![[ca]](/mwf/flags/ca.png "Canada")
Hello, i am a completely new player to Clonk, but a fanatic now that i have tried out the game and had a fair understanding of the concept. The reason why i am posting this is because i had tried out OpenClonk and have read that the developers were trying to make OpenClonk completely new, so i was hoping on helping out make it as great as possible by giving out some suggestions and ideas that i think would help make OpenClonk one of the greatest games to be concieved (by developers). I will start off by telling everyone here how i had stumbled upon this game.
Only 3 days ago i had found out about clonk through a program i had downloaded, after some research i had done on Youtube, and Google. I had to try it out, i had gone in with extremely high expectations, and had came out with no regrets. I had played Clonk Rage, though the controls were a bit off and the settlement modes felt lacking, it was still a great game and one that i had now came to admire. I was lurking around the clonk website that very evening, after experimenting with clonk rage, and endeavor and i had found out about OpenClonk, naturally i had to try it out. After playing it, i had fallen in love with the controls and was now eager to try the settlement modes but sadly, there were none. I had gone back to the OpenClonk website and was looking around for information on why settlement was not there yet and when it was coming out.
Long story short, i enjoy playing this game incredibly, and want to add some feedback and things i would improve on.
List of things, Starting from minor to major things that i think if improved could greatly benefit the community and the gameplay.
• First thing i thought about was the main page for clonk. When you first get on www.clonk.de the main page you arrive on does not tell you where you are. First time i got on the site i was confused about what the site was dedicated to. What I'm getting at here is to make the home page completely dedicated to telling the viewer what Clonk is.
• Second thing i thought should be improved goes about the gameplay in OpenClonk. The Grappling hook from what i felt, was not as smooth as it should be, i had came to use the grappling hook with hopes that it could be used like a grappling hook from the "Worms" series. E.g: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE03M2bfKjc << watch how the worm uses the ninja rope, when it shoots the ninja rope from mid air, it doesn't do a sketchy sudden pull like in OpenClonk, it's like a smooth springing effect, looks very natural.
• Another gameplay feature of OpenClonk thats not that big of a deal, but is quite annoying to me is opening and closing chests. When i open a chest and take my stuff, a lot of the time i forget to close the chest and try to move and it does not let me, until i close it. I think that allowing the player to move while the chest is opened would fix this and when the player gets too far away from the chest the chest closes, this makes it so you dont have to keep clicking on the chest to open and close. Once again, NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL. It's a small aspect that annoyed me while playing tutorials.
• This is about the last thing i think about when reflecting back on settlement mode for clonk rage and endeavour, as well as the online mode. What i was thinking when reflecting on settlement mode is that it should be the primary focus of OpenClonk. In Clonk Rage i highly enjoyed settlement mode but i felt that it needed to have a natural goal, a goal that is obvious. For example, a goal that isn't stated by the computer, but stated by the player. If one reflects back in history, people always had a goal, a goal that was natural to them, and their goal was survival, they needed to eat, sleep and have shelter and because they needed this they had to get it by making structures, such as a windmill and a derrick. What i'm getting at is that the settlement mode should not be called settlement mode anymore, but it should be called civilization mode, Civilization in my eyes does not necessarily mean that one needs other people, or in this case, Clonks, but they need working structures/tools to make their food, and their shelter. How i imagined this mode is that every time you start a new civilization mode, you only get to pick the terrain, such as desert or underwater or even on the moon. But you start off like humanity had started off, As cavemen. So now imagine that your a caveman on the moon, and you common sense tells you that you need food, so you go out and you take a rock, and throw it at an animal, and devour it. Now you need shelter, so you find, or dig a nearby cave and this becomes your new home. Your new home will contain a blank canvas, you can do research in this home by drawing on the walls for examples, like blueprints. How you advance through every era depends on your research, as new problems arise, such as transporting your materials from one place to another, you would have to do research to build for example, a train. With this new settlement mode, instead of having settlement points and gold, you simply make a new currency, that can be used for everything, for example, you can sell a bone for 30 "Clonks" or whatever currency you would like to call it. The research is the only thing that this currency is used for, and for the rest, you make and harvest your self. Such as cutting down a tree, and then planting a seed so that in 3 days. You have your tree back for harvesting once again. Woops, didn't mention something. There has to be clear needs