In that vein, LevelUp’s Gaming Tidbits last week pointed me towards Improving Usability in Games. I fully agree with the points in part 1, with particular emphasis on point 5: Know what the f’k I’m doing.

A player should be able to put down a game for a period of months at a time and still be able to hop right back in. Anything else is self-defeating and counter-productive.

How to Make Games User-Friendly: Part 1 – James Portnow on Next-Gen

This problem is exactly the reason why I’m so passionate about journal systems in games. It applies to games as simple and linear as Army of Two or as complex and unwieldy as Deux Ex: Invisible War. I and so many other gamers, simply cannot afford to play every day or even every week. When we do find the time to get return to a game after a holiday, (or after a month of Guitar Hero 3 obsession ;) we need to be reminded of what the hell we were trying to achieve before RL got in the way. A simple log of what’s just happened and where we could go next would make our game experience so much happier.

I’m not quite as enamoured with part two of the series but James makes some good points about the advantage of an in-game manual and SD-TV compatibility. Read them yourself at How To Make Games User-Friendly: Part 2

What are your most reviled game design decisions?

Age Rating:

12 (BBFC)

What is it?

A Bioware RPG witha futuristic space-colony setting and third-person-cover combat

It is fun?

Hell, yes.

Is it worth the money?

(£39.99)

Yes, yes, yes. At £1 per hour, it’s very good value for money.

Why?

I love western-style RPGs. I love sci-fi settings. And I love taking cover during combat. I love Mass Effect. This game is almost made for me :)

There are flaws. I talked about Mass Effect’s dialogue issue back in December. The inventory interface is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen, as is the party selection menu. Still, I had so much fun playing the game itself that I don’t really care.

The Good:

• Purpose – You have actual goals throughout the game that aren’t simply “shoot everything in sight”. Sure, that’s generally the means to your end, but at least there’s a purpose behind it.
• Combat – The combat system is great. It’s like Gears of War but less frustrating. Gears feels like you’re wearing a huge chunk of magnetic armour and everything else is made of iron. Mass Effect gives you more control when running and it’s far easier to go around things.
• Breadth – You have a giant world to explore. This isn’t a sandbox game but you can spend hours just exploring the Citadel and pick up lots of side-quests
• A useful journal! Longtime readers will know, I’m a bit fanatic about RPG journals. This one does the job, though could have done with listing the target locations more prominently. Iinstead, you’re forced to open up every single item repeatedly, to find the nearby missions.
• Force powers Biotics – These mysterious powers are great fun. There’s a little something for everyone – healing, direct damage, disabling, shields, sharpshooting… I love it. None of them look quite as spectacular as KOTOR2′s Force Storm, but the combination of Lift and an assault-rifle-wielding teammate looks impressively violent.
• Advancement – I’m not sure if BioWare did a sneaky enemies-level-up-with-you but if they did, it was very subtle and much more satisfying than Oblivion. In Oblivion as you got more powerful, it never felt that way because even the lowliest grass-dwelling bandit mysteriously sprouted glass armour and would kick your sorry ass unless you specialised in combat. In Mass Effect, you can do the majority of the game in any order and it’s always challenging, but you still get the feeling of becoming more powerful.

The Bad:

• The interface and dialogue system. The interface will need a whole post to explain, so I’ll save that for another time. Just trust me, it’s rubbish.
• Uncharted worlds – These are fun to start with. The first time you get dropped on an uncharted world, it’s a breathtakingly beautiful scene. The next hundred and fifty seven times start to grate. Ultimately, the uncharted worlds all feel the same – drive around from way point to way point, drive in circles shooting something, fall off a mountain, find building, kill everyone, search back room (or for variety, upstairs back room), play unlocking mini-game, The End. But it’s the only way to get that level 50 achievement so, for some insane reason, I did them all. There’s no way I’m going for level 60 on another playthrough.
• Repetition – The endless combat in corridors for the main quest does get a little samey after a while.
• Achievements – If you collect gamerpoints compulsively, Mass Effect will swallow you for days. Assuming that you play as efficiently as possible, you’ll have to play the game all the way through twice and the middle four planets at least once more with different allies. Considering it took me around 40 hours to hit level 50 with almost all the sidequests, that’s something in the region of 80-100 hours to get all the gamerpoints. I’d advise you to rent Avatar: The Burning Earth instead, but you probably already did.
• Tower of Hanoi – Has BioWare ever made an RPG that didn’t feature the Tower of Hanoi? I’ve been solving this puzzle for at least 15 years now. I know it was in KOTOR and I’m sure I saw it in another BioWare game. Here’s a compromise; show us the puzzle and have a character ask what it is. If we answer Tower (or Towers) of Hanoi we get a free pass, okay?

