As a staunch fan of single-player mode, hearing that I would be trading and interacting with other towns initially gave me pause. If you’re like me and don’t feel like dealing with anyone for a region or two, this is easily remedied by playing in a private region. Of course, it’s a little more difficult to do so. It becomes a careful balancing act, and you need to successfully manage multiple cities at once in order to keep them bustling and profitable. Ignore one, and the others will see their progress hampered or even stagnate.

I love that electricity and water have been simplified. I always felt it was a little too micromanaged for my tastes, and having those two resources anchored to the roads removes unnecessary complexity. Your focus is now on running a successful city and keeping your citizens happy, rather than placing the power lines and water pipes just so for maximum efficiency.

I’ve heard some grumbles about the new focus on Sims in your city, but I enjoy it. It gives the town more personality and if I’m waiting for my cash to increase to a certain point I like following them around. It also gives me a better feel as to how commuting in the city is faring. I had an inkling my town’s roadways were going to be congested long before the game warned me to place some bus stops. Following a few Sims around let me reach that conclusion and take action before the roads become too congested.

I do have a few minor gripes with the game. Perhaps I wasn’t paying attention during this part, but I had to ask around about how to mine ore and drill oil. It turns out those are tied to choosing a Specialization. I had thought that choosing one meant that I was stuck with only that and would lose it if I chose another. While I do like that SimCity teaches you the basics and lets you figure the rest out as you play–you can choose to learn all there is or you can choose to keep a passing knowledge of how to play and still be successful–specialization could and should have been explained a little better.

The game itself runs fine and I’ve had no problems there, but the tutorials seem to be a different story. The initial tutorial glitched on startup, with no HUD appearing and just a view of the city. Pretty, but not what I was expecting. It took restarting and two more tries for the tutorial to finally work. The in-game tutorials in my own cities also have given me a few problems. Whether it’s clicks not registering or the in-game tutorial HUD hanging, it not only takes me out of the game (literally and figuratively) but it also discourages learning more.

The Road Upgrade icon could be designed better as well. It’s an arrow with a flourish at its end and looks a bit like a Refresh or fancy Undo arrow. I didn’t click it for three nights, thinking it would undo my previous road placement. I was becoming frustrated with not knowing how to upgrade my roads–I had tried dragging High Density roads over Low Density ones to no avail–when I finally happened to hover over the Road Upgrade icon and I saw what it actually did, I felt both relieved and frustrated. It should be designed in a way that I can tell what it is at a glance, not a mouse hover.

Those frustrations are minimal when looking at the big picture and don’t have a large impact (if any) on the enjoyment I’m getting while playing this game. SimCity helped me love games again–a slightly odd icon and a glitch here or there isn’t going to mar my entire experience.

Haven’t played a SimCity yet? You should check this out. Whatever your opinions on the constant internet connectivity are, the game is solidly made and an absolute joy to play. I’m loving every minute of it.

I was bawling as I sat on my couch, watching various names scroll across the TV screen before me. I grabbed my phone to text someone, anyone. I needed someone to anchor me to reality. Because this? This was just so, so sad.

I have come close to crying in a movie theater, but I’ve never actually cried. The closest I’ve come is when I saw the climax of Toy Story 3. I don’t cry in movie theaters. I don’t like the moment when you exit and you see someone’s ruddy cheeks and nose and the stains of old missed tears stuck to their face. It feels like you’re intruding on a private moment. A moment shared with dozens of others.

Movies have made me feel many things. Games have made me feel fewer. I have grown attached to game characters, I have watched in disbelief and shock as something horrible befell them and their polygons were lost to me forever… At least, until my next new game playthrough. I felt twinges of sadness, but never anything more than that. Never have I felt even the urge to cry.

And yet there I was, sitting on my couch in my apartment and crying ferociously over the end of the Walking Dead. I’ll admit, when I first felt the urge to cry I was weirded out. I remember thinking, “Video games don’t make you cry.” No more than a minute later I decided to let go of my silly preconceived notions and just let loose.

Did the interactions and decisions I made change the course of the storyline? Not really, no. Did the interactions and decisions I made change the way other characters viewed me and interacted with me, in turn? Yes. I didn’t care that I was going along a linear path with some slight deviations. I cared about Lee, I cared about how Clementine perceived Lee, and I cared about gaining the trust of those around me. (Except for Larry. I really just did not like that guy, an opinion I know I share with many others.)

