q335r49
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The Materialism of DROD

The most interesting thing about DROD is that the architects are limited by the movement of the monsters. DROD architecture is NOT about "self-expression" (as most video games claim to be) it is NOT essentially 'telling a story' or representation but is in fact -- about the monsters.

That is, DROD is the precise inversion of a game like Final Fantasy 30. In FF, the hardware mechanics serve the storytelling elements -- thus, flashy graphics and a sweeping 'epic' storyline are meant to serve representation, self-expression, human enjoyment, etc. Precisely the opposite with DROD: the puzzle designs are LIMITED by the (very simple) movement designs of the monsters, and the solution of the puzzle is, essentially, the discovery of an yet unrecognized aspect of monster movement.

Thus, while in FF the mechanics serve the aesthetic, in DROD the aesthetic serves the mechanics -- in this case, the movement of the monsters, or what I will call "materialism".

DROD and Math

Authough I say that DROD, in general, refers to a certain form of materiality, it is still, first and foremost, Art rather than a Machine. There are those who say that DROD is 'mathematical': But what would be the nontrivial interpretation of this statement?

That is, trivially, everything is mathematical, even bad games like FF. The movement of the characters, the battle systems, etc. are all numerical and mathematical. So what does mathematical mean?

Perhaps DROD is mathematical if the movement of the monsters point towards a general theorem. There are plenty of theorems to be made about monster movement, but this still does not strike us as interesting.

What must be meant by the statement, "DROD is mathematical", then, is that DROD points towards a mathematical limit. Not a human limit, or human will. Thus, what "DROD is mathematical" means:

The design of a particular room is primarily limited by the laws of mathematics, and NOT by "human expression".

DROD is a game for game designers. Playing through DROD will often reveal its mathematical nature. The player will realize, quite early on, that "There is more than one way to skin a cat". The multiplicity of solutions means that the game is, in a limited way, outside of the control of the architect. The architect becomes a channel for mathematical laws which are expressed, and it is in fact quite hard to make a puzzle with a single solution.

But the mathematical nature of DROD is no doubt felt more closely by architects than players. The architecture of DROD is not, primarily, 'to tell a story', but rather to reveal the fundamental laws that limit even the architect -- this is another interpretation of 'materiality'.

DROD and Art

In the end however, DROD is NOT mathematics but Art. I said before that DROD points to mathematical laws. But the problem with mathematics is that it cliams to have discovered, in a pure and rational language, the fundamental law of a given situation.

Thus, to attempt to write a "solver" for DROD, and to name in a precise, concrete, and final way all of the laws of DROD is (mis)guided by this belief.

The difference between art and math, both of which are concerned with truth, is that art recognizes human finitude. It realizes the severely limited nature of humanity in relation to the universe and its ability to recognize universal law.

For example, did not Marx attempt to express a universal law in his writings? There is undoubtedly some truth to what Marx says. Yet, authough Marx postulated a law about all of history, such a law could only be expressed in a vague rather than precise form, and only at a certain point in history. The difference between art and math is this:

While both art and math are about fundametnal truth, art recognizes that the appearance of fundamental truth to humanity is fleeting and temporary. Art knows that only certain forms of truth can appear to humanity at any given point in history.

NiroZ
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q335r49 wrote:
That is, DROD is the precise inversion of a game like Final Fantasy 30.

FF30? How far in the future are you?

DROD is a game for game designers. Playing through DROD will often reveal its mathematical nature. The player will realize, quite early on, that "There is more than one way to skin a cat". The multiplicity of solutions means that the game is, in a limited way, outside of the control of the architect. The architect becomes a channel for mathematical laws which are expressed, and it is in fact quite hard to make a puzzle with a single solution.

Not really. It's hard to find a fun, enjoyable puzzle that has a very restricted solution.

q335r49
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The Story of DROD

As Art, then, DROD attempts to bring into appearance a fundamental truth, the ultimate materiality of the world. It does, as mentioned above, in numerous ways: By pointing to the monsters, by pointing to the mathematical laws, and so on. But it also expresses this fact allegorically, in the stories.

The mathematical attitude, the archival attitude, is in fact represented in the empire. Mathematics is the attempt to archive and to categorize all of truth -- and as such, it attempts to make its own work final and ultimate.

Yet, DROD, in its thinking of the archivists (of the Empire), renders the ultimate laws of mathematics temporary rather than final while at the same time continuing to point to a deeper source -- at 'the center of the earth'.

