M
Misty
Guest
Victory Road is the best garbage game I ever played. It is a Daytona waifu game with crappy physics. There was a surge of Dark Basic and Visual Basic games being released on the internet. Most of these were garb, but a couple were actually good, like Victory Road. They were 3d games with flatlands 2d collisions. Now you may ask yourself, why are their no GM games equivalent to this? There are several reasons. GM is fully capable of making non-garbage 3d games, but people don't use it to it's full potential. There is a cultural stigma against GM making people feel undue shame. In Visual or Dark Basic, there is a cultural "hoorah" and support. There is an underground vibe that you are a "legit" coder. And this fuels people to put their heart and soul into games, where as GM is less of a challenge to learn, so they have this sense of dawdling and not giving their all, tortoise and hare psychology. VIsual Basic games tend to have low emphasis on gamefeel, because the code is more tedious to program. Game Maker games tend to have a high emphasis on gamefeel, an overfocus. VIsual Basic games like Victory Road focus on the presentation of high quality arts and sounds to compensate over the lack of gamefeel. Where as Game Maker just strolls through with the game feel, often resorting to minimalism art design. Game Maker games often focus more on gamefeel than the game, where as Visual Basic has carefully made level designs to get the most out of the game to compensate for the lack of gamefeel. If you haven't played Victory Road you need to play it to understand what I'm talking about.
Why haven't games the quality of Victory Road been made with Game Maker yet? Game Maker could make games like Victory Road and more, Victory Road is a 2d flatlands game with low poly 3d graphics. The reason people haven't made games like this in Game Maker is the perfectionism syndrome. In Game Maker, the programming ease of use is easy, and people want more more and more. They want their games to have the most features before they get started, they feel unsatisfied if every feature isn't "perfect". Someone might say to themself..."No built in lightmapping in GM? I have to code my own 3d collisions? Must scrap the whole project and think of something else, I refuse to put my efforts to make a nice 3d2d flatlands game." Whereas in DarkBasic/VisualBasic programming is more desperate, they take what they can get, they are clawing at walls, they will accept lack of lightmapping and lack of AAA features in Basic because they just want to prove they can make a great game in VisualBasic. Whereas game maker 3d games tend to have zero effort put into them whatsoever, half of GM race games are just square block roads, couldn't even put the energy to draw a curve texture, bare minimum effort, just inching along, tortoise and hare psychology. Game Maker is a repeat of the Bible Story of the man who had talents who buried it in the sand. He wanted more and more talents, features, and abilities, 1000 wasn't enough, he wanted more to get started...GM is the engine that has 1000 talents but people won't put in the effort in to use it to the best of their potential. As Nocturne said, "Perfection is the enemy of good".
There is this cult of gen x people, who just see a great game, imagine it in their heads, and have this magic sense of just putting everything on their heads into the computer. Then they realize, there is no ability for a computer to just translate what they have in their heads, they have to do a lot of work making models tediously and such. So their product comes out half-baked and nothing like they imagined. Then even worse than gen x are these 12 year old millenial kids, who don't even have anything in their heads besides The Voice modern reality tv and Justin Bieber. And they make a game devoid of spirit or content just an empty game with no personality. Their game didn't fall short of the mark, there was no mark to begin with. The problem is not game maker, the problem is the developers, not putting the spirit into the game.
How a game works is it sucks your soul into the game. A good 3d game will have music that sucks your soul into the game and you feel like you are inside the game actually in the game. Game Maker devs dont seem to be conscious of this trick to make great games. There was this one game maker FPS where you were in an arena and you had to fight waves of robots. The effects were cool, the gameplay was cool, but the game was just a toy, a windup snowglobe to play with and admire. It didn't actually suck your soul into the game, it felt like you were mindcontrolling a person's body, not that you were actually the body. The announcer was funny like Bruce Cambell, which brings me to my next point - overdetail.
