My favorite one is that talking to ship captains in Arcanum transports you to your destination without checking if you are near a boat. So you can charm a captain, bring them to the Void, and use them as a way to teleport back lol.
I had no idea about this exploit! And it's a perfect example of what I was talking about, since this is a scripted event. There were no checks in the script, and the code to teleport the party assumed that the caller made sure it was OK to do so. Still...that's fun. I like it.
@@Gadzinisko Yep, I don't remember the exact details, but this should work with all NPCs that can transport you to a different location (ship captains, train conductors, certain guards, etc.). The only two caveats I can think of in regards to trains specifically is that you can't board a train if your magick aptitude is too high and that boarding a train involves talking to two separate NPCs.
The "games are toys" take is so true. Years ago I would play Gothic (great RPG) with my friends, and we would just make up scenarios in the game, make our own "quests" or create some arbitrary challenges for us
@@ashtraycommsllcI think that people using toys in a derogatory way need to grow up. Everybody likes toys. For big boys and girls sometimes our toys look like classic cars or a designer shoe collection. Sometimes for parents toys are a few specialist tools that live in the shed and allow us to practice our hobby. A basketball or a football is a toy, it doesn't stop being a toy when you grow up. My mum works in aged care and lots of the residents are much happier when they have their dolls or stuffed cats or dogs. People like toys, toys are good. People who think you can get too old for toys are simply and obviously wrong. My gaming PC is one of my favourite toys, most of what it does it only does because I want it to and it's fun. Sure I can open spreadsheets on there, but I wouldn't have spent the money if it wasn't a toy too. There's definitely a difference between a game and a toy. The main one being that games have rules. We often call games with few rules and interpretative/open ended play styles a sandbox but I think toy is an equally apt description. Minecraft, back in Alpha when all you could do was pick up blocks and put them back down was a great example of a toy rather than a game. There was no way to win or lose, just things to play with. Some people grow out of games since they take a lot of time and by definition they don't matter to the outside world, but everybody has toys. Edited for spelling and typos.
One of my favorites from Fallout is how you can barter with your companions while they are your companions. This allows you to 'sell' them an unlimited amount of loot. Thereby negating completely any concerns over carry weight.
One of my favorite things to do with games was to find ways to play them wrong. It's very satisfying to find an advantage or bug this way, and it gives you a little glimpse into their inner workings, like a kid who breaks apart a toy with a hammer. You get this insight while also having fun doing something strange or unexpected. It's like finding patterns in a game's AI and using it against them. In GTA Vice City I figured out a way to get to the other side of the island before unlocking it, and stocked up on the better guns and gear, which made playing the first half of the game a total breeze. Sometimes going through a weird hoop to cheese part of the game becomes the challenge itself. Some people like placing lost money on the middle of The Monopoly board, so that whoever lands on Free Parking gets it. It's not in the rules. Games are games, and sometimes we get to decide how the games pieces are used.
I dont know if this was a bug or on purpose, but in Fallout 1 you could barter with anyone who you could enter dialog with, and the barter window allowed you to unload a gun. Since the ammo was inexpensive I would go around an area, trade whatever junk I had for everyone's ammo, sometimes even trade them incompatible ammo for their ammo, and then attack the now completely disarmed area.
Simply amazing, thankyou so very much! Here's another one; When to cut and when to polish, what to look out for when a feature won't make the "cut" /get past the finish line. Cheers!
Concerning Fallout 2 the quest to kill Wesley (I think that was his name) can get chaoticaly evil in sooo many ways that makes it one of the most interesting ones for me. Like you said, you COULD plant explosives on his child making him a walkin IED, but since normal and active packs of explosives share the same icon, more than often I ended up planting the non-active dinamite into the child and hearing myself blew up out of a sudden with a giant qustion mark over my head, like "how did that happen?." Also for the sake of experimentation I gave the kid (or planted, I don't remember) a fully loaded Desert Eagle, waited for some time and saw the child shot his own father by accident. As for Arcanum, there is an open labyrint north-west of Dernholm with an "unidentified" sword inside a walled spot in wich you cant get into. By using the "travel-trick" you can (after a 100 luck check) get inside and retrieve it, and since that area is recognized as an "exterior zone" you can just resume your traveling without any issue.
Just wanted to say first. I really enjoy watching these and how enthusiastic you are. Secondly, I love your take on how players play around with the games as toys. What is your feeling with online or multiplayer games though? Do you feel those overlooked features should stay or be addressed as a priority?
Multiplayer exploits are different, especially since it affects other players, especially if it can cause griefing, but even if it just means out-leveling them. Those exploits usually need to be fixed.
In Baldur's Gate 3 you can kind of exploit things like in The Outer Worlds but in this case relating to pickpocketing. If you pickpccket in BG3, you often get caught and can get sent to jail. However, if you pickpocket and run away fast enough and transition to camp, you can override getting caught.
"Games are toys" for real when I was a kid I would play games that gave me just enough mental sandbox as just that, Lego Star Wars or Star Wars Battlefront games were vessels for whatever storyline I wanted.
An amazing bug was strafe jump (circle jump) in original Quake. "Strafe-jumping was a result of a bug in the code base of the 1996 first-person shooter video game Quake. In Quake's sequels it was decided to be kept intact,[4] as it had become a standard technique used by players." - Wikipedia on Strafing (video games). They kept it in and improved it with each version. Quake 3 CPM is my favorite. People who master it are basically like flying super humans and people who can't do it are like sitting ducks.
most of Quakes physics bugs became mainstream fps features partially because they were inherited by games that used quake code ramp jumping, rocket/grenade jumping, surfing, bunnyhopping and more I’m not super into Quake 3 stuff like defrag. what’s the difference for the different physics??
I think the concept Tim was talking about in this video is called "Emergent gameplay". You've got intentional emergence and unintentional emergence. Intentional emergence is what Tim meant when he talked about mechanics being systemic.
My favorite picpocket fun in Arcanum was planting cursed items on NPCs and watching the effects occur. Since cursed items are magic items, they were almost always more valuable than what the NPC had, so they'd equip them. I assassinated someone once by planting a cursed gauntlet with poison DoT of 1/sec, and watching them slowly succumb to it. I also planted cursed weapons to give myself an edge in combat against someone i normally couldnt take.
