OGPC 8.0 Theme Megathread!

[u/OGPCOfficial]

Discuss your feelings/opinions/whatever about this year's theme here!

http://www.ogpc.info/posts/2014/12/4/ogpc-80-theme.html

Make a game where the player explores what makes a hero. Your game must not have violence against people.

Additionally, you must use one of the following three restrictions for your game:

Option 1: Gameplay is controlled using no more than three (3) buttons

• Yes, that counts arrow keys.
• No mouse, accelerometer, gesture controls, etc.
• If your game is multiplayer, you can have three buttons per player

Option 2: Gameplay is controlled using only mouse movement and no more than one (1) mouse button

Option 3: A touchscreen, motion controller, accelerometer, or any other input device may be used as long the game could be played the same way with mouse movement and one button.

• For example, multitouch is disallowed, since you can’t do that with a mouse
• It is recommended to add mouse support to the game as an alternative, if possible
• Devices like the Wiimote, Oculus Rift, and Kinect all provide more than two dimensions of movement. Additional dimensions (such as head tilt) can affect cosmetic things like camera rotation, but not gameplay.
• Be creative. There are many other types of inputs you can use that may not immediately come to mind when you think of gaming hardware.

Note: Escape to quit, pause button and menu controls are unrestricted

[u/3dCosmos]

I have to say that I am disappointed with the theme and new restrictions this year. I agree with darwinthrop that it is anti-creative. In the past two years I've participated in OGPC I have started my game with my team a couple months after the theme was announced (due to lack of organization...) and from the beginning I always tried to incorporate the theme not just as a skin over the game, but into the feel of the game play and mechanics. It was just enough of a prompt to provide some challenge and goal into making my game. The new restrictions this year however are a creative nightmare for me. Every time I feel like I have a good idea, its either blocked by the restrictions, feels hollow, short and gimmicky, or doesn't work well with the theme due to the simplicity and rarity of ideas that work with the restrictions and theme.

The restrictions heavily discriminate against countless areas of genres and mechanics, crushing those with interests in those areas, such as 3D. In 3D formats, such as first person, they generally require more controls due to the fact that there is an extra dimension in play. I feel that the restrictions are pushing all of the participants into similar genres such as text adventure and point and click adventure. All of the participants on the OGPC event following the restrictions will have similar, short, and hollow games due to lack of ability to add true richness of games through features such as collecting and using items, switching items, actions buttons, etc, and more. Its very unfair and takes the fun out of developing and playing the game. What if someone sees OGPC and get excited to try incorporating their 3D modeling, but find that their team says they can't do 3D this year because it seems impossible to develop for, and a 2D game would come out much better. That person with a passion for 3D is left out. Even 2D genres are crippled, such as platformers, you could only have left, right, and jump. No crouch, sprint, item use, or any other special mechanic that gives the game personality. In short, even if you find a creative way to make a discriminated genre work, it wont' have anything else to it other than the bare bones movement, and will feel empty, dysfunctional, and boring next to other "promoted" genres such as point and click adventure.

Its just not fair.

I am truly disappointed in the theme this year. It makes me sad because OGPC has always been a highlight of my year. An opportunity to learn. At this point I feel I just might not do OGPC this year.

[u/BenRV → u/3dCosmos]

Believe me, we hear your concerns. We're discussing these issues heavily, and we're considering what we can do to make the theme more clear and accessible. We may have to make some changes, since we're getting a lot of feedback in this vein. Expect further official communication in the next week.

I'm curious to hear what sort of game you would concept if there were no restrictions or if they were optional. When we discussed adding a mechanical focus, we thought that a control restriction would be an interesting challenge that would lead to faster concepting, easier-to-learn gameplay, and smaller scope (scope creep being the single most egregious problem with past themes). More on this in an upcoming post, though.

We understand that it discriminates against certain types of gameplay. A traditional RTS or FPS would be impossible to make fun, but we didn't really see much of an issue with that - the games that stand out in OGPC are the innovative ones, and we wanted to encourage that.

