The Great Bridge of Riven

[Andross]

Everyone knows which bridge I'm talking about I'm sure, but for the 2 that don't, I mean the one from boiler island to temple island. The one that looks about 1 1/2km long. In the original game you get across it in about 2 or 3 clicks, but obviously that isn't going to be an option here. What are you going to do (if there's anything you can do), to make it more manageable to cross in real time? Otherwise, you'll have everyone swapping to Node mode to get across and then swapping back at the end?

[zib_redlektab]

Haha, this has been a subject of a lot of discussion for us in the past, and long story short is that we won't really have an answer until we actually get to this area.

That said - we hope to have a "zip" mode of sorts in our final product, and this would be an ideal place to use it. For people who want to take it slow and enjoy the view, you can walk across at your own pace (or run). When it's your fifth time across the bridge, and you really just want to get to the end, our hope is that you'll simply be able to click across, as you did in the original.

There are some other ideas that we've come up with for making areas like this more bearable. Another such area is the pipe the player crawls through on boiler island - this involves a few clicks in complete (or nearly complete) darkness. Fine in a point-and-click, but in realtime we're afraid the player might actually get lost in the darkness. It's issues like this that keep us up at night.

Literally, I mean- we stay up all night debating things like this.

[Mozalbete]

I think the most fun solution would be a "turbo" mode just there, so that pressing a button you go really fast.

[Andross]

There are some other ideas that we've come up with for making areas like this more bearable. Another such area is the pipe the player crawls through on boiler island - this involves a few clicks in complete (or nearly complete) darkness. Fine in a point-and-click, but in realtime we're afraid the player might actually get lost in the darkness. It's issues like this that keep us up at night

What about if when you entered the pipe (and the moiety caves as well), you transfer onto a track, that as long as you hold the forward button you move along that, regardless of where you move the mouse? So then you still "feel" like you're in control, but you're actually being guided along a set path.

[opspe]

Myst IV took an interesting approach to this: pre-rendered full video sequences. For the bridge, it would have to be either running or some sort of walking with sped-up time.

Triggering it wouldn't be as easy as, say, the lumber cart. Maybe it could be area-activated... My idea would be something like a venus fly trap: on either end, there are two adjacent trigger areas. When the player passes from the "normal world" to the first area, it starts a timer (a few seconds, not displayed on the HUD or anything), and if the player passes into the second area before the timer expires, it triggers the running sequence.

A similar thing could be done with the pipe.

[Andross]

Actually that would be even easier in real time.

Thing is though, that would be a long time to be out of control of your character. Its a very long pipe! And for a lot of it in pitch black, you wouldn't know what was happening. Very frustrating for your character.

Maybe another option would be for the entrance to the pipe to be a portal to another smaller pipe that in another dimension of sorts, which would be a lot shorter go navigate through. When you got near the end you'd go through another portal and be back in the realRIVEN (pardon the pun) again!

That doesn't work for the great bridge though.

[jameverywhere]

For the pipe, couldn't you just decrease the area of total darkness that you have to travel through? If you make more of the pipe visible to the player, and decrease the darkened area to just "a few clicks" worth of time pressing the forward arrow or whatever is guiding you, wouldn't that still evoke the same feeling in the game without leaving you in darkness for forever?

[Yali]

Why can't it be like in Alien Isolation where you crawl through narrow ventilation shafts and the movement is awesome?

[tomysshadow]

I know that this is a pretty old thread, but I wanted to give my suggestion for how the Great Bridge of Riven should work in realtime 3D by using other pre-rendered games as evidence.
http://youtu.be/3N9LzUbWnqE

[nick]

Hey! I remember Schism! Never finished it though.

Thanks for making that video. You raise a lot of good points, and you do echo some similar suggestions that have been made during our IRC discussions. Although the issue is still mostly undecided (and probably will remain so until we reach those areas and do some playtesting) I figured I'd give my 2 cents.

I've always been on the side of avoiding taking (total) control away from the player unless absolutely necessary. I think it harms immersion to put them 'on rails', and if possible I always vote to let the player retain full control within context. I've argued this case when we were working on our ladder system and debating fully animated vs. player controlled, and I feel the same way here. Granted, the great bridge and similar areas are just too long for a walk/run option (even a sprint), but I feel that a roller-coaster style animation like in Schism could be equally long and as boring. I believe you touch upon the solution in your video when you talk about combining techniques and using a fade (like in the darkness of the tunnel).

This subject is one of the things we've debated amongst ourselves that still hasn't received a definitive solution. We do have several designs written up for how it could be done, but we really just need to make a few prototypes and see what works. We'll be sure to share the results with you guys.

Thanks for your feedback!