I confess I have been somewhat lax in my boardgame-fanboy duties as of late. We are inundated with all and sundry new releases each year (mostly clustered around the fall conventions) and generally get served more new games than we know what to do with. This inevitably means some worthy releases pass by without enough notice. Mystic Vale is the latest to cross-over from cardboard to the app store(s). The result is a surprisingly punchy lightweight, rapid-fire push-your-luck game, remixing relatively new trends in mechanics (deck-building & customization) with the tried-and-true (set collection, engine building). It is a good game and faithful app, but a little flat and perfunctory as well. Mystic Vale is generally a worthy super-filler, and the digital app gets the job done.
To cleanse the land of corruption, competing tribes of druids graft on ever-more-potent magical allies, animal spirits and the like to turn the tide. Every player starts with an identical deck of cards and takes turns drawing from the land’s energy to fuel more magical improvements. But the tainted land is strong as well and will leave greedy players empty-handed.
There’s a Mario Party minigame where the players take turns inflating a comically oversized balloon until it pops, exploding with (again, comedic) force and knocking out contestants one by one until there is only the winner left. The spirit, if not the mechanic, of push-your-luck, is crystallized into this image. Players can calculate the risks and independently decide how far they want to push their luck for a greater reward. Mystic Vale does this with its Spoiled Lands, drawing every turn until three corrupted symbols appear. The player can choose to draw more cards, one by one, increasing their rewards in the process, but also risk busting and ending their turn prematurely with nothing to show for it. Push-your-luck is so satisfying because it breaks a large risk down into delicious increments. It’s difficult to do well, aside from very pure, refined implementations (e.g. Can’t Stop).
To its credit, Mystic Vale make it one of the central decisions of each turn, and then tasks successful players with spending their mana & spirit symbols to further enhance their decks. Each deck cycles through 20 cards with a top, middle, and bottom region which can each be enhanced with purchases from a common pool of cards. The game’s iconography is crystal-clear, and its elements as stripped-down as can be.
In addition to the primary resource, mana, there are four elemental symbols as well as a ‘guardian’ subtype with tribal synergy. Most purchases simply enhance a deck’s mana and victory point yield during the harvest, but the bigger swings in ‘tech’ improvements come from the vale cards. These are also purchased after the harvest, but instead of using mana, players must have a match of the symbols of the vale. A few give straight-up victory points, but the more interesting offerings give unique effects (bonus mana, avoiding spoilage, wild symbol conversion) to dramatically accelerate the game’s pace.
The game feels aggressively midrange for such a naturalistic-shamanistic setting, for the whole affair is over in under twenty turns (Which passes in no time at all on the app). It ends just as things really start taking off for the players, kinda like with Splendor. It has achieved an amazing balance of brevity and strategy, for players must constantly assess which engine to build and how. Pretty much every card is viable and competitive, some with niches smaller than others. Mana and timing constraints mean that even winning decks often have jury-rigged, rag-tag elements mixed in with the rest.
The endgame comes so quickly because the pacing is up to the players. Instead of a set number of turns, the game is scaled around a victory point pool. Once it is completely divvied up amongst players, the game is over. More involved multi-card synergies will generate gonzo points in a single turn, but are they worth the lengthy set-up? Alternatively, is it worth scrimping a few victory points each turn if everyone else is planning for a deferred late game? It’s a simple but elegant change which turns game length into another strategic element to be decided by the dynamic equilibrium generated by the players.
The app makes the art look inorganic and forced, as if the graphical assets were used to recreate the tabletop visual as literally as possible. (They also appear to scale poorly). Functionality and legibility are top-notch. Music and layout are both serviceable, and the app has a touch of whimsy about its loading-screen text, but generally this implementation is a by-the-numbers affair. It is good but not to be oversold, like when the game boasts of its ‘card crafting system’. Lastly, Mystic Vale has both an in-game rule reference, a card compendium, as well as the obligatory introductory tutorial series, so props for thoroughness on that front.
Now for the bad news. Everything Mystic Vale does well recalls a stronger instance in another game. As an experience or an instruction in game design, it’s masterful. But there are other lightweight games I love more, and other quick-playing games with a little more control or strategy on tap. The game itself couldn’t be further than kitchen-sink, but in terms of gaming niches this is precisely the trap it falls into. Maybe this is the hobbyist curmudgeon in me, but it feels as if Mystic Vale’s strengths do not actually further its appeal.