Overdetail is when game dev's try to hard to suck you in the game, by adding a bunch of excessive details like a narrator. It actually has the reverse effect and repels you from the game. This is because the game must not interrupt the player's internal narrative and thoughts. A good game will have a player thinking thoughts related to the game while he or she is playing. Some thoughts might be related to gameplay, other thoughts may be related to characters or story or real-life in relation to the game, or alternate fantasies that aren't in the game, such as attack helicopters. Overdetail interrupts the player's internal narrative and forces an unwanted narrative on the player. It is like trying to take a bath while annoying people keep talking and bothering you. It's really annoying when tutorials just pop up or make you over focus on them. A good tutorial will be a trap, like sign in a cave that they have to find, to make it feel like it was their decision to do to the tutorial. The tutorial should never be forced, in a menu there should be an option to do a tutorial. The tutorial should feel like a "game", like a challenge that they accomplished something by completing. Overstructure is when a game tries too hard to force you into the tutorial, but games like these have other symptoms and metaphors as well, such as forcing you to climb a 2 foot wall using wall jump only, and puts an invisible wall on top of it just to force you to "learn" the mechanic.
Pop games
Both Seiklus and The Cleaner are both Metroid Prime and Star Wars ripoff games. Nothing wrong with that, both are original enough to be unique and their "own" games. The problem I have with both games is the environment seems aimless. Metroid Prime did not have an aimless environment, the first level was completely linear and when you finally went to the open world, you had a sense of awe and wonderment about you, and the quest was clear, find the artifacts and gain abilities to access areas. Neither of those 2 games had this clear sense of purpose. The Cleaner had repetetive textures and directionless environments, Seiklus had environments that were a watered-down copy of Metroid Prime 1. Both games lacked polish and detail to the environments and physics. Both games had a sense of "being lost" but with no direction. In the Cleaner I wasn't even sure who I was, I looked like one of the bad guys, but the story implied I was a good guy? There was no clear direction to what I was supposed to do, other than shoot enemies...there was a guy shooting yellow things at me but I couldn't tell if he was friend or foe, or if the yellow things were helpful or dangerous, or if he was specifically targetting me or just aiming randomly and for no reason. The maps were confusing, lots of teleportation going on and easy to get lost, no sense of heading or footing. The Cleaner had lots of flash but no substance. The combat was repetitive and simple. The game rewarded luck more than skill, you were too slow to dodge enemy lasers so you just hoped they provided clear patterns, and your own lasers were too slow to even reliably pre-shoot enemies, just had to hope they would walk into it. All of this is bad game design. Far as Seiklus goes, I prefer a game with text. I can see how people might like it, call it avante garde, just not my thing, I think the movie Cassanova is ok, just not my thing, I prefer movies with color, I prefer games with text or audio narrative. I could see the "nature" thing they were trying to do with Seiklus. But the graphics were very simple, couldn't really get "into" the silent nature thing they were trying to do with the mspaint graphics. If it had more realistic and natural graphics and music that fit the calm pace of the game, instead of loud chiptune music, I could have "got" the nature thing they were trying to do with it. That being said, there were good things about both games. The story and narrative of The Cleaners was very unique unlike anything I have seen even in professional games. So the guy has talent, just should be part of a team, shouldn't be expected to make an entire game with no help. Seiklus also had talent in it too, there was a sublime essence to the color theory that was really unique and fresh to look at, sort of like a watered-down copy of books like 'Frog and Toad'. That being said, both these games are a bit overrated, reviewers mainly focusing what they want to focus on and ignoring the elephant in the room. Not that this is an exclusive trend to just game maker games...there is a huge bias of supporting indie games in general, I've seen some darkbasic indie games get universal 5/5 star ratings and they were much worse than even mediocre game maker games. Even when I was in middle school I made a game that was pretty much total garb and all of my friends and classmates said it was amazing, so I started to believe it was amazing. Go figure.
It's amazing what a little rub can do to the human mind. Add a little of the right music, game turns from plain to amazing. Add some of the right graphics, game turns from amazing into genius. Add a crowd of fans praising the game, game turns from genius to legend of gods. Who knows, you add a little nypmphs and tinkerbell faeries coming out the computer screen and giving you romantic massages, people might even say the game came from aliens.