Dawg that was literally one of my favorite things in fallout. I honestly clicked this for background but that's crazy how I found out how grenades pocketing was put in a game
I've read that was a karma free way of getting rid of the pickpockets in Fallout 2 as well. Empty your pockets except for a ticking bomb, and walk past them.
👋Fun fact. The Grand Theft Auto series began life as a racing game.🤯 A bug caused cop cars to recklessly crash into the player car constantly, which led the developers to explore that idea... GTA as we know it today was born!
It's also important that the designer recognize that players are having fun. I used to be a wow-addict, but Blizzard saved me when they removed downranking spells. I've never heard anyone complained about that mechanic. Everyone I knew thought it was a fun mechanic to tinker with. Then Blizzard removed it because it gave dedicated players who master that trick an edge that is difficult to "balance" the game over. That's when I knew the game had peaked.
I like in civilization revolution where if you move a settler 2 tiles and the final tile you land on happens to have another unit, then you can settle immediately on the turn. This happens to be a bug, but it changes the dynamic of the game where you can plan out your units 2 spaces away from each other and then chain settle cities by rushing settlers if you have enough gold. It makes civ rev feel considerably faster paced than it should be and I kind of like it.
Loved them too. Elder Lions was right to leave the Path of BOS a Bit. Maxson from FO4 is Just cold. Just as His Brotherhood. Cold as their Steel. Why Not do both If you are so mighty? Why Not, follows your Mission AND protect the People.
Quest Item example reminds me of how Valve's source engine has code to deal with buggy fog on a case by case basis for a subset of HL2 maps, even though the games they were making with it a decade later had nothing to do with it. That switch statement is still sitting there doing NOP for no other reason than maintaining a 20 year old last-minute fix. So the exact opposite and inverse of what you are describing LOL.
As a kid I would put dynamite on shopkeepers, put a 20min fuse and go travel the world map until I hear a "ding" then go back. The bomb would go off and I wouldn't be blamed for it. You could then take everything for free off the corpse (well, the floor in F1) or shelves depending on the shop. I would also plant like 5+ dynamites on super mutants when I was too low level to get clear of them. IIRC if someone carrying explosives got caught in an explosion it could trigger a chain reaction? I remember planting like 99 explosives on a boss and shooting a rocket at it and then it was like waiting 15 minutes as each explosive blew up in sequence, slowly pushing the guy away off-screen until he died... couldn't loot it 😩 I also remember giving SMGs to NPCs so they'd burst all their allies to death. Edit: I think it wasn't in fallout but the older scrolls (morrowind and oblivion) where I would pickpocket people and put like 500 pounds of crap in their pocket, overburdening them and making them unable to move, making them extremy easy targets.
Oh! I just remembered another one. In some parts of the game, during dialogs, someone would bring you somewhere (as a prisoner for exemple, or when the cultist take you the church basement's secret lab entrance) there would be a tag to make time move forward a couple minutes. If you planted an explosive before the conversation, it would blow up right after the screen transition, just before (or at the same time as) the new dialog begins. Could make really funny situations, depending on where the npcs/players are spawned at the time of the transition.
I discovered that arcanum world map exploit my first time playing the game. I was sick of walking to the wise woman in tarant for identification, every time went back to tarant I would try to land on her out of the world map. I think I only succeeded once or twice in the whole playthrough, it is a tough trick to pull off
Another way to think about systemic design is that the code which performs the action should decide if the action is possible (or alter how the action is performed). So if you have code that drops items, then that code should decide (based on item properties) if the item should be droppable. Then reserve scripts for extreme edge cases, such as the Wabbajack from Elder Scrolls (a staff with a very unique effect that no other items possess). Rephrased this way, it becomes very close to standard Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) design, where functions are designed as black boxes which can't be altered from the outside. With game design, you have to be more loose about that definition, but it's still worth investigating if you're new to game design.
Thanx for the bug. Steal and pockpicking was the most funnny campagne later of Fallout tactics. Was allways a realy cool feature and i love ur thoughts about imbalance.
I remember you mentioning you might respond to questions. I remember that there was a game (Lionheart) that used the Fallout SPECIAL system but were you ever approached about a licensing the skill and progression system from Arcanum?
Hi Tim, I have been loving this series, as a huge Fallout fan and an aspiring game developer it's been super useful. I also really resonated with your video on being a gay game developer. I'd like to ask about the process of creating queer representation in games as well as how attitudes have changed in the industry over time.
Hi Tim! I was listening to your appearance on the Purpose Made podcast and you had mentioned you wish you were able to do a MMORPG. I was hoping you would be able to discuss it a little more. I know you said you weren't really sure what you would do with one but i would love to hear about the ideas that you do have and your thought on MMORPGs as a whole.
My favourite extreme example of this phenomenon has to be the Korean Third Person Shooter Gunz:The Duel. Originally a pretty medicore game in pretty much all aspects. Until a few players realized pretty much every action could be animation cancelled, leading players to play the game in a way that the developers couldn't never imagined was possible. In practice? The game from a very standard TPS with rolls/wallrun/jumps and a dash. But what can you do with a dash if all your weapon swaps and attacks can be cancelled? Well, a lot : th-cam.com/video/svyxbk9a-zg/w-d-xo.html And yes, this is as damaging to your wrist as you think it is.
Do you think players are less creative nowadays than in the 80's & 90's when it comes to problem solving? You mentioned the "Shady Sands Shuffle" (when you plant a live grenade in an NPC's inventory) but I don't think I would have ever think of this solution for a quest. Also having quest markers and visual aids in game reduces the amount you have to read and piece together subtle clues (like the heart condition of one of the crime bosses in F2).