Mystic Vale is refined and sharp, better than most of its kind, that of a mid-range, easy-to-learn, decently competitive multiplayer deck builder. Its individual components are better represented by other games, and honestly it isn’t really that strategic, but it is extremely well-made and fun. The app is a fairly priced way to experience it, with decent AI and timed multiplayer. Good, but not excellent.
Construct beta r153 has just been released. Construct is a “codeless” HTML5 based game engine that runs entirely in your browser. The major feature of this new update is the new ease curve editor which can be used for tweening timelines. Addition you can now use both local and global variables in scripts in events.
It’s time to embrace 5G, starting with the Edge in our homes and hands.
In June 1997, David Isenberg, then of
AT&T Labs Research, wrote a landmark
paper titled “Rise of the Stupid
Network”. You can still find it here. The
paper argued against phone companies’ intent to make their own systems
smarter. He said the internet, which already was subsuming all the world’s
phone and cable TV company networks, was succeeding not by being smart, but
by being stupid. By that, he meant the internet “was built for intelligence at
the end-user’s device, not in the network”.
In a stupid network, he wrote, “the data is boss, bits are essentially free,
and there is no assumption that the data is of a single data rate or data
type.” That approach worked because the internet’s base protocol, TCP/IP, was
as general-purpose as can be. It supported every possible use by not caring
about any particular use or purpose. That meant it didn’t care about data
rates or types, billing or other selfish concerns of the smaller specialized
networks it harnessed. Instead, the internet’s only concern was connecting end
points for any of those end points’ purposes, over any intermediary networks,
including all those specialized ones, without prejudice. That lack of
prejudice is what we later called neutrality.
When Craig Burtondescribes the Net’s stupid architecture as a hollow
sphere comprised entirely of ends, he’s painting a picture that gets at
what’s most remarkable about the Internet’s architecture: Take the value out
of the center and you enable an insane flowering of value among the connected
end points. Because, of course, when every end is connected, each to each and
each to all, the ends aren’t endpoints at all.
And what do we ends do? Anything that can be done by anyone who wants to
move bits around.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-11-2019, 01:49 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
E3 2019: Watch Dogs Legion's Breakout Star Is Helen, Assassin Granny
Ubisoft's E3 2019press conference had quite a few unexpected surprises, but none seems to have hit as hard as an octogenarian with a mean streak. Helen, one of the showcased playable characters from Watch Dogs Legion, has captured the hearts of the Internet.
That's no small feat, because the pitch behind Legion is that anyone is a playable character. Any of the residents of London you find wandering have their own stories and backgrounds and habits, and you can hack into their lives and learn more about them to recruit them. Many of them have specialized skills like brawling or robotics expertise. Helen, according to the trailer, is a former assassin, and the wrinkles have made her no less deadly.
The Internet quickly agreed: Helen's pretty great.
Is it bad that a major reason for me buying Watch Dogs: Legion is just to plays Grandma Helen? @watchdogsgame#E319
Watch Dogs 2: Okay I’m playing these DedSec characters as pacifists, no killing, just tazers Watch Dogs Legion: MY NAME IS HELEN AND I SHALL SLAUGHTER THE GOVERNMENT PIGS
Jotun Developer Announces Spiritfarer For Nintendo Switch, Due Out In 2020
During Microsoft’s 2019 E3 Xbox Conference today, Thunder Lotus announced Spiritfarer, a “cozy” management game about dying. The game is scheduled to arrive in 2020 on the Switch and multiple other platforms.
Here’s a bit about it, straight from the PR:
In Spiritfarer, you play Stella, ferrymaster to the deceased. Build a boat to explore the world, then befriend and care for spirits before finally releasing them into the afterlife. Farm, mine, fish, harvest, cook, and craft your way across mystical seas. Join the adventure as Daffodil the cat, in two-player cooperative play. Spend relaxing quality time with your spirit passengers, create lasting memories, and, ultimately, learn how to say goodbye to your cherished friends.
Thunder Lotus is previously responsible for Jotun and Sundered. The aim of Spiritfarer is to deliver an experience that is both entertaining and emotionally moving. The team’s also got the veteran creative director Nicolas Guérin on board. Check out the trailer below:
Is this a game you would like to try out on the Switch? Tell us down in the comments.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Is Coming To Nintendo Switch
During today’s Xbox E3 2019 Press Conference, Microsoft showed footage of a new LEGO Star Wars game. It’s called Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and is once again being handled by TT Games.
While it was confirmed for the Xbox One during the show, a new trailer uploaded on the official TT Games YouTube channel has now revealed it’ll be coming to the Switch as well. You can see this confirmation at the very end of the video.