I tried my best to play the game as I would if these events were actually unfolding. This meant a lot of tough decisions made spur of the moment. This attempt at playing the game truthfully made me all the more connected to Lee and the narrative. I was wholly invested in it and the rewards were far greater than I could imagine. This updated adventure game deftly evoked complex feelings from a simple premise. That in itself is masterful. As I said earlier, I cared about mostly everyone. I wanted desperately for Kenny to support Lee in his most desperate moments and I would do anything to save Clementine. And yet wanting, which is enough in other games, was not enough here. There were times that Kenny was flat out wrong and I had to deny him or argue with him. There were times where I made decisions that may have saved Clementine physically but hurt her emotionally. And I cared.

It’s been brought up that Heavy Rain set out to do the same thing a few years back. Why was everyone singing the praises of The Walking Dead series when Heavy Rain created such a grand divide between those who loved it and those who wouldn’t be bothered with it? As I mentioned above, The Walking Dead did a fantastic job of creating, developing, and presenting nuanced characters that you legitimately and whole-heartedly cared about. I almost never care about the protagonist. Protagonists are faceless to me, for the most part and I honestly don’t remember the last one I did not consider to be an extension of myself. Although Lee made the decisions I would’ve in those albeit impossible situations, he was his own person. He was someone I cared immensely about. He was someone I wanted to save, especially for Clementine’s sake. When a zombie came too close for comfort it wasn’t my game I worried about ending but Lee’s life. He was his own character and not just a physical avatar of my controller inputs. I cared so much about the protagonist Lee. I cared so much about his ward Clementine. I cared so much about Kenny and Carly and Duck and Katjaa and Ben and Odim and Christa and tried with all my power to keep every single one of them safe.

And so at the end of the game as the credits rolled I sat on my couch, crying. Now, as I write this up a month or so later I recall the ending and I can feel the sadness welling up within. I’m not one to get so sentimental and emotional over fictional work. And yet here I am, feeling a lump in my throat form as I remember what happened.

Games like these are what change the way the public views our industry. Games like these change the way the industry looks at itself. I am so, so unbelievably excited to see what happens next, both with our industry and with Telltale Games.

Bra-freakin-vo.

• I got a job! (Yay!)
• I found an apartment! (Yay!)
• I’m planning on adopting a Greyhound rescue! (Yay!)
• I graduate in three weeks! (Aaah!)

I had also signed up for my first 5K–actually, that took place earlier this morning. I wasn’t able to do it because I’ve been sick for a week. To make myself feel better, I signed up for the ROC Race down in Del Mar on May 20th. I don’t have a lot of time to train for it, but, c’mon. I got this.

Don’t expect a lot of activity here until graduation and move-in is over.

I’ll be back to fill your brain with some nerdy information, I promise.

I write from time to time for a student-run USC blog called Celebrity SC. It’s focus is on cinema, tv, and video games. I recently wrote an article entitled, “Red Legos are for Boys, Pink Legos are for Girls.” You can catch it here: http://bit.ly/HBRiR1

[Retro Monday] resumes today! Keep an eye out for an article later. Looking to get your retro games fix? Check out the “retro” tag under the Categories section to the right. I’ve covered a few games, from Lunar Lander to Ninja Gaiden.

I was a conference assistant again, but found my time in the CA Lounge to be very limited compared to last year. While a bit of a bummer, the high quality of the talks I attended and the contacts I was able to make made up for it.

This year, I spent my first two days at GDC attending a variety of different summits and tutorials. The first day saw me sitting in on topics such as expansion into the European and Asian markets, and how to create a game a teenage daughter would like to play. Tuesday was the Level Design in a Day tutorial, and by far one of my favorites.

The Level Design in a Day tutorial was given by these well-spoken gentlemen:

• Ed Byrne, Creative Director,Imba Interactive
• Neil Alphonso, Lead Designer,Splash Damage
• Jim Brown, Lead Level Designer,Epic Games
• Joel Burgess, Senior Designer,Bethesda Game Studios
• Seth Marinello, Level Designer,Electronic Arts
• Matthias Worch, Lead Designer,LucasArts
• Coray Seifert, Director of Product Development, Slingo, Inc.

