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A few years ago, the original designers were planning on doing a Manhunter 3 that would be playable on-line. However, I doubt anyone on here can tell you exactly what happened to it.
And I believe the reason why classic Sierra never produced anymore Manhunter games had to do with the relatively weak sales of the first two.
These games were very interesting though. I guess it would be fair to consider them the predecessors of later first-person adventure games like 7th Guest (and its sequel, 11th Hour), the Myst games, Shivers, etc. Meaning, travelling through a good-looking but not very interactive (usually pre-rendered) world, solving one illogically placed logic puzzle after another.
I remember playing Manhunter: NY back in the late eighties and thinking how cool the designs were. The gameplay was however perhaps a bit too different for most when compared to what was selling well at the time.
This is the simplest solution I could come up with:
- Create an interesting and varied game world (the setting).
- Then create two hundred main quests.
- Each main quest will apply to a specific player character.
- The player is at first provided with a blank/generic character (which the player can create, within certain limits).
- He/she is given the option (through interacting with pre-programmed NPC’s or human game masters) of assuming the identity of a pre-determined player character; and in turn assuming the responsibility for finishing a specific main quest.
- If at some point the player gets stuck or tires of this quest, he or she can visit an inn or similar establishment where the quest can be returned to the main collection of quests (for another player to try and solve it).
- Only one player can attempt any one main quest at one time.
- Another thousand or so subquests (i.e. diversions), that would be accessible to everyone, can be created to keep players interacting.
- Present everything in an isometric perspective (with 3D polygonal characters on 2D pre-rendered backgrounds) that would be familiar to adventure game fans. And which should allow access to players with older computers.
I’m not a programmer, so I’m not the best person to judge the logistical viability of the above ideas. However, as a generally creative type of guy I’d love to be a writer/designer on this (as long as the division of work/responsibility is clearly divided between the different members of the writing team).
And hi to Chris Williams. I still remember that article you wrote about mopping up fake blood on the Phantasmagoria set. (Your writing had this “man, this is cool” quality about it.) It was great having a kid my own age skulking about Sierra. I guess, in a sense, us younger fans identified with you.
Anyway, good luck on your future endeavours! And let us know if you ever decide to go into game development!
A person told me about this problem (and it might be you as well!!!) however although i have played some of it in Dosbox, i saw nothing like what you describe!!
Some of you may have seen this already, but Dean Erickson’s got a new day job.. realty!
link–>
Like I said in another thread, what I didn’t like about the latter two Gabriel Knights is how they handed out straightforward explanations to complex mythologies that date back for centuries.
Von Glower never felt all that evil to me. Life and death, that’s nature. Good and evil are artificial constructs created by humans to simplify their perception of the world. Reminds me of a line by the Devil from Brimstone: “My job’s not to decide who lives and dies. My business is with the soul. And I have never damned a soul who didn’t thoroughly deserve it. Mother Nature is a completely different story. She kills indiscriminately, good and evil alike. Why she gets all the good press, I’ll never know.”
They’ve been showing Knight Rider reruns here and I just saw the guy who played Leber in a two-parter called “Knight of the Juggernaut”.
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“…You’re right Chris, that idea is very Sims-like. I think the problem with it is that there’s no actual storytelling….”Yup. Or at east there is only in the sense that any story is just a case of “X wants Y so he can do Z” at heart–but indeed this type of setup would largely require that the players read stories into the game-play themselves instead of just viewing it as the world’s largest version of playing dolls.
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“…I would argue against your basic premise (that this would work) and say instead that planned stories, of the epic variety, are neccessary to adventure games, and without those you do not have an adventure game….”Valid. The problem being how do you allow a player to have this grand epic quest while still allowing multiplayer. For instance, in City of Heroes, they have “Task Forces”, which is a 5 hour series of missions with a story attached to it. But only a very few people do it simply because you essentially have to set aside 5 hours to just that as you are chained to the other players that you are doing it with and if all 5 decided to try and do just one mission each night, you could never be certain that all five would be able to, or properly show up each of the subsequent nights.