"For a brief moment, I felt as if I were about to journey, not to the center of Africa, but to the center of the earth"
- Heart of Darkness

...

Ummm, I still have to finish the abyssian fortress and probably a few other levels, so I have no idea what the mothingness is. But, in conclusion, DROD is art in the sense that art attempts to write the philosophy of the future. Art is always both practical and truthful -- it at once names the ultimate truth and considered the human in relation to this truth. Thus, art attempts to write a symbolics of the future, to bring the invisible and the mechanical into appearance precisely through this symbolics, which will no longer refer to what we consider, today, as necessary and material.

DROD is an attempt to think the materiality which is unarchivable and not immediately present (as math is), but which can be named and which seems to come to appearance through the (future) presence that naming brings about.

OK... just a few remarks to start off.

Oneiromancer
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I like your style, sir. And congratulations on lurking for so long. I do have one comment...

q335r49 wrote:
Ummm, I still have to finish the abyssian fortress and probably a few other levels, so I have no idea what the mothingness is.

The Pit Thing actually talks quite a lot about the nature of the mothingness early in the game, although it is so odd and not clearly referenced that Beethro (and most players, I'm sure) didn't realize that was what it was referring to.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

eytanz
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Actually, I think the Pit Thing is pretty explicit about what the mothingmess is early on. The main problem is that the Pit Thing is not entirely a trustworthy source.

Also, and I'm not sure whose fault this is - the devs or the forum - but a lot of people use the word "Mothingness" to refer to the Pit Thing itself. I hoped that TCB would solve that, but I've still seen it done, so let me be explicit on this - the Pit Thing and the Mothingness are two different things.

Given this confusion, I don't know if q335r49 means that he doesn't know what the mothingness is (in which case, he should review the Pit Thing's explanations), or if he doesn't know what the Pit Thing is, which is indeed still a mystery.

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Rabscuttle
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Was 'mothingness' or 'pit thing' used in JtRH anywhere? Because I was under the impression that the PT was the Mothingness (before TCB)

The Heart of Darkness quote is ...interesting?

Oneiromancer
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eytanz wrote:
Actually, I think the Pit Thing is pretty explicit about what the mothingmess is early on. The main problem is that the Pit Thing is not entirely a trustworthy source.

It is my recollection that the term "mothingness" was coined by the Pit Thing and thus it is one of the few things on which it would be trustworthy, provided it remembers how it defined it in the first place. It's not like there are any other entities that we know of, that would have heard the term before (except for Beethro).

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Oneiromancer
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Rabscuttle wrote:
Was 'mothingness' or 'pit thing' used in JtRH anywhere? Because I was under the impression that the PT was the Mothingness (before TCB)

I believe the Pit Thing said "The mothingness will consume you" which many people probably interpreted as "I will consume you" and that "mothingness" was the method it would use to do so.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

coppro
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I don't think the Pit Thing invented the term 'mothingness', at least given the aumtlich informing 1st Slayer of it. I'd guess it's more of some archaic term that has lost general use, but the ancient vat recipe for the aumtlich still had the term. At the time, the Pit Thing is thing only living(?) thing that knows the word, or indeed of the thing that the word is referring to.

zex20913
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I just want to put something about mathematics out there. There are two types of math: structural, and specific. I feel that the structural type is what you're talking about here--things that are certainly true about the universe, no matter what situation there is. (For example, reflexivity: X is X. Time is time, money is money). I feel that this type is too restrictive, is boring, and is far too structured to be of any applicable use. I don't want to build a totally inflexible building. Tap it with a shopping cart and it'll fall down. We can't create this totally inflexible material, and structural math tries.

Specific math is for a given situation. It tries to find and apply things that must be true, under the constraints. 2+2=1 in modulo 3. True, math folk say that fewer constraints are better, because then the result can be applied in more situations. It does not pretend to be totally universal, though, and should not try to. This, to me, is where the meat of mathematics is. I can make my own constraints and find out things about it.

Specific math takes tiny pieces of the universe at a time, and says "This will always be true here." Structural math tries to do that to the entire universe at once.

With DROD, I feel that it's a combination of art and specific math. There are given constraints, but a very, very large amount of specific rooms, and thus a very very large amount of specific "theorems" to explore and prove. Some theorems are bad (Bad Evil Restaurant springs to mind as something providing very little useful information), and some theorems are difficult (Larrymurk and BoyBlue, among others, are producing some relatively Newtonian theorems), but they are all shown to be possible, or true. (People like Stefan and Rabscuttle seem to be Gauss-like solvers)

The art comes in with finding the specific room/theorem to make, out of a huge number of possible rooms. I think that it's creative math at its finest, and I think that creative math is art.

