0:00:00.350,0:00:03.149 Welcome to my third design tour. 0:00:03.149,0:00:08.520 Today I will be talking about Gish, by Edmund McMillen and Chronic Logic. 0:00:08.520,0:00:12.410 What really makes this game unique are the indirect physics based controls. 0:00:12.410,0:00:19.110 There are two kinds of input, directional controls and state changes. 0:00:19.110,0:00:21.080 Direction controls tell Gish where you want to go. 0:00:21.080,0:00:26.080 He'll try to move in the direction you press, either by shifting his weight, or by spinning 0:00:26.080,0:00:28.100 his body. 0:00:28.100,0:00:33.909 State change keys change his physical properties, either by making him sticky, slippery, heavy 0:00:33.909,0:00:34.589 or expanded. 0:00:34.589,0:00:40.789 Most side scroller games have relatively direct controls. 0:00:40.789,0:00:46.530 For example, theres usually a jump key that shoots your character upwards, and is reactivated 0:00:46.530,0:00:48.139 when you hit the ground. 0:00:48.139,0:00:51.639 In Gish, there is no jump key, not really. 0:00:51.639,0:00:56.389 But if you can press your body down and then expand and shift your weight upwards, you 0:00:56.389,0:00:58.479 leap off the ground. 0:00:58.479,0:01:03.129 This seems like a lot more work than just pressing a jump button, but it's a good example 0:01:03.129,0:01:08.060 of the difference between shallow controls and deep ones. 0:01:08.060,0:01:13.270 Gish has deep controls, because the work at a level below what you explicitly intent to 0:01:13.270,0:01:13.890 do. 0:01:13.890,0:01:18.960 For example, if you want to climb a wall, you make yourself sticky and crawl up it. 0:01:18.960,0:01:25.640 If you want to go down a narrow pipe, you make yourself slippery and jump in, or wiggle 0:01:25.640,0:01:26.259 in. 0:01:26.259,0:01:30.719 However, there is no explicit action like 'climb wall' or 'go down pipe'. 0:01:30.719,0:01:34.640 It all follows naturally from the underlying rules. 0:01:34.640,0:01:38.990 You can become sticky or slippery, and the world follows the laws of basic Newtonian 0:01:38.990,0:01:39.960 physics. 0:01:39.960,0:01:43.850 The best example of this may be flipping a switch. 0:01:43.850,0:01:48.229 In most games you have a use button, and if you press it while near a switch you flip 0:01:48.229,0:01:49.409 it. 0:01:49.409,0:01:53.479 However, in Gish you have to physically move it from one position to another. 0:01:53.479,0:01:58.420 This is more work, but it's fun because there are so many different ways to do it. 0:01:58.420,0:02:04.710 You can stick to it and pull it, become heavy and push it, or knock an object into it. 0:02:04.710,0:02:09.750 At first, this control scheme feels pretty awkward, especially since basic trick like 0:02:09.750,0:02:12.330 jumping are not very clearly explained. 0:02:12.330,0:02:16.960 However, as you get used to it, it starts to feel a lot more natural and intuitive than 0:02:16.960,0:02:19.500 the explicit controls in many other games. 0:02:19.500,0:02:22.750 You can start to move around like a tar ball ninja. 0:02:39.300,0:02:42.080 Multiplayer is where the controls really shine. 0:02:42.080,0:02:47.330 Each mode is very simple, usually in a small room with a simple rule. 0:02:47.330,0:02:52.300 This one here is a pit fighter level, where the objective is to kill the other player. 0:02:52.300,0:02:56.620 You aren't provided with any weapons or attacks, but you get to make up your own. 0:02:56.620,0:03:00.390 You can try and squish them while they're unprepared, or break a hole in the ground 0:03:00.390,0:03:07.390 and knock them into the spikes. 0:03:13.010,0:03:16.980 There are a number of other multiplayer modes in Gish including Sumo wrestling, football 0:03:16.980,0:03:18.680 and racing. 