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“…I’d rather play Sims than play a game with nothing else except for character interaction. Betrayal was a game that appealed to gamers across genres.
…”Don’t know Betrayal so can’t comment there.
But I do think that given a soap-opera engine as described above, you would have the fexibiility to be able to create large scale stories (at the developers end) that would require players working together (since individually they have only limited control in the large scheme), with the freedom that you wouldn’t have if you were always busy trying to create mini-missions by hand.
For instance, if you were to announce to the players that the kings of each of the kingdoms was going to meet. And then you replace the NPC kings with actors for a large get together (maybe repeating every hour or so) and have some spectacular display of enmity between the kings. And continue doing such stuff working the world into a state of war. But you would announce every time some important event was going to happen and the players would have chances to try and maneuver things so that everythig went well instead of getting worse.
But if, for instance, they failed you could make all of the young men disappear for a week, and then only return a few with different personalities. I think that the players would care very much and that they would indeed view it as that they had lost in the story that had been organized, even though individually they had only a small amount of influence in the result and it was the entire community which failed.But as said, this is just a kind of thing I could envision if I wanted to stick very strictly to the ideas I said earlier. That it is wise to stick to those is not clear. I just think that those are the kind of rules my mom would have laid out for herself if she were to approach making an MMO adventure game.
-Chris
Good call Collector. I’ve played a demo of Syberia and the full game The Longest Journey all the way through, though I don’t consider either of those especially “recent”. Syberia II is of course more recent. The demo of Syberia, while the graphics and mood were awesome, didn’t really grab me. Still, you can’t always tell how good a game is going to be from a demo, and especially in this adventure-less age, you have to take what you can get. I know all the positive response Syberia has received. Well, one of these days 🙂
Brandon, a five year old system would be able to handle Syberia and Syberia II. If you haven’t played them yet, they are true adventure games. I felt that each one was only a half game, but, still enjoyable when played one after the other. I liked The Longest Journey better, but we need to support any good adventure games if we want any more to be developed.
No problem Ken, I know you’re busy with the next major release. I thought this bug sounded familiar. Just wanted to make sure it was noted, if it hadn’t been before.
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“… (by Brandon Klassen) After preview, clicking Edit, the message composition window is now empty.IE 6.0.xxxxxxx….
Brandon.
…”Sorry Brandon – that’s a known bug. I’m struggling with the new version of this software, and have a major release ready to go in the next 2-3 weeks. As soon as I can get that version into production I’ll get this fixed.
-Ken Williams
Welcome here!
If you’ve looked around this site after you posted your message, you might have already found the answers to your questions. But I’ll briefly answer anyway, in case you didn’t.
Jane Jensen has been writing novels and continued working on developing computer games. Visit her website at http://www.janejensen.com.
It’s unlikely that Ken and/or Roberta would bring a game project to another company. Ken has stated that he and/or Roberta might be interested in doing another computer game one day, but that “one day” is not right now 🙂 I can’t picture Ken and/or Roberta at another company such as Blizzard. I mean, we’re talking about the former CEO and lead designer of Sierra here. If they ever were to start a new computer game project, they certainly wouldn’t have to “re-employ” to a company in the industry to make something happen.
I haven’t bought any new PC games for… a while. I’ve been enjoying GameBoy Advance games currently (on an SP), including the new Zelda one (The Minish Cap). I have a feeling I’d play more PC games though if my system was up for it. My system is about 5 years old – time for a new one.
I don’t think 3D creation is just a talent – though talent is still involved. Anyone can learn to model – architecture, for example. But, modelling characters with personality, animating and texturing things, I believe this takes more artistic talent than just knowledge. You mention having trouble creating in the extra plane. I think while it’s true you can learn something (this would apply to anything), naturally there will be people who are more adept at doing it and will learn quicker and have more of an intuitive understanding of it.
“the core bit would not to be to really have any stories, but just lots of non-player characters with lots of stats and interests.”
