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Cake day: September 2nd, 2023

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  • Yes. All of those aim to solve the yellow paint problem, so they serve the same purpose as yellow paint. The difference between yellow paint and other solutions is that those other solutions have some game design thought behind it.

    You don’t have to have an npc walking slower than you. You can make it run faster, and just wait for you if you get too behind, like any human would. You don’t have to have the villain stop in the chase scene. If the enemy gets too far, you lose and restart in the last checkpoint, like it always has been.

    You don’t have to have low-poly art for this to work. Not everything in assassin’s creed was climbable. But you know when it was and when it wasn’t, do you didn’t even try to climb what wasn’t. You could climb vertical walls of mountain rock. You couldn’t climb up flat walls either, you had to have bricks sticking out. Granted, most buildings had something to grab onto. But you saw which elements you grabbed onto, if those weren’t there you would know why you can’t climb.

    If your level design is clear and consistent, you don’t need yellow paint.


  • It doesn’t have to be a cutscene. You just naturally go with the NPC as part of the story. While he’s telling you something and you are getting to the place for example. The start of uncharted 2 comes to mind, when you are a team of thieves and the other dude is leading you to where the treasure is, while talking to you.

    Yellow paint is not subtle.

    If you don’t want a ledge to be grabable, IMO, it’s way better design if you mark the ones that you can’t grab.

    Why can’t I grab onto that ledge? Because it’s way to small. Because it has some spikes (obviously within reason, don’t put random spikes in random ledges). Because it’s too high up. Because it’s a slippery surface (like clearly wet and smooth rock). Or just don’t put a ledge there if you don’t want people to grab it.

    If the answer to the question is “because it’s not painted yellow”, it’s just bad design.


  • calcopiritus@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldYellow Paint
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    4 days ago

    That’s why yellow paint is lazy. You just apply it everywhere and be done with it. Instead of figuring out the right way to highlight each situation in an “organic” manner.

    Before yellow paint, each game had its own way that differentiated from the rest. Now they are the same thing. Games are supposed to be art.

    In lego star wars games, grappling hooks were marked by a big red circle. Bombable assets were reflective metal. You could use the force (both normal and dark) on items which had blue/red sparks. And you could build objects in places that had jumping Lego pieces.

    In assassin’s creed, bricks that you could grab onto were clearly sticking out. You could also grab onto windows and such. No paint needed. If you saw a building, you most probably could claim it. If there was a pile of hay, you know you could jump from somewhere, and you would take no fall damage. If you saw a bench, you could sit on it. If you saw a roof tent, you could hide in it. If you saw a big guy with pockets in his back, you could steal from him. And many more things. I believe the first game already had a map, you could use it to find most of these items.

    In both of these games, interacting with the environment was an important part of the gameplay. There were thousands of interactables. Why can’t modern AAA games use any of these methods instead of lazy yellow paint?


  • calcopiritus@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldYellow Paint
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    4 days ago

    Yellow paint is just lazy level design.

    Yes, yellow paint exists to solve a real issue. But many games before it have managed to fix that issue.

    Wanna guide the player through a path? Have a guide NPC go before you (might even be the villain in a chase sequence!).

    Want to clearly show in which places you can do X thing? Have a clear visually distinct asset that stands out mark those places. Make sure you don’t have similar assets elsewhere.

    If the argument is accessibility, just make it an option to turn those special assets bright pink/yellow, or just a much more distinct (even if visually unappealing) asset for higher-budget games.

    Wanna show which ledges are grabbable? This may be the only acceptable use case. But even then, there are more discrete ways like shining stones or have the character extend its arm towards it or something. Or just make basically every ledge grabbable. I had no issues in either sm64 nor in the original assassins creed, and neither had yellow paint.