____________________________

eytanz
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"mothingness" was used in JtRH, in a way that I think obscured the issue. I don't think the Pit Thing was ever named.

Part of the problem was that there was considerable disagreement among the various writers of JtRH (Erik, Mattcrampy, and myself) about the nature of the Pit Thing, and while a consensus was eventually reached and we ended up with a consistent product, it was less straightforward than if we had agreed on it to begin with. By the time we implemented the TCB story then a lot of the kinks were worked out, but now there was already some confusion among the players.

I think that sooner or later, there will either be an SmS that explains exactly what the mothingness is and how it relates to the Pit Thing, or else I will write a story to the website doing so. But I'll need Erik's permission, and also free time, which is not something I have in abundance these days.

____________________________
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[Last edited by eytanz at 05-07-2007 12:27 AM]

ErikH2000
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I'm quite appreciative of q335r49's post. Well, maybe too appreciative. I can delude myself into thinking I had worked out a detailed philosophy of DROD like that when I really haven't. Or after reading q's analysis, that somehow I am subliminally more deep in my thinking than I actually am.

But I'll make a few comments along the same theme...

The puzzle and game design came before story considerations, because in the first release of DROD there was only the barest of "dungeon crawl" plots. I had something only just slightly more sophisticated than "Go get some treasure and come back alive" or "Go kill the bad guy". It was instead, "Go do something that gets you treasure, discover a bad guy, and kill him." So because the game started out with puzzles first and story as an afterthought, we established this priority early. Since people loved the puzzles so much, we knew better than to screw with it.

I don't feel like I have a good handle on Q's definitions of art and math. I can say that in game design, it seemed terribly important to avoid anything that seemed random or unpredictable, or to corrupt the gameplay with presentation elements even if they would make the game seem more realistic or artistic. So perhaps decisions like these were the underpinnings of what Q is calling "mathematics" in the game.

I also much prefer puzzles which are solved with "human" jumps of intuition, as opposed to brute force solutions that could better be performed by a machine. When you can find a solution, but the process by which your mind produced it seems inscrutable, then that is a magic moment, different than mechanically plugging numbers into a Sudoku grid. Perhaps this is the "art" that Q is talking about.

For the story of DROD, which properly began with Journey to Rooted Hold, I had a few tenets to follow while writing it:

* Every mysterious or obscured thing focused on in the story must have some planned explanation, even if that explanation is never given in the story. i.e. We make a big deal about the Mothingness and say all kinds of confusing things about it, but there is still a real definition of it that we are following. And we could have kept on insisting that all manner of unfathomable things were lurking beneath Lowest Point, but it seemed best to come clean and show it. I would rather prove that we have something specific and real in the story.

* Similar to the first tenet, there is no magic in the Eighth. Saying that "anything is possible" undermines the credibility of the Empire's pursuit of knowledge, which I preferred to be undermined more legitimately. More importantly, I didn't want to invalidate Beethro's "believe what I see" approach to finding the truth. How Beethro or the Empire seek knowledge should not be quickly dismissed by laughing at their unwillingness to accept an unpredictable, magical universe.

* Beethro has limited capabilities to discover truth. He's kind of dumb, but he doesn't put anything into his head he isn't sure about, and that's his strength. He is an untalented scientist, but I hope to make the point that it is better to know a few things that are true than it is to know many things that aren't.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Jatopian
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ErikH2000 wrote:
I also much prefer puzzles which are solved with "human" jumps of intuition, as opposed to brute force solutions that could better be performed by a machine. When you can find a solution, but the process by which your mind produced it seems inscrutable, then that is a magic moment, different than mechanically plugging numbers into a Sudoku grid.

I am so glad someone else thinks this about Sudoku...

q335r49 wrote:
the (very simple) movement designs of the monsters

Are you familiar with serpents? goblins? wraithwings? Citizens?

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

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[Last edited by Jatopian at 05-07-2007 04:20 AM]

halyavin
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And TopCoder even organized competition to write computer programs that solve Sudoku (up to 64x64 of course). My program was not good (97 place ), but I found very quick way to generate big non-trivial Sudoku matrix (I can describe it if anyone is interesting). Poor admins don't thought it and spent a lot of computer time to generate big test cases.

q335r49
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Wow! I didn't think I'd get any serious responses -- sweet message board. Let me expand on one point at length in this already fairly complicated thread.

