Thinking Aloud

Physics and Half-Life and Theatre
Well, they're telling the truth when they say that it's harder to maintain¹ a blog than it is to begin one.

The biggest reason for my inactivity is this:

This isn't a terrible attempt at abstract art, but rather a zoomed-in screenshot from one of my assignments, a 2D physics demo which I had to develop from scratch. It was so difficult that I began to see it as a sort of final boss for the semester. It involved a fair bit of advanced differential calculus, which alone was pretty tough, given that my educational background isn't particularly mathsy. Add collision detection and response to the equation (hehehehehe) and things started to get a bit ridiculous; and that's before I even tried to get it working over two computers (one computer handles the blue shapes and the other handles the red). Several 14-hour days and cans of energy drink later, I managed to finish it, but it was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done.

It's a fairly close call, though.

In my scraps of free time before the level of crunch became ludicrous (ludicrunch?), I played through the original Half-Life for the first time (I've played it before but never completed it). I was planning to write an entire entry about it, but I wouldn't really be saying anything that hasn't already been said, and it'll be difficult to describe what I liked about it without sounding unreasonably critical of modern games, so I'll just summarise: I think that it has aged pretty damn well and is even better than its sequel. It's a textbook example of how to make a fun and immersive action game, in my opinion.

I didn't take any screenshots when I played it, so I stole one from GameSpot. (Source: GameSpot)

What else did I do? Well, last week, I went to the theatre to see One Man, Two Guvnors – something I'm rather hesitant to write about, as I don't want my uninformed opinions to be mistaken for an attempt at an objective and adequately-justified review. This following few paragraphs will contain minor spoilers, but it's mostly stuff you can read on the website.

According to Wikipedia, the play is a modern adaptation, of the 18^th century Italian play Servant of Two Masters. It's driven by two connected stories. The first follows the roguish Francis Henshall as he lands himself two jobs with different “guvnors” and tries to keep them from discovering one another long enough for him to get paid (and steal some of their food). The second is concerned with the guvnors themselves; one of whom is a woman disguised as her gangster brother who was murdered by her boyfriend. The other guvnor is the boyfriend.

According to its website, the play has received five stars from many reviewers from both the tabloids and the broadsheets. I can only assume that these are people who know far more about comedy than me, so I'm not going to say their reviews were wrong, nor that the play deserved less. To be honest, though, I thought it could have been much better. The whole thing was a tad too slapsticky, for a start – one character gets hit in the face by an opening door at least twice, and tumbles down the stairs three times, in the space of a single scene. The dialogue was largely unmemorable, though that's not to say there weren't highlights; a few scenes have some particularly funny alliteration.

The one thing that bugged me the most was the constant breaking of the fourth wall. Every so often, Hernshall turns to the audience to talk about his plans. I'm not saying he has soliloquies or that he makes a handful of dramatically ironic “it's as if I was in a play!” statements; and the play isn't inherently “meta”, either. No, he actually addresses the audience as the audience, banters about the play in drama speak, and even brings a pair of people on stage to help him carry some luggage.

Now, I realise it's written as one of those comedies that you shouldn't take seriously, but still, what exactly did it add that couldn't have been added through other, less gimmicky means?

Level Editing, Mighty Jill Off, and Tomb Raider
In my last entry, I mentioned that I was doing a bit of Super Meat Boy level editing. Here's a screenshot of my tiny first (and thus far only) level, so you don't have to entry-hop:

Would have called the series "Castles 'n' Shit" - this level is one of the "'n' Shit" bits.

I decided to give it a try after reading about the game Mighty Jill Off (not as explicit as it sounds), an indie platformer which, according to discussants, uses a (sparingly used and mostly SFW) BDSM theme as a metaphor for the dynamic between the player and creator of a difficult or punishing game. The game's protagonist Jill is a guest character in SMB, which is what alerted me to MJO's existence in the first place (you can see her in my screenshot dying to spikes – no imagery intended there, I'm just rubbish at my own level). Now, I have absolutely no profound insights to share about the themes themselves, but it did get me thinking about difficulty in platformers as well as games in general. What level of difficulty is permissible in a game?

It's something I've been thinking about ever since I released my custom Tomb Raider level² Jobmond& Co back in 2007 as a part of TRLE.net's “Back to Basics” contest.

Jobmond & Co (Source: TRLE.net)

It performed well score-wise, but became vaguely infamous at the time for being weird, difficult, and confusing. The two biggest gripes appear to be backtracking and the difficulty of timed runs. The first I can understand, and I'm quite surprised that I didn't realise that it was a problem after having played through it so many times. The second, I'm not so sure about. I realise a lot of Tomb Raider players don't like the pressure of having to complete tasks under timed conditions. I certainly didn't while playing the official (Core) games, and I can't pinpoint what made my preferences change.

So don't get me wrong – I'm not disputing the preferences of those who criticized the level for its timed challenges or difficult jumps, nor can I fairly say that they graded the level based on the wrong criteria (some reviews were insultingly bad, but for different reasons). What I wonder, though, is how much should I care? Or, more formally, how far should the author go to cater to the preferences of the players? I enjoyed testing the difficult platforming areas, but there's the fact that I made them myself, so it is/was difficult to be objective, especially knowing that I didn't have to complete a timed platforming sequence or tricky jump to see the rest of the level; I could skip it or make it easier, if I so fancied.

I do think timed events have their place, even in a game like (Core's) Tomb Raider where the controls are somewhat antiquated and the grid and movement systems mean you can't always jump when you want, or as high as you want. I think, and I'm sure there are others who agree, that when you're used to the controls, the challenge of lining up a sequence of jumps is pretty fun; and adding a time limit makes it even more exhilarating (and you can't spell “exhilarating” without “Lara”. Coincidence? ...Probably). Who can forget that flaming platform bit in Palace Midas in the first Tomb Raider?

(Source: http://perusing-pixels.blogspot.co.uk)

I suppose I should ask myself what I would have done differently, gameplay-wise. For a start, I would have gotten rid of some of the backtracking, or at least flipped³ some of the revisited rooms so that the player wouldn't worry about whether they're making progress. I'm sure if I had played the level as the player instead of author, I'd have gotten annoyed and given up. But I'm not sure I would have added more camera hints – I think they're a bit of a crutch. I'd rather have tried to make the various areas more distinguishable (which I tried to do anyway), and added a suggestion in the readme to sketch out a map.

I don't think I would have made the platforming easier, but I might have made it less frustrating. There are one or two parts where all but the most precise jump will send the player sliding away from their objective. For those who would prefer to explore rather than repeatedly attempt the same precarious jump (which is perfectly fine; they're playing Tomb Raider, not I Wanna Be The Guy), I might have released an “easy” mode alongside the standard version, but I'm not so sure about this one. It's wise to avoid challenges so difficult (whether the good or bad sort of difficulty) that they alienate a lot of your audience, but I don't know. Would it cheapen the experience? Well, I think that's another blog post for another time (but I promise nothing).

Go play Mighty Jill Off. It's a fun game and short enough to be played in a half-hour sitting.

I don't know how to do footnotes properly

1. “Maintain” makes it sound like it's some sort of vehicle, and that I should be “oiling it up” on a regular basis. Needless to say, I won't be doing this.
2. The level editor is a lighter version of the one that The Last Revelation was made with – the old engine, basically.
3. A flipped room is an alternative versions of a room. It usually has modified architecture or objects. One such room is the main chamber in TR1's The Cistern where pulling a level fills it up with water, and pulling it again drains it.