Looking for simple and concise tag names for these.
9, 24, 28, 30, and 34 still need something.
4 needs improvements.
1) Final retaliation - creatures that somehow still can kill the player after or on the moment of their death, related/sub types of this are
suicide bombers and the poorly named
splitting creatures. This includes things like exploding, releasing deadly vapors, potentially falling on the player character (especially in case of giants), releasing swarms of parasites or whatever inhabiting their bodies, and so forth. Regardless if this is intentional or not.
... examples:
Dark Alliance (zombies), any instance of
sucide bombers, Xenomorphs (acid blood, some games have them trashing about on the floor for a while which can also wound if you get too close), "glory devices", etc.
= karmiccreatures 2) Instant killers - regardless of lack of instant death and how ridiculously large amount of hit points the player character has, there are still things that can instantly kill them, possibly even ignoring any invulnerability and such. Being eaten whole is one common example, or failing a
QTE.
... examples:
McGee's Alice = instantkillers 3) Meeting old characters, their graves, ghosts, etc. This was mentioned in the old thread but nothing was invented for it.
... examples:
Nethack = past characters 4) Self-resurrecting creatures (enemies) - unlike spawning new ones, the old ones return to life unless something is done to them (if anything can). Usually undead. May repeat indefinitely or only few times.
... examples:
Zombi,
Blood (only the zombies),
Resident Evil 3 (nemesis)
=
Immortals (temporary?)
5) Single player controlling multiple characters separately, especially when they're far away from each other.
... examples:
Space Hulk,
Zombi,
Head over Heels, and some other games tagged with
cooperation.
= separatedprotagonists 6) Separated or split up, the protagonist gets separated from the rest either intentionally or by accident. Including games where player controls more than one character and must go about alone with one.
... examples:
Summoner,
Jericho,
Legendary = separated 7) Games that ignore effects of moving uphill and downhill or similar. In contrast to games with stamina where this would have changes to stamina drain rate, while others would have effect on movement speed only (slower uphill, faster downhill). The ones that ignore the effects of such should be a minority.
... examples:
Alien Carnage = zerogroundlevelgravity 8) Simulated movement. Related to stamina, but the movement otherwise tries to be more realistic.
... examples:
Silent Hill (maybe?),
ArmA 2 = life-like motion 9)
Group games where the player has no (constant) direct control over his followers. May still have the possibility to give some instructions to them (e.g. tactics, give verbal commands, or similar [instructions, in effect]) or switch which character they directly control. Primarily for real-time games, though also applicable to turn-based games (where the player needs to have less control for it to differ from regular
group)
... examples:
Star Ocean 3,
Mass Effect,
Last Remnant (maybe?)
=
group-leader, ??? (still able to control others directly needs another)
10) "Active" group consists only of subset of total followers.
... examples:
Star Ocean 3,
Septerra Core,
KotOR 1&2,
Mass Effect = group-subset 11) Mixed high and low tech setting. Swords and guns in same setting with the sword wielders pretty much equally matched with the gunfighters.
... examples:
Star Wars,
Star Ocean, and plenty of Japanese SciFi games.
= mixedtech 12) Characters are limited to "zones". In old games that functioned on "screens" this was somewhat natural for them, this was followed by games that had small zones that did not conform to a screen. Then there appeared games that didn't have zones, but the characters would still not wander outside their personal zones. This also became a method of cheating since you could back out of the character's zone of operation and shoot/attack it from outside it. This is occasionally done to fight the virtual stupidity, or simply to avoid writing too complex AI.
...
RE3 was somewhat exceptional for those playing on consoles exclusively since that was one of the few well known games where a character was NOT confined to a zone. The now deprecated
offscreen action partially covered games that broke from this zoning as well.
... examples:
Star Ocean 3,
Resident Evil games and any other games that have small "room"-like areas from which the characters can't escape unless the plot demands it.
= zonednpcs 13) Any game where you can run about on foot, control vehicles (land, air and space)
and possibly ride animals. Multi-vehicular tag covers cases where you mostly move with vehicles and often swap with them, but otherwise it's unusable. There's really no way to differentiate between games where you run about on foot or drive a vehicle
exclusively currently either. Even something so simple as side-scrolling platformer says nothing if you're on foot or on Moonbuggy.
... examples:
Crysis,
Far Cry,
Fuel of War,
Battlefield,
Battlefront,
ArmA 2,
Grand Theft Auto,
Parkan etc. mix on-foot and vehicular activities
= walking, driving, riding, swimming, flying, underwater diving, ... 14) Characters, vehicles etc. getting pieces of them cut off with damage. Especially with holes appearing in them when shot or otherwise penetrated. This is partially covered by
dismemberment and
damage modeling. Usuallly this is over dramatic damage modeling on biological entities. Sort of like voxel bodies though I doubt they're done with voxels, just slightly more advanced version of the tech used for dismemberment (doesn't only cut things in half).
