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The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem #155359
09/19/07 04:33
09/19/07 04:33
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 4,206
Innsbruck, Austria
sPlKe Offline OP
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sPlKe  Offline OP
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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 4,206
Innsbruck, Austria
inspired by an article i read a few days ago, i am posting a few ideas how to prevent the gameplay stop when the cutscene starts..

basic explanation:
the original article stated, that it is neccesary to have cutscenes and stuff to tell your story. however, a cutscene or something like this breaks the pace of the game. usually, you sit there doing nothing.
the autor then cited a few examples...

here are a few ideas i have to prevent this from happening...

a good example is half life 1... basically, there are no cutscenes. there are, but you play them. interactivity is they key to this. probably one of the best solutions you can think of...

another idea would be to make the whole game told through the actions of the player. imagine, you start at your home. a normal human, whatever.

now, you can go out through the door and down the stairs onto the street and walk down. or you go to your neighbor, steal a knife, stab him, take is shotgun and go onto a killing spree. this results in the actions the other characters take. so basically, the whole game is breoken down into various what ifs, dependng on what you can do. there is not one cutscene, no line of dialogue nothing, but the player knows why this is all happening. because he acts the way he does. and action brings reaction... i couldnt think of a better way to do this...

there are of course the traditional ways: skip cutscenes, make cutscenes interactive by allowing to move the camera or your player or something like this.

think about it...

Re: The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem [Re: sPlKe] #155360
09/19/07 06:26
09/19/07 06:26
Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 4,771
Bay City, MI
lostclimate Offline
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lostclimate  Offline
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Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 4,771
Bay City, MI
some other things, make minigames in the cutscenes, like in ff7, you can also make dialog choice based so it gives people at least a little to do.

Re: The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem [Re: lostclimate] #155361
09/19/07 07:52
09/19/07 07:52
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 3,538
WA, Australia
J
JibbSmart Offline
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JibbSmart  Offline
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J

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 3,538
WA, Australia
i am in most cases inclined towards half-life1/2 type cinematic-less-ness. there are still well-animated scripted events, but the player is completely involved, or they are far enough away that the player is merely spectating but still loses no control over their character.

i like this because most action games piss me off with little unnecessary detracting and distracting cutscenes that are badly done anyway.

on the other hand, platformers like the Jak and Ratchet & Clank series have great animation in their cutscenes and they are so well executed, that the games would lack a lot of depth without them. cutscenes are very important for character development, especially of the main character if they have a personality aside from the player's. half-life1/2 don't require the main character to have a personality, and this actually makes them a lot more immersive as the player is given no reason to believe they aren't in there doing everything themselves.

cutscenes, if used, should be used in such a way that they provide an opportunity to for the player to settle down. very frequent but short cutscenes are not good. on the other hand MGS2's cutscenes tended to be too long, and MGS3 suffered slightly in a similar fashion.

but of course, these are just the way cutscenes affect me in games. i'm sure others see things quite differently.

julz


Formerly known as JulzMighty.
I made KarBOOM!
Re: The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem [Re: JibbSmart] #155362
09/19/07 12:41
09/19/07 12:41
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 7,121
Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany
Machinery_Frank Offline
Senior Expert
Machinery_Frank  Offline
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 7,121
Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany
Sometimes cut-scenes are like a bonus, you can sit back and enjoy, it is just like getting paid for the hard job you did while playing.

But if you listen and watch other people in the game like HL or Bioshock do it then it also helps very much to tell the story. Besides that there can be voices over headset and your own voice from the off. You can read articles, emails or listen to audio-messages in the game. This all has been done in Doom3, Bioshock and many other games.

A mixture of all those elements is the best way.


