Preserving Games

Archiving the Creation Processes of the Video Game Industry

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Spawn Labs and Mobile Gaming

5 April, 2009 (20:25) | News and Commentary | By: walker

When I think of mobile gaming, whether it’s on a laptop, iPhone or other device, I think of games sensitive to the processing constraints of those platforms: web-based items like Bejeweled or Tower Defense, a retro-graphics piece like Battle for Wesnoth, etc. The latest games on the PS3, 360 or Wii do not come to mind.

Peter Walker of Spawn Labs and Vircion Inc., based out of Austin, gave a talk last week for the Texas Advanced Computing Center that explained the company’s plan to break this mold in the realm of console gaming. Their ambition is to allow gamers to play their console games on any computer at any location. The central idea behind this technology is that remote servers will handle the processor-intensive rendering of graphics and other game computation, sending an audio/video stream of the processed results to the user’s computer. That would allow the client’s computer to strictly handle those AV streams, rather than be responsible for the serious number-crunching. Gamers would essentially be playing the AV streams of the processed results, which would be dictated by whatever input the player sent to the server.

Walker identified some trends in gaming: gigabyte requirements increase, as do CPU and GPU processing requirements. Moore’s Law seems to be in full effect. But Walker points out that cooling power can’t keep up. Already an increasing percent of battery power is spent just cooling the processing chips. As a result mobile platforms like laptops simply cannot pack the cooling power necessary to run resource-intensive games (at least not without burning your lap). Walker points out the success of smaller-scale games, but notes that these are a different kind of gaming experience, casual and less time-intensive than the likes of Call of Duty 4 or Mass Effect, and constitute a gaming experience of a different order. Spawn’s research is aimed at bringing the gaming experience of the most graphically intense console works to a mobile community.

This is achieved through utilizing the increasing pervasiveness of broadband and the efficiency of audio and video codecs, specifically the H.264 standard. Key to this standard is the Scalable Video Codec. This would allow the client computer to select whichever particular bitstream it was set up to decode, among the many a gaming server would offer. That allows a gaming server to only encode and transmit once and simultaneously support a range of client machines with different codec-decoding capabilities.

So what could all this mean for game preservation? Well, in a certain sense it will make the job much more challenging. Technology like this continues the trend of client computers handling less and less of of the actual content. In this model, gamers are essentially reacting to, and playing in, a movie (the AV stream) that their input incurs. Very little of the game’s actual binary content resides on the gamer’s computer. Compare this to a classic like Ultima 4, where a considerable preservation step is accomplished by possessing uncorrupted copies of the original 3.5” or 5.25” disks. Move ahead to World of Warcaft: the client side CD contains a lot of code and information, but a very large part of the game itself is not to be found there. In the model being developed here, gamers could possess even less of the binary makeup of the game, and might simply purchase a license to play the game. That leaves the individual’s personal game material as a minor component of preservation.

At the same time, it’s a fascinating model for more flexible, platform-agnostic gaming, and it could point the way to interesting methods of preserving games. After all, if gamers could be happy interacting with a dynamic video stream, perhaps a preservation effort could employ a similar approach. If nothing else, the success of a model like this might open up the possibility of remote access to actively preserved games.

Not-So-Sensible World of Soccer

23 February, 2009 (12:43) | Emulation and Vintage Gameplay | By: admin

My experiences playing Warcraft reminded me of a time when games were simpler, and I enjoyed reliving those memories.  Sensible World of Soccer, on the other hand, reminded me that, when it comes to sports games, added complexity is a necessity that is sometimes taken for granted by younger players like myself.  To get right to the point, I find SWoS to be almost unplayable.

But before I address how the gameplay in sports games has, thankfully, advanced over the years, I will note that my issues with SWoS began with the speed of the game itself.  When I began playing the game on DOSBox (see previous posts for information on how to obtain and use DOSBox), the little soccer players were zooming around the screen.  Before I could hit escape and catch my breath, it seemed that five goals had already been scored against my team.  No matter much I tried to slow the game’s movement through DOSBox’s options menu, the game never seemed to calm down.  Filled with frustration, I downloaded the recent re-release of the game from XBOX 360’s online marketplace.  To my surprise, though the game was slowed considerably, it was still blazing at a speed entirely incompatible with the actual game of soccer.  Can this really be the default speed?

