Thread: [TuxKart-devel] Thoughts on Kart Models.
Status: Alpha
Brought to you by:
sjbaker
Menu
▾
▴
tuxkart-devel
|
From: Steve B. <sjb...@ai...> - 2004-06-27 08:48:40
|
(Cross-posted to HP Game of The Month - because I don't think everyone is over here yet). Someone posted a new BSOD-kart model to that forum...here were my comments: caleb256 wrote: > ok I have made a bsod needs to be textured (can't find his texture :/ ) > http://berty.dyndns.org/~caleb/tuxkart/bosd.ac > http://berty.dyndns.org/~caleb/tuxkart/bosd.blend As I said before, Karts are pretty much only seen from the rear end. It is UTTERLY imperative that artists think about that as they work. This kart looks *identical* (because it is) to Grumbel's 'tuxkart4' - but with a different driver. I don't think that's going to work. The four (or hopefully many more) Karts have to be distinctive from the rear so you can tell who is who. My original kart models - although crude and almost identical vehicles - had the virtue that they showed off the driver very well - and since the drivers were all very different, it was extremely easy to see who was who from behind. Grumbel's kart has Tux sitting much lower (more like a real GoKart than a cartoon-style thing) - which is OK so long as the other karts are *WAY* different so we can tell who's who. This kart has a *tiny* BSOD figure - whom you quite literally cannot see at all from behind. Here is what I would build for a BSOD kart - I'd like to see a model of a classic beige-box desk-side PC with CD-ROMs for wheels and the CD drive tray opened up to make the seat-back. Take some liberties with real PC design by putting the computer on it's side - it doesn't have to be a literally correct portrayal - so long as it has recognisable elements of a PC, that's how people will see it. However, turning things around allows the back panel of the to be on the back of the Kart where we can see it. Plan to have some cables trailing out fluttering in the breeze as though they were ripped away from whatever they were connected to as the *evil* BSOD absconded with someone's PC. The CD-ROM wheels can have 'TuxKart 1.0.0 Backup: 27th July 2005" textured onto them like it was hand-written in magic marker. This fits the bill for what we need: 1) It's DISTINCTIVE from the rear...you can quite easily tell who it is even when he's just a dozen pixels across out in the distance. 2) It's INTERESTING from the rear - fluttering cables, maybe with some animated sparks coming out of them. Perhaps some flashing LED's and a spinning power supply fan with little vortices coming out of it. Think: "Pointless eye-candy". 3) It's FUNNY/SILLY/CUTE - this is a fun game - not a serious/realistic game. Think of outrageous things to make Karts out of. A computer on wheels is just fine for this genre. 4) It fits the established CHARACTER of the 'person' driving it. BSOD is The Evil Blue-screen-of-death -- the antipathy and arch-enemy of Tux. Stealing someone's computer and turning it into a GoKart is exactly the kind of nasty thing we'd expect him to do...so that's what he has to be doing. 5) It opens up the possibilities for 'special' attacks and defences - like if you try to rear-end BSOD, you get electrocuted by the sparks from the trailing cables. He could shoot CD-ROMs as weapons and get huge speedups from driving over nVidia chips in the road on his own special levels. The players will understand why this is immediately if the kart is a computer on wheels. If it's a regular GoKart driven by what looks like a grey cube - it won't make *ANY* sense at all. (I'm sorry to come over as negative on these contributions - I'm really VERY appreciative of everyone's efforts - they are all food for thought - but it's no good just to say "Wow - really good" and then quietly dump the graphic later - because that doesn't achieve ANYTHING.) ---------------------------- 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 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- GCS d-- s:+ a+ C++++$ UL+++$ P--- L++++$ E--- W+++ N o+ K? w--- !O M- V-- PS++ PE- Y-- PGP-- t+ 5 X R+++ tv b++ DI++ D G+ e++ h--(-) r+++ y++++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK----- |
|
From: Ryan F. <rf...@gm...> - 2004-06-27 09:26:07
|
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 03:49:43 -0500, Steve Baker <sjb...@ai...> wrote: > Here is what I would build for a BSOD kart - I'd like to see a model of a > classic beige-box desk-side PC with CD-ROMs for wheels and the CD drive tray > opened up to make the seat-back. Take some liberties with real PC design by > putting the computer on it's side - it doesn't have to be a literally correct > portrayal - so long as it has recognisable elements of a PC, that's how people > will see it. However, turning things around allows the back panel of the to be > on the back of the Kart where we can see it. Plan to have some cables trailing > out fluttering in the breeze as though they were ripped away from whatever they > were connected to as the *evil* BSOD absconded with someone's PC. The CD-ROM > wheels can have 'TuxKart 1.0.0 Backup: 27th July 2005" textured onto them like > it was hand-written in magic marker. [snip] > 5) It opens up the possibilities for 'special' attacks and defences - like if you > try to rear-end BSOD, you get electrocuted by the sparks from the trailing > cables. He could shoot CD-ROMs as weapons and get huge speedups from driving > over nVidia chips in the road on his own special levels. The players will > understand why this is immediately if the kart is a computer on wheels. If it's > a regular GoKart driven by what looks like a grey cube - it won't make *ANY* > sense at all. For SuperTux GotM we moved away from the geek-theme (ie, evil BSOD's) and made it a little more "realistic" (you know, walking iceballs and iceblocks :). I don't think that would be a bad idea for TuxKart to go thise route either. There seems to be quite a few linux-geek-theme games out there and to anyone new to linux (or that just doesn't get the "joke") it may look kind of dumb or not make sense. I'm not saying that we *definitely* should get rid of the BSOD's (after all, I think it fits a lot better into a racing game than into a game like supertux), but I do think it's something we should think about. Also, if we invent new characters (so we have 6-8), it gets kind of repetitive when we have a bunch of boring geek stuff. I do think that "geeky" characters like the suse lizard or beastie, the BSD demon, would fit quite well into the game (for the same reason that tux does: they're things that work well when taken completely out of context). Also, Gown should be renamed to Penny :P Ok.. maybe not. We ended up doing this in SuperTux because we found it sounded much nicer. After a vote it won by a landslide (I'm pretty sure all votes went towards it :) Anyway.. off to bed. -- Ryan |
|
From: Steve B. <sjb...@ai...> - 2004-06-27 14:59:24
|
Ryan Flegel wrote:
> For SuperTux GotM we moved away from the geek-theme (ie, evil BSOD's)
> and made it a little more "realistic" (you know, walking iceballs and
> iceblocks :). I don't think that would be a bad idea for TuxKart to go
> thise route either. There seems to be quite a few linux-geek-theme
> games out there and to anyone new to linux (or that just doesn't get
> the "joke") it may look kind of dumb or not make sense.
