Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
reVersinG elaboration: simpliFication
You can use elaboration to make games more complex, but you can also do the reverse.
By replacing elaborate patterns with simpler ones, you can remove complexity from a
design. You can also use simplification to create diagrams that are more abstract than
the game that they describe yet that still retain some of the game's dynamic behavior. We
used this simpliication technique for several diagrams in this topic, notably the
Pac-Man
examples in chapter 5 and the
Risk
examples in chapter 6. For example, in the diagrams
for
Risk
, we modeled the opposition from other players as dynamic friction (see Figure
6.27). a multiplayer diagram for the same game would use the attrition pattern for the
same mechanism. By replacing attrition with dynamic friction, we removed the other
players from the diagram entirely and focused more on the internal economy from the
perspective of a single player.
Elaboration does not apply only to design patterns; it applies to almost any element
in a Machinations diagram. For example,
Figure 7.5
displays a number of ways to
elaborate a converter. Any game mechanism can be an elaboration of a converter as
long as it displays more or less the same functionality: consume one resource to pro-
duce another. The elaborated converters cannot be called design patterns, because
they don't present a generic solution to a common problem. However, building up a
repertoire of such structures (while being aware of what they originally came from)
will allow you to experiment with game mechanics with great ease.
FIGURe 7.5
different elaborations
for a converter element
