Might I remind you that my comment was in response to your initial suggestion about making the game easier by making the traps non-lethal? That's what I have repeatedly termed "dumb easy mode" (DEM), which I consider an abomination. By varying the difficulty I was referring to a way to somewhat intelligently implement easy mode. Making the game even harder than what it is currently was never the focus of my argument. Moreover your comment about the game's pacing, level design, enemy and trap placements etc. being perfect are precisely the reasons that have me up in arms in the first place against dumbing down the game just to cater to some SoT fans who find it way too hard.Sance wrote:I'd be strongly against such a change because it would break the pacing, the level design etc. Enemy and trap placements are perfect as they are and something like let's say extending the health of guards would break the pacing because the combat is not that hard so it would just be a chore to fight enemies with more health: it would make the game harder because the time limit would be less forgiving with such a change but there are easier ways to achieve that (giving the player less time to complete the game, let's say 40 minutes).
These are indeed better suggestions than DEM. Resurrection would be much easier to implement obviously (especially given the cheat for it), but instead of placing a resurrection point in every single room I would place one or two strategically in a level depending on its length. Something like classic platformers where once the player passes a flag or similar, on dying he's resurrected at the flag position rather than at the very beginning of the level or the game itself. As for rewinds, again it needs to be limited so as not to ruin the game. Perhaps instead of 3 rewinds gifted automatically per level, there can be rewind potions instead that need to be collected by the player for future strategic use.Sance wrote:I can see a lot of ways on how the game could be made easier but they vary in complexity:
- A rewind feature: you have 3 rewinds per level for example. Guess it would need a tremendous amount of work (for example in SoT it works by the game always storing the last 8 seconds of the player's actions in the memory) but it would be a natural fit for the game with its focus on time. I can only see this happening if there is an aim for SDLPoP to support recording and replays.
- Ability to resurrect: same function as the rewind (correcting a mistake). Upon death the player gets resurrected at a specific platform in every room (a safe, solid platform of course). It would look awesome with the opening "falling to a crouch with a music tune" part.
Simply neutering traps, providing guides (I've already noted how IMO this has made Super Mario worse) or implementing invulnerability are all examples of DEM as far as I am concerned.Sance wrote:- Non-lethal traps: you don't die from a trap, you only lose two bottles of health. Should be problematic to implement and it may not even be the most ideal as you wouldn't need to solve some of the rooms (the life upgrade potion room in the second level comes to mind: you start with 3 health so a player could just waltz through the spikes, jump up and pick up the potion without suffering any kind of punishment.
- Guide: in every room an arrow shows the way to the exit.
- Multiple lives: the best option in my opinion. You have 3 lives per level (could be adjustable but 3 should be the max) and instead of dying your character starts flashing like in other classic platformers, giving you a few seconds of invulnerability.
As someone arguing against reduced complexity in general, I have no objections against any of these.Sance wrote:As for making the game harder there are hordes of options to make the game more brutal without actually breaking anything
Not a bad idea per se, but I suppose we have to keep in mind just how much we want to stray from the original PoP and create what might essentially amount to a brand new game (something you've already suggested). If the goal is to create something new entirely then there are no restrictions on sticking to any of the original's elements. We can include anything ranging from better enemy/boss AI, randomly generated levels, a scripting engine - you name it, the sky's the limit! (Well actually motivation and programming competence are the limiting factors, but let's ignore that for now while we're busy dreaming up cool stuff.Sance wrote:Honestly I'd even totally change one thing in the game: Jaffar. I don't think he's a worthy end boss: he should function as the first guard on level 8 and instead of just dying on level 12 he should behave like he does in PoP Classic: after getting to half health he teleports away and another fatass appears instead of him and then you fight Jaffar again on level 13 before getting to the Princess.