0:03:18.680,0:03:22.090 The Sumo wrestling and football modes are interesting because they wouldn't be fun at 0:03:22.090,0:03:23.940 all using traditional controls. 0:03:23.940,0:03:28.270 The physics based controls are almost impossible to master, so they're great for multiplayer. 0:03:28.270,0:03:33.680 You and you friend can try and compete to invent new techniques. 0:03:33.680,0:03:38.240 Unfortunately, Gish only offers multiplayer on the same computer, which is difficult to 0:03:38.240,0:03:42.370 set up unless you have extra controllers or keyboards lying around. 0:03:42.370,0:03:46.320 It won't really work if you try to share a keyboard, because most keyboards don't register 0:03:46.320,0:03:49.650 enough simultaneous key presses. 0:03:49.650,0:03:53.930 This kind of multiplayer would be ideal for consoles though, and I'm surprised that nobody 0:03:53.930,0:03:59.070 has done anything like this. 0:03:59.070,0:04:03.120 Even on the same computer, there are occasional physics bugs where two objects can merge into 0:04:03.120,0:04:03.790 one. 0:04:03.790,0:04:10.790 This is kind of weird, but it's kind of fun to have to fight over the same body. 0:04:17.240,0:04:19.240 In single player there are also occasional physics bugs. 0:04:20.340,0:04:24.660 Sometimes things go through you, so you survive collisions that should be fatal. 0:04:24.660,0:04:28.250 However, what is really awful is when you are killed by things which shouldn't be dangerous, 0:04:28.250,0:04:30.500 or that you couldn't possibly see coming. 0:04:30.500,0:04:34.710 So I'm almost at the end of a chapter and I have four lives left, this should be no 0:04:34.710,0:04:35.710 problem. 0:04:35.710,0:04:38.540 Oh ok. The wall exploded with no warning. 0:04:38.540,0:04:41.740 Lets see, now three lives should be enough. 0:04:41.740,0:04:45.320 I'll just go in this launcher here. 0:04:45.320,0:04:47.320 Hmm... 0:04:47.320,0:04:49.380 Well two lives left, it can't glitch out again. 0:04:49.380,0:04:50.090 What? 0:04:51.090,0:04:53.280 Is there some kind of trick to this? 0:04:53.280,0:04:53.840 ...It better not. 0:04:54.840,0:04:56.890 *Sigh* 0:04:56.890,0:04:59.280 I have to go back seven levels now. 0:05:00.280,0:05:04.970 Not only are there no in-level save points, if you die to many times, you're sent back 0:05:04.970,0:05:07.680 to the beginning of the chapter, which is seven levels back. 0:05:07.680,0:05:13.100 The only way to turn this off is to play on easy mode, so do yourself a favor and play 0:05:13.100,0:05:13.910 on easy mode. 0:05:13.910,0:05:19.210 As far as I can tell, nothing else changes, it just lets you continue on the same level 0:05:19.210,0:05:26.210 if you die. 0:05:26.300,0:05:30.170 On a totally different note, this game uses advanced graphics techniques, such as stencil 0:05:30.170,0:05:34.680 shadows, normal mapping and per-pixel specular highlight, and apples them to great effect 0:05:34.680,0:05:36.230 in their 2D world. 0:05:36.230,0:05:40.870 I've never seen this before or since, so if any of you are working on 2D games, don't 0:05:40.870,0:05:47.870 forget that a lot of 3D graphics techniques can still be used. 0:05:52.530,0:05:59.530 While the music in Gish is uniformly excellent, the sound effects are rather sparse. 0:06:02.490,0:06:07.080 I made a few placeholder sounds for this scene to show you how you can make unique sound 0:06:07.080,0:06:09.020 effects very quickly and cheaply. 0:06:13.889,0:06:20.889 0:06:38.260,0:06:43.850 These sound effects wouldn't win any awards or anything, but I think I've made my point. 0:06:43.850,0:06:50.850 Anyway, in of my critiques, Gish is one of my favorite games and you can find it at crypticsea.com. 0:06:52.139,0:06:55.449 If you have any questions or comments, or if theres a game you would like to see next 0:06:55.449,0:06:57.650 week, let me know on the Wolfire blog.