ErikH2000 wrote:
I also much prefer puzzles which are solved with "human" jumps of intuition, as opposed to brute force solutions that could better be performed by a machine. When you can find a solution, but the process by which your mind produced it seems inscrutable, then that is a magic moment, different than mechanically plugging numbers into a Sudoku grid.

That's interesting, that 'flash' of insight, which is basically what gives DROD a human intention, something like the message of the architect ('aaa, so that's what he wanted me to discover'.)

But it's at once both the voice of the architect (The 'human' talking to the human, architect to delver) and what was always there (the monsters) -- so that the architect points to or communicates some truth about the 'material' -- the monsters.

I think that it would be wrong to say that what the architect wanted to communicate is precisely some subtlety regarding monster movement, like, on the oremite level "(SPOILER) A goblin is blind to force arrows, so you can lure him to a location where he 'thinks' he can attack you but cannot (/SPOILER)(like that ridiculously subtle 'leap of insight' on the oremite level) " which, if expressed more precisely, can lead towards archivization. (I can just imagine a book in the Grand Library: 'On the Vision of Goblins, Volume 3').

One of the things I liked about TCB is that it constantly introduced new elements, as opposed to kind of working out a few given ones more exhaustively like in JRH and earlier -- it kind of throws everyone off their feet, as if this "Freedom of Monster Design" itself kind of attempts to overcome the archiving tendency. Like, sort of like how the 1st archivists wanted to kill all the surfacers. But he is in fact sort of defeated by the complexities of the monsters he uses to kill the surfacers -- by the fact that there has to be a new branch of the library dedicated to goblins and rotatable force arrows, for example.

So, to put it kind of paradoxically, the 'design' of monsters, engineered to eliminate the threat to the archive, turns out to be, in the end, the largest threat to the archive. This just sounds like an interesting statement to throw out, as a digression.

But -- this sounds like "freedom of monster design" were merely some kind of combinatorial 'explosion' to destroy the archive. But I think there is a positive aspect to freedom as well. I think that DROD kind of points at this 'inscrutable moment', and, in its various puzzles, attempt to think the complexities of this moment out more carefully ... so that DROD seems to be a meditation on some fundamental aspect of video games, like the intersection between human intuition and the mechanical game elements -- the thinking of that 'inscrutable moment'.

I mean, to be more precise: "Freedom of monster design" sounds human and arbitrary, like, the complete unarchivibility of human ingenuity, but that is really too romantic an interpretation.

What "Freedom of monster design" means is in fact the precise opposite -- that 'freedom' is somehow closely linked with these 'monsters'. People think they can go out and make an awesome game, but, I mean, Hollywood Blockbusters are trash! They cost millions to make, but they are missing something -- and that something is precisely the ability to think 'the monsters' -- the materiality.

FF costs millions to make, but it is really just flashy lights. What makes a game 'entertaining' are these subltle logical leaps. But these subtle logical leaps, these inscrutable moments, are not human but monstrous. They involve the uninnumerable, and YET, mechanical discoveries. MERELY the behavior of these monsters -- not human-human, architect-delver, but human-monster.

DROD then, kind of says, in genereal: The fundamental aspect of gameplay (all video games, not just DROD -- DROD is merely the attempt to name or think about the foundation of all video games) is ruled by monsters, the architects being the channeling of these material forces, but still, Monsters.

Beef Row
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q335r49 wrote:
(SPOILER)-----(/SPOILER)

There's a better way to do this. See the button that says [Secret]? Here's what it does :

You can also simply type secret and /secret in HTML tags.

____________________________
"Now I will repeatedly apply the happy-face rule"

zex20913
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q335r49 wrote:FF costs millions to make, but it is really just flashy lights. What makes a game 'entertaining' are these subltle logical leaps. But these subtle logical leaps, these inscrutable moments, are not human but monstrous. They involve the uninnumerable, and YET, mechanical discoveries. MERELY the behavior of these monsters -- not human-human, architect-delver, but human-monster.

I read a study once that said brain activity increased for the first half hour of playing a video game. Then, it went to TV-watching levels. With most video games, you know exactly what to do within a half hour, and then it's just a process of applying what you have learned to more difficult situations.

With DROD, you take what you've learned, and apply it to a new situation. There's relatively little button-mashing in DROD. And if you stop thinking after half an hour, you stop solving rooms.

