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| Re: So, About Those Challenges | |
| Posted By: LegendaryMark <mark_likes_cake@hotmail.com> | Date: 5/27/11 10:49 a.m. |
In Response To: So, About Those Challenges (GhaleonEB) Hey Ghaleon, great read! Very well put together :) Perhaps I can clear something up for you with regards to how flexible the challenge system is likely to be in Reach. While I was working at Bizarre Creations (specifically this would be work on a cancelled racing title) I produced a system which gave broadly similar functionality to that which the challenges in Reach display. So much so, in fact, that I was fairly near completion of it when Reach came out and I was like "Hey!! That was my idea!!" :D On (what used to be) our end, here's how things worked. Every time you go online the game checks a server somewhere for a blob of multiplayer data, mostly for things like balance changes (in the context of Reach, things like weapon damage, grenade splash radius etc). The advantage of this being that we can make balance changes and such without having to actually patch the game. We'd just create new data with our in-house data management tool. However what this means is that if you can somehow create challenges using only this data, you can create new challenges without the need to bake them into the game at all. The way my system worked was to use the idea that every "requirement" could be described entirely in terms of actions (i.e. triggers, e.g. player killed another player or (in our racing game) player completed a lap etc) and conditions (e.g. player is going over 100mph, player has all 4 wheels off the ground etc). This meant that, assuming we broadly exposed each action/condition to our data system, designers can then create whatever the hell they want - in some cases stringing many of these things together for some really wacky challenges! If the game had already launched, we'd have created new data (or changed existing data) and simply replaced the challenge data blob currently on the server with the new one. Bingo! If I had to guess, I'd say Bungie used something pretty similar. Certainly the final functionality strongly resembles what we had cooking. I'd imagine all challenges currently in the matrix you mentioned urk talking about are already all on our machines as data feeding into their challenge system, but if they wanted to create brand new challenges (let's say if finishing campaign levels in under X minutes suddenly became INSANELY popular) they could push those out in a day. Just if you were interested, you know :) Again, nice article!
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| Replies: |
| So, About Those Challenges | GhaleonEB | 5/27/11 12:35 a.m. |
| Good Read, Nice to see it explored. | Revenant1988 | 5/27/11 9:16 a.m. |
| One other thing, | Revenant1988 | 5/27/11 9:28 a.m. |
| Well done. | FoxmanFX | 5/27/11 10:02 a.m. |
| Re: So, About Those Challenges | LegendaryMark | 5/27/11 10:49 a.m. |
| Re: So, About Those Challenges | GhaleonEB | 5/27/11 11:53 a.m. |
| Re: So, About Those Challenges | FoxmanFX | 5/27/11 12:14 p.m. |
| Re: So, About Those Challenges | LegendaryMark | 5/27/11 1:41 p.m. |
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