This was the first of many complaints about the ways in which SWoS presents the game of soccer to video game players.  Soccer is known throughout the world as the “beautiful game,” due to the grace and intricacy required to truly compete in the sport.  Soccer is not the kind of hyperkinetic sport that basketball is, or that SWoS would have you believe soccer is.  It is more like an athletic chess match; players are constantly scanning the field, looking for their best option before making a move.  The speed of SWoS makes this kind of thought and strategy impossible, robbing the sport of its great uniqueness.  In modern soccer video games like EA Sports’s FIFA series, the game allows the player to take his time; indeed, acting or moving too quickly will likely result in defeat.  This is the pace that a soccer video game demands, the pace of the sport itself.

Another glaring issue is the one-button control scheme.  You use the same button to pass the ball and to shoot the ball.  This requires you to use your movement buttons to both move your player and to guide the ball so that, when you press the “kick ball” button, the ball is sent toward a teammate for a pass or toward the goal for a shot attempt.  There is not enough room here to elaborate on how incompatible this button scheme is to soccer movement and strategy, but I can simply say that soccer players often find themselves running in one direction and kicking the ball in another direction.  A player running towards the goal may have an open teammate to his left; good luck trying to kick the ball to your left while continuing to move play forward in SWoS.  In modern games, the player is given a shoot button, a normal pass button, a lob/cross pass button, and a through pass button, and all of them are necessary if the player really wishes to recreate the sport itself.  Considering these options in addition to the advanced buttons that a player can now use in modern games to turn a normal shot into a chip shot or an exceptionally powerful line drive, one recognizes how important the new complexities of modern soccer games are.  These control options are not simply added in for innovation’s sake; they are, in fact, finally allowing the soccer video game to be what it ought to be.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that SWoS was a failed attempt in its time.  I imagine, in the mid-1990s, that soccer fans were happy for any soccer video game they could find, and SWoS certainly broke some important ground that continues to benefit soccer gamers today, most importantly the incredible depth of its leagues, player rosters and career modes.  The manual for the game claims to have “practically every professional team, league, and cup competition in the world,” and after perusing the team select menus, I am inclined to agree.  Also, the game not only features 26,000+ real life players but also includes “accurate personal statistics,” so the better players in real life will perform better in the game.  These inclusions provided SWoS with an off-the-field depth that was ahead of its time and set a high standard for games to come.  Not to mention that the game now serves as a delightful history lesson; for someone like myself who only recently became a fan of world soccer, it is quite interesting to see who was playing for all the teams I know and who were the best players in the mid-1990s.

With that said, I could not wait to turn SWoS off and return to my beloved FIFA ’08.  I have come to expect from soccer video games the ability to guide the players that I know and love via advanced control schemes at a thoughtful and strategic pace, and it is astonishing to see what gamers had to settle for just over a decade ago.  Many of the classic video games that have been deemed important and influential have aged well, continuing to be enjoyable and entertaining to new players even as the graphics increasingly show the game’s age.  However, SWoS, I would argue, will be better served in my generation by remembering than by replaying.

Warcraft – Army of Four

23 February, 2009 (10:22) | Emulation and Vintage Gameplay | By: admin

Of the many games that Blizzard created for the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo franchises, the only one that seems to have been all but forgotten by the company is the original Warcraft.  On Blizzard’s official website, the company features detailed web pages for their games dating back to Diablo and Warcraft II, but there is hardly any mention of the first Warcraft game.  Also, new copies of Blizzard’s games can still be purchased at Amazon.com, except for Warcraft I.  No worries; it can still be found on the aptly titled website Abandonia.

Immediately upon viewing the main menu, one may realize why this game has essentially been abandoned by Blizzard.  The multiplayer options (Modem, Network, Direct Link) are reminders of a time when playing a multiplayer game was a much greater hassle.  In this modern era of multiplayer gaming, of XBOX Live and Steam, efficiency and ease of use is expected.  Jumping into a multiplayer game should be as easy as turning on your computer or console.  This may be the reason why Blizzard continues to sell Warcraft II in its user-friendly Battle.net edition but does not bother with Warcraft I.  Today, a game is often measured by its multiplayer capabilities, and here Warcraft I is found wanting by comparison.

It would be a shame if this development resulted in younger gamers missing out on what is undoubtedly an engaging single player experience.  Subtitled Orcs & Humans, Warcraft allows the player to play through a Human campaign and an Orc campaign, which may persuade the gamer to feel that he or she has been given two games for the price of one.  Though the gameplay mechanics are the same for both campaigns, the two races features varied soldier types (for example, Human Clerics can heal damaged soldiers while Orc Warlocks can re-animate dead soldiers as Skeleton fighters) that demand different strategies from the player.  Also, the mission objectives, after a short beginner’s mission that is the same for both Orcs and Humans, are unique.  It is always interesting, after fighting against certain characters, to change allegiances and assume control of what was once your opposition, to get two sides of the same story.