____________________________

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[Last edited by zex20913 at 05-07-2007 12:40 PM]

Kevin_P86
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Beef Row wrote:
You can also simply type secret and /secret in HTML tags.

Except HTML tags use angle brackets (< and >), whereas you actually want square brackets ([ and ]). That is, you want to type:

[secret]Secret text here.[/secret]

which produces:



____________________________
+++++[>+++++<-]>[>+++>++++>+++++<<<-]>.>+.>-------.<++++.+++++.

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[Last edited by Kevin_P86 at 05-07-2007 06:03 PM]

lakibuk
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People think they can go out and make an awesome game, but, I mean, Hollywood Blockbusters are trash! They cost millions to make, but they are missing something -- and that something is precisely the ability to think 'the monsters' -- the materiality.

Don't get the movies analogy. Can you explain?

FF costs millions to make, but it is really just flashy lights. What makes a game 'entertaining' are these subltle logical leaps. But these subtle logical leaps, these inscrutable moments, are not human but monstrous. They involve the uninnumerable, and YET, mechanical discoveries. MERELY the behavior of these monsters -- not human-human, architect-delver, but human-monster.

That's what i love about DROD and which frustrates me when i play AAA titles. The intelligent interaction with monsters / items.
Example: first person shooters. I'd love to use granates in some clever subtle way. Like luring the enemies in a closed section and throw a grenate on them. But no, these game always work the same way: cross-hair,aim,shoot,quicksave. Great graphics (yes, i hate FF, too).
The grenates are merely gimmicks without real use, something you can't accuse DROD's game elements of. Put into the game without thought, just cause every shooter has them.

____________________________
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Blueskied Games (main site) - Gratis Spiele (german site)

q335r49
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Hi Karl,

Thanks for the thoughtful responses, I'm a bit long winded, but I hope I'm being reasonable.

DROD and Cinema

I guess I was being kind of obscure about the reference to 'If Monster : DROD = X : Cinema, X=?'. To be honest, I have no idea what X may be, but the analysis of DROD seems to point towards a particular method of finding X.

Technical Innovation

I think that, in order to explain what X may be, we would need to think about 'technical innovations' in general, if we assume that the manipulation of monsters, which is the core of DROD, is a 'technical innovation'.

First, the traditional, wrong perspective: When people think about technical innovation, they usually think something having to do with hardware or software -- graphics cards, algorithms, and such. There is an analogy of

Technics:Movie :: Machine:Man. (This is wrong)

There are these engineers who work out the technical components, and then there are directors who "humanize" the technical components. Thus, for Hollywood, or for FF, there are engineers and who make film, cameras, special effects, etc., and then there are 'creative geniuses' who 'give life' to these things or make them human.

Both Human AND Technical

Can technical innovation be art? I'm not saying that what people call 'design' is 'art' -- a well-engineered engine, iPods or sleek laptops or stuff are not 'art', by my definition. Yet, too often, art critics completely ignore the technical, saying that art is merely human: 'how well a story is told' or 'how these flashing lights make me feel'.

But what would it mean if we were to consider DROD as 'art'?

Certainly, we can't say that DROD 'tells a great story' and 'evokes deep emotions'. And, in addition, DROD contains several technical components: I'm not saying the actual source code or anything, but the design of the monsters, the core gameplay of 'manipulation': the set of mechanical monsters that move and react in set ways. And all these things can in no way be considered 'human'.

Everything in DROD is both human and technical. The human component, the story, is easy to interpret using traditional methods. But that would be only getting half the story -- it would be silly to say that DROD 'taught me the meaning of true love, like Titantic'. Thus, the human and the technical must be interpreted together.

But how would it be possible to interpret the technical -- how is it possible to interpret 'gameplay'?

The Voice of the Monster

The most important leap that must be taken, I believe, is called the universality of voice: we must allow everything to 'speak', even the 'monstrous', undead, technical components. The inability to hear the undead is the error of art critics everywhere who are still caught in a romantic interpretation of movies and who fall prey to the 'great storytelling' and 'beautiful graphics' of video games.

'Materialist' philosophy centers around giving a voice to these technical elements. For example: Monster manipulation. DROD is wonderful in that monster manipulation is set on center stage and discoveries are not "plot twists" but rather technical knowledge.

Can we say, however, that technical knowledge (the knowledge that 'monster movement is at the center of gameplay, the interaction of man with monster') is precisely that which the voice attempts to express?