Hey Tim, I've always been massively inspired by your games, and I was wondering what your thoughts are on exposing things like Derrived Statistics to players, and how much information is enough versus how much is too little. In Fallout, you're just sort of vaguely told that increasing your stats with guns, but it doesn't show raw percentages or formulas and it effects a bunch of stuff under the hood that is never shown to the player in-game. In the Outer Worlds however, every point you add to your gun skill shows exactly how much more damaging and accurate you're going to be with that weapon. The Outer Worlds approach is nice because it gives the player a better feel for how they're spending their skill points, but I feel like older games didn't do this as much. Was this a technical limitation? Was it a choice not to reveal the information to the player to encourage experimentation? maybe it wasn't seen as necesarry? I guess what I'm trying to ask is how much of derrived statistics should be visible for players, when is it too much and should we keep some stats hidden, or show everything?
I'm guilty of the Edgewater power plant reset, but haven't used it in the game since, mostly because I'm more built to handle tough areas and don't have to rely on stealth as much. Except the Monarch caves, I gtfo'd from there XD Coincidentally I'm having a similar experience to Cyberpunk 2077 on Hard, starting with stealth but ending as a powerhouse, as I am on OW (first playthrough on Supernova). Worth saying I really, really liked Cp77 so OW's been a treat!
CP2077 is poorly balanced towards the end. It is hard to not become a powerhouse regardless of the build (I've tried stealth, melee only, no crafting - still overpowered AF). Hence playthroughs like "clearing Arasaka tower with a shovel".
Please expand Outer Worlds. The game sapce is amazing and the setting/characters are great but we need more openness/freedom. Game has so much potential.
In Arcanum I remember there was a ring (I think?) that makes wearer invisible but constantly deals a lot of damage to wearer. I don't remember how exactly it was possible to get it. I think it was accessible in a location you can randomly stumble upon or from coordinates that are given as a rumor. So anyway. NPCs in Arcanum like to pick up items that are dropped on the ground and wear them. This ring was the best tool to kill off NPCs without anyone suspecting anything.
Well you don't need to explain the bugs, everyone should accept that if a bug happens it's QAs fault - they should've tested it, should've caught it... --- sorry, ofc it's ironic comment, but I can never resist the beautify of this approach, devs are never to blame
Was the inventory bug/feature example from Fallout tied to the decision with how party inventory was resolved? I imagine if you guys had more time you'd have a more robust companion inventory UI/Paper Doll stuff.
I believe this is absolutely true when it comes to singleplayer games, but become highly undesirable in multiplayer games. Players are very likely to get an unearned feeling of "being smarter" by abusing bugs - and that's fine for singleplayer, they felt like they cheated the system - but in multiplayer it quickly leads to elitism.
Do you think games coming out under shorter deadlines means only the best things get put into the game so it's a better product in the end or do you think it is always better for them to have huge development cycles like how Bethesda seems to take over half a decade to make one fallout game/elder scrolls game etc
Hey, Tim, I have a question about bugs. I think a lot of people are of the opinion that developers release unfinished games nowadays, because they can just fix them later. How do you think post-launch updates have impacted game development?
I'm obviously not Tim, but IIRC even Fallout 1 had patches post release. I think gamers would unanimously agree that the fact that there is no longer an expectation that a game will be mostly functional at release is a detriment across the board. I think that it's clear that since so many games like Fallout were able to use post launch patches to fix bugs but also had great playable games on day 1 means that the technology isn't the issue, it's the market. People should demand refunds every time a game is broken on day one, but they don't. They wait for 6-12 months and then start complaining long after everyone has already bought the broken product and the developers make off with the cash every single time. It's great that a small team can use their customers as QA when releasing titles as "Early Access" Alphas and Betas, but it's also very easy for developers to take advantage of people's trust. Personally, I've paid for that many games that seem now as though they're never going to be completed that I'm done giving people chances. If the finished product is good I'll buy it but I'm not going to pay for something before it's done anymore. Minecraft really blew me and many others away. When I paid $10 for it, it was literally a building block simulator. No mining, mobs or crafting. They're still releasing updates to that game, and it could be considered "finished" at any point after the official release. Unfortunately, many other Devs saw that success and decided 'i don't even need to make the game, I can just sell empty promises' and now that business model is kind of busted.
Yeah I did hear Tim talk about the Fallout 1 patch which removes the waterchip time limit etc., but I thought of this as something which was a lot rarer with early games. I didn't really consider whether releasing 'unfinished' was a product of people just growing accustomed to it as opposed to updates being more readily available. You're probably right, the main reason why we see more unfinished games nowadays is due to player expectation instead of the readiness for easy patching. I think the live-update content releases are an interesting aspect of this too, like you bring up with Minecraft. I am an avid Path of Exile addict and I love that game to death. Every 4 months or so they release massive content limited to that specific league. However, in the first week or so the new content is often broken or unbalanced. So even with developers that aren't all empty promises and have good intentions, I think we still suffer from games being more unfinished. @@SineN0mine3
Hi Cain, would you be interested in Let's Playing any of the main Fallout games? 1, 2, 3, NV, 4, 76. Many of us would love to watch you stream, and I'm curious about your thoughts on Bethesda's entries. Also, if you do play 76, there would be a ton of people wanting to meet you and help you learn how to play, and do fun activities like show you around the world and build a CAMP.
All the little games I’m working on now aren’t RPGs. I’ve got a space combat sim, a dice and card game, and a 3D procedural dungeon generator…which could probably be used in an RPG.
Without actually watching the video. No Man Sky has a bug that allowed to... well, i will be cryptic a little bit... fly straight ahead after punching the air. It was fixed at one point. But then put back in place. Just saying.
Alternate video title: origin of the exploding pants. Glad you left that exploit in as it made me explore different builds when one of my buddies told me about it
My favorite example of these is that in the original Team Fortress mod for Quake, all damage caused knockback and rockets caused self-damage, leading people to figure out a way to optimize self-knockback and discover rocket jumping. When Valve made Team Fortress 2, they implemented rocket jumping as an intended mechanic with the soldier class balanced around it and weapons specifically referencing it
Speaking about exploding children. Fallout was quite famous for its brutality and it was quite discussed case when they made children immortal in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I don't want to ask you about your opinion on that, but ethics in video games culture - that is quite big and interesting topic. What is violence in games and why certain acts of violence are perceived as something normal and others not? Or another question: even though gaming medium grants an action to the player, all ethical choices inherently biased by game design: usually being good, from creators perspective, is more rewarded then being evil. So can and should there be unbiased games that at least try to give gamer true ethical freedom? And can game designer add some unethical, evil choices to the game, without punishing the player with consequences?
