Game mechanics ramble

content/rambles/emergent-mechanics.md

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+---
+title: "Emergent Game Mechanics"
+date: "2023-09-25T02:36:11+02:00"
+author: "$HUMANOID"
+tags: ["gamedesign", "quake", "doom"]
+description: "A little piece about emergent mechanics"
+---
+
+# Preamble
+
+I usually talk about whatever hobby project I've been hacking together when the
+inspiration to write strikes. In a sense this is a similar ramble, just on a
+wildly different topic, namely video game design.
+
+# The Meat and Potatoes
+
+For some time now I've been attempting to wrap my head around why I find games
+like Doom Eternal to be boring, while games like Ultrakill and Quake are some of
+my favourites of all time. And I think I've found the answer.
+
+Doom Eternal has location based damage and various enemy weak spots. For
+instance, shooting the Mancubus' arm cannons causes them to be disabled, making
+the Mancubus significantly more manageable. Likewise, shooting a grenade at a
+Cacodemon causes it swallow the grenade and be stunned for an easy Glory Kill.
+The Arachnotron has a turret that can be shot and disabled; the Makyr Drones can
+be shot in the head as quick ammo piñatas; the shields on the dudes carrying
+them can be easily disabled using the Plasma Rifle, causing a shock wave... so
+on and so forth.
+
+Initially, I found these to be really neat ideas. However, it rather quickly
+became boring when I found out shooting the weak spots is really the only viable
+way to get rid of enemies, especially on higher difficulties. Sure, Doom Eternal
+allows you to be very creative in _how_ you shoot those weak spots, but the
+moment you stop bothering with them, the difficulty curve starts to resemble
+something closer to a vertical line than an actual curve. The end result is that
+the combat feels pre-baked and static if you want to be remotely efficient.
+
+Ultrakill does this right. It has -- as far as I'm aware -- two ways the
+trajectory of projectiles can be influenced. One being by punching a projectile
+as it is about to hit you. The other is with a shock wave, often caused by an
+explosion. Shock waves can be caused using the Knuckleduster (heavy melee
+attack), the Core Eject (shotgun altfire that shoots a grenade), the rocket
+launcher, parrying your own shotgun blast as it exists the barrel and several
+that I can't think of right now. This is the only rule regarding projectiles
+that is set in stone. Because of this simplicity and how many enemies have
+projectile attacks, you can get very creative in how you kill them, while
+keeping all approaches equally viable at any given moment. When an enemy has
+just shot a projectile at you, you can chose to dodge it, answer it with a
+shotgun blast; punch it back to the culprit using a light melee attack; switch
+to heavy melee and shoot it back using a shock wave; overcharge the pump action
+shotgun, dodge out of its explosion damage using the I-frames received when
+dodging, while using said same explosion to send the projectile back to the
+unsuspecting enemy; use those I-frames from the dodge to go through the
+projectile and punch the enemy in the face retrieving some health in the
+process, etc, etc.
+
+All of these are viable stratagies depending on how much health you still have
+and how many other enemies there are. Getting out of the way of overcharge
+explosion damage by dodging is no small feat, but might save you from more
+damage if you're surrounded by a lot of high level enemies. Punching a single
+enemy isn't something you'll want to do when still surrounded as it means doing
+less damage in that moment and only damaging a single enemy. I could go on and
+on, describing how and when one might chose any given strategy, but I'll try to
+stop here.
+
+The result is an incredibly dynamic combat system that allows for endless
+creativity in dealing with any given scenario. If Ultrakill's design philosophy
+were closer to that of Doom Eternal, there would be a dedicated "redirect
+projectile" button/weapon. It wouldn't serve much of a purpose outside of
+deflecting the occasional projectile. On top of that, each enemy attack would
+have one and only one viable way to answer it.
+
+For me an encounter in Doom Eternal would go something like the following:
+
+> Mancubus, take out its cannons using machine gun altfire; Arachnotron, ditto;
+> Cacodemon, switch to shotgun, shoot grenade using altfire, Glory Kill; "oh
+> hey, shield dudes", switch to Plasma Rifle and pepper them a bit...
+
+There is (usually) one "proper" strategy to deal with each enemy. As a result,
+instead of improvising throughout the entire fight, I'm focussing on what hoops
+to jump through and in what order. And I guess I don't like being treated as a
+circus lion. In Ultrakill, I just do what comes natural in any given situation
+without feeling like I'm being forced down a rather
+face-paced-yet-impressively-boring path.
+
+Doom Eternal's movement is even more strict. There is a double jump, double dash
+and later on a grapple hook. Sure, there are some interesting things you can do
+here, but short of exploiting the physics engine by manipulating the framerate
+by opening the weapon wheel, you're not going to see any crazy movement
+strategies.
+
+Ultrakill has a triple dash, a slide, dash jump, ground pound and the player
+character can be knocked about by explosions and shock waves. On top of that,
+there is also the very intricate interplay between these elements due to how the
+physics engine works.
+
+The result here is a set of extremely complex mechanics that are never set in
+stone; instead emerging from a few laws of the game that don't have total death
+grip control over their domain.
+
+There is no way I could write an article about emergent mechanics without
+mentioning Quake. So lets do that now.
+
+None of the high level mechanics in Quake are intended. Everything from
+straferunning, to wallrunning, to rocket jumping, to bunnyhopping and power
+bunnyhopping (also called strafejumping in the context of Quake) is the result
+of a few basic rules and wack physics.
+
+1. "The player can turn"
+2. "The player can move in 8 cardinal directions"
+3. "The player can jump"
+4. "The player can sprint, increasing their speed"
+5. "There are entities that are affected by physics"
+6. "The player is one such entity"
+
+And that's it as far as I'm aware.
+
+All the of the complex movement mechanics emerge from the interplay of these
+rules. One of the first that was found was straferunning. What this means is
+sending both a move-forward and strafe input. Due to the way velocity is
+calculated, this results in a slight speed increase. Shortly after this, it was
+discovered that doing this while running into a wall causes a greater speed
+increase. As did wiggling the mouse left and right. When jumping you don't lose
+any momentum. Put all of these together -- with the exception of wallrunning --
+add little finesse on top and the result is strafejumping.
+
+To me there is something about using these emergent mechanics that is infinitely
+more satisfying than the pre baked equivalents in modern games. Figuring out how
+to (ab)use the game's rules to your advantage is half the fun if you ask me and
+games like Doom Eternal take most of that away from you by giving you one or
+very few viable strategies to approach a given situation and then telling you
+most of them from the get go. Getting it to do something that the developers
+never originally intended.