In summary:

It’s a brilliant space-shooter RPG. Mass Effect would get my vote for Game of The Year 2007.

Mysteriously HUD-Free Screenshots

Please, cRPG designers, think about the journal early in your game design. Unless your game has all the complexity of Doom 3, a journal can make or break your game. Here is your cut-out-and-keep checklist of things to consider:

General Points:

1. Hired genre-appropriate writer?
2. Logged all known quests?
3. Category: Trailheads
4. Category: Quests in progress
5. Category: Quests completed
6. Category: Quests on the backburner
7. Category: Quests’ area

Quest-specific points:

1. Logged all details given in dialogue?
2. Logged information source?
3. Logged information source location? (if known)
4. Logged promised reward? (if known)
5. Logged what player has already done?
6. Logged where player should go next? (if known)
7. Logged known map locations?
8. Logged visited vs. unexplored areas?
9. Logged acquisition of unique quest object?
10. Logged loss/discard and location of unique quest object?

Click on each item to get the detailed explanations. Do you think I’ve missed anything? Do you disagree? Let me know.

[HRODC website found through Experts Exchange]

• RPG Journal Part I – The Basics
• RPG Journal Part II – The Categories
• RPG Journal Part III – Information
• RPG Journal Part IV – Maps

Inventory

When I pick up an as-yet-unrevealed quest item, please please please, log it in the journal. I can’t stand it when you find odd items like A Toothbrush with no clue as to its importance. I learned my gaming habits from playing Steve Meretzky games. Did anyone else get caught out by leaving the screwdriver back in Arthur’s house in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy? Or have their Simpleberry Bush confiscated in Spellcasting 201: The Sorceror’s Applicance? Growing up with those games has left me with a healthy inventory-centric paranoia.

(For those unacquainted with the games in question, you would get these items near the start of the game. They were fairly unassuming and sometimes used for other purposes during the game. They were also required near the end. You could leave them inaccessible locations throughout the game and only find out that you needed them back after days of intensive puzzle-solving.

A distasteful design practice now but apparently acceptable then. Personally, I think that the quality of writing more than made up for those particularly evil, evil, EVIL mechanics.)

A-hem… and back to the topic at hand. Flag up quest items, please. It can be a simple as this:

Found a mysterious flamey feather today. I wonder what it came from…

Short and piques your interest, yet doesn’t give anything away. Much more immersive than World of Warcraft’s utilitarian ‘This starts a quest.’

There’s one thing more crucial than logging the presence of a quest item. It’s this:

Where did I leave the damn thing?

Most CRPGs have an inventory limit. It can be astoundingly frustrating – you drop a seemingly-innocent useless item. Two weeks later you’re happily playing along and you get “Bring me the Helm of Arturoc from Godwin’s Cove”. You think “Ooo, yeah, I’ve been to Godwin’s Cove. I was carrying that Helm around for ages.” And then your heart sinks as you remember clearing all the junk from your inventory back in… where was it again?

This heart-breaking problem is easily solved by another simple journal entry:

Got sick of lugging the silly Helm of Arturoc around the place. Left it in Bethesda.

Hooray! Problem solved.

Check back soon for the quick summary of this article series.

I do apologise. Here is part 4 of How To Write an RPG Journal – Maps. Turns out maps are quite big enough to warrant their own section. For those of you who missed the series back in January, have a look at RPG Journal Part I – The Basics, RPG Journal Part II – The Categories, and RPG Journal Part III – Information.

Maps

Maps are important. Incredibly important. Even when your game isn’t the size of World of Warcraft. I know, it’s not the sort of thing that gets mentioned in reviews. Trust me, the map feature is sorely missed if it’s not there.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. If I recall, it didn’t have a map. If it did have a map, it was next-to-useless. Remember that giant bird cage in the menagerie? I climbed all the way to the top of that. Then I went on holiday. When I came back a month later I had no idea where I’d been or where I was going. I spent a few days running around in large but unproductive circles before moving on to a more rewarding game. Seamlessly-blended levels are pretty and immersive but make everything look very samey.