Well, here's the deal. You need characters...things *with* character.
Nintendo and Sony (and pretty much all the other 'cute' game companies)
have spent billions working up their characters and getting them identifyable.
There can't be many people who don't know who Mario is - and I'd be suprised
if there were any games players who didn't know who Peach, Luigi, Wario and
Bowser are.
Do they feel that they need to replace their characters because they've used
them too much? NO!! To the contrary - they even bring in characters that
are over-used from other pantheons to expand the set. (Note the appearance
of Pikachu, DonkeyKong, etc in their more recent games).
Character identifiability is CRUCIAL to these kinds of games.
If we invent a new character then nobody will know who the heck it is,
whether it's a good guy or a bad guy, whether it's a stumbling idiot
or a cunning tactician.
In the Mario 'world', you know that if you choose DonkeyKong's kart,
you'll have banana 'privilages' (DK doesn't skid on them like everyone
else) - you also know that he's a big guy - so you aren't suprised that
his heavy kart is harder to steer but better in collisions.
You didn't need to RTFM to know that...you just knew it.
Now - if every OpenSourced game of the 'cute' genre goes off and invents
a new set of characters - we'll never build that set of characters that
people can identify.
Please don't come away with the idea that this was all an arbitary
decision - it was all well-researched. It wasn't just me. Here is the history:
So - we needed a set that everyone can use. When TuxAQFH, TuxKart, TuxRacer,
SuperTux and ..some other one (I don't recall it's name) were being developed,
the developers got together and thought carefully about these characters.
Characters like Sonic, Mario, Crash Bandicoot, etc are CAREFULLY chosen and
people write huge 'style guides' for their artists to work with. Did you notice
that Mario originally had a blue hat and red shirt rather than the red hat and
blue shirt he always wears now? Do you think that was a mistake or a carefully
thought out design decision? Read on...
BSOD was my idea - Gown came from that other game who's name I've forgotten,
I wrote a letter to SuSE asking them if we could use their Camelion and if
so, what was it's name? Their response was a resounding YES - and they
ran a competition to choose the name ("Geeko" won - Susie came second).
The original Gown was just a baby-blue version of Tux with pink eyes - she
looked terrible. I emailed a bunch of sites dedicated to women in OpenSource
(eg TuxChix) and asked them for their input on what Gown should look like.
They suprised me by NOT wanting some kind of strong 'grrrl' image but
almost universally wanted either the Foxxy character you can see on
my Tux history page (http://www.sjbaker.org/tux) - but some cross between
Minnie mouse and Daffy Duck. I played around a bit and Tux's girlfriend
was born as a somewhat girl-shaped penguin in a red and white spotted
mini-skirt and with a bow on her head (so you can tell her from Tux when
she's in a GoKart!). Her beak is a little shorter and more rounded
and her eyes are larger and blue instead of black.
It is extremely difficult to get 'name recognition' for your characters,
once you've got it, don't throw it away or screw it up.
It's MUCH better to pick a set that most players will recognise than it
is to invent a whole new set that nobody knows.
I'm frankly horrified that you guys changed that in SuperTux...it was a
really bad tactical mistake IMHO - and I can only guess that you didn't
think it through.
> I'm not saying that we *definitely* should get rid of the BSOD's
> (after all, I think it fits a lot better into a racing game than into
> a game like supertux), but I do think it's something we should think
> about. Also, if we invent new characters (so we have 6-8), it gets
> kind of repetitive when we have a bunch of boring geek stuff.
We need to add characters - that's for sure. The only reason there weren't
more in the original TuxKart was because I'm not a great artist and four
were the minimum I could get away with!