This tutorial was so important to me because I had decided just two weeks prior that I wanted to be a level designer. Granted, I have been designing levels and modding during my free time for five years now, but for whatever reason I didn’t think of pursuing it as a career.

Being a three-week-old “serious” level designer, I had developed a mantra that I wasn’t sure fit in with the level design world. Mantra: Design levels that were as well-thought out, engaging, and full of character as the world they are a part of.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw this slide on the screen:

It says, “What is a level designer? Storyteller!”

Granted, there was a slide after that which clarified that level designers were actually “player narrative experience architects” or something of the sort, but everyone agreed to keep it simple.

The Level Design in a Day tutorial was nothing short of amazing–I ate up every single slide I saw. The presentations were chock full of interesting tidbits and I took in a tremendous amount of information. I tweeted the talk until my phone threatened to die on me. You can probably still find some of my LDinaDay tweets if you check out my twitter page–I haven’t tweeted much since GDC.

I also sat in on Raph Koster’s talk on Good Design, Bad Design, Great Design. That was another fantastic talk. Tuesday was full of winners! Raph Koster’s talk was inspirational, informative, and engaging. I  would highly recommend checking out his slides–I can’t do a better job telling you what he spoke about than he did.

As for the CA program, I felt perfectly at home this year. Although I didn’t get to hang out with some of my old friends as much as I would’ve liked, I still had an absolute blast. The new CAs really got into the swing of things, and it was a joy being able to meet them and get to know them. Being a CA is one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had so far.

All in all, this was another astounding GDC experience. Expect more topic-specific articles in the coming days!

Links to check out:

Matthias Worch’s presentation on Player Stories and Designer Stories: http://www.worch.com/2012/03/11/player-stories-and-designer-stories-download/

Raph Koster’s presentation on Good Design, Bad Design, Great Design:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/03/09/gdc2012-slides-for-good-bad-great-design/

More links to be added as more presentations find their way onto the internet.

The Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco is upon us! I’ll be a Conference Assistant for my second year in a row, and I’m of course unbelievably excited to once again provide the best conference-going experience possible for attendees and attending a few enlightening talks of my own. I’m also super excited to see all of my friends from last year, and to make a lot of new ones this year!

If you’re attending GDC, let me know! I’d love to meet up.

I’ll try my best to keep FI updated throughout the week!

Want to know what I’ll be up to when I’m not CA-ing around or hanging out? Check out The Crevices page to get an idea!

If you missed a previous retro article, why not get started here? GDC is coming up, so why not read about my experiences as a CA here?

Happy Gaming!

I’ve decided to keep an online journal of the things I learn and the progress I make while working on my Skyrim mod, The Crevices.

What’s the point of The Crevices? The goal is to create a level that evokes feelings of claustrophobia, fear, and disorientation. It is also an experiment in creating an overly large, challenging maze while still maintaining some sense of accessibility. I want the player to feel as though they are truly discovering a place that hasn’t been tread often before.

What does this mod require? It requires level design, Papyrus scripting, dialogue creation, quest creation and management, actor creation and management, and narrative creation.

The narrative of The Crevices is as follows:

The hero encounters a worried husband, a huntsman. The huntsman informs the player that his wife has been out hunting for a few days longer than usual. He worries that she may have gone into The Crevices again–last time she did so, she found herself trapped and with dwindling supplies for a few days. The Crevices aren’t well-known outside of the hunter community, and are notorious for claiming lives of those that wish to explore. Few have dared to traverse through the caves, and fewer still make it out alive. As a result, The Crevices are neither charted nor fully explored.

The player enters The Crevices, well-hidden and tucked away, and begins to search for the missing huntswoman. The player finds tight, claustrophobic spaces and little light within. These close-cut spaces seem to go on forever. A false exit is found, forcing the player to start over again. The rock bridge beneath the player crumbles, thrusting them into a deep pit of water. A rock slide, barely missing the player, forces a change of direction.

These are The Crevices, and hopefully the player can make it out alive.