In other words:

Distinguish between explored and unexplored areas. Please do it. I don’t care if you use a fog-of-war or just change the colour. Choose the best internally-consistent logic for you. If I’m in a city then it makes sense to have a visible map. If I’m wandering around unexplored countryside, it’s fair to hide the fine detail of an unexplored area. ’tis all good as long as I can tell where I’ve already been.

Make notes: Notes are the second most significant part of mapping. Please, if you’re going to say things like “Meet me at Moire’s house” then have the courtesy to mark it on the map. If you can’t be bothered to do that, let me add my own notes. I have to say, the Cartographer add-in for World of Warcraft is indispensable. With the number of ‘get me x amount of y‘ quests, I don’t know what I’d do without the ability to mark “Here Be Sunscale Scytheclaws”.

Well, okay, I do know. I’d look it up on Thottbot. I don’t like doing that because it breaks my immersion and is sort of cheating-ish. Give me the tools to do it myself.

Come back next week for part 5 – Inventory. I promise it will be here. I’ve already written most of it.

This post is all about fleshing out your RPG journal. Make it useful. I’m not about to tell anyone how to write. Rather, I’ll focus on what to include and what’s safe to discard.

Record everything

RPG quests can be horrifically complex. Well-written dialogue provides a lot of information. Journals for computer role-playing games are there to take some of the strain out of remembering. Don’t forget, us gamers are busy people. Between blogging, learning VB.net, having a social life, household chores and everything else, remembering the fine details of a D&D computer RPG quest is pretty low on the list. It is crucial not to overlook pertinent facts when writing a journal. Here’s a list of things you should include in every quest entry.

• What or who gave me the information
• Where to find them later
• What they’ll give me in return for doing their menial task
• What I’ve already done
• Where I should go next

By no means am I advocating a dumb “go here and do this” journal. When it’s appropriate to the mission, it’s much better to simply say “I have heard that Joraq is hiding in Mardon’s bar,” when he’s not, than to spell everything out. We gamers like to think now and then, though we keep that well-hidden.

A Bad Journal Entry

Using an example from NeverWinter Nights 2: I had to talk to every guard post in the Docks and convince them to ignore the highly illegal actions of Moire’s gang. I played this mission over two sessions. On the second session, I logged in, checked my journal and had the following entry:

“Your sweep of the Docks is nearly complete, you have only one guardpost left to visit”

Well, great. The writer managed to check both the “What I have done” and “What to do next” boxes while simultaneously providing no information whatsoever. Last time I played this game was three weeks ago. He or she may as well as written “Yeah, I talked to some guys. Still gotta talk to some other guys.”

Fortunately, this entry was saved (barely) by putting the location of the final guardpost on the map, not that I knew this at the time.

A Good Journal Entry

A good journal entry for the same quest would look like this:

I have already convinced three of the guard posts to ignore the criminal activities of Moire’s gang. I just need to visit the last one in the north-east corner of the Docks area before reporting back to Moire’s house. It’s a good thing she marked all the posts on my map.

Please overlook the slightly ham-fisted exposition. I am not a fantasy writer.

A Great Journal Entry

A great entry would look like this:

“These guards are useless. No wonder Moire’s thieves practically run the Docks as it is. Outside the tavern, I just had to mention her name and they crumbled. The guards stationed by the armoury almost showed some backbone but caved when I slapped them a round a bit. In the north-east corner I paid the sergeant a bit of money to work for me but we’ll keep that quiet from Moire for now. I just need to visit the guardpost round the back of the Watch House and then it’s back to Moire’s for tea, biscuits and a few thousand gold pieces. Sweet.”

See how that works? Obviously, it’s much easier for me to write the above entry after the fact than it is to create entries using a database or other data-driven system to write plain English. I get that. Still, the ‘good’ entry should be entirely within reach of everyone.

So far I only know of one game where the journal truly aspired to greatness. That was Planescape: Torment and it succeeded magnificently. Sure, the game had other flaws. In some parts the plot was entirely driven by the journal but hey, I’m talking about journals. I’ll ignore that fact.

Check back in a few days for Part IV: Maps and Inventory

RPGs are about a story, a world and your place within that world. In such a non-linear environment, the entire user experience of the story centres around two things – 1) the journal, and 2) the way people treat your character. This post is about the importance of journal structure.