No: because this would merely be an archivization. IN FACT: monster manipulation is not that which the voice refers to, or the content of the voice, but it itself has a voice. That is, the manipulation of monsters is not 'knowledge' that can be accumulated, but is itself a human designed gameplay component that must be interpreted.

The infinite descent is this: just as the architecture of a particular room can be seen to point towards a PARTICULAR (concrete and precise) aspect of monster movement or growth, the technicity of the gameplay, the decision to construct DROD around the theme of monster manipulation, is itself a technical innovation that points to something. Just as room architecture points to monster movement, DROD with its gameplay of 'monster manipulation', as a technical innovation and therefore both human and technical, itself points to something else.

In DROD, everything points towards the technics, attempts to describe the technics.

What aspect of video games, or life in general, does the technical innovation of monster manipulation point towards? This question leads towards a broader consideration of a universal technicity -- for example, a consideration of mental processing in general: is all mental processing manipulation of monsters? I suppose this is the point where a professional philosopher might take over... in any case, this section seems particularly weak... We all know that, after playing DROD, we tend to 'AAA' games with a kind of dissatisfaction -- it seems as if the world were a bit more empty afterwards. But what exactly is the voice of DROD, which has this particular effect: what is it saying about video games in general? This part seems to require a great deal of expansion.

Applications to Cinema

To return to the original question of cinema, we would need to consider a film that is 'technically innovative'. I don't mean 'Independence Day' -- but, a film out there 'like DROD', but we aren't sure: the criteria of technical innovation cannot be so readily decided. We cannot apply the same argument to cinema, but we must interpret these technical innovations, these monsters yet to be named, not as cultural treasures to be celebrated, but as kind of a authentic philosophical thinking of (not the humanity!) but the technicity of everything: say, true love (e.g. the technology of romantic love: that which it reveals about the world, that which it obscures).

lakibuk
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We all know that, after playing DROD, we tend to 'AAA' games with a kind of dissatisfaction -- it seems as if the world were a bit more empty afterwards. But what exactly is the voice of DROD, which has this particular effect: what is it saying about video games in general?

That they lack substance.

Thanks for your response btw.
Are you a philosophy or movie student?

____________________________
Karl
Blueskied Games (main site) - Gratis Spiele (german site)

q335r49
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naw man, comparative lit. the ending sure was weird! but I'm glad its over: 60+ hours! And some kind of secret code at the end... and 3D graphics ... wierd!

-- I'm selling my laptop after this game... and moving to the AlphaSmart Dana (google it, highly recommended -- I haven't charged it in like a week).

Syntax
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File: ProForumite.JPG (110.7 KB)
Downloaded 92 times.
License: Public Domain

Excellent stuff q335r49. Could this possibly be the greatest contribution to the forums in the shortest period of time?

I think so...

Mattcrampy
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Hmm, interesting stuff here.

Although actually where it gets interesting is further down - your first post appears to be saying that DROD is mechanics first and the gameplay is entirely subservient to it, which is true and very much admitted (it's a trope that has its roots in Sherlock Holmes fandom - that the work is being communicated by a well-meaning, mostly accurate, third party, who may be wrong on details, as opposed to the audience seeing everything the author intends them to see). After that, it suggests that games are primarily mathematical models. This is not so interesting to me, though their use as a storytelling device fascinates me.

I always use the example of a perfect mathematical replica of the American political process. You put in inputs, whatever they are, and out come what happens. And then I talk about how that would affect the country, that their reactions can be predicted by a machine, however complex, in the same way that a particularly clever satire could. These little number games become art so easily, which is probably why they took on storytelling aspects so early in their life.

One of the things I've noticed about DROD is that it has a very complete ecosystem of enemies. Few games manage to get the same sort of variety, and they usually rely on a few oft-repeated tropes but with idiosyncratic movement (much like the difference between roaches and spiders after JtRH). I've also learned a lot from the discussion of using the level design to tell a story - this is used quite literally in parts of JtRH - and it's something that's not used a lot in other games that spend more on game assets (Half-Life Episode 1 does, a notable exception - while one could argue that it's more game design than actual physical environment that's telling the story there, I disagree in that it's the same principle - using your game mechanics to express and reinforce your story).

I also wanted to throw in something about the progression in TCB as opposed to other games. In most games, there's a few baseline behaviours that never get taken away - for instance, usually your first weapon in an FPS will be kept for much of the game - while individual levels will get a particular feature to play with that defines that level. To keep the amount of interactions from becoming overwhelming, they won't keep those actions for long or will reintroduce them on a limited set of levels.

