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Fewer, better, harder, stronger

Started by superpig Aug 16, 2007 at 4:28 PM 32 replies 7.6k views

Original Post

Aug 16, 2007 at 4:28 PM

Most games in which you're battling enemies tend to create their gameplay by continually throwing lots of short-lived enemies at you. As the game goes on and the difficulty gets harder, you might see more enemies, or ones with more HP or greater accuracy, but the basic pattern doesn't change - continual onslaught, mowing your way through hundreds upon hundreds of bad guys. I'm interested in exploring the idea of the opposite route - use only a few enemies, maybe one at a time, but have the fights last longer. It's almost like a game built around back-to-back boss fights, but not quite so contrived... My number one question is, how do we make fighting against one enemy for a prolonged period of time remain interesting? Replacing ten enemies with one enemy that has ten times the health won't be interesting, it'll just be tedious, and it tends to destroy immersion (15 shots to the head and no frag? Bad game designer!). So, first thought is that the battleground needs to vary. One of the reasons the 'onslaught' is playable is because you're facing the enemies in new tactical situations; they might be pretty much identical enemies but the situation you're facing them in is different and requires a different approach. So, if we want to face off against a single enemy for 10 minutes, we need to keep the situation changing regularly throughout that. I don't think this idea is anything new; for example, the battle against the Gonarch near the end of Half-Life involved facing the creature in a number of different 'areas,' where enough damage dealt in one section caused the battle to progress to the next. The important thing, though, is that the change in situation causes a big enough change in gameplay, because "Same shit, different location" isn't that great. Instead I'm thinking things like a fight that progresses from a regular gunfight into a warehouse filled with hydrogen canisters, forcing you to be much more careful about shooting and using stealth and close combat techniques instead. There's also possibilities here for chase gameplay - both the player escaping the enemy and the enemy escaping the player - though care must be taken to ensure that the chase is interrupted at points to keep the gameplay varied. Second thought is that in order to recreate some of the "tracking multiple enemies" feeling that the groups of bad guys create, we need to allow our enemy to create 'auxiliary threats.' This is a great place to use some of the latest player tactics against themselves, and get the enemies using physics-gaming to their advantage. Imagine that you've managed to land a shot on the enemy, so he's in cover. You wait for him to pop out so you can land another shot, but instead of leaning out to shoot at you, he shoots the support holding up the platform above your head. While you're diving out the way of the platform, he makes a run for it, firing a couple of shots in your direction, and then he's disappeared and you have to find him again. Third thought is that if you've got this kind of thing going on, then as soon as you do encounter pairs of triples of enemies, the experience should become much more deadly. Using the same tactics that have been established in single-enemy mode but adding teamwork on top of that should really challenge the player. What are your thoughts on this? (I'd like us, if possible, to ignore the technical implementation of this kind of AI).

d000hg

Aug 16, 2007 at 4:37 PM

Well what realistic situations are you one on one, except a boxing/fighting game?

Gyrthok

Aug 16, 2007 at 4:49 PM

My first impression brings to mind the Tyrant monster from Resident Evil 2, no matter how many times i blew up that guy (and wasted valuable ammo) he'd get right back up and plow through a wall after me.

It seems like the kind of game that would be more tactical and puzzle like, since you would have to plan your moves and tactics ahead (like in the original Alien movie, where you can look at schematics of the airducts and plan routes/traps, and try and tactically out think your opponent).

ShinkaFudan

Aug 16, 2007 at 4:57 PM

You may be referring to RPG or action games, but this post definitely hints to a game I've played recently called "Warning Forever". It's a shmup that is just boss after boss after boss...

Here it is: http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/warningforever

masonium

Aug 16, 2007 at 4:58 PM

Shadow of the colossus, for playstation 2, has a similar concept, on the very basic level. The game consists entirely of very large "bosses" that you must conquer.

superpig

Aug 16, 2007 at 5:17 PM

Quote:
Original post by d000hg
Well what realistic situations are you one on one, except a boxing/fighting game?

