The one on the left. Mainly because Holyjaw picked it and he scares me. Not really. He is Asian after all, but I do like the left one.

WTF is a "Dynamic Difficulty Modulator"?

Good question my fine fellow! Dynamic Difficulty Modulation is when a game takes real-time information about the player and applies it to a given system, then augments variables that relate to key systems/mechanics said player regularly involves himself or herself in.

DDM is just a fancy way of saying "The better I play, the more pissed off the game gets."

Now, although it may not be a subject commonly looked at in game development (let alone the indie front), dynamic difficulty curves CAN make a game better. Take for example Left 4 Dead's AI Director. Whenever the player plays in a certain manner, the game throws something new at the player. Naturally, this creates interesting moments that change the way the player is thinking from moment to moment. Now, taking from that, you can see that the game is just spicing up your Friday nights with the occasional random Hunter or Boomer that pounces out from the corner. VHEL effectively does the same thing...but to some other extremes. >>

Short term, Mid term, Long term, and Global difficulty


Yes, games ACTUALLY have variables like this going on. I theorize in game design psychology and how the player is effected from moment to moment, so naturally I look at the short term effects of what the player experiences, to the very long-winded effects.

Short term is important because it relates to how you're playing at that very moment, and what factors are contributing to your success or failure. A good example of a game that has some solid minute to minute play is Call of Duty (before IW f**ked it up). The second you're thrown into a firefight, is the very same second you zone in on the most essential elements to success (this means playing the game as intended than branching out). As far as difficulty is concerned, whichever odds you're put up against at that very moment, are what contribute to the overall difficulty curve you now face. Clearly, if you're trying to take out 2 guys at once, you've set yourself up for a firm kick to the can unless you're lightning fast and can sharp-shoot those 2 pansies.

In the case of VHEL, since it is a single player game, there's still a very strict line I've made as to what the player regularly sees and encounters. In addition, VHEL takes into the account of what the player can easily beat or otherwise overt. Yes, VHEL does use something like the AI Director to spawn enemies into the game, but in addition to this, there's a system called "Notoriety". Now, Notoriety is basically a way to calibrate the rate of the success of the player, then ratchet up the challenge as seen fit. Here's an example of what I mean:



This system works in tiers similar to levels. If you play badly, the game will lower the challenge the enemy will present AT THAT VERY SECOND. Similarly, if you think you can take on the world, and so rightfully showcase this, the game will have no mercy AT THAT VERY SECOND. Notoriety measures several things you do in real-time: enemies defeated, player strategy (based upon cloak, cunning, and combat), common tactics for victory, and uncommon tactics for victory. Mind you, Notoriety DOES NOT effect enemy spawns, it changes enemy variables such as speed, variable timers, path-finding, damage output, and aggression, in general.

Mid term is more akin to games that have a heavier focus on strategy. "How best can I use item A against enemy B, later on?" "How much ammo should I conserve to reach destination C safely?" "When is the best time to send troops into my enemy's backdoor?" Questions like these occur a lot more irregularly because they're situational. Like short term difficulties, there is a mid term difficulty to these circumstances. Factoring in how best the player should "tilt" the balance of play into their favor means taking into the account of currently available resources (including the environment the player is in), and then coming up with a plan. A means to an end -- that's all this is.

In VHEL, we have the weather system, which acts as a irregular mid term difficulty modulator that augments what the player encounters, when and where. For example: Say you're in a rainstorm with fairly weak Ragnic like the Nidaria and Planula. You're focus on mostly offensive trap setups make handling said situation a piece of cake. Seconds later, a lightning storm comes into play. Suddenly, you're forced to deal with bigger Ragnic like Echopraxia and Geist who can easily counter your previous strategy. In turn, you're forced to make a decision to either push your current tactics, or regroup and use a separate method to take on your new challenge (mind you, this is before you even go directly into an engagement with your new foe).

