Fire Hose Games » Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Final Fantasy, circa 1987. Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) is something that has been popping up a decent amount in the video game world recently; games that automatically, or through player input, adjust the difficulty to make games easier or harder to play are appealing because they make titles usable by large ranges of the population. I realized this past weekend, while going nuts with the cgcmarathon, that it’s been around for a while and that the ORIGINAL Final Fantasy, a Dungeons and Dragons inspired 8-bit classic on the original NES, had a great self-DDA system that let the user choose how hard they wanted the game to be at the very beginning of the game!
The only problem is that it isn’t clear at all that is what’ s happening, since it is the “party select” screen, and doesn’t give any hints about how hard it will make the game. So how does Self-DDA work in Final Fantasy? Let’s examine, with this easy to reference formula. How to determine game difficulty in Final Fantasy based on party make up. CCC - Interview: David Perkinson (Producer): Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. CCC's Patrick Evans discusses what all the force is about with producer of LucasArt's Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, David Perkinson. CCC: How did you guys approach the source material when planning this game from start to end? Is there a specific way that you guys looked at certain scenes and decided that comical elements would work better here than in other scenes?
Can you give us an abridged explanation of how you guys dissected the Original Trilogy and “Lego-ized” it? David Perkinson: There’s no formula – we tried to convey all the main plot points, and very naturally picked out key moments from the movies which we wanted to bring into our storyboards. We chose levels based on familiarity and the best opportunities to deliver great gameplay coupled with the tongue-and-cheek spin on Star Wars. Every time we approached a scenario, we’re instinctively putting a LEGO twist on it. New Stuff You Should Check Out! David: Mos Eisley has a great one. Infinite_adaptive_mario [Slug Wiki] Infinite Adaptive Mario Download: here Requires: Java 1.6 Controls: arrows to move, 's' to jump, 'a' to run Recently, there has been increased interest in building games that dynamically adapt to players. One of the common approaches to building adaptive games is dynamic difficulty adjustment. However, most of these approaches are limited to parameter tweaking such as adjusting weapon strength or reducing spawning times, and do not modify levels in response to difficulty adjustment.
My system attempts to overcome this limitation by incorporating parameter tweaking into procedural content generation. The system creates new levels on the fly in response to the current performance of the player. Infinite Adaptive Mario expands on Markus Persson's Infinite Mario by adapting to the skill of the player. The player begins at level 50, which produces levels with a moderate degree of challenge. Levels generated at the easiest and most challenging difficulty settings: Good Idea, Bad Idea: Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment- Destructoid.
[Editor's note: unangbangkay takes a look Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in his contribution to the Monthly Musing. DDA isn't really brought up that often and I must say this was a really enlightening read. -- CTZ] Videogames as we know them were built on the idea of challenge. Arcade games were always about (and still are about) getting as far as you can go, mastering the gameplay (or at least the minutiae of the levels) and going until you either ran out of money or you contracted premature arthritis in your wrists.
As games got more complicated the management of challenge turned into something of an art. Too much challenge, and players got frustrated and quit. Too little challenge, and players got bored and quit. So the idea of dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA) was born. DDA is a relatively new concept, and only really emerged in roughly the last decade. Did you ever notice Max Payne's DDA? Half-Life 2 also did it, but in an even more subtle and unobtrusive manner.