Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Digital Machinations diagrams are dynamic and interactive representations of game
mechanics. Unfortunately, we can't show their dynamic and interactive nature in the
static illustrations printed in this topic. However, Dormans has created a free, online
application named the Machinations Tool. The tool lets you draw Machinations
diagrams, simulate their operation in real time, and interact with them. On the
Machinations website, you can find interactive versions of many of the examples
that we discuss in this and later chapters. To a certain extent, the digital versions
of Machinations diagrams are playable. Some diagrams are so much like playing an
actual game that experimenting with them is fun and challenging in itself.
How the Machinations Tool Works
A static Machinations diagram, such as the ones printed in this topic, can display
only one distribution of resources. However, the Machinations Tool allows you to
load digital versions of the diagrams and see how they change over time.
The Machinations Tool looks similar to an object-oriented 2D drawing application
such as Microsoft Visio. It has a workspace in the middle and a variety of selectable
tools in a side panel. You can create diagrams in the workspace or load them from
a file.
NOTE
appendix a
contains a tutorial
explaining how to use
the machinations Tool.
When you tell the tool to run, it performs the events that are specified by the dia-
gram in a series of
time steps
or
iterations
(we use the terms interchangeably). The
tool changes the state of the diagram. When it has completed one iteration, the tool
then executes another with the diagram in its new state, and so on, repeatedly until
you tell it to stop. (You can also build a feature into the diagram that will cause iter-
ation to stop automatically when certain conditions are met—like when the clock
runs out in basketball.) You can control the length of each time step by setting an
interval
value; if you want the tool to run slowly, you can set the interval to several
seconds per time step.
Scope and level of Detail
In earlier chapters, we discussed the notion of
abstraction:
the process of simplifying
or eliminating details of a system to make it less complex and easier to study and
tune. For example, the computers that ran the early versions of
SimCity
did not have
enough CPU power to represent each automobile individually. Instead, the game
simply computed traffic density in a general way along each stretch of road and dis-
played an animation that showed how dense it was.
Machinations diagrams permit you to abstract as much or as little as you like. You can
use them to focus on all, or only part, of a game's mechanics. Using Machinations
diagrams, you can design and test your game's mechanics at different levels of
detail. How you use them depends on what you want to achieve. For example, it's
often sufficient to model a game from the perspective of a single player, even if the
