Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
In
The Legend of Zelda
, the bow and arrow can be used to open doors by shooting
distant switches. The mechanism (
Figure 11.11
) combines a skill-based lock with
a more traditional lock-and-key mechanism: The player must have the bow and at
least one arrow. Using the lock consumes arrows (and has a chance of failing). As
with the lockpicks in the previous example, the game must include some sort of
mechanism to supply the player with enough arrows to prevent creating a situation
in which he cannot proceed.
FIGURe 11.11
The bow and arrow
in
Zelda
combines a
regular key (the bow)
and a consumable
skill key (the arrows)
mechanism.
This type of lock does not display dynamic behavior; it contains no feedback loops.
Even more elaborate game mechanics for locks and keys, such as the bombling crea-
tures in
Zelda
(
Figure 11.12
), create more interesting gameplay, but they typically
do not create the dynamic behavior we are looking for.
FIGURe 11.12
Bombling keys. Try this
in the machinations
tool.
Throughout this topic, we have stressed the importance of feedback loops in the
creation of emergent gameplay. You might have noticed that so far, the lock-and-
key mechanisms discussed in this section include little feedback. The activators in
Figure 11.9 create some feedback, as does the trigger to spawn a new bombling in
Figure 11.12. However, in both cases this feedback is very local and does not affect
the lock-and-key mechanics much.