... examples: several older lightgun zombie shooters mimicked this in a way,
Left 4 Dead 2,
Wolverine: Origins (for wolverine himself at least)
= softbodies (temporary)
15) Games where death forces the player to load a save or some such and games where this just sends them back to some respawn point (sometimes with a penalty, like xp, gold or some such loss). Permadeath and retrypoints tags cover only certain cases of these. Lives does not really say anything about it either. Some (especially those with lives) allow continuing right from where you died.
= instantretry, retrypoints, retrypoints-rollback, deathpenalty, ... 16) Ability to move environmental objects. Should be two tags, one limited to small objects and the other into both small and large. Possibly third for presence of strangely unmovable fixtures. Possibly counter with something that says there are no movable environmental objects.
... examples:
Deus Ex,
Prototype,
Hulk 17) Environmental object manipulation. Again, may need splitting to small and large. Pretty much same as moving, but the objects have other uses besides changing their location. Possibly merge with #16.
... preferably something that also covers telekinesis.
... examples:
Half-Life 2,
Penumbra,
Twin Sector = mutablescenery-small, mutablescenery-large, mutablescenery-fixtures, inertscenery 18) Falling on top of characters harms them.
Head jumping tag is for method of _jumping_ (mainly from same height) on top them to damage them rather than jumping down on them from somewhere higher. This would be primarily for games where you can't jump on top of them when standing right next to them. Also implies dropping objects on top of them causes harm, somewhat overlaps with #17 due to this (throwing the object at their face likely has same or similar effect).
... examples:
Assault on Dark Athena (outright kills the characters), several other games knocks the characters on the floor or slightly hurts them
= bodyslamming 19) Bullets and such that leave from some arbitrary point from the sprite or model instead of from the weapon that fired them. Similarly first person games where the gun is positioned unnaturally at the middle of the screen and cases where they aren't but the bullets still are projected from the middle. Shmups should be ignored as this is practically the standard behaviour for them that seemingly never got any attention.
...examples: Doom, Doom 2, many topdown shooters (projectiles leave from the center of the sprite/model instead of the gun)
= centerprojection 20) NPC/minion shopping. NPCs and possibly even the player character's minions can buy items and such for themselves when
they feel like they need them.
... examples:
Majesty 2 (minions buy armor, potions and magical artefacts when they feel like they need them and when they have enough cash for them)
= npcshopping 21) Player owns or can own a large houshold with a number of (presumably loyal) retainers and they must manage this to some degree or simply benefit from their existence.
... examples:
Baldur's Gate 2(?),
Summoner 2,
Divinity 2 = estate 22) Creatures or characters that normally instantly would attack the player, but do not. Friendly monsters, so to speak, though not necessarily friendly (could be neutral/indifferent) nor monstrous by appearance.
... examples: Grim Fandango (all the skeletal dead), Dark Alliance (ghosts), Divinity 2 (most ghosts), Fallout series (non-feral ghouls)
= neutralmonsters 23) Group members can die, but as long as even one stays alive, the others can be resurrected.
... examples: most older games tagged with
group.
Mordor series did a twist for this that your whole party may die, and be resurrected by another group strolling about.
= resuscitation 24) Same as #23, but characters fall unconscious or become incapacitated instead, and come around after combat (usually barely so). They may remain unconscious until healed even after combat.
... examples: More recent games tagged with
group. Those marked with
multiple protagonists. Some games allow both falling unconscious and dying, though usually enemies do not try to beat up unconscious party members if there are better targets around.
= ???
25) Being spotted causes NPCs to gain a magical ability to know where you are. Especially troublesome in certain stealth games. Also, another contrasting tag for NPCs not gaining such ability. They'll continue shooting where they _think_ you are, but you could already be somewhere far off, or behind their back.
... examples: two first
Splinter Cell games are reported to as having the first, while the following games the latter.
= relentless guards 26) Forgetful enemies. After chasing you for a small distance and not seeing you for few seconds, they'll forget that you ever were there and return to their posts or whatever. Especially when this happens inside a high security compound. There's no general alert issued until you've been found nor do they inform others of a sneaky bastard on their premises.
= forgetfulenemies 27) Player has the ability to instantly kill or incapacitate NPCs.
= killingblow, stunning 28) Improbably healthy NPCs, and improbably healthy player character. Common in non-tactical shooters. Characters survive much greater beating than anyone could believe them capable of. Commonly does not extend to vehicles.
= ???
29) Skill/ability/"research" tree. A tree of new abilities which is unlocked either by
adv-ptdistr or
upgradesystem.
= abilitydependencies 30) Dropped items are completely destroyed instead of appearing in the game world. Usually accompanied by a warning that the item(s) will be destroyed by the action.
... examples: many console RPGs.
= ???
31) Items in the world that can be placed in your inventory can be destroyed while they're in the world. This should not include trash functionality of your inventory. Implies
itemdurability. (not including "plot items")
... examples: many roguelikes
= destructible items 32) Items can't be dropped. (not including "plot items")
... examples: many adventure games.
= inventory-indisposable 33) Items you have in the safety of your inventory can be destroyed by external means. (not including "plot items")
... examples: some roguelikes
= inventory-unprotected 34) Player encounters dangers they must evade. Or even flee in terror.
... examples: these are often QTE's
= ???
I'll edit this post directly to add new ones and mark those that have proper tags.
