voice regonition just compares two sound waves: input and stock

stock is readydefinited wave done by the developers, and input is the one user gives in.

comparsion tries to find similiar (not exact) sound wave and works after that. In vista, the sound waves are modified "run-time" and so it is called as 'learning'.

All the developers are having hard time is.. yeah. there isn't.

Thanks for your feedback!

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as for the looking effect: i am not sure but i think thats quite usual in current games. halflife, fable aso interact with the player not only with point and click but also with "appearance and recognicion".

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I don't know Faible, but HL does not offer any consequences of just looking at someone.

In HL it is just a mouse click to toggle follow/stay.
In HL2 you have to come near a person to get informations, or to get hit by a 'policeman' in the railway station.

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The problem with the trading system is the offer and demand cycle would only work for one itme. As soon as there are more this could be mre anoying then helpful.

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For a merchant and in a store there is the traditional rpg system better.

For small tradings imagine to scroll with the mouse wheel through your items.

Your example with the kid starring at the bag is nice!
But, it is a bit different to starring at an item, because the item is obvious, while the bag is not what the kid want, it wants something that's in it, the bag is not the matter of interest, but what it contains or could contain!!

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More important from my interest is to explore new gaming contents.

I'm interested in offer/demand, less in the sense of trading, but in the sense of influencing other npcs as you can see in the Tom Sawyer Scene.

I try to develop a sort of dialog tree which is more a decision tree of look/ignore, offer/demand.

I wish to expand the 'fighting' system too by 'low power acts' like holding/pushing, by holding a door close for instance...

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I think this is a good place to remind everyone to a nice dialog tool, which is much more than only that:

SmartTalkingNodes from Superfluxus

http://www.superfluxus.de/


I mention it, because it shows a nice concept to produce intelligent ingame interaction. Although, I want much more as my row of posts is showing.

I'm curious, if anyone already used it!

As already said, I'm interested in a theory of game and gameplay which offers new approachs to genres which are not already established.

Taking Tom Sawyer, and more lately Charles Dicken's heros like Oliver Twist, as an example seems to be a good choice to me, because I don't see games at the moment which are comparable to these novels.

Main property: a hero who is too weak to fight!
Main difference to the established games: they can't accumulate strength and abilities to make a carreer, to get strong enough to fight.

So, it is not about getting and establishing power, but about powerlessness and how to avoid and escape from it!
It could be called the different approach to life of girls and boys: Boys have to expect to grow strong, and to establish themselves and their needs by strength, while girls mainly have to expect to be the weaker part of a fight, means, they have to think about different strategies to establish themselves and keep peace.
And, that's it, the girls' way of keeping peace, which is the main task within democracy: avoiding powerlessness, the girls' way in games, beyond playing with dolls or The Sims, the struggle against powerlessness, is something which is established in novels and movies, but isn't established in games yet.

(Hope, this isn't too confusing. If you didn't understand, but are still curious, what I meant, please ask! )

"reverse RPG"

Wow!
Thanks for the link!
Will defenitely have a closer look into that discussion!

Here's another unusual RPG called "Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble" that was just released. It looks like and uses boardgame style gameplay. I played a public beta a while back, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I may purchase the full version once it becomes available:

http://www.mousechief.com/dg_index.html

It looks very funny, and seems to have great ideas for the game mechanics!
Thanks for the link!
I would like to play it, but I fear that I can't play it without looking into a dictionary every second sentence!

As a side note: you post so much interesting links, I enjoy each! But, I hesitate to replay each time: "What a great link!" So, please don't worry, when you post a link, and you don't get a response!
I enjoy each one!

New suggestions on the theme 'SUBSTANCE AND DESIGN':

Within both categories there are special qualities they have to fulfill.
The 'interface' is within the 'responsibility' of both.
Both together in connection to each other are responsible for the game 'being intuitive'...

Within 'substance' there are 'reliability', 'easiness of the controls', 'lucidity'(Übersichtlichkeit), 'fairness'(relating the AI and the information it bases on)...(to be continued)

Within 'design' there are 'identification', 'touch', such as the 'connection' to the gamer, the player's heard, experiences, emotions, knowledge, to the player's world and thus to the expectations which this world makes probable.

Let's talk about 'connection': the design has to connect the elements which the substance provides in the head and heart of the player. It has to take care that the player doesn't loose the thread! The thread/connection between the elements, the meaning of their relations, but also the connection between the players motivation to start the game and reasons to continue playing, the connection between head and heart: means the mind puzzles and that they actually evokes feelings. Even the math puzzles are rewarding with pleasure about a solution with the 'cleanness' or 'simplicity' and that it rewards with the 'shelter' of being 'enclosed' and 'rounded', escaped from threatening chaos and problems.
'Design' not only provides the player with pleasure, desire, disappointments of getting/missing rewards, but rewards the player 'while' playing with nice sound, nice ambient, gimmicks etc..
And here we go and come to the main idea that struck me today:

The design provides a 'while' (while playing), it provides the player with celebrating each moment, it organizes the playing as an event.
That's
'production/staging' (in the sense a play is presented in a theatre) ("Inszenierung")

Remember other games beyond pc and consoles to realize what I mean:
for instance 'soccer': when they express their pain when fowled, their pleasure when they shot the goal, how they prompt the fans in the audience to support them, how they show their anger etc. - all this sort of communication between the soccer team and their fans.

New term, to be considered when searching for new game mechanics:

CONVENTIONS/USUAL PRACTICE (german: "Konventionen")

For instance:

The conventions of games to restart a game at a certain point when the gamer failed.
In shooters, when the player dies, or when a hostage have been killed, you have to restart from a savegame, or begin the mission again.
Although, many designers think there is a necessity of this mechanic, it isn't.
It is a convention. Designers and gamers are only used to it, but there are other possibilities to organize progresses and failings.
In adventures, you simply don't proceed.
There are other conventions in multiplayer games, respawn at a certain places, or loose money, and go on after a certain time, and so on.
But, one can think of games and there have been games where you couldn't restart, you even couldn't fail in a way that the game has to be restarted, you simply proceed within the 'fate' that accumulates within your avatars properties.

The point is, that often you think that there are certain mechanics in a certain genre, and these are laws which are set in stone, but they are not. They are conventions, that means they are available to your creative mind to change them or to keep them or to skip them.

Thanks for your time!

The point of games is that the journey is more important than the destination or conclusion, so really it doesn't matter all that much if you stick to the save-game conventions or not. Problem is that any save-game related choice in design should never interfere with the fun of playing the game. The problem of not going by the save game conventions is that a.) you might confuse gamers and b.) the alternative solution should still punish or reward players for failing the initial level. If you choose not to punish players, then the alternative 'reward' should make sense and be something that can be done over and over again as people theoretically could fail a mission dozens and dozens of times. The latter choice will most likely end up with design solutions like in Bioshock.

Examples of bad save-game designs would be Soldier of Fortune-Payback, but also for example Bioshock. In Bioshock dying doesn't punish players because Big Daddies for example get to keep their health at the level you'd damaged them to before. You can kill a Big Daddy with a wrench if you'd wanted and don't care to respawn a couple of dozen times. Somehow.. the save game mechanic in that game felt kind of broken.
In Soldier of Fortune Payback you'll be begging for more save game checkpoint spots, because of the difficulty of the game. It's one of those games that theoretically only takes you roughly 6 hours to finish, but you will play at least double that time because of the countless retries you will be doing. They should have added more save-game checkpoints,

Cheers