)Don't quote me out of context!Sance wrote:Let's say you add:
- the higher quality Mac graphics
- background music for the levels
- an extra "awesome" feautre like the option to choose from multiple protagonists with different appearances and in some cases different starting health (PoP1 prince, PoP2 prince, SoT prince, WW prince, 2008 prince, the princes from Mechner's comic book, Jake Gyllenhaal (:D), whatever, you get the idea)
- some of the difficulty features I mentioned.
You kidding me? It would be amazing: old fans and some new fans would play it, especially if no new Prince of Persia title is created by Ubi in the meantime. You give it some flashy title (Prince of Persia Reborn, PoP Redux, PoP Ultimate Edition, PoP Megahit Edition, Ultra PoP, Super Turbo PoP Ultimate Ultra Edition) and just count the downloads till your eyes bleed.
My objection is purely to DEM and I am absolutely willing to bet that implementing your original suggestion of simply making all traps non-lethal will do nothing to magically boost this ancient game's popularity among those SoT fans you mentioned or anyone else. Changing the game to the extent you mention above however means you've gone way past simple modification of the original and (as I have mentioned repeatedly) entered the realm of almost creating something brand new. Let me clarify once and for all - simply dumbing down the original game to make it easier for SoT fans - stupid and bad and will do no good; modifying it intelligently to introduce whole new features = possibly great (depending of course on how well it's done).Actually I don't think you understand the full ramifications of the work David has done here.Sance wrote:Actually I'm a lawyer and I know a thing or two about copyright law: in my opinion reverse-engineering is not illegal because it comes from intricately studying the program it is based on and on top of that there is no source code to be stolen in this case.
The point is that he didn't simply observe how PoP functions and perform a clean room implementation of a clone that functions as similarly as possible to the original. He actually disassembled the original machine code from the EXE and converted it back into a more or less accurate C language approximation of how the original source looked like. I am not a lawyer myself and might be wrong of course, but I doubt you'd be able to defend this given existing laws.David wrote:Remember that SDLPoP is based on the disassembly of the DOS version.
So it copies more than just "functionality, programming languages and data formats".
The linked article does not say anything about disassembling.
This does seem possible but a lawyer specializing in IP law (what's your area of focus BTW?) ought to be consulted before attempting to sell anything. Of course we're a long, long way from having anything worth selling, but it's something that definitely has to be clarified first if people ever get serious about going down this path. Let's also not forget the variance in IP laws around the world.Sance wrote:I don't think that a game has to remain free if the two entities (SDLPoP and the content of the game ~ the game) are separate and SDLPoP itself is free.
Very limited rewind and resurrection abilities (that moreover have to be acquired, and not too many of both in the same level) can be implemented (also see above) but a guide that tells the player every step of the way where to go or even how to circumvent traps/enemies would again be DEM in action.Norbert wrote:as SDLPoP already allows for recording/replaying, a rewind feature certainly seems like a possiblity. A guide option sounds useful too; not too difficult to implement.
I find these statements somewhat contradictory. Clearly not being able to get past level 3 wasn't a big enough turn-off for you that you simply gave up on the game in disgust because you felt it was simply unbeatable. As I've said, on the "unbeatability scale" I doubt I'd place PoP even in the top half, but apparently gamers nowadays do lack the patience to "push through" and instead simply give up on PoP because they find it too hard.Norbert wrote:yes, an optional easy mode could expand the audience and might encourage repeated play-throughs. As a kid I don't think I could get past level 3 without using cheats.
Anyway, I'm pretty much done arguing over this point. DEM is crap IMO, would devalue the game and result in next to no new players. Proper implementation of difficulty modes and various new features is a long-term proposition that OTOH takes the game entirely in a new direction. Provided it's done well I see nothing wrong with that, but we really need to see whether any of the actual devs even care enough to go down this road. So, David, Falcury & co - since you are the guys doing all the hard work while we're just sitting back here arguing or building castles in the air - where do you see SDLPoP down the line? What's the end game (pun fully intended!)?
