Best Game 'Minor' Innovations!

[Imran Siddiqui]

No, no, I don't mean like Doom III's graphics, or Half Life's story. I mean like little things (be they features or options) that make you go, "That's so cool".

I'm saying the 'Test Performance' in No One Lives Forever 2. I've always thought it was tedious that when you changed one display option (resolution, whathaveyou) you'd have to go and play the game to see if it was ok, and if it wasn't, you'd have to make sure you didn't mess anything up before you could change the options back. NOLF2 has a little gameplay video that will test the performance of your display settings and give you a recommendation.

I had 1024*678*32 (or whatever) and Medium detail. I pressed the 'Test Performance' button. You say this little gameplay video, and then afterwards it told me, I could go higher with my settings. I thought that was a great idea! Don't have to futz around in my game to see if the settings worked ok, have something to do that for me outside of MY game itself.

[DrSpike]

Deus Ex had tonnes of minor features that you could easily miss. For instance if you go into the ladies' room later on the game you overhear a women telling a friend "yeah *that's* him".

[Lemmy]

Public works in CtP - The best ever.

Ctrl-N in GalCiv - creates a new random map without having to go through the "new game" setup.

Fallout character system, i think i spent over an hour the first time i created a character, i loved it!

[Alex]

The pack mule in Dungeon Siege. It is surprising that no developer has ever thought about it before.

[Rasbelin]

Great idea for a thread, Imran.

MoH:AA - working configuration file system.

MoH:AA SH - Call Vote, Vote Yes/no and maplist options in the in-game menu, unlike in MoH:AA. Also the gamma calibration is neat.

Freeciv - Can be played in a resizable window which is perfect for multitasking.

Civ III - Armies make it easier to move larger number of units at once. Especially good for larger field campaigns.

AoE - the lack of too many visible options may look confusing, but actually it's very working.

[Traianvs]

I think the best minor idea ever in RTS games would be keyboard shortcuts... I wouldn't be able to imagine a game of AoK without a keyboard, yuk,... you can do everything thrice as fast with a keyboard


overpowering the shotgun in SoF gold was a very important minor difference that made the game kick ass a whole lot more

[pg]

quake1 - mouselook... i'm not sure if you'd call it a minor innovation though. at the time hardly anyone used it or knew about it while today every uses mouse look.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by pg
quake1 - mouselook... i'm not sure if you'd call it a minor innovation though. at the time hardly anyone used it or knew about it while today every uses mouse look.

True, I remember playing the really early games with keys..........then someone who I was playing quake1 with soon after I started playing it incredulously said "you mean you don't use mouselook?"

FPS was changed forever. Good call PG.

[Grumbold]

Call to Power: powerful scripting and proper armies employing combined arms principles.

Braveheart: The first? game to combine RTS battles with a TBS country sim.

[Rasbelin]

Good point indeed, PG. Without mouselook, modern FPS games would be nearly impossible to play well.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Another one:

Morrowind - REAL looking water! I mean, in most games before it you had water just be this clear, blueish stuff. In Morrowind (and in some games after... like NOLF2) you have a reflective, silverish top to the water, just like in real life. It looks absolutely AMAZING!

[Alex]

Cheats available as a menu option in Civ2.

[CapitanGarlic]

Color-changing HUDs. Or HUDs with schemes, like Deus Ex (Soylent Green=)

[Maquiladora]

I use Soylent Green too mmmmm

For minor innovations id say the in-game tutorial or the training mission, for those of us who cant be arsed to read the manual from cover to cover!

[Sandman]

Games coming in DVD boxes, as opposed to those cardboard boxes.