Certainly I'd like to see the BSD Daemon ('Beastie'), Mozilla, and Wilbur
(The GIMP) added to our set. Wilbur is difficult because he doesn't have
a body - which is the reason he's not in TuxKart right now. I chose not
to do Beastie at the time because he absolutely requires a heck of a lot
of polygons what with the trident and all. Mozilla wasn't the popular
package it is now - and back then when it was still pronounced "Netscape",
so I don't think people would have recognised the red dinosaur.
> Also, Gown should be renamed to Penny :P Ok.. maybe not. We ended up
> doing this in SuperTux because we found it sounded much nicer.
> After a vote it won by a landslide (I'm pretty sure all votes went towards it
> :)
AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!
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.
We RESEARCHED Gown. We asked female gamers - who might want to hit the
'Play as Gown' button.
We asked if they liked the name...they did. We cared less about what male
programmers thought of the name than we did what female gamers thought.
We carefully made her the same basic size and shape as Tux so that in
games where it matters, the game designer can have them fit through
the same sized doors and have them not look stupid when they can jump
the same height and run at the same speed...maybe share the same 'bones'
to cut down on the animation workload.
We carefully made her the same basic colouration (requiring a change
to the game that made her blue) because it's easier to tune the
colours of the backgrounds when you know the colour of your characters.
If Gown is blue - then levels with a blue sky in them will make it
hard to see her. (That's why there are so few blue Nintendo characters).
Notice that BSOD's blue screen has a white 'bezel' around it - so you
can still see him clearly against a blue background - since he MUST be
blue.
Gown *IS* called Gown - and hundreds of thousands of Linux gamers know
that. You can no more vote to change that than you could have Nintendo
change Mario's name to Bob. What you have probably done is either confuse
people who already know her name - or introduct the possibility that Tux
is two-timing his faithful companion of all these years. That in turn
damages Tux's character - which erodes the plot line of every other
game that uses Tux-is-rescuing-Gown or Gown-is-rescuing-Tux. Changing
her name (or appearance) is vandalism!
Please understand - Game design is a SCIENCE - these decisions are things
you arrive at after careful thought - not just on a whim when you say
"lets have a poll about this". If the reasons BEHIND such a choice
are not carefully discussed then the people doing the voting will make
bad choices that you'll regret later on.
Ack!
---------------------------- 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
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
GCS d-- s:+ a+ C++++$ UL+++$ P--- L++++$ E--- W+++ N o+ K? w--- !O M-
V-- PS++ PE- Y-- PGP-- t+ 5 X R+++ tv b++ DI++ D G+ e++ h--(-) r+++ y++++
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
|
|
From: Steve B. <sjb...@ai...> - 2004-06-27 15:04:14
|
Oh - I just remembered the other character. We used 'Clippie' the Microsoft dancing paperclip as another minor bad-guy character. In these days of lawsuits and Microsoft having finally 'noticed' Linux, that might be a bad idea. :-( ---------------------------- 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 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- GCS d-- s:+ a+ C++++$ UL+++$ P--- L++++$ E--- W+++ N o+ K? w--- !O M- V-- PS++ PE- Y-- PGP-- t+ 5 X R+++ tv b++ DI++ D G+ e++ h--(-) r+++ y++++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK----- |
|
From: Ingo R. <gr...@gm...> - 2004-06-27 18:34:47
|
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.
> If we invent a new character then nobody will know who the heck it
> is, whether it's a good guy or a bad guy, whether it's a stumbling
> idiot or a cunning tactician.
Doesn't really matter in a Kart game if you know the characters or
not, the 'cuteness' is quite a bit more important.
> Now - if every OpenSourced game of the 'cute' genre goes off and
> invents a new set of characters - we'll never build that set of
> characters that people can identify.
Well, maybe not, but I would prefer a wide range of different
characters in different games anytime about seeing BSOD driving or
walking around on my screen.
> Did you notice that Mario originally had a blue hat and red shirt
> rather than the red hat and blue shirt he always wears now? Do you
> think that was a mistake or a carefully thought out design decision?
> Read on...
Design decisions on early-Mario were in large part done for technical
reasons (limited number of colors, low resolutions and such).
> BSOD was my idea - Gown came from that other game who's name I've
> forgotten,
'xtux' I think.
> It is extremely difficult to get 'name recognition' for your
> characters, once you've got it, don't throw it away or screw it up.
Name recognition requires that one has a recognizable name in the
first place, thats why we dumped 'Gown'. There wasn't anybody that
liked that name and in a lot of languages it was simply
unpronounceable, thus not much recognizable.
> It's MUCH better to pick a set that most players will recognise than it
> is to invent a whole new set that nobody knows.
Only if the set itself is any good.
> I'm frankly horrified that you guys changed that in SuperTux...it was a
> really bad tactical mistake IMHO
Most of the players think different.
> - 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.
> Certainly I'd like to see the BSD Daemon ('Beastie'), Mozilla, and
> Wilbur (The GIMP) added to our set. Wilbur is difficult because he
> doesn't have a body - which is the reason he's not in TuxKart right
> now.
I kind of have a strong dislike for just having driving
software-logos, neither of them really has anykind of personality,
beside that I don't think they mix all that well.
> 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'.
> 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.
> We carefully made her the same basic size and shape as Tux so that
> in games where it matters, the game designer can have them fit
> through the same sized doors and have them not look stupid when they
> can jump the same height and run at the same speed...maybe share the
> same 'bones' to cut down on the animation workload.