for the Clonks, things that limit them so that they need to research. For example. make clonks have night and day. Every 10 minutes they would need to sleep, and 10 minutes is 1 day. So you plant a seed and it takes 3 days for it to fully grow, then it would take 30 minutes of game time. This will let the players have hours of fun. Thats about all i can say about the "civilization mode" as i call it. Now! on to the online. I recently had taken a liking to "Minecraft" this game is so fun because people create their own servers and the restrictions they make make their gamemode diffirent. For example, making it so that you can only make bows and arrows and the only way to be able to get points is by killing other creatures and players makes this game a deathmatch mode, therefore creating their own gamemode, without choosing one. What I'm trying to get at here is that every gamemode will initially be Civilization mode, but the restrictions the hosters add will make the gamemode different, such as keeping the era in modern in civilization mode and having 2 teams and the only thing you can make is weapons and the only way to earn "Clonks" is by killing the other team, therefore getting more "Clonks" and being able to research and create a new weapon that makes it easier for a clonk to kill. I'm not really sure what happens when you start a settlement mode online and create a settlement without completing the goal and you exit and try to make the same gamemode again, but if it does not save the entire map, then thats another reason allowing people to have their own server that they can host for days on end would be a great idea. That idea i mostly took from "Minecraft" because that is the method provided to the player. And this method is needed if making a civilization in civilization mode would take a long time in real time.
Phew. That was a mouthful.
Anyways, please don't get angry while reading this, i loved this game so much and had found out that you had not created settlement mode yet so that's why i wanted to give this idea before everything is done.
And i want to apologize if some of the things that i said was a problem isn't actually a problem and that it's just because the game is still in alpha phase.
A little bit about my self:
My name is Solomon, A.K.A Sweatpants
I live in Canada
I am a mediocre photoshop designer.
I have played countless amount of games from every genre and had never played a game with this much potential in my entire gaming career.
I have no idea how to script
And i am 17 years old.
Thank you for reading this INCREDIBLY long post, and i hope you enjoy my feedback and ideas, if not, then oh well.
;)
By the way. I can help in anyway that you would like me to, if that help does not require coding or scripting of any kind. But requires Photoshop or on ways of reaching out to the English-Speaking community. I can even help out design a website, i have done the designing a few times but i have never coded the website successfully.
Only 3 days ago i had found out about clonk through a program i had downloaded, after some research i had done on Youtube, and Google. I had to try it out, i had gone in with extremely high expectations, and had came out with no regrets. I had played Clonk Rage, though the controls were a bit off and the settlement modes felt lacking, it was still a great game and one that i had now came to admire. I was lurking around the clonk website that very evening, after experimenting with clonk rage, and endeavor and i had found out about OpenClonk, naturally i had to try it out. After playing it, i had fallen in love with the controls and was now eager to try the settlement modes but sadly, there were none. I had gone back to the OpenClonk website and was looking around for information on why settlement was not there yet and when it was coming out.
Long story short, i enjoy playing this game incredibly, and want to add some feedback and things i would improve on.
List of things, Starting from minor to major things that i think if improved could greatly benefit the community and the gameplay.
• First thing i thought about was the main page for clonk. When you first get on www.clonk.de the main page you arrive on does not tell you where you are. First time i got on the site i was confused about what the site was dedicated to. What I'm getting at here is to make the home page completely dedicated to telling the viewer what Clonk is.
• Second thing i thought should be improved goes about the gameplay in OpenClonk. The Grappling hook from what i felt, was not as smooth as it should be, i had came to use the grappling hook with hopes that it could be used like a grappling hook from the "Worms" series. E.g: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE03M2bfKjc << watch how the worm uses the ninja rope, when it shoots the ninja rope from mid air, it doesn't do a sketchy sudden pull like in OpenClonk, it's like a smooth springing effect, looks very natural.
• Another gameplay feature of OpenClonk thats not that big of a deal, but is quite annoying to me is opening and closing chests. When i open a chest and take my stuff, a lot of the time i forget to close the chest and try to move and it does not let me, until i close it. I think that allowing the player to move while the chest is opened would fix this and when the player gets too far away from the chest the chest closes, this makes it so you dont have to keep clicking on the chest to open and close. Once again, NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL. It's a small aspect that annoyed me while playing tutorials.