As one of the first Real-Time Strategy games, Warcraft essentially sets the foundation that would be built upon in the years to come by the Command & Conquer and Starcraft games.  Thus, gamers familiar with the more complex strategies of these later games may have difficulty adjusting to the simpler gameplay of Warcraft.  In the RTS games that followed Warcraft, players were allowed, and encouraged, to create dozens of soldiers and battle vehicles and design heavily populated attacking formations filled with as many units as the player desired.  In Warcraft, a player must work with groups of four.  Just four.  If a player wishes to attack an enemy base with 16 units, the player will need to click-drag the cursor over four units and send them into the fight, then do the same with three more groups of four.  This alone may discourage more accomplished RTS players from finishing Warcraft.  However, as someone who is often overwhelmed by the staggering possibilities of more recent RTS games, I find Warcraft’s simplicity relaxing and enjoyable.  Though the scale is significantly decreased, the game is still asking the player to make stategic and effective use of soldiers and resources to defeat the enemy.

In conclusion, if one is looking for a multiplayer game, I would encourage that gamer to look elsewhere.  However, gamers who would like to experience an earlier, simpler RTS single player game ought to try Warcraft.  Certainly, by comparing Warcraft to the more recent entries into the genre, one can see how these games, and the gamers who play them, have changed.  I can imagine the unified response to Warcraft having been, “More!”  In the years to come, gamers would be given more units to build, more formations to fill, more technologies to research, and more industrious enemies to defeat, expanding to the point where some gamers (myself included) were left behind.

Playing Mario on a Keyboard

5 February, 2009 (11:58) | Emulation and Vintage Gameplay | By: TimA

Twenty three years after Super Mario Brothers was released in the United States, emulated versions of the game are available for download on numerous websites.  Playing Mario on a keyboard,  however, is not the most intuitive way to play the game.  As the actual Nintendo Entertainment Systems can not be preserved indefinitely, how does one capture the essence of Mario gameplay while playing an emulated version of the game?  There are a couple of ways that this can be done.

The people at RetroUSB take actual NES and SNES controllers and reconfigure them with USB cords so that they can be plugged into a USBport.  As the website states, the controllers that they use are not replicas, but real controllers from the aforementioned systems.  For $35, you can have essentially the same gameplay experience that you did 23 years ago.

The possibility of acquiring these USB controllers is , of course, dependent upon the continued existence of RetroUSB.com.  While it is possible that replicas of the NES controllers may be produced for the foreseeable future, there is another way to simulate gameplay using a standard keyboard that comes relatively close to the actual thing.

The best way to understand what I’ll be getting at is to walk through this yourself.  There are probably hundreds of emulated versions of Super Mario Brothers, but I’ve found that a reliable (and free) emulated version can be played by using Nestopia.  This NES console emulator can be used to play all of the games (and there are a lot) that are availalbe for download in ‘the Vault’ at  Vimm’s Lair.  Click on the link for the ‘the Vault,’ then the link for ‘Nintendo,’ then the letter ‘S’ and then scroll down and select ‘Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt.’  After the game is downloaded, open the Nestopia executable file, use it to open Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt and voila!  Take a moment to revel in nostalgia.

Now open the ‘Options’ menu and then ‘input.’  You’ll see that Nestopia wants you to use the directional buttons to control the motion of your character (makes sense) and the comma ‘,’ and period ‘.’ for the ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons on the Nintendo game controller.  Try playing Mario using these controls.  You’ll notice that you are using five fingers to play the game: three fingers on your right hand for the directional buttons and two on your left hand to control the A and B functions.  I suppose that with time one could become accustomed to playing Mario this way, but it certainly feels awkward and I would argue that you’re not really capturing the ‘essence’ of Mario gameplay.

Now, I have to give credit where it’s due so I will give a shout-out to Brandon Schoech for showing me this, but you can reconfigure the keys that you use on your keyboard so that you can play Mario using your thumbs the way that you would on an NES controller.  Open the ‘options’ and ‘input’ menus and then in the third column select ‘set all.’  For the left directional button select the letter ‘a,’ for up select ‘w,’ for right select ‘s,’ and for down select ‘z.’  For the ‘B’ functions select the period ‘.’ and for ‘A’ the slash ‘/.’  You can leave the settings for ‘Start’ and ‘Select’ as they are, or change them as you see fit, since you won’t use them as much.  Now you can postion your thumbs on either side of the keyboard and the effect is remarkably similar to that of using the NES controller.  One key aspect of this configuration is that you can use your right thumb to hit the ‘A’ and ‘B’ controls simultaneously, which is especially important in Mario as (if you’re like me) you will want to hold down the ‘B’ button indefinitely so that Mario will run through the entire game, but still be able to hit the ‘A’ button to throw turtle shells and shoot fiery spitballs.  This key configuration also takes a little getting used to, but it takes less time than the default setting and is certainly more true to the actual Mario gameplay.  Incidentally, I haven’t played Mario in something like eighteen years, but with the two-thumb key controls, I’ve managed to make it to the end of the fifth level.  I feel like that’s not too shabby.

