Throughout this project, I've had to make design choices that I believe should be eloborated on in more detail. Its one thing remastering a game, and a totally different one to remake it.
Silent Hill uses a control scheme dubbed "tank controls" which at the time was very common for this genre of game and many others followed suit like: Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, Parasite Eve etc. Even other massively popular games not in the horror genre used them too, like Tomb Raider for example!
This is ultimately down to hardware limitations as analog sticks wern't fully introduced during this generation of gaming.
Because of this, the design of most games had to follow basic movement input and designers had to come up with creative ways to use the most out of this in more advanced open worlds.
Even through next iterations of hardware, some of these franchises still used the same control style, simply because players had grownup accustomed to this input and it worked well for this genre.
In the industry today, this control scheme has ultimately been replaced with other methods, since control is much easier to implement in a variatey of ways. Tank controls are still in use, but mostly in niche titles, aimed purpsefully at recreating this type on control.
Other franchises in the horror genre have migrated to other control schemes such as the very popular "over the shoulder", some have even taken this further by introducing virtual reality as a method of control.
Silent Hill in particular in the later releases have changed to a more standard 360 movement model, allowing direct movement in any direction at the push of a button / stick. The latest in the series was going to use VR as mentioned above but was ultimetly cancelled.
So that leaves this project. What direction should the control scheme go? Should it be left alone to wholefully recapture the uniqueness of the original game? Or, should it lean more towards the other titles later in the franchise and allow a more modern system?
Ideally both! However, due to time this won't happen. I would personally have had the option for both input types. Instead I decided to tackle this problem a different way...
Seeing how this is a remake, players new and old would both expect everything to be modernised; visuals, gameplay, controls etc. Younger players whom have never experienced older generation of consoles would immediately expect the game to control like any other modern title using 360 degree movement. Even older players to some degree would expect this new type of movement seeing how they would be accustomed to playing in this style for generations now.
This then brings to question the authenticity of the project, in regards to nostalgia, people who have played the original will expect to have the tradational controls too.
Balancing these arguements is tricky.
After a lot of testing and being a fan of both control schemes I believe I've designed a good compromise of the two.
Immediately I would rather the control scheme be similar to what the majority are use to: 360 degree movement. Now, Silent Hill encapsulates two styles of the tank control movement, the first being static controls for fixed cameras and the other 3D for the more open areas of the town.
With this in mind I've made it so that the player can move in any direction and the camera follow / orbit as required, with additional control to orbit the camera manually. This is what a modern title would play like, additionally I've made the camera 'chase' the player like it did in the original. So when the player moves forward, the camera is pulled, but if they move left or right the camera is stationary until the player moves in a direction again. On top of this, the original had a look-offset, meaning that the camera is always looking a foot infront of the player direction, I've also included this.
So the open area camera is modernised, yet still has behaviours reminiscent of the original.
The other movement style with fixed cameras is also a bit different. Originally because the player moves in a set world-direction, they could run through camera triggers seemlessly and get through sections fast.
To replicate this, I've still included the newer 360 movement, so the player can move relative to any camera, allowing easy navigation. Although going through a camera trigger would cause a switch in controls since "relative" controls are just that, relative to each individual camera. So what is up in one scene might not be up in another.
A way around this, whilst still mimicing tank controls is to delay any realtive control update. This means that the player can run through any number of triggers and the control will be the same, meaning they can keep on going without interuption. If and when the player no long wishes to pursue their current trajectory and the player stops, then any new movement is now relative to the current camera and the process can begin again.
I think this is a nice way to modernise the traditional tank control scheme. While it may sound complex and is hard to describe, playing it feels right.
So in the end I beleive I've solved this issue, I ideally would have liked an option for both inputs, but since this is a limited vertical slice it doesn't seem warranted.
No comments:
Post a Comment