When I planted explosives on someone in Fallout 1, I always imagined it being like LoonyToons and my character just casually sticking it in the back of the person's waistband. The ability to do that provides me so very much entertainment.
Complexity in anything just adds more points of failure, if you have really complex questchains and loads of things that can go wrong, it's just logical that there will be more problems. As such I am also much more lenient with, especially crpgs, complex games, I demand a much more robust experience from say, call of duty, than I do from baldurs gate 3 for example.
hey tim, im really enjoying the videos you have been making. ive always loved game dev and have wanted to work in the field of game dev, but i am currently working an entry level data analyst position for an ecommerce site. do you have any insight or experience with pivoting your career? i don't have much time at my current job, but i dont know if this is exactly what i want to do. thank you for sharing your stories and posting these videos
I really like my games to tell a story so while I see the reverse pick pocketing as a emergent gameplay the "clearing the combat flag" feels more like a bug to me. Narratively it makes sense to plant a live grenade in someone's pants, but not to enter and leave a place until people forget that they're mad at you.
Hello Tim. Would you like to answer may Question? How did you think about VaultBoy and his Origin? I Like the Fallout TvShow very much. But. Some stuff made me think "Yes... but could have been better." As for example the Council of VaultTec were they Decide tge what, how and why. And Coop as the Vault Boy. I mean it is okay. Nothing to get mad about. But it doesnt Taste the Way your Fallout and Fallout 2 or even 3 did. My Favorite list is. Fallout 1 then 2 then New Vegas and then Fallout 3. Fallout 4 is okay but.. yeah..
Ha that's really funny. I remember putting grenades in people's pockets in fallout. I also used to put stacks of poison in people's inventory in Skyrim which has a similar effect. I used to do that drop in trick in Arcanum as well funny enough 😅.
"Games are toys." Is that really your take, Tim? That they're toys and nothing but toys? Honestly, that'd be a great way for the industry at large to try and absolve itself of any and all responsibility toward the public, which I don't gather you do yourself. You've already done a talk on video games as art (or art in video games, as the case may be), so I hope you'll consider expounding upon what you mean by "games are toys". Only some games are toys from my perspective, namely games that don't require the player to think at all and are purely intended as a "fun" distraction, e.g. the arcade games of our flaming youth. (Too funny that when I mentioned going to the arcade upon a family member's visit, she went "{GASP!} You visit the penny arcade?!" lol Reminds me of Todd Howard's remark about the video game development companies being stuck in a tent with pornographers at a show in the early days of game development.
Ah yes the ol Shady Sands Shuffle I love when bugs become features the story behind them is usually interesting like how the reason the Spy in Team Fortress 2 exists was because of a bug in the original that made you look like a member of the other team but you still had the ability to kill them
Did you play dwarf fortress and/or rimworld, the absolute kings of games with numerous mechanics interacting in an unexpected way (and bug becoming feature like loss by the lost of framerate of "catplosion" for instance"? If not, you should absolutely.
Hey Tim! I was wondering if you were still in control of fallouts story today what would of have done differently and where would like it to be in the future. Hope you have a great day!
I think they never created a proper gear trading system with your party members, but they just made sure they didn't react to getting their stuff stolen?
PLanting explosive on your ally in Fallout 1 was the only way to remove blocked way. Made it too many times. Ppanting explosives onto children and other in Fallout 2 is a true classic, but for other reasons...
My favorite one is that talking to ship captains in Arcanum transports you to your destination without checking if you are near a boat. So you can charm a captain, bring them to the Void, and use them as a way to teleport back lol.
I had no idea about this exploit! And it's a perfect example of what I was talking about, since this is a scripted event. There were no checks in the script, and the code to teleport the party assumed that the caller made sure it was OK to do so.
Still...that's fun. I like it.
That's... actually amazing.
Does that work with train cashier too?
Haha didnt know that
@@Gadzinisko Yep, I don't remember the exact details, but this should work with all NPCs that can transport you to a different location (ship captains, train conductors, certain guards, etc.). The only two caveats I can think of in regards to trains specifically is that you can't board a train if your magick aptitude is too high and that boarding a train involves talking to two separate NPCs.
i love how the reverse pickpocket bug has become a staple feature in modern RPGs lol
Minus Fallout (series) I cant think of any that have it, mind saying ones you saw it in?
@@ValdVincent It's in every Bethesda game.
@@ZiddersRooFurry Can you name a time it was useful in one?
@@ValdVincent Killing Present Richardson without alerting the rest of the Enclave base. Plenty of other ocassions similar to it
@@ashtraycommsllcI thought you could reverse pick pocket in Daggerfall? It is an awfully long time since I've played it so I could be wrong.
The "games are toys" take is so true. Years ago I would play Gothic (great RPG) with my friends, and we would just make up scenarios in the game, make our own "quests" or create some arbitrary challenges for us
@@ashtraycommsllcI think that people using toys in a derogatory way need to grow up. Everybody likes toys. For big boys and girls sometimes our toys look like classic cars or a designer shoe collection. Sometimes for parents toys are a few specialist tools that live in the shed and allow us to practice our hobby.
A basketball or a football is a toy, it doesn't stop being a toy when you grow up.
My mum works in aged care and lots of the residents are much happier when they have their dolls or stuffed cats or dogs.
People like toys, toys are good. People who think you can get too old for toys are simply and obviously wrong.
My gaming PC is one of my favourite toys, most of what it does it only does because I want it to and it's fun. Sure I can open spreadsheets on there, but I wouldn't have spent the money if it wasn't a toy too.
There's definitely a difference between a game and a toy. The main one being that games have rules. We often call games with few rules and interpretative/open ended play styles a sandbox but I think toy is an equally apt description.
Minecraft, back in Alpha when all you could do was pick up blocks and put them back down was a great example of a toy rather than a game. There was no way to win or lose, just things to play with.
