Damn, that's some genius shit and extremely simple at the same time. Stuff like that sprinkled all over a game is what gives the player the sense that the world is really reactive and always paying attention to his deeds, even if it isn't true across the board.

Josh Sawyer has talked about "world" reactivity at length. There's a GDC talk he did about it on that site. Well worth a view. A contemporary video titled, 'The Magic Behind Fallout', features the practice and why it's so effective even generations later.

Americanizing the public bus system with capitalism. Yuck.

Not familiar with FC2. Did the bus actually travel between map coordinates for any distance ala vertibirds in FO4 or just cut to a loading screen immediately? Never had much experience with vehicles (aside from horses) until I used them in 7DTD. Helicopter pads also have been added to the trader compounds in that game that most surmise will work more like a fast travel system. The (automatic) travelling between map ccoordinates thing must be incredibly hard to do. I'll never forget Nate Purkeypile talking about how hard the opening cart ride in Skyrim's intro turned out to be. Seems a rogue bee kept crossing its path and sending the cart flying. lol Still, if one can turn on a cinematic camera in RDR2 while the horse takes them back to Shady Sands, I should think the same could be done with any kind of vehicle at this point.

@@lrinfi Immediate loading screen. Basically there are 5 bus terminals on the map, 1 in the middle of the map, and the others each at the 4 corners. Interacting with 1 terminal lets you jump to any of the other 4. Speaking of FO4, there was a mod that did something very similar, where you could build transportation at any settlement, and then interact with it to instant fast travel to any other settlement you have. You just have to make gas to use it. I ended up really liking this system. It made settlements more useful for roleplaying as someone who limits fast traveling from the map.

@@Atestinal I failed to mention that I always pick up something like the 'Lone Wanderer' motorcycle mod or the van mod (for New Vegas) before starting a playthrough. I couldn't get into Skyrim for some reason before the modding community started coming out with mods for that game. There are some amazing creators in the modding community whose love of the games is palpable. It's "driveable" vehicles that have taken off of late, but public transportation still appears fast travel only. Bummer.

@@lrinfi Maybe you've seen this one, but there's a cool mod for Skyrim that changes the fast travel carts outside of cities so that they travel in real time, like in the intro sequence.

I'm being the worst by mentioning it but there really aren't that many unskippable cutscenes in Metal Gear

@@returnofthespacecowgurl Thank god they are skippable, otherwise I'd never replay those games

Or when weapon is pointing down when you're too close to the wall.

SOCOM had that right?

I like Arma 3's 3d crosshair cursor thing that does this. You either see the crosshair stuck on the wall, or you see it hundreds of meters away.

it's genius.....

I’d love that for some first person shooters as well lol

the biggest nightmare in a story-driven game is when you REALLY need to use the bathroom, hit ESC to pause the cutscene and suddenly the cutscene is gone forever some games will pause entirely when the window isn't in focus so you can abuse that, but sometimes it's hard to predict how that will mess with the game

I wish the cutscenes were replayable and everything but I understand why they're not, because some are loading screens. But, for example, Dark Souls has English that I can't understand, and I don't always have a second chance at it. Also I have trouble focusing on cutscenes that talk about people and places, so I get extremely tired trying to focus and I wish I could rewind.

@@theodorealenas3171 I don't think many games use cutscenes as loading screens nowadays, but good point nonetheless.

To add to your comment: if its skippable please make it "Hold to skip" to avoid accidental skipping!

AAA are more likely to listen if people let their voices be known. Unfortunately Indies are jerks to disabled gamers. It's a shame and it's way too common for them to not only refuse to care or consider them, but to often privately detest them and seethe anger that they dared to ask for simple accessibility features. Even rebindable keys is a struggle for many indie developers. Not because the indie doesn't have the time or money, but because theyre just jerks and dont care. There's a reason laws like the ADA had to get passed. If most Americans arent forced into providing accessibility, they wont do it and will get angry if anyone asks for accommodations. These laws have to exist to protect disabled people, so these laws should be extended into virtual software.

