Post by Lord Ba'al on May 13, 2014 19:05:09 GMT
Peter Molyneux
Hello. Welcome to the second of the design videos where we’re talking about Godus and talking about some of the new features. Today we’re going to be talking about single player and multi player, but first Jack I think you’ve got some questions from yesterday’s video that we did for the community that have come back.
Jack Attridge
Yes. So we had our video yesterday that we put out on air last night. We looked at everyone’s feedback on that. The first one we got a lot was about the ……… flattening of the land. A lot of people were worried that we were talking about these beautiful mountains and valleys and rivers and that we’re just flattening it all off and it becomes… well that’s not the case.
Peter Molyneux
Well, it is the case, but only if you want it to be the case. Because here’s the interesting thing, some places in the world are very flat and there is an efficiency to flatness. American cities are laid out in grids, there is an efficiency to that, but there’s a cost to that and that cost is beauty and maybe the happiness of the little people. There’s another shot here which we haven’t released yet but it shows you what is going through our mind. As you can see, this land has been sculpted so there are flat areas for people to settle on and those flat areas are across lots of mountains. We’ll talk about the tornado a little bit later. I love the sheep by the way. So don’t think about it as being just a flat monotonous landscape. It is completely up to you how your world and what their worlds are going to look like and everything that you do has an impact on those little people.
Jack Attridge
Exactly. Our art director Paul, who has worked on every game after Populous, so all the Bullfrog games, he’s designed this so the mountains have these wonderful crevices of plateaus that you can just build up. So your population’s explored vertically as well as horizontally, which is wonderful.
Peter Molyneux
It is, it is fantastic. What’s another question?
Jack Attridge
Ehm… So yeah there’s a lot of ehm… There’s a very contentious issue about gesture based movement. A lot of people loved that from Black & White.
Peter Molyneux
Yes, gesture based movement. Well let’s go back to this picture again. There are some things I love about gestures and there are things that I don’t like about gestures. I don’t like when gestures are confusing, when there are misreads. In the original Black & White we tried to implement lots of gestures with the mouse. We implemented too many of them and that means that you got very confused and it was very cryptic how you accessed those gestures. Now, with Godus, what we’re going to do is give a power to the way that you cast your miracles. And that power… If we look at this screen here, if I just… with the mouse… if I throw this tornado up the hill, now think of the word throw… if I throw it up the hill… if I mix it round with my finger, those are the sort of specific gestures which I love. In other words, knowing that you want to cast a tornado and then allowing you to modify that tornado with your gestures. And that should work fantastically well on the mouse and it should equally work fantastically well with your finger or fingers.
Jack Attridge
Okay. And then one of the other things people were kind of worrying about was micromanaging. They didn’t want to have to turn people into disciples and things like that. And ehm… There’s definitely an interesting thing with Godus and that’s the lovely relationship between you and your followers. And that’s essentially that you can’t really change people’s free will. Your power is changing the world around them. And you need them in order to survive. The more followers you have the more powerful you are. So you’ve got that kind of lovely relationship of reinforcing eachother. So you don’t have to worry so much about managing them and telling them where to go because, the lovely thing about is it that you’ve got a lovely voyeuristic almost look into their lives and seeing what they’re up to.
Peter Molyneux
Yeah. Yeah. Ehm… the ehm… Here’s the thing about this. Your little people… You will never micromanage your people. Like in Black & White you can pick up a disciple and put them somewhere else and that meant that there was a lot of sort of actions like this. We are going to give you the finger of god or hand of god which will allow you to interact very personally with a follower, but that’s not the main way of doing it. That’s a side issue. The main thing I can say to you is your people are fascinated with what you do… here to their land. So if you start flattening an area of land or raising up a mountain or lowering a valley your people will naturally be fascinated with that. They’ll naturally come to that point. So everything is about influence. Your little people love you as a god and they are fascinated with what you do. I don’t like the idea that you’re moving them like troops like in an RTS. This is all about influence. And it’s all about their behavior and their personality. I want them to be truly terrified if there are these god powers like tornadoes cast. But I want them to be unbelievably delighted if you give them something called gift of the gods. We’ll be talking specifically about this in another video in the next couple of days about gifts of the gods and miracles. But don’t think you micromanage them at all.
Jack Attridge
Okay. So that were some of the issues from the response yesterday. So let’s talk about…
Peter Molyneux
Single player and multi player.
Jack Attridge
Yes.