Spacewar!

26 January, 2009 (13:57) | Emulation and Vintage Gameplay | By: TimA

Spacewar! is arguably the first videogame ever created. It was released in 1962 on the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processing) computer which had marked a massive shift in the philosophy of computer design when it was released just three years earlier in 1959. For today’s gamer, Spacewar! seems rather simple. There are two spaceships. Each player controls one spaceship. Each player tries to shoot the other player’s spaceship. There are four commands: turn clockwise, turn counter-clockwise, thrust, and shoot. And that’s basically it. No one wins. The ships will be regenerated until the two players get bored and decide to stop playing.

That being said, there are some aspects of Spacewar! that are considerably innovative, even by today’s gaming standards. At the center of the screen is a wormhole created by a dieing star. The spaceships are constantly pulled towards the wormhole and the players must maneuver the spaceships so that they do not fall into the wormhole while at the same time avoiding the bullets of the other spaceship. As the player must also somehow attempt to shoot the other spaceship, the gameplay that results from simultaneously coordinating three separate actions is quite sophisticated and was not seen again until at least the 1980s. The gravitational pull that is constantly tugging at the spaceships is based on the actual laws of gravity and the PDP-1 made 100,000 calculations per second to determine the motion of the spaceships in relation to that gravitational pull. The “thrust” command, for instance, does not actually move the spaceships forward (as it almost certainly would in any videogame that were released today). The command actually slows the spaceship down so that the user can gain control of the ships so that it does not go spinning into the wormhole. If timed correctly, the thrust command can use the force of gravity to propel the spaceship into the orbit of the dieing star so that the spaceship will go around the wormhole. The resulting motion is something akin to the way that comets travel around planetary bodies rather than crashing into them. One must be parsimonious with the thrust command, however, as the ships have a limited supply of fuel. The bullets that are the spaceships’ ammunition are also subject to the gravitational pull of the star and will circle around the star at the same rate as the spaceships.

While certainly sophisticated, Spacewar! lacks a lot of the customary modern game conventions. As mentioned earlier, the game does not designate a “winner” and a “loser.” While one spaceship can destroy another, the ships will just be regenerated ad infinitum until the players decide to end the game. Neither does Spacewar! tally “wins.” Also, as mentioned earlier, the spaceships have a limited fuel supply, however there is no bar at the bottom of the screen alerting the player as to how much fuel remains. Also, the spaceships seem to disappear randomly, for no apparent reason, only to reappear at the starting position. It is not obvious whether this is due to some sort of internal, unspecified time limit or if it is just a glitch. All in all, while Spacewar! is a game that could certainly not be played for hours (or even one hour), the need for players to simultaneously coordinate three actions will definitely provide at least fifteen minutes of engrossing gameplay for the modern gamer.

What Story? Reporting a MUD-Dev Thread from April – May 2000

23 January, 2009 (14:49) | News and Commentary | By: walker

From August 22, 1996 to the early October of 2004 the MUD-Dev mailing list housed a slew of earnest and lengthy discussions — technical, philosophical, design and otherwise — concerning the development and play of multi-user dungeons (MUDs). 

MUDs were developed before graphics-capable computers, originating and remaining entirely text-based. Players type commands, role-play or just socialize through the keyboard. Gameplay ranges from hack and slash to interactive fiction to simple chat, with all sorts of degrees of role-play in between. MUDs are often discussed as the precursors of today’s MMORPGs, and therefore an early index of the concerns and goals of those MMORPGs by at least 10 years. But MUDs are by no means a dead genre. New MUDs, and players for them, are continually coming into play.  

The MUD-Dev archive is available at Raph Koster’s site as a bundle of distinct HTMLs, or right here at the School of Information on a single (very) large page with the messages hyperlinked and separated.

I’ve taken a look at the threads “Procedural Storytelling” and “A footnote to Procedural Storytelling”, which had sprung off from an earlier discussion, “Self-Sufficient Worlds”. The topic, broadly, concerns the art of storytelling in MUDs and more typically, how to generate them automatically on a large scale by abstracting them. Instead of doing a play-by-play of the discussion, I thought a report of the salient ideas and contentions would be more digestible.

