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[Friday]

Hi. This is the thread for discussion about difficulty in the Knorpse. I'm going to put down some things I've learned from making EK2 and J Project. I am doing this because there are some first timers signing up and I'd like to give them the benefit of my and the other vets experience. Obviously, this is a discussion thread, so post your ideas/thoughts.

So! You've just discovered Evil Fire! Wow! What a cool effect! I know! I'll make a room/boss filled with like fifty of them and --

HOLD IT!

Guess what? Evil fires are random. Why? Because the timing on their firing rate is random. This isn't really a problem if you're got one or two fires in a room. But if you put a whole lot of them, especially at angles that surround the player, you're basically guaranteeing that the player is going to die multiple times through no fault of their own.

Evil fires are not the only "random" culprits. There are lots of things in the enemy files (like wall shooters) that should be used with restraint. A good rule of thumb is this: If you're having trouble with your own room, you should probably tone it down. You made it, after all, so you know everything about it. The player is not going to have that benefit.

But what about rooms that are just really fucking hard but have no random elements? Like IWTBG? you ask.

Well, those are better, but can still be frustrating to play, because generally you have to do them over and over and over until you get them right. The way to make these types of rooms a LOT LESS FRUSTRATING FOR THE PLAYER is to place a save point right before and right after the room. That way, the player can attempt until he gets it right without having to replay content, and once he does get it right, he doesn't have to do it again.

Oh, so I should put a save point in every room, then?

Nope. It's fine to be stingy with your save points as long as the rooms you're making are easy or medium in difficulty. Here's a good way to look at it:

Did you make this room with the idea in mind that the player would have to play it multiple times in order to learn and then surpass it? Save point before and after.

Did you make this room with the idea in mind that the player could fairly easily get through it on his first try? No save point.

You'll notice I use a lot of the enemy types in the ROBOTS file in my areas. This is because they are almost all without exception deterministic in behavior. The hoses have some SLIGHT randomness in their spread, but not enough to bother me, usually. I'd still recommend restraint in using them, however, just because they tend to be popular. Oh, and don't make a room that has two quick firing hoses supporting each other on a flat plane. It's been done already.

Anyway, to sum up; This knorpse should be about fun. Not about making people  Frocto tear his hair out. I'm going to be doing the endgame stuff, and my stuff should be the hardest stuff the player has to get through.

All that being said, don't feel like I'm trying to take control of your area. You should feel free to design what you want to.

Also, if you really want to make a hard area, feel free to do so, and then make it optional! This can be as simple as making Easy/Hard versions of your area and letting the player decide which to play. Personally, I'd love it if this knorpse had some really difficult areas for me to test myself on.

STILL UNSURE?

Have someone playtest. This is the silver bullet of bad level design. Having an outside perspective can really teach you a lot.

[Bongo Bill]

A lot of the enemies in Knytt Stories are extremely nondeterministic. Things get pretty bland if you rely on the same few predictable guys, so there's no problem in trying to mix things up.

The perspective on level design that can be observed in Mario and Metroid, amongst others, is this: not every area is a white-knuckle challenge. It's enough, for most places, to just have enough going on that the player can't fall asleep at the wheel. The places where the challenge is light? Those are great places for a few of the randomly-moving bugs that shoot spikes at random intervals, or the plants that shoot spores with random trajectories. But when you really want to test the player's skill, every bit of randomness you add increases the probability that the level might sometimes be impossible, which is just unfair. The best challenges are the ones that almost surpass the player's skill level, and the worst ones are the ones that unequivocally exceed it; impossible challenges fall into the latter category.

For any given screen, decide whether you want the player to be fighting hard to survive, or just remaining alert, and let that decision inform its final layout. "MORE DYING = MORE CHALLENGE" is no longer adequate as a principle of level design.

[Catloaf]

Based on this thread, I am going to purposely make a horrible death room or two filled to the brim with lame random enemies with very few save points.  And I will this section right before the key.
[spoiler]And alternate paths negating the need to to through the rooms entirely.[/spoiler]

[yyler]

I have discovered that it is difficult for me to even put enemies in rooms because they ruin how much I like the composition.

That's kind of why my Knytt level you guys played had a lot of running around and then sudden difficulty spike!!!! And even so, my favorite rooms from the end sequence were the ones where enemies do something cool rather than something necessarily effective--like running under the evil fire. This time it should be better.