I knew from the start that I wanted to create a level filled with interconnecting pathways, dead ends, and false exits. I knew the feeling I wanted to evoke. To prepare, I sketched out a rough draft of the level.

Odin Sacrifices Himself Upon Yggdrasil

The inspiration for the layout of the level came from Yggdrasil, from Norse mythology. The winding nature of the branches depicted in the above illustration demonstrates exactly how I wish to see The Crevices laid out.

It's a pretty ambitious level

The rough draft will definitely change in order to ensure a enjoyable experience while playing. To start, I’ll be creating only the first third of what’s depicted above. That will be the complete quest. I plan on fully decorating each third section, perfecting the lighting, triggers, and scripting, then moving on as soon as each portion is tested thoroughly enough.

A rough draft of the characters and their dialogue have been completed. The quest progression has been sketched out.

Hopefully it all comes together! I’ll post another update as soon as something major happens. For now, I’m just working on crafting the first third of the level.

Adding Actors and Clutter to Level

Yes.

Apparently it uses a new scripting language called Papyrus. They claim that if you’ve had experience with modding Bethesda games in the past, it shouldn’t be too tough to understand how this one works. Bethesda, of course, provides a bevy of tutorials for understanding quest creation, level creation, and scripting. Those can be found here.

I highly recommend getting into the Skyrim modding scene. The community has been nothing short of helpful, giving, and passionate in the past. They’re an extremely friendly group, and I expect awesome sites such as UESP to have dozens of great tutorials within the next week.

The Creation Kit can be found in Steam. Click on View up in the top left, then click on Tools. The Creation Kit will be in the list.

I already am starting out on learning Papyrus, and once that’s mastered I hope to have a relatively fleshed out quest and corresponding dungeon done by Friday afternoon. Keep an eye out if you’re a Skyrim player!

Cheerio, and happy modding!

After a lovely one week vacation, [Retro Monday] is back. Two weeks ago we covered Lunar Lander. Today, we’ll be taking a look at Corridor 7: Alien Invasion, a game I watched my dad play since I was in preschool. Probably not the best idea due to the amount of alien gore in the game, and definitely a contributor to my extremely dramatic and irrational fear of the dark.

Without further ado, I present to you Corridor 7.

Corridor 7

Corridor 7 was developed by Capstone Software and published by IntraCorp Entertainment and Gametek. Released in March of 1994 for PC, it utilized a modified version of the Wolf 3D engine. It featured single-player and multiplayer modes. IntraCorp distributed the game on 3 1/2 inch floppy disks, and Gametek later distributed the game on CD-ROMs. Unless otherwise noted, screenshots are taken from the floppy disk version of the game.

Gameplay (CD-ROM)

The premise of the game is fairly simple and straightforward. I’ll let the manual explain the unnamed hero’s impetus in the game:

As a result a dimensional gate (the Vortex) is opened in the midst of Corridor 7, allowing an army of alien invaders to reach Earth. The aliens quickly overrun the military base and took its control killing everyone. While the creatures are busy modifying the surroundings to better suit their needs, but before they can effectively cut off Delta Base from the rest of the world, a lone Special Forces soldier is able to penetrate their perimeter: his objective will be to stop the invasion and destroy the artifact.

There you have it.

Menu Screen

Upon booting up the game, players would be taken to the above menu screen. By choosing New Mission, players were then tasked with choosing what difficulty they’d like to attempt Corridor 7 on. They are, from easiest to toughest:

• Corporal: the levels contain few aliens and only 10% kills are required to gain access of the elevator.
• Lieutenant: the aliens increase in number and 75% kills are required.
• Captain: this is the standard difficulty setting and requires that 100% of the aliens are killed.
• Major: like Captain, but with a higher number of enemies.
• President: like Major, but features a randomization factor which scatters around the level all the objects present. This setting is only available in the CD version, however through a specific dos command it can be played on the floppy version.

Starting Weapon

The controls were fairly straightforward. Players used their mouse to aim and shoot, and the space bar was used for activating objects. One thing I remember my dad doing was walking against the walls, constantly pressing the space bar to find hidden rooms. Once a trap wall was found, they would disappear and reveal the room to the player. Inside could be a secret path, more supplies, or enemies. There were several hidden throughout a level, and the trap walls looked the same as the ones that surrounded it. They could only be found through the space key and knowledge–or luck.

