The Road Ahead

In between work, moving and a couple livestreams, I've been working on two scripts for my channel, as well as deciding what the next game I want to cover for Not Forgotten will be.

My work-in-progress scripts are a rant/essay on nostalgia. Tentatively titled Is It Just Nostalgia? This was inspired by a lot of comments on my videos by people claiming that the only reason people are attracted to some of the older games I cover is the rose-tinted glasses effect, and not that they are better than modern games in any way. Here's an excerpt of the unfinished script:

In making fine crystalware, it’s common practice to immerse the product in an acid bath to remove rough edges and imperfections. Cheaper work gets even more aggressively washed and polished down so that there are no visible errors, but all the delicacy and detail is lost. This is my attempt at an analogy to video games. When you’re smoothing out the hiccups and rough edges of a concept over the years, you can accidentally or intentionally cut some of the best choices and ideas with it.

Take the Far Cry series for example. Though the original was well-received, Far Cry 2 was a turning point for the series, shooting you head-first into a malaria-ridden wartime wilderness both beautiful and dangerous. It had many purposeful limitations like little to no fast travel, intermittent malaria episodes, rusty and badly maintained guns that jammed when you least expect them, and roving patrols that would go after you if you were spotted. Sure we all swore when our AK-47 broke down for the 50th time while running into a jeep full of angry soldiers, but what did we lose when future designers of the series took all these features out?

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My other script-in-progress is the inaugural episode of a series I've been wanting to start for a while now, Game I/O -- where I cover specific game mechanics, their merits and examples of them in games. Here's a little peek at Game I/O - Environmental Destruction...

Instead of just modelling just a cliffside for example, you have to model the cliffside, then cut it up into chunks and model and texture those too, then apply physics logic such as weight, friction and then assign a “damage meter” to them. Shooting at it a couple times with your assault rifle might not dent it, but a good rocket or two will then trigger them to break apart, turning into virtual building blocks that fly, slide and bounce around loosely.

It gets even more complicated when you introduce flammability temperature into the mix, then you have to have complex algorithms simulating heat, the spread of fire, and other elements.

Rainbow Six: Siege is a great example of how to do intricately detailed destructible environments, and tying that into gameplay. Though the basic foundation of each building is solid and cannot be destroyed, each wall has layers upon layers of wooden bars, sheetrock, exterior decorations and panels, which you can break apart piece by piece with a sledgehammer, breach charge or firearm. This is tied directly into the game’s mechanics, where the advantage of blowing open another entrance to a room could be the difference between a tactical advantage or a swift defeat. The density of walls and ceilings then become a resource that is constantly being fought over. Reinforcing walls, doorways and ceilings help give you an extra second or so of time to prepare before an assault -- which in a twitchy shooter like Rainbow Six: Siege is a huge advantage. 

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On the retrospective front, the top contenders for the next singular game I cover are:

• Sacrifice
• Alundra
• Outcast

Hopefully this helps give some insight to my patrons on what I'm up to. Let me know if you have any questions or if you'd like to make any suggestions. Thanks, and I'll be talking to you soon!