I'm thinking more action movies. Have you seen Mr and Mrs Smith?

There are plenty of situations for it. Fact is, given the average body count of most games - what kind of organisation has that kind of expendable manpower? Clearly they can only afford it because the people are complete muppets and they don't have to spend any money on training. If their people were actually more competent and able to last more than 10 seconds against you they might think twice before sending 20 of them after you at a time.

superpig

Aug 16, 2007 at 5:41 PM

Quote:
Original post by Gyrthok
My first impression brings to mind the Tyrant monster from Resident Evil 2, no matter how many times i blew up that guy (and wasted valuable ammo) he'd get right back up and plow through a wall after me.

Was it fun? Or just annoying?

Quote:
It seems like the kind of game that would be more tactical and puzzle like, since you would have to plan your moves and tactics ahead (like in the original Alien movie, where you can look at schematics of the airducts and plan routes/traps, and try and tactically out think your opponent).

Yes, that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of. The kind of situation where you'll shoot at someone not actually because you think you'll hit them but because you're trying to drive them back towards a danger zone or something like that.

Jaws

Aug 16, 2007 at 5:43 PM

I want to have the same kind of extended combat feel that you're talking about in my game. It would definitely make fights more memorable.

You mentioned something about doing a certain amount of damage to the enemy, causing the fight to move into another area, to ensure that the fight actually does go through all of the planned stages. That's probably the most feasible way of achieving the effect (by scripting the sequence of areas specifically based on the damage), but I foresee that avenue running into another problem you mentioned about enemies that can take tons of hits, destroying immersion. A well placed hit to the head should probably finish off most enemies, but if you're only in the first stage of the fight, the enemy will seem to have some magic protection that allows him to survive the hit just so that the next area of the fight can be used.

I'm not sure how I would solve the problem, either. A content-heavy way of doing this would be to just produce so many instances of these enemies in areas that have potential for multi-stage fights that some of the fights would inevitably end up that way, even if some of the fights would end early on with lucky blows to the head. Some sort of dynamic relationship between the AI units and the surrounding environments would probably be necessary.

Captain P

Aug 16, 2007 at 5:56 PM

Your description reminds me of Brothers in Arms. Gunfights aren't run-n-gun: you'll quickly end up dead that way. And since firing a weapon isn't dead accurate, especially when an enemy is behind cover, smart thinking, pinning down enemies and outflanking them is what it's mostly about - with tanks and anti-tank weaponry later thrown in to add some variety and difficulty. It's almost more of an action-puzzle at some points than a shooter. By extending this sort of combat mechanisms with coordinated enemy attacks (the AI in BiA was mostly defensive), you could create some interesting and challenging situations. It's probably not the kind of game you'll want to play every day, but it's surely a refreshing and interesting experience.

I've once tried to do a similar thing in a Half-Life map I made. I got sick of the many grunt-infested maps so I wanted to create a map with few, but smart, enemies. What I did was dropping 4 grunts behind the (then unarmed) player, and providing some subtle hints towards an escape route. Once escaped, the grunts couldn't normally get to the player, but with some scripting, I provided a surprize for the player: the grunts had 'followed' him. I then gave the player a shotgun and an area that provided some cover but otherwise favored mid to long-range fights, so it was the players turn to lure the grunts into a trap.

I'm not sure to what extend my intentions succeeded, but I think that at least making your enemies appear smart can add another dimension to combat. Overusing them as cannon-fodder on the other hand, will establish a 'cheap' imago, just as adding health and stronger weapons does. I think the main thing here is that there's no new tricks and strategies to discover behind stronger enemies: they behave the same, it just takes some more time to take them out. Once you've figured out their patterns, there's nothing fearsome left in them. An unpredictable and smart enemy, or an unknown entity, is probably much more intimidating.