AAA pubs and devs seem to struggle justifying the time and money spent on small things, even though they usually can bring more of both than smaller projects. It's such a shame they can't get over that business-mindedness; they could make some truly great things.

I kinda take it for granted now with how many hours I have in the game, but I love how Far Cry 2 handles HUD usage. It's only up when you need it or if you hit the appropriate button, but most of the time you have a clean screen. The diegetic elements help as well.

Red Dead 2 doesn't get near enough praise for how unintrusive the HUD is. ever since discovering that could just turn off the minimap with the blink of an eye I've become more and more annoyed at with its absence in other games.

@@cowboylou I also made some FC2 videos!

Comes across as friend, doesn't he? Love, love, love when "famous" people don't let it go to their heads and prove just as grounded as you and me. I met Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barret once rather unexpectedly at a shuttle launch. There's no doubt in my mind that what they wanted more than anything in the world was to be utterly ingonito. Ms. Barrett even passed a hand over her hair and said, "I never expected anyone to recognize us looking like this." :) I'd vowed to myself when I recognized them that I wouldn't bother them; go up and say, "hi"; nothing. My aunt, otoh, had a different idea; rushed down the aisle of the Imax theatre; caught Gene Roddenberry by the arm; and said, "My niece has something she wants to say to you." I didn't, actually. Couldn't think of a thing, in fact. But there I was, stiff and stupid, trying to have a normal conversation with two fellow human beings, regardless. lol They were awesome about it, btw.

The world reacting is always very satisfying

Volition was always great about this. The Red Faction and Saints Row series (especially Saints Row 2) had tons of destructible elements.

Was replaying FEAR the other day and that's really one of the things that popped to my mind. The destruction has barely any gameplay implications, but the way you see boxes and papers and random soda cans and ridiculous amounts of sparks flying across the screen, not to mention its clever use of normalmapped decals that make it look like you're blowing chunks out of walls, is just really cool.

It's basic now, but I remember playing GTA4 for the first time and being completely blown away by some the environmental detail, like when you hit a streetlight and seeing bits of electricity underneath, or bullet holes and dents staying on your vehicle. As for shooters, seeing fire-spreading for the first time in FC2 was neat. If you shot at ammo piles, they would go off and spray bullets everywhere. There were also these poorly constructed, wooden structures that would explode if a grenade went off near them, or if you drove a car into them. I take a lot of this stuff for granted now, but at the time, I was really impressed.

@@ZiddersRooFurry I loved how in Saints Row 2 you could blow up the train. Had no real effect on anything, it was just a fun, little thing you could do.

Yeah, that's a big issue for me in Cyberpunk 2077. I want to sit down! It's a small thing but CP2077 already has a sit-down animation (as used in dialogue cutscenes) it shouldn't be that difficult to implement. You can even take a shower in your room and yes, sit down there but you cannot sit down much in Night City.

With sitting down in games, I really like how kingdom come deliverance allows you to sit at tables and benches, but one thing is funny with it. If youre standing at a table with food on it, you can eat the food directly from the table when standing, but when sitting down, you're not allowed to eat the food from the table, can't even put it in your inventory. This is the PS4 version

@@shrek1onDVD I'll have to check that. I have it on PC.

@@shrek1onDVD It's not just Kingdom Come. Seems to me, any game with features like that disallow performing pretty much any other kind of action while its in use, whether there are any accompanying animations (and there usually aren't) or not. You might be lucky to be able to pick a dialogue option with a nearby NPC, but -- again -- I've had to mod Skyrim, at least, to make it so that I could have my character do that (sit or stop and stand and eat, complete with animations). There must be a reason why that sort of thing is not done all the time, at least in RPGs where it will definitely be noticed that everyday actions performed by humans are missing. Perhaps some nice developer can clue us in as to why that is. Performance? Running too many skeleton-dependent scripts at once? Time? Budget? What? Because I had no issues whatsoever with that Skyrim mod.

