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Converting dice rolling mechanic into digital games

Started by November 27, 2013 01:22 AM
16 comments, last by ferrous 11 years, 1 month ago

Lorenzo: interesting ideas, although I'm not sure whether I fully understand it or not, I'll try to digest it! smile.png

Norman: Yea, I agreed with your points that when it comes to computer, some of the things should be simplified and focus on the world itself. But mine one is not a RPG game, it's kinda strategy-liked game per se.. My previous plan to handle this scenario is like this:

1. First, player move to a location

2. A picture together with some description texts appear

3. Then let the player choose between some decision (let say kill or run)

4. If the player choose Kill then it will test the player's STRENGTH; If the player choose Run then it will test about his SPEED.

5. <This is where the dice rolling comes in, if I do not show anything, then I will just directly show the result once the player has made his choice, which is like what the computer RPG did (but at least they did show an attack animation with either HIT or MISS keyword, since I'm not doing any animation on this part, so I'm quite worry that player might feel boring/annoyed after some time)>

Brick: Wow, that's cool, I like the simulation and it's quite real! Thanks for sharing smile.png

Seeking for Perfection

[quote name='birdkingz' timestamp='1385607224' post='5112628']
My previous plan to handle this scenario is like this:

1. First, player move to a location
2. A picture together with some description texts appear
3. Then let the player choose between some decision (let say kill or run)
4. If the player choose Kill then it will test the player's STRENGTH; If the player choose Run then it will test about his SPEED.
5.

ah, the editor screwed up again and lost my reply!

in short, the best option would be to have the dice rolling mini game for the drama and tabletop feel of it, and also have a diceless gameplay option (automatically roll for me) for a more streamlined gameflow. best of both worlds. users could switch between the two play modes at any time. that would appeal to both the tabletop and non- tabletop crouds.

Norm Barrows

Rockland Software Productions

"Building PC games since 1989"

rocklandsoftware.net

PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!

http://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php

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How fancy are you willing to make it? Say the example is a player archer firing at an NPC soldier. In a tabletop game the player would roll dice for the attack and the DM would roll dice for the defense and the result would be determined by some simple math. A computer could do a thousand RNG iterations in the time it would take your D10s to stop rolling, so you can flesh out the process and present the results to the player in a very clean way. For instance, give the archer five different "dice rolls" for the attack: Stance, Focus, Grip, Aim and Release. Show weak or fail results as shaky footing or a clumsy draw or a flinch when the arrow is loosed. Strong results would be similarly displayed, and a perfect or critical hit might have a special visible effect, like a close-up of the archer's steely eye as he zeroes in on his target, or a special sound effect when the bow is drawn, or a different colored trail that tracks the arrow's path. Think of cinematic events like the ones in Sniper Elite or Max Payne, or the special execution moves in Skyrim when certain conditions are met.

You don't have to present the player with all the numbers, just use them to give the player an idea of why they succeeded or failed. Let them say, "Aw, man, my hand slipped as I nocked that shot," or, "Dang, it hit his breastplate at a weird angle and deflected," the way tabletop players say, "A three? A frickin' three?" So a guy who would usually be bitching about how there are definitely eight ones on his particular icosahedron can instead whine about how everyone he goes up against is some kind of matrix agent that slides between bullets and cannot feel love.

Edit: An added bonus to this might be that a low-level character will seem clumsy and sloppy and unsure of himself, while a more advanced and powerful character will convey his superior training and experience through the way he moves and the results he gets. A fight between two unskilled grunts will look like a schoolyard brawl, a duel between elites will be fast and powerful, and an elite versus four grunts will look like something out of a Bruce Lee movie, as he overpowers them in dice rolls and style simultaneously, but if he botches a roll at the same moment that a grunt lands a crit, it'll actually look like he lost his balance just as the rookie landed a competent blow.

Norman: Now I get what u mean :)

Iron Chef: Wow, that's really an interesting idea where u draw few dice to determine different output. Thanks for your sharing!

Seeking for Perfection

- a couple pre-baked animations.

- a random value to attain.

- add a few 90 degrees orientation offsets to the dice object so the animation will end on that value.

Everything is better with Metal.

Having meaningful choices to do with the dice results would help.

I recommend looking up Descent: Journeys in the Dark (first edition!!!). It's a board game that puts some meaningful dice-based choices before the player.

Dice faces have more than one information though, and this may be hard to balance efficiently.

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Honestly, think long and hard whether simulating ties to the physical world really are worthwhile. In tabletop games, dice and other play tokens are really just artifacts of a time before ubiquitous, cheap computing. Sure, we still use dice because they're cost effective and immensely practical, and perhaps because we tend to believe (incorrectly) that we can influence them or that certain die are luckier than others, but there's really very little to rationally enjoy about the physical aspect of rolling die, and less still to enjoy in the tedium of summing, multiplying, substituting and cancelling them against others. Had Dungeons and Dragons been designed today, its very possible it might not have used dice, and might instead have come with free downloads for an android app.

Significant computation and viable displays are starting to be so inexpensive, in fact, that its not unreasonable to think that a game could include its own dedicated computer. Probably the only thing that really prevents that today is that most tabletop and board games don't have large enough manufacturing runs to really get the costs to a comfortable place. Still, its not uncommon to see first or third-party phone/tablet apps for popular games -- its probably a toss-up between absolute ubiquity of phones and tablets, or whether someone figures out how to get the costs down.

throw table_exception("(? ???)? ? ???");

Personally, all those dice animations are going to get skipped if possible, and aggravate me to no end if I cannot skip them. The XBLA/iOS game, Panzer Generals Assault or whatever it's called has animated dice, and it's just annoying, show me the damn result already!

One thing you can do is just abstract mostly everything into percentages, as technically that's what the player needs to know anyway. Having an 80% chance to hit? Okay. I don't need to know that I have to D10 to hit, and a target number of 5, but a +3 to hit because I'm wielding a magic glock.

(I do like Iron Chef's idea, though it could be added in the polish phase of your game)

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