Which would have been ok for a 'brother' character, but for a female
character reusing almost the same body just doesn't work very well.
> Gown *IS* called Gown - and hundreds of thousands of Linux gamers
> know that. You can no more vote to change that than you could have
> Nintendo change Mario's name to Bob.
We didn't just changed the name, we basically started to create a new
character. Current SuperTux doesn't even contain a picture how her, so
the design is pretty much open for discussion.
> or introduct the possibility that Tux is two-timing his faithful
> companion of all these years. That in turn damages Tux's character -
Not really, Mario has Princess Daisy and Princess Peace (in some
countries called Toadstool) and nobody really seems to care.
> which erodes the plot line
Havn't yet seen a Tux game with something that is worth calling a
'plot-line'.
> Please understand - Game design is a SCIENCE - these decisions are
> things you arrive at after careful thought - not just on a whim when
> you say "lets have a poll about this".
Game Design should be art, not science, if we continue the route of
Microsoft bashing and walking logos we are doomed to fail.
--
WWW: http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/
JabberID: gr...@ja...
ICQ: 59461927
|
|
From: Steve B. <sjb...@ai...> - 2004-06-27 19:40:12
|
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 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- GCS d-- s:+ a+ C++++$ UL+++$ P--- L++++$ E--- W+++ N o+ K? w--- !O M- V-- PS++ PE- Y-- PGP-- t+ 5 X R+++ tv b++ DI++ D G+ e++ h--(-) r+++ y++++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK----- |
|
From: Ingo R. <gr...@gm...> - 2004-06-27 21:05:06
|
Steve Baker <sjb...@ai...> writes: > I'd like to know what process you'd like to use to try to get some > kind of 'recognition' into these critters? First of, simply by not reusing some companies logo, ie. somethings which people have seen for years, yet never have seen it move, speak or whatever. Sure that doesn't guarantee for anything, but at least it gives people something new, something that isn't already spoiled due to the context it was used in the past. > 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. I simply doubt that the characters are established. Tux might be the only one that is reasonable established, even so their is still a whole lot of room to let him do whatever we want, ie. no kind of bonuses and powerups has really been established beside the herring and even that is used for all kinds of different things. Gown on the other side still runs around as pink penguin in xtux, looks quite different in tuxkart, and isn't GUI-selectable in TuxAQFH. I am not even able to find a picture of her on images.google. Geeko isn't used anywhere beside Tuxkart I think. Bsod was used in the old SuperTux but got stripped away, beside I think Microsoft-bashing is something that we should really avoid. After all if 'we' don't like Microsoft, we shouldn't let them influence our character design. > 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... There are no good guys in a Kart game and beside that even Nintendo happily lets them switch from the bad side to the good one and back, nothing wrong with that. > who likes herring and who would be likely to shoot CD-ROMS. So far there isn't any kind of established 'magic-system' so far for Tux and friends, so we are still rather free on that topic. What should happens if Tux collect herring? Should they act as coins, make him invulnurable, let him grow or what? > We have to have *SOMETHING* like that or else it's just random and > meaningless. Well, Mario doesn't throw around with plumber items either, but instead consumes mushrooms and throws around turtles. So stuff can actually be rather random, as long as it is consistent in the game itself. I don't think that cross-game consistentency is all that important, sure you shouldn't have and item and give it one role in some game and a whole other in a similar game, but thats not what we are doing anyway. > Game players don't read manuals...you have to do SOMETHING to make > that connection. In-game consistentency should be more then enough for that, if the player collects an item the first time he shouldn't be completly suprised by what happens, but there is little need to know what exactly is going to happen either (mushrooms boost you in MarioKart, but let you grow in MarioWorld, knowing that they are collectable is already enough to know). > OK - I'll bite. Which languages had this problem? German, Portuguese, English (yeah, its an english word, yet native speakers didn't like it much at all when used as name), maybe more, can't remember. > How did you figure out that 'Penny' was OK? How many languages did > you survey? All of the above maybe a few more that where around. > 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? We didn't try to find a name perfectly prouncable in every language possible, just something people playing the game would be ok with. And the little world play between Tux and Gown wasn't really enough to keep it. > Be honest - someone didn't like the name Well, it started just as a misunderstanding and with the name Gwen: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=4193986&forum_id=36963 which was then later fixed to Penny. > At least in English 'Gown' has mild humor value and it's memorable for > that reason Yes, it has a mild humor value, but there is really not much more than that to it. And well, I prefer a name that I can pronounce about one which I can't and which has humour that requires a lexicon for me to understand. > - 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. SuperTux already has translations in CVS and so do most other games that have any content worth a translation. And well, I speak english as second language and still neither did get the 'joke' at first nor do I like the name itself. -- WWW: http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/ JabberID: gr...@ja... ICQ: 59461927 |
|
From: Steve B. <sjb...@ai...> - 2004-06-27 21:51:53
|