Models, Textures and Games from Dexsoft
Re: The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem [Re: Machinery_Frank] #155363
09/19/07 12:48
09/19/07 12:48
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 4,305
Damocles Offline
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Damocles  Offline
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Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 4,305
Some seuqences should play ingame, as mentioned with Half-Life
(Barney opening the dor etc)

But a cutscene is a rewarding thing, especially if the player
just had a lot of action, and a hard task.
The best position is the end of a chapter of the gameplay. (like in Gothic)

During the game, the gameplay should not stop just because
the player hit a trigger. (the worst thing is, that some character
talks to you, the controls are disabled, and you get hit by an enemy at the same time)
Breaking the gameflow should only
be done if the player finished a hard task, and no enemies or
other action has to be taken care of.

Re: The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem [Re: sPlKe] #155364
09/19/07 13:26
09/19/07 13:26
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,534
hamburg
Samb Offline
Serious User
Samb  Offline
Serious User

Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,534
hamburg
a cutscene is for me like a reward.
in zelda: twilight princess, I love every cutscene. and they don't have voice acting.
but they can tell a story with minimum text. other examples are resident evil 4. the cutscenes are just awesome and sometimes looks like a next gen game.
but I don't like prerendered cutscenes in adventures etc.
mario and sonic games with prerendered cutscenes are ok (ok, only sonic and the secret rings and mario sunshine got prerendered cutscence ) but adventures like zelda etc.? no way!

I know some people don't like cutscenes in videogames. but i'm pretty sure they do not really care for the story, they just want to play.

Re: The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem [Re: Samb] #155365
09/20/07 21:02
09/20/07 21:02
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 7,490
O
Orange Brat Offline

Senior Expert
Orange Brat  Offline

Senior Expert
O

Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 7,490
I have no problem with cutscenes. While I like the interactive, scripted sequences of HL2 and Bioshock, I prefer a non-interactive cutscene. It doesn't take you out of the game, it integrates into and moves the story forward. Only short attention spans may have a problem with them, and that's there problem.


My User Contributions master list - my initial post links are down but scroll down page to find list to active links
Re: The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem [Re: Orange Brat] #155366
09/21/07 02:09
09/21/07 02:09
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,131
M
Matt_Aufderheide Offline
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Matt_Aufderheide  Offline
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M

Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,131
In general cutscenes are bad..they are a relict from the early days of "CD-ROM multimedia", where there had to be hours of video and rendered scenes. A game is not a movie; why should it try to be? Cutscenes are often a bone thrown to people who "expect" it.

The Halflife style scripted stuff is almost always much better as it doesn't break the game world. Frankly though, even that stuff is often unneeded. In future I expect more and more games to rely on the game world to be dynamic and intelligent rather than pre-scripted and canned (this has nothing to do with attention spans).

Cutscenes also take valuable development time that could be better spent making the game better...often they are used as cover for a bad or incomplete game.

Also, the obvious difference in rendering quality and style between poor compressed cutscene video and game rendering is a problem. If you do do cutscenes, at least use the game renderer and do it realtime.




Sphere Engine--the premier A6 graphics plugin.
Re: The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem [Re: Matt_Aufderheide] #155367
09/21/07 02:17
09/21/07 02:17
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 702
Z
zazang Offline
User
zazang  Offline
User
Z

Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 702
I find cutscenes a refreshing break in heavy action based PS2 games...
Just sit back for a few moments n watch n then get back to action...However I admit,I dont like too long ones


I like good 'views' because they have no 'strings' attached..
Re: The Gameplay stops... the Cutscene problem [Re: Matt_Aufderheide] #155368
09/21/07 04:11
09/21/07 04:11
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
PHeMoX Offline
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PHeMoX  Offline
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
Not being able to do anything except move and look around in a train waiting can be claustrophobic.

I don't mind a good scripted event as long as the camera gets a nice cinematic movement script too. Off course sometimes cutscenes are heavily overdone, simply last too long or can't be skipped .. that's when I start to dislike them. I'm not buying a game to sit and watch a 7 minutes cutscene of predictable blabla ...

A game that has near perfect cutscenes is Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. It's free to download now and it's worth it. It uses the ingame engine, it's non-interactive and it's superb in the cinematic way it tells the story.

Cheers


PHeMoX, Innervision Software (c) 1995-2008

For more info visit: Innervision Software
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