Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
configuring various military units on different kinds of terrain (about
five or six). Despite a few small flaws, Advance Wars is a good example
of an elegant game design.
Take Advantage of Each Decision
If you're designing a turn-based game, you have a wonderful setup for a
very efficient, interesting game that has literally no downtime. Each deci-
sion, each move, is an opportunity for a really interesting, meaningful,
ambiguous decision. If your game has a grid, consider reducing its size.
If you are controlling units, consider making fewer with more power.
Remember that each element that adds complexity blurs the decisions in
the game slightly, and this can add up quickly: before you know it, you've
got a game with 10,000 nearly meaningless decisions instead of one with
100 very interesting ones.
Grid Design (or Not)
Squares are the go-to grid setup for most turn-based game developers
because they are perceived as being the easiest for people to understand
or use. This is unfortunate, because squares bring a lot of problems.
One problem with squares is that diagonal movement takes players
farther than orthogonal movement does. Some systems charge players
movement points or some such thing for moving diagonally, but this
is something of a Band-Aid solution. For this reason, war gamers tend
to go with hexes (hexagons). Mechanically speaking, the strength of
hexes is huge because each tile is equidistant from all of the tiles sur-
rounding it. It's a nice, uniform system and I would recommend it as
the default replacement for squares in turn-based games. The only two
downsides to a hex-based design is that it can make it more difficult to
incorporate nice-looking artwork into the game, and also many control
setups (keyboards and D-pads) are based on a four-directional control
scheme. Of course, the latter isn't a problem for mouse-based or touch
screen-based games.
Another thing to consider is that even though grids (the splitting up
of space into discrete sections) generally do make sense in turn-based
games (since the element of time is divided up into discrete sections),
you don't always have to go with a grid. The tactical RPG D&D module
Temple of Elemental Evil (developed by Troika Games) gives you a con-
tinuous amount of movement to spend on a continuous space. Using
continuous space instead of a grid requires a little finessing, but it can be
done well and might be right for what you're doing.
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