• This is about the last thing i think about when reflecting back on settlement mode for clonk rage and endeavour, as well as the online mode. What i was thinking when reflecting on settlement mode is that it should be the primary focus of OpenClonk. In Clonk Rage i highly enjoyed settlement mode but i felt that it needed to have a natural goal, a goal that is obvious. For example, a goal that isn't stated by the computer, but stated by the player. If one reflects back in history, people always had a goal, a goal that was natural to them, and their goal was survival, they needed to eat, sleep and have shelter and because they needed this they had to get it by making structures, such as a windmill and a derrick. What i'm getting at is that the settlement mode should not be called settlement mode anymore, but it should be called civilization mode, Civilization in my eyes does not necessarily mean that one needs other people, or in this case, Clonks, but they need working structures/tools to make their food, and their shelter. How i imagined this mode is that every time you start a new civilization mode, you only get to pick the terrain, such as desert or underwater or even on the moon. But you start off like humanity had started off, As cavemen. So now imagine that your a caveman on the moon, and you common sense tells you that you need food, so you go out and you take a rock, and throw it at an animal, and devour it. Now you need shelter, so you find, or dig a nearby cave and this becomes your new home. Your new home will contain a blank canvas, you can do research in this home by drawing on the walls for examples, like blueprints. How you advance through every era depends on your research, as new problems arise, such as transporting your materials from one place to another, you would have to do research to build for example, a train. With this new settlement mode, instead of having settlement points and gold, you simply make a new currency, that can be used for everything, for example, you can sell a bone for 30 "Clonks" or whatever currency you would like to call it. The research is the only thing that this currency is used for, and for the rest, you make and harvest your self. Such as cutting down a tree, and then planting a seed so that in 3 days. You have your tree back for harvesting once again. Woops, didn't mention something. There has to be clear needs for the Clonks, things that limit them so that they need to research. For example. make clonks have night and day. Every 10 minutes they would need to sleep, and 10 minutes is 1 day. So you plant a seed and it takes 3 days for it to fully grow, then it would take 30 minutes of game time. This will let the players have hours of fun. Thats about all i can say about the "civilization mode" as i call it. Now! on to the online. I recently had taken a liking to "Minecraft" this game is so fun because people create their own servers and the restrictions they make make their gamemode diffirent. For example, making it so that you can only make bows and arrows and the only way to be able to get points is by killing other creatures and players makes this game a deathmatch mode, therefore creating their own gamemode, without choosing one. What I'm trying to get at here is that every gamemode will initially be Civilization mode, but the restrictions the hosters add will make the gamemode different, such as keeping the era in modern in civilization mode and having 2 teams and the only thing you can make is weapons and the only way to earn "Clonks" is by killing the other team, therefore getting more "Clonks" and being able to research and create a new weapon that makes it easier for a clonk to kill. I'm not really sure what happens when you start a settlement mode online and create a settlement without completing the goal and you exit and try to make the same gamemode again, but if it does not save the entire map, then thats another reason allowing people to have their own server that they can host for days on end would be a great idea. That idea i mostly took from "Minecraft" because that is the method provided to the player. And this method is needed if making a civilization in civilization mode would take a long time in real time.
Phew. That was a mouthful.
Anyways, please don't get angry while reading this, i loved this game so much and had found out that you had not created settlement mode yet so that's why i wanted to give this idea before everything is done.
And i want to apologize if some of the things that i said was a problem isn't actually a problem and that it's just because the game is still in alpha phase.
A little bit about my self:
My name is Solomon, A.K.A Sweatpants
I live in Canada
I am a mediocre photoshop designer.
I have played countless amount of games from every genre and had never played a game with this much potential in my entire gaming career.
I have no idea how to script
And i am 17 years old.
Thank you for reading this INCREDIBLY long post, and i hope you enjoy my feedback and ideas, if not, then oh well.
;)
By the way. I can help in anyway that you would like me to, if that help does not require coding or scripting of any kind. But requires Photoshop or on ways of reaching out to the English-Speaking community. I can even help out design a website, i have done the designing a few times but i have never coded the website successfully.
![[de]](/mwf/flags/de.png "Germany")
>Anyways, please don't get angry while reading this, i loved this game so much and had found out that you had not created settlement mode yet so that's why i wanted to give this idea before everything is done.
