Mini-games anyone?

ExtremeDrinker · Post by **ExtremeDrinker** » Mon Oct 13, 2003 3:07 am

Maybe there could be a Day of the Tentacle game for the Pipboy where you can go to that computer and play Maniac Mansion?

Joking aside, I think the Gambling/Casino style games should have a mini-game aspect to them...I like that idea.

Rock/Paper/Scissors would really kick ass, though...Not sure where that would be used, but I think it would be pretty friggin cool.

Ernesto · Post by **Ernesto** » Mon Oct 13, 2003 3:09 am

I think I speak for every farmer when I say Brama milking.

On a serious note, it would be fine by me if there was a Bramin herding mini game. All you do is make sure they get in a pen/stay in the pen. It could work.

The Wasteland idea was brilliant. Perhaps you played a series of battles Wasteland/Bard's Tale style?

Off topic, thank God Amer is gone. If that was the way I typed, I would have kicked myself in my ass.

OnTheBounce · Post by **OnTheBounce** » Wed Oct 15, 2003 12:59 am

Doyle wrote:The betting at Becky's in Fallout 2 didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I would prefer the purely skill-based betting that was found in the first game and in other areas in FO2. In fact, I think of Becky's Casino as an example of what happens when they try to add a 'mini-game' element to gambling while retaining the skill-based nature. Maybe it's just because I don't know the rules of the game they were playing, but I found it somewhat confusing...

Exactly.

The whole idea is to keep it abstracted, so that the character and not the player is the one playing the game. It really doesn't matter in the context of the game exactly what the character is doing, whether they are playing Poker, Roulette, Black Jack or Faro ("Bucking the Tiger") for that matter. Each type of game has certain things that an experienced gambler can do to beat the pants off of a less experienced gambler and that's what's considered to be happening. The player him/herself doesn't need to know all of these things, and simply using a skill check weighted for difficulty strikes me as absurd, since the experienced Roulette player is manipulating red/black odd/even bets and maybe a few here and there on number ranges or single numbers, not simply staking everything on a single number bet, then allowing "skill" (or "will", if you've seen Run Lola, Run) to win the day, or at least the bet.

If people want to play gambling games there are myriads and myriads of casino games out there. Why not play one or all of them rather than trying to get the devs to import them into FO3?

Now, some things can still be done to flesh out Gambling -- although I think this may be a moot point, since IIRC JES has said that Gambling is being dropped. For instance, you could have the option to cheat while you are playing. You could choose to add a certain bonus to your skill check, more or less depending on how much you wanted to risk being caught. If you were caught cheating the very least that would happen is that you would have to return your winnings and not be allowed to gamble there any more, while in some places guards would go for their weapons (perhaps you'd be "next on the menu" in certain places...).

Cheers,

OTB

requiem_for_a_starfury · Wed Oct 15, 2003 1:12 am

All I had in mind was a simple animation, either of blackjack if you're in a casino or rock/paper/scissors if you want to gamble with someone in the wastelands. You would only be able to choose the amount to bet, or to stop gambling, the player would actually play the game and you would just watch the animation but if gambling is being dropped it's a moot point anyway.

Franz Schubert · Post by **Franz Schubert** » Wed Oct 15, 2003 8:02 am

I think mini-games suck. They never amount to anything more than a time-waster, and I don't want a time waster in Fallout.

ExtremeDrinker · Post by **ExtremeDrinker** » Wed Oct 15, 2003 8:49 pm

Does that mean no Special Encounters, either? What about those sidequests that just give you a little Karma and have no real point to the main quest?

Franz Schubert · Post by **Franz Schubert** » Wed Oct 15, 2003 11:14 pm

No those are amusing, their purpose is to amuse, while not distracting from the game and not disrupting the flow of the game.

With minigames, developers are like, "hmmm, let's put in a bunch of minigames in case people don't like the real game very much"

atoga · Post by **atoga** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 3:00 am

Well, what's your definition of a minigame? You could say dialogue is a minigame, but that's an important part of Fallout. Personally I think a lot of this stuff adds atmosphere. If you want to get distracted by the details, nothing should stop you.

Franz Schubert · Post by **Franz Schubert** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:19 am

Even if you want to argue semantics, dialogue is not a minigame. And about adding atmosphere, I've never seen it done, or even attempted.

atoga · Post by **atoga** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 9:06 pm

Compared to most other CRPGs, dialogue is a minigame consdiering the depth of it and the complexity of different skills used (deception, persuasion, barter, different stat rolls, presence, etc.) It's pretty 'deep'.

As for atmosphere being added, one example of that might be making items in Fallout. Pretty much everything you could need in the game could be bought, but going around collecting parts/schematics and building them adds a lot of complexity and is perfect for the junk-ridden wastelands of Fallout.