Read more »

Doom: 15 Years Later

13 January, 2009 (21:00) | Emulation and Vintage Gameplay | By: admin

In 2007, Henry Lowood, curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University, presented a video game canon in order to encourage initial preservation efforts by the Library of Congress.  On this list of ten important video games is the 1993 DOS-based game Doom, and rightly so.  Doom is one of the earliest, and still one of the best, entries in the first-person shooter genre, a genre that continues to succeed in the market in such forms as the Halo and Resistance franchises.  Despite monumental advances in graphics technology and more efficient control schemes, Doom continues to be considered one of the finest first-person shooters of all time, thanks to the thoughtful level design and the exciting array of weaponry that is still copied by successful first-person shooters today.  Nevertheless, video gaming has certainly changed in the 15 years since the game’s initial release, and thus, so has the Doom experience.

The changes begin immediately with the installation of the game, the ease of which depends upon the version of Doom that you possess.  Indeed, there are many versions of Doom to be found, and the easiest version to access is the recent release of the game on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 online marketplace.  With this version, the player does not have to worry about setting the game controls or toggling the sound options.  Additionally, playing Doom online with other players is far easier on the Xbox than with any of the current versions of the PC.  Ironically, a game that was created for the PC in order to utilize its multiplayer network capabilities is now easier to play online with a console than with an actual PC.  Concerning the PC versions, one can still purchase the most recent official release of the game from internet marketplaces and local game stores.  This version is called The Ultimate Doom, which adds an additional fourth episode to the DOS version’s original three and, unfortunately, works best on Windows 95.  In order to play this version on Windows XP or Vista, one must go through a great deal of trouble, resetting certain display options for Windows and even manually downloading plugins and adding them to system folders.  Thus, if a gamer purchases The Ultimate Doom and is unable to play it on his or her Windows operating system, I would suggest that the PC user find an original DOS version of Doom and utilize the DOSBox program.

To install and use DOSBox and the DOS version of Doom, simply follow the same instructions as in the previous post for Ultima, except for an additional step.  If you try to play this DOS version of Doom immediately, you will have no sound.  Thus, after completing step 5 from the Ultima instructions (mount the “dosprog” folder), type “c:\” and press enter.  Then, type “setup”, which will bring you to the setup menu for Doom.  Here, you will need to choose “Select Music Card,” then choose “Sound Blaster” and press enter through the remaining choices.  Then, choose “Select Sound FX Card” and again choose “Sound Blaster” and press enter through the following options.  Now, choose “Save Settings and Run Doom.”

When starting the game, one immediately encounters a difference between Doom and many of today’s games.  Because the gameplay in a first-person shooter relies upon quick reflexes and hand-eye coordination, Doom offers five choices of difficulty so that the player can toggle the game to match the player’s experience with the genre.  With the higher difficulty options, the enemies become more accurate and deal more damage to the player, and, at the highest difficulty setting “Nightmare,” the enemies will actually “respawn” soon after being killed.  Today, many games are eschewing difficulty settings in favor of a more flowing experience in which the player initially fights only a few, easy enemies and slowly begins to face stronger opposition as the player’s ability naturally progresses through practice.  Because the difficulty decision for Doom is made at the beginning of the experience, a good player may become bored if the difficulty was set too low or an overzealous player may set the difficulty too high and find the game too hard.  This is an example of an early game’s willingness to interrupt the story’s flow; if the gamer was too confident in choosing a difficulty, the game was all too happy to humble the player, initiating a “game over” that forced the player out of the narrative flow and back to the beginning.

Not that Doom has a grand narrative to interrupt.  Unlike modern first-person shooters, which rely on the storyline to propel players from one level to another through cinematic scenes and lengthy discussions between characters, Doom contains very little story and absolutely no character development.  The gamer is simply told that he or she is playing as a future Marine who, while experimenting with teleportation on the moons of Mars, accidentally opens a gateway to Hell.  Thus, the Marine must fight his way through Phobos, Deimos, and finally Hell to beat the game.  The only references to this narrative occur between each level, when an overview of the surface of the moon (or Hell) is shown and the recently beaten location is marked off as the Marine moves to the next location, and upon the successful completion of a moon (or Hell), when some text or a single image appears, telling the story of how the Marine moves from one chapter to another.  Therefore, the game relies almost entirely on the pure enjoyment of the gameplay to encourage the player to continue.