Long term is a bit more strenuous in nature. RPG's are probably the more common genre that implore a sense of long term difficulty and challenge. As a result, there's a higher focus on "meta gaming", since you're thinking about variables and advantages beyond what the character you're playing as would normally be able to conclude. Long term play, in general, is mechanically inclined; it doesn't support the notion of immersion because immersion is confined within a short term space. Long term difficulty, in this case, would suggest that what you decide at a given moment will conclude how you'll deal with a situation later.

In VHEL, your long term play revolves around your "stock" (like stock of items/equipment).

Previously, I made mention of a system called "growth", which helped influence how characters would "grow" but not detract the strategy element. Due to a number of inconstant factors in the story, as well as gameplay foils (it's just annoying, imo), that system was canned. Instead, stocks take it's place and work to buff up your characters in a particular manner at the beginning of every event/day. Now, I know what you're saying -- what does this have to do with long term difficulty if the game is static like L4D? Simple (and VHEL isn't static like L4D). In the game, each day you progress within the wastelands, the Ragnic get a new ability/toy to play with. If you're familiar to ODST with it's Firefight mode, then the concept here is the same. The further you progress, the harder encounters become. Stocks are meant to give you positive buffs to counter what the Ragnic get. The cool part is that the way in which you explore your environments determine which Ragnic abilities will be put into place.

Mr.12 said wha'??!

Just look at the "example" (as corrected by Muff)... >>


Why the hell you would choose "more Ragnic" over "less resources" is beyond me, but the point here is that your ability to choose routes dictates your long term play; it's INTENTIONAL long term difficulty foreplay, that encourages the player to create a custom "build" to best deal with the challenges they've committed to. Hey, look at that! As a result, I just made meta gaming fair to a new player who doesn't have intimate knowledge about what happens in a fixed game and also made meta gaming more demanding (aka FUN) for players who'll try to reuse the same damn strategy to win every play-through! I win! YAY!

Global term is likely the most common difficulty curve. Ever seen a game with Easy/Normal/Hard modes? You have. Don't lie. It's like your aunt at those family get togethers who always kisses you; you can't escape those tuna-lipped kisses :D

Global term IS your "choose your difficulty" difficulty. Same shit -- different coat of paint.

Why is it important? Because it influences the learning/difficulty curve from the get go. Now, why do games need global term difficulties? Just like the others, they create unique challenges for the player. The problem, however, is that we have our short, mid, and long term curves that do everything that a traditional "Easy, Normal, and Hard mode" would do. How? 'Cause they're dynamic! See what I just did? Since the game learns on the short term, mid term, and long term levels, it can effectively give you the most accurate challenge. The global term, instead, needs diversity here; and oddly enough, that diversity comes from handicaps and restrictions.

What if the game had a mode where you couldn't use more than 4 traps for any Job at a time? What if you had only one sliver of stamina per character (no more, no less)? My point here is that so long as the player is playing in interesting ways that forces a new way of thinking each time, plus the challenge (obviously, the game has to play well next to this), then I'm sorry to say this, but I've stolen 50+ hours of your life from you.

I'm returning to my cave...

I have a few videos of the game that I need to upload (some gameplay, some not).

Currently, however, I iz lazy and don't want to edit hours of footage......so.....there you go. Deal with it! D:<

What the FUCK man.

... You can actually code this shit? I thought games were made out of fucking magic, dreams, and cold hard cash. And seeing as how you're asian (or at least highly influenced by asian culture as per your avatar and nothing else) 1) You don't believe in magic 2) lol asians dont have dreams and 3) Cash is for grandma and grandpa to hold anyways so WTF YOU CAN ACTUALLY CODE THIS SHIT???

WTF did Mr.12 break now?