Caos Trigger Golem had better gameplay than both those games. It doesn't try to be anything fancy, nothing avant garde, it just does what it does, and does it well. Well, sorta. I couldn't get past the 4th save area, I tried to spawn a golem but it just wouldn't spawn.
The legit-ness of 2d games with 3d graphics.
If a game is set on a 2d plane, with 2d collisions, but has 3d graphics (like Hovertank 3d or Victory Road)...it is not actually a 2d game, but a 3d game. Let me explain. The graphics themselves alter the gameplay...the 3d graphics allow you to see enemies in the distance, radically changing the gameplay. You can do things in a 2d game with 3d graphics that you can't do in a top-view down tank game. In a top-down tank game, gameplay is restricted to a small box area. There is also no sense of height or depth. In a 2d game with 3d graphics you might have a bridge section where you can fall down the map, but in a 2d game that's top down it would just look "odd". And it also just looks better on the eyes. Smash Bros is a 2d game with 2d gameplay but 3d graphics. The combat of Smash Bros looks better than pixel art because with pixel art there is zooming problems and the fists get pixelly. It is also easier to animate using a 3d bone system than changing a character each frame by hand. With bones you just make a character once, then animate the bones. If you mess up it's no muss no fuss, just redo the bones. But if you mess up a 2d character animation you wasted hours and hours and have to redraw the character frame by frame all over again. 2d bone animation looks a bit odd and presents a problem or two. Sometimes 2d bones can make a character look 3d, but only in a parallax way. With 2d bones you cannot make a character turn and look at the camera, they are locked in parallax flatlands. So when a character changes direction you have to temporarily disable the bones and replace it with a custom turning animation. I prefer the workflow of 3d bones but unfortunately game maker doesnt have it built in. 3d bones are far superior to md2s.
Various notes.
Some games are all flash, no substance, and others are all substance, no flash. Games with only flash, no substance, usually hook you in with great cutscenes and great story, but have monotonous gameplay you only play to reveal more of the cutscenes and story. Example of this is "The Cleaner". Games with no flash, only substance, have great gameplay, but no cutscenes, no story or music to keep you hooked to the game. Example of this is "Suave".
Uncanny valley
A lot of games try to be simple on purpose, this way the creator can better diagnose and organize the game. When a game becomes too advanced it becomes hard to diagnose, hard for the author to see "what" exactly is wrong with the game. This is one of the reason classic games are better than modern games like modern race games...modern race games try to be too realistic, loses its artistic identity and ends up just being a pile of pop-music. You can't say modern race games are "bad", just missing that special "something" that made classic games special. It's like an arranged marriage...it's "ok", you can live with it... but it's missing that special "something".
Why haven't games the quality of Victory Road been made with Game Maker yet? Game Maker could make games like Victory Road and more, Victory Road is a 2d flatlands game with low poly 3d graphics. The reason people haven't made games like this in Game Maker is the perfectionism syndrome. In Game Maker, the programming ease of use is easy, and people want more more and more. They want their games to have the most features before they get started, they feel unsatisfied if every feature isn't "perfect". Someone might say to themself..."No built in lightmapping in GM? I have to code my own 3d collisions? Must scrap the whole project and think of something else, I refuse to put my efforts to make a nice 3d2d flatlands game." Whereas in DarkBasic/VisualBasic programming is more desperate, they take what they can get, they are clawing at walls, they will accept lack of lightmapping and lack of AAA features in Basic because they just want to prove they can make a great game in VisualBasic. Whereas game maker 3d games tend to have zero effort put into them whatsoever, half of GM race games are just square block roads, couldn't even put the energy to draw a curve texture, bare minimum effort, just inching along, tortoise and hare psychology. Game Maker is a repeat of the Bible Story of the man who had talents who buried it in the sand. He wanted more and more talents, features, and abilities, 1000 wasn't enough, he wanted more to get started...GM is the engine that has 1000 talents but people won't put in the effort in to use it to the best of their potential. As Nocturne said, "Perfection is the enemy of good".
