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Re: Campaign Story
Dave Fancella wrote:
On Tuesday 17 August 2004 12:18 pm, Jens Granseuer wrote:
Hmm, not sure about the setbacks, but you probably don't want to have the
story later on tell the player that battle wasn't important after all.
;) Better to have the player start the map knowing what he's up against
then tell him later on "Oh yeah, that map you did such a job on? Doesn't
matter at all, don't know why you even played it". ;)
What's the difference?
The difference is that it makes the player feel bad. ;)
I'm not really sure how to make setbacks happen for a player that has to
literally win each map to play the next. On the other hand, allowing for
one side or the other to win each map either takes us back into branching
campaign stories, or finds us with some maps that just plain don't make
sense in the story.
Isn't having scenarios the player must _lose_ really pointless? And yes,
the branching stuff scares me.
Yes, you're right, but luckily I have solved the problem. ;)
We don't have to play *every* map in the storyline, just the pivotal ones. So
the first couple of acts the maps played should mostly amount to "If you win,
we hold our position, but if you lose we get overrun", and we flesh out the
reasons in the story.
The problem with having maps that you have to lose, assuming for a moment that
we did that, is that the game then becomes a role-playing game rather than a
tactical wargame, where your role is to just play the story we've assigned
you. But players don't want that, and we don't want that, so you're
absolutely right that each map must be won in order for the campaign to
proceed. So I suppose the trick is to write the story right. ;)
How about have a map in which when time is turn "n", when the empire start
an attack on somewhere more important than which the player is playing,
and the player is assigned to deal with a bigger battle of another map?
This way, one may set the victory condition as "turn=20" then a message
like
"The empire is on their way to our HQ !" , then the game of this map is
over,
and the player is sent to play another map, after victory of that map,
or certain
turns, say turn=15 (of course, these maps should be big enought not to
let the player
win too fast) the player is informed that the battle in last map is lost.
Map
A Turn=20 or so -> player is sent to map B
B Turn=15 or so -> player is informed the battle in map A is lost
I pulled this solution by considering the new Star Wars movies. Have you
considered that the new Star Wars movies represent a story which concludes
with the bad guys winning? Yet at the end of each movie (so far), we're
still seeing scenes where the heroes are prancing around victorious. Because
the victories they have achieved have amounted to holding their position,
without advancing, and the enemy is still advancing around them. Make sense?
Dave
Brain @tw
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