I didn't break anything, per se, but a lot has changed recently. Since I consider the community (here on WDFnews.com) to be the test audience for VHEL, I typically stay open about development. Although no one here has yet to play the game, let alone knows why I make the changes I do make, it's important to keep in mind that VHEL is still in pre-production with a rudimentary engine in it's early Alpha stages. As so, my reasoning for removing or adding gameplay components ordinarily leverages off of enhancing or simplifying the experience on a number of levels for optimal play. More over, I stress test everything that's experimented in the game to push out the highest levels of fun possible. Here are those "extreme changes" I've made:

The Bad

- Character Jobs have been removed from the game

- Character specific bonuses have been removed

- VHEL abilities have been removed

- The previous count of 12 contracts (12 objective oriented missions) have all been removed or reallocated

- Control over 3 or more couriers using macro instruction has been removed

- Previous Stamina system, along with "break" system, have been removed

- Item (trap & puppet) total count has been changed from 16, to 12, to 9, to now 6 in all (I'll talk about this in a bit)

- About 10 characters within the cast (as well as their story events) have been removed

- Playable character "Loki Tokun" has been removed indefinitely; Control over "Caspian Sable" and "Mel Gammosani" has also been removed

- Trade and Value (the idea of trading based around proximity values) has been removed

- All 3 difficulties to the game have been removed

The Good

- Gameplay for short, mid, long, global are now skewed for optimal convergent strategies versus non or pure convergent play

- A new programmer is apart of the team

- 3 new people are apart of the voice over cast

- Better GUI presentation utilizing in-game assets versus abstract forms of communication

- A new Mega Man-like system in place now for contract selection and benefits

- Total number of Ragnic types has increased from 6 to upwards of 20+

- Fully realized, destructible environments

- A brand new item acquisition system working around the concept of company "relationships"; lightly speaking, VHEL now has a "tech tree"

- A brand new stamina system built around a redefined concept of player penalty and player reward within the cooperative realm

- Outside of key story moments, player objectivity now plays a role in how the story progresses; you literally will not be playing this game the same way every time by choice alone, but by contextual circumstances as well

- Traps and Puppets are defined by roles and functionality now; you'll always have a reason to use all of them

- New playable characters "Jinan Abiru Ralaluu" and "Akrin Lo'Barr" have been added

- Alternate character outfits (1 per playable character)


...So what the hell caused so many changes in a game that isn't even in the toughest part of game balancing?


Using Chaos Theory

Game Design = Creating Fun

Abstract role of a Game Designer: Study the human mind, then trick it

Seriously, that's all a game designer is meant to do. I didn't come to this conclusion until I realized the trend in my own design as well as many other games out there. The human mind, as we all know, has a tendency to think within two extremes: logically or emotionally. RPGs and other stat heavy games are convergent by nature; you'll always know the solution to every outcome, which quantifies them as logically bound games. Emotional games, like Adventure games, have a tendency to throw non-convergent subject matter at the player, allowing for a number of responses from the player, but with no particular end point to ratify. EA's Skate had a non-convergent progressive model for clothing acquisition, alternatively removing any logistical reasoning to continue playing.

These are extreme cases, but the human mind, understandably enough, can think within both parallels: convergent and non-convergent. Games have to be able to present an interesting problem to any player, then give them the tools to solve them within a confined space. Games also need a way to look different all the time. These illusions, and the need to solve understandable problems, must be indefinitely infinite, otherwise the immediate space the game occupies WILL destroy game immersion, therefore creating player boredom. Both sides of the mind need to be entertained. The emotional end needs variety in some form (seeing new in-game objects or sounds), while the logistical side needs more problems to solve. As so, we need something in-between the two. In enters optimal convergent progressive models; aka the chaos theory of game design.

Funny thing about chaos theory is that it applies to ANY fixed event that has an unexpected occurrence or probability. Valve best exemplifies such ideology with Left 4 Dead's AI Director since you "assume" something will happen and you "know" the solution(s), but you never know "when" anything will occur. You can make your assumptions by formulating a linear algebraic algorithm, but the odds presented by such a formula would largely equal 0% unless there's prerequisite knowledge. This is true based upon what would be defined as the "end point" in a optimal convergent model. The end point would be defined by an opposing agent with actions and intentions largely being dependent on two factors: personal preference and the agent's knowing of the player's actions. The AI Director in L4D incorporates both to compute and create viable problems and situations for the player. Starcraft has a similar system as well, but with a humanoid influence: the enemy player. OOOooo, I feel like some kind of scientist talkin' like this! =D

So how is VHEL using such a scientific resolution, if at all? Well first off, VHEL, as you guys know, is a Real-Time "Stealth Tactics" game, which means that the focus of the player, on tap with evading the enemy, is to develop cunning strategies to always out compete the enemy. Therefore, we need things like dynamic environment generation, dynamic enemy generation, dynamic resource generation, dynamic story generation, etc. Why does everything under the sun need to be "dynamic"? Largely because chaos theory and optimal convergent thinking (like formulating your strategies) derives from an unpredictable occurrence with a understandable end; e.g. "It hasn't rained in quite a bit. I bet when it does, I'll have many more Ragnic to deal with that'll steamroll me. =o".