Some people grow out of games since they take a lot of time and by definition they don't matter to the outside world, but everybody has toys.
Edited for spelling and typos.
One of my favorites from Fallout is how you can barter with your companions while they are your companions. This allows you to 'sell' them an unlimited amount of loot. Thereby negating completely any concerns over carry weight.
If you try this in real life your friends will stop going shopping with you.
You can also just pickpocket them, saves opening the dialog box
One of my favorite things to do with games was to find ways to play them wrong. It's very satisfying to find an advantage or bug this way, and it gives you a little glimpse into their inner workings, like a kid who breaks apart a toy with a hammer. You get this insight while also having fun doing something strange or unexpected. It's like finding patterns in a game's AI and using it against them.
In GTA Vice City I figured out a way to get to the other side of the island before unlocking it, and stocked up on the better guns and gear, which made playing the first half of the game a total breeze. Sometimes going through a weird hoop to cheese part of the game becomes the challenge itself.
Some people like placing lost money on the middle of The Monopoly board, so that whoever lands on Free Parking gets it.
It's not in the rules.
Games are games, and sometimes we get to decide how the games pieces are used.
I dont know if this was a bug or on purpose, but in Fallout 1 you could barter with anyone who you could enter dialog with, and the barter window allowed you to unload a gun. Since the ammo was inexpensive I would go around an area, trade whatever junk I had for everyone's ammo, sometimes even trade them incompatible ammo for their ammo, and then attack the now completely disarmed area.
That sounds like a bug, still funny
Yeah, you could buy all of someone's weapons, or at least all their ammo, from them right before you fight them XD
Simply amazing, thankyou so very much! Here's another one; When to cut and when to polish, what to look out for when a feature won't make the "cut" /get past the finish line. Cheers!
Concerning Fallout 2 the quest to kill Wesley (I think that was his name) can get chaoticaly evil in sooo many ways that makes it one of the most interesting ones for me. Like you said, you COULD plant explosives on his child making him a walkin IED, but since normal and active packs of explosives share the same icon, more than often I ended up planting the non-active dinamite into the child and hearing myself blew up out of a sudden with a giant qustion mark over my head, like "how did that happen?."
Also for the sake of experimentation I gave the kid (or planted, I don't remember) a fully loaded Desert Eagle, waited for some time and saw the child shot his own father by accident.
As for Arcanum, there is an open labyrint north-west of Dernholm with an "unidentified" sword inside a walled spot in wich you cant get into. By using the "travel-trick" you can (after a 100 luck check) get inside and retrieve it, and since that area is recognized as an "exterior zone" you can just resume your traveling without any issue.
I'm pretty sure that icons for idle and primed explosives are different. The primed ones are animated in a subtle, but noticeable way.
Thank you biteyourownteeth2100
Very cool
both of my hands fell off tomorrow
@@deathsheadknight2137 The classic "coming of age" story.
@@Heyesy thanks for saying so
You're welcome!
5:40 is one of the best stories I ever heard and I love how you finished it off like an annoyed teacher.
The grenades in kids pockets thing sounds like something the Let's Game It Out guy would do.
Just wanted to say first. I really enjoy watching these and how enthusiastic you are.
Secondly, I love your take on how players play around with the games as toys.
What is your feeling with online or multiplayer games though? Do you feel those overlooked features should stay or be addressed as a priority?
Multiplayer exploits are different, especially since it affects other players, especially if it can cause griefing, but even if it just means out-leveling them. Those exploits usually need to be fixed.
Actually i looked through all the comments and someone commented before you
In Baldur's Gate 3 you can kind of exploit things like in The Outer Worlds but in this case relating to pickpocketing.
If you pickpccket in BG3, you often get caught and can get sent to jail. However, if you pickpocket and run away fast enough and transition to camp, you can override getting caught.
"Games are toys" for real when I was a kid I would play games that gave me just enough mental sandbox as just that, Lego Star Wars or Star Wars Battlefront games were vessels for whatever storyline I wanted.
An amazing bug was strafe jump (circle jump) in original Quake.
"Strafe-jumping was a result of a bug in the code base of the 1996 first-person shooter video game Quake. In Quake's sequels it was decided to be kept intact,[4] as it had become a standard technique used by players." - Wikipedia on Strafing (video games).
They kept it in and improved it with each version. Quake 3 CPM is my favorite. People who master it are basically like flying super humans and people who can't do it are like sitting ducks.
most of Quakes physics bugs became mainstream fps features partially because they were inherited by games that used quake code
ramp jumping, rocket/grenade jumping, surfing, bunnyhopping and more
I’m not super into Quake 3 stuff like defrag. what’s the difference for the different physics??
I Loved Quake so much as I was young
I think the concept Tim was talking about in this video is called "Emergent gameplay". You've got intentional emergence and unintentional emergence. Intentional emergence is what Tim meant when he talked about mechanics being systemic.
Tis My Favorite TH-cam Channel right now
My favorite picpocket fun in Arcanum was planting cursed items on NPCs and watching the effects occur. Since cursed items are magic items, they were almost always more valuable than what the NPC had, so they'd equip them.
I assassinated someone once by planting a cursed gauntlet with poison DoT of 1/sec, and watching them slowly succumb to it.
I also planted cursed weapons to give myself an edge in combat against someone i normally couldnt take.
Dawg that was literally one of my favorite things in fallout. I honestly clicked this for background but that's crazy how I found out how grenades pocketing was put in a game
Has Tim talked about how they thought up the vault boy?
Tis a very good Question
Best part of this video is that stylish popsicle shirt! I have a similar one so I’m biased 😅
I think "Bite your own teeth" may be a reference to the philosopher Alan Watts
In Call of Duty zombies headless zombie still walking around was a bug that they turned into a feature
Ah yes, the Shady Sands Shuffle.
I've read that was a karma free way of getting rid of the pickpockets in Fallout 2 as well.
Empty your pockets except for a ticking bomb, and walk past them.
👋Fun fact. The Grand Theft Auto series began life as a racing game.🤯 A bug caused cop cars to recklessly crash into the player car constantly, which led the developers to explore that idea... GTA as we know it today was born!