Just my 2 cents. :)

EDIT: @ShinkaFudan: Warning Forever is great fun! The most interesting thing to it is that the next boss has improved on the weak spots of the previous one. Attack from the back, and the next boss has long arms to prevent you from getting there. Attack from the front and it'll get more frontal armor. If lasers killed you a lot, the next boss has more lasers, etc. A good example of adding smartness to enemies. :)

JWalsh

Aug 16, 2007 at 5:57 PM

See Shadow of The Colossus.

The entire game is literally traveling from one boss fight to another, with no intermediate combat. Once you reach a boss, you must locate hot spots on his body which must be shot with a bow, or stabbed with your sword.

The difficulty lies both in determining where the hot spots are on the enormous monsters, and then determining how in the hell you're actually going to pierce the hotspots. The monsters range from slow and easily dominated, to aquatic mobs that prevent you from breathing if you stay on too long, to flying monsters that you must pierce in mid-air while balancing on their backs.

In the case of SoC, each boss is almost a level in themselves, as they have ramps as part of their armor, and hair/fur which can be climbed. So you must stabs the hotspots, all while dealing with environmental effects, and the constant shifting of their bodies always in motion from traveling or flight.

Cheers!

superpig

Aug 16, 2007 at 5:58 PM

Shadow of the Colossus certainly has some of the elements I'm talking about. (I really ought to play it sometime...)

Do you find that the gameplay it presents is sufficiently varied? I'm a big fan of the kind of platforming that it apparently features so I imagine I'd enjoy it, but I wonder that I wouldn't get bored after the sixth or seventh level.

Also, how much tension does it manage to create? I always imagined that once you climb aboard the Colossus it's basically non-stop until you either fall off, die, or successfully complete it. Without those opportunities to stop and take breathers, or the quiet pause to make the player wonder what's going on, I'm curious if it doesn't run at "maximum Gs" for the whole of each level with a rest inbetween.

EnigmaticCoder

Aug 16, 2007 at 6:06 PM

Quote:
Original post by superpig
Most games in which you're battling enemies tend to create their gameplay by continually throwing lots of short-lived enemies at you. As the game goes on and the difficulty gets harder, you might see more enemies, or ones with more HP or greater accuracy, but the basic pattern doesn't change - continual onslaught, mowing your way through hundreds upon hundreds of bad guys.

I'm interested in exploring the idea of the opposite route - use only a few enemies, maybe one at a time, but have the fights last longer. It's almost like a game built around back-to-back boss fights, but not quite so contrived...

My number one question is, how do we make fighting against one enemy for a prolonged period of time remain interesting? Replacing ten enemies with one enemy that has ten times the health won't be interesting, it'll just be tedious, and it tends to destroy immersion (15 shots to the head and no frag? Bad game designer!).

So, first thought is that the battleground needs to vary. One of the reasons the 'onslaught' is playable is because you're facing the enemies in new tactical situations; they might be pretty much identical enemies but the situation you're facing them in is different and requires a different approach. So, if we want to face off against a single enemy for 10 minutes, we need to keep the situation changing regularly throughout that. I don't think this idea is anything new; for example, the battle against the Gonarch near the end of Half-Life involved facing the creature in a number of different 'areas,' where enough damage dealt in one section caused the battle to progress to the next. The important thing, though, is that the change in situation causes a big enough change in gameplay, because "Same shit, different location" isn't that great. Instead I'm thinking things like a fight that progresses from a regular gunfight into a warehouse filled with hydrogen canisters, forcing you to be much more careful about shooting and using stealth and close combat techniques instead. There's also possibilities here for chase gameplay - both the player escaping the enemy and the enemy escaping the player - though care must be taken to ensure that the chase is interrupted at points to keep the gameplay varied.

Second thought is that in order to recreate some of the "tracking multiple enemies" feeling that the groups of bad guys create, we need to allow our enemy to create 'auxiliary threats.' This is a great place to use some of the latest player tactics against themselves, and get the enemies using physics-gaming to their advantage. Imagine that you've managed to land a shot on the enemy, so he's in cover. You wait for him to pop out so you can land another shot, but instead of leaning out to shoot at you, he shoots the support holding up the platform above your head. While you're diving out the way of the platform, he makes a run for it, firing a couple of shots in your direction, and then he's disappeared and you have to find him again.