You’re right Chris, that idea is very Sims-like. I think the problem with it is that there’s no actual storytelling. Yes, with a good system you’re going to get very creative character interaction and development, but it has no story beyond that character interaction. With enough NPC programming and user commitment, can that character interaction develop into stories? I would argue against your basic premise (that this would work) and say instead that planned stories, of the epic variety, are neccessary to adventure games, and without those you do not have an adventure game.
“though I suspect there are still other versions without having to break down and put in RPG stuff.”
Interestingly enough, many RPG-like story elements are in adventure games – dungeons, monsters, heroes, magic, etc. It’s not a mistake to include some RPG elements in an adventure game – take Sierra’s Quest for Glory series. It stands as one of Sierra’s original and top five adventure series (King’s Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Quest for Glory). One of the most unique Sierra games (Dynamix, actually) is Betrayal at Krondor. Sure, it was more RPG-oriented, but the story really shone through and it was released at a time (1993?) when the technology hadn’t exploded to the point that the interest was just in making great battle scenes or special effects. I’m not sure what my point with that was… just that in terms of playability, I’m not sure you’re going to get enough people to want to play your game idea. I’d rather play Sims than play a game with nothing else except for character interaction. Betrayal was a game that appealed to gamers across genres.
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“…We know that the MMORPG formula works. Therefore, it would be a good idea to figure out what those elements that make it work are and apply them to an adventure-centric game. But first it needs to be said that content is king. Exploration and puzzle solving can only last so long before you are tired of seeing the same stuff over and over again….”…At heart every RPG boils down to fighting mobs. And I think most people do tire of it, which is the point at which they switch to a different MMORPG and get to experience the new UI, the different rule set, and the stories in the new world. But at least when you are fighting things you get to see lots of flash and bang, and worry about “dying.” With just story, it would be hard to create a rush like that on a regular basis.
The other, main, issue with a story-based MMO would be that, in an MMORPG you can get objects that you keep and that you want–ecause they make you stronger. If, in a story, the object of your quest is to get a wife…. Well how do we give the player a wife? An NPC won’t do him any good, and you can’t force two players together in the game.
Yet another issue is that stories end. RPGs kind-of end in that there is a maximum level. But that is only self imposed…if you wanted you could keep the levels growing exponentially forever–except you would need to make realms for the two level 130 players =\ Certainly you can have endless mini-stories, but MMORPGs as they already are seem to have difficulty creating enough story content for everyone.
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“…Such a game should have player rankings or ways to increase stats to help give people an incentive to play. As simple as it sounds, it works. I was not kidding about the magic booties…I was at a LAN party and actually witnessed a friend of mine playing EverQuest wait for 3 hours for a monster to spawn that would drop some special item….”Dunno, I approach adventure games as being an attempt to give a player the ability to become a character in a story in as seemless a manner as possible. And this is admittedly not the part of gaming that the core group of computer game players has preferred through history–and so adventure games died and RPG won. Simply, there weren’t any buttons and numbers, and all that was left was silly stories for kids–who don’t play computer games.
So I do agree that it is quite possible that the current set of people buying and playing MMORPGs would not enjoy an MMOAG as I described. The main question for me would be how many girls 12-28 do you think you could get to start playing online games? And the second one is, how many of the people playing WoW also liked Ranma 1/2 (semi-soap-opera Japanese Animation) and why, as they just might like such a game after all.
I think that if I were to start programming an MMOAG, the core bit would not to be to really have any stories, but just lots of non-player characters with lots of stats and interests.