Noone will get angry when reading that - especially not if you took that much time to write a feedback and didn't just say "it's okay, but some stuff is not good" or something ;)
>First thing i thought about was the main page for clonk.
True. We have not much to do with the original clonk.de-site, though. But we tried to make it better on openclonk.org!
>but is quite annoying to me is opening and closing chests.
The whole chest<->backpack interface is a bit awkward at the moment (if you want to put a lot of stuff from the chest into your backpack for example). Allowing movement while having the menu open could really be a bit more intuitive I guess
While the idea of progressing from one era to another may interfere a bit with the current plans about settlement/civilization, it is true that you need some kind of minor goals (unlike in ClonkRage where you would just build the same building over and over again to reach that 5000 settlement points that you need for winning - without worrying about production lines and stuff because you can buy everything with gold) and I really hope (and think ;) ) we will be able to make the settlement mode more interesting (and more intuitive) than in CR
I think what kept Clonk alive all those years was mainly the ability to create your own objects and make your own scenarios (or gamemodes). There are endless mods for ClonkRage (going from shooter over Civilization stuff to SuperMario clones) - and with the new possibilities of the OpenClonk engine those mods can only become better :)
The main archive for those stuff is ccan.de btw (from ClonkPlanet to ClonkRage). But Arne was still too lazy to implement a decent distinction whether the mod has an English translation or not. (Most of the stuff is in German I am afraid)
>First thing i thought about was the main page for clonk.
True. We have not much to do with the original clonk.de-site, though. But we tried to make it better on openclonk.org!
Yes, openclonk.org has a much better presentation because it is very clear to the viewer what he is looking at, which is openclonk. But, the reason why i was commenting on clonk.de is because when you Google "clonk", that is the first page that pops up. Clonk.de isn't that bad of a website, simply making the "about" section the homepage rather than the news would make the page 10x better, especially for first time users, which is what the games staff should be targeting :)
While the idea of progressing from one era to another may interfere a bit with the current plans about settlement/civilization, it is true that you need some kind of minor goals (unlike in ClonkRage where you would just build the same building over and over again to reach that 5000 settlement points that you need for winning - without worrying about production lines and stuff because you can buy everything with gold) and I really hope (and think ;) ) we will be able to make the settlement mode more interesting (and more intuitive) than in CR
I'm glad that you guys will be making the settlement mode more interesting and intuitive, i am looking forward to seeing the final project. The only reason i had this idea about civilization is because it will give the player a lot to do, without getting bored along the way from doing the same things over and over again, just like you stated. And the other reason why i suggested it was because i have studied the psychology behind certain games (unprofessionally of course ;) ) and it appears as though the ones that become popular very fast are ones that give the player a large amount of personal freedom, because the player knows the goals naturally, this makes the game not frustrating and part of their daily routine. With all that said, that is what i believe, and i get my facts off the fact that i have played a lot of games and always question my self by asking myself "why is this game so enjoyable?" and that is the answer i had derived from doing this.
Anyways, thank you incredibly for replying, all i am asking with this suggestion is to think it through, just as i did. I extremely hope that the new settlement modes plans the team has prepared for us would completely trump my idea and make the experience of playing OpenClonk unforgettable.
Oh and thanks for showing me the site for all the mods, i went on it and sadly i could not read any of the german, therefore could not register :(
True. We have not much to do with the original clonk.de-site, though. But we tried to make it better on openclonk.org!
Yes, openclonk.org has a much better presentation because it is very clear to the viewer what he is looking at, which is openclonk. But, the reason why i was commenting on clonk.de is because when you Google "clonk", that is the first page that pops up. Clonk.de isn't that bad of a website, simply making the "about" section the homepage rather than the news would make the page 10x better, especially for first time users, which is what the games staff should be targeting :)
While the idea of progressing from one era to another may interfere a bit with the current plans about settlement/civilization, it is true that you need some kind of minor goals (unlike in ClonkRage where you would just build the same building over and over again to reach that 5000 settlement points that you need for winning - without worrying about production lines and stuff because you can buy everything with gold) and I really hope (and think ;) ) we will be able to make the settlement mode more interesting (and more intuitive) than in CR
I'm glad that you guys will be making the settlement mode more interesting and intuitive, i am looking forward to seeing the final project. The only reason i had this idea about civilization is because it will give the player a lot to do, without getting bored along the way from doing the same things over and over again, just like you stated. And the other reason why i suggested it was because i have studied the psychology behind certain games (unprofessionally of course ;) ) and it appears as though the ones that become popular very fast are ones that give the player a large amount of personal freedom, because the player knows the goals naturally, this makes the game not frustrating and part of their daily routine. With all that said, that is what i believe, and i get my facts off the fact that i have played a lot of games and always question my self by asking myself "why is this game so enjoyable?" and that is the answer i had derived from doing this.
