Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
value to assign to the three pages of writing. The rest of this decision exercise is not
terribly relevant (let's just say I'm spending as much time as I can this weekend try-
ing to catch up on the writing that I didn't get done during the week). The point is,
however, that there are two separate measurements in play.
Originally, I had calculated how many
pages per day
I would need to write to
finish the topic on time (three). That differs significantly, however, from the calcu-
lation of how long I would have to leave in each day to accomplish the three-page
goal. In that case, the value and utility of
time
as the primary measuring device
becomes important. “Can I
spend
time watching the TV show and still have enough
time to
spend
writing my book?� Notice the emphasis on
spending
time. How im-
portant is that TV show to me that I would spend time on it—perhaps in exchange
for something that is not as important to me later in the week so that I can make up
the time on my book?
I
NTHE
G
AME
Settlers and Warriors
Similar sorts of gymnastics are often necessary when doing calculations for games.
At times, it is not enough to know how long it takes to create something. You need
to know how many
somethings
you can create in a particular amount of time.
Imagine that we are calculating a build order in a turn-based strategy (TBS)
game. (We could do the same with an RTS game, but thinking in terms of “turns�
instead of seconds or minutes is easier for this example.) In our game, we know that
it takes three turns for a city to create a warrior. We also would like to use the
production of these cities to create a new settler unit so we can expand our empire
—as soon as possible. The settler takes five turns to create. Additionally, creating
the settler unit is useless unless we can send a warrior along to protect it.
We also know that we could expect an attack in as few as 20 turns. We want to
be able to defend our city with a minimum number of four warriors. The four war-
riors must be built and in place on that twentieth turn when the attacks could begin
to occur.
One approach would be to build the four warrior units
first
and, once the city
is suitably defended, proceed with building the settler and the escort warrior.
However, because expanding our empire is a high priority, we want to begin that as
soon as possible. The question is, can we afford to build the settler unit and its ac-
companying escort warrior
right away
, send them off in search of the promised
land, and
then
begin cranking out our defenses? Will we have the four defensive
warriors in place by the time the twentieth turn arrives?