Not exactly the same but in Bloodborne there was a system where you could leave little pre-set messages in the environment for people to read and if they rated your message positively it would restore your health. It just so happened that someone rated my message the exact moment a boss was about to land the killing blow on me and it was enough to allow me to survive and kill the boss. The fact I still remember that exact moment from years ago shows this is a cool feature!

Agree on that, can make for a clutch save and it feels awesome when it happens!

im leveling up !!!!!!!🤩

just living in the game is half the fun!

He's written a memoir, of sorts...that will never be published according to him. No reason why he couldn't write one specifically about his approach to the nuts and bolts of game design, but I think he is (in a way) with those videos covering the subject on this channel as opposed to those sharing personal memories. It's a videography in that respect. He could package those up and upload them to any online learning site that specializes in videos of the kind and earn a decent living if he ever actually retires, which I personally don't expect will ever happen. ;) I'm learning a lot from those specific videos and I'm not even a game developer! Kind of makes me want to play around with some of the engines and tools, though. It'd probably be more like pulling hen's teeth for someone like me to get even the most basic thing working. (I'm not a programmer.) Seems like a lot of fun in and of itself, though, and reminds me of the most satisfying moments in my own career when everything just gelled in the most unexpected and delightful ways.

Giving the player incomplete or inaccurate information regarding gameplay can be incredibly engaging and is a shame devs rarely play with the idea. I also like how older games would give you directions based on the actual game world instead of map markers. Both force the player to engage with the world instead of auto piloting through things.

It isnt difficult, but I have had personal conversations with very successful indie darlings who had literal red-faced seething meltdowns at me just for asking simple questions like "So you said you will never add [disability accessibility feature]. What is the reason for that, exactly?" And when they didnt answer honestly (side stepped) and I reiterated politely "Oh yea sure, but why not do it? It's pretty simple. [Points out one accessibility feature that could be fixed with one line of code]." When they finally opened up to me about their real thoughts bc I didnt let it go while making them feel comfortable enough to share, the responses were incredible. Incredible, as in... Devs I respect opening up to me their true thoughts made me shut up immediately, say goodbye, and go to a corner bc I wanted to vomit. Absolutely sickening reasoning, absolutely raging hatred for disabled persons or their own fans, etcs. All because they feel gamers are so entitled? And one dev I loved a lot when he went red faced telling me the honest truth, seemed to just hate his own supporters bc his art was just so precious to him that even the tiniest outside change was, to him, ppl essentially raping his mind. Freaking weird stuff. Like things I never expected. Permadeath solo devs seem to especially have really sick minds (mental health problems) and anger towards gamers. Idk why exactly. That genre attracts some weird ppl that I used to admire before talking with them about gamedev and gamers. I have a good way to get people to open up, feel comfortable, but also force them to answer- always getting the honest truth out of them. And it is often an ugly truth. So many indies dont deserve their wild success. Millionaires who hate those fans who love them so much they made them millionaires.

I never really see this with AAA or professional industry devs. Professional devs seem less sickening bc I think they already dont have an unhealthy attachment to their game as some artistic expression of their personal self. It's easier to change your game when you already didnt have full untethered artistic control. Collaboration in game design, is IMO, a healthy thing for humans.

@@nowayjosedaniel The superior attitude/"gamers are entitled brats" stuff isn't unique to indie developers, but to mod authors and, actually, most everyone in between. It's an ego thing. I wouldn't judge them too harshly, but I've seen developers talk down to their communities in their forums so often that some will go off and give the games themselves bad reviews, whether they deserve it or not, they're so wounded by it. Gamers themselves might also try to set their egos aside when it comes to "collaborating" and/or just interacting in any way with developers from mod authors to professionals. Members of the public can do some pretty dumb things themselves when it comes to that. I should know. I'm sure I have on occasion, but I'll never forget working a temporary job at a county government office responsible for public school aid. I thought I might actually like to work in such an environment until I did. The things employees and, even, administrative personnel were saying about people desperate for aid were just as much or more stomach-churning. I tried to ignore it for the most part and/or chalk it up to stress and the like, but that didn't work too well. Glad I didn't get on staff there, to be honest. That's why I always try to remember to say "industry" when conversing with people about industry issues. It's industry (of all kinds) that's sick, not necessarily the people working in them in whatever capacity.