Because the game is fairly linear, Doom, unlike Ultima, does not demand a walkthrough to be defeated.  However, a walkthrough will likely be necessary if the player wishes to find all of the “secret locations” hidden in each level.  Because the game is not interested in narrative, these secret locations do not provide the player with additional information on the plot or characters like modern games often do.  Instead, these hidden areas usually give the player massive health upgrades or a better weapon a few levels earlier than the player would have otherwise found it.  Again, the player’s motivations for finding these locations are not drawn from narrative but from gameplay; how fun it will be to start blowing up enemies with the rocket launcher starting in level 3 instead of waiting for level 7!.  After each level, the player is told how many of the secret areas he or she found, so the player can feel pride in knowing that 100% of the secret areas were discovered.  Also, since the game is mostly interested in the player enjoying the gameplay, Doom is happy to provide the player with cheat codes, unlike many modern games.  These codes allow the player to gain invincibility, accumulate all weapons, and walk through walls.  With these codes, the player need not play a minute of the game without his or her favorite weapons.

The final key difference between Doom and newer PC first-person shooters is the control scheme.  Because Doom was made in the DOS years when many PC users did not yet own a mouse, the game is played with both hands on the keyboard.  The left hand operates the Left-Ctrl button (fire weapon) and spacebar (open door), and the right hand uses the arrow keys to move: up moves forward, down moves backward, left turns the player in a counter-clockwise circle, and right turns the player clockwise.  In modern games, thanks to the ubiquity of the mouse, the player now uses the left hand to move (usually, ‘w’ moves forward and ‘s’ moves backward) and the right hand controls the mouse.  Rather than using the left and right arrow keys to turn the player, ‘a’ and ‘d’ are used to “strafe,” moving the player to the left or right while continuing to face the same direction.  Thus, the player is now able to continue firing at an enemy while moving aside from that enemy’s line of fire.  To turn, the player now uses his or her right hand to operate the mouse, spinning the character’s view with the movement of the mouse and using the mouse buttons to fire the weapon.

Because the controls are now more efficient, the player is required to exhibit even greater hand-eye coordination in modern games.  In Doom, because the player did not have the mouse and thus could not easily look up or down, the player’s aim was adjusted by the game.  If an enemy was standing on a ledge above the player, the player needed only to look in that general direction and start firing, and the game would send the bullets upward to strike the enemy.  In modern games, now that the player has a mouse, the player must not only move the weapon’s aim left and right but also up and down to zero in exactly on the enemy’s position, making the experience more difficult.  Since players could not aim so efficiently or strafe in Doom, the game assumes that the player will take some unfortunate damage as a result of these unavoidable control inefficiencies and provides the player with more health items in a level than many modern games provide in an entire game.  Thus, the designers of these games recognize that the ability, or inability, of the player to translate his or her reactions to the in-game character relates directly to the difficulty of the game, and the games are designed accordingly.

Finally, the spacebar, used to open doors in Doom, is now most often used to jump, an ability that Doom players were not given.  The lack of jumping in Doom contributed heavily to its linear design; the player was like a rat running through a labyrinth.  In modern games, the player is able to jump over ledges and up to greater heights, which increases the player’s feeling of control over the gameplay and changes the experience substantially from that of playing Doom.  In newer games, when a player sees an item on a ledge, the first instinct is, “How do I jump up there?”  Playing Doom, the gamer would think, “Where is the passage that will allow me to walk up there?”

After a decade of jumping, strafing, and mouse-aiming, one realizes how much these control innovations, as well as stronger narratives and flowing difficulties, have changed the first-person shooter.  It is a testament to the eternal joy of playing Doom that these innovations are soon forgotten after stepping back onto the moons of Mars and revisiting all those secret places you used to know.

Preservation and Emulation – A Guide to Installing “Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness”

12 December, 2008 (01:11) | Emulation and Vintage Gameplay | By: TimA

An important method to preserve videogame content, and all content contained in electronic records for that matter, is emulation.  In order to access many DOS-based videogames, for example, one must download a DOS emulator.  These emulators are now widely available on the Internet and videogames that are no longer playable on modern operating systems can be played through this application which emulates the functionality of DOS.  Below is a guide to installing one of the most influential DOS-based games, Richard Garriott’s “Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness.”

In order to play Ultima 1, you must first download a DOS emulator. Currently, one of the most popular DOS emulators is DOSBox 0.72, which can be downloaded free-of-charge at www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1. Choose the version of DOSBox that corresponds to your operating system, save the installer executable, and follow the steps to install DOSBox.

DOSBox can be used to play a number of DOS-based games. Finding these games can be tricky as websites with DOS game libraries often require you to enter personal information including e-mail and physical addresses before the site will let you download a game. www.oldschooldos.com allows you to download games anonymously. To find Ultima 1, from the Old School DOS homepage click the link for “RPG” games. Listed on this page are six classic DOS RPGs including two other games that are widely considered to be foundational to the RPG genre: “NetHack” and “Dungeon Master.” In order to play Ultima 1, follow these steps:

(Note that the following steps are valid only for Windows operating systems. Directions may vary for other operating systems).