Ingo Ruhnke wrote: >>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. > > I simply doubt that the characters are established. Arguably not (although I happen to think they're pretty firmly established). But even if they aren't yet established - how do you imagine putting a completely different set of characters into every new game makes that any better? Clearly there is value in this kind of recognition or all of the commercial games of this genre wouldn't continually re-use the same ones over and over. Heck, it goes beyond games - cartoons, toys - everything. > Tux might be the only one that is reasonable established, even so > their is still a whole lot of room to let him do whatever we want, ie. > no kind of bonuses and powerups has really been established beside the > herring and even that is used for all kinds of different things. But getting that established requires building on what understanding people have - not tossing out what's already established. Why change a spinning herring to a spinning coin or a pink elephant or something? It's change for change's sake. By all means model a nicer herring - add new things that AREN'T herrings - but there is no need to subtract without powerful reasons. > Gown on the other side still runs around as pink penguin in xtux, > looks quite different in tuxkart, and isn't GUI-selectable in TuxAQFH. Nothing's GUI selectable in TuxAQFH - nor was it in early versions of TuxKart. The Voodoo cards couldn't run GUI's on the same screen as the 3D graphics - so that stuff was hard to do. In those days, everything was command-line oriented and most games from that vintage had command line options. You most certainly can play as gown in TuxAQFH and you could originally in TuxKart too. I have a photo of a little girl - maybe 5 years old - playing as Gown. Her father sent me the photo telling me that the little girl wanted a red/white hair bow to look like Gown. > Geeko isn't used anywhere beside Tuxkart I think. No - and he's a problem because he's a commercial logo. Certainly he should be replaced. > Bsod was used in the old SuperTux but got stripped away, beside I > think Microsoft-bashing is something that we should really avoid. M$ bashing of the *obvious* kind is not good - but a little subtle play is OK IMHO. >>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... > > There are no good guys in a Kart game and beside that even Nintendo > happily lets them switch from the bad side to the good one and back, > nothing wrong with that. That's true if you only think about one game in isolation. What I'm trying to get across is that we need to look at the big picture. People go out and buy MarioKart DoubleDash having a REALLY good idea of what they are getting into because they played Mario Tennis or Mario Golf or something. Building that kind of recognition for OpenSource games goes beyond just one game. That's why the original authors of at least five games got together to discuss this stuff. The Big Picture only works well if we don't try to invent the whole range of characters every time we write a game. > So far there isn't any kind of established 'magic-system' so far for > Tux and friends, so we are still rather free on that topic. What > should happens if Tux collect herring? Should they act as coins, make > him invulnurable, let him grow or what? TuxAQFH, TuxKart and TuxRacer all use the idea that blue (really: silver) herrings are general 'points' to be scored - like coins in Mario games. Red Herrings do some kind of generally good magic, Green ones are generally bad magic and gold ones are super-versions of the silver ones. I believe that the freeware version of TuxRacer only used the silver ones - the commercial version used gold ones and (IIRC) red ones...I'm not sure of that though. xtux didn't have collectables (as I recall) and the original SuperTux didn't follow the herring convention AFAIK. Just as with Mario, you don't need to know *specifically* what a mushroom does, only that it's not going to kill you and that you should probably go out of your way to collect it. So, you don't need to know *specifically* what a Red Herring does. >>We have to have *SOMETHING* like that or else it's just random and >>meaningless. > > Well, Mario doesn't throw around with plumber items either, but > instead consumes mushrooms and throws around turtles. So stuff can > actually be rather random, as long as it is consistent in the game > itself. No - it doesn't have to be exactly the obvious occupation of the character (although the early Mario games had more to do with wrenches and green pipes than later ones) - it just needs to be moderately consistent and to change only slowly and predictably. > I don't think that cross-game consistentency is all that important, I couldn't disagree more. I think it's fairly crucial to the long term needs of OpenSource. Anyway - in the interests of not starting this project with a massive flamefest, let's try to pick a set of characters. I think Tux is a given - it *is* "Tux"-kart after all. Beyond that, I think we can agree to drop Geeko...no problem. I'm fairly passionate about keeping Gown and BSOD - you don't want to call her 'Gown' - but since we want everything to be graphical anyway, her name doesn't appear anywhere and you can call her whatever you like. My description of what I'd like BSOD's kart to look like is (I think) fairly compelling. My son has been building a 1st cut of it - I'll post a screenshot to another thread. What about the others? My view is that it's pretty pointless to simply make up a character off the top of our heads (assuming we can do that convincingly) - when there are so many OpenSourced characters out there already. Beastie seems to me to have a lot of milage because he's a devil with a pitchfork - which is interesting graphically - and has all the associations of fire and lava and stuff - which always looks good in game levels. I think the Mozilla dinosaur is a good pick too. I think these would be great characters even if they WEREN'T OpenSource mascots, the fact that they *are* is just a little icing on the cake. What would everyone else like to see? ---------------------------- 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 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- GCS d-- s:+ a+ C++++$ UL+++$ P--- L++++$ E--- W+++ N o+ K? w--- !O M- V-- PS++ PE- Y-- PGP-- t+ 5 X R+++ tv b++ DI++ D G+ e++ h--(-) r+++ y++++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK----- |
|
From: Ingo R. <gr...@gm...> - 2004-06-27 23:11:10
|