Peter Molyneux
Yes. Right. And remember, all of this that we talk about is going to be summarized in a document so you’ll be able to refer to it and poke it and tweak it. And also remember, please please please give us your feedback because we love this feedback. It is changing our minds as designers on the game and we’re taking a lot your ideas and putting them through. Like to see more of those ideas by the way! Right… Let’s talk about single player and multi player. There’s a fundamental problem here isn’t there? Some of us like “the zen” of single player. The calmness of it.
Jack Attridge
Our own pace. Our perfectly sculpted world.
Peter Molyneux
Exactly. I am one of those people. I like to turtle it. It’s called turtling and it’s when you build up your forces. I love that sort of approach in RTS games. I find that if I’m playing an RTS my heart just can’t take multi player for more than a few moments. So single player is very very important. It’s the heart of what Godus is. But, there are times when multi player is going to be fantastic. So let me just talk you through this… and again this is going to be summarized in a document… We’re trying to solve this problem where we have two opposing forces. The calmness of single player versus the excitement and adrenaline rush of multi player versus… some people are good at multi player and some people are not. And the way that we’re approaching that is this. I’m going to draw a little diagram for you. We have got something called… and we’re going to have a whole episode on this… something called home world. Home world is a zen place. And in home world you build… you interact with your little people… this is where you’re crafting the ultimate civilization. And home world is something that’s going to take you a long time to kind of build up. You’re starting with a few little people and by the end you’re going to end up with a vast metropolis. Don’t think that home world is ehm… phrenetic, it’s not. As your followers expand in home world, as your god powers increase because of the belief you’ve got, you can take followers from home world into one of three different options. And we may have to do a stretch goal for one of these because they are very very involved. The three different options are these. Multi player… Multi I’ll do MP because I can’t spell multi player. Multi player… and I love this… multi player versus friends. In other words, you versus your friends. You’ll have your own little league tables, you’ll be able to battle against eachother. What you do is you take a number of followers from your home world and you kind of invest those followers in your multi player game. You’re going to be battling against those other friends that you’ve got. They’re gods. It’s your people versus their people and your god powers versus their god powers. And I love the fact that I have friends and I challenge them. Let’s go and have a game of Godus tonight. I really love that. The other one which is very very similar to this is multi player versus stranger. Now I’m going to be a little bit intriguing here because there are these things called cults which your… your people are part of a cult and you can do things… you think of your cult like a clan, you can do thinks that are good for your clan and this is where… this is I think the most ehm… biggest adrenaline rush is when you’re battling against someone you don’t know. Someone who’s got another set of people. Someone who may have another set of beliefs. Someone… You may be thinking of yourself as a good god, you may be fighting a stranger who’s an evil god. And again, you take followers from your home world, you invest them in this battle. If you win these multi player battles, you will get followers and belief back to return to your home world, which is a great increase in the population and the power of your home world. And then the third and the most important element… Again taking followers from your home world and putting them into something called a crusade which is like a sequence… I can’t say crusade. I’ll rub it out. Cru… sa… God my twitter is going to be alive with me not being able to spell now. A crusade… A crusade is like a series of challenges… of single player challenges. It’s you versus a themed god, themed gods that we have got. It’s like the story mode that you’re playing through. Again, you’re taking your followers from your home world, you’re investing them in the crusade. That crusade is very single player. And this way, with these three, we’ve got the adrenaline rush of multi player versus strangers for your cults or clans, we’ve got the intimacy of multi player versus your friends and we’ve got the slightly more relaxing single player. So we’ve got all three. Now the stretch for us is this… and I would love to do this… I would absolutely adore to do this but these guys, this person in particular, Gary, he’s going to be the head of the programming side here, he’s …………….. about this… I’d love cooperative multi player. I love the idea that it’s me and my people plus you and your people against two other people. For me, that is how you redefine multi player. Not only battling one on one, but battling two versus two. But that maybe a stretch goal. And that applies to… and this is the cool thing… all three of these. So, two friends versus two friends, two friends versus two strangers or two friends in the crusade. And that should all work but it is a lot more effort. So that way… I think we’re doing this in this way… We should be able to solve that problem. The zen of single player versus the adrenaline rush of multi player. Anyway, that is just about it for this video. Tomorrow we are going to be answering some of your questions so please keep them coming through. We’re also going to start to talk about god powers, gift of the gods and a little bit more about how the little people behave. Again thank you very much for watching. Thank you so much for supporting our Kickstarter. And, you know, we really really appreciate your pledges. We’re very very excited to receive those pledges and super excited to receive your ehm… feedback. Thank you very much.