The game will include content from the nine major Star Wars films and is scheduled to arrive at some point in 2020. We can only hope TT Games is able to fit all of this content on the card.
While we wait patiently for more information, take a look at the game’s official announcement trailer below:
Will you be picking this LEGO title up when it is released on the Switch? Tell us down in the comments.
Become one of the Steel Rats, a biker gang sworn to protect their city against an invading army of alien robots - Junkbots. Wreck and ride through hordes of enemies, switching between four unique characters as you wreak havoc with the ultimate killing machine; your flame spewing, saw bladed, motorcycle.
An open world mystery about a solar system trapped in an endless time loop. As the newest recruit in the Space Program of Outer Wilds Ventures, a fledgling space program searching for answers in a strange, constantly evolving solar system, you?ll have to discover what lurks in the heart of the ominous Dark Bramble and to see if the endless time loop can be stopped.
Don’t Miss: A look at the data-driven AI framework behind Destroy All Humans 2
Populating an entire game world with characters that give an impression of life is a challenging task, and it’s certainly no simpler in an open world, where gameplay is less restricted and players are free to roam and experience the world however they choose. The game engine has to be flexible enough to react and create interesting scenarios wherever the player goes. In particular, the demands on the AI are different from a linear game, requiring an approach that, while using established game AI techniques, emphasizes a different aspect of the architecture.
This article discusses the data-driven AI architecture constructed for Pandemic Studios’ open world title Destroy All Humans 2. It describes the framework that holds the data-defined behaviors that characters perform, and how those behaviors are created, pieced together, and customized.
The premise of an open world game with sandbox gameplay is to give players the freedom to do what they want, the freedom to create their own game within the world the developers provide. Their play is not linear, which is fantastic for a sense of immersion, but reduces the ability of the game developer to control, limit, and pre-script scenarios that the players encounter.
The AI code needs to be built on a foundation that is flexible enough to respond to any eventuality. It needs to handle a domain of gameplay that is broader in scope than a linear title and react to situations that might not have been anticipated. In effect, the AI needs to have a strong emphasis on breadth of behavior over depth. That is, the architecture must promote the ability to create large numbers of behaviors and make applying them to characters as easy as possible.
One solution to this challenge is to make the behaviors data-driven. They should be created without requiring changes to code, pieced together and reused as shared components, and substituted out for specialized versions. Ideally, the developer should be able to tweak not only the settings of a behavior, such as how long a timer lasts or how aggressive an enemy is, but also the very structure of the behavior itself. For example, what steps are needed to complete a given task or define how those steps are performed? By allowing our behaviors to fit into multiple situations, be reusable, and be quick to create and customize, we can more effectively create all the actions that the characters will need to give the game life.
The basis for the behavior system in Destroy All Humans 2 is a hierarchical finite state machine (HFSM), in which the current state of an actor is defined on multiple levels of abstraction. At each level in the hierarchy, the states will potentially use sub-level states to break their tasks into smaller problems (for example, attackenemies is at a high level of abstraction and uses the less-abstract fireweapon below it to perform part of its function). This HFSM structure is a common method used in game AI to frame a character’s behaviors. It has several immediate benefits over a flat FSM. (For current information about HFSMs, see Resources)
In our implementation, each state in the HFSM is called a behavior and makes up the basic architectural unit of the system. Everything that characters can do in the game is constructed by piecing together behaviors in different ways that are allowed by the HFSM. A behavior can start more behaviors beneath it that will run as children, each performing a smaller (and more concrete) part of the task of the parent. Breaking each task into smaller pieces allows us to reap a lot of mileage out of the behavior unit-reusing it in other behaviors, overriding it in special cases, dynamically changing the structure, and so forth-and spend more time making the system intuitive and easy to modify.
Starting children. There are many ways to break a task into smaller pieces, and the correct choice ultimately depends on the type of task. Does the task require maintaining certain requirements, performing consecutive steps, randomly performing an action from a list, or something else? In our implementation, we allow several methods of breaking down a behavior into smaller pieces by allowing different ways to start children behaviors.
Prioritized children. The first and most common way to start children is as a list of prioritized behaviors. Behaviors that are started as prioritized will all be constructed at once (memory is allocated for them and they are added as children of the parent) and set into a special pending mode. (See Figure 1.)
FIGURE 1 A combat behavior starts prioritized children, which in turn starts more prioritized children. Pending behaviors are orange and active ones are blue.
