"Character creation" or What are names for?

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Topic General / General / "Character creation" or What are names for?

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By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-23 16:15 Edited 2012-01-23 19:22

After having seen this video yesterday which was posted in the German clonk forum, I started to ask myself whether we could learn some lessons from it.

Let's Play - Clonk Rage!!

Although many problems he encounters are more 'CR controls' related there are still a few points which are applicable to OpenClonk. Especially the 'character creation'. Right at the beginning the player is asked to create a player file. The guy in the video makes the understandable assumption that this new player isn't just what we all know what it is, a dummy file which stores the control set, crew and is shown in the network lobby, but the real ingame character. A fair assumption since this is how other games work. Whereever there is such a creation dialogue, players expect it to have an impact in the game - otherwise don't do this dialogue.
Skip to 05:40 in the video and you will hear him say: Why does it say I'm Ribald? I'm not Ribald, I'm Harry Wang!

I know we already had this discussion but I want to rekindle it with this piece of real evidence. Why am I asked for a name that (assuming I play only single player) will never reoccur?
Past discussions went about how people love to forge their crew, give them names and train them and get a relationship with them. I wonder if this is really an objective perspective or just the misty-eyed view of someone who grew up with the old clonk. We all know how it works, we all know what player files are. But do they?

The distinction between player and clonk is never explained and in OpenClonk unexplainable except you dig out the other clonk games and tell people how it worked there: That you could do some training on your clonks and these were saved in your very own player file and different names were useful if a friend came over and you had a splitscreen session.

My suggestion would be to skip the player file naming. Just give it a name like 'Player1' or pick the computer's name. The name the player fills in should be one he will see further in the game. So let it be "You first crew member's name:". Colour picking is fair. Portrait is not. This is another never-to-be-seen-again choice. Make it "The style of your clonks:" and let the player choose the different clonk skins we already have. Also next to the colour picker there is still some space for the non-existing colour sliders.
The control selection is as well based on old-fashioned reasons: In past clonk it was useful to be able to see where your controls on the keyboard were. No it's not. Make it a dropdown menu with preselected WASD or QUERTZ/Y scheme, offer the other two choices for Dvorak and Gamepad. Maybe even give a warning if someone alters the control scheme, reminding him that this might render his controls unusable if the given device doesn't exist.

There still a button to disable mouse control. I don't think there is much to say about this, is there?

I think it's past time we polish this dialogue. It's ugly and incomprehensible but the first thing new players see:

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-23 16:19

There is much hassle to save here if we had no more things like player crews, either by not saving clonks and giving them always the player's name or by reducing the amount of clonks to one :)

By Clonk-Karl [de]

Date 2012-01-23 17:23

> My suggestion would be to skip the player file naming. Just give it a name like 'Player1' or pick the computer's name. The name the player fills in should be one he will see further in the game. So let it be "You first crew member's name:".

Or simply use the player name as the first Clonk's name?

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-23 17:36

Well, yes. You will still leave a little confusion why 'sometimes' (whenever a different clonk is selected) the name is different.

By Caesar

Date 2012-01-24 13:54

That confusion should vanish in the multi-clonk tutorial.

By Zapper

Date 2012-01-23 19:20

I agree on most of that!

>I wonder if this is really an objective perspective or just the misty-eyed view of someone who grew up the old clonk. We all know how it works, we all know what player files are. But do they?

Both I guess.
I am also for being able to select the style of your Clonks. - but I would not leave the name-field away. I would rename it to "Network Name" or "Crew Name".
Why, you ask? Because already now in CR it was pretty annoying having the masses of "empty"-named clients floating around the online games. And I doubt players will explicitly change it before they join their first online round if they are not forced to set it at player creation.

Nothing against naming the first Clonk after the network-name, though

Also I would rather show the player icon ingame (on flags/buildings/shields) somwhere.. :)

PS: if the player decides not to enter the network name ("I NO DO NETWORK!") then that's his/her decision..

By Maikel Date 2012-01-23 21:51

Agreed, would be good to see if this guy manages to play openclonk (and count the amount of ****).

By PeterW

Date 2012-01-24 01:06

Huh? The player name will be visible in the lobby and in chat all the time. Same goes for the portrait.

I suppose you could make the argument that it makes sense for the first Clonk to inherit the player's name if you're really worried about that bit of confusion. But there are enough games that have this kind of distinction, I don't think we should really worry about this too much.