It's also important that the designer recognize that players are having fun.
I used to be a wow-addict, but Blizzard saved me when they removed downranking spells.
I've never heard anyone complained about that mechanic. Everyone I knew thought it was a fun mechanic to tinker with.
Then Blizzard removed it because it gave dedicated players who master that trick an edge that is difficult to "balance" the game over.
That's when I knew the game had peaked.
I like in civilization revolution where if you move a settler 2 tiles and the final tile you land on happens to have another unit, then you can settle immediately on the turn.
This happens to be a bug, but it changes the dynamic of the game where you can plan out your units 2 spaces away from each other and then chain settle cities by rushing settlers if you have enough gold. It makes civ rev feel considerably faster paced than it should be and I kind of like it.
Q: a lot of people are divided with how the BOS was written in FO3. I was curious on your take.
Personally I loved them. Made us feel less “alone”
Loved them too.
Elder Lions was right to leave the Path of BOS a Bit.
Maxson from FO4 is Just cold. Just as His Brotherhood.
Cold as their Steel.
Why Not do both If you are so mighty?
Why Not, follows your Mission AND protect the People.
Finally the origin story of the “Shady Sands Shuffle”!
Quest Item example reminds me of how Valve's source engine has code to deal with buggy fog on a case by case basis for a subset of HL2 maps, even though the games they were making with it a decade later had nothing to do with it. That switch statement is still sitting there doing NOP for no other reason than maintaining a 20 year old last-minute fix. So the exact opposite and inverse of what you are describing LOL.
my favourite prank to pull in Fallout 1 & 2 was to put set time bombs in enemies' inventories xD
As a kid I would put dynamite on shopkeepers, put a 20min fuse and go travel the world map until I hear a "ding" then go back. The bomb would go off and I wouldn't be blamed for it. You could then take everything for free off the corpse (well, the floor in F1) or shelves depending on the shop.
I would also plant like 5+ dynamites on super mutants when I was too low level to get clear of them.
IIRC if someone carrying explosives got caught in an explosion it could trigger a chain reaction? I remember planting like 99 explosives on a boss and shooting a rocket at it and then it was like waiting 15 minutes as each explosive blew up in sequence, slowly pushing the guy away off-screen until he died... couldn't loot it 😩
I also remember giving SMGs to NPCs so they'd burst all their allies to death.
Edit: I think it wasn't in fallout but the older scrolls (morrowind and oblivion) where I would pickpocket people and put like 500 pounds of crap in their pocket, overburdening them and making them unable to move, making them extremy easy targets.
Oh! I just remembered another one. In some parts of the game, during dialogs, someone would bring you somewhere (as a prisoner for exemple, or when the cultist take you the church basement's secret lab entrance) there would be a tag to make time move forward a couple minutes. If you planted an explosive before the conversation, it would blow up right after the screen transition, just before (or at the same time as) the new dialog begins.
Could make really funny situations, depending on where the npcs/players are spawned at the time of the transition.
I discovered that arcanum world map exploit my first time playing the game. I was sick of walking to the wise woman in tarant for identification, every time went back to tarant I would try to land on her out of the world map.
I think I only succeeded once or twice in the whole playthrough, it is a tough trick to pull off
The "Shady Sands Shuffle".
I absolutely used pickpocket to put live dynamite on enemies!
@2:35 Ah, Tim, so it boils down to reducing complexity, hence reducing the chance of bugs.
Another way to think about systemic design is that the code which performs the action should decide if the action is possible (or alter how the action is performed). So if you have code that drops items, then that code should decide (based on item properties) if the item should be droppable. Then reserve scripts for extreme edge cases, such as the Wabbajack from Elder Scrolls (a staff with a very unique effect that no other items possess).
Rephrased this way, it becomes very close to standard Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) design, where functions are designed as black boxes which can't be altered from the outside. With game design, you have to be more loose about that definition, but it's still worth investigating if you're new to game design.
That's how we did it in Arcanum. The common case was coded, and scripts could override it. I think I need to make a video about that.
>plant dynamite on the kid and tell him his father's calling him
jesus
Thanx for the bug. Steal and pockpicking was the most funnny campagne later of Fallout tactics. Was allways a realy cool feature and i love ur thoughts about imbalance.
I remember you mentioning you might respond to questions. I remember that there was a game (Lionheart) that used the Fallout SPECIAL system but were you ever approached about a licensing the skill and progression system from Arcanum?
I asked a question about Lionheart and SPECIAL previously. So I'm glad someone else has also asked about it.
Hi Tim, I have been loving this series, as a huge Fallout fan and an aspiring game developer it's been super useful. I also really resonated with your video on being a gay game developer. I'd like to ask about the process of creating queer representation in games as well as how attitudes have changed in the industry over time.
Hi Tim! I was listening to your appearance on the Purpose Made podcast and you had mentioned you wish you were able to do a MMORPG. I was hoping you would be able to discuss it a little more. I know you said you weren't really sure what you would do with one but i would love to hear about the ideas that you do have and your thought on MMORPGs as a whole.
My favourite extreme example of this phenomenon has to be the Korean Third Person Shooter Gunz:The Duel.
Originally a pretty medicore game in pretty much all aspects. Until a few players realized pretty much every action could be animation cancelled, leading players to play the game in a way that the developers couldn't never imagined was possible.
In practice? The game from a very standard TPS with rolls/wallrun/jumps and a dash. But what can you do with a dash if all your weapon swaps and attacks can be cancelled? Well, a lot : th-cam.com/video/svyxbk9a-zg/w-d-xo.html
And yes, this is as damaging to your wrist as you think it is.
Freaking *LEGENDARY* game!
Shame pay to win and hackers killed the official servers.
Thnx for the laugh about pickpocketing the kids to place armed Grenades on them lol. That’s great.
Love the shirt buddy!
Do you think players are less creative nowadays than in the 80's & 90's when it comes to problem solving? You mentioned the "Shady Sands Shuffle" (when you plant a live grenade in an NPC's inventory) but I don't think I would have ever think of this solution for a quest. Also having quest markers and visual aids in game reduces the amount you have to read and piece together subtle clues (like the heart condition of one of the crime bosses in F2).
