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(UI MOCKUP DRAFT) Cutscene interaction
bluhman
Posts: 2,410 Arc User
So you're tired of having to either wait in solitude while a cutscene is playing. Maybe you minimize your game and do some other stuff while Hi-Pan is explaining his evil plot to the gangs of westside for the umpteenth time. Well, what I have here is a suggestion that aims to minimize these issues through three big components, listed in rough order of (estimated) difficulty that each feature would entail:
THE UI
Labeled helpfully with numbers, each element is as follows:
Note that I understand that for some situations it is impossible to skip cutscenes because they are required to trigger events that allow the player to advance the game (i.e. in Resistance, there are cutscenes which will trigger situations such as: cave ins, floods, force-cascades that open up exits...) But then it's a question of whether skipping the cutscene is going to actually skip the events of the scene, or just restore control to the player? And if restoring control to the player, then is it safe to allow them to move into certain parts of the map? Could they get trapped or interfere with movement?
And so that's why the plan has three parts, and certainly why the function of just straight-up skipping a cutscene is very difficult to implement. But at the very least, the first bugfix and the feature would be nice, right?
- Fix the 'mouse-focus from camera' bug, which locks the cursor at the center of the screen during some cutscenes.
- Let players continue to chat and interact with other players while a cutscene is playing.
- Have a system in place to skip cutscenes.
THE UI
Labeled helpfully with numbers, each element is as follows:
- Chat Box - Same as the chat box inside the tailor, the Chat Box in cutscenes is initially collapsed into a small button in the lower left. When pressed, the entire chat menu will become available to the player for them to type, switch channels, and communicate as they please. Note that if the chat box is up and the player is typing into it, it will consume input concerning other elements of this UI, such as:
- Skip Cutscene Prompt - This label tells players that, in order to skip a cutscene, they must hold down the skip cutscene button (default likely would be space or A on controllers). If this is held down, then...
- Skip Cutscene Dial - This dial will fill up, indicating how long the key/button was held. And once filled, the player will be confirmed for wanting to skip the cutscene.
- Teammate display - Anonymously displays the other teammates and their cutscene-skip status. If a portrait is empty, this means they have not skipped the cutscene. If it is filled, they have confirmed a vote to skip. the cutscene will only skip if all players successfully vote.
Note that I understand that for some situations it is impossible to skip cutscenes because they are required to trigger events that allow the player to advance the game (i.e. in Resistance, there are cutscenes which will trigger situations such as: cave ins, floods, force-cascades that open up exits...) But then it's a question of whether skipping the cutscene is going to actually skip the events of the scene, or just restore control to the player? And if restoring control to the player, then is it safe to allow them to move into certain parts of the map? Could they get trapped or interfere with movement?
And so that's why the plan has three parts, and certainly why the function of just straight-up skipping a cutscene is very difficult to implement. But at the very least, the first bugfix and the feature would be nice, right?
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Comments
A lot of MMOs have a skip scene option nowdays, especially in the farmable raids
If anything, the chatbox should be available all the time, I hate when I type in alerts only to go KAPOOT
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Why is it bad?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
It's bad because it's reinforcing the design of cutscenes that lead to them being unskippable in the first place.
The way cutscenes are done in a naive way for MMOs is to actually have the actors, characters, NPCs, and other map conditions change and move on the server-side to play out a cutscene. Consider the boss intro for Valerian Scarlet, which is a drawn-out conversation between Caliburn and Valerian:
In this cutscene, your characters are actually still visible, static, in the background. If the cutscene was just made skippable, what would Valerian's AI do in this situation? Would she continue talking to Caliburn while trying to fight you off? What if she died mid-sentence? What if other players were still watching the cutscene? These are all considerations and reasons as to why it wouldn't be immediately possible to make cutscenes skippable in a situation like this. At this rate I could convincingly pass as a Cryptic employee with excuses like these.
Then there's a later technique to making cutscenes that instead uses client-side 'dummies' to play a cutscene. Here's the ending cutscene to Whiteout:
This scene is kind of dull honestly, it involves Justiciar, Sgt. Blair, and the player character walking in a robotic formation to talk to an angry roin-esh and a lot of dialog. It's also not skippable, but the real thing to notice here are two things:
So great, that's all we need for skippable scenes, right? There's already a set of cutscenes in this game that can be skipped by just mashing the space bar - all of the tutorial cutscenes, for example (powerhouse and crafting) are cutscenes that can be skipped. The zone intros are also like this. So, why not implement that in future lairs and stuff, wouldn't that work?
Well, no, cause there's still:
- If one person skips a scene, what does the rest of the team do? Does the skipper just Leroy-Jenkins in there by themselves? Should they be blocked by some invisible wall before the whole team is ready?
- If a person does skip, should the cutscene be interrupted on other peoples' clients? Would it be permissible for other players to screw up how cutscenes play out? Would we get photobombings like we do at the end of alerts?
- Dummies can be somewhat naive to player state. This means you can end up with some cutscenes that intend to play out with serious scenarios resulting in the player character rendering as a gingerbread man because of a inventory-trash become device.
Which is why I thought up of a solution from a design perspective, so I mean, the ball isn't in my court anymore at this point. I've answered the first two issues, don't really have a good solution for the third, and didn't mention the fourth issue of Cryptic just straight-up not doing things, which is a problem I can never really solve without actively trying to get myself employed at the company.