Maidens of the Kaleidoscope
~Beyond the Border~ => Akyu's Arcade => Topic started by: Paul Debrion on January 30, 2010, 04:35:13 PM
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When you go for a walk outside for whatever reason (at least I hope you do), you don't mind that it takes so many steps just to cross the road. You don't mind that it takes 20 minutes to walk across the campus to get to your next class (if you're a college student that is). You don't mind that it may take you five minutes or more just to walk to your car on your way home from work (if you have a job that you drive to). We percieve these trips to be "short".
Overly specific example that might not apply to you aside, what I'm getting at is how our sense of scale affects our tolerance of distance we travel and the time we take to do so.
In real life we tend to tolerate such distances and time to cover them. A given distance seems longer when it is inside your house than it is when it is out on your driveway. We often take this for granted and never give it a second thought.
However, put the same distance into a video game, and things start to fall apart.
The problem in a video game is that you're perception of time and distance is not as effected by scale as in real life. What would be considered a short trip in real life seems like a painfully long distance when put into a video game. On the flip side, a room in your house that seems big enough in real life will often seem too small if put into a video game.
In many games the developers will compensate in many different ways, like making indoor areas bigger, putting buildings closer together, or making the player faster or slower than a normal person. Sometimes this leads to rather hilarious results, such as how certain areas in World of Warcraft make you look like midgets in a land made for giants, or in Half-Life 1 where when you stop and think about it your default running speed often crazy fast in some of the more enclosed areas.
This starts to become obvious when you play a game for the first time that does not try to adjust these distances to make them more comfortable. For example, when many people play a tactical shooter like Rainbow Six 3 or Arma, they often feel that outdoors feel to big and indoor areas feel too small. It's easy to get used to distances being scaled for comfort that it can feel awkward when distances are scaled like real life. (reality is unrealistic!)
Have you had any unusual/funny/interesting experiences with exaggerations of scale and speed in a video game?
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I have one game for you, Paul.
Desert Bus
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In Pokemon, you can traverse an entire continent/country in, like, five minutes.
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In Pokemon, you can traverse an entire continent/country in, like, five minutes.
4 Seconds if you use Fly
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4 Seconds if you use Fly
Wich is amazeing considering that alot of the pokemon that can use fly are bearly big enough to carry a human.
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Wich is amazeing considering that alot of the pokemon that can use fly are bearly big enough to carry a human.
And even one without any logical means of flight at all. Smeargle.
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And even one without any logical means of flight at all. Smeargle.
Actualy, Smergal might have a way of preforming just about any attack. It Could Fly buy spining its tail really fast like a propeler.
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I was actually wondering the same thing. My conclusion was that, when we take long trips of not doing anything, we think about other things other than the task at hand. When we play video games, we are focused on the video game at all times.
While washing dishes in real life, you think about other things like what you're going to do tonight.
While washing dishes in a video game, you are only focused on the dishes and them being washed.
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In GTA, walking from one end of the city to the other feels like I'm actually walking a long distance. NO WAY. >:(
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Barely fits, but
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8mg8ahPHSs#t=1m20s
:V
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When I tried doing a Meido game, I made the Map specifically to scale to my very own house. I measured from one side to the other in terms of meters, and used that in a grid based space.
Now, I'm perfectly content with the house as it is - it's roomy enough, and it's very comfy. The only real complaint I have is sometime's My Mom's work area takes up too much space in the kitchen, but even that isn't much of a problem.
In the Meido game, even without stuff like counters, workbenches, and other household clutter in the way, only two of the rooms were big enough to hold everyone together at once. Out of a pathetic looking six rooms in the entire house, not including the basement. I have never been more or equally ashamed of the size of my house before or since looking at that map I made.
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Dragon Age. 30 hours of gameplay in, and suddenly I get told a year has passed in game time.
Uh...what? I don't recall seeing a single sunrise or sunset...
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I remember how long it felt to go from place to place in EarthBound, until I got Teleport-- and then I abused it as much as I could.
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Dragon Age. 30 hours of gameplay in, and suddenly I get told a year has passed in game time.
Uh...what? I don't recall seeing a single sunrise or sunset...
That's because it would happen every five minutes if there were.
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That's because it would happen every five minutes if there were.
Why, hello there, OoT Hyrule Field. :V
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Super Metroid. That is all.
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Super Robot Wars. Not. To. Scale. The fact that a battleship looks smaller than a real robot doesn't help at all. Gotta love the SDness though.
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Dragon Age. 30 hours of gameplay in, and suddenly I get told a year has passed in game time.
Wait, what? It has? Goddamn, I thought it was all over the course of a month or two at most! I guess I haven't been paying attention.
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I'm curious too, mostly because it doesn't bother me to progress through a game's less action oriented segments. I quite enjoy the change of pace, talking to NPCs and a lot of other things that apparently nobody else has the patience for.
I think it's not entirely a matter of scale, although it certainly is true that we don't spend as much time playing games as we do living life (hopefully. :P ) I think the issue at hand is moreso that when people play a game about being a superhero, they want to be a superhero. All of the more mundane stuff is not only contrary to the point of the plot but also doesn't utilize the game specific mechanics to the same degree, if at all either. Hence boredom, or at least so I'd guess anyway.
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When I tried doing a Meido game, I made the Map specifically to scale to my very own house. I measured from one side to the other in terms of meters, and used that in a grid based space.
Now, I'm perfectly content with the house as it is - it's roomy enough, and it's very comfy. The only real complaint I have is sometime's My Mom's work area takes up too much space in the kitchen, but even that isn't much of a problem.
In the Meido game, even without stuff like counters, workbenches, and other household clutter in the way, only two of the rooms were big enough to hold everyone together at once. Out of a pathetic looking six rooms in the entire house, not including the basement. I have never been more or equally ashamed of the size of my house before or since looking at that map I made.
I've seen this effect in action on some Source engine custom maps where people try to model houses after real life houses and use real world measurements.
Needless to say, they feel a lot smaller in the game than they would in real life, due to in-game characters not having the same level of mobility and flexibility as a real human.
It's kind of like what people in wheelchairs go through all the time except you can climb stairs and jump.
I remember one such map was used for a game of zombie survival in Garry's Mod, and getting a dozen people into the attic was hilariously awkward. :D
"Move you dumbass, they're going to be here soon!"
"I can't! This guy is in the way and the door is stuck!"
"You mean me? I can't go anywhere, I'm stuck beside the chair! THE CHAIR WON'T LET ME LEAVE!"
"Oh god they're in the house! Go go go!
"I CAN'T!"
"WE'RE FUCKED! WE'RE ALL FUCKED! AAAARRRGGGHHH!"
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In GTA, walking from one end of the city to the other feels like I'm actually walking a long distance. NO WAY. >:(
Try getting stuck in the countryside after crashing your vehicle and having to walk back to the nearest highway.
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Oh GTA SA, how your mountain ranges tortured me! :V
Though, driving up them towing as many tractors with a tractor as possible then sending them all off the cliff was always worth the pain it took to get them there.
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GTA's an awesome example because (LCS and VCS aside), the most recent the game, the greater the proportion virtual city/real city.
And that makes taxis in GTAIV a blessing. :V