Third thought is that if you've got this kind of thing going on, then as soon as you do encounter pairs of triples of enemies, the experience should become much more deadly. Using the same tactics that have been established in single-enemy mode but adding teamwork on top of that should really challenge the player.

What are your thoughts on this? (I'd like us, if possible, to ignore the technical implementation of this kind of AI).

I think it's a great idea, and I have something to add. Give the player some sort of motivation to fight the enemy. For instance, add a cut scene before the battle, and provide some background information about the enemy. Make the enemy more human rather than some faceless opponent. Give the player a reason to hate the enemy, or make the enemy and the player have a mutual respect in spite of the battle (i.e. Dyne and Barret - Final Fantasy VII). Of course this doesn't have to happen for each enemy because that would be a lot of work and maybe tedious. Even so, I think this would add depth to the game.

Additionally, you could have recurring enemies who change with the player. You mentioned that battles could change as you progress through them. Well, you could draw this progression out for several encounters. Think Bowser from Mario 64.

Also, you could give the enemy emotions which affect its abilities in battle (of course, this has been done before). I think the whole point of having a system like this is making enemies less generic and more unique.

Regards,
- John

Edit: I just remembered a great game. Although you are talking about a shooter or and action game, Final Fantasy Tactics immersed me in each battle, and it remains one of my favorite games. I would estimate that more than 60% of the required battles had enemies vital to the story.

LachlanL

Aug 16, 2007 at 6:11 PM

Sounds pretty cool. There's a couple of issues I can think of. For starters, most people can't survive more than one or two bullets. Perhaps you could make guns moderately inaccurate (like in paint-ball, you've got to aim at a particular spot for a split second to get fairly accurate. Snap-shots could go anywhere). Also, you'd have to give the AI some fear of bullets flying around him. That way he'd duck for cover and try to shoot back some supressing fire. I guess you could also have people wearing body armor, that way most hits would go to the body cavity and cause winding or slight damage, but not kill straight away. If the player can get off a head-shot with an inaccurate gun against a dodging opponent they can score a quick kill. This would make stealth more important.

superpig

Aug 16, 2007 at 6:16 PM

Quote:
Original post by Jaws
I'm not sure how I would solve the problem, either. A content-heavy way of doing this would be to just produce so many instances of these enemies in areas that have potential for multi-stage fights that some of the fights would inevitably end up that way, even if some of the fights would end early on with lucky blows to the head. Some sort of dynamic relationship between the AI units and the surrounding environments would probably be necessary.

The problem with spawning in extra enemies in the event of an early success is that it kinda robs the player of their achievement. You might as well just have the first enemy get back up again. Perhaps, if the replacement enemies step up the difficulty and change the gameplay sufficiently, it'll work - you took out the guy with the pistol so now you face a guy with a machine gun instead. Still, that smells a bit like dynamic difficulty - "keep upping the opponent until the player isn't wiping the floor with them."

Quote:
Original post by Captain P
I think that at least making your enemies appear smart can add another dimension to combat.

Definitely! Players don't appreciate good AI unless they can see or hear it happening.

Quote:
I think the main thing here is that there's no new tricks and strategies to discover behind stronger enemies: they behave the same, it just takes some more time to take them out. Once you've figured out their patterns, there's nothing fearsome left in them. An unpredictable and smart enemy, or an unknown entity, is probably much more intimidating.

Exactly. While we'd want to be able to easily tone enemies up/down to account for difficulty settings, I'm thinking we could change things like "resourcefulness" and "awareness" instead of (or as well as) basic stats like "health." They'd determine the enemy's ability to spot things like environmental hazards to use, and their ability to spot when they're standing somewhere dangerous.