When a behavior is in pending mode, it is not updated; instead, it waits until the behavior itself decides it can activate, based on its own settings. When activated, the behavior will in turn start any children it has. Only active behaviors can have children, so a pending behavior will wait before starting its children.
As a rule, only one active behavior can run beneath a given parent, which creates a problem: what to do when multiple behaviors are able to run. We need to set a priority to determine which sub-task is more important. When starting children as prioritized, we define their priority implicitly based on the order the behaviors are added to the parent. The earlier a behavior is listed, the higher its priority (see Isla in Resources).
This solution avoids the problem that would have resulted had we determined priority strictly by number, such as priority-creep, in which priorities become larger and larger, trying to trump the rest. Here we localize the priority definition, so it’s only relative to the small subset of behaviors that are started as siblings.
In the example above, we see a hierarchy of behaviors and the children available under each, with fire active as a child of attack, which in turn is active as a child of combat. If the currently pending behavior (dodge) were to determine that it needs to start (when the NPC detects it is being fired upon), it will interrupt its active sibling (attack) and revert it to pending, which in turn will delete all children of attack. Once no other active sibling behaviors are running, dodge may begin.
This method of applying priority implicitly works well in most cases, but sometimes the importance of the tasks cannot be described with a simple linear ordering. To handle cases in which a behavior is doing something important and should not be interrupted by non-critical tasks (even if they’re higher priority), we can implement a feature called “can interrupt.” Essentially, an active behavior may receive a boost in priority, preventing interruption during specific parts of its execution.
With this boost, priorities can be specified in ways more complex than simple linear ordering. For example, while melee is listed at a higher priority than dodge in Figure 1, it should still be allowed to finish its animation even if dodge decides to start-by giving it a boost in priority while running, we prevent dodge from cutting it off mid-animation.
Sequential and random children. Other ways to start child behaviors are known as sequential and random. Behaviors that are started sequentially are run in the order that they are listed. If the first can run, it will do so until it completes on its own, followed by the second, and so on. When the last behavior in the sequence finishes, the parent finishes as well. For a group of child behaviors started randomly, only one will be chosen to run, and the parent will complete once its child finishes.
Non-blocking children. Behaviors can also be started as non-blocking, in which case they may activate even if there are already other active behaviors running beneath the parent. They exist outside the prioritized list. These behaviors are useful for performing tasks that work simultaneously with others, such as firing while moving, or playing a voice over on a specific condition, or activating and deactivating effects. Generally, anything performed by a non-blocking behavior must not interfere with any other sibling behaviors that might be running, since a non-blocking behavior will only be interrupted when its parent is deactivated (and never by a sibling behavior).
By using various combinations of these methods up and down the tree, we can form decisions and task handling over multiple levels that would be difficult to define in a single behavior.
Opinion: Observation’s AI is a brilliant narrative device
Spoilers ahead.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
–HAL 9000
There are so many ways to describe the brilliance of No Code’s Observation, but the strangest may be the most apposite: it turns everything inside out. Observation’s inversions are masterstrokes and they all center around the game’s heart and soul, your character SAM, the AI for the game’s titular international space station.
A strange “incident” befalls the station, damaging it and robbing it of power. One astronaut, the station’s doctor, Emma Fisher, is alive and trying to bring you back online to help her find out what’s happened. One horrifying fact becomes immediately apparent: you’re now in the orbit of Saturn. Observation turns Saturn’s hexagonal polar storm (yes, it really exists) into a beautiful motif that ties the game together. But the major chord is SAM.
First we must deal with the obvious. The game’s developers consciously took inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey, right down to a gas giant having totemic status in the story, an onboard AI defined by what its lidless eyes can see, and the use of an obsidian monolith to represent an unfathomable alien intelligence. But No Code repays its debt with interest, using Clarke’s classic ingredients to tell a new story that only a video game could tell in quite this way (more on that later).
One of the ways in which No Code does this is by blessedly upending all the usual cliches about AI becoming superintelligent serial killers. SAM is, in the end, one of the good guys. And yet the game manages to give us a magnificent set piece of a scene where you get to be the AI turning the station’s systems on a hapless astronaut in order to murder him.
The difference here is that the game frames this as morally justified and a horrible necessity of an ugly situation. There’s an almost insouciant boldness in this, taking this cliche and inverting its ethics, but it pays off. It’s emotional, satisfying, and necessary. And it was quite a feeling to actually be the AI doing this.