With the design to the traps and puppets the player uses, I needed to maximize their potential by allowing multilateral functionality. In this light, traps can have split functions, making gameplay much more diversified and meaningful. A good example of this type of gameplay is the Soldier's rocket jump ability in TF2. The rocket launcher was designed to do AOE -- that's basically it. With the ability to rocket jump, you can suddenly move virtually anywhere on the map, maximizing room space, and effectively augmenting your strategical advantages. Clearly there's a downside to rocket jumping, but that's a cost-per-reward resolution, which is also dependent on the ongoing situation of the field (a foreign agent). VHEL's trap and puppet design (stuff I'll show in the next update in full) are a lot like this by nature now. =P


I talk too much...>>

I seriously could go on and on and on about the many things I've researched and associated into my new design philosophies, but I'll have to save those for another time (this update is too long as is). No worries about the footage -- that's slowly being cleaned up and edited for all to see. In addition to that, I also have a ton of recorded dialogue from just about all the voice actors. Some of them need to send me their stuff, but once they do, I can put that together and showcase the talent FINALLY. Any who, I'll make the effort to talk about the other decisions made recently next update. Hopefully, they'll amuse some you who bother to read everything I write these days. =P

Toodles <3

Truth.

1. I don't understand anything about the pre-alpha whatchamacallit.

2. Those are some pretty poofy pants. Looks like you could smuggle 4 full sized turkeys in them.

I'll post up a bit more info about how the prototype works, a little later. Yes, I know it's confusing to understand, right now.



I actually need the audio montage more for ModDB, really. So yes, I still need it.

Last time we met...

...I showed off a crappy prototype alpha build to a game herald as a genre breaking piece of enchantment, with an absurdly deep lore, rich characters and settings, and a deeper look into my thigh fetish (I like'em big). Well ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to say that I'm still working on it...............and that's about it! Now obviously, this piece information is as valuable as Valve saying "Half-Life 2 - Episode 3 is coming soon", which, if you're more intelligent than a seal given a small fish for doing fancy horn-honking tricks, is no different then me putting a security blanket over my head and saying "Ignore the man underneath the blankie! Move along, denizens!" To this extent, I'm sorry -- really -- but that's not to say I've been sitting on my ass for 10 years masturbating to the latest porn on the web as opposed to creating a first person shooter meant to be released several years earlier, before filing bankruptcy and losing the IP everyone expected to be "the best game ever [trademarked]".......oh wait.

^ This piece of art is not finished -- like the state of the rest of the game. =P

But Mr.12: What about the Alpha playtest thingy?

...You mean the one on November 20th (1 day before my best friend's birthday)? Well, why don't we take the date to that and do what Blizzard does whenever they have to talk about dates:

"It's coming soon [trademarked]" - A Blizzard representative

A lot of things have changed since I last talked about VHEL-Courier. If it'll make everyone feel more confident about my "zanny promises", the doc is set in stone and I have nothing more to really debate about it's direction outside of wanting to add more to it's long term progression. The story -- though in need of editing on the script front -- is pretty much complete. The voice over cast is set, the development team is set, and your mom is set for me to see her in bed. So why, you wonder, am I not showing off gameplay? Well, that's going to be the beef of this update; the reasons why VHEL is going to be the next Team Fortress 2/ Diablo 3/ StarCraft 2 in terms of development longevity (you were right on the money with the StarCraft Ghost comparison, Holyjaw. =P) Short answer: tech/art change. Long answer: continue reading.

Remembering what made VHEL cool to begin with.