Jaws

Aug 16, 2007 at 7:20 PM

Quote:
Original post by superpig
Quote:
Original post by Jaws
I'm not sure how I would solve the problem, either. A content-heavy way of doing this would be to just produce so many instances of these enemies in areas that have potential for multi-stage fights that some of the fights would inevitably end up that way, even if some of the fights would end early on with lucky blows to the head. Some sort of dynamic relationship between the AI units and the surrounding environments would probably be necessary.

The problem with spawning in extra enemies in the event of an early success is that it kinda robs the player of their achievement. You might as well just have the first enemy get back up again. Perhaps, if the replacement enemies step up the difficulty and change the gameplay sufficiently, it'll work - you took out the guy with the pistol so now you face a guy with a machine gun instead. Still, that smells a bit like dynamic difficulty - "keep upping the opponent until the player isn't wiping the floor with them."

I didn't mean spawning extra enemies, perhaps the word "produce" was misleading. The number of enemies would be the same, it's just that if the design is executed properly, the chances are that while some battles may end with early success, others will take longer (this could depend on how "critical" your damage is, ie head vs limb shots).

Basically what I'm saying is, you could just not rely on a specific fight being epic, but create enough fights that some of them surely will be. Then hopefully it won't seem "forced". This wouldn't work if you actually did have a significant enemy of the hero's that you specifically wanted to be drawn out, though.

Gyrthok

Aug 16, 2007 at 9:20 PM

Quote:
Was it fun? Or just annoying?

It was fun in that i was fighting a single opponent and not X clone, less fun because until later on there was absolutly no chance of victory or means of outwitting it. I actually found the bosses in Clive Barkers: Undying much more interesting, it took me abit to figure out i had to cut their heads off with the Scythe Of The Wretched to kill them, otherwise the fight would drag on indefinitely.

Quote:
Yes, that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of. The kind of situation where you'll shoot at someone not actually because you think you'll hit them but because you're trying to drive them back towards a danger zone or something like that.

About the only time i've experienced anything even remotely like this was playing Planetside as an Infiltrator. Many, many times did i employ clever tactics to out manuver my opponents, and vice versa. I'd often use myself as bait to lure them into explosive traps, or plant a number of spitfire turrets throughout the base, not to stop them but more to alert me to their presence and location so i can better gauge where they were headed. Its the kind of experience i really enjoyed purely because of the tactical aspects of the fight.

You could probably achieve something similar with an overarching RTS AI controlling and co-ordinating the enemy units on a map, but replicating originality would be difficult. You could always try an adaptive AI, much like a chess AI that may test the player's tactics or intentions by sacrificing the occasional unit, or throw in some mind games the AI can use to try and confuse the player.

superpig

Aug 17, 2007 at 4:43 AM

Quote:
Original post by anothrguitarist
I think it's a great idea, and I have something to add. Give the player some sort of motivation to fight the enemy. For instance, add a cut scene before the battle, and provide some background information about the enemy. Make the enemy more human rather than some faceless opponent. Give the player a reason to hate the enemy, or make the enemy and the player have a mutual respect in spite of the battle (i.e. Dyne and Barret - Final Fantasy VII). Of course this doesn't have to happen for each enemy because that would be a lot of work and maybe tedious. Even so, I think this would add depth to the game.

Agreed, certainly. I'd like to make each fight feel unique, both through the gameplay and through making the enemy feel like more than just another faceless drone. A cutscene is probably unnecessary much of the time - having the enemy use things like taunts can help to give them character within the battle (or even have them try to negotiate with the player!) The more they stick around and the player interacts with them, the more memorable and apparently complex they become, so it's possible that we wouldn't even need to put much effort into this aspect of things.

Quote:
Additionally, you could have recurring enemies who change with the player. You mentioned that battles could change as you progress through them. Well, you could draw this progression out for several encounters. Think Bowser from Mario 64.

Yep, certainly. An enemy that knows when to retreat is often more interesting than one who will just keep shooting at you until he falls over, and provides another potential way to drive a battle.