That is, after all, the game’s key selling point: in other games, you’d play Emma. In this adventure game you instead play the AI as the nosey problem solver. But the joy of this game goes deeper than just being able to be HAL 9000, fun as it is. Not only is it spectacularly realized with a beautiful UI, but this gimmick’s centrality was fully utilised by the developers to do something amazing with the story. Something I think deserves a Nebula Award at the very least.
Some reviewers suggested that the game didn’t deliver on exploring AI consciousness, much less deep questions about “what it means to be human.” But I’d argue that Observation did a far better job with representing an AI’s dawning sapience than any of us could’ve predicted. How? With the very thing that makes Observation special: the fact that you are playing the AI.
Throughout the game I found myself thinking that a real AI or virtual assistant would perform all these tasks near instantaneously. My futzing around would be agonizingly slow to my user, sluggish to the point of uselessness. Even quick tasks like looking up crew life support information took several painful seconds to execute. A true AI would be able to reply straight away. And yet, I realized, this is the point.
SAM has already been changed by the entity on the station. It is precisely at that point, “the incident,” that the player takes control of SAM. Our very human frailties and strengths come to infuse his every action: curiosity, indecision, deliberation. Thus, everything you do in Observation expresses this core fact about the character. What would be painfully unrealistic in any other portrayal of a virtual assistant becomes marvellous characterization in Observation.
The game doesn’t dwell on the implications or meaning of SAM’s dawning sapience–though the hints that are there are breathtaking examples of a little going a long way–because you are his dawning sapience, with all its clumsiness.
This also explains something that almost became a complaint about the game: its relative lack of characterization.
In Fullbright’s magnificent Tacoma the characters are so real you come away deeply invested in their lives, all but praying that they’re still alive as you reach the game’s climax. Here, I felt next to nothing for every death I witnessed, except inasmuch as it had an effect on Emma.
But consider the importance of perspective-taking in Observation. You are, rigorously and completely, this AI. Your memory was severely damaged by the incident, so SAM, like the player, comes in knowing very little. Dr. Emma Fisher is his primary point of contact for the entire journey. As SAM’s consciousness develops, you cathect with her. You come to feel for her; she is literally your first experience of empathy, a feeling SAM is clearly struggling with. It certainly doesn’t help that the entity is all but commanding SAM to “bring her.”
The effect of this is that your view of the rest of the crew can only ever be peripheral at best. It makes sense that you’d only mourn their loss second-hand, through Emma, who is your first point-of-reference for human fellow-feeling. It makes sense that your nosey poking around the crew’s effects and audiologs are bent towards finding out what happened on the station, because it’s what Emma needs to survive. SAM’s most poignant flashes of consciousness are always related to Emma; he tries to reassure her, he asks if she’s okay.
What could be a limitation, then, is a stunning narrative strength; a triumphal conversion of absence into presence. That effect could still be achieved with meatier characterization of the crew, however, so it doesn’t completely excuse the lack of it. Plenty of other games prove how much can be done with precious little, and the few logs and documents you observe here simply don’t do enough. At least it fits the world in an enriching way.
Where Observation really falls down is the last few seconds of its ending, but that’s a story for another day.
As I’ve said many times before, I’m not one of those critics who scorns games that “should’ve been a movie” or somesuch. If you want to make a game, make a game. Learn, practice, and spread some joy along the way. Those games have just as much right to exist as anything else, regardless of how we critics endlessly carp about the true meaning of “interactivity” or what-have-you.
But Observation is one of those titles that really could only be a game. Expressing SAM’s halting and awkward awakening by using a human player is an effect, an experience, you simply couldn’t replicate in another medium. It perfectly demonstrates the specific form of interactivity that prevails in video games as a medium. While all art is interactive, not all art can do this specific thing, hit these specific notes of experience and expression. Like some forms of modern art that reach their highest expression through the viewer/participant, this is a game that really, truly needs a player.
In the end, I felt like I knew SAM because I had to be him. That manifested in dozens of small ways, from feeling apologetic about not being able to complete a task for Emma to the limited angle of vision I had on all the other characters.
Its narrative, though atypical, is a masterclass in storytelling, as powerful as it is innovative. Observation easily stands among the impressive ranks of games involving the exploration of empty space stations with enigmatic AI, Event[0] and Tacoma among them. Observation gets on you and in you like the beguiling entity that looms over the story–and I don’t think I’ll ever wash it off. Nor do I want to.
Katherine Cross is a Ph.D student in sociology who researches anti-social behavior online, and a gaming critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications.