The Ammo Pack

There were ammo health packs, health packs, and visor fillers strewn across the levels. They were often multiple use, and the amount remaining would be displayed next to the pack. For example, the ammo packs (pictured above) would show how many uses were left via a column of bullets on the right. A chunk would delete upon use and find its way into your ammo bar. These were typically three-use deals. There were also health chambers placed in levels for the player to use, which restored a far greater chunk of health for the player.

Alien Invader Fights Back

I mentioned a visor in the paragraph above, so let me cover that–as well as the HUD elements–quickly. The visor was capable of displaying infrared and night vision, enabling the player to see force fields and other deadly items. Displayed on the HUD was the amount of life, armor, ammo, visor, and mines left. These could all be replenished. Items, such as key cards needed to access certain areas, could be found throughout the level, carried by monsters or lying in wait for an intrepid player. The alien face in the middle of the HUD, behind the visor gauge, would become invisible if no aliens were in the immediate vicinity of the player. The closer player and enemy tread, the more visible the alien would become.

Another Corridor (CD Version)

Corridor 7 is very true to its name–it features several corridors that can often look too similar to each other. Luckily, there was a handy map that players could use. They could utilize it in order to find the aforementioned secret rooms and, more importantly, their way around the level. The map also featured yellow dots representing enemies. The map would refresh about once a second, creating a short period of no visible information. This, plus the enemies’ ability to sneak up behind players and ambush them, led to several intense moments.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, there was a CD-ROM version and the original floppy disk version. The differences, in addition to the immediately visible President difficulty setting, were important. The CD-ROM version featured ten more levels than the floppy disk’s 30, putting its final count at 40. The CD-ROM version featured 8 multiplayer maps, and one mode: deathmatch.

This is my own conjecture, but I believe that the CD-ROM version and the floppy disk version sport different HUD elements. I could be entirely wrong and attributing the CD moniker to emulated ports, but I’m going to stick with my theory.

Master of Orion, Micropose 1993

Let’s take a brief look at the world that influenced Corridor 7. We’ll focus on games first. The year prior to Corridor 7‘s release saw a a number of games featuring sci-fi settings and narratives, as well as defending against the invasion of an alien race. The best examples are Master of Orion pictured above, and Syndicate (1993, Bullfrog Games). The sci-fi setting proved to be very popular and financially successful, which definitely encouraged Capstone to create one following the sci-fi trend.

Doom

Unfortunately for Capstone, id Software released Doom in 1993. Considered the game that revolutionized first-person shooters in a 3D space, Doom used an engine that was faster and more capable than the modified Wolfenstein engine Capstone was using. Thus, Corridor 7 was considered out-of-date by the time it saw release.

42nd President of the United States Bill Clinton

Global and national events likely had little bearing on the development of Corridor 7. Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States and soon had to contend with terrorists bombing the basement of the World Trade Center. On a better note, Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization signed a peace agreement on the White House lawns on September 13th, 1993. There were no major technological advances and no major space discoveries to suggest a major sci-fi influence.

While it could be said that Corridor 7 was the defense of the American ideal against those who would seek to destroy it, that connection is tepid at best. Corridor 7 was a game that wished to explore the sci-fi genre on its own, and it wished to tell the tale of a man who could not only survive but succeed in spite of the odds. It’s a classic hero tale in video games, and it’s certainly neither the first nor the last to explore that narrative.

Corridor 7

The future of Corridor 7 included a sequel, Corridor 8. However, in the middle of development Capstone and their parent company, IntraCorp, went under. In 2005, Les Bird, a programmer for the game, gave the source code to a fan who runs a large Corridor 7 fansite. That can be found here. Since then, there have been no rumblings of a remake or a remastered version. Things have gone silent for Corridor 7, but it definitely remains in several gamers’s hearts.

This article is dedicated to my dad, who really loves this game. I have fond memories of watching him play Corridor 7 for hours on weekends, and it was awesome. He beat the game on Major difficulty. At least, that’s what I like to tell everyone.

Sources:

MobyGames entry

KBW’s Corridor 7 Website

Giant Bomb’s entry

What Happened in 1993? (cross-checked with a variety of other resources)

All images link to their source site.