondering if emotion is a kind of trap.
I don’t need to tell you how much respect I have for games like Ico, Journey or Rain World, all titles which seek to resonate on an emotional level at one point or another. Despite my appreciation for them, it also seems like there’s a tendency to put emotion on a pedestal. Those games mean no more to me than Alien Solider, Resident Evil 4 or The Wonderful 101. When I sit down for just one more game of Pac-Man 99, I’m not overcome with emotion. This is where we could quibble about what it means to be emotional in the first place, after all Pac-Man 99 must provide some kind of payoff on an emotional level. Whether that’s the relaxing trance of being in the zone or the satisfaction of a hard earned victory. There’s some emotional rationale for playing any game. Even so, games which tug the heartstrings are more inclined to stand out, assuming they succeed.
It’s possible I’m underselling myself, after all my approach to videos has never been emotionally driven. That only becomes a priority later in production, once I’ve figured out what I want to say. Perhaps the same is true of development where I’ll get into a habit of building emotion in later. Personally, I think a theme is more important than an emotional payoff though because a theme keeps on giving. The Sopranos is my favourite TV show but I wouldn’t say it makes me emotional. It just explores certain themes and day to day life in a compelling way. A theme might be nice.
In recent years I’ve had the misfortune of vividly conceptualising a 3D game I don’t have enough resources to make yet. Such is the life of a wannabe designer. This imaginary game has a theme which I’d attempt to convey through its audiovisual elements, without the use of a traditional narrative. I’d really like to make it some day. In the meantime it’s been nothing but poison because other projects feel lacking in a thematic sense, comparatively speaking. Proxima in particular had zero thematic substance until recently. This is another way the project has grown more ambitious, the setting has recently been altered in a way which will need more assets. Assuming this new setting sticks, I think it will make for a much more compelling premise. If I’m lucky people will find it just weird enough, if I’m unlucky, it’s too weird. Regardless I must remember to be blunderful in all things so I'm following my own taste to the bitter end. I like the new direction and most importantly to me, it’s inching tantalisingly close to a theme, even though I can’t quite see what the theme could be yet.
Right now I’m Team Theme rather than Team Emotion. Even so, I’m wondering, is it always worth trying to find a theme? Returning to Pac-Man, you can see how people have elaborated on its concept over the last four decades. We might make jokes about Pac-Man popping pills or whatever but nobody in their right mind could say it has real thematic substance. Ultimately it’s a game where a yellow circle runs away from ghosts. Likewise for Tetris which is even more barebones in its presentation.
Does it matter that Pac-Man makes no sense? Not to me.
There’s a subtle but important shift which needs to happen when changing career from critic to creator, you need to hold beliefs. I’m not sure critics do, in fact it might be better if they don’t. Games deserve a chance to win a critic over. Rain World is the most famous example for me. My resistance to its unfairness was eventually overcome to the point where I would now praise it for being unfair. Except the instant death pits, those can still fuck off. Point is, you need to stake a claim. For example, I don’t believe that random outcomes are ever acceptable in a competitive game. As a critic, I need to entertain counterarguments and try to see the bright side. As a developer, I don’t have to. As a developer, random numbers are not acceptable in a competitive environment. You might disagree but you’re not making my game.
Here’s another belief, emotions and narrative are overrated. That’s not to say they’re bad - they can be extremely valuable - but they’re more icing than cake. Nobody really cares why Pac-Man pops pills or Mario eats mushrooms, they just do and it’s alright for games to work that way. Sometimes I miss that nonsensical simplicity which seems harder to come by these days. Maybe this is actually the right direction to take Proxima. Maybe it just is what it is.
Comments
Richard Rosean
It's interesting you list *Wonderful 101* as a game with less emotional resonance than something like *Rain World*, because I actually found it to be one of the most emotionally compelling games I've played. Granted, the emotion didn't come in the form of sadness, or serenity, or awe that a game like Rain World might offer. But the sincere goodness of the characters and their triumph over evil gave me a sense of happiness few other games have matched. Not that you're saying this, but I think sometimes the joy of fantastical heroics is a feeling that tends to get overlooked when examining a game's emotional appeal.
gibbdude
Maybe this is just because I'm an insufferably cynical person, but it's my feeling that, typically, appeals to emotion without thematic support are misguided and stupid at best and manipulative trickery at worst. I have to be following along thematically for an emotional swell to move me, or else I'll dismiss it as substanceless and feel less engaged as a result. I would also say that I am Team Theme. This might sound weird, but I do really think that games like Pac-Man or Super Mario Bros. have themes that are just as strong if not stronger than more "emotional" works. If I had to provide a concrete description (though I'm not sure I want to), I'd say that their themes tend fall along the lines of "Playfulness is valuable," or something like that. However you identify them, I say that they exist because those games all have designs which are effectively focused on providing certain types of interactions and evoking certain reactions; in the broadest sense, they're all meant to be fun. Maybe this is just pointless qualification, but I'd say that the fact that they aim to and successfully conduce such a feeling means the presence of a theme. The theme of Pac-Man is the flavor of experience you have while playing it.