Hey Tim, I've always been massively inspired by your games, and I was wondering what your thoughts are on exposing things like Derrived Statistics to players, and how much information is enough versus how much is too little. In Fallout, you're just sort of vaguely told that increasing your stats with guns, but it doesn't show raw percentages or formulas and it effects a bunch of stuff under the hood that is never shown to the player in-game. In the Outer Worlds however, every point you add to your gun skill shows exactly how much more damaging and accurate you're going to be with that weapon.
The Outer Worlds approach is nice because it gives the player a better feel for how they're spending their skill points, but I feel like older games didn't do this as much. Was this a technical limitation? Was it a choice not to reveal the information to the player to encourage experimentation? maybe it wasn't seen as necesarry? I guess what I'm trying to ask is how much of derrived statistics should be visible for players, when is it too much and should we keep some stats hidden, or show everything?
I'm guilty of the Edgewater power plant reset, but haven't used it in the game since, mostly because I'm more built to handle tough areas and don't have to rely on stealth as much. Except the Monarch caves, I gtfo'd from there XD
Coincidentally I'm having a similar experience to Cyberpunk 2077 on Hard, starting with stealth but ending as a powerhouse, as I am on OW (first playthrough on Supernova). Worth saying I really, really liked Cp77 so OW's been a treat!
CP2077 is poorly balanced towards the end. It is hard to not become a powerhouse regardless of the build (I've tried stealth, melee only, no crafting - still overpowered AF). Hence playthroughs like "clearing Arasaka tower with a shovel".
6:45 That quest solution wasn't in the German version.
There weren't any kids in the game.
In today's world, all exploits get patched. 😢
What is the game that you have had the most impact on besides ones where you were in a lead role?
Please expand Outer Worlds. The game sapce is amazing and the setting/characters are great but we need more openness/freedom. Game has so much potential.
In Arcanum I remember there was a ring (I think?) that makes wearer invisible but constantly deals a lot of damage to wearer.
I don't remember how exactly it was possible to get it. I think it was accessible in a location you can randomly stumble upon or from coordinates that are given as a rumor.
So anyway. NPCs in Arcanum like to pick up items that are dropped on the ground and wear them.
This ring was the best tool to kill off NPCs without anyone suspecting anything.
This is how video games are easily over-produced. "Balance" and "developer intent" is how you remove the fun of system exploration.
Have you thought of making a Fallout type game now (since you don’t own the IP), so you can make your own take on Fallout now in days?
Well you don't need to explain the bugs, everyone should accept that if a bug happens it's QAs fault - they should've tested it, should've caught it...
---
sorry, ofc it's ironic comment, but I can never resist the beautify of this approach, devs are never to blame
Was the inventory bug/feature example from Fallout tied to the decision with how party inventory was resolved? I imagine if you guys had more time you'd have a more robust companion inventory UI/Paper Doll stuff.
Hey Tim, how do you feel about using a trainer or cheats like 'god mode' so that players can play through games that don't have a story mode?
I believe this is absolutely true when it comes to singleplayer games, but become highly undesirable in multiplayer games. Players are very likely to get an unearned feeling of "being smarter" by abusing bugs - and that's fine for singleplayer, they felt like they cheated the system - but in multiplayer it quickly leads to elitism.
Do you think games coming out under shorter deadlines means only the best things get put into the game so it's a better product in the end or do you think it is always better for them to have huge development cycles like how Bethesda seems to take over half a decade to make one fallout game/elder scrolls game etc
Hey, Tim, I have a question about bugs. I think a lot of people are of the opinion that developers release unfinished games nowadays, because they can just fix them later. How do you think post-launch updates have impacted game development?
I'm obviously not Tim, but IIRC even Fallout 1 had patches post release.
I think gamers would unanimously agree that the fact that there is no longer an expectation that a game will be mostly functional at release is a detriment across the board.
I think that it's clear that since so many games like Fallout were able to use post launch patches to fix bugs but also had great playable games on day 1 means that the technology isn't the issue, it's the market.
People should demand refunds every time a game is broken on day one, but they don't. They wait for 6-12 months and then start complaining long after everyone has already bought the broken product and the developers make off with the cash every single time.
It's great that a small team can use their customers as QA when releasing titles as "Early Access" Alphas and Betas, but it's also very easy for developers to take advantage of people's trust.
Personally, I've paid for that many games that seem now as though they're never going to be completed that I'm done giving people chances. If the finished product is good I'll buy it but I'm not going to pay for something before it's done anymore.
Minecraft really blew me and many others away. When I paid $10 for it, it was literally a building block simulator. No mining, mobs or crafting. They're still releasing updates to that game, and it could be considered "finished" at any point after the official release.
Unfortunately, many other Devs saw that success and decided 'i don't even need to make the game, I can just sell empty promises' and now that business model is kind of busted.
Yeah I did hear Tim talk about the Fallout 1 patch which removes the waterchip time limit etc., but I thought of this as something which was a lot rarer with early games. I didn't really consider whether releasing 'unfinished' was a product of people just growing accustomed to it as opposed to updates being more readily available. You're probably right, the main reason why we see more unfinished games nowadays is due to player expectation instead of the readiness for easy patching.
I think the live-update content releases are an interesting aspect of this too, like you bring up with Minecraft. I am an avid Path of Exile addict and I love that game to death. Every 4 months or so they release massive content limited to that specific league. However, in the first week or so the new content is often broken or unbalanced. So even with developers that aren't all empty promises and have good intentions, I think we still suffer from games being more unfinished.
@@SineN0mine3
Hi Cain, would you be interested in Let's Playing any of the main Fallout games? 1, 2, 3, NV, 4, 76. Many of us would love to watch you stream, and I'm curious about your thoughts on Bethesda's entries. Also, if you do play 76, there would be a ton of people wanting to meet you and help you learn how to play, and do fun activities like show you around the world and build a CAMP.
How do you feel about Amazon using AI generated assets in promotional material for the new Fallout series
Hey Tim,
I was actually going to ask you what your thoughts on Scripting were. You've brought it up here, so I thought now was a good time to ask.