#define PERSONALITY_FUNNY 0
#define PERSONALITY_SERIOUS 1
#define PERSONALITY_TEMPERAMENTAL 2
#define PERSONALITY_VAIN 4
#define PERSONALITY_COWARDLY 5
… //the more the better#define OPINION_LOVES_SECRETLY 0
#define OPINION_LOVES_OPENLY 1
#define OPINION_HATES_SECRETLY 2
#define OPINION_HATES_OPENLY 3
#define OPINION_LIKES 4
#define OPINION_DISLIKES_SECRETLY 5
#define OPINION_DISLIKES_OPENLY 6
#define OPINION_NONE 7
… //the more the better#define RELATION_PARENT 0
#define RELATION_LOVER 1
#define RELATION_SIBLING 2
#define RELATION_FRIEND 3
#define RELATION_SPOUSE 4
#define RELATION_BOSS 5
#define RELATION_MONARCH 6
#define RELATION_OTHER 7
… //yup#define POSITION_BEGGAR 0
#define POSITION_MONARCH 1
#define POSITION_HEIR 2
#define POSITION_NOBLE 3
#define POSITION_NOBLE_HEIR 4
…#define LOOKS_HIDEOUS 0
#define LOOKS_GODLY 1
#define LOOKS_MEH 2
#define LOOKS_GOOD 3
#define LOOKS_BAD 4#define ITEM_WEAPON 1
#define ITEM_DRESS 2
#define ITEM_SHIELD 3
#define ITEM_POTION 4
#define ITEM_WAND 5
…#define EFFECTS_LOOKS_GODLY 0
#define EFFECTS_LOOKS_HIDEOUS 1
#define EFFECTS_OPINION_LOVES_OPENLY 2
#define EFFECTS_RESUSCITATES 3
#define EFFECTS_KILLS 4
#define EFFECTS_FIGHTING_SKILL_UP 5
…struct Relation {
NPC *person;
int opinionOf;
int relationship;
};struct Item {
int type;
int effect;
int value;
};
struct NPCItem {
Item* item;
boolean has;
boolean wants;
};class NPC {
private:
Relation* relations;
int relationCount;
NPCItem* items;
int itemCount;boolean male;
boolean goodGuy;
int socialStanding;
int looks;
int age;
boolean alive;
unsigned char fightingSkill;
…public:
…
};You could then, for instance, randomly create a “family” for each player. Giving the player a room in their house as a servant or such. Each member of the family would have their various interests and statistics. If you find out something from one of your family, then you can go out looking to solve that. And if you do, then they will tell you more about themselves and maybe give you better things (bigger room, nicer clothes, some money, etc.)
For instance, if the son of the household lets slip that he likes the girl across the way, then you know that getting those two together will be good. So you can then go and perhaps buy a love potion. …But for that you will need to make certain they are looking at each other. So you have to talk to the player managing the house across the way to convince them to bring over their daughter so you can lock the two of them in a room. …But the player across the street might be on at different times than you or has their own reasons for not wanting to allow the two to get together.
So instead of buying a potion, you might follow the daughter about a bit. There you might find out she likes some other guy–so him you give a potion that makes him act mean. The next time the daughter meets him, he dumps her and she flees away crying. At which point you bring over the guy from your house. He comforts her and presto, you are back on path.Would be my first idea. In a sense it would be player created content–just they would create it by advancing the story, and it would advance based on what methods they used trying to make the lives of their family better. The biggest issue would be the question of how many different mini-instances you could create for each time two NPCs meet each other so that the player really has the ability to be creative. The above example for instance requires that we can administer potions to NPCs, that an NPC being rude to another can not only change their opinion of that NPC but after it has been changed react properly (burst out crying), get your NPCs to follow you, add a new NPC to a list (daughter meets our NPC), and that our NC who was secretly in love will react properly on seeing the daughter crying.
I think such a thing could be considered as a type of MMOAG that would have marketability (though a bit Sim-My Family) though I suspect there are still other versions without having to break down and put in RPG stuff.-Chris
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“… (by Chris Williams)Mmm…. Really what I was saying is what the ground rules one would have to lay down if he wanted to create something that really was an adventure game and not a role playing or action game. I tend to think in terms that if you try and just blodge one thing about and force it to become something else that it isn’t, you’ll just get a half-assed whatever. So I’m not talking about taking an MMORPG and cutting it down and then trying to add some new stuff in, but rather, that if you wanted to create a new genre (MMOAG) based on traditional adventure games, the first thing one would have to do is accept those limitations before he could go on to actually making a design that could be successful.
