Most impactful limitation to game programming?

[+cmadruga]

On 1/3/2020 at 5:22 PM, nanochess said:

I think the greatest limitation is the limit of 64 definable cards, and the other is having only 8 sprites.

I know it gets a little subjective, but dynamically redefining cards helps at least alleviate the 64 card limit, no?

My experience has been that the 8 sprite limit is much more crippling. It’s almost like a game design has to revolve around it.
From the start, one has to think about how many sprites to allocate to the protagonist... given player’s eyes will be on those sprites all the time, that decision certainly impacts perception of visual quality of the entire game... But then again, if you use too many sprites on the protagonist, it will look awesome but everything else will look like crap... etc... Am I missing something?

[+cmadruga]

5 hours ago, mr_me said:

More so than a chess algorithn?

Boardgamegeek shows a complexity rating for chess of 3.72 out of 5. There are many modern games way above that. Note I’m not snubbing chess, it’s a... good game. ?

[+nanochess]

26 minutes ago, cmadruga said:

I know it gets a little subjective, but dynamically redefining cards helps at least alleviate the 64 card limit, no?

My experience has been that the 8 sprite limit is much more crippling. It’s almost like a game design has to revolve around it.
From the start, one has to think about how many sprites to allocate to the protagonist... given player’s eyes will be on those sprites all the time, that decision certainly impacts perception of visual quality of the entire game... But then again, if you use too many sprites on the protagonist, it will look awesome but everything else will look like crap... etc... Am I missing something?

The 64 cards limit has prevented me of writing my great graphic adventure or having full graphic screens without simplifying too much.

 

[+cmadruga]

3 minutes ago, nanochess said:

The 64 cards limit has prevented me of writing my great graphic adventure or having full graphic screens without simplifying too much.

 

Ah, yes, I can see your point now. I made assumptions about the type of game you were thinking.

[+cmadruga]

On 1/3/2020 at 9:48 AM, Arnauld said:

As a game designer, I'd probably say the number of sprites. But it really depends on the game type.

Like Arnauld said from the beginning!

Edited January 6, 2020 by cmadruga

[mr_me]

26 minutes ago, cmadruga said:

Boardgamegeek shows a complexity rating for chess of 3.72 out of 5. There are many modern games way above that. Note I’m not snubbing chess, it’s a... good game. ?

Chess is not a complicated game.  I was playing it in kindergarten.  Beating a grandmaster is complicated.

[+cmadruga]

2 minutes ago, mr_me said:

Chess is not a complicated game.  I was playing it in kindergarten.  Beating a grandmaster is complicated.

Indeed. But going back to your original question to Artrag (“More so than a chess algorithm?”), I think yes, it seems reasonable to expect that some modern games may require way more resources to implement good AI than chess. As a function of complexity.

[carlsson]

17 hours ago, cmadruga said:

Boardgamegeek shows a complexity rating for chess of 3.72 out of 5.

It should be added that is a user generated rating from a little over 2100 votes. It made me curious which are considered the truly most complex board games. While BGG doesn't have a such search function, some user generated lists gave me a few clues.

 

Air War: Modern Tactical Air Combat (1977) has a complexity rating of 4.66. Somehow it almost sounds like an Intellivision title.

The Campaign for North Africa (1979) also clocks in at 4.66 and perhaps is best known for Sheldon playing it in Big Bang Theory.

Advanced Squad Leader (1985) is rated at 4.72. Microprose published "Avalon Hill's Squad Leader" for Windows in 2000 but I don't know if they're related.

Europa Universalis (1993) has a complexity of 4.89. A couple of computer game versions exist, though not exact replicas of the board game.

La Grande Guerre 14-18 (1999) is all the way up to 4.91 for the 23 people who survived it long enough to rate its complexity.

 

Regular Go on the other hand has a complexity of 4.00 so a little more than Chess but far lower than these modern games.

 

Remember that complexity is a combination of complicated rules, many possible moves and strategies how to plan ahead, a lot of admin and tile flipping of which some of those components will take some code to implement in a video game but not necessarily a lot of CPU time or memory resources.

 

When we discuss big, complex board games, the screen resolution of 20x12 + MOBs should be considered. Yes, you can scroll the map as shown elsewhere but the overview easily gets lost if you are zoomed in on a part of the map most of the time.

 

On 1/6/2020 at 4:19 AM, cmadruga said:

That reminds me that a while ago someone made a game inspired by Incan Gold / Diamant for Intellivision, I think it was for one of the competitions.

Yes, that would be Dwarven Mine by boardgamebrewer.