In contrast, DROD by virtue of its design is capable of taking away elements without the player caring. There's a few factors for this: in DROD, all the 'verbs' (that is, everything the player can do) are available at the beginning, and it's usually the focus of a puzzle when they're restricted (JtRH has a few rooms that restrict turning, and sword sheathing changes all the verbs bar 'move'). In other games, verbs are often represented as objects the player has (such as a Zelda game's items or weapons in an FPS) which means that you can't often add more verbs without giving the player too much choice. Players also tend to react badly when you permanently take a verb away from them. In DROD, advancement is exclusively done through game elements, and it's easy enough to ditch some elements temporarily so the player doesn't get overwhelmed.

(The verb problem has other repercussions - generally verbs need practicing as soon as one gets them, a trope Nintendo regularly uses to the point where it starts to hurt gameplay (Ocarina of Time's bosses were always susceptible to whatever verb you'd just gotten, and little else).)

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ErikH2000
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I can't let this topic die. I enjoy it too much.

Can we say, however, that technical knowledge (the knowledge that 'monster movement is at the center of gameplay, the interaction of man with monster') is precisely that which the voice attempts to express?

The "voice" being the architect's voice...

There's a couple different approaches to room design, "technical" and "story". Both of them start with the architect trying to enact a demonstration, and then all the convolutions of the room are constructed to achieve it.

For a technical design, you notice some properties of one or more game elements and then demonstrate them. Or rather, create a puzzle that requires demonstration of these properties to solve them. An example would be that serpents set up inside loop chambers can be killed by leading goblins into the chamber to create a dead-end. The more rewarding technical demonstrations begin to take on the appearance of theorems, where if the player grasps the theorem, that knowledge will guide his actions. For example, there is a terrific room in The City Beneath (Frozen Depths: 1N 1E) where the player needs to make a few interesting general conclusions before choosing a path over an area of trapdoors.

Whenever new game elements are introduced, (JtRH and TCB releases) this is fresh territory for technical rooms and you can expect to see a lot of them. The architect has many new things he can tell the delver concerning his discoveries of the nature of DROD. I suppose we are waxing materialistic at this point.

The story-driven room design is about choosing some small plot that the room will accomplish. I'm not talking about a plot along the lines of "Denfry dies in Beethro's arms. Beethro sobs." I mean a plot that will direct puzzle design, i.e. "Beethro sets off a series of bombs, and runs along a path, always just one step ahead of the last explosion. But the bombs will force him into a dead end with no way out. He barely notices that one clever step will put him out of harm's way." (TCB: Archival Catacombs: 3S 2W) You could come up with a plot like this before you sat down to make the puzzle. Oftentimes, vague story-driven requirements generate interesting puzzles as you, the architect, struggle to find the combination of elements that will enact and enforce the desired plot.

The important thing with story-driven design is that the puzzle is not just about getting the player to discover a solution. They are also meant to enjoy a small drama brought about by the tiny story suggested by the puzzle. Here are a few other puzzle stories from TCB:

* Beethro is stuck in a room full of many automated traps. He must lead monsters onto the traps.

* A weaponless goblin must navigate through seemingly impenetrable Aumtlich defenses. After discovering the correct path, the Aumtlich and the large structure they stand upon drops satisfyingly into the depths. (We should have added Aumtlich screams!)

I didn't design these rooms, and I don't know what their authors were thinking, but I can imagine beginning with a story idea and producing the room to enact it. In fact, this has been my usual approach to room design, and any technical demonstration thrown in was usually discovered along the way of implementing the puzzle story.

(As a disclaimer, I didn't design even one puzzle room in TCB. I'm quite proud of the guys that did.)

-Erik

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q335r49
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You seem to be describing the creative process, pointing out that one usually begins with a story, and that technical discoveries may come by accident. That's true -- we are all beggars when it comes to insight, and a great deal of experimentation is needed ... nothing is obvious or immediate, and the story is kind of an effort to push the fixed elements of game design to their limits of 'expressivity'.

However, the fact that we need a story in order to build good rooms doesn't seem to imply that the analysis of the room itself will yield the story. If a story is a (practical) requirement for expressivity, what does the room or game in fact express? I guess my (vague and probably fairly weak) arguments have all been aimed at trying to point out something beyond these immediate aspects of the game -- both these interesting mathematical or technical facts and the story.

And why do we even care what the room 'says': does it say anything at all -- how is the question at all relevant? I kind of purposely avoided the analysis of actual rooms, but I think that might have weakened any point I have tried to make, since it all comes out kind of vague. But it seems to me that, in order to think beyond the story/math opposition, we would need to look at the game in general.