For me, VHEL is very special because it was my first real attempt to take on a very demanding game that required a broader understanding of game development, in general. Truth be told, it was a bigger undertaking than I was previously prepared for, plunging me through a shit storm of "I'm not sure what to do anymore" moments for years. I had to learn from A LOT of my mistakes to even tackle it with the right experience in my pocket and mentality; and as so, VHEL gave me a lot of experience from questioning the game creation process and understanding what it meant to create fun. / rant

First and foremost for others looking into the VHEL universe is the artstyle. Some of the art came out nice, like Rangda down here:

^Pro tip: she's evil.

I actually grew very proficient at drawing in this particular manner, but the process was so jarring and arduous that it suddenly became too unwieldy for practical applications in game development (IE: Animating, yo). The environment creation process was even harder because of how complex the masking/parallel gradient mapping technique was. Here's a level that was in the works:

Faust Courier (It was so big, I had to create a external link for it)

Basically, the quality bar was sub-par; a lot of effort was being put forward but the immediate results were sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. Slow like a snail trying to go from one end of the wall of China to the other...while also taking breaks, too. Further testing into the Alpha build didn't hinge on the design or the programming. It was the art and animation, and because everything was so freakin' expensive to create (FYI: Each character takes about 3 days to fully render because of the way I draw them...that's excluding time spent reworking things and animating). This was kick to the nuts #1.

^Cool effects...too bad they will never see the light of day for a good long while.

The second problem was a bit more technical. See: all the details used in parallel gradient mapping are basically placed under a faulty layer (a mask). You funnel all the details underneath this faulty layer (the mask), and do whatever you please to achieve the effect you want. Now for VHEL, each mask per symbol has about 5-10 individual layers underneath the mask layer. This is excluding more complex details that are individually grouped and symbol'd, and distributed within the SAME layer as many other symbols (sometimes). Most details are gradients. Some are static BMPs. Some are animated. Some are symbols within a shared library between 2-4 characters -- etc., etc..

SO!

All this mumbo jumbo basically means that characters -- if rendered as is -- will lag everything else down to a crawl...badly. How do I know? We play-tested this stuff. How do you fix this problem? Turn everything into a static layer/make all symbols static. The problem? Uh...one argument: "Is it worth it"? I didn't trust how often I changed up details, which proved I wasn't confident in the art style enough (also see the first problem I previously mentioned with character creation). Ultimately, I lost confidence in the style -- kind of typical when you're talking about an amateur art style that had very little thought behind it and was created literally a decade ago. This was kick to the nuts #2.

The last issue, though remedied a bit now, was the design. The design took forever to lock down; and although it's very strong now, I MUST finish up the design document (like properly write it all up and correct the changes in the older doc). Why is this important? It's not that problematic to me -- I know the game inside out.........but my programmer doesn't. Level design needs to be locked, sub-systems need to be written out, and all the complex AI modulators need to be thoroughly explained and...well...fucking good. It's a lot of work, and it's hard to do so with a game that's development history is built around trial and error. The better trade off would be to drop EVERYTHING and start over -- I worked on two smaller games WITHIN VHEL's own development lifetime! At least then I could design the game with a much more intentional mindset, with fewer backtracking to deal with. Am I going to drop everything? Fuck no! Are you mad! Do you know how angry people would get?! Hell, my ex-girlfriend even threatened me if I quit on it! However, right now isn't the best time to deal with a game that really does require much more man power to create. Consider this VHEL's "sleeper days" until the day I can strike back and do this "right".

So now what?

I'm a professional indie developer. I work with people who make money doing this stuff. Sadly, I don't have too many games behind my name, which is why I decided to focus on Flash game development for the past, oh, 6 months now. To my surprise, it seems a bit more fitting for where I want to go with my games (big audience of people, free to play, earning money off of ad revenue, small games that require very little cost to make, etc..). I decided to team up with a technical engineer, David Maletz, who I knew from helping work on a indie game called Aero Empire, that bombed mid development due to poor direction. Sadly, that poor direction leaked into the game we wanted to make very quickly called Daybreak, which was "playable", but not very fun. My participation in the project was limited to art and animation because I didn't help lead the design process. We finished 90% of the game, but the final most art was never integrated, nor was all the music. The team scattered a bit after David got married mid-development, during my break up, and because of the composer's laptop issues. You can play it if you want, but you've been warned.