[eddhell]

Don't forget about updates, expansions, rule changes, etc....that Squad Leader game....sheeesh......used 3-ring binders so you could add new content...takes like two days just to inventory all the playing pieces...lol

What version of AD&D are they on now?  I quit when they took the demons and devils out, back before the big revamp (2.0 i think it was called)....

 

Chess is....well....chess!  Over a 1000 years old and has same basic rules for at least a couple centuries....(which makes it a classic)

 

BTW, any of you ever play Knightmare Chess?  back to cmadruga's question - I would like to see someone add those rules to a computer chess game, but there again it adds complexity to AI and game in general....probably way too much for older cartridge based consoles....

[mr_me]

2 hours ago, carlsson said:

Regular Go on the other hand has a complexity of 4.00 so a little more than Chess but far lower than these modern games.

 

Remember that complexity is a combination of complicated rules, many possible moves and strategies how to plan ahead, a lot of admin and tile flipping of which some of those components will take some code to implement in a video game but not necessarily a lot of CPU time or memory resources.

Go is a good example, simple rules, simpler than chess.  They use to say a decent AI couldn't be done; mainly due to the size of the board I think.

 

And Intellivision has a slow cpu.  A decent game of intellivision chess can take days.

Edited January 7, 2020 by mr_me

[+cmadruga]

Thanks for the analysis, Carlssen. From your list, ASL is pretty notorious, as eddhell also confirmed.

Also the rating on Go vs Chess makes sense. I think it's about degrees of freedom.

 

I have never done this, but if you dump BGG's entire database and plot a game's overall rating against complexity (excluding games with not enough user votes), I would expect something like an "S" curve to come up.

Too much complexity takes away from the experience. (My personal limit seems to be around 4.3-ish.)

Too little complexity makes for a cheap, simplistic experience that is not appealing either.

 

Eddhell, what I suggest when considering board game implementation candidates is to consider the following:

- what games in the middle of that "S" curve have solo rules (in lieu of AI) and can fit the Intellivision's limitations.

 

 

[First Spear]

I think graphically that having only 20x12 tiles is #1, rules about how the 64 GRAM spaces can be used is #2, single color for a MOB is #3, palette rules (FGBG vs Color Stack) are #4.

 

I don't see the RAM limitation for variables or overall ROM storage as blockers, as the LTO design makes those issues "go away". With an Ultima-inspired game still in the works, graphics matter but storage matters more. Still, it would've been cool if the Intellivision had some other graphics mode that sacrificed colors for better resolution, like many systems from that era had a monochrome "high resolution mode" (eg Apple II) but lower-res more colorful one. 

Or if the designers had just added that extra AY-8912 for additional tones+noise channel on board to the base system no extra cost... That would have opened up a ton more of usage of the system.

[eddhell]

On 1/4/2020 at 9:14 AM, cmadruga said:

What types of games are you thinking?

just thought of a few less complex games that I would like to see ported to Inty...

 

anyone remember "The Cosmic Tunnels" on c-64?  great, simple addictive gameplay, seems possible on older hardware

 

"Space Taxi" - another favorite classic, and I wish someone could program Intellivoice to keep the "Taxi!" speech intact (but i think that's impossible, wasn't the Intellivoice pre-programmed with certain phrases?  but platform numbers could probably be done)

 

and any kind of "Mail Order Monsters" simulation would be nice.....this was the grandfather of all "Monster Rancher" virtual pet raising/fighting games...as well as something like "Crush, Crumble, and Chomp" - a "Rampage" type destruction game but with turn-based play instead of real time... 

 

 

[carlsson]

Some people with the right know-how and tools can load custom samples onto the Intellivoice, but it seems to be a highly patented technique so it is guarded as one of the biggest trade secrets in the Intellivision world.

[mr_me]

So who exactly has that secret intellivoice know-how?

 

What some have done is play digitised audio using the regular intellivision sound chip and cpu; similar to space taxi on the c64.  That would pretty much takes up all cpu resources.  Standard GI allophones are also available for intellivoice but it makes speech sound robotic.

Edited January 21, 2020 by mr_me

[Intymike]

All the Elektronite games with voice (Hover Bovver, AF) have newly recorded voice samples.

 

[artrag]

Actually you don't need intellivoice to have voice during gameplay. Deep Zone has speech samples played on the AY8910. Quality is low but the technology is there 

[carlsson]

Yes, that was what mr_me referred to as a technique that possibly hogs all of the CPU for as long as the sample is playing. While I understand that the IntelliVoice is a quite common expansion on the Intellivision so it could be nice to support it, generally I think speech synthesis is more of a gimmick than an important addition to gameplay. Sure, it could be so that without the speech, a game like Space Taxi quickly would have been forgotten. A game like Impossible Mission however lasts just as long without the added speech.