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Fig. 2. Examples of the major tasks performed in an FPS - from left to right: Kill
Agent , Use Resources (ammunition, healing items) and Open Door
pattern for a speed/rival race event with the difference that it repeats several
times in sequential order (see Fig. 1c).
Half Life 2 (HL2): HL2 is a single player first-person shooter (FPS). Like a
number of first person shooters, you acquire weapons and health packs in order
to defeat non-player characters (NPCs) and traverse levels. Analysis of the levels
in the game indicate a number of workflow patterns. First of all, entrance to
a level triggers instancing of gameplay tasks (WP #6 - Multi-Choice [17] in
combination with WP #8 - Multi-Merge [17]). We group these into three major
task types, viz. Kill Agents , Use Resources , Open Doors (see Fig. 2). Kill
Agents is the destruction, by whatever means, of other agents in the game. Open
Door tasks are a general description of having to remove a physical impediment
to progress spatially, for example, opening a door, destroying an oil drum, or
killing a blocking NPC. These sequences are embedded within a set of multiple
tasks that may be ignored. For example, you do not have to kill all agents to
progress through a level. This killing of agents and collection of resources is
often up to the discretion of the player. A subset of the tasks require a certain
sequence (WP #1 [17]) for them to be completed.
In the level Routekanal1 there are certain sequences that must be performed
before progression can occur. For example, you clear out an area of NPCs with
a mounted machine gun ( Kill Agents ) and come to an oil drum that has to be
destroyed ( Open Door ) before you can traverse to the next location and enter a
tunnel. Note, it is possible to avoid shooting the NPCs if you are skilled enough
in traversal, but you must shoot the oil drum. Therefore, this is an example of an
enforced sequence within multi-choices. Once the level is traversed, a final door
opening task is completed to exit the level; left over tasks are removed from the
list allocated to the player. You cannot go back to the level to finish the other
remaining tasks, you must recommence the level in order to begin again, or, you
must go to a save point in the game to recommence the level at the same state.
This is an example of the Canceling Discriminator pattern (WP #29 [17]).
Combining these four workflow patterns together, we construct an overall
FPS workflow pattern shown in Fig. 3 (left). We argue that this pattern, in
slight variations, forms the structure of a number of FPS games. Thus designs
for other FPS games can be configured from an executable form of such a pattern.
In addition, there is further detail in the tasks being performed in the can-
cellation region. In a similar manner, such tasks may be devolved into a split
 
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