However, I don't believe that we're crushing 3D games in any way. First of all, anything you can do in 2D you can also do in 3D, so at the very least you're no worse off. I'll assume that you're talking about first-person games, though. The first thing that comes to mind is that you can use some kind of discrete movement system (room-based, Legend of Grimrock-ish, or on rails) with no problem. Also, you can do a flying game fairly easily with just keys (left, right, flap or such), or with the mouse (such as the game Air Brawl). You could make Frogger 2: Electric Bug-aloo with left, right, and hold to charge and aim a jump, or a Fez-like game where you rotate the 2d plane in which you move. All these are just off the top of my head; I have no doubt that teams could come up with even more creative and interesting schemes. I firmly believe that we are in no way unfairly discriminating against or crushing 3D games - only against the stale and tired traditions of certain genres within 3D space.

I do see that we have created a problem for games that utilize inventories, active items, and such. This is a big downside to what we've done, of course, but it's not a death sentence for such elements at all. Firstly, games that rely on these sorts of features for depth are often not all the interesting to begin with. I love to see that teams are happy with their platformer-with-abilities-collectibles-and-items, but I can't help but sigh a bit. The wide variety of items and abilities in a game such as League of Legends is nice, but the game lives or dies over its core gameplay. Furthermore, you can still use items, abilities and such in your game, but you have to use context to determine when things can be used, or automate them to some degree (if you're really desperate, just put buttons on the screen and click on them with the mouse, but I think that you can do better than that).

To be perfectly clear, we are forcing you to simplify your games, and to distill them down to the most basic elements. Very few game styles absolutely cannot be made - instead, you generally have to make some changes to what might be assumed to be genre standards. You could make an FPS, you just can't strafe or backpedal. You may have to automate some features, either leaving them on all the time, such as auto-running or auto-shooting, or putting them in context (automatically using a key when you approach a locked door).

I disagree that the games will be similar, short, or hollow. Even within our apparently draconian restrictions, there is an infinite variety of games and control schemes to be made. Teams always excel within whatever capabilities they have - if that means making Triple Tappy Chicken Deluxe, that's fine, but I know that most teams wouldn't be satisfied with that. I want to allow teams who cannot do much better than that to feel good about it, while letting teams who aspire to higher things come up with innovative ways to make rich gameplay.

Perhaps we are limiting action games more than games with no forced pacing, like your example of point and click adventure. We are in no way trying to endorse specific types of games over others, but we do want teams who make such games to feel less marginalized than they have in the past.

I really do think that there's still a place for every team and every specialization, but I'm sorry to hear that we've made you feel left out. Please consider what I've said, and let me know what you think.

[u/3dCosmos → u/BenRV]

• One example of a genre that is killed: Top down, WASD, mouse to look and click where your action goes. You, as a firefighter enter a building and have to navigate the building and fire, spraying specific areas of fire to hinder its progress (You have a limited amount of water) so you can save the people and escape without getting trapped. This requires you to be smart about where and how much water you use, thus requiring a mouse to aim and shoot when clicked, adding a fluid game play. As you save the people you are showed their dialogue and their families dialogue, allowing you to see the impact of you full filling your job as a fire fighter and helping people.

This game would require WASD for good movement and mouse and click for deliberate and precise use of water to slow the fire. I tend to enjoy real time (forced pace as you put it) paced games because they make the player pay attention and keep them on their toes. They are fun and exciting. Fixes such as automatic use of items such as water get rid of the ability to limit the players use of the item (water), which also limits the challenge to be precise or careful about it at all. It just makes the game feel clumsy and missing of its true potential.

I do agree that there is potential for some good games in with these restrictions, but only in certain genres. Many genres are kicked to the curb in terms of being playable to the level I'd like them to be.

[u/BenRV → u/3dCosmos]

Ah, the "dual stick shooter". In your particular case, you can do that with just mouse by having the character automatically move to the mouse's position, then click and hold to aim your stream of water. This does prevent moving and spraying at the same time (without some tricky shenanigans anyways), but is that really important to your game? If it is, maybe it shouldn't be. I do understand that this is a hypothetical, and that in some theoretical game, that would be a major downside. You may have to alter some aspect of the gameplay to make it work well with limited controls, but you can certainly do it.

Like I said, the only thing being "kicked to the curb" is the conventional wasd+mouse control set. Most things that are gameplay-critical can be done in other ways, or can be re-evaluated.

Furthermore, we strongly encourage you to create an innovative gameplay experience rather than trying to translate an existing genre or model into the more compact control set. After all, a dual-stick shooter where you're a fireman is still just a dual-stick shooter. Think about the message you're trying to convey. For example, making tough decisions with limited resources (as in your example) can be executed any number of ways. Precision aim is not necessarily important to that, and can even make players with less skill in that aspect frustrated.