  • In the RPG menu at oldschooldos.com, click on the link for “Ultima 1” and download the zipped file.
  • Extract all of the unzipped files into a new folder on your C:\ drive, and title the folder “dosprog”
  • Open DOSBox.
  • In DOSBox, enter the following command string: “mount c c:\dosprog\” and hit enter. I’m not totally sure about this, but in entering the above command string you are essentially convincing the emulator that in accessing the “dosprog” folder, it is actually accessing the c:\ drive. If you forget the above command string, you can also enter the command “intro mount” and DOSBox will remind you how to mount the folder “dosprog” as your c:\ drive.
  • Once you have mounted the dosprog folder, type “c:\” and hit enter. You will notice that the beginning of the command string changes from “Z:\>” to “C:\>.”
  • Now type “ultima” and the game should start.
  • When a picture of a castle appears, hit the space bar.
  • You will be prompted to create a new character or continue a previous game. Choose the former.
  • You will now be prompted to generate a character. From this point the best thing to do is follow a walkthrough. www.gamefaqs.com is a good website for walkthroughs of all videogames from all eras. A walkthrough for Ultima 1 can be found here: www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/562657/9073. This walkthrough has good tips on how to stay alive as Ultima 1 is much more difficult than the average modern RPG.  A walkthrough that takes you through the narrative can be found here: www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/562657/1804. FYI, you should definitely consult the first walkthrough before you create your character. After you designate your character’s attributes they cannot be altered and certain attributes are more essential than others depending on the race and character class that you select.
  • Once you create your character you can start playing the game.  You can command your character by hitting certain letters on your keyboard.  You can “attack,” e.g., by pressing the letter “a.”  A complete list of keyboard functions for Ultima 1 can be found here: www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/pc/ultima1/commands.shtml This website also offers a brief walkthrough and some interesting game facts.

The walkthrough for Ultima 1 is pretty essential.  Unlike modern games, there is no tutorial element in the first part of the game, so you pretty much have to figure things out on your own.  These walkthroughs, however, are considerably shorter than a walkthrough for a modern game.  This is due largely to the fact that the narrative element in Ultima 1 is pretty thin.  You will spend most of your time simply killing monsters and trying to stay alive (which is a tall order).  Through killing monsters you will raise your attributes and acquire gold which you can use to spend on weapons, armor, and food.  Note that you must level up considerably before attempting any “quests.”  Also expect to die often, but don’t let this discourage you.  Remember that unlike modern games, dieing is just a part of the experience (one might say frustrating experience) of playing older games.

That being said, in terms of game mechanics, there is not that much difference between Ultima 1 and Final Fanasy XII, for example,  or World of Warcraft.  You have a character for whom you select a character class, a race, and a gender.  You designate that character’s strength, intelligence, etc.  You kill monsters, cast spells, go on quests, buy weapons and armor and eventually fight “bosses.”   One minor (though significant) difference is that when you start the game you will find that if you start fighting the monsters that are presented to you, you will die pretty quickly and you will be unable to progress.  If you take a look at one of the walkthroughs, you’ll find that you need to start fighting in the first level of a dungeon in order to get money and to raise your hit points.  This is a salient difference from modern RPGs in which the challenges that you are presented with are almost always tailored to the level of your character.  You get the sense, in Ultima 1, that the world of the videogame pre-exists your character and you need to figure out how to acclimate your character to the world.  This seems like a much more “realistic” approach to gameplay and one that more closely resembles the layout of a modern MMORPG than a modern single-player RPG.  Apart from this sort-of “pre-existence” of the videogame world, however, there is surprisingly little difference between the content and structure of Ultima 1 and that of a modern RPG.

Because of this relative lack of difference in game structure,  I don’t think that someone who is familiar with the gameplay of modern RPGs will have much difficulty playing Ultima 1.  From a preservation standpoint, including a walkthrough with the emulation would be helpful, if only to convince the player to not give up after dieing a couple of times.  Also, including the list of keyboard commands is essential as I have been unable to locate one in the game itself.  Other than that, from a thirty-year vantage point, Ultima 1 is still largely intelligible and playable for a modern videogame player.

The Power to Create

8 December, 2008 (14:49) | News and Commentary | By: admin

In a recent interview for the Wired blog, Blizzard’s Executive Vice President of Game Design Rob Pardo is asked about past Diablo games and their perceived “RAM dependency.”  The interviewer notes, “When Diablo II came out…I didn’t really feel like I got the full experience of the game running perfectly until I had something like 2GB of RAM.  With Diablo III, are we going to need 6GB?”