Hello. Welcome to the second of the design videos where we’re talking about Godus and talking about some of the new features. Today we’re going to be talking about single player and multi player, but first Jack I think you’ve got some questions from yesterday’s video that we did for the community that have come back.
Jack Attridge
Yes. So we had our video yesterday that we put out on air last night. We looked at everyone’s feedback on that. The first one we got a lot was about the ……… flattening of the land. A lot of people were worried that we were talking about these beautiful mountains and valleys and rivers and that we’re just flattening it all off and it becomes… well that’s not the case.
Peter Molyneux
Well, it is the case, but only if you want it to be the case. Because here’s the interesting thing, some places in the world are very flat and there is an efficiency to flatness. American cities are laid out in grids, there is an efficiency to that, but there’s a cost to that and that cost is beauty and maybe the happiness of the little people. There’s another shot here which we haven’t released yet but it shows you what is going through our mind. As you can see, this land has been sculpted so there are flat areas for people to settle on and those flat areas are across lots of mountains. We’ll talk about the tornado a little bit later. I love the sheep by the way. So don’t think about it as being just a flat monotonous landscape. It is completely up to you how your world and what their worlds are going to look like and everything that you do has an impact on those little people.
Jack Attridge
Exactly. Our art director Paul, who has worked on every game after Populous, so all the Bullfrog games, he’s designed this so the mountains have these wonderful crevices of plateaus that you can just build up. So your population’s explored vertically as well as horizontally, which is wonderful.
Peter Molyneux
It is, it is fantastic. What’s another question?
Jack Attridge
Ehm… So yeah there’s a lot of ehm… There’s a very contentious issue about gesture based movement. A lot of people loved that from Black & White.
Peter Molyneux
Yes, gesture based movement. Well let’s go back to this picture again. There are some things I love about gestures and there are things that I don’t like about gestures. I don’t like when gestures are confusing, when there are misreads. In the original Black & White we tried to implement lots of gestures with the mouse. We implemented too many of them and that means that you got very confused and it was very cryptic how you accessed those gestures. Now, with Godus, what we’re going to do is give a power to the way that you cast your miracles. And that power… If we look at this screen here, if I just… with the mouse… if I throw this tornado up the hill, now think of the word throw… if I throw it up the hill… if I mix it round with my finger, those are the sort of specific gestures which I love. In other words, knowing that you want to cast a tornado and then allowing you to modify that tornado with your gestures. And that should work fantastically well on the mouse and it should equally work fantastically well with your finger or fingers.
Jack Attridge
Okay. And then one of the other things people were kind of worrying about was micromanaging. They didn’t want to have to turn people into disciples and things like that. And ehm… There’s definitely an interesting thing with Godus and that’s the lovely relationship between you and your followers. And that’s essentially that you can’t really change people’s free will. Your power is changing the world around them. And you need them in order to survive. The more followers you have the more powerful you are. So you’ve got that kind of lovely relationship of reinforcing eachother. So you don’t have to worry so much about managing them and telling them where to go because, the lovely thing about is it that you’ve got a lovely voyeuristic almost look into their lives and seeing what they’re up to.
Peter Molyneux
Yeah. Yeah. Ehm… the ehm… Here’s the thing about this. Your little people… You will never micromanage your people. Like in Black & White you can pick up a disciple and put them somewhere else and that meant that there was a lot of sort of actions like this. We are going to give you the finger of god or hand of god which will allow you to interact very personally with a follower, but that’s not the main way of doing it. That’s a side issue. The main thing I can say to you is your people are fascinated with what you do… here to their land. So if you start flattening an area of land or raising up a mountain or lowering a valley your people will naturally be fascinated with that. They’ll naturally come to that point. So everything is about influence. Your little people love you as a god and they are fascinated with what you do. I don’t like the idea that you’re moving them like troops like in an RTS. This is all about influence. And it’s all about their behavior and their personality. I want them to be truly terrified if there are these god powers like tornadoes cast. But I want them to be unbelievably delighted if you give them something called gift of the gods. We’ll be talking specifically about this in another video in the next couple of days about gifts of the gods and miracles. But don’t think you micromanage them at all.
Jack Attridge
Okay. So that were some of the issues from the response yesterday. So let’s talk about…
Peter Molyneux
Single player and multi player.
Jack Attridge
Yes.