…”It’s true what you say about making a game something it is not and having the results stink…However, one must not limit themselves too much by not budging from a design concept that’s about what an adventure game “should” be. To my knowledge, no one has been successful at making an MMOAG, which means no one has the formula. We know that the MMORPG formula works. Therefore, it would be a good idea to figure out what those elements that make it work are and apply them to an adventure-centric game. But first it needs to be said that content is king. Exploration and puzzle solving can only last so long before you are tired of seeing the same stuff over and over again.
That said, we must also not forget the whole point of multiplayer games: Competition/co-op. Simply being a place people can get together and chat, except this time while playing an adventure game, just won’t cut it. Such a game should have player rankings or ways to increase stats to help give people an incentive to play. As simple as it sounds, it works. I was not kidding about the magic booties…I was at a LAN party and actually witnessed a friend of mine playing EverQuest wait for 3 hours for a monster to spawn that would drop some special item. Turned out to be a pair of magic boots that he couldn’t use because they were outside of his character class. Hahaha. But I digress. The point is, if you can make someone sit at a game for three hours waiting for an item to max out his stats – and that’s not to mention people who give up entire nights to get to the next character level – then it’s safe to say that having such a component in a multiplayer game makes sense to have, because that’s the hook.
Brandon, I like your idea about “quest modules”. Of course, having an engine that allows for easy addition of diverse content that cannot be abused by users, should the system be open to them, is an arduous design task. One would also need a large enough database of quests to keep things interesting. That’s why I floated the idea of user-created content, as I don’t think there’s a core devteam of any size that could keep of with the demands of a system like that on their own. To bump up stats, you could have “quest points”. That is, for every quest you complete, you get X points…Very similar to Sierra’s scoring system, I suppose. Hitting certain point thresholds should open up new and more difficult quests…New maps to explore would be a good idea too. The quests available to each player should be randomized as much as possible to limit trading solutions amongst players, and to allow for a certain amount of replayability. How to do that seamlessly is something I’d think to think about more. I don’t know, maybe you could have something like the enchanted door in KQ2 except it leads each player to someplace different.
That Second Life project is pretty interesting. Actually, I know one of the designers who did concept work for their logo.
I agree with what you’re thinking, Chris. As I said above, I haven’t really played any MMORPGs. I’ve never heard of British Legends, though I remember playing a lot of Trade Wars when I was in high school. We’d setup our own games on our school network, and it was a lot of fun.
Here’s the short version of the idea I had a few years ago: to setup a MMOAG, the engine connects to a server and downloads “quest modules”. These modules are either single player quests or multi-player quests. The game-world is exploration-based so that you run across the quests as you explore. The gameplay is centered around activity hubs such as towns. What this means is that while you need people playing the game and building the game world, you also need people to write the quests on a continual basis. The quests are constructed according to certain components so that they are easily added to the game world, but yet they can’t be too simple as to become repetitive. By uploading an entire series of quest modules to the server, you’d basically have a full adventure game. This is probably a poor explanation, but I just wanted to give the gist of the idea. I have a very specific idea of exactly how it could all work.
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“… (by Chris Schweiter)What you are proposing is to eliminate the RPG aspect from MMPORGs, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it effectively guts them….”
Mmm…. Really what I was saying is what the ground rules one would have to lay down if he wanted to create something that really was an adventure game and not a role playing or action game. I tend to think in terms that if you try and just blodge one thing about and force it to become something else that it isn’t, you’ll just get a half-assed whatever. So I’m not talking about taking an MMORPG and cutting it down and then trying to add some new stuff in, but rather, that if you wanted to create a new genre (MMOAG) based on traditional adventure games, the first thing one would have to do is accept those limitations before he could go on to actually making a design that could be successful.
But as you stated, whether or not there is any design that could be successful is unclear. …Or at least a design that is feasible to make based on X budget and Y time (and 0 idea of how well it would do either.)At the moment I personally don’t have any solution–or even if I thought I did it wouldn’t mean I was right of course =)
Am certainly open to post what various thoughts I have had playing MMORPGs, but I do think that for the moment doing such a thing as a true MMOAG would be a very difficult task. Mostly was just trying to show where I think my parents (and myself as it is) would come from on encountering an MMORPG.
