Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Don't just check for immediate or near-term effects of your combinatorial tests. It's
important to make sure that a menu selection is available or a button performs its func-
tion when pressed, but mid-term and far-term effects can lock up or spoil the game
down the road. Here are some of these effects to consider:
Does my game or session end properly?
Do achievements get recorded properly?
Can I progress to appropriate parts of the game or story?
Did actions taken in the game get properly counted toward season/career
accomplishments and records?
Can I properly start and play a new session?
Can I store and retrieve sessions or files?
Here are some of the observations you might make from running the
NFL 2K5
Game
Options tests you completed in Figure 10.22:
Playing in Coach Mode prevents the user from selecting or controlling any
of the players during the game. With that mode on, what is the function of
the Multiple Hot Routes choice, since the player is prevented from assigning
any Hot Routes? Maybe this relationship could be made clear to the user by
“graying out�? the Multiple Hot Routes choices if Coach Mode is set to “Yes.�?
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Normally, the A button (on Xbox) is used to change player selection and skip
over in-game events such as timeouts. In Coach Mode, some of the A button
actions, like active player selection, are blocked. As a side effect, Coach Mode
prevents the user from interrupting timeouts. You end up waiting approxi-
mately 90 seconds for the timeout to expire before gameplay resumes.
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According to NFL rules and the game's own documentation, coaches should
not be allowed to challenge plays in the last two minutes of the half. If this is
literally applied, then no coaches' challenges should be possible at all in a game
where each quarter is only one minute long. However,
NFL 2K5
does permit
coaches to challenge plays during the 1st and 3rd quarters of the game when
Quarter Length = 1 minute.
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One of the features of
NFL 2K5
is to provide Crib Points for various accom-
plishments during the game and one of the rewards is 10 points for every hour
of gameplay. When playing with Quarter Length = 15 minutes, the actual
gameplay time (four quarters) takes more than 1 hour. During the game you
will get pop-up notifications of a 10-point crib reward. This can happen two
or three times depending on the pace you play. Once the game ends, the sum-
mary of Crib Points earned during that game shows that the 10-point game
time award was only counted once.
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