I mean, DROD is both about delving and architecture. It's also about the vats ... about the construction of monsters. The figures and the jobs in world of DROD sort of express the components of game design -- delvers, architects, vatters ... and a bunch of other jobs that are beyond my analysis. Most games are just about the delvers -- about the thrill of it all. But DROD, at least, has attempted to develop a community of architects as well.

It can be argued that the architects are really too limited a profession ... since they work with premade parts. Yet, that's kind of what I like about DROD versus something like ... 'RPG maker' or something -- it considers a VERY particular aspect of game design or architecture, perhaps something not that 'expressive' at all! From your consideration of story, it seems that the architects would have to begin with a story -- with somethig human. But this original story is really just 'purely practical' and seems to disappear, stripped of all its 'drama'. So that architecture is a very mundane thing, almost -- come up with a scenario, attempt to use the 'machine' of the game to express this scenario, but this machine ends up expressing, perhaps, something fairly interesting, etc. etc.

But the point is: the room itself need not be considered as the primary component of expresison, but the entire game, and even its community, expresses something as a whole. The game calls room design 'architecture' -- and it tells people to set about this profession. Yet, 'architecture' should be considered not only as a practical design of a room, but the experience itself is also significant. What the game calls architecture is the process of working with technical components to express an 'original story' -- a story which seems to disappear in the end. The game thus says something about 'architecture' in the world in general.

If we were to consider the analog with writing. Most writers would say that writers write novels about 'experience'. But, after being an 'architect' in DROD, I would say: writing might START with a story, but the story actually disappears. It's actually dealing with technical components of language (I'm not sure what the precise analogy would be here). And, no matter how hard you try, you are still somehow stuck inside these technical aspects. You can't write your story without them, but you can't write your story with them, either, since the technical aspects always tend to express something else... maybe just pure mechanical pleasure...

So, I guess I'm trying to consider the game in general. It seems that everything in DROD speaks -- and what we hear is not just the voice of the architect. The experience of DROD architecture, as a particular interpretation of the word 'architecture', seems to say the above.

zex20913
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q335r49 wrote:

If we were to consider the analog with writing. Most writers would say that writers write novels about 'experience'. But, after being an 'architect' in DROD, I would say: writing might START with a story, but the story actually disappears. It's actually dealing with technical components of language (I'm not sure what the precise analogy would be here). And, no matter how hard you try, you are still somehow stuck inside these technical aspects. You can't write your story without them, but you can't write your story with them, either, since the technical aspects always tend to express something else... maybe just pure mechanical pleasure...

A more suitable analogy might be found in screenwriting. A screenplay is written, but it must then be translated into film, and the play becomes more of a skeleton than the final product. The structure of the story remains, but it may look different than what you actually began with. Something is lost in the translation from story to film (or room), unless the story is trivial (boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy gets girl, the end; Beethro kills monsters). The architect acts as the director. Mainly, though, the architect is also the writer. The only time I know of where the writer is not also directing is in official holds--Erik will come up with an idea for a room, and he will have people come up with rooms to satisfy the idea--the script.

Yes, I'm still talking about actual rooms, not the script of TCB or JtRH.

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Mattcrampy
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zex20913 wrote:
(boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy gets girl, the end; Beethro kills monsters).

I'd pay to watch that. It's like a fantasy action/romantic comedy.

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Briareos
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Mattcrampy wrote:

zex20913 wrote:
(boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy gets girl, the end; Beethro kills monsters).

I'd pay to watch that. It's like a fantasy action/romantic comedy.

But... but... "The Princess Bride" already exists...

And sadly Andre The Giant isn't around anymore to reprise his role as Beethro for a sequel.

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q335r49
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Of course, I'm greatly prejudiced in my arguments, I know where I'm trying to go, but -- if we could concentrate on what actually happens when a story gets 'translated' into DROD. It's not too pleasant a process. Erik notes that the 'story' is useful for insight, as some kind of practical device, and I'm saying its JUST that. Translation would be a very deceptive term to use -- I'd say, Negation. We can hardly say:

Screenplay:Film::Story:Room

The former still preserves some core of meaning, some kind of romantic escape at the end, etc. The 'translation' of story into room form, this kind of architecture, kind of completely wipes out the story. What a wonderful machine! You know, a closer, perhaps less 'romantic' consideration of architecture is needed.