Steve Baker <sjb...@ai...> writes: > Arguably not (although I happen to think they're pretty firmly > established). But even if they aren't yet established - how do you > imagine putting a completely different set of characters into every > new game makes that any better? Different characters give you a clean start, you simply arn't bound by older stuff. Sure one can always reuse old stuff when its good, but being forced to reuse old stuff just because its old isn't really a good start. > Clearly there is value in this kind of recognition or all of the > commercial games of this genre wouldn't continually re-use the same > ones over and over. There is nothing wrong with reusing stuff, I just want to reduce it to the good parts and throw everything else away. > But getting that established requires building on what understanding > people have - not tossing out what's already established. I don't think there is a understanding in peoples mind at this point, just because some game used some item back in the past for something doesn't mean that some noticable amount of people still remembers that. > Why change a spinning herring to a spinning coin or a pink elephant > or something? Because I am hell of a lot confused by having red-herrings as bonus, green-herrings as bad things and hell-I-can't-remember-which-color- herrings as speedups. They all just look kind of the same when driving with high speed. > It's change for change's sake. Yes, in parts that is true, but thats the point. The game has to fit together as a whole, one can't do that if one keeps all the old stuff around. To make it all fit together one has to start from scratch and then only bring back old stuff that was good and useable. One needs a good reason to *keep* something old, not one to change it. > M$ bashing of the *obvious* kind is not good - but a little subtle > play is OK IMHO. Well, if its subtle enough than it might be ok, however so far I have mostly seen only the very damn obvious kind MS bashing in linux games, thats why I better avoid it all together in the first place. > The Big Picture only works well if we don't try to invent the whole > range of characters every time we write a game. I just don't consider this 'Big Picture' finished or even mature enough to call parts of it fixed, thats all. > TuxAQFH, TuxKart and TuxRacer all use the idea that blue (really: silver) > herrings are general 'points' to be scored - like coins in Mario games. > Red Herrings do some kind of generally good magic, Green ones are generally > bad magic and gold ones are super-versions of the silver ones. As said above I find using herring for a whole number of different things a pretty bad idea. Sure I could now start and create different looking herrings and such, but I easily get a far better result by starting from scratch and not using herring for each and everything. Just for the record, herring shouldn't be used in Tuxkart as Coin, since other drivers might not be penguins, so something generic could be better. > xtux didn't have collectables (as I recall) and the original > SuperTux didn't follow the herring convention AFAIK. SuperTux had a golden herring for invulnurability, got replaced with a 'classic' star. > Just as with Mario, you don't need to know *specifically* what a > mushroom does, only that it's not going to kill you and that you > should probably go out of your way to collect it. So, you don't need > to know *specifically* what a Red Herring does. I need to know that Green Herring will basically halt me and I have to play quite a lot to know what Blue Herring is about, not using Herring would avoid this confusion completly. > I think Tux is a given - it *is* "Tux"-kart after all. > Beyond that, I think we can agree to drop Geeko...no problem. Speaking about logos and such, we could reuse them for the basic design of the Karts, not sure if its such a good idea, but it might work and be much less abvious then using them as characters. So for Geeko it would be something like this (just green, four wheels and in Kart shape): http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/luxrota-uv7.jpg > I'm fairly passionate about keeping Gown and BSOD - you don't want > to call her 'Gown' - but since we want everything to be graphical > anyway, her name doesn't appear anywhere and you can call her > whatever you like. I am not even sure if Penny should be a penguin, after all I have a hard time imagine a female penguin that doesn't just look like Tux + bow in the non-existing hair. > My description of what I'd like BSOD's kart to look like is (I think) > fairly compelling. My son has been building a 1st cut of it - I'll > post a screenshot to another thread. In SuperTux we have this little IceBlock as BSOD replacement: * http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/iceblock.gif And while, since BSOD is just the most obvious Microsoft bashing, I really would prefer to get rid of it. > What about the others? Nolok, which is the bad guy in SuperTux: http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/nolok.png As replacement for the butterfly-Tux we could use this little guy: http://super-tux.sourceforge.net/milestone1/images/flyingsnow.png Some other (not yet used) SuperTux characters: http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/eviltux.png http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/yeti2.jpg > My view is that it's pretty pointless to simply make up a character off > the top of our heads (assuming we can do that convincingly) - when there > are so many OpenSourced characters out there already. The problem is that there aren't any characters, just logos and stuff. And well, just throwing them all together won't give a very good mix. > Beastie seems to me to have a lot of milage because he's a devil with a > pitchfork - which is interesting graphically - and has all the associations > of fire and lava and stuff - which always looks good in game levels. Might be useable. > I think the Mozilla dinosaur is a good pick too. Would need a serious redesigned, a dragon like creature would be good, but I wouldn't call it Mozilla, Mozilla itself is just too huge. -- WWW: http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/ JabberID: gr...@ja... ICQ: 59461927 |
|
From: Caleb S. <gam...@gm...> - 2004-06-27 20:04:45
|