@@lrinfi Dont get me started on mod authors. Those people are on average 100x worse than the worst gamedevs I have ever read. Pure mental illness and uncontrolled ego meltdowns, copyright screeching despite the irony, and an obsession with ownership of modified content even when it's just a hue shift of vanilla game assets. And NexusMods admins are severely mentally ill, and embarrassingly authoritarian and baseless. Like real insanely aggressive jerks who have no clue. I honestly wish lawyers would get more involved with modders, as I have seen people having public meltdowns, backed by administrators or even publishers, who end up publicly stating that the modder's inconsequential changes to a gamedev's original assets make it an original copyrighted work. Meanwhile Disney literally steals original fan art and wins legal battles to own it. Modders live in a delusional world where they think shifting hues of a gamedev's assets gives them full copyright over said vanilla assets. Like insanity, but this mental illness is fully backed by entire communities and their admins. It is so ironic, as most modders dont own any of the work they do. Bethesda even has it in their ToS/EULA that they own all mods. And clearly the original authors own the content, not someone who changes 1 pixel or changes blue to teal and claims it is their own. Insanity.

@@lrinfi 100% on the public assistance stuff. A lot of the people who work in positions to help hurting families degrade and seethe at said families. They will approve food stamps for a hurting family of 6 and then go off gossipping about how theyre welfare queens or low IQ savages. Ive seen it too many times. People hating the very people they want to help. In the USA, there is a racial component there too. I've seen people saying incredibly racist things abt black ppl after theyre flood victims and lost their homes and need govt aid.

Your request is a lot more reasonable though since color blind support is meaningless if a game's mechanics are based on color. Should devs remove game mechanics that rely on sound too since it excludes the deaf?

while a small problem, it really frustrates me when games don't give options for left handed be it outside and inside the game, we may be a small portion but we are people too and deserve immersion. :/

I thought Troika themselves had used the term "vignette" for the alignment openings in ToEE?

I use the term "environmental storytelling" for environmental storytelling. ;)

@@voiceofreason1098my brain 😂

​​@@voiceofreason1098Came here to find this. The standard 'game journalism' term seems to be environmental storytelling, especially when it comes to Bethesda games. I've never noticed if the devs call it that though.

@jademiusSreg what kind of professional Dev are you?

First thing I mod in after the unofficial patch has always been something like Ordinator for the changed skill trees. There are a bunch of different ones that are great. Particularly Enarim or Simonrim stuff.

It's a pain to navigate on console with a a controller, which mind you has been their primary demo since Morrowind.

​@@stuartmorley6894 At this point I don't even remember what park trees without Ordinator are like.

It was pretty, but the functionality was far from ideal, imho. I didn't like the fact that i couldn't just pick the perk I needed/wanted and, instead, had to unlock quite a few I knew I'd never use just to be able to select the ones I did want to use because they were further along the branch. Far Too many of what I felt were wasted perk points was the result. And that's what happens when you try to "streamline" progression, skills, perks, etc. into an all-in-one interface like that. I much prefer lists that allow players to pick and choose what they want to invest in and finely define their builds.

Even if the perks themselves often left a lot to be desired, the layout and interface of it all was absolutely MESMERIZING. Especially how they thought to tie it in with the cosmology of the setting and how you enter the menu by "looking up" to the sky when I'm the pause menu. That was all such a stroke of pure genius as far as I'm concerned. There were a lot of immersive touches in Skyrim that still make it endearing despite it's many flaws, but that one might just be the best if you ask me.

the wind? i havent played FC2. is it like the wind in Ghost of Tsushima where it is like a subtle quest marker?

@@cowboylou Yeah, and it also influences how fire spreads. Some minor effect on stealth as well I think.

