Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
continually layering and refining the individual game mechanics. If you read the foreword to The
Game Maker's Apprentice , you may remember this quote from Phil Wilson of Realtime Worlds
(creators of Crackdown ):
“The initial idea is simply the seed from which the game grows, or the stone from which the
pillars are hewn. The role of a designer is to fully realize the vision: conceiving and continually
refining the various supporting mechanisms to make them mesh like the components of a Swiss
timepiece.”
This is exactly what we have been trying to model in this chapter. You probably thought this
was a purely technical exercise, but gameplay programming is as much about game design as it is
about programming. Good gameplay programmers have a natural feel for creating and honing
game mechanics, and their influence on the success of the final game is often as great as that of
the designer who came up with the idea in the first place.
So before you continue, why not play around with some of the settings again and see if you
can make the game even more appealing. Simply changing the values of some of the constants
that we have defined can have a huge effect on the gameplay. If you're feeling brave, then you
might even like to add some more features or enemies. There are a range of different sprites
(created by the original artists) in the Chapter06/Resources directory to help you do this.
In the interim, it's time to take a bit of a break from programming as we start working
towards the next project in the topic. This time, we're going to create a completely new concept
that relies on its storyline and characters to drive the gameplay forward. It's time to test your sea
legs, land-lubbers, because there are some eerie-looking shadows on deck….
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