What can be adult themed about a game?

Frankly I dont want to see nudity in my gaming anyway, nor do I have a need to see delicately cut implied sex scenes - and if any game insists I buy a joystick so that I can wank it off then I'm personally going to pickup the game studio executive who read your post on the way over to your house and let loose with a 12 gauge.

It will not change how complex the plot driven cut scenes are, because they will still get dumbed down for thick people anyway.

And I dont see how the gameplay away from these cut scenes can be adult themed. I'm trying to imagine it now...

"Oh man, I played Call of Booty last night. I has to mash the "u" key AND the "space bar", it's so out there man. No-one under 16 is gonna get that."

There are many things that can be done with the story for example. Most typical teen movies and tv series (and scifi shows ) describe good and bad only as polar opposites with no real shades of grey in between. Good guys are always doing good things and bad guys do always bad things because, well because they just are evil. A bit like in every children's story.

Or how thing in general are presented in very polarized way. There is not much room for anything else than win or lose. Which goes very well hand in hand with the view the children have about the world. Everything is absolute. Good or bad, happy or sad, right or wrong. The bad guys always look like bad guys and speak with german accent while the good guys look kewl and don't speak with german accent. Or how certain things are always presented as bad, harmful and in negative light to make a point how bad those things are.

Typically these kind of things lead to the cutscenes or the characters and the world in general just being shallow and dull. The older we get the more sides we tend to see but when we were younger we tend to see the world much more black and white. Thus the more adult themed a movie is the less it tells the viewer who is good and who is bad for example and lets the viewer makes up his own mind.

I think the word adult themed is wrong choise of words though.

I don't think you even need nudity or sexual cues for adult themed movies. Of course by adult themed movies I do not mean porn. I'd imagine forcefeedback dildos would sell well though.

In a game this kind of approach can be anything from bad guys not shooting at you as soon as they spot you, not having good and bad people specifically but just people and when presenting a choise to the player not tell him A is bad thing to do and B is good thing to do. Or simply when having dialogue with " a bad person" he does not want to kill all your children and put your head on the wall while at the same time using the aforementioned device.

Now I understand more clearly what you meant. For story heavy games your point of view is absolutely valid.

The encounters I am designing for my own game do have some story elements in places, in fact the first one I came up with I think you will enjoy. Some are more story driven than others, but we will have to see how it all unfolds.

I have begun work on the Mayan level today, picture attached. Clearly it is very early stages.

Slowly but surely...

looks cool, is it going to be levels or all one world with regions? I prefer the world with regions bit.

Quote from Mustangman759 :

looks cool, is it going to be levels or all one world with regions? I prefer the world with regions bit.

I could do regions but if the game ever gets popular it would need to support multiple instances of the same map which would be self defeating.

World of mayacraft?

Quote from Hyperactive :

World of mayacraft?

hah! No I just fancied a Mayan themed raid because the style of architecture is so dramatic and unusual.

It caused me a bit of pain because Mayan architecture has so many external staircases and their idea of a staircase is so steep it was hard to discern from a sheer wall in the collision code, on top of that I want the player to be able to go inside buildings so I needed a really good collision system.

I tried all sorts, but in the end had to make my own collision system from scratch and it was a real nightmare. The first several dozen attempts/techniques either didn't work or reduced the game to a crawl with all the calculations, but I just cracked it and it's running fine now and there is room for me to optimise it later.

Quote from Hyperactive :

World of mayacraft?

better release that quickly then cause itll bomb after 2012 when the whole world will suddenly stop caring about mayans

Tell us when you need beta testers looks pretty cool

Quote from Shotglass :

better release that quickly then cause itll bomb after 2012 when the whole world will suddenly stop caring about mayans

Hah. I think the Mayan deadline is going to expire before mine!

Quote from Mustangman759 :

Tell us when you need beta testers looks pretty cool

Keep half an eye on off topic

In the meentime I've been playing with animations. Animation Test.

Pretty interested in this, have played quite a few P2P and F2P mmorpg's.

The models and animations look great.

I'm up for testing too

I had a quick play with shadows earlier which didn't go well and then began work on the ground, I am using a technique that is new to me and I have not used before so it's taking me a while to put it together.

I'm out of time now, so I doubt much will change until next Sunday when I have a chance to sit down with it again. But I'm very pleased with progress, it's hard to believe this has only been a weekend.

This weekend's progress is seeing a new terrain system in the works. There is quite a lot to do here, not least the re-inclusion of the Mayan buildings and the foliage which I currently have hidden whilst I work on the ground.

It kinda looks like you are trying to recreate morrorwind a little. I like it.
Any progress updates?

I always start a game by doing the "world" that the player walks about in first, this determines so much of how the game is structured internally. I expect to be on this phase of the build for some time until I find a technique that gives me the quality I am looking for a given project.

I know I cannot do AA graphics so I am not going to try too, but I am fairly confident I can do much better than the screenshots shown so far

Just a small update, here's one of the Dragons from the game. You won't get to kill this particular one in the game, you have to get it so drunk that it falls unconscious by brewing a giant bowl of bear... Gotta love Welsh folklore for the inspiration for that quest line...

Eve online, the only game I play with other people outside racing. Fantastic and even after 7 years I'm still learning things, continuous updates, skill training advances in real time so you cannot grind, great concept. It's not fairy waving fantasy, space ships are way more interesting . Eve market and commercial system is very very good. PVP can be wonderful.

Downside; it's too expensive for casual gamer, it is not suitable for casual gamer, very steep learning curve. Missions are a bit repetitive, NPC generally suck.

Another game similar to this would attract me. I would like to see a driving MMORPG, but I'm not sure how that would work?

Mind you a drunk dragon sounds fun!

Hey Becky Rose online gaming is most interesting type of game and interesting because you get rival and a level of competition arises there.

Quote from AlienT. :

It's not fairy waving fantasy, space ships are way more interesting

I think similar, magic/fantasy stuff aren't my cup of tea, but MMOs using other genres like EVE are quite rare. That new Star Wars MMO just replaces magic with "the force".

Read something about a Stargate MMO once (years back) that was never realized, but it got me interested.

relevant
http://www.escapistmagazine.co ... arves-Dont-Define-Fantasy

It's amazing the difference that lighting makes

Cheers, I have been playing with some of the modern graphics techniques so have a few more beauty shots. There's no shadows on these but the effects are still quite pretty.

This 3 headed Hydra is made of glass:


This Dragon is made of gold:

on a side note. Totally understand the stupid achievements thing now. Just got hooked up with a 360 and some Xbox Live action (got it mainly for SkyGo). What a ball ache all these weird achievements are.

good luck with the work Becky, looks good.

So whens the open beta lools good btw