Seems most games I've played resolve that issue by making auto-actions optional perks the player can invest in or not. As a player, I'm not going to invest in perks such as "stepping on land mines no longer set them off" and the like. Nope. If I'm not vigilant enough to be on the lookout for and deactivate (if that's an option) those landmines, I should have to pay the price for my lack of vigilance. :) I've actually foregone perks further along a "tree" I wanted to invest in just to avoid those kinds of auto-actions.

I added a damage number mod to Mass Effect 2 and 3 and it's wonderful! I can tell what works and what doesn't a TON better.

I find it's much more interesting when you have enemies telegraph their health. I'd like a game jam where you need to get rid of all in game numbers in favor of other design choices like the Chicken-o-meter.

@@downstream0114whats the Chicken-O-Meter?

"I also love any feature that speaks on behalf of the 'playfulness' of the developers." I adore the phrase Noah Caldwell-Jervais used in his original assessment of Fallout 76: "fragments of creativity". I firmly believe (and someone would have a really hard time talking me out of it) that individual developers are primarily responsible for such "fragments of creativity". It may or may not be within the scope of the "official" game, but is palpable to the player, regardless. “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Good dialogue trees seem to be a lost art. I've played too many games where they may as well have been replaced by linear forced dialogue. They don't even present the illusion of actual dialogue well.

Yes. Reusing a good one over and over is not a good thing. Seems most every bank in Boston was enduring a robbery when the bombs fell in Fallout 4, but only one house apparently had a gas leak and explosion in its kitchen, throwing the stove out into the yard, in 7DTD, though several others apparently caught fire during "the event". Good environmental storytelling is essential to bringing a setting to life, getting a history of scarcity, chaos and desperation across in the case of both these games, but I remember delighting at the first "robbery" scene I stumbled across in FO4 and becoming progressively annoyed/numbed by those that followed.

Also, the dialog thing got me thinking... How exactly does one plan for that? I know you've touched on dev planning before, bit I mean dialog specifically; every line has to be written, and often voiced, and then translated for any language you'd want to support. So do you set a fixed maximum of lines? A set number of branches away from the 'main path'? Branching dialog can quickly balloon out, so I guess what I'm really asking is how do you reign it in and keep it within scope? I know dialog isn't your thing, but I was wondering if you had any insight on it.

I think games like Diablo 1 and 2 handle that well. You get a very distinct hud icon when you have unspent points. I've played games that don't telegraph level ups well so know exactly what your talking about.

I'm so sorry.

I loved RDR2's tutorial for that very reason.That must be the longest tutorial in gaming history, but RS used all that time to set up the whole game; its story; introduce the gang members; and, as an added bonus, introduce the game's mechanics to the player in bite-sized chunks. Beautifully done, imho.

@@lrinfi Good example, but for the most part they force you to do an activity to showcase it's feature. Imagine that you found out that you can drag people around with the lasso just on your own. It would be twice the amazement.

@@Arnechk lol True, but I think it works for a game like RDR2 -- the prewritten protagonist; linear mission/story type game. I usually don't play those, but RDR2's (along with Witcher's) characterizations and story was so compelling I gave it a go. I..uh, wound up modding it in pretty short order to be a horse ranch simulation instead of RDR2. (Love those horses!) Rockstar would make a mint if would put out a game for horse lovers. "Horse" games are pretty darned awful.

Of course it works, RDR2 is the best game out there if you take into account the scale. But there is some diminishing returns that comes with developing it. If you compare GTA4 and GTA5, 4 is more intimate, while 5 has on paper more to do, but it's like sctretching a jpeg picture to some absurd resolution can calling it a igger picture, despite it being pixelated to hell and back. I'm wondering how GTA6 and TES6 will feel.@@lrinfi

i would love to know some more but the only example that comes to my mind is bordelands onc console you tap l3 to mark as junk and and again to mark as favourite to avoid accidently selling it enxt time you go to a vendor you have sell all junk button