Categorise Everything

Gamers have jobs. Gamers have kids. A lot of us just don’t have the time or inclination to work through pages of chronologically-ordered diary entries hunting for that elusive clue that we overlooked the first time.

That’s what computers are for.

As I said previously, keep the journal entries for finished quests separately from the unfinished ones. Keep the entries for ongoing quest A away from the entries for quest B. Make it easy for the player to find the entry they’re looking for.

This can all be done in a fairly small and simple interface, thanks to the worldwide familiarity of hypertext. It’s handy, that Internet. Failing that, use tabs. Click on headers. I don’t care. Just keep it simple.

The Three Essential Categories

The following three categories should be in every computer RPG journal.

• Quests in progress – scannable executive summaries only, please.
• Completed quests – as I said in Part I, I still want to see them.
• Selected quest – every historical entry for the selected quest, be it current or complete.

Bethesda’s Oblivion did the journal well even though the size of the font and layout made it annoying to navigate. Have a good look at the Oblivion journal for a good real-world example of what I’m talking about.

Extra Categories That I Would Like

The following categories would be nice, but most games will be perfectly fine without them.

• Ignored quests – Sometimes I just want to get on with the main plot arc. Late in the game, it’s so annoying to see all those ignored Chapter One trailheads flapping around the bottom of my To-Do list. They’re just reminders of my failure to save everyone and everything. Let me put them on the backburner for now. You can pop them back into ‘Quests in progress’ if I accidentally stumble across something pertinent
• Zones – RPGs are heavily area-based. Instead of hunting through my list it would be so convenient to filter my list down to what’s available in the current area. I know I just said that Oblivion’s journal was good but it was pretty annoying to walk halfway around the Imperial City only to find out that the other quest in my journal required me to do it all over again.

Guild Wars would let you ‘abandon’ a quest and pick it up at a later date. That’s fine for the kind of game that Guild Wars is but it’s a real immersion-killer. I wouldn’t recommend it for offline RPGs. IIRC, Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic used area filters in the journal.

Anyway, there you have it. Three-to-five categories. Shouldn’t be too complicated to implement, right?

Part III coming up in a few days – I’ll talk more about the information that needs to be in the journal.

RPGs. Role Playing Games. Games where the emphasis is on role-playing and story, choosing what missions to complete and how you complete them.

By their very essence, computer RPGs are complex. You can have five or more different tasks to juggle at the same time and for each task you can choose to do them a different way in order to achieve a different outcome. Gee, what would be useful to keep track of this? Why, a journal of course. How convenient that the game developers provided one for me. Now I don’t need to write everything down and lose it because the game will keep track of all the details, right?

Wrong.

So many times, I have seen journals that just don’t keep track of enough information. Or even worse, they update and you lose half the information you were relying on. So, over the next week or so, I am going to write the definitive How To guide for RPG journals. Some of it will be obvious to a lot of you, but trust me. I have played games that miss out even the most basic features. So, here we go…

The Absolute Basics

To start with, every journal needs the following information:

What quests have I found?
I like to wander around and talk to everyone in a room before I actually do anything. I’m not gonna remember all those trailheads.

What quests have I started?
Hey, it’s entirely possible to hear about a quest and do nothing about it. Or accidentally do part of a quest without realising. Personally, I like to keep trailheads apart from ongoing quests but that’s optional.

What quests have I finished?
It’s not good enough to simply delete a quest from the log once it’s finished, a la Guild Wars. In fact, it’s downright silly. Save games get lost. People play through twice to take the alternative path. I know I finished Guild Wars’ ‘Althea’s Ashes’ but was it with this character or another? I can’t remember. I have a life. (Contrary to what Boris Johnson would have you believe, but who takes him seriously anyway? Side note: check out the comment over there by Aranpreet Bhangal, a 14-year old who puts Boris and most commenters to shame most eloquently. One to watch, that kid.)

Back to the topic at hand – journals in cRPGs. They’re bloody useful when done well and an incredible liability when done poorly. Ideally you want to tie them into the map and inventory to help players keep things straight. Deus Ex 2 had a great premise of being able to choose who to follow but the clunky journal system made it almost impossible to keep track of what the heck was going on. I played the game for maybe 7 hours at the most before I had to stop. I had no idea which faction I was helping. I had maps and photos of all sorts of locations that I didn’t remember. By then, I just didn’t care enough to play on.

In the later posts I’ll talk about how to avoid problems like that by focusing on the details.