Peter Molyneux
Yes. Right. And remember, all of this that we talk about is going to be summarized in a document so you’ll be able to refer to it and poke it and tweak it. And also remember, please please please give us your feedback because we love this feedback. It is changing our minds as designers on the game and we’re taking a lot your ideas and putting them through. Like to see more of those ideas by the way! Right… Let’s talk about single player and multi player. There’s a fundamental problem here isn’t there? Some of us like “the zen” of single player. The calmness of it.
Jack Attridge
Our own pace. Our perfectly sculpted world.
Peter Molyneux
Exactly. I am one of those people. I like to turtle it. It’s called turtling and it’s when you build up your forces. I love that sort of approach in RTS games. I find that if I’m playing an RTS my heart just can’t take multi player for more than a few moments. So single player is very very important. It’s the heart of what Godus is. But, there are times when multi player is going to be fantastic. So let me just talk you through this… and again this is going to be summarized in a document… We’re trying to solve this problem where we have two opposing forces. The calmness of single player versus the excitement and adrenaline rush of multi player versus… some people are good at multi player and some people are not. And the way that we’re approaching that is this. I’m going to draw a little diagram for you. We have got something called… and we’re going to have a whole episode on this… something called home world. Home world is a zen place. And in home world you build… you interact with your little people… this is where you’re crafting the ultimate civilization. And home world is something that’s going to take you a long time to kind of build up. You’re starting with a few little people and by the end you’re going to end up with a vast metropolis. Don’t think that home world is ehm… phrenetic, it’s not. As your followers expand in home world, as your god powers increase because of the belief you’ve got, you can take followers from home world into one of three different options. And we may have to do a stretch goal for one of these because they are very very involved. The three different options are these. Multi player… Multi I’ll do MP because I can’t spell multi player. Multi player… and I love this… multi player versus friends. In other words, you versus your friends. You’ll have your own little league tables, you’ll be able to battle against eachother. What you do is you take a number of followers from your home world and you kind of invest those followers in your multi player game. You’re going to be battling against those other friends that you’ve got. They’re gods. It’s your people versus their people and your god powers versus their god powers. And I love the fact that I have friends and I challenge them. Let’s go and have a game of Godus tonight. I really love that. The other one which is very very similar to this is multi player versus stranger. Now I’m going to be a little bit intriguing here because there are these things called cults which your… your people are part of a cult and you can do things… you think of your cult like a clan, you can do thinks that are good for your clan and this is where… this is I think the most ehm… biggest adrenaline rush is when you’re battling against someone you don’t know. Someone who’s got another set of people. Someone who may have another set of beliefs. Someone… You may be thinking of yourself as a good god, you may be fighting a stranger who’s an evil god. And again, you take followers from your home world, you invest them in this battle. If you win these multi player battles, you will get followers and belief back to return to your home world, which is a great increase in the population and the power of your home world. And then the third and the most important element… Again taking followers from your home world and putting them into something called a crusade which is like a sequence… I can’t say crusade. I’ll rub it out. Cru… sa… God my twitter is going to be alive with me not being able to spell now. A crusade… A crusade is like a series of challenges… of single player challenges. It’s you versus a themed god, themed gods that we have got. It’s like the story mode that you’re playing through. Again, you’re taking your followers from your home world, you’re investing them in the crusade. That crusade is very single player. And this way, with these three, we’ve got the adrenaline rush of multi player versus strangers for your cults or clans, we’ve got the intimacy of multi player versus your friends and we’ve got the slightly more relaxing single player. So we’ve got all three. Now the stretch for us is this… and I would love to do this… I would absolutely adore to do this but these guys, this person in particular, Gary, he’s going to be the head of the programming side here, he’s …………….. about this… I’d love cooperative multi player. I love the idea that it’s me and my people plus you and your people against two other people. For me, that is how you redefine multi player. Not only battling one on one, but battling two versus two. But that maybe a stretch goal. And that applies to… and this is the cool thing… all three of these. So, two friends versus two friends, two friends versus two strangers or two friends in the crusade. And that should all work but it is a lot more effort. So that way… I think we’re doing this in this way… We should be able to solve that problem. The zen of single player versus the adrenaline rush of multi player. Anyway, that is just about it for this video. Tomorrow we are going to be answering some of your questions so please keep them coming through. We’re also going to start to talk about god powers, gift of the gods and a little bit more about how the little people behave. Again thank you very much for watching. Thank you so much for supporting our Kickstarter. And, you know, we really really appreciate your pledges. We’re very very excited to receive those pledges and super excited to receive your ehm… feedback. Thank you very much.