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 03:49:43 -0500, Steve Baker <sjb...@ai...> wrote: > > (Cross-posted to HP Game of The Month - because I don't think everyone > is over here yet). > > Someone posted a new BSOD-kart model to that forum...here were my > comments: > > caleb256 wrote: > > > ok I have made a bsod needs to be textured (can't find his texture :/ ) > > http://berty.dyndns.org/~caleb/tuxkart/bosd.ac > > http://berty.dyndns.org/~caleb/tuxkart/bosd.blend > > As I said before, Karts are pretty much only seen from the rear end. It > is UTTERLY imperative that artists think about that as they work. > > This kart looks *identical* (because it is) to Grumbel's 'tuxkart4' - but > with a different driver. I don't think that's going to work. The four (or > hopefully many more) Karts have to be distinctive from the rear so you can > tell who is who. My original kart models - although crude and almost identical > vehicles - had the virtue that they showed off the driver very well - and > since the drivers were all very different, it was extremely easy to see who > was who from behind. Grumbel's kart has Tux sitting much lower (more like > a real GoKart than a cartoon-style thing) - which is OK so long as the other > karts are *WAY* different so we can tell who's who. I was thinking of the same thing. > > This kart has a *tiny* BSOD figure - whom you quite literally cannot see at > all from behind. > bah it was not very much of any thing just a cube with a blue face :D > Here is what I would build for a BSOD kart - I'd like to see a model of a > classic beige-box desk-side PC with CD-ROMs for wheels and the CD drive tray > opened up to make the seat-back. Take some liberties with real PC design by > putting the computer on it's side - it doesn't have to be a literally correct > portrayal - so long as it has recognisable elements of a PC, that's how people > will see it. However, turning things around allows the back panel of the to be > on the back of the Kart where we can see it. Plan to have some cables trailing > out fluttering in the breeze as though they were ripped away from whatever they > were connected to as the *evil* BSOD absconded with someone's PC. The CD-ROM > wheels can have 'TuxKart 1.0.0 Backup: 27th July 2005" textured onto them like > it was hand-written in magic marker. > > This fits the bill for what we need: > > 1) It's DISTINCTIVE from the rear...you can quite easily tell who it is even > when he's just a dozen pixels across out in the distance. > > 2) It's INTERESTING from the rear - fluttering cables, maybe with some animated > sparks coming out of them. Perhaps some flashing LED's and a spinning power > supply fan with little vortices coming out of it. Think: "Pointless eye-candy". > > 3) It's FUNNY/SILLY/CUTE - this is a fun game - not a serious/realistic game. > Think of outrageous things to make Karts out of. A computer on wheels is just > fine for this genre. > > 4) It fits the established CHARACTER of the 'person' driving it. BSOD is The Evil > Blue-screen-of-death -- the antipathy and arch-enemy of Tux. Stealing someone's > computer and turning it into a GoKart is exactly the kind of nasty thing we'd > expect him to do...so that's what he has to be doing. > > 5) It opens up the possibilities for 'special' attacks and defences - like if you > try to rear-end BSOD, you get electrocuted by the sparks from the trailing > cables. He could shoot CD-ROMs as weapons and get huge speedups from driving > over nVidia chips in the road on his own special levels. The players will > understand why this is immediately if the kart is a computer on wheels. If it's > a regular GoKart driven by what looks like a grey cube - it won't make *ANY* > sense at all. also how about if you use a magnet on him he goes mental and I was thinking he could the super attack MEGA LAG so that all the other players lag for 1-2 mins and he is fine :D well its just a thought and what are we going to do about geeko?? > > (I'm sorry to come over as negative on these contributions - I'm really VERY > appreciative of everyone's efforts - they are all food for thought - but it's no > good just to say "Wow - really good" and then quietly dump the graphic later - > because that doesn't achieve ANYTHING.) thats OK it was just a quick 10 min job. If you had said "Wow - really good" I would have been shock :O > > ---------------------------- 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 > -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- > GCS d-- s:+ a+ C++++$ UL+++$ P--- L++++$ E--- W+++ N o+ K? w--- !O M- > V-- PS++ PE- Y-- PGP-- t+ 5 X R+++ tv b++ DI++ D G+ e++ h--(-) r+++ y++++ > -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK----- > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email sponsored by Black Hat Briefings & Training. > Attend Black Hat Briefings & Training, Las Vegas July 24-29 - > digital self defense, top technical experts, no vendor pitches, > unmatched networking opportunities. Visit www.blackhat.com > _______________________________________________ > Tuxkart-devel mailing list > Tux...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tuxkart-devel > |
|
From: Steve B. <sjb...@ai...> - 2004-06-27 21:14:35
|
Caleb Sawtell wrote: > also how about if you use a magnet on him he goes mental and I was > thinking he could the super attack MEGA LAG so that all the other > players lag for 1-2 mins and he is fine :D Yeah - really it would be good for 'special' attacks to work on certain people better than others - and for each to have a special defense too. It makes the game 'richer'. We should establish a list of characters - what each one has in the way of special abilities and vulnerabilities. > well its just a thought and what are we going to do about geeko?? Yeah - I'm not at all happy about my Geeko model - it completely sucks. I'd be happy to just drop Geeko. Also, I think when I did the game, the big commercial distro's were seen more as the good guys than they are these days. Back then it was good to support them - nowadays it kinda smells like advertising. The trackside signage should probably promote OpenSource projects rather than SuSE and VA.Linux and such. Philips got a promo on the original track because they gave me a free GeForce-256 graphics card...so I owed them one...I think I've repayed that dept! ---------------------------- 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 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- GCS d-- s:+ a+ C++++$ UL+++$ P--- L++++$ E--- W+++ N o+ K? w--- !O M- V-- PS++ PE- Y-- PGP-- t+ 5 X R+++ tv b++ DI++ D G+ e++ h--(-) r+++ y++++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK----- |
|
From: Steve B. <sjb...@ai...> - 2004-06-27 23:54:08
|