Also, you could give the enemy emotions which affect its abilities in battle (of course, this has been done before). I think the whole point of having a system like this is making enemies less generic and more unique.
Definitely. Combining that with the 'retreat' idea opens up possibilities of psychological warfare, too - if you can scare the enemy enough, or display an exaggerated show of force, then you could get them to run away. Some basic emotion engine would help to drive both the kind of tactics that an enemy uses (i.e. an angry or scared enemy is more likely to be reckless and use more explosive but riskier tactics) and things like the taunts and teamwork systems.

Quote:
Edit: I just remembered a great game. Although you are talking about a shooter or and action game, Final Fantasy Tactics immersed me in each battle, and it remains one of my favorite games. I would estimate that more than 60% of the required battles had enemies vital to the story.
That's cool. One thing I've considered is that if every enemy were to have a unique identity (procedurally generated, or whatever), then perhaps at one point in the game you might be able to break into an enemy computer and peruse personnel records - including the ability to see which ones you've killed and which ones you haven't. If there are only 100 enemies in total throughout the game, say, then such a thing becomes manageable.

superpig

Aug 17, 2007 at 4:48 AM

Quote:
Original post by LachlanL
Sounds pretty cool. There's a couple of issues I can think of. For starters, most people can't survive more than one or two bullets. Perhaps you could make guns moderately inaccurate (like in paint-ball, you've got to aim at a particular spot for a split second to get fairly accurate. Snap-shots could go anywhere). Also, you'd have to give the AI some fear of bullets flying around him. That way he'd duck for cover and try to shoot back some supressing fire. I guess you could also have people wearing body armor, that way most hits would go to the body cavity and cause winding or slight damage, but not kill straight away. If the player can get off a head-shot with an inaccurate gun against a dodging opponent they can score a quick kill. This would make stealth more important.

Agreed with all of that. I think there's one particular change in standard behavior that would emerge from this - when an enemy sees you, their first reaction will not be to shoot at you, it'll be to get behind cover. They'll only shoot at you when they're not in imminent danger themselves.

superpig

Aug 17, 2007 at 5:08 AM

Quote:
Original post by Jaws
I didn't mean spawning extra enemies, perhaps the word "produce" was misleading. The number of enemies would be the same, it's just that if the design is executed properly, the chances are that while some battles may end with early success, others will take longer (this could depend on how "critical" your damage is, ie head vs limb shots).

Basically what I'm saying is, you could just not rely on a specific fight being epic, but create enough fights that some of them surely will be. Then hopefully it won't seem "forced".

Ah, I gotcha. Problem is, if you've created a large area for a fight to take place in and then the player kills the enemy with a fluke headshot right at the beginning, the rest of that area is potentially wasted. Can we salvage it - set up other interesting things there?

Quote:
This wouldn't work if you actually did have a significant enemy of the hero's that you specifically wanted to be drawn out, though.

True. I think maybe the way to approach those is to restrict the player's power, instead of trying to make the enemy particularly more powerful than usual. In action movies the scene always starts with the hero's gun getting throw out of reach or something like that so he has to fight purely using his environment.

umbrae

Aug 17, 2007 at 6:19 AM

rRootage is in a different genre but has some of the features you may be looking for. I believe patterns make a fun game - finding the patterns and working within them to advance the game. rRootage is purely about patterns, other games have patterns but not as obviously portrayed.

Shadows of the Colossus is also about patterns. I found each Colossus enjoyable, the winning pattern was different each time and varied enough for me to not loose interest.

The concept explored here is a good one - the battle proceeds through different 'arenas' in which the gameplay rules are different. This may be bad as each gameplay dynamic needs to be play-tested and balanced.

But that's what this is about, interesting and varied gameplay.

Often a game will have strong gameplay until the end boss battle. This is because the gameplay dynamics are often different in a boss battle and not as much effort has been put into balancing it.

I think this is a great idea. I would design it in patterns and make sure they progress in an understandable order, introducing new concepts little by little. Under the surface it would be a puzzle game.

[Edited by - Umbrae on August 19, 2007 5:19:07 AM]

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