Comments on: Colour for Movement

By: Jasper

Jasper — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:54:34 +0000

My draft comment was too long and V. boring! A brief version:
As a game player I have no idea how these things are or can be done.
To a very minor degree some games have done something similar. Eg in Unreal 2 when the ship lands for repairs some enemy engage you while others try to break intio the ship.
Overall I think PP makes some interesting and insightful points.
Except for one: I don’t think I would enjoy a game where the player and/or the enemy merged into the background if still or slow moving. We would all be inching around to avoid being seen. A very small map would take an awful long time to play.
Might work as a very very brief transition between chapters.
Meanwhile; Snakes vision varies from non-existant to very keen. Common to all is a sharp sense of smell using their tongues. I’m off for a jolly good licking.

By: Freyband

Freyband — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:16:29 +0000

Reminds me of multiple enemies throughout the games I’ve played over the past years.
You mention an enemy running away when alone. That reminds me of the raiders from Fallout 3. If hurt enough (or too many teammates die) some will run away. The trying to keep distance from the player (vaguely) reminds of a boss fight from Dead Rising where the boss uses a sniper and runs when the player gets close (or sometimes when he can’t get a shot at you). The enemy only moving when you do I remember from the Third (I think) Legend of Zelda game. He also could only be killed via a slash/shot/? to the back so you’d have to trick him to getting him to turn his back to kill him. As for the attacking when you move a certain speed it reminds me one of the creatures from the first Half-Life games (I’ve only found called as tentacles so far, not too suiting for these giant green freaks). The thing was blind and only reacted to loud noises. So you move slow it’s oblivious to your presence, yet the mappers of Half-life made it so there were crate you had to smash to get on w/ the map. You smash it the things attack where you made the noise as well as the general area nearby, but if you were to do something like throw a grenade the things would move to where the explosion was and attack that area instead). You could chose to do something like run (never turned out well for me ) or sneak by (turned out bad often but it worked better then running).
I think seeing elements like this in HL2 mods (or continuations) would be amazing.

By: planetphillip

planetphillip — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:32:58 +0000

Yes, for Episode Three it might be cool because of some of it being set against a white background.

By: reaper47

reaper47 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:14:09 +0000

Nice. This is the kind of enemy idea that seems obvious at first (ever since Jurassic Park the “it can’t see you if you stand still” idea has become rather popular), yet with the exception of some RPG-style invisibility-gizmo, this has hardly, if ever, been done in an FPS.

Would love to see an enemy like that for Episode 3, for example. It would be a nice counter part to the be-quiet-that-thing-HEARS-you tentacle from HL1.

By: Wesp5

Wesp5 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:10:55 +0000

The Source engine FPS/RPG hybrid Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines already uses a kind of similar feature for the player. Some clans have a discipline (spell) that makes them practically invisible but at early levels only when they are not moving. It’s nice to see yourself blend into the background the moment you stand still.

By: Zanpa

Zanpa — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:55:26 +0000

Very interesting, but waaay too hard to create.
That’s why it doesn’t already exist (or in a much simpler form).

By: Jasper

Jasper — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:23:56 +0000

Thank you PP. You mention Larry Niven. A writer of heroic imagination and, together with a few others including Asimov and A. C. Clarke, somewhat prophetic. An example being ‘A Gift from Earth’ being very relevant to today’s obsession with human spare parts. His earlier works were enormous in scope and variety. ‘The Legacy of Heorot’ is a must read for HL gamers.
A link for those who do not know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Niven
Off topic? Not actually because readings of these works give a greater understanding of the question(s) posed in the this post as well as feeding the imaginations of game writers and players.
Indeed, this post is deeper than it might appear and needs careful thought and response.

By: planetphillip

planetphillip — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:33:06 +0000

Fixed, strange I made the mistake twice.

By: Jasper

Jasper — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:21:58 +0000

Isaac Asimov is a real science and science fiction writer par excellence.
To the get spelling of his name wrong is nearly akin to blasphemy!
Please PP, correct and then remove this comment. Thanks.
For the post – I’ve read it but need to understand it before making a comment, if any.

By: andi

andi — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:25:56 +0000

This could work. This could work very well. The AI would have to be planned…. well, let’s say that you could fit a flow chart for HL2′s combine AI onto an A4 sheet. I postulate that the level of detail required to do the suggested (without rethinking the whole approach to AI) would take up atleast an A2 sheet. A challenge worthy of the gods themselves. Beta testing, even alpha testing would take forever. Would the result be worth it, however? Yes, I say. Infact, I would dearly love to get cracking on this right now, but (again, postulation), it would take a good few years.

I really wish to see this style of gameplay realised; it could definately be considered a “step forward” for games.

By: planetphillip

planetphillip — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:09:35 +0000

I love the idea of killing one enemy but not others and the way that could work. Especially if you could make it look like one enemy killed another – kinda set them against each other.

By: SolidFake

SolidFake — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:09:05 +0000

some interesting concepts there, it was ever one of my favourite moments when I have hidden in a closet in Metal Gear Solid 2 and the enemies out there are searching for me, slowly opening one closet after the other. I really didn’t know what todo, should I go out and fight? Or running away? Or hope that the alarm counter goes down before they come to my closet.

btw: Snakes can’t hear, because they have no ears. They feel the vibrations from the earth, that’s why they don’t “hear” you when you stand still and why they are afraid when you stomp on the ground. But they still can smell and see you

By: planetphillip

planetphillip — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:05:22 +0000

I wasn’t panning the game just the fact that the developers made a big fuss about the enemies not attacking you.

By: Kyouryuu

Kyouryuu — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:57:14 +0000

“Bioshock developers made a big fuss about how cool their enemies were because they didn’t attack you on sight. Shock! Horror!” [...] “Let me make sure you understand what I am suggesting. When the player or enemy stops moving they fade into the background. ”

Maybe you should complete BioShock before panning it. Someone didn’t find the Chameleon Tonic…

By: CrowbarSka

CrowbarSka — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:22:20 +0000

This was actually used in the recently-released multiplayer mod Neo-Tokyo. One of the character classes has motion-sensor goggles.

However, that is human players fighting other human players and the kind of combat you suggested could end up being very different. I honestly love the idea of being stalked by some big, powerful creature and having to remain absolutely still even when it is right next to me. It reminds me of that famous T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park: absolutely terrifying!

Are you familiar with Metroid Prime on the Nintendo GameCube? You play as a human character but your ship has crashed on an alien world, and you get to observe (and fight) many different kinds of creatures with varying behaviours. I really like that idea of discovering new species of animals and plants, some hostile and some not. There could even be some kind of ecological system where certain aliens prey on others. Maybe if you protect some of them they can act to your advantage (open up new routes or something).