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-24 01:52 Edited 2012-01-24 02:20

> you could make the argument that it makes sense for the first Clonk to inherit the player's name if you're really worried about that bit of confusion

Yes, I am because I could hardly think about any games 'that have this kind of distinction'. Enlighten me on this because I was lost in remembering such games.

> The player name will be visible in the lobby and in chat all the time. Same goes for the portrait.

Yes, but only if you ever do some network related stuff. So why not choose such things when you first click on network? Or don't call the player name 'player name' but network name.

By Zapper

Date 2012-01-24 07:56

>Yes, I am because I could hardly think about any games 'that have this kind of distinction'. Enlighten me on this because I was lost in remembering such games.

Well, at least any RTS :)

>es, but only if you ever do some network related stuff

Not quite true - you also see it in the game evaluation dialogue

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-24 12:29

> Well, at least any RTS :)

Yes, but in every RTS it is extremely obvious that there are your disposable minions which die fast and are easy to replace. Clonks never draws this distinction when you first enter the tutorials.

By Sven2

Date 2012-01-24 11:15

Naming the first Clonk after the player file makes sense in single-Clonk-scenarios. Naming all Clonks after the player does not - we could as well get rid of the Clonk name display then and display the player name in its place. But why would the player need to see his name all the time (except in splitscreen)? The label is not there to remind the player of his name, but to tell him which Clonk he is controlling. If Clonks start getting different models, this will probably be more clear; but still I'd prefer to have a unique name there to get some kind of distinction.

I have played a lot of games where characters had different names. Like in most classic role-playing games (think e.g. Final Fantasy), there would be many side-characters you'd pick up and they had different names. In Worms I'm pretty sure the worms had names. In Warcraft 3 the heroes had names (even if you were playing only one). In DotA and derivatives the heroes have names.

In scenarios, whenever the player is addressed, it is (correctly) done using GetPlayerName. E.g.in kill messages, scoreboard, etc.

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-24 12:32

Granted although I think it is fairly more common in RTS that you have as I said to Zapper 'disposable minions'. Worms always made it clear that the top name was only the "Team name" and as well let's you choose your worms' names right at the beginning.
I'd really like to see the first clonk named after the player.

By PeterW

Date 2012-01-24 15:30

> Enlighten me on this because I was lost in remembering such games.

Well, let's say our good genre neighbour Worms? :)

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-24 15:54

Yes, yes, Sven mentioned it :) As I answered him, I think Worms makes a very clear distinction between "Team name" and "Worm name". Which in our case might then come out as "Crew name" instead of player name?

By Sven2

Date 2012-01-24 17:22 Edited 2012-01-24 17:25

I find "player name" quite clear - in fact, I would consider the "team" thing in worms a bit misleading, as it makes me think of teams of players. The player also doesn't necessarily know he will have a whole "team" of Clonks. The same goes for "crew". The prominent place where the player name will be shown is in multiplayer (in the lobby, in chat, etc.), and "crew name" doesn't make any sense there.

I think the solution of propagating the player name to the first Clonk is fine. It hides the confusion of multiple names until it is really needed, i.e. scenarios where you have multiple Clonks.

By PeterW

Date 2012-01-24 20:46 Edited 2012-01-24 20:48

That you have "user accounts" for when multiple people share a computer is a pretty common in games as well (say, World of Goo). A "crew name", on the other hand, doesn't strike me as a useful concept.

Maybe we could make it clearer that we have distinct "name spaces" by having the new-player thing ask for your name as well as three Clonk names - prefilled for convenience? We might even show them - so you can have an early look at what Clonks are and what they look like in your player color.

By ala

Date 2012-01-24 23:38

I'm still a big opponent against ripping more and more character out of the crew. The people actually like to name their worms in Worms, and the Etagenkampf (Floor Fight) players name their 5 mages like they want them. Everyone likes naming their things - some girls tend to name even shoes!

And the thought of having only one clonk most of the time is extremely one sided. What about settlement and what about RPGs?
It makes thinks easier if you can establish systems like: "This clonk named ala always is my fighter, and this clonk slave is always my miner - this way I can swap through them very fast".