There is this cult of gen x people, who just see a great game, imagine it in their heads, and have this magic sense of just putting everything on their heads into the computer. Then they realize, there is no ability for a computer to just translate what they have in their heads, they have to do a lot of work making models tediously and such. So their product comes out half-baked and nothing like they imagined. Then even worse than gen x are these 12 year old millenial kids, who don't even have anything in their heads besides The Voice modern reality tv and Justin Bieber. And they make a game devoid of spirit or content just an empty game with no personality. Their game didn't fall short of the mark, there was no mark to begin with. The problem is not game maker, the problem is the developers, not putting the spirit into the game.
How a game works is it sucks your soul into the game. A good 3d game will have music that sucks your soul into the game and you feel like you are inside the game actually in the game. Game Maker devs dont seem to be conscious of this trick to make great games. There was this one game maker FPS where you were in an arena and you had to fight waves of robots. The effects were cool, the gameplay was cool, but the game was just a toy, a windup snowglobe to play with and admire. It didn't actually suck your soul into the game, it felt like you were mindcontrolling a person's body, not that you were actually the body. The announcer was funny like Bruce Cambell, which brings me to my next point - overdetail.
Overdetail is when game dev's try to hard to suck you in the game, by adding a bunch of excessive details like a narrator. It actually has the reverse effect and repels you from the game. This is because the game must not interrupt the player's internal narrative and thoughts. A good game will have a player thinking thoughts related to the game while he or she is playing. Some thoughts might be related to gameplay, other thoughts may be related to characters or story or real-life in relation to the game, or alternate fantasies that aren't in the game, such as attack helicopters. Overdetail interrupts the player's internal narrative and forces an unwanted narrative on the player. It is like trying to take a bath while annoying people keep talking and bothering you. It's really annoying when tutorials just pop up or make you over focus on them. A good tutorial will be a trap, like sign in a cave that they have to find, to make it feel like it was their decision to do to the tutorial. The tutorial should never be forced, in a menu there should be an option to do a tutorial. The tutorial should feel like a "game", like a challenge that they accomplished something by completing. Overstructure is when a game tries too hard to force you into the tutorial, but games like these have other symptoms and metaphors as well, such as forcing you to climb a 2 foot wall using wall jump only, and puts an invisible wall on top of it just to force you to "learn" the mechanic.
Pop games
Both Seiklus and The Cleaner are both Metroid Prime and Star Wars ripoff games. Nothing wrong with that, both are original enough to be unique and their "own" games. The problem I have with both games is the environment seems aimless. Metroid Prime did not have an aimless environment, the first level was completely linear and when you finally went to the open world, you had a sense of awe and wonderment about you, and the quest was clear, find the artifacts and gain abilities to access areas. Neither of those 2 games had this clear sense of purpose. The Cleaner had repetetive textures and directionless environments, Seiklus had environments that were a watered-down copy of Metroid Prime 1. Both games lacked polish and detail to the environments and physics. Both games had a sense of "being lost" but with no direction. In the Cleaner I wasn't even sure who I was, I looked like one of the bad guys, but the story implied I was a good guy? There was no clear direction to what I was supposed to do, other than shoot enemies...there was a guy shooting yellow things at me but I couldn't tell if he was friend or foe, or if the yellow things were helpful or dangerous, or if he was specifically targetting me or just aiming randomly and for no reason. The maps were confusing, lots of teleportation going on and easy to get lost, no sense of heading or footing. The Cleaner had lots of flash but no substance. The combat was repetitive and simple. The game rewarded luck more than skill, you were too slow to dodge enemy lasers so you just hoped they provided clear patterns, and your own lasers were too slow to even reliably pre-shoot enemies, just had to hope they would walk into it. All of this is bad game design. Far as Seiklus goes, I prefer a game with text. I can see how people might like it, call it avante garde, just not my thing, I think the movie Cassanova is ok, just not my thing, I prefer movies with color, I prefer games with text or audio narrative. I could see the "nature" thing they were trying to do with Seiklus. But the graphics were very simple, couldn't really get "into" the silent nature thing they were trying to do with the mspaint graphics. If it had more realistic and natural graphics and music that fit the calm pace of the game, instead of loud chiptune music, I could have "got" the nature thing they were trying to do with it. That being said, there were good things about both games. The story and narrative of The Cleaners was very unique unlike anything I have seen even in professional games. So the guy has talent, just should be part of a team, shouldn't be expected to make an entire game with no help. Seiklus also had talent in it too, there was a sublime essence to the color theory that was really unique and fresh to look at, sort of like a watered-down copy of books like 'Frog and Toad'. That being said, both these games are a bit overrated, reviewers mainly focusing what they want to focus on and ignoring the elephant in the room. Not that this is an exclusive trend to just game maker games...there is a huge bias of supporting indie games in general, I've seen some darkbasic indie games get universal 5/5 star ratings and they were much worse than even mediocre game maker games. Even when I was in middle school I made a game that was pretty much total garb and all of my friends and classmates said it was amazing, so I started to believe it was amazing. Go figure.
