Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
do frustrating and inept controls count as an emotion?
instilling anger in the player surely qualifies...

oh and btw if you've ever played final fantasy 7
thats a great guide to emotion, just remember
the bit when (name withheld for spoiler reasons) died.
you know you i mean if you've ever played it...

Yep, that game is the perfect example of frustrating and infuriating your player.
30 second unskippable cutscenes *when you perform an attack in battle*, horribly inconsistent story (People get shot at and blown up all through the game, but when the developers deem it convenient, whatshername can suddenly be *really* killed by whatshisname... In another hour-long unskippable cutscene, no less.
Yes, that's what I call frustrating and inept controls, paired with frustrating and inconsistent storyline, and frustrating and tedious gameplay.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
do frustrating and inept controls count as an emotion?
instilling anger in the player surely qualifies...

If you want to do that, you can, but your game is likely to suffer at the judging stage [smile]

This is somewhat similar to TechnoGoth's question, but I believe it's different enough to merrit a post. Say you have several groups in the game. Depending on how each group feels about you, they'll help you/give you missions or try to eliminate you. Would that be acceptable as an emotion element?

Unrelated to the previous, would a simple rage/guilt/sanity bar be suffient to qualify?

Quote: Original post by Gyrbo
This is somewhat similar to TechnoGoth's question, but I believe it's different enough to merrit a post. Say you have several groups in the game. Depending on how each group feels about you, they'll help you/give you missions or try to eliminate you. Would that be acceptable as an emotion element?

Maybe. You'd need to be clear about their motivations - it needs to be obvious that they hate/fear/trust/whatever you, and that the decisions they're taking aren't just random.

Quote: Unrelated to the previous, would a simple rage/guilt/sanity bar be suffient to qualify?

Yes, provided you actually make it relevant. There are some games (e.g. American McGee's Alice, Indigo Prophecy) that simply called their health bar "sanity meters" to the extent that if you hadn't read the game manual you would just assume it was a health bar - that sort of thing is not really sufficient. If you have a rage/guilt/sanity bar that actually affects the behaviour of the character, then that's OK.

Quote: Original post by Gyrbo
Unrelated to the previous, would a simple rage/guilt/sanity bar be suffient to qualify?

Just adding to this: does sanity alone qualify as suitable for the Emotion element?

I'm planning on using sanity as part of my game, and although I'll also be having other more "standard" emotions (fear, anger etc.) it would be nice to know this if I have to cut gameplay out at a later stage.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid

Quote: Original post by Gyrbo
Unrelated to the previous, would a simple rage/guilt/sanity bar be suffient to qualify?

Just adding to this: does sanity alone qualify as suitable for the Emotion element?

I'm planning on using sanity as part of my game, and although I'll also be having other more "standard" emotions (fear, anger etc.) it would be nice to know this if I have to cut gameplay out at a later stage.

MMmmmmh... not really. If you have the other emotions in there as well then it should be OK, but on its own it's not really close enough.

I should probably ask before I go any further with my development - are emotion-based opinions sufficient for the emotion element?

For example my game is based around government, and the various things that a government does (or does in mine at least). Such as whether the government oppresses the people, or gives them freedom, whether taxes are high or low, whether food is plenty or scarce. Based on this, the population has a morale, as well as an opinion of the government which takes into account all those factors.

Is that enough for emotion, or does the actual emotion itself need to be represented directly? The problem is I wasn't planning on having any specific characters in the game that would be able to indicate any emotions.

Quote: Original post by baldurk
I should probably ask before I go any further with my development - are emotion-based opinions sufficient for the emotion element?

For example my game is based around government, and the various things that a government does (or does in mine at least). Such as whether the government oppresses the people, or gives them freedom, whether taxes are high or low, whether food is plenty or scarce. Based on this, the population has a morale, as well as an opinion of the government which takes into account all those factors.

Is that enough for emotion, or does the actual emotion itself need to be represented directly? The problem is I wasn't planning on having any specific characters in the game that would be able to indicate any emotions.

Simply saying, "The populace is happy" or "The populace is frightened" or something like that should suffice. You can do emotion on a large scale, it doesn't need to be exhibited by specific characters. I think that you do need to explain the morale otherwise it wouldn't be clear that there's any emotion in play at all, but if you do, a simple broad-scale thing should be OK. (Of course, whether you can really work with a single morale across an entire country is a game design decision).

Okay, I was thinking of something, but I need to know if it meets the appropriate concept for emotion.

What I'm thinking of doing is having it so that the squad AI is affected by each members anger level. So if a situation occurs like you've been pinned down in combat and you can't easily emerge from cover, they'd get more angry, which would have both benefits and downfalls. On the benefit side of things, they'd get a defensive bonus and higer offensive power. On the other side of that coin, however, they would also take a lot of stupid risks, like exposing themselves to take shots at enemies, or trying to shoot enemies that are far out of their range.

I was also thinking of having it so that certain classes of soldier would be affected by their anger levels at different rates, or to different effects, but I wanted to make sure that my idea is applicable first.

That sounds OK, provided you're fairly obvious about them "getting angry" (i.e. visual or audio cues).