The problem which Harry Wang faced above should be solved exactly the other way around: More character! Make it clear that the player name is more like a tribe: "Choose the name of your clonk tribe".
Imagine this in a Settler2 campaign: "Ah come on I'm not an Asian nor a Viking, I'm damn German, man!"

By Günther [de]

Date 2012-01-25 01:23

At least we got rid of the useless distinction between computer and chat names. So instead of the three network names you got in CR, we now have two. We could further force them to be the same for the common scenario of one player at the computer. (I know this is missing your point, I just wanted to note that progress in a related area has been made and we're not doomed.)

By Isilkor Date 2012-01-25 02:03

The color picker is also too hidden.

By B_E

Date 2012-01-25 19:06

Concerning the colours: Wasn't there a discussion of letting players have two (or multiple) player colours in the future? Or am I just remembering something completely different/wrongly?

By Günther [de]

Date 2012-01-25 20:21

http://bugs.openclonk.org/view.php?id=568

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-25 06:01

I started with some little tweaks to the player options dialogue. Mainly to get used to the GUI.
TODOs:
- Crew member names
- Clonk style picker
- Reactivate the color sliders? Why are they gone?

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-25 06:06

Oh and maybe one experienced dev might want to have a look at my changes (not very much) just to be sure I didn't do anything wrong.

By Günther [de]

Date 2012-01-25 20:20

Don't leave unused stuff around for somebody else to clean up. Old code belongs in the repository, not in comments, unused functions, variables, class members and resources should be removed.

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-26 03:54

Good point, I will do so. All the comments already there made me doubtful whether it is right to remove the code.

By Ringwaul [ca]

Date 2012-01-25 08:02

Gah, the number of times I changed the position of those ink lines on the player-options window.

Bear in mind if you're moving them in the source image they will likely be in the wrong position at a different resolution. :[

By Sven2

Date 2012-01-25 09:58

Why don't you just make them control styles and let them draw along with the controls?

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-25 14:14

What Sven said! And it'd be nice to have the source image of this dialogue. I couldn't find it in the res repos :(

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-26 04:15 Edited 2012-01-26 04:18

You have the player-options window source file lying around somewhere? I need it :I

By Ringwaul [ca]

Date 2012-01-26 04:44

I was going to push it, but before I could I am getting an error,
"no suitable response from remote hg"

I guess I'll try to get help on IRC tomorrow. But I'll attach the .xcf to this post for now.

I hereby license the following file(s) under the CC-by license

Attachment: StartupPlrPropBG.xcf (8180k)

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-26 05:06

Ah, many thanks :)

By Sven2

Date 2012-01-25 09:57

Crew names and death messages can already be edited in the player properties startup page. There is no nice dialog (like the one for the player); you have to right-click the crew member and select the option to change name or death message.

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-25 14:17

Yes, yes, I know und I will probably copy stuff from there. But I want to show the crew names when you open the game for the first time.

By Sven2

Date 2012-01-25 14:25

Didn't you just want to hide the complexity of Clonk names for first-time players?

Choosing a Clonk model at that point would definitely be cool. But I'd rather make it a player property, from which the first Clonk will derive its appearance.

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-25 14:46

I don't want to hide complexity. I want to show every new player what exactly is to choose.

> But I'd rather make it a player property

Yes, that was what I had in mind. ;)

By Maikel Date 2012-01-30 21:36

Clonk styles should ideally be picked per clonk, or?

By ST-DDT

Date 2012-01-30 22:02

Yes, but by default the player skin should be selected.

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-30 23:01

I don't want to make it overly complicated. Experienced players can go and edit their player file. Our scenarios work with 2 crew members anyway, so it isn't much of a choice. And after you got your first 4 crew members (which will hardly be seen as I said) all different skins, I gets boring anyway to select them?

By Caesar

Date 2012-01-31 10:59

Well, currently, the custom settings per Clonk are ignored...

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-31 14:20 Edited 2012-01-31 14:22

Yes. But it's on my todo. ~~You will have to change them anyway.~~

As I think about it since we have nil, you won't have to change anything.

By Clonkonaut [ie]

Date 2012-01-29 14:33

Update on the progess. I'd appreciate if someone would make something better for ClonkSkins.png!

By Clonk-Karl [de]

Date 2012-01-29 14:44

We could also load and display the meshes directly. This way we could play some animation there as well, such as the Clonk running (think CX color selection).