Glitches in videogames

[invertin]

Glitches are more entertaining than the actual game in some cases. In the actual game, you are constrained by the rules of the game, even if those rules are ridiculously complex, you can always expect X result from Y action. But with Glitches, their behavior to the rest of the game is completely unknown, to the player and to the developer until somebody starts experimenting. And even then the results might be entirely different depending on entirely unrelated circumstances. The investigation and discovery process is what I find really interesting. Especially since a lot of glitches reveal previously unknown information about how the game works.

For example, on another forum focusing on XCOM, there was a well-known glitch where walls facing south-east would always have invisible gaps where they should connect to the ceiling. Not large enough to shoot through, but large enough for the AI to "see" you when they shouldn't. Through investigation of that glitch, using map editors and such to place soldiers in specific locations, they learned that soldiers have an invisible variable that shows whether or not the aliens know where they are, and that aliens instantly know your location if you damage them unless you kill them in one hit. Plus, the variable affects all aliens and is individual to the soldiers- the game keeps track that an alien saw you, not which alien saw you, but it does remember which soldier was seen, when it was previously believed that aliens could detect any soldier from seeing one soldier.

But at the moment the only real glitches that reach that level of mystery are the Glitch pokemon, and Nintendo have been mostly getting rid of those. The Glitch pokemon shouldn't be fixed, they should be advertised as a feature!

But I'm not saying that massive holes in gameplay, or corruption, or memory leaks, or save problems should be left alone. But at the same time, if there is a glitch that nobody would meet in normal gameplay without deliberately looking for it, it should be left in the game. Simply because glitches in some cases make the game more fun and more interesting. One of the reasons I'm not interested in new pokemon games (apart from the fact that they all look stupid now) is that the glitch pokemon have been mostly erased, and the left overs are too dangerous or too mundane.

...Anyway, thoughts?

[Gifted]

I completely agree. I remember, I used to play World of Warcraft just because of glitches. I would just wall jump to unreachable points, and that was fun. Then, they took that out, and I unsubscribed. Yes, wall jumping could be used for exploiting, but it was only in a few situations that should've been fixed with better solutions. I always enjoy finding glitches in games, and it really extends the lifespan of your average game.

[Sandurz]

I also agree! Myfavorite glitch of all time is in FE8, with the control enemy glitch. Basically I got to play my friends outside of that crappy arena.

[Zhukov]

If the glitches in a game are more interesting than the game itself then clearly the game is crap.

I try to avoid crap games. Sometimes I even succeed.

[Endoperez]

If the glitches in a game are more interesting than the game itself then clearly the game is crap.

Or the glitches accidental genius that should be written down and worked into the game design of further games - even if it doesn't work in the game where the glitch originally appeared in. If people liked a glitch, what about a MMO game with parkour? And what about rocket jumping: that won't fit games that try to be realistic, but it becomes an interesting mechanic in stylized games.

[invertin]

If the glitches in a game are more interesting than the game itself then clearly the game is crap.

More interesting in terms of experimentation. You can't experiment much in pokemon, but then we found the glitch pokemon, and experiments happened and were fun.

Sims 3 has some funky genetics glitches that I would like to play around with.

Pokemon is one of the best game series ever and Sims 3 is pretty damn popular as well.

I suppose that the same basic effect could be made of a game with really complex game mechanics, but the game itself only explains the basics so that the player has to experiment and find out how X reacts with Y if variable Z is 6 or whatever.

[Endoperez]

I suppose that the same basic effect could be made of a game with really complex game mechanics, but the game itself only explains the basics so that the player has to experiment and find out how X reacts with Y if variable Z is 6 or whatever.

Or even, a game that's so complex that EVEN THOUGH the player has been explained what they do and how things work, players still have to experiment. Say, 15 different nations in a strategy game instead of 3, or 500 different pieces of gear in an FPS instead of 10. Most roguelikes, Dwarf Fortress, many sim and strategy games...

[zoidberg rules]

You want glitches, three words, Grand Theft Auto...

I know that mostly, the attraction to these games is within the whole sandbox/open world/lookwhatIcandowiththecheatIfoundholyshitthatsamazingImustgetthisgame but in certain cases, you can get some pretty interesting and fun glitches after using cheats, and to get rid of the glitches, restart the console! No consequences whatsoever!

I'll get you started, boot up GTA IV, find your nearest swing set, get a car and reverse slowly into it...

Enjoy the consequences,you know, that is, unless they patched that physics glitch...

[invertin]

I suppose that the same basic effect could be made of a game with really complex game mechanics, but the game itself only explains the basics so that the player has to experiment and find out how X reacts with Y if variable Z is 6 or whatever.

Or even, a game that's so complex that EVEN THOUGH the player has been explained what they do and how things work, players still have to experiment. Say, 15 different nations in a strategy game instead of 3, or 500 different pieces of gear in an FPS instead of 10. Most roguelikes, Dwarf Fortress, many sim and strategy games...

Most roguelikes have very predictable interactions. Consumable items do things when you eat them, weapons do things when you hit with them. You can expect an item to do what it looks like it's designed to do.

Nethack did have some interesting ways to play with it. For example, the Cockatrice was a chickenish thing that turned you to stone if you touched it. In that game, it was possible to turn yourself into one, lay some eggs, pick up the eggs once human (while wearing gloves, of course) and then throw the eggs at monsters to petrify them. (and somehow the game developers realized you could do this and programmed in a stat penalty for doing it)

Dwarf Fortress was a good example. If you know what you're doing, the laws of physics barely prevent you from doing anything at all. Especially things the creator didn't necessarily intend to happen. I remember reading about a zombie fish. Because it was a zombie, it didn't need to breath water. So it dragged itself across the floor in order to chase dwarves on land.

The most interesting stuff for me is AI, and how AI deals with situations in ways you wouldn't expect. I remember a youtube video, showing an AI squad of half-life 2 rebels fighting an AI squad of combine. The combine and rebels kept moving around from cover to cover, even flanking the enemies, but according to the developers they never intended them to do that, it was just a random quirk that ended up that way because of how they decide what cover to move to.

[Endoperez]

Most roguelikes have very predictable interactions. Consumable items do things when you eat them, weapons do things when you hit with them. You can expect an item to do what it looks like it's designed to do.

The interactions might be predictable, but when you're FACED with a specific interaction, you can't always react the same way. Say, in Dungeon Crawl, enemy Centaurs are very fast (faster than most player races), carry bows (which hurt), pretty often have either magic bows or arrows (it hurts A LOT more), and are rather tough.

If your character is otherwise ill-equipped to fight it (say, a sneaky character who the centaur has already noticed), you have to consider what consumable items you have found. Can you confuse the centaur? If you do, should you run or try to stab it? Can you poison it? If you can, should you stay stacking the poison or run away and hope the poison does it in? Can you teleport away? Since the teleport takes a few turns to come into effect, you have to try to use it BEFORE you're in the danger of dying outright. Can you teleport the Centaur away? Do you have healing potions? Do you have any useful wands? If the centaur is shooting magical arrows, do you have items that let you resist that element?

And once an item is gone, it's gone, or a charge spent. When you're faced with a hydra and have no fire-based attacks left, you might think back to the centaur you killed with a wand of burnination. When you are poisoned and about to die, you might look back and decide that you should've used your sole potion of Heal Wounds (more heal) instead of one of your potion of Healing (less heal, cure poison and sickness). After you die, you might realize you never used the last charge of the wand you were saving for a tight place.

I like roguelikes where you don't have to learn what the items do, but to learn to USE them properly. It's all about the tactical situations you find yourself in.