…And of course the only game design experience I have is having a wizard named after me.-Chris
PS. Howdy Brandon and Johann as well =)
Lots of good points in this thread.
Surely, by its very essence, an adventure game is like a novel brought to the computer screen. It has a definite beginning and end. With a clear thread running between the two. And clearly delineated characters, a constant setting, etc.
What most people seem to describe when they talk about multiplayer adventure games are really not adventure games at all, but rather “life simulations” (for lack of a better word). You know, they are virtual worlds within which the player get to play out some fantasy life, facing the challenges that go with that life.
Anyway, I’m not saying it’s impossible to build a successful on-line adventure game. Merely that it would be difficult (and that the gameplay would necessitate certain restrictions that MMORPG players may find frustrating or annoying). All the same, it’s a project I would love to be a part of!
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“… (by Stevenshd@earthling.net ) How do you want them scanned? Front, back, dpi, JPEG quality setting etc?…”
As good quality as I can get, around 1425*1425 pixels.Regards,
– AlistairQuote:
“… (by Chris Williams)
So, just to say what would need to be done to make a MMOAG:
No levels or skill modifiers. No dice roll
Zero-twich
Does not require more than arrow keys and the mouse <- Opinion
Player would be able to advance through a story (or perhaps several stories) and a multitude of subplots within each
Completing a story would give only the reward of a nifty animation sequence and perhaps open up a new storyOf course on top of that you would need to figure out how to make it multiplayer and a way to make enough content to satisfy millions of people for several years and provide in-game stuff to do when you just want to putter about.
-Chris…”
Hi, Chris. I just have a few comments on your post. Consider that every online game out there, big and small, is generally about fighting other players and/or building up your character. The majority of the content of MMPORGs is fluff. They keep respawning monsters and have their players whack them so they drop the magic booties. Repeat ad nauseum to level 50. What you are proposing is to eliminate the RPG aspect from MMPORGs, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it effectively guts them. But if that is done, then one must think of a way to make it worthwhile to play with other players other than for the sake of it being a glorified chat room…Otherwise it’s just another adventure game whos online component has no point. I think Myst: Uru tried to do something like this, and I played it. It was a dismal failure. Let me put it this way – The online play was so boring that the players were trying to kick as many of the various construction cones from all over the map into the central fountain as possible. Also, one of the things they had to do to get to another map was to run all over the place finding these little tokens. If you got enough of them, it unlocked a new world for you to experience new levels of boredom in. That is not fun. And those were pretty much the only two things you could do in Uru, other than be ragged on for being “out of character”, which also happened to me.
So the question then is, what can be done differently? How could you whip up so much content not centralized around fighting each other (not that there’s anything bad with a little competition, it’s just that the game shouldn’t be centered around killing things) or pushing up stats that it keeps everyone busy and happy? The answer is: You don’t. You let the customers do it. That’s right, you give them a piece of the development engine and let people do their own thing, and build your persistent world for you. A real life example of how this works can be found with Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com ). Just read through the site, it’s pretty crazy what they have done. The difference between this and what you are proposing is that a MMPOAG would be centrailized around quests and puzzles, instead of opening shops and buying useless junk 🙂
I remember a long time ago I played a text-only game called British Legends – I guess you could call it a MUD – on CompuServe that was kind of like that. It was very Quest-Centric. You increased your rank on the system by completing them – You’d get so many points for each one done. As you got more powerful you could take on more difficult quests, usually involving slaying some high level monster or some such. I can’t say much more as I never got a chance to play it that much (I can’t remember what I paid for CompuServe, but it was per-minute and a lot to rack for a 14 year old), but overall I thought it was pretty fun.
Update: Looks like someone took British Legends and put it on the ‘Net. I hope my memories about it served me as well as I thought they did…See for yourself: http://www.british-legends.com/
