Re: [TuxKart-devel] Thoughts on Kart Models.

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Ingo Ruhnke wrote:
> Steve Baker <sjb...@ai...> writes:
> 
>>Character identifiability is CRUCIAL to these kinds of games.
> 
> Yep, and therefore its important that the character has some kind of
> personallity to identify them. MrLaptop and MrBSOD didn't had any kind
> of personality, they looked just like poor tries to do a bit Microsoft
> bashing, thats why we dumped them in SuperTux, there was just no way
> one could relate to them.

But how do you *start* a character with a personality?

I'd like to know what process you'd like to use to try to get some
kind of 'recognition' into these critters?

If you have a better way - I'd truly like to hear it.  However,
simply tossing out somewhat established characters and putting in
wholly new ones doesn't really acomplish very much.

Characters don't have to be deep - it's not like I need to know
their opinions or politics - but I DO need to know who the good
guys are and who the bad guys are...who likes herring and who would
be likely to shoot CD-ROMS.

I didn't have anything to do with "Mr Laptop" - but BSOD is obviously
a bad guy.  Everyone knows that a Blue Screen of Death isn't a good
thing...so he's obviously a bad guy.  We know the attributes of a
computer - so when we see him shooting CD-ROMs and getting benefits
from driving over computer chips - we immediately understand what's
happening.

We have to have *SOMETHING* like that or else it's just random and
meaningless.

In any Mario game, you know that a tiny toadstool is an extra 'life'
or a good guy whom you want to talk to instead of killing.  Why a
toadstool of all things??  I have no idea - but since this has been
true in every Mario game since the very first, I don't need to ask,
I don't need to RTFM...you know a LOT about the game from the
get-go - and that makes it easier for the game designer to communicate
with the end-user.

Game players don't read manuals...you have to do SOMETHING to make
that connection.


>>BSOD was my idea - Gown came from that other game who's name I've
>>forgotten,
> 
> 'xtux' I think.

Thanks - Yes, that was it.

>>- and I can only guess that you didn't think it through.
> 
> Well, there wasn't that much to think through, most characters sucked,
> some names sucked, so we fixed that, plain and simple. Beside that I
> simply doubt that the current character set has any much name
> recognition yet, sure some geeks now them, but thats it. Neither
> SuperTux, TuxAQFH or Tuxkart where at a stage where I would call them
> playable back then.

Go read some 'TuxKart' reviews out there.  The game doesn't explicitly
*say* what her name is unless you dig through the config files - but
a lot of them mention her by name.

I have a clipping someone sent me from a Japanese game magazine - I
can't read any of the Japanese text in the review - except that
I see the words "TuxKart", "Tux" and "Gown".  Where did they find out
that name?   They must have seen it elsewhere and recognised her.

Of course they *might* be saying "we can't pronounce 'Gown' so this
game sucks"...I have no idea.

>>See my previous argument for why this is stupid. You guys were
>>undoing an awful lot of very carefully thought out work done by a
>>lot more people than (probably) participated in your vote.
> 
> Well, it wasn't really a vote, it was more that all people agreed on a
> name chance and nobody was oposed to 'Penny'.

Hardly a rational way to choose.

>>We RESEARCHED Gown.
> 
> It didn't seem to have worked much good, since the unpronounceability
> of the name in many non-english languages didn't seem to have taking
> into account.

OK - I'll bite.  Which languages had this problem?   How did you figure
out that 'Penny' was OK?   How many languages did you survey?
Where did you get in contact with all those native speakers in order to
be sure that "Penny" doesn't mean "Stinking Pile of Dog Pooh" in Mongolian?

Huge multinational corporations naming really important things like cars
get this wrong all the time - I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that a few
OpenSource developers were able to deduce this in any meaningful way.

Be honest - someone didn't like the name - so without thinking carefully
about it, you just changed it.  I very much doubt that Penny is any
better at all than Gown in every language that's widely spoken by Linux
users.

At least in English 'Gown' has mild humor value and it's memorable for
that reason - and the vast proportion of Linux gamers must speak English
because the overwhelming majority of Linux games are written only in
English and never get translated into anything else.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>    WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
            http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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