It's amazing what a little rub can do to the human mind. Add a little of the right music, game turns from plain to amazing. Add some of the right graphics, game turns from amazing into genius. Add a crowd of fans praising the game, game turns from genius to legend of gods. Who knows, you add a little nypmphs and tinkerbell faeries coming out the computer screen and giving you romantic massages, people might even say the game came from aliens.
Caos Trigger Golem had better gameplay than both those games. It doesn't try to be anything fancy, nothing avant garde, it just does what it does, and does it well. Well, sorta. I couldn't get past the 4th save area, I tried to spawn a golem but it just wouldn't spawn.
The legit-ness of 2d games with 3d graphics.
If a game is set on a 2d plane, with 2d collisions, but has 3d graphics (like Hovertank 3d or Victory Road)...it is not actually a 2d game, but a 3d game. Let me explain. The graphics themselves alter the gameplay...the 3d graphics allow you to see enemies in the distance, radically changing the gameplay. You can do things in a 2d game with 3d graphics that you can't do in a top-view down tank game. In a top-down tank game, gameplay is restricted to a small box area. There is also no sense of height or depth. In a 2d game with 3d graphics you might have a bridge section where you can fall down the map, but in a 2d game that's top down it would just look "odd". And it also just looks better on the eyes. Smash Bros is a 2d game with 2d gameplay but 3d graphics. The combat of Smash Bros looks better than pixel art because with pixel art there is zooming problems and the fists get pixelly. It is also easier to animate using a 3d bone system than changing a character each frame by hand. With bones you just make a character once, then animate the bones. If you mess up it's no muss no fuss, just redo the bones. But if you mess up a 2d character animation you wasted hours and hours and have to redraw the character frame by frame all over again. 2d bone animation looks a bit odd and presents a problem or two. Sometimes 2d bones can make a character look 3d, but only in a parallax way. With 2d bones you cannot make a character turn and look at the camera, they are locked in parallax flatlands. So when a character changes direction you have to temporarily disable the bones and replace it with a custom turning animation. I prefer the workflow of 3d bones but unfortunately game maker doesnt have it built in. 3d bones are far superior to md2s.
Various notes.
Some games are all flash, no substance, and others are all substance, no flash. Games with only flash, no substance, usually hook you in with great cutscenes and great story, but have monotonous gameplay you only play to reveal more of the cutscenes and story. Example of this is "The Cleaner". Games with no flash, only substance, have great gameplay, but no cutscenes, no story or music to keep you hooked to the game. Example of this is "Suave".
Uncanny valley
A lot of games try to be simple on purpose, this way the creator can better diagnose and organize the game. When a game becomes too advanced it becomes hard to diagnose, hard for the author to see "what" exactly is wrong with the game. This is one of the reason classic games are better than modern games like modern race games...modern race games try to be too realistic, loses its artistic identity and ends up just being a pile of pop-music. You can't say modern race games are "bad", just missing that special "something" that made classic games special. It's like an arranged marriage...it's "ok", you can live with it... but it's missing that special "something".
