[TuxKart-devel] Re: Tuxkart-devel digest, Vol 1 #36 - 8 msgs

[Ricardo C. <ri...@ae...>]

 Let me contribute with my 2 cents.

 I agree with most of what Ingo said. The game should be designed for ordinary 
gamers, and such bonuses/maluses should be intuitive.

 About characters, designers should have in mind that characters should be 
made so that when a player looks at it, he will feel like driving it.
 Anyway, I think that if some Gnu-world character fits in the game, why not 
using it? I believe that the Mozilla dragon would fit very well in the game.
 Have a look at a few gnu characters here:
http://www.fe.up.pt/freefeup/

Cheers,
 Ricardo

>
> Message: 2
> To: tux...@li...
> Subject: Re: [TuxKart-devel] Thoughts on Kart Models.
> From: Ingo Ruhnke <gr...@gm...>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 02:59:30 +0200
> Reply-To: tux...@li...
>
> Steve Baker <sjb...@ai...> writes:
> > Pretty much every game has highly ad-hoc things. MarioKart uses
> > Cubes with '?' on them for good things and cubes with an upside-down
> > '?' for bad things. The confusion-until-the-last-minute thing is
> > absolutely crucial for game play. Ditto with herring colours.
>
> Well, that red is good and green is bad isn't obvious, traffic lights
> actually do it reverse. Beside that collecting herring and getting
> 'random item' is also not intuitive, a ?-box however is (they contain
> something, herring don't). So herring should if at all only be used as
> coin-like things, bonuses should just be stored in boxes like in
> Mario. I would remove the evil-?-blocks completly as standard map
> items and make them placeable by other players only.
>
> > I don't see how choosing an ice cube over a computer monitor changes
> > how things 'hang together'.
>
> It removes the pointless microsoft bashing element.
>
> > That's a ludicrous position. Change absolutely everything except
> > what we can't change? I don't know *ANY* commercial games of the
> > 'cute' genre that do that.
>
> Commercial games in general are the successors of good or even great
> games, thats something that isn't true for Open Source games, which
> are often just half finished, unplayable or worse. And starting from a
> half-finished not even really playable game under the premise to keep
> most stuff is just not moving you very must away from that
> half-finished thing and you will just end up with another incomplete
> looking patchwork.
>
> > BSOD is on the very skinnymost end of that curve...I couldn't
> > imagine a more subtle dig at one of the most truly evil companys on
> > the planet.
>
> BSOD is rather close to having Clippy driving around in a kart, its
> just Microsoft-bashing put down into shape, not something I want to
> have as a playable character or else we could start with creating
> Mr-Kernel-Oops and Mr-XFree-just-locked-up.
>
> > It's just an icon.
>
> Herring is not just an icon, its already closly related to Tux being a
> penguin, too closly already in case there are other non-penguin
> characters that should also consume that item.
>
> > What does a toadstool need coins for?
>
> Coin is a rather generic item.
>
> > Banana's are not in fact part of the natural diet of a gorilla.
>
> In Donkeykong games its used as coin-like item, in MarioKart it works
> only to make other Karts slip.
>
> > Herrings only swim in the Northern Hemisphere but Penguins only live
> > south of the equator.
> >
> > Who cares?  It's an icon.
>
> It either has to be generic enough so that one doesn't care about why
> its there (coin) or it has to be close enough related to what its
> meant to be (Herring->Penguin eating it). If BSOD starts eating
> herring things start looking wrong.
>
> >> SuperTux had a golden herring for invulnurability, got replaced
> >> with a 'classic' star.
> >
> > ...and that helped the game how exactly?
>
> It replaced the 'heck what should this ugly item do' with something
> more familiar and better regonizable.
>
> >> In SuperTux we have this little IceBlock as BSOD replacement: *
> >> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/iceblock.gif
> >
> > Yeah - it's OK - but it's going to look silly in a lava-themed level.
>
> Could get a refrigerator on his back or something to keep him cool.
>
> >> And while, since BSOD is just the most obvious Microsoft bashing, I
> >> really would prefer to get rid of it.
> >
> > Sorry - I just can't agree with you on this one.
> >
> > So what's the solution to such impasses? Put both in there is my
> > recommendation.
>
> Make it a bonus-character that you have to unlock or whatever.
>
> >> As replacement for the butterfly-Tux we could use this little guy:
> >> http://super-tux.sourceforge.net/milestone1/images/flyingsnow.png
> >
> > Change for change's sake again...why change?
>
> Aehm, because butterfly-Tux is one of the ugliest things ever. It
> looks like big fat Tux with some wings stuck on him, well, it *is* big
> fat Tux with some wings stuck on him, so no wonder that it looks that
> way. I just can't stand characters that where only done the way there
> are due to technical limitaions and to easy modeling (why create
> something new, when one can reuse Tux over and over again), nothing
> wrong with doing it that back then, but I see little reason to keep it
> that way.
>
> > What is the reason that snow is so good and a butterfly Tux is so
> > bad? I can give the reasons why butterfly Tux is good:
> >
> > The butterfly Tux was originally an angel-tux...your guardian angel
> > coming to help you...but then we decided to make it
> > religion-neutral, hence the butterfly - a sign of peace of sorts.
>
> I don't care much about what it was meant to be, if it looks like
> big-fat Tux with wings, it just has to be dropped.
>
> >> Some other (not yet used) SuperTux characters:
> >> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/eviltux.png
> >> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/yeti2.jpg
> >
> > So your basic view is that any character you designed is good - and
> > anything the original 'consortium' of designers put together is bad?
>
> No, my work isn't necesarrily good, but since most of the original
> consortium evolves around character reuse with little changes,
> word-plays (Gown), logo-recycling, Microsoft bashing (BSOD) or geek
> stuff, yep, I consider it all rather bad and ugly.
>
> > Those are OK - I like the evilTux - but the Yeti is a DISASTER
> > because he has fur and doing good fur is a BIG no-no for anything
> > but the VERY latest of hardware...and even then, you have to want it
> > pretty badly to take the performance hit for it.
>
> It doesn't need to have real 3d-fur, after all its most of the time
> only seen from quite a bit behind. The fur should be fakable without
> too much throuble with some simple texture mapping.
>
> > The idea of a dinoasur in the abstract is surely a good idea -
> > painting it red and calling it Mozilla doesn't make much difference
> > to much - and some people will doubtless like the reference.
>
> And some other people would surly hate the reference. I don't mind it
> being a dino, I don't mind it being red, but calling it Mozilla just
> spoils the fun, Mozilla is a browser, not a game character the
> reference just doesn't make 'click', there is just not much that this
> red-dino-game character would have in common with some piece of
> browser software.

-- 
Eat right, stay fit, and die anyway.