Too many scripts?

[Mishka]

How can you tell when you have too many?

From a developer's standpoint, it's much easier than that of a critic. For one person, some things that contribute to gameplay can seem like gimmicks, and for others, they are essential additions.

When does this become obvious and broadcast to the world that the developer bloated the game and added too many features?

Does good use of these features make up for the sheer number of them?

It is an easily identifiable trait of beginners' games, but what about scripts developed solely for the game in question? Does the criteria change?

What about scripts that don't contribute to the gameplay that the user had no idea had to utilise? How often are these noticeable?


I know I'm asking a lot of questions, and I'm not too worried about having too many scripts in my own games, but I want to know what you think about this.

[Zylos]

It depends on who you ask. For me, less is more. But then I like to rely on plain old eventing. For a scripter, he might say the more the merrier, as long as they aren't conflicting with each other.

A fair middle ground is have scripts for things important to your game or nice additions that feel right with the flow of your game. But if it's something that's not vital to a game, and it distracts too much from the actual game, then it's overkill and that's bad. It's all about the feel of the game rather than the number of new features it has.

[Mishka]

I always felt that super script-heavy games were basically there for the flashiness.

When it comes to the number of things in a game (especially an indie game where almost none of the engine is original) I like to keep the scripts down to a bare minimum and only get scripts for things that would be too tedious to event.

Even then, as I am not a fan of too many minigames, there isn't much that I could justify putting in. As far as scripts go, I find that, while battle systems bloat the script count, they are necessary sometimes.

Of course, I'm thinking of trying to make a game with no combat whatsoever so that I can just have the bare bones of the engine that enterbrain gives you with little more than MA's ATS (which is 100% essential).

It would make for an interesting project, but that isn't the point of this discussion.

Zylos, with you being one of the greatest makers here, I think that you provide a good insight as to how to determine what is essential, what is nice, and what is unnecessary. I like to keep things at an essential level as of late, but some things that catch my eye, or some things that would show off my eagerness to include original artwork are good for providing an original atmosphere.

Of course, this can definitely tie in with my discussion of original content...

[cozziekuns]

Well, Enterbrain already gives you 30+ scripts at the beginning, so it's not a matter of "how many is too many", but more about "what good will this do towards my game?".

People chucking in scripts because it looks cool, raises the level cap to 9999(pretty much useless for all games minus Disgaea), or just because everyone else has it.

You could always just copypasta all the scripts into one giant file anyways.               

I'm an eventer at heart. If I can work with the RTP, so can everyone else.

[Mishka]

I was actually thinking about DROPPING the level cap because of how low I expect a final level party to be in the first place. I mean, who actually plays a game enough to get to level 300? An amateur beginner's RPG at that?

I fucking love Disgaea. It's the only game you can sink 30 hours into without progressing. The item world is just... yeah. I freaking love it. And I'm only in Episode three.

[shintashi]

I think when you begin to lose track of how to debug what you wrote, you have too many scripts. When your game stops loading in a timely fashion and you only have 3 maps, you have too many scripts.

When you start crossing your fingers when hitting the little green triangle, you have too many scripts.

When you wake up in the middle of the night and copy paste your scripts somewhere in case the thing crashes, you might  have too many scripts.

[Zeriab]

How do you indeed quantize the number of scripts in your game? I can see the number of custom scripts being the number of topics which you have copied from. But other than that I don't see any clear way of determining whether what you implemented counts as 1, 2 or 3 scripts.
The number of scripts does not capture their complexity and weather they are heavy or light weight.
I'd advice not using the number of scripts for anything other than perhaps an extra check for the credits list.

A much more interesting question is about which features to have. How you implement the features, whether it is by eventing or scripting, doesn't really matter to the player assuming the functionality is the same for the user. The simplistic way is usually the right way for designing the solution. (I am not talking about the UI. I am talking about the design of the implementation)

As Zylos I also like simplistic user interfaces. I would say the biggest problem of beginners' games is not overcomplicated user interfaces but rather inconsistencies. Just think about it: Plugging in scripts from various scripters which have different styles. You have to alter the scripts or the styles won't fit together.

*hugs*