Demos need respect.

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Deltamatic
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Demos need respect.

Post by Deltamatic »

I've been thinking some thoughts on the purpose of demos, specifically in Keen mods (as opposed to in general). You can do a lot of stuff with them, but from what I've seen of the few Galaxy mods out there *cough*tuit*cough* demos are existent but underutilized. So for people in the future who'll be working on this sort of stuff, here's my ideas tossed out into the open.

Demos should show off your sweet levels.
If you've worked long and hard making a level as fun as possible, you don't want to hop around in one area not doing much. Run all over the place, highlighting the puzzles and fights and tricky jumps. A player should think a level is fun just from watching it on the demo.
Demos should show off your creative patches.
Assuming what you're making isn't a levelpack, there's probably going to be different enemy behavior than in the original games. Capitalize on it. Flaunt how unique your enemies are, and the player will have a better chance of looking forward to them than if he just saw it and thought "oh, an arachnut" without a chance to see it vanishing like a treasure eater or whatnot.
Demos should show off your artsy tiles.
Have areas with detailed backgrounds, eye-popping tile animations or interesting decorations? Be sure to run by those in at least one demo. Decorative tiles are the spice of Keening, and you don't want to drop them from what may very well be your player's first impressions.
Demos should show off your varied music.
Avoid having two--or, heaven forbid, even more--demos with the same soundtrack. That would be repetetive and, especially if these same-sound demos are consecutive, jarring. Since you have some great music for your mod, you'll want your player to hear as much as you can cram into those demos.
Demos should look awesome while doing it.
Flawless jumps. Perfectly collected points. Elegantly trounced enemies. Death-defying hazard avoidance action. You can record over your demos as much as you want, so if you mess up you can try again. Nothing says "playing my mod will be rocking" than "look at this demo of my mod being played in a rocking manner".

Your mod deserves this kind of quality. Don't waste your demos.
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Post by Ceilick »

I kind of agree with most points, and especially agree with the last point about controlling keen in a cool manner, but disagree with what I think is your main point.

When making a demo, I know personally that I don't want to show the player how to solve the puzzles I've put in unless they are skill oriented and not 'mind' oriented. I don't want to show the player where to find the keys and switches, how to approach a maze, and I generally don't like showing the 'type of jump' to use in a certain situation. I do want to show off the gameplay, I don't want to show the player how to play the level.

Something I've done in the passed, which I'm rethinking, is that I've shown levels that generally aren't very important in the long run. If a level isn't required, I'm likely to use it as a demo because it shows off the graphics and environment and doesn't spoil the 'game experience' of trying to beat the required levels. I think, though, that this can be accomplished in the required levels as long as those levels are challenging enough to be tough even after seeing part of it played in a demo.

My main issue with showing off in demos is ruining surprises. In Dead in the Desert, almost no one expected the underground and factory environment. Part of this, I think, is because of the demos were all set in the desert. As a mod maker, I want both to surprise the player and to give them a balanced struggle that they have to figure out how to overcome. These are not easy tasks and therefore I'm reluctant to give the player freebie' through demos.

I think you bring up a valid point, though, that when a player sees some things beforehand it can possibly create more excitement for them when they actually encounter the situation when playing for themselves.

Balance in what is shown and what isn't in a demo seems crucial; demos should show off without showing everything and should show the player how cool things are without showing them how to beat part of the level.
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Post by tulip »

So if I get it right, Delta, Levellass' two demos of Zoltan would qualify as perfect. The two demos are completely different, each one showing you a new aspect of monster behavour, graphics and level design.
But I have to agree partly with Ceilicks elaborated comment. There's only one situation in which you should show your puzzles, and that is when you're unsure about their design. This could be either if you want to know if they're too easy/hard, or whether your style levels is enjoyed at all.

I'm generally not that big a fan of demos, and I prefer to release finished projects only (well some bugfixes might occur later but that's it) . Also a lot of those demo releases ended up being the final releases. Even one of the best demos (which also qualifies for most of your points), Mort1 had to be finished by someone else (Levellass again) half a decade later.
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Post by NY00123 »

Looks like the word "demo" has two possible meanings in this concept so something is a bit unclear.
Are you talking about the recorded demo playbacks you can see in game, or a demo release of a MOD consisting of a little portion of it?
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Post by tulip »

Hmm, now that you mention it NY00123, I think Delta is referring to the recorded demos, so I got him wrong completely.
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Post by Genius314 »

I usually don't watch the demos until after I've beaten the game.
But I agree with Ceilick, the demo should give away some cool features without spoiling any surprises. Basically it should leave the player wanting to see more of the game, rather than becoming a "Lets Play" video.
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Post by Levellass »

Demos should show off your sweet levels.
Hmmmn... nope.
Demos should show off your creative patches.
Yep. Hooray!
Demos should show off your artsy tiles.
What artsy tiles?
Demos should show off your varied music.
Ooooh no.
Demos should look awesome while doing it.
Um, mine are the practical kind.
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hmm...

Post by GoldenRishi »

I don't know. I think these are what I would consider to be the most important things:


1.) Especially for the first demo, it ought to show people the style of your game. Every game has a style, which is usually related to the developer's artistic tastes, that sort of is the life and soul of every game. A game like Rayman, for example, the style is a combination of dark and cartoony. The characters are made to be a little bit absurd, but it adds to a level of humor to the game. In combination with music and the storyline, it creates what people remember when they play the game (Much like the ambiance of Zelda, Mario, et cetera)

So when you make a demo, it should always have music, animations, and at least the beginnings of a storyline. These are the things that will differentiate games like Rule of a Yorp's Dinner Table from some random Keen fan game some kid slopped together in a few hours. I still am angry that Ilsoap discontinued RYDT! And that's what you should instill in your players when they first play your demo(s).


2.) Obviously, you should hope to be showing off not merely the artistic creativity of your game, but also your game play. What also differentiates good games from bad ones is game play. So while you may not have your physics engine working as nicely as you'd like, you should never release a demo that's half-cocked. Always have you engine working, if not flawlessly which most demos probably don't have, at least so that the game play isn't just irritating and starts to actually weigh against the game.

Also, there's usually something unique about the best Keen fan games. For example, in RYDT, you get to play as a Yorp and you have unique moves; also, the game had a slightly RPGish character about it. Same thing with Keen 3000; in Keen 3000, all that was ever made was a quick 3 item RPG, but one could tell from the get-go that the game had a lot of potential if AR would have stuck around and finished it. In Issis II, Keen had health, different weapons, and could swim under water. In Dopefish Lives!, you got to play as a swimming dopefish, which was nifty to say the least. In RKP3, you get to pick up pikmen-like shrubbery and you can have them attack people, which is one of the things I've always remembered about that game. These are examples of games that differentiated themselves because of their unique game play.



3.) I agree with this one: level designs. If you have a three level demo, for example, you should at least have one level (preferably the first) that really shows off what you expect your finished levels to look like. Level design also has a bit of a spirit to its own; games can have mediocre graphics, storyline, and game play, but if they have really good level design, they can still end up being pretty good games.





Basically, you're looking to really show off one or more of these and differentiate your games from other games, in my opinion anyways. It's not always about just having flashy tiles and crazy enemies. I think there's a certain cohesiveness to a game and particular "little things" that cause people to remember it.
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

I think every demo in the world should be like the first demo vid in The Wizard of Oz for SNES :p
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