Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Composing Gameplay Phases
When you are designing levels for a game that has a number of these emergent
gameplay phases, your job is to compose a desired gameplay experience from them.
Suppose that, in our real-time strategy game, your design goal for a particular level
is to emphasize the first building phase. You can achieve this by harassing the
player early on with small groups of enemies that attack frequently. This forces the
player to maintain a delicate balance between increasing production and building
up defenses, and it slows down the former considerably. The effect will be that the
building phase will probably be much longer. By creating a map in which resources
are relatively scarce and scattered, the player is more likely to go through several
exploration and consolidation phases.
scriptinG Vs. emerGence
When you are composing the gameplay phases for a game or a level, you can try to
have all the different phases emerge naturally from playing the game. however, in
many cases, it is more effective to force a few changes through deterministic or dynamic
scripts. For example, in many levels of the single-player campaign of
StarCraft
(and many
other rTs games), the game designers planned specific attack waves to be launched
against the player by the ai. some of these events simply occur at a fixed time, while oth-
ers are triggered when the player reaches particular points on the map. even when you
are aiming for dynamic, emergent gameplay, don't be afraid to mix in some more direct
forms of progression in this way. When done subtly, you create a highly dynamic game or
level that offers great variation and has a high replay value.
It often requires a major event to initiate a shift between gameplay phases. While a
game is in a particular phase, it is in balance, and the player probably settles into a
certain rhythm of play. We have identified several design patterns that are commonly
used to create significant events that can cause the game to shift to a new phase.
n
Slow cycle.
In the previous chapter, we discussed the
slow cycle
pattern in
StarCraft II
to shift the game between distinct defensive and offensive phases. In
general, a slow cycle is effective but also a little lacking in subtlety, especially when
the player has little impact on the slow cycle mechanism. (According to legend,
King Canute demonstrated the limits of monarchical power by showing that he
could not hold back the tide, a classic slow cycle.) On the other hand, the
slow cycle
pattern tends not to produce events as dramatic as those we describe next.
n
Static friction/static engines.
When
static friction
is infrequent but has a high
impact, it can cause phase shifts.
Caesar III
contains a good example (see Chapter 9,
“Building Economies”), in which periodic invaders and periodic demands for trade
goods by the emperor create high-impact static friction. Because the balance of the
city economy is delicate, these events can easily throw the economy into a phase
of decline, where lost access to resources causes citizens to leave town, reducing the
labor force and lowering production.