Generally, when people use the word "emotional" they're referring to specific types of emotion, sadness, sympathy, wistful self-reflection, etc. A good action game can be tense and exciting, but those aren't the types of emotions people mean when they use the term. It's semantics, interesting semantics, but nothing to lose sleep over. Anyway, my point is your game needs a grapple hook.
The best theming in games is embedded in the mechanics themselves. The Molly and Lewis sections in Edith Finch, the finales of Hellblade and W101, the entirety of Before Your Eyes. I can't think of any better examples of marriage between story and gameplay than these. And I'd agree, if you're just putting cutscenes or other non-interactive theming into your game which can easily be replicated in other media, it is just icing. Some cakes are great without icing, but I haven't eaten straight frosting since I was 7.
"I'm hopeful this will be a much more enjoyable phase of development"' I'm happy to read that! Proxima definitely looks intriguing. It's always been more interesting to me when the core mechanics are simple and the complexity is emergent.
Doctor Professor
I think it's totally legit to choose to focus on mechanics over theme, especially for a solo project where scope creep is a serious concern. But I do think you're on shaky ground whenever you describe something as "overrated." That's essentially a claim that people are wrong about how much they like something, which is a very bold (and sometimes offensive) claim to make. Like, yes, the themes of Pac-Man and Mario are far less important than their respective mechanics, but I'd argue there are also plenty of games where it's a bit more even-handed (new God of War, The Last of Us) or maybe even the other way around completely - and plenty of those games are very successful and widely-loved. Neither of these groups of games is inherently better than the other but they are for different audiences with different priorities. People play games for all kinds of reasons and have all kinds of different subjective reactions to the same external stimuli. As a developer, the end results of saying "theme is just icing" and saying "I want to make a game that relies more on mechanics than theme" are pretty similar - you're focusing on a particular aspect in your design and development, and as such you are targeting a specific subset of the audience. But I think the former way of thinking leads down some dangerous roads and makes you likelier to get in pointless arguments.
Codfish Cartographer
With regards to theme, emotion, etc - what's important is to think about your goals for the game, and what will best help those goals. Professional game designers have a list of "pillars" for a game - these are the most important aspects of a game, and EVERY decision should benefit one (preferably multiple) of these pillars. If skilled gameplay is your primary concern, then the story and themes should work to elevate the gameplay. Viewtiful Joe had a series of interesting time-control mechanics to explore, and so it designed its story to help those mechanics make sense and shine. I would also try to recommend not getting too bogged down in a lot of nitty gritty details yet. Your primary concern should be to get a working prototype of the mechanics made, so you can truly make sure that they feel as good to play as you imagine them to be. Even if it's only partially functional and sloppy, a basic prototype is very valuable this early in a project.
great work man, just keep at it. About that big 3d adventure... I think most of us have one of those eating at our passions from the abyss. Maybe you should try it sooner rather than later, since a) all ideas are beautiful and perfect until they come crushing into the real world, b) perfect is the enemy of good, c) I think there is a beauty in finding how those perfect ideas can *actually* be implemented in the real world, d) once it's out it might no longer haunt you, and most importantly E) you have a lot of people willing to help get your ideas out (this patreon being a little proof of that). Even if in your perfectionist mind it ends up being a ""failure"", it shure as hell would be a learning experience, and a really great one at that!
Very interested to see what the game's graphics will shape out to be like when the time comes. Graphics do a huge part in giving the game an identity. I was gonna come up with a big speech about how emotionally driven decisions can end up improving gameplay but your one comment about acknowledging feature creep kinda nullified that. Nonetheless I hope your game ends up enjoyable.
Fantastic write up Matthew. I look forward to next month's update :)
Matthewmatosis
Great progress this month. While I don't have any visuals yet, the ones I'm planning have evolved considerably into something I'm more excited about. It might be too ambitious but I'm going to try it and roll back to the original premise if needs be. Collisions are looking much better and I also made a major improvement to my level building workflow which would be necessary to rapidly prototype stages for Proxima. Like I said, all the pieces are in place and it seems as though the game is actually worth making so I'm going to continue building stuff, playtesting and fixing up what I have so far. I'm hopeful this will be a much more enjoyable phase of development where I'll just play around with a few more ideas (like the aforementioned water/ice stuff) and build some levels. Still thinking I'll take a minimalist approach to movement and obstacles, only adding more if it feels necessary but I suppose that's just something I'll work out through iteration.
