Comments on: Julian Streets, the Fox of China http://www.gameideas.org/2007/02/08/julian-streets-the-fox-of-china/ Videogame concepts from a professional designer Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:15:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: Pierre-Alexandre Garneau http://www.gameideas.org/2007/02/08/julian-streets-the-fox-of-china/#comment-145 Sat, 10 Feb 2007 14:13:48 +0000 http://www.gameideas.org/2007/02/08/julian-streets-the-fox-of-china/#comment-145 Code patches are actually fairly easy with the new console generation -- Xbox 360 games get patches all the time. That said, I agree that this project would be a bit too ambitious to try the weekly model with. Julian Streets would be an awesome game in that format if pulled off correctly, but it sure would be hard to pull off. But hey, that's the nice thing about this blog: I get to come up with cool concepts outside of too many real world constraints ;) As an aside, there are now firms selling detailed 3D models of all the streets in London. You could create a GTA-style game set in London and save a lot of modeling time with this. I'd seriously consider this if I were to create that type of game. A GTA clone set in real London with a new mission each week could be a lot of fun :) Code patches are actually fairly easy with the new console generation — Xbox 360 games get patches all the time. That said, I agree that this project would be a bit too ambitious to try the weekly model with. Julian Streets would be an awesome game in that format if pulled off correctly, but it sure would be hard to pull off. But hey, that’s the nice thing about this blog: I get to come up with cool concepts outside of too many real world constraints ;)

As an aside, there are now firms selling detailed 3D models of all the streets in London. You could create a GTA-style game set in London and save a lot of modeling time with this. I’d seriously consider this if I were to create that type of game. A GTA clone set in real London with a new mission each week could be a lot of fun :)

]]> by: Thelo http://www.gameideas.org/2007/02/08/julian-streets-the-fox-of-china/#comment-144 Sat, 10 Feb 2007 12:25:24 +0000 http://www.gameideas.org/2007/02/08/julian-streets-the-fox-of-china/#comment-144 Telltale Games are currently trying out the episodic model with the adventure game Sam and Max (they aim to push out one "episode" per month), and from what I've seen, it works pretty well for them so far. Of course, adventure games thrive on novelty, so it might just be the best genre to pull it off ; who knows how much novelty we'd be able to add to a stealth-action game such as this each week? A project like Julian Streets would require quite a lot of head-scratching at the start from the designers, though, just to define the basic set of actions that the player can do... since it'll be these actions that will define every single future mission. So if you forget to put in, say, a way to swim, then you'll never be able to ship a mission that requires swimming. And on the flip side, if you put in too many player actions, then every level has to be built according to these possible actions and it can become really hard to design sensible missions. So if you decide that Julian is able to bash certain doors down, well, you have to decide the resilience of every single door in the game. Well actually, I guess that if you actually shipped code patches with the weekly missions, it could theoretically be done, but code patches and consoles still don't mix very well. Maybe it'd be feasible on PC? But yeah, lots of head-scratching in perspective on this one... which is why I'm really scared of trying to build any sandboxy, freedom-oriented game. When you basically have to think about *every* situation that could break your mission, and the player can generate a million different situations... x_x Telltale Games are currently trying out the episodic model with the adventure game Sam and Max (they aim to push out one “episode” per month), and from what I’ve seen, it works pretty well for them so far. Of course, adventure games thrive on novelty, so it might just be the best genre to pull it off ; who knows how much novelty we’d be able to add to a stealth-action game such as this each week?

A project like Julian Streets would require quite a lot of head-scratching at the start from the designers, though, just to define the basic set of actions that the player can do… since it’ll be these actions that will define every single future mission. So if you forget to put in, say, a way to swim, then you’ll never be able to ship a mission that requires swimming.

And on the flip side, if you put in too many player actions, then every level has to be built according to these possible actions and it can become really hard to design sensible missions. So if you decide that Julian is able to bash certain doors down, well, you have to decide the resilience of every single door in the game.

Well actually, I guess that if you actually shipped code patches with the weekly missions, it could theoretically be done, but code patches and consoles still don’t mix very well. Maybe it’d be feasible on PC?

But yeah, lots of head-scratching in perspective on this one… which is why I’m really scared of trying to build any sandboxy, freedom-oriented game. When you basically have to think about *every* situation that could break your mission, and the player can generate a million different situations… x_x

]]>