One scripting video, coming up!
@@CainOnGames Most excellent. Thanks Tim!
Oh and don't worry about pronouncing my username.
Have you ever been interested in directing/designing a game that was not an RPG?
All the little games I’m working on now aren’t RPGs. I’ve got a space combat sim, a dice and card game, and a 3D procedural dungeon generator…which could probably be used in an RPG.
@@CainOnGames Awesome! I saw those videos but completely forgot. Thank you for your work Tim!
Thats good qa 😂
Without actually watching the video. No Man Sky has a bug that allowed to... well, i will be cryptic a little bit... fly straight ahead after punching the air. It was fixed at one point. But then put back in place. Just saying.
Are you aware of Fallout 1 and 2 fan-made mods?
6:16 lmfao
insects dont get the recognition they deserve
Alternate video title: origin of the exploding pants.
Glad you left that exploit in as it made me explore different builds when one of my buddies told me about it
My favorite example of these is that in the original Team Fortress mod for Quake, all damage caused knockback and rockets caused self-damage, leading people to figure out a way to optimize self-knockback and discover rocket jumping. When Valve made Team Fortress 2, they implemented rocket jumping as an intended mechanic with the soldier class balanced around it and weapons specifically referencing it
Speaking about exploding children. Fallout was quite famous for its brutality and it was quite discussed case when they made children immortal in Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
I don't want to ask you about your opinion on that, but ethics in video games culture - that is quite big and interesting topic. What is violence in games and why certain acts of violence are perceived as something normal and others not? Or another question: even though gaming medium grants an action to the player, all ethical choices inherently biased by game design: usually being good, from creators perspective, is more rewarded then being evil. So can and should there be unbiased games that at least try to give gamer true ethical freedom? And can game designer add some unethical, evil choices to the game, without punishing the player with consequences?
When I planted explosives on someone in Fallout 1, I always imagined it being like LoonyToons and my character just casually sticking it in the back of the person's waistband. The ability to do that provides me so very much entertainment.
When creating a story, how many were so beautiful and EPIC... but the technology wasn't around or extremely ambitious!
Complexity in anything just adds more points of failure, if you have really complex questchains and loads of things that can go wrong, it's just logical that there will be more problems. As such I am also much more lenient with, especially crpgs, complex games, I demand a much more robust experience from say, call of duty, than I do from baldurs gate 3 for example.
hey tim, im really enjoying the videos you have been making. ive always loved game dev and have wanted to work in the field of game dev, but i am currently working an entry level data analyst position for an ecommerce site. do you have any insight or experience with pivoting your career? i don't have much time at my current job, but i dont know if this is exactly what i want to do. thank you for sharing your stories and posting these videos
I really like my games to tell a story so while I see the reverse pick pocketing as a emergent gameplay the "clearing the combat flag" feels more like a bug to me. Narratively it makes sense to plant a live grenade in someone's pants, but not to enter and leave a place until people forget that they're mad at you.
It's pretty essential though. Keeping track of every enemy or NPC that has seen something across an entire game would be huge.
@@stuartmorley6894Ok? I wasn't saying that the mechanic itself shouldn't exist though.
Hello Tim.
Would you like to answer may Question?
How did you think about VaultBoy and his Origin?
I Like the Fallout TvShow very much. But. Some stuff made me think "Yes... but could have been better."
As for example the Council of VaultTec were they Decide tge what, how and why. And Coop as the Vault Boy.
I mean it is okay. Nothing to get mad about. But it doesnt Taste the Way your Fallout and Fallout 2 or even 3 did.
My Favorite list is.
Fallout 1 then 2 then New Vegas and then Fallout 3.
Fallout 4 is okay but.. yeah..
Ha that's really funny. I remember putting grenades in people's pockets in fallout. I also used to put stacks of poison in people's inventory in Skyrim which has a similar effect. I used to do that drop in trick in Arcanum as well funny enough 😅.
"Games are toys." Is that really your take, Tim? That they're toys and nothing but toys?
Honestly, that'd be a great way for the industry at large to try and absolve itself of any and all responsibility toward the public, which I don't gather you do yourself. You've already done a talk on video games as art (or art in video games, as the case may be), so I hope you'll consider expounding upon what you mean by "games are toys".
Only some games are toys from my perspective, namely games that don't require the player to think at all and are purely intended as a "fun" distraction, e.g. the arcade games of our flaming youth. (Too funny that when I mentioned going to the arcade upon a family member's visit, she went "{GASP!} You visit the penny arcade?!" lol Reminds me of Todd Howard's remark about the video game development companies being stuck in a tent with pornographers at a show in the early days of game development.
I wish the owlcat devs shared your feelings so they would stop nerfing fun exploits in wotr 😢
fix crashes and game breaking bugs other than that let us cook
Thanks for the question BiteYourOwnTeeth!
Ah yes the ol Shady Sands Shuffle I love when bugs become features the story behind them is usually interesting like how the reason the Spy in Team Fortress 2 exists was because of a bug in the original that made you look like a member of the other team but you still had the ability to kill them
6:15 true gamer mindset right there!
Did you play dwarf fortress and/or rimworld, the absolute kings of games with numerous mechanics interacting in an unexpected way (and bug becoming feature like loss by the lost of framerate of "catplosion" for instance"? If not, you should absolutely.
Hey Tim! I was wondering if you were still in control of fallouts story today what would of have done differently and where would like it to be in the future. Hope you have a great day!
I really like this shirt, it feels like there should be one, but with compasses instead.
Awesome stuff, and that shirt is awesome too!.
I think I was pick pocketing my party members to give them better weapons. Because there was no other way to do it.
I think they never created a proper gear trading system with your party members, but they just made sure they didn't react to getting their stuff stolen?
Thanks for the video
6:05 That's hilarious.
Jajajaj that’s it’s call it “ Bethesda magic “ when there’s some kind of gameplay in the entire game .. 😅
PLanting explosive on your ally in Fallout 1 was the only way to remove blocked way. Made it too many times.
Ppanting explosives onto children and other in Fallout 2 is a true classic, but for other reasons...
Children of The Den go boom.