Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
display as well. I came across an amazing mod called NAO, which
told me when to use certain abilities as a Warrior; it did this, however,
with sound. No on-screen display, just a loud noise when it was time
to hit a certain button.
In addition to the game field, other elements of a game are por-
trayed visually. The interface, the in-game instructions, and the con-
troller itself are all visual artifacts. When you try to remember which
is the X and which is the Y button on a Super Nintendo controller, it is
likely that you are visually recalling it, although I admit that some of
you will use haptic or motor memory—how it feels.
The vast majority of information in digital games is presented to
the players through their eyes, which does a disservice to the medium.
This preoccupation with the visual sense is by no means limited to
games. The movie industry, advertising, art, and much of the world
in which we live consist of visual display. Take a few moments in
the neon-soaked streets of Tokyo or in awe at the cinematography
of a summer blockbuster as commonsense examples. As we learned
in Chapter 3 and as we are going to learn here, there is a special way
that the brain handles each individual sense. In the case of digital
games, we have audio and visual to work with, with some haptic stuff
in the use of the vibration motors in the controller. For the sake of the
educational psychology sort of hook that this topic is taking, I will
focus only on the areas where there is a lot of research, namely, video
and audio.
Audible Stuff in Games
The other half of a game's presentation is, of course, what you can hear.
For the vast majority of game projects, this means the background
music and various sound effects. There is really not much else to say
here. Game design dating back to the arcade eras didn't always have
music, other than a jingle to signify that the level had begun; think
Pac- Man , for example. It was uncommon for there to be a music track
on early home systems as well, partially because of memory limita-
tions, and partially because the best sounds coming out of very early
games could barely produce anything resembling music.
We have learned an amazing amount about how to make music and
sounds. As a result, in modern games, there are several approaches
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