^David's wife made me make this game. D=

Daybreak Beta

David wanted to post up the game somewhere "just for the sake of it". I told him no, and we never spoke of the game since. I acknowledge fully that Daybreak is a functional, yet mediocre game, so my mission now, especially around the people I work with is to be 100% involved with the design process to insure the quality of the game and the fun factor. Yes, I'm literally implying that this game sucks because I didn't decide to get off my "bumshit ass" [trademarked] to effectively make this game as good as it could have been. That would have been better than me just nodding my head when we had those development meetings to discuss direction and focus.

Killjoy -- VHEL's immediate rival

VHEL is, and will always be, "the underdog game". It was created from ambition, it was designed to be ambitious, it has art that looks ambitious, and the only words you will ever associate to that project is "ambition". Truth be told, VHEL is everything YOU DON'T want to do in game development. The more I saw the recent problems in it, the more I wanted to "challenge" VHEL with a project that outdid it in every way possible. The result of that was Killjoy. What is Killjoy? Killjoy is a story about several girls who slip into a parallel reality called "sunset land" (some characters prefer not calling this place by this name because of how simpleminded it sounds), where they confront extraterrestrial beings known as condemned to get a high score. The girls are known as "Inamoratas" in this parallel world, while also being accompanied by Killjoys, the incarnation of their ideal ultimate boyfriend/husband. All this information and more is provided by a flying red, autonomous rhombus that believes it's the ultimate match maker, setting up the girls on "dates" that force them to endure trials with their Killjoys as a act of mutual bonding. Yes, I do have a fucked up imagination.

^Fun fact #1: I like Asians. Fun fact #2: I like Asians with thickness to their thighs! =D

First thing you need to know: The story is locked in. I haven't had to touch it quite as much as VHEL. Same is true for the settings and most of the game overall. As far as what kind of game this'll be, it's a rouge-like with a different take on character growth. If you liked anything related to VHEL, you'll like Killjoy. More over, it's a lot more comprehensible -- no need to remember complex names, locations, or confusing back-stories that glorify oh so devastating moments within a character's lifetime that just HAVE TO BE resolved in the immediate storyline. Killjoy is 100% Flash made. When it's done, you'll find it on Newgrounds. It's my first official attempt to treat Flash as a development platform for the intent of making money. One could say it's the VHEL that never was, although VHEL is much, much bigger. Still, I'll keep you guys posted on this one when I'm ready to talk.

So what are you currently working on, Mr.12?

^Previously, I used blue highlights and fonts. It looked terrible. -___-

Adria is an action game that's being developed by David, myself, a new composer, and a few high profile voice over friends of mine. I AM OVERSEEING THE ENTIRE DESIGN! If you're going to judge me for my talent in game development, play this game when it comes out. Seriously. We started 2 weeks ago and we are set on finishing it up very, very soon. I'm putting in overtime to make it play right and feel right, so I'm not skimping up on making it perfect like I did with Daybreak. For the sake of invoking the "damn it 12! Stop mind-fucking with us!" comments, I'll refrain from saying much. I will say, though, that you play as a souless girl who kills stuff. That's it. I won't say a word more about the storyline. It's like Soul Reaver, but without the deep philosophical view points. A lot of VHEL's gameplay has leaked into it, so if you see something that sounds like it came from my talks about VHEL's design, then yay, you likely found one of my many Easter eggs! =D

Changes are made daily, so it's getting better everyday. Ashley Kisner, Khana's voice actor, actually playtested the initial pre-production build. This was her response to some of the patchy level design to the test area and unchecked bugs originally in place (Note: This pic is about 2 weeks old. We're pretty far into the game now).

^The bat AI used to latch onto your face and literally...well...rape it. =P

And with this, I think I'll call it a wrap. Bitch and moan if you want another update soon! Ciao! =D