Anyways, thank you incredibly for replying, all i am asking with this suggestion is to think it through, just as i did. I extremely hope that the new settlement modes plans the team has prepared for us would completely trump my idea and make the experience of playing OpenClonk unforgettable.
Oh and thanks for showing me the site for all the mods, i went on it and sadly i could not read any of the german, therefore could not register :(
I would be careful about putting it like that. You feel free in certain games not because you can do everything, but because you can do everything you want to do. Just take the dreaded invisible walls in 3D games: In some games you constantly run into them, breaking your immersion. In others, you don't even notice them unless you actively look for them. The difference isn't technical, but the player's expectations. Essentially, if all possible things the player wants to do in a given scenario all involve getting to an existing (and readily accessible) point in the map, he will never know that there was a restriction.
Now admittedly, open world games like Clonk involve getting a bit more on the speculative side with what the player wants to do. But this doesn't mean that just putting anything we can think of into the game is a good game design strategy. We will always have things the player can't do, and we don't want the player to run into it. And at that point we have to ask ourselves the question: What's more effective - making it possible or making it so clearly impossible that players stop asking for it?
Just think about Minecraft: Its main and most glaring non-freedom is hidden in plain sight - you can only manipulate blocks, nothing smaller. Just look at any screenshot, and you understand that intuitively. The freedom you get is mainly a side-product of this fundamental restriction. That's great game design.
Now admittedly, open world games like Clonk involve getting a bit more on the speculative side with what the player wants to do. But this doesn't mean that just putting anything we can think of into the game is a good game design strategy. We will always have things the player can't do, and we don't want the player to run into it. And at that point we have to ask ourselves the question: What's more effective - making it possible or making it so clearly impossible that players stop asking for it?
Just think about Minecraft: Its main and most glaring non-freedom is hidden in plain sight - you can only manipulate blocks, nothing smaller. Just look at any screenshot, and you understand that intuitively. The freedom you get is mainly a side-product of this fundamental restriction. That's great game design.
>I would be careful about putting it like that. You feel free in certain games not because you can do everything, but because you can do everything you want to do.
I completely 100% agree with you, but i never once said that a game needs to have everything for the person to feel free in it. I simply implied that making it have 1 gamemode that is basically a combination of all the gamemodes you would expect the game to have will give the game a natural goal and by simply restricting/adding things in a gamemode will make the possibilities of custom gamemodes nearly endless. adding mods will simply make the possibilities even greater.
To make that statement even clearer, all games have restrictions but making it so that "the player doesn't run into it", like you stated would be easier because his goal will be collecting clonks to advance into the next era of science and technology that the player will not complain that he cannot make a laser rifle with rockets on the sides because it will not help him get the maximum amount of score/gold or whatever per day so that he can go farther with his game.
only other way i can explain what i am trying to explain is by giving an example of a simple flash game: http://armorgames.com/play/7598/flight
If you play this game, you right off the bat know that there are an incredible amount of restrictions such as being able to spawn wheels and start driving on the floor once you hit it and drive all the way around the world (beating the game). But that doesn't matter to you, because the games restrictions are what make it so enjoyable.
If it still seems like I'm not getting the point of what your saying then it is probably my fault for cornering myself in a wall ;)
> Only 3 days ago i had found out about clonk through a program i had downloaded
What program by the way?
Tunngle i think it was. I was playing warcraft 3 with some friends over lan, and this is what i was told to download to do so. After they had left i was looking around, clicked mixed games and the first one up there is Clonk. So i searched it up ;)
Oh, and thank you to whoever the "moderator" is for telling me how to quote :P was confused on how to do so.
Oh, and thank you to whoever the "moderator" is for telling me how to quote :P was confused on how to do so.
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