Pardo’s response characterizes one of the chief, and unique, concerns for game designers.  He responds, “One of the philosophies we have is to always try to cater to a pretty low system spec.  We really wanna make sure that as many gamers as possible can play our games.  At the same time, we want a lot of our graphics and all of our features to look good.”

This response exemplifies how daunting the obstacle of processing power can be in the design and creation of a video game.  As designers begin to imagine enormous and magnificent worlds populated with defined and stylized characters, they must always keep in mind the limitations placed on their work by the current PC technology available to the gaming public.  Obviously, as Pardo suggests, the designer’s first responsibility is to create a game that the majority of gamers are capable of running on their computer systems.  Essentially, this means crafting a game that can be enjoyed by gamers whose PCs run on below-average processing power.  But, the designers also have a responsibility to utilize the latest in design technology to create a game that can compete with other recent games on a visual basis.  Thus, as designers work on a game like Diablo III and constantly try to improve the scope and detail of the game’s visuals, they must do so remembering that their ultimate responsibility requires them to deliver a game that “caters to a low system spec.”

I would be interested to learn how game designers are affected by what is, essentially, a lack of resources, a creative issue for which there is little precedent.  Many filmmakers, for example, often must consider how much film they are using and how much film is left.  However, filmmakers are using that film supply for one purpose: to create a visual image.  Game designers, on the other hand, must use one supply of RAM not only to create their visuals but also to run the gameplay itself.  Thus, in navigating this difficult creative path, on which imaginative visuals will almost always be sacrificed for the gameplay, do designers often find their ideas for environments and characters being limited?  Have they become so familiar with the technology that they inherently dream up worlds and populations with processing limitations in mind?  Or do they dream big at first and scale back once the magnitude of the gameplay’s processing requirements are determined?

I would imagine that this is a particularly prevalent problem for MMORPG designers.  In creating game worlds where anything can happen, where any number of player and non-player characters can come together in one place, designers must ensure that the graphics that animate these worlds and characters do not soak up so much processing power that the gameplay runs slowly or perhaps ceases to run.  Thus, considering the requirement of creating an environment that can process a large number of gamers at all times, these game designers are necessarily limited in their power to create visually impressive landscapes and lifelike characters.  I would argue that, because of this limitation, MMORPGS will always be a step behind many other genres visually, and I would be interested to know how designers of these MMO experiences feel about working in a genre in which their visual imaginations must always be kept in check.

Beyond Video Game Preservation

7 November, 2008 (11:44) | News and Commentary | By: admin

Creating video games means establishing virtual worlds. The creation process involves stories, communications and networks – a series of actions that are much more complicated than meets the eye. In exploring and documenting this dynamic process, researchers must go beyond preservation and also consider the emotional and psychological aspects that went into designing a game. Researchers must also consider the cultural and societal impact the games have on the groups of people and individuals that play the game. For example, to the user, playing a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game it is not just playing a game; the MMO becomes a meeting place for people to gather and the games themselves become a community.  

The game preservation project not only becomes a landmark digitizing and archiving endeavor, it also takes the form of a pioneering effort to experiment with and establish methodologies for the preservation of digital content and new media art. By embarking on this journey, the archivist is challenged by questions such as: How will we preserve virtual worlds? How do we collect new media art? What are the best ways to make what we collect accessible to others? The answers to these questions will have a substantial impact on the future of digital preservation, especially the future of preserving MMOs.

This preservation of the creation process of video games project presents an opportunity to record the psychological and emotional aspects of developing and playing MMOs. Designers, developers and engineers in the video game industry are an extraordinarily creative group of people. A key challenge in this research will be to successfully interpret and understand what they were thinking during the video game creation process. For example: What inspired a game designer to incorporate specific attributes of a lead character?

Recently, the process of recording and collecting user data has become more pertinent than ever. Developing the best methods for handling information archives is also of paramount importance. In preserving and archiving the video game creation process, researchers need to develop systematic creation methods and establish user data management systems and processes that can be easily passed along to and replicated by future researchers.

The ethnographic research approach will serve as a highly effective method for the successful documentation and preservation of video game development histories. A key to the success of the project, for example, will be to accurately record the creation process with a series of visualizations. Conversations, observations and physical records must be collected and collated in a holistic fashion. In employing the ethnographic approach, another challenge will be to successfully integrate the information and establish clear connections between each of the elements of the creation process.

While taking on this important task, it is necessary for researchers to create a new design system that takes into consideration a video game’s long-term influence on a user. While it is essential to determine the factors that influence the game creators’ behavioral processes, the project should also endeavor to go beyond preservation and record the emotional and psychological aspects of creating video games.