Ingo Ruhnke wrote: > There is nothing wrong with reusing stuff, I just want to reduce it to > the good parts and throw everything else away. That much (at least) we agree on. Dump what didn't work - add new to replace it...but keep what *did* work. >>Why change a spinning herring to a spinning coin or a pink elephant >>or something? > > Because I am hell of a lot confused by having red-herrings as bonus, > green-herrings as bad things and hell-I-can't-remember-which-color- > herrings as speedups. They all just look kind of the same when driving > with high speed. So what scheme *does* work for you? 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. >>It's change for change's sake. > > Yes, in parts that is true, but thats the point. The game has to fit > together as a whole, one can't do that if one keeps all the old stuff > around. I don't see how choosing an ice cube over a computer monitor changes how things 'hang together'. > To make it all fit together one has to start from scratch and > then only bring back old stuff that was good and useable. One needs a > good reason to *keep* something old, not one to change it. 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. >>M$ bashing of the *obvious* kind is not good - but a little subtle >>play is OK IMHO. > > Well, if its subtle enough than it might be ok, however so far I have > mostly seen only the very damn obvious kind MS bashing in linux games, > thats why I better avoid it all together in the first place. xtux was stupid (attack specifically recognisable/named Microsoft employees with a chainsaw wielding penguin)!! xbill - ditto - not subtle enough. 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. >>The Big Picture only works well if we don't try to invent the whole >>range of characters every time we write a game. > > I just don't consider this 'Big Picture' finished or even mature > enough to call parts of it fixed, thats all. Not *fixed* - but evolvable. Not change for the sake of change. > As said above I find using herring for a whole number of different > things a pretty bad idea. See earlier comments about the role of the spinning cube in MarioKart. > Sure I could now start and create different > looking herrings and such, but I easily get a far better result by > starting from scratch and not using herring for each and everything. > Just for the record, herring shouldn't be used in Tuxkart as Coin, > since other drivers might not be penguins, so something generic could > be better. It's just an icon. What does a toadstool need coins for? Banana's are not in fact part of the natural diet of a gorilla. Herrings only swim in the Northern Hemisphere but Penguins only live south of the equator. Who cares? It's an icon. >>xtux didn't have collectables (as I recall) and the original >>SuperTux didn't follow the herring convention AFAIK. > > SuperTux had a golden herring for invulnurability, got replaced with a > 'classic' star. ...and that helped the game how exactly? > Speaking about logos and such, we could reuse them for the basic > design of the Karts, not sure if its such a good idea, but it might > work and be much less abvious then using them as characters. So for > Geeko it would be something like this (just green, four wheels and in > Kart shape): > > http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/luxrota-uv7.jpg Yeah - well, once you change the character, I don't think you need to preserve anything of it in kart design. The karts need to somehow fit with the characters...and most of all, they need to look good in the situations where you see them most. > I am not even sure if Penny should be a penguin, after all I have a > hard time imagine a female penguin that doesn't just look like Tux + > bow in the non-existing hair. As I explained - I polled the female gamers about this - and they were pretty unanimous about what they wanted the female image of Tux to look like. You are not a female game player - you aren't the one who'd be most likely to want the 'play as gown' thing. > 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. > 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. > Nolok, which is the bad guy in SuperTux: > > http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/nolok.png OK. > 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? 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. > 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? Is that what you're trying to tell us? You're sure coming over that way. 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. >>My view is that it's pretty pointless to simply make up a character off >>the top of our heads (assuming we can do that convincingly) - when there >>are so many OpenSourced characters out there already. > > The problem is that there aren't any characters, just logos and stuff. Aside from geeko (which I've agreed we should drop), I disagree. >>I think the Mozilla dinosaur is a good pick too. > > Would need a serious redesigned, a dragon like creature would be good, > but I wouldn't call it Mozilla, Mozilla itself is just too huge. The early versions of Mozilla were a cuter, more cartoonish dinosaur. 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. ---------------------------- 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 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- GCS d-- s:+ a+ C++++$ UL+++$ P--- L++++$ E--- W+++ N o+ K? w--- !O M- V-- PS++ PE- Y-- PGP-- t+ 5 X R+++ tv b++ DI++ D G+ e++ h--(-) r+++ y++++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK----- |
|
From: Ingo R. <gr...@gm...> - 2004-06-28 00:59:48
|
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. -- WWW: http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/ JabberID: gr...@ja... ICQ: 59461927 |
|
From: Caleb S. <gam...@gm...> - 2004-06-28 10:16:04
|
On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 02:59:30 +0200, Ingo Ruhnke <gr...@gm...> wrote: > > 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. > Can we have the kde dragon in there to huh? > > > -- > WWW: http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/ > JabberID: gr...@ja... > ICQ: 59461927 > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email sponsored by Black Hat Briefings & Training. > Attend Black Hat Briefings & Training, Las Vegas July 24-29 - > digital self defense, top technical experts, no vendor pitches, > unmatched networking opportunities. Visit www.blackhat.com > _______________________________________________ > Tuxkart-devel mailing list > Tux...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tuxkart-devel > |
×
Want the latest updates on software, tech news, and AI?
Get latest updates about software, tech news, and AI from SourceForge directly in your inbox once a month.
Thanks for helping keep SourceForge clean.
X