Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
n Skills : Water can provide your players with ways of learning new skills,
such as fishing or pearl diving. Players could also have swimming skills
that they could upgrade; if this skill is something that players need to
train to improve, it could also provide areas where only those with a
higher skill level can reach.
n Barriers : If you decide that players cannot swim or cross water in your
game, you can use water as a barrier.
n Border : You can use water as a way of separating different areas.
n Player
s attention : You can use terrain and objects to push the player in
a particular direction. This is a common trick used in today
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they use landscape items such as hills and mountains and objects such as
paths, fences, and birds circling in the distance to direct a player
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s games
s atten-
tion in a certain direction. You can use water effects in the same manner.
Using the landscape, a river/stream, and some objects you can make a
player move in a particular direction.
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Note
Even though you are making an MMO, you might be wondering why you should be trying to push
players in a particular direction. There are many different levels of players in the world; some will
need more help than others. This is certainly true of new players who will not know your game very
well. One failing some modern MMOs have is not making the game easy enough for the player to
understand early on within the first few levels. Hard games like this can lead to lots of questions in
the chat rooms and forums. If players get frustrated, they will move onto the next MMO or game.
It
s also a useful technique to give hints to players (of any experience level) that something is going
on in a particular direction. If players see something interesting or intriguing in the distance, they
are more likely to enjoy the game than when just randomly walking around.
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To add a water effect, you need to follow these steps:
1. Select Water Area from the Create list.
2. Choose a texture to use for the water. You can see the create menu in
Figure 13.8. Select the texture, and then right-click on the world to place
a yellow box, which will contain the texture